Favourite Fiction, Post-1960

Open up the questions to the audience at almost any literary  event, and someone, sooner or later, will ask you to name a favourite author – one who has influenced you, perhaps – or a favourite book. A question which throws my already wavering memory into shut down or something close to it. But no more. The following list of the novels and short story collections published since 1960 and that I’ve enjoyed and admired most will supply the answer. Several answers. As long as I remembered to take it with me. And please take into consideration this list is current as of July, 2019, and there are gaps I can see already. Where, for goodness sake, is the Don DeLillo? The Willy Vlautin? But don’t let’s get started – this will do for now.

John Updike
The Rabbit Quartet (1960/1971/1981/1990)

Thomas McGuane
Ninety-Two in the Shade (1973)
Nothing But Blue Skies (1992)

A. S. Byatt
The Virgin in the Garden (1978)
Still Life (1981)

William Maxwell
So Long, See You Tomorrow (1979)

 

Larry McMurtry
The Last Picture Show (1966)

Donald Barthelme
Sixty Stories (1981)

Toni Morrison
Beloved (1987)

Carol Shields
Mary Swann (1990)

Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried (1990)

Denis Johnson
Jesus’ Son (1992)

Michael Cunningham
The Hours (1998)

John McGahern
That They May Face the Rising Son (2002)

Alice Munro
Runaway (2004)

Kent Haruf
Eventide (2004)
Benediction (2013)
Our Souls at Night (2015)

Marilynne Robinson
Gilead (2004)
Home (2008)
Lila (2014)

Colm Toibin
The Master (2004)
The Testament of Mary (2012)

Raymond Carver
Where I’m Calling From (1989)

Richard Ford
The Lay of the Land (2006)

Jon McGregor
So Many Ways to Begin (2007)
Even the Dogs (2010)

Maile Meloy
Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It (2009)

Kevin Powers
The Yellow Birds (2012)

Zadie Smith
N-W (2012)

Tom Drury
The End of Vandalism (2014)

Maggie Nelson
The Arganauts (2015)

Anne Enright
The Green Road (2015)

Claire-Louise Bennett
Pond (2016)

[A separate list covering crime fiction can be found elsewhere on this blog]

 

 

A Few Thoughts on Colm Toibin, “Brooklyn” and Adaptation

I watched John Crowley’s film version of Colm Toibin’s novel, Brooklyn, again the other night, after reading an interview with Toibin in The Guardian Review. I was particularly interested in his remarks concerning the screenplay, written by Nick Hornby, and the ways in which the film’s ending differs from the original.

Unable to find suitable work at home, Eilis [Ey-lish] has emigrated from her home in south-east Ireland to Brooklyn, where a priest has found her both employment and  somewhere to live. Once settled, she falls into a relationship with Tony, a young man of Italian descent, and, though uncertain of her feelings, when she is called back to Ireland due to the death of her sister, she agrees to marry him, hastily and secretly, before she leaves. Once home, she  resumes her old life with a new maturity and greater self-confidence; a good job presents itself, along with a dependable man of a higher station, whom she likes and who would marry her. She has not told anyone – not the man, not her mother – that she is already married. It’s as if she herself has forgotten: has chosen to forget. Her husband’s letters are shut away, unopened, in a drawer. But gossip and rumour seek her out and Eilis has to decide what to do, which course to take. In this, her dilemma is not unlike that of Isabel Archer at the end of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady [both author and novel much beloved of Toibin] though Tony the plumber is, thankfully, neither as mendacious nor manipulating as Gilbert Osmond.

In both novel and film, she returns to America: there seems to be no viable alternative. But in the novel, her feelings about this are ambivalent at best; the film recasts this in the far more positive light of an inescapably happy ending. Eilis, unburdened by doubt, stands in bright light on the opposite side of the street from the building supplies store from which Tony and one of his brothers emerge, talking; it takes a few moments for the brother, and then Tony, to realise Eilis is there. Almost unable to believe his eyes, Tony, bedazzled, hastens into Eilis’ arms and the final clinch of an unambiguously happy ending.

What does Colm Toibin think of this?

“I’m interested in what Nick [Hornby] did with the structure of it,” says Toibin, “which is so brilliant; how much he left out, how he moved the drama on. But I tear up for the very last section, that I didn’t write.” He doesn’t mind that it changed the novel? “It’s gorgeous. And what were they meant to do, have an ending with her sitting on the train feeling smug: look what I’ve just done to everybody?”

This recognition that different forms of media have different requirements is something that writers perhaps find easier to accommodate than readers, whose reaction, more often than not, is less generous, less understanding; they are more likely to want the film, radio or television version to be as close to the original as possible and expect the author to feel the same.

Over the past years I’ve adapted the work of a number of authors: Arnold Bennett and Ruth Rendell for TV; Graham Greene, Paul Scott, Qiu Xiaolong and A. S. Byatt for radio. The majority of those, sadly, are no longer in a position to complain, and those that are, to the best of my knowledge, have refrained. When Antonia Byatt’s Frederica Quartet was being broadcast, and she was asked about it on Woman’s Hour, she was careful to make clear – before making comments which were, thankfully, positive – that’s John Harvey’s Frederica Quartet, not mine.

With other writers’ work, my process has always been to strip the story down it basic elements, then begin to build it up from there, with the demands – strengths and weaknesses – of the particular medium in mind. Where adapting my own work is concerned – two books for television, two books and three short stories for radio – I think I have been more successful with the latter. When I was writing the screenplays based on the first two Resnick novels, Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment, I was guilty of forgetting my own rules at times and sticking too close to the originals; favouring a speech, a scene, an exchange of dialogue, because I liked it rather than because it contributed towards an effective piece of film. Which is why, whenever the Resnick books have been optioned by this or that television company since – as has fairly frequently been the case – and I’ve been asked if I would be interested in writing one or more of the scripts, I’ve always said thanks, but no thanks – someone else, experienced and coming to it with a fresh eye, will likely do it better.

