A Certain Zone of Consistency

[woops]

lawrence durrell

 

[IdleRich]

He did write the same thing several times, but I get the impression that that was less to do with him having discovered a great truth than the fact that he only had one interesting thing to write about. Edit - I'm thinking about his brother Gerald actually.

 

[woops]

That's still one novel though. I'm talking about a series of novels recounting the same events from different perspectives.

this is exactly what ld does tho

 

[woops]

this is exactly what ld does tho

innit @sufi

 

[woops]

how about the 4 apostles do they count

 

[woops]

ballard is my fabourite example of, someone who write's the same book over & over. its why i dint like him,

readin that perec biograph hammered home how much care he took not to repeat him self and to make each work, an advance on the last.

 

[woops]

Ballard and Burroughs are the two I think come closest to 'writing the same book over and over'.

if you compare, junky or queer to say the soft machine their very diffrent book

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah Burroughs definitely wrote two books 1) Junky and Queer 2) The other ones

 

[Clinamenic]

Qualitative individuation

 

[version]

if you compare, junky or queer to say the soft machine their very diffrent book

Right, but those two are really the outliers. There's a very definite (inter)zone once you get past those two.

 

[woops]

Right, but those two are really the outliers. There's a very definite (inter)zone once you get past those two.

hmmmm

 

[Corpsey]

To say Dostoevsky or Kafka only wrote one book you'd have to have read only one book by them

I take the point that the same themes and obsessions recur (Ballard said the artist has to have the courage of his own obsessions), but isn't so much of art about the finer details?

Is 'Hamlet' the same as 'King Lear'? Is it the same as 'Othello'? (Much less 'Twelfth Night')

I think it's helpful if not essential as an artist to have a single obsession driving you. Otherwise it's hard to be driven to write a novel.

Also style is a sort of of personality, and everybody only has the one, unique personality.

 

[Corpsey]

Maybe I'm being too harsh re kpunk's original point

I think of ishiguro, who's written a novel about/from the POV an english butler, a school of cloned children and a robot and yet seems to have written a very similar book each time, the same techniques and themes again and again

 

[woops]

Also style is a sort of of personality, and everybody only has the one, unique personality.

la style, c'est l'homme même (buffon)

 

[IdleRich]

To say Dostoevsky or Kafka only wrote one book you'd have to have read only one book by them
I take the point that the same themes and obsessions recur (Ballard said the artist has to have the courage of his own obsessions), but isn't so much of art about the finer details?
Is 'Hamlet' the same as 'King Lear'? Is it the same as 'Othello'? (Much less 'Twelfth Night')
I think it's helpful if not essential as an artist to have a single obsession driving you. Otherwise it's hard to be driven to write a novel.
Also style is a sort of of personality, and everybody only has the one, unique personality.

I think that you're agreeing with what I said earlier re theorists and grand sweeping statements... it sounds much grander to say "Great authors only write one novel" than to say "Great authors often explore the same theme in several books but they do it in a different way so it's not really the same book, oh and occasionally they might explore a different theme so the book where they do that will obviously be different".

But it's always like that, you don't say "I feel that the novel has run out of steam a bit lately and with cinema and tv there is a case to be made that is no longer the most vital form of art for presenting new ideas in narrative form, although come to think of it I did read a pretty good book the other day..." you have to pronounce "The novel my friends, I declare, it is dead!".

Or I guess it went "There is some debate about the meaning of a book - if someone reads it and understands it to mean one thing are they necessarily wrong even if it's not what the author intended? Is the author always right? Can other meanings creep in unintentionally? This is a slightly complex issue which can't be summed up with a single pithy... oh fuck it, hey everyone the author is dead!"

I think of ishiguro, who's written a novel about/from the POV an english butler, a school of cloned children and a robot and yet seems to have written a very similar book each time, the same techniques and themes again and again

Although the Unconsoled is totally different.

 

[Corpsey]

This is what Nabokov drives at in his lectures in literature (granted that he generalises himself and is narrow minded in his own way) -- it isn't the ideology or the "message" of a great novel that makes it great, it's the artistry of the style, including not just the prose style but also the construction of its plot etc.

I was a bit too into that anti theoretic angle on things when I was a student, but I think it remains a useful corrective to the grand blunt force theories of political/psychoanalytic etc criticism. (As they remain useful lenses as opposed to the notionally "pure" aestheticism angle.)

 

[IdleRich]

Surely for a truly great book you want it to put across a great idea in a great way. I dunno if "message" is precisely the right term, but you want it to be about something good and be done in a good way. Form and content.

 

[version]

DeLillo's someone whose style can make his books feel quite similar, even when the plots are drastically different. The voice is overpowering.