Hello and welcome to "How Literature Works" - a series of programmes that will hopefully do exactly what it says on the tin - expose the workings of novels, plays and poems, so that by the end we'll all be able to read as efficiently as possible. By using the word "efficiently", I've no desire to imply that there is a finite amount of meaning in a particular work, and, if you know the ropes, it's perfectly possible to extract all of it. Rather, I hope that everyone listening will be able to fully engage with a text, and enjoy it (or not) with a more complete knowledge of what's going on within it, why the writer created it in the first place, and to have the confidence to push outwards from their comfort zone into more unfamiliar areas of literature. That's the ambition - and if together we achieve it, we won't have done too badly.
There's an awful lot of reading and book-related activity going on at the moment. Book clubs are thriving all over the UK, on TV and the radio. The radio station you're currently listening to broadcasts over six and a half thousand hours of serialized books a year and more books are being published in the UK than ever before. Tens of thousands of people are discovering the joys of reading, and there is now a number of new ways literature can be accessed - on the internet, on CD and by download or podcast. There's government figures to back this up if you can be bothered to find them; but if you can't a casual glance at what other people are up to on public transport will support this the thesis just as well. More and more people seem to have their noses in a book. And if you enjoy reading this is surely a good thing. At the very least, a book can while away a few spare minutes every day, or make the journey into work more bearable. You can read a book to escape into another world that may be more interesting than your own; or, if it's the right book and you're in a susceptible mood, it can engage you at deeper levels of emotional and intellectual attention and actively nourish your spiritual life. In short, just like Lord Reith hoped for from his fledgling BBC on its foundation in 1922, you can be entertained and informed.
So far so good. But there's more to reading than scanning the words and turning the pages. For whatever reason we pick up a book, we each engage with it in a different way. There are as many different ways of reading, and as many possible outcomes to the act of reading as there are readers. This may be dependent on what sort of book we're reading; how it's written; the subject matter; our likes and dislikes; how and where we're reading it; our own expectations; or any or all of the above. It's basically a three-way relationship between us, the writer and the culture we inhabit. And it's this relationship we're going to be examining at in the course of these programmes. Along the way, we'll be looking at the history of storytelling and publishing; how writers write and how readers read.
And how the academics in our universities and colleges, and the reviewers in our newspapers and periodicals try to explain what's going on in a given text.
So we're not necessarily looking at what to read, but how to read - and why we bother reading at all. By which stage, whether you're new to the game or a seasoned pro, you'll be ready to tackle any book, even James Joyce's near-incomprehensible Finnegan's Wake, and be able to get the most out of it.
And I'm interested in your experiences of reading too. Feel free to e-mail me at any point during the series with your thoughts, observations and experiences at [email protected], and we'll incorporate some into the programmes and get a dialogue going. For example in last Sunday's Independent , there was an article bemoaning the fact that the latest crop of literary fiction - Andrea Levy's Small Island and Yann Martel's Life of Pi were singled out - are unwittingly contributing to the degradation of fiction because they're too easy to understand, and yield up their meaning too readily. As you'll find out in these programmes, it's a point of view I've absolutely no sympathy with whatever, but you might. Let me know if you think that the harder we have to work as readers, the more enriching the experience. You might just persuade me to alter my views. Well, you never know. Anyway without further ado, let's get on with exploring How Literature Works.
‘How Literature Works’ is a big, fat, serious often frustrating subject that has taxed mankind’s grey matter since he first learned to record what he was thinking and saying. And you might imagine that as the twenty-first century takes its first faltering steps, we’d have wrestled it to the ground by now. After all, we can map every individual gene in the human body, so combinations of printed symbols shouldn’t prove too much of an obstacle to our understanding. Only they do.
As we’ll see, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; but it may seem odd that we’re unable to fully account for one of the most significant talents that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom - the ability to create sequences of words that can, in the hands of those who know what they’re doing, play their readers like pitch-perfect musical instruments. I mean, how do you account for the following experience, which is one I hope we’ve all shared.
You’re reading a book - it doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a collection of poems or a play. You occasionally nod appreciatively at a well-turned phrase, an apt description, an observation that strikes a chord, a shared opinion. But then, gradually, you feel something more powerful begin to steal over you. Or it may smack you right between the eyes. It’s an involuntary synthesis of the conscious act of attention with a physical urgency that may involve the spinal column, the hairs on the back of the neck, or, in extreme cases, a moistening of the eyeballs.
During these episodes, there’s often an accompanying sense of synchronization between the self, and the worlds both outside and inside the book that is felt rather than understood. The experience also inspires a number of related responses, the two most powerful being joy at the privilege of being able to feel this rush, and wonder mixed with gratitude that there are writers who can produce this liberating and invigorating effect. It’s the closest the brain comes to having an orgasm - that is, assuming the brain plays a significant role in this mysterious onset of nervous stimulation.
