Bob Dylan reading.
My husband and I have both been reading Stewart O'Nan and are both knocked out by the research that give his books so much resonance. In both SONGS FOR THE MISSING (me) and LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER (husband), the details about working at restaurants persuade the reader they are entering a real world. Both books are outstanding as is all his work. These are not the only details but are certainly the most fully fleshed out. Did he sit at such a place for weeks to get it so right? Philip Roth also excels at this. I think back on AMERICAN PASTORAL, and the details on glove-making that were mesmerizing. Does this impress you in books? Do you like learning about what working at Quiznos is like or do you regard it as filler? I can't get enough of it. Who does it as well as O'Nan?
12 comments:
I haven't read O'Nan before, but I loved AMERICAN PASTORAL. Increasingly, it seems Roth has become interested in using historical research to flesh out the background of his novels, and there is no better detail than AMERICAN PASTORAL. I loved all the cultural history of the characters and towns.
I still haven't read his latest, INDIGNATION, have you?
Dating myself a bit here I recall that back in the 60s there was an entire genre of novels about How Things Work, and the king of the genre was a guy named Arthur Hailey, who wrote books about things like the inner workings of huge hotels, airports, the auto industry, etc. He was enormously popular, and a number of his books were made into very successful (financially, anyway) movies. I'm sure he's probably no longer read, and I hadn't thought of him in years, but your comments on O'Nan reminded me of him.
I read most of Arthur Hailey's novels back in the Sixties and Seventies and recall enjoying them. Not sure how well they would hold up now. AIRPORT or HOTEL might make a good Forgotten Book for somebody, though.
The only Stewart O'Nan novel I've read was THE SPEED QUEEN, but I liked it quite a bit. Have always meant to get back to his work.
I have not read O'Nan so I can't say anything about his work. As for putting in detail, it depends for me on how it is worked in. In reading fiction, I generally don't want to know a lot of details about some job I'm pretty familiar with, and I only want the details if they can be worked into the narrative and don't leap out as asides.
I'm so glad to read this. I have SONGS FOR THE MISSING and was planning to read either it or Dennis Lehane's THE GIVEN DAY as soon as I finish ON BEAUTY, by Zadie Smith. I love it when a book goes into detail about something I'm not necessarily familiar with. I think most people must, which would explain the popularity of police procedurals, medical mysteries, historical fiction and a whole slew of stories where we enter an unfamiliar world. Thanks for the thumbs up on O'Nan.
Internet down all day here. But briefly. loved the Hailey books. Felt like I was ready to walk into a hotel and run it. American Pastoral is my all-time fav. Roth although I didn't completely buy such speedy. radicalization. O'Nan love Speed Queen and A Prayer for the Dying, written in second person to great success.
Details can weigh a story down in lesser hands. Songs for the Missing is amazing. O'Nan can write in woman's voice better than a lot of women.
I agree with Charle's take on this. I come from the Hemingway school of less is better.
I love lots of details about how work gets done. Frederick Forsyth does a lot of this in books like THE DOGS OF WAR and THE DAY OF THE JACKAL.
Those were great books, Graham. Showing that you can combine detail with great suspense is you're a master.
When done well and unobtrusively, this can do as much as anything to set the reader in the story. Several years ago I read ROSE, by Martin Cruz Smith, which takes place in an Irish coal town of over a hundred years, describing the lives of the people and working of the mines in great, and absorbing, detail. (I am presuming he was accurate.) Kept me engrossed throughout, until the end, when I saw the entire structure of the plot was hung on such a flimsy frame he should have been ashamed of himself.. It's a shame; he had me hooked, right up until that whole "emperor has no clothes" thing.
Plot does matter.
Avram Davidson. He gets the details down in his crime and contemporary mimetic fiction, and in his fantasticated fiction he invents them seemingly effortlessly (and all of his fantasticated fiction has a factual contemporary or historic setting...not so much for the fully abstractly metaphorical fantasy, was he).
Post a Comment