Tag: authors

An Updated Original Language

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

It was a while ago now but I mentioned I was reading For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. While this was likely over two months ago, I did take a break from it for a bit and read some other stuff in between. As I start reading again though I’m reminded of something I’ve thought previously, and likely mentioned on here already. Books age. Or more precisely styles of language and storyline age. There is little we can do for the storylines. The wild west cowboy books will be of their time in the 1950s, they suffer from fashions, just as modern-day thrillers will one day do similar. This is evident in films of such things too. Pathetic female leads needing rescued by some heroic man is an ideal our sensitivities in 2020 are acutely aware. Perhaps the issue then is not the period but the quality of book. Books like this don’t last the test of time because they were never supposed to yet plenty from the period still make for great reading.

With that, there are plenty of books from the 1850s let alone the 1950s which still feel highly readable. Perhaps they are just so well written that they become ageless. For Whom The Bell Tolls unfortunately doesn’t feel like that. It is a classic of literature, Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I enjoyed The Old Man & The Sea, which is a beautifully written story. There is something with this latest book which I can’t quite shake though. It feels like I’m reading a dated 1950s movie. It feels clunky and old fashioned and I didn’t expect it to. It’s an easy read, and not unenjoyable. The subject matter is one that interests me too but the language and imagery it creates have aged, and it’s aged to it’s detriment unfortunately.

This has got me thinking about a solution which I am aware is unfeasible. When I read books written by foreign authors, if the story is well known enough, it has likely been translated more than once since it’s publication. Recently, let’s say in the last ten years, Faber & Faber produced a new translation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba The Greek. From reviews it is a decent translation, less difficult to get through than the previous apparently but I’m cautious of that idea and it’s entirely subjective. Do some research on the Russian masters and you’ll discover multiple translations, evidently varying in quality enormously. You have to be careful to read the right ones otherwise your experience of one of the greats could be confusingly different to other peoples. When reading the introduction to Knut Hamsun’s Hunger the translator says the first translation was so bad, and he gave examples, that certain parts of the text had completely different meanings to the original. Translations are important.

What then for original versions. If someone translates Hemingway into Spanish, do they attempt to recreate and honour the exact style of the original or do they attempt to make it more accessible for the modern audience. Language evolves and translators are of their time. They can’t take liberties of course but a good translator is in some cases as important as the author. In that case, am I left with the unfortunate realisation that while books originally in foreign languages may evolve for me as language does but those originally in English will be doomed to age like the time they were born in. It could just be this current book, as many from that time don’t give off such an impression, but certainly it won’t be alone, other previously celebrated books and authors will disappear with the times too.

Which leads to the unthinkable, do we need books to be updated in their original languages too? There is no straightforward answer but unless they’re illegible through age the answer is likely no, don’t damage the intellectual property and creation of an artist. Could you imagine them touching up the Mona Lisa, giving her haircut a modern look. Yet it’s done in music with covers in a way. There is something that sits uncomfortably with the idea and I find it reassuring to feel that. Let the greats be greats and if their creation lasts whatever the evolution society hurls at them then great. If not, well so be it. As I said, unthinkable, yet the issue still remains.

The Elusive Secrets Of Writing

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Writing really is an art form once you get into it and understand it’s intricacies. What I am doing now is writing, that is surely obvious and it is one particular style of writing. I’m not entirely sure what style and while I hope that isn’t me exposing how little I understand of writing intricacies, I’m going to go with it being hard to explain and label your own style. That is probably just me making excuses of course as I’m self-conscious of describing my writing, especially if I get it wrong in the eyes of those who know. The reason I go into this is that I have started reading For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I mentioned a few days ago when finishing The Old Man & The Sea that his writing style is very simple but that he manages to purvey a deeper meaning and understanding. While some write in technically complicated and convoluted ways he manages to get an equally deeper understanding across without turning the reader in circles first.