And that’s the problem. We can’t pinpoint where it comes from or what will prompt it; it can occur at any time and in the unlikeliest circumstances; it can’t always be called up at will - re-reading the same passage doesn’t guarantee a repeat performance; no-one else may have the same reaction as you, no matter how heartily you recommend that they read it.
The novelist James Joyce used a posher word than ‘orgasm’; he referred to these frissons as ‘epiphanies’, events that can occur at any time, and in the least-looked for places. They can emerge from the essences of practically anything, animal, vegetable or mineral, and are often content to simply announce their presence. What the perceiver makes of them is up to him. At root, they’re “a simple sudden synthesis of the faculty which apprehends,” which have sufficient revelatory power as to make them seem almost religious. Here’s Joyce’s full definition, originally published in ‘Stephen Hero’, a fictionalized autobiography he started writing in 1904:
He [Stephen Hero] was passing through Eccles' Street one evening, one misty evening, with all these thoughts dancing the dance of unrest in his brain when a trivial incident set him composing some ardent verses which he entitled a "Vilanelle of the Temptress." A young lady was standing on the steps of one of those brown brick houses which seem the very incarnation of Irish paralysis. A young gentleman was leaning on the rusty railings of the area. Stephen as he passed on his quest heard the following fragment of colloquy out of which he received an impression keen enough to afflict his sensitiveness very severely.
The Young Lady-(drawling discreetly) ... 0, yes ... I was ... at the ... cha ... pel
The Young Gentleman- (inaudibly) ... I ... (again inaudibly) ... I ...
The Young Lady-(softly) ... 0 ... but you're ... ve ... ry ... wick ... ed .
This triviality made him think of collecting many such moments together in a book of epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant ' a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. He told Cranly that the clock of the Ballast Office was capable of an epiphany.
Lakeland poet William Wordsworth also had these orgasms, christening them ‘spots of time’ in his long autobiographical poem ‘The Prelude’, dating from the late 1790’s:
There are in our existence spots of time
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence . . . our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.
This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks
Among those passages of life that give
Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,
The mind is lord and master–outward sense
The obedient servant of her will. Such moments
Are scattered everywhere, taking their date
From our first childhood.
So if you get these moments, you’re in pretty exalted company. And there’s absolutely no reason, if we’re reading great literature with our full attention, why we shouldn’t all experience them. They’re one of the things that makes great literature great.
These moments are just one manifestation of Meaning, the term I’ll be using throughout this book to identify the most important ingredient that makes literature work. Meaning is what animates literature - it’s what we bring away from the act of reading, and what, ultimately, keeps us coming back for more. It can take many forms; some totally inexplicable, like the cerebral orgasm, and some instantly and completely comprehensible. And all points in between. Meaning can obfuscate, allude, hint, equivocate or state directly. It can energize, perplex, inform and entertain. It can be spiritual or cerebral; strictly personal or universal; concrete or evanescent; consistent or capricious, compliant or unruly, subtle or obvious. Often at the same time. You can think you’ve grasped the meaning of a piece of writing, then a single word completely undermines your interpretation. Perspectives can change from word to word, line to line. Or not.
It’s a big subject.
The glory of meaning often lies in this fluidity, its frequent refusal to stay in any one form for long. It’s what keeps us fascinated by the works of Shakespeare four centuries after they were written. But we frequently get impatient with its chameleon-like qualities, and that can tempt us into thinking that we know more about it than we do, perhaps believing that there is such a thing as a single expressible interpretation acceptable to everybody.
However, if we stop to consider for a moment, the idea that meaning can be ultimately ‘knowable’ doesn’t stack up. If it was, a critic could proudly proclaim, “Well, now my book’s nailed Marcel Proust, there’s no need for anyone else to write about him any more.” Which is, of course, nonsense. You would have to be mind-bogglingly arrogant (or seriously deluded) or simply an American academic to make a claim like that. Not only would Proust immediately fail to fascinate if he were to be ‘nailed’, all Proust scholars would be thrown out of a job. And there’s more of them than you’d think. I met one at a party the other night. Honest.
But it would be equally foolish to assume that all attempts at interpretation are a complete waste of time: simple unitary explanations can sometimes help us understand the nuts and bolts of what’s going on in a text, and are often essential to establish a base camp in more difficult literary terrain (modernist novels, for example), as long as we recognize that these are largely temporary explanations, and that the work in question will gradually yield up its riches as we come to understand it on its own terms. And this can take time. We must also acknowledge that every generation will re-invent its own version of Proust based on its prevailing cultural and aesthetic pre-occupations, and anyone who thinks he can halt this process will soon, like Canute, find the tide of history lapping round his ankles. Meaning is constantly undergoing a process of re-assessment and regeneration, which, in the long run, helps literature stay vital and keeps a lot of reviewers, critics and academics on their toes and off the streets.
So far, so straightforward. Most of us will have been perplexed at our inability to grasp what a writer’s on about. It’s a matter for personal judgement whether to toss the book to one side or whether to invest time and effort in unpicking the text. But if we choose the latter, where can we turn for help if it all proves too much?