WE can learn much from reading literary magazines. For instance, from the current issue of the Irish Literary Supplement (published twice yearly in New York and obtainable from Books Upstairs on College Green) we can learn that a short story writer's background in science "is certainly not inconsequential to her expression of the consanguinity of the entire macrocosm".
This is from a review of Jennifer C. Cornell's collection of stories, Departures, published by Brandon Books, and the reviewer is named as Deborah Hunter McWilliams from Irvine in California. This, I gather, is a college (most of the reviewers in the Irish Literary Supplement come from American colleges) and I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that Ms Hunter McWilliams teaches in the English department there. Certainly she has a striking way with the English language.
We learn, for example, that "the complexity of the text's disposition lies in the intent of the narrative structure" - indeed that "better stated, the intricacies of human relations manifested in the Departures stories cohere to the very strategy of the text itself". I like that "better stated".
We learn, too, that the writer being reviewed is intrigued by "the subtleties of both the societal and physical ecosystems - the possibility of disburdening from our own status of ethnological subordinate". But that's not all: she also "underscores the idea of an organic substructure by which to coalesce the fragments of human history" and she "judiciously correlates the importance of husbandry as but one realisation in the custody of humanity". Whatever you're having yourself, Deborah.
Finally, the stories stress "the symbiosis of the individual - intonation in the orchestration of a communal utterance", while readers are "forced to relocate (recontextualize) our normative ideals and customary disposition" when considering "the discernible declivity of civil equanimity."
I could go on quoting, but I won't. As it happened, just before encountering Ms Hunter McWilliams's review, I had been re reading for the umpteenth time George Orwell's famous 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language", whose basic theme is that our use of language "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts". His essay should be read by anyone who is concerned about the constant abuse of the English language.
I know exactly what Orwell would say about the kind of writing quoted above. The trouble with it is not just that it's gibberish (I haven't a clue what Ms Hunter McWilliams is trying to say, and I suspect she hasn't, either), but also that its widespread use in academic teaching is breeding a generation of students convinced that, if they are to appreciate literature (and build careers from it), they should write like that. Most of them, of course, will simply end up hating literature, and who can blame them?
IF one is to judge by contributors to the Books of the Year round ups in various newspapers, Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark should have strolled away with the Booker Prize - by my count, it was mentioned by twice as many as mentioned Graham's Swift's winning novel. Margaret Forster, Bernard O'Donoghue, Antonia Fraser, Pat Barker, James Walton and Paul Bailey were just some of the eminences who loved the Derryman's book.
The other most mentioned Irish book was by another Derryman. Seamus Heaney's splendid new collection The Spirit Level was singled out by Peter Kemp, John Carey, John Walsh and Bernard O'Donoghue, among others.
Frank McCourt's remarkable memoir, Angela's Ashes, cropped up a few times in the lists, while no less a book lover than Grey Gowrie confessed himself "electrified and moved" by Eugene McEldowney's The Sad Case of Harpo Higgins. And I was glad to see Michael Arditti praising Ita Daly's Unholy Ghosts for the way it "domesticates the great historical events of the mid 20th century without in any way diminishing them, while creating an unforgettable portrait of tortured adolescence". I thought it one of the best Irish novels in years.
WILLIAM TREVOR's new collection, After Rain, also figured prominently among the most mentioned books of the year, and Trevor is singled out for special praise by Auberon Waugh in the current issue of his magazine Literary Review (whose contributors do pride themselves on writing in English).
In his "From the Pulpit" column, Waugh is being his usual provocative self. Speaking of the Booker, he writes: "A prize which has honoured Berger, Okri and Keri Hulme, while ignoring the one outstanding literary artist of our time, brings nothing but ridicule on the sponsor.
The new Trevor collection, he asserts, "is unquestionably the best work of fiction published this year, just as he is unquestionably the greatest craftsman and storyteller writing in English ... The fact that the Booker Prize has resolutely ignored our greatest living writer for twenty seven years tells us all we need to know about it."
Yes, Auberon, but what's with this "our" guff? Is Mitchelstown in the UK?