This is an art form in itself. For anyone who has ever written anything or appreciated others writing, getting deeper meaning and mood across is a challenging art. As I read this latest book though it does make me think of authors who write in similar simple prose yet write really badly. His writing is so simple but he does in it such a way that it is both accessible and with depth in the same moment. I’m not entirely sure how he does it though, it can’t just be short sentences. It is one of those books they teach children in school and it is clear to see why. Deeper meaning and accessible is a winner. There is a reason he won the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for Fiction after all.

I mentioned earlier about long and convoluted sentences. Here I must hold my hands up and confess my guilt. In my defence I learnt how to write like this when studying part of my philosophy degree in that you need to make sure every angle of meaning is covered. The problem here is that it doesn’t allow the reader to form any interpretation for themselves and such long sentences can be both hard to follow and boring. There’s a website called The Hemingway App in which you can upload your work and see what reading age and grade it would be. It also gives advice on shortening sentences, whether sentences are hard or very hard to read and such things like excessive use of adverbs, passive voice or when simpler words would be better suited. I use too many adverbs for example and too many of my sentences are ‘hard’ or ‘very hard’ to read. My ego would like to think hard or very hard to read simply means they are written to a very high standard and level but my ego can miss the point sometimes. Up to this moment this piece is a Grade Nine which would be 14-15 year old’s. I rarely use this app but when I first discovered it did check out a few of my pieces for curiosity’s sake. I had a Grade Fourteen which I was very happy with myself over but generally they vary between Grades Eight to Eleven. Apparently we should aim for eight to nine if we want maximum reach. I don’t really know whether I want maximum reach but a fool would dismiss the importance of such knowledge. I hope not to be a fool forever.

Final Mark – Grade Eight

Haruki Murakami

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I finally got over my readers block and finished what feels like my first book in months. I feel very pleased with myself. With enforced isolation around the corner maybe we’ll all get a chance to have a little read soon. The book was ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ by Haruki Murakami. I’m sure there’s a proper word for it but it is two stories running parallel to each other, which you find out as the story evolves are interconnected. One was a cyber punk detective story about a man who ‘shuffles’ information for a quasi-governmental organisation call The System and who finds himself being chased down by first The System’s shady rivals and then some underground sub-human aquatic monsters called Inklings. The story was written in 1985 so imagine all of your favourite dark grimy 80s punk sci-fi films and picture how that could look and unfold. The other is a dreamy story about a man who arrives in a walled town which he cannot leave, he has his shadow taken from him and he works as a dreamreader. The town also has unicorns. It is obvious in any book which is two stories together that they interconnect so it is probably okay to say that without giving too much away.

It seems every Murakami novel, I say every but this is only my third, the men are solitary lonely lovers of jazz and alcohol. It mustn’t be coincidental that prior to becoming an author Murakami ran a jazz bar in Tokyo. The women in his story are never like any women I’ve ever met, they seem both simple and deep and are usually quite promiscuous. I have heard criticism of his female characters as being unreal but I mentioned this to a woman once who suggested the women were merely described from the perspective of the narrator and that this was either how the narrator experienced them or how he viewed women. They couldn’t in that case be unreal and I quite like that description, it seems like an insight worth repeating when I am attempting to sound smart.

Murakami described this as his favourite novel he had written and while it is not his most successful or well renowned it does seem to have won a variety of awards over the years. I enjoyed it but I felt it lacked on to ‘South of the Border, West of the Sun’ and his collection of short stories ‘Men Without Women’ which was the first Murakami I read and didn’t just enjoy because I was feeling like a man without a woman at the time. He has a pained empty loneliness in his work, apparently in this style it is a very Japanese thing, but it feels like something you can connect with in a positive way despite those not appearing to be positive attributes at first. We enjoy authors because of story or language but quite often because we can connect to them. There is a depth to his work that is approachable and relatable, and as I finish his books I am always excited to read the next. If you haven’t read your first yet I think you know what you need to do. You may just have a little time on your hands soon anyway.