Read Books that Excite You
There are plenty of good books out there, but not all books are ones that will get you writing. What you should be reading are books that actually excite and challenge you with their writing and their ideas, that get you longing to write, that make you wish the book would never end. Are you reading competent fiction, or exciting fiction? Here are a few books I’ve read recently that have gotten me excited to do my own writing.
Journey to the End of the Night
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
This book isn’t for everyone. In fact, I’m often turned off by sadism, misogny, or excessive cynicism in a book, and this shocking novel has all three. And yet…this book challenges me, takes me out of my comfort zone, and keeps me reading with the electric energy of its writing. It is an absolutely stunning work of bitterness about the human condition and psyche. It is an agonizing portrait of apathy, lack of compassion, and the lowest, blackest impulses of the human spirit being induleged and tolerated. And yet it captures the nightmarish chaos following World War I better than any other postwar novel I know. You will be electrified by the voice, the nervous energy quivering through it, the shades of dream and nightmare that seem to leak into reality.
After the jump: two more books to get you hopping.
Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee
When trying to describe this novel to my friends, the only word I could come up with was “devastating.” In truth, this novel had a greater devastating power than any novel I had read in years. It is told in a crisp, beautiful style, with flawless and civilized language, but it is capturing moments of great grief, suffering, and absolute helplessness in the face of destruction. Humans in this book are both predatory and hobbled by guilt, helpless with pain, bitterly upright. They must confront the undeniable horrors of South Africa’s racial history, and acknowledge that the consequences of violence in the past are inescapable. Still, the book is thoroughly human. Interestingly, the way one character treats dogs shows his humanity more than his behavior with humans. You’ll be left speechless after reading — and itching to try your hand at a devastating story of your own.
I haven’t finished Chronic City yet — I’m about three-quarters through it. But already, the nervous, jittery energy of this book has gotten me excited about writing more scenes for my current short story. It’s a widespread, tangled view of a certain world in Manhattan — the artists, the moneyed philanthropists, the twitchy conspiracy theorists. These intriguing characters collide again and again in a city wrapped up in its own paranoia, grief, and anxiety. It’s a very New York book, and yet it captures a lot about modern life that feels universal. I recommend it as a book to study setting, character, and the energy of a voice that never sleeps, just as surely as its subject matter.