Top 50 Books of the Century (so far …)

 

Like all lists, this is biased, of course; partial, of necessity; it’s intended to be something to argue over, disagree with vehemently, send you to your local bookstore or the library shelves – or on line if you must: these are the books – fiction and non-fiction but not poetry – that have given me the most pleasure in the past sixteen (almost) years; the ones I could most look forward to rereading – and, in some cases, already have.

Hunts in Dreams : Tom Drury (2000)
Assorted Fire Events : David Means (2000)
Mystic River : Dennis Lehane (2001)
The Lovely Bones : Alice Sebold (2002)
That They May Face the Rising Sun : John McGahern (2002)
Sons of Mississippi : Paul Hendrickson (2003)
The Master : Colm Toibin (2004)
Runaway : Alice Munro (2004)
Eventide : Kent Haruf (2004)
Gilead : Marilynne Robinson (2004)
The Ongoing Moment : Geoff Dyer (2005)
The Broken Shore : Peter Temple (2005)
The Year of Magical Thinking : Joan Didion (2005)
The Lay of the Land : Richard Ford (2006)
Watch Me Disappear : Jill Dawson (2006)
This Book Will Save Your Life : A M Homes (2006)
Winter’s Bone : Daniel Woodrell (2007)
So Many Ways to Begin : Jon McGregor (2007)
Home : Marilynne Robinson (2008)
Red Dog, Red Dog : Patrick Lane (2008)
American Rust : Philipp Mayer (2009)
The Children’s Book : A S Byatt (2009)
Truth : Peter Temple (2009)
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It : Maile Meloy (2009)
The Good Soldiers : David Finkel (2009)
Even the Dogs : Jon McGregor (2010)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter : Tom Franklin (2010)
How to Paint a Dead Man : Sarah Hall (2010)
The Summer Without Men : Siri Hustvedt (2011)
Hemingway’s Boat : Paul Hendrickson (2011)
The Forgotten Waltz : Anne Enright (2011)
This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You : Jon McGregor (2012)
May We Be Forgiven : A M Homes(2012)
N-W : Zadie Smith (2012)
The Testament of Mary : Colm Toibin (2012)
Dare Me : Megan Abbott (2012)
Benediction : Kent Haruf (2013)
10th December : George Saunders (2013)
Thank You For Your Service : David Finkel (2013)
Lila : Marilynne Robinson (2014)
Fourth of July Creek : Smith Henderson (2014)
The Blazing World : Siri Hustvedt (2014)
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing : Eimear McBride (2014)
Another Great Day at Sea : Geoff Dyer (2014)
Our Souls at Night : Kent Haruf (2015)
Between the World & Me : Ta-Nehisi Cotes (2015)
Manual for Cleaning Women : Lucia Berlin (2015)
The Argonauts : Maggie Nelson (2015)
Willnot : James Sallis (2016)
Pond : Claire-Louise Bennett (2016)

Stranded with Colm Toibin

There’s usually a moment or two, at least, of interest or emotion to be garnered from Desert Island Discs, but, for me, the recent edition featuring Colm Toibin was riveting pretty much from start to finish.

How refreshing it was, for instance, to hear him say – when Kirsty Young raised the issue of his being short listed three times for the Booker Prize, but never winning – that on the first occasion he hadn’t minded, but when The Master, his novel about Henry James, didn’t win in 2004, he was both dazed and surprised. Clearly, he thought it should have won, for he would have been aware of the momentous challenge he had set himself in writing about – inhabiting – James in the way that he did; aware even, I suspect, that with The Master he had written what might yet prove to be his own masterwork, the fullest and most complete of his novels.

As it was, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty won the prize.

Either side of that confession of disappointment, if that’s what it was – honesty, certainly, rather than false modesty – Toibin said more that was useful about the business of writing during thirty or so minutes than might be gained from one of those lengthy and expensive courses you see advertised.

You need a lot of silence and time on your own. Things happen of their own accord but only if you give them, I suppose, peace.

But if you’re a novelist [rather than worrying over a philosophy of life] well, you just think, tell the story, get on with the business of what he did next, what did she think then, who did she see coming in the door? You’re always working with small images, small details, where the bottle was on the table the second she sipped water, or almost did. So it’s almost as if you’re making drawings or storyboards all the time, trying to see things.

And the book Colm Toibin would most like to take to his desert island? Why, James’ The Portrait of a Lady, of course.

 

Serving Two Masters

I was back at Goldsmiths College in New Cross on Wednesday evening, there to talk some of the students enrolled on the current Creative Writing MA programme, taught by Maura Dooley and Blake Morrison. Under the banner, My Life as a Jobbing Writer, I glossed through my forty years as a professional author, from my chancy beginnings as Thom Ryder, fictional chronicler of Britain’s Hells Angels, through almost 50 westerns and on, via some classy dramatic adaptations for radio and television, to my latter life as crime writer and sometime poet. It was fun to do – I think, of interest – and I tell you what – doesn’t that old pulp artwork look good blown up on the big screen!

A number of the questions revolved around the twin poles of artistic integrity and commercial imperatives, and I only wish I’d had the following, from Colm Toibin’s essay on Henry James, The Lessons of the Master, on hand to help with my answer.

All of his life as a writer James worried about both the purity of his work and the making of money. It was as though he himself were a married couple. One part of him cared for the fullness of art and the other part for the fullness of the cupboard.