Tag: literature

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.

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s being distracted from the current book I’m reading with another. I envy these fast readers who can sit down and complete a book in a few days. I’m more of a few weeks to a few months depending on the distractions around me type of person. There’s one book I’ve been reading for nearly a year now, I really enjoy reading it too so it’s not as simple as it may seem at first. I wonder if I’m a victim of how we process entertainment these days. I’m not sure I like calling myself a victim but more I’ve allowed myself to get caught up in the culture of short bitesize moments of pleasure.

I love a website called Aeon – which I’ve written a piece on here about before – that has some incredibly interesting articles. They’re not always a light read, not difficult but sometimes they require more effort than something on a website devoted to football. The articles on there are usually about three to four thousand words and despite knowing they’re interesting and that I can learn from them; a combination of the effort involved in the length and with the mental effort required slightly above minimum, I’ll not always bother. I prefer fiction books to non-fiction even if the topic in the non-fiction is potentially really interesting. Partly this is because I genuinely enjoy stories and the way meaning and message can evolve in this style.

The more I write about this I suspect I’m just lazy and ill disciplined. Aeon requires a bit more effort than football news and non-fiction potentially more than a story to follow and get into. I am leaping from one extreme to the other though, this is never a black and white argument unless I generalise which I seem to have been doing. This piece today was going to be another review and as seems to be a bit of a trend it was going to be a play. Dario Fo‘s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay to be precise. I’ve mentioned Dario Fo in a previous review of one of his plays, Accidental Death Of An Anarchist. He wrote political and social plays on the whole and this is a large part of what has drawn me to him. Take into consideration everything I have mentioned and you can see what leads me to a play. Something that’ll take me one to two hours to read followed by that rosy sense of accomplishment.

Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay is the story of two couples caught up in different situations in which people push the boundaries of stealing. The prices in the supermarket increase once more so the women riot and take what they want, only paying a minimum compensation to the shop. “I paid half price for half my goods”. While the husbands get caught up in similar as the canteen at work increases the prices and the workers simply serve themselves. Unlike the wives though the husbands take a stance against this seeing it as stealing. What ensues is a comedy involving fake pregnancies, avoiding the law and hypocrisy, all as Fo dissects the moral arguments behind whether there can be such a thing as justifiable theft.

The varying levels of hidden meaning in stories is what draws me to fiction. We can analyse what the playwright or the author intended with certain bits. I may not have appreciated it much at school but it is something I certainly enjoy now. For example, despite not having the most flamboyant of styles, I enjoy Sartre’s fiction far more than his non-fiction, even though they’re both variants of his philosophical discourse. Maybe lazy and ill disciplined is in itself a lazy understanding of something which as I’ve already mentioned is not a black and white issue. Interpretation for me is everything, and can’t pay won’t pay, I suspect I know what I would do.

The Elusive Secrets Of Writing

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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

BR#Ten – The Old Man & The Sea

Hamar Williams1 Comment

There is a certain romanticism in literature. Not always the stories themselves but sometimes the stories of the stories, the stories of the creators of the stories. I understood that for the first time when a friend of mine told me the life of Lord Byron and proceeded to explain why I didn’t need to read any of his work, his life was the work. Ernest Hemingway is one of these people. He is there in the echelons of folk lore, another author to define an art and inspire a craft. This is actually my first Hemingway and considering my interest in and admiration for those involved in the Spanish Civil War, how I’ve not read For Whom The Bell Tolls is beyond me.

The protagonist is an old man called Santiago who has now gone eighty-four days at sea without catching anything and is seen as unlucky. On his eighty-fifth day, which is also a number of special significance apparently, he hooks the largest Marlin he has ever seen and allows it to pull him and his skiff, tiring itself out in the process for three days. This is a titanic battle between two great warriors who have lived and survived in their respective worlds up until this point, finally coming face to face. He needs this in a way and while he talks to himself of the money he will make it is evidently never really about this.

The Old Man & The Sea is a fable. There will surely be multiple essays and books upon what the lesson within it is but for me it is one of heroism, determination and acceptance. Acceptance in a way despite the fact he doesn’t accept defeat at any point until he has no choice. His acceptance comes from life and experience at sea; knowing that defeat can happen, but we fight until our last and then some more and if success doesn’t come we just carry on as it’s all part of everything.

Hemingway creates an air of romanticism around Santiago and it is easy to imagine him sitting by the harbour when in Cuba and watching the weather beaten old fishermen going out and if not knowing their stories then creating them. It is one of epic proportions in three days and one hundred pages. His simple use of language allows for you to easily get into the story but it is also this language which reveals all the hidden meaning as the story progresses. It definitely makes you want to jump in a skiff and set sail. The sea is a powerful and unforgiving mistress but she will teach you all you ever need to know.

An animation by Aleksander Petrov

BR#5 – Frankenstein

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From time to time as adults we throw a little classic in to our reading. The kind of story that spawned others and has passed the test of time. The kind you could have studied at school. That last one in a way makes it sound unappealing considering we don’t always look back on the book we studied at school fondly. Frankenstein though isn’t one of them, it’s one of the ones you wish you had studied at school. It has so many of those moments you could see yourself analysing in a class, it has layers. It is also very simple and obvious. A main uncomplicated but unbelievable story. Take it at face value and that’s it.

The writing feels like it could be updated although it shouldn’t ever happen. When things are translated they are also updated in language and in a subtle way style. A book written in English will forever be ageing. I would love to know how Tolstoy sounds to a Russian than he is in the latest translation I read. In that sense I can tell it was written in the early nineteenth century. While that’s not a problem it will be one day.

Shelley approaches all sorts of ideas and concepts throughout the book. They are too numerous to go into detail in just five hundred words but she discusses justice, the role of god, she approaches ideas of personhood and what is is to be a person, our understanding of ethics, even existentialism but this was long before it had become an ism. This is an entire philosophy course for a year covered. There are many essays written on it. I imagine it’s a common understanding too that there is the potential schizophrenia angle which relates in a way to ideas of duality in the book. They need each other, the monster never tries to hurt him and when he dies the monster goes off to die too. Did Frankenstein give a part of himself in the creation of the monster. In a way the monster shows more of what we call humanity than Viktor Frankenstein who in the end becomes a monster himself in a sad way. In a contemporary sense we could think of the development of Artificial Intelligence. The monster has not only an ability to learn but has self-consciousness, the ultimate stage of creating free thinking robots. I could go on and on.

Quite interestingly the book has nearly as interesting a back story. Mary Shelley was the daughter of the revolutionary thinkers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the wife of the poet Percy Shelley. In the ‘Year Without Summer’ of 1816 when they were visiting the exiled and infamous poet and writer amongst many things, Lord Byron in Switzerland, the weather forced them to stay indoors and Byron came up with the idea they all wrote horror stories. In a dream over the next few nights the story of Frankenstein and his monster came to Mary Shelley.

Along with all this and not to be forgotten it’s actually quite a good story. You don’t just read it to learn and look smart, you read it to enjoy. I assume they teach it in schools still and if they don’t can’t think why. It’s so full of everything it would be a waste. I ended it really feeling happy that I had just read a good book. We all should, we may just learn a little eloquence and humanity from a monster.