Thoughts on being prolific (and Asimov’s middling mysteries)

[From my weekly books column]

As someone who isn’t always a happy multi-tasker (I find it difficult to properly work on a column or review until I’ve cleared the ones before it – not the ideal situation for a freelancer!), I’m envious of the really prolific writers – the ones who toggle effortlessly between projects. And when a writer working across a range of genres and subjects manages to be seriously good too, it can be infuriating. Consider Isaac Asimov. He was best known for his work in science fiction, but the 500-plus(!) books he wrote or edited included mysteries, limerick collections, writings on history and popular science, and even an 800-page-long guide to the works of Shakespeare.

In his chatty and hugely engrossing autobiography I. Asimov – written as a collection of essays on numerous topics, ranging from fellow sci-fi writers to Jewishness to acrophobia to new parents-in-law – Asimov shares some thoughts about his own prolificity. Someone once asked him how he got into the mood for a writing session: did he do a crossword puzzle, for instance, or ritually sharpen his pencils or go for a quick jog around the block? “Before I can possibly begin writing,” Asimov replied, tongue firmly in cheek, “it is always necessary for me to turn on my electric typewriter and to get close enough to it so that my fingers can reach the keys.” This ability to simply sit down and start working without any fuss or preamble is something that many writers would willingly sacrifice a finger off each hand for.

Asimov also claims that he was never afflicted by writer’s block because he wrote so many different types of books that if he ever got tired of one genre, he could switch to a different kind of writing for a while. “I don’t stare at blank sheets of paper. Instead, I simply go on to any of the dozen other projects that are on tap.” He makes it sound straightforward, but this approach reflects professional dedication as well as love for the actual process of writing – which is something that, believe it or not, many great writers simply don’t have.

****

Of course, this is not to suggest that everything Asimov wrote was of the highest order – inevitably, some of his work has an assembly-line quality to it. I was recently reading The Union Club Mysteries, a collection of the monthly mysteries he wrote for the magazine Gallery in the early 1980s. Gallery wasn’t a respectable literary journal (it was a “skin” publication, one of the many Playboy spinoffs), so these 2000-word stories can be considered Asimov Lite – it would be unfair to hold them up to the standards of his best work such as the Foundation series or the “Robot” stories and novels. But even by lower standards, these are largely pedestrian pieces, only occasionally salvaged by a clever idea.

Each story uses the framework of a conversation between elderly gents at the Union Club, with a polymath named Griswold relating a tale from his incredibly colourful past (he may have been a spy or an important government official, or perhaps he’s simply making things up; one can never tell). In every case, he was called upon to solve a mystery, which he invariably did – and at the end he has to divulge the solution to his clueless club buddies. For the reader, the payoff in each story is this ending, where a visual break in the text allows one to try and figure the answer out before Griswold drawls out the solution in his patronising way.

The format is a good one, but Asimov is definitely working at low steam overall. The “puzzles” usually centre on a trite detail, such as the differences between the British and American ways of writing a date (which means “6/8” could be either June 8 or August 6) or the fact that a library book has a little pocket in which something might be hidden, and too often the final revelation doesn’t justify the long buildup that preceded it. A couple of the riddles are entertaining (what's a reasonably common English word that you couldn’t be sure how to pronounce if you saw it written in all-caps? **), but on the whole these pieces are presumably meant for the reader who’s taking a break from ogling at the magazine photo-spreads. Me, I’m returning to Asimov’s wonderful memoir, or to his Black Widower mysteries which are more elaborate and satisfying than the Union Club trifles. (See, that’s one advantage of being a fan of a really prolific writer. If something isn't to your taste, there's plenty else to choose from.)

** Answer: POLISH

1,000; and notes on a few books

My Dashboard tells me that this is the 1000th post on this blog. Positively criminal. Someone should set limits for these things. Anyway, since there isn't much time for non-work-related blogging these days, I thought I'd make a few quick notes on some of the books I've read and enjoyed in the past few days. Longer posts on a couple of these may follow later.

- Roberto Bolaño's Last Evenings on Earth, a very involving collection of short stories by the Chilean author whose work has enjoyed quite a resurgence in recent months. A recurring theme in these stories is exile – the characters are constantly on the move or unsure of their bearings – but this is handled much more abstractly than in the straightforward “diaspora fiction” narratives we are accustomed to. (These days, the very word "exile" on a book jacket can set off alarm bells for a jaded reviewer.) Bolaño's work seems set to approach magic realism at times, but it's much more subtle: best of all is the masterful title story about a father and son who go on a very strange, meandering “vacation” together. Some of the pieces also have to do with writers and the writing process, notably "A Literary Adventure", where a low-profile writer named B becomes obsessive about the work of another, much more famous author (A). The style here is very spare and poetic.

- Long overdue: Isaac Asimov’s classic “science-fiction mysteries” The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, featuring the Earthman Elijah Baley and his robot-partner R Daneel Olivaw investigating murders together. Part of my ongoing project to devour as much sci-fi writing from the 1940s and 1950s as possible. Unfashionable as he may be these days, I love Asimov's clarity of thought and the way he combines simple prose with far-reaching ideas. His autobiography I. Asimov, written as a series of random essays on various topics, is one of the great “open and start reading from anywhere” books.

- Rahila Gupta’s Enslaved, a powerful examination of modern-day slavery, told in the form of first-person accounts by five people who were trafficked or smuggled into the UK: they include a pregnant child from Sierra Leone, a young Punjabi lady forced into marriage and a Chinese man living in fear of the criminal corporations known as triads. Gupta tells their stories very lucidly and intersperses the narratives with italicized passages that explain background, provide context and examine legal complexities in the immigration process (many of which worsen the predicament of the victimised "slaves"). A real eye-opener to the subtle forms that human exploitation can take in a highly developed country. I wasn't a fan (to say the least) of the Aishwarya Rai-starrer Provoked, which was co-written by Gupta, but this book is excellent.

- John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos: Wyndham’s sci-fi novels (which he himself preferred to call “logical fantasy”) have recently been reissued by Penguin with attractive new covers. The Midwich Cuckoos, about a group of sinister, frighteningly precocious children slowly assuming control over a quiet English village, was the inspiration for the 1960 film Village of the Damned. A little verbose at times but overall this is very good paranoia fiction, the full implications of which only gradually sneak up on the viewer. I hope to move on to Wyndham's other work soon, especially The Day of the Triffids (also filmed in the 1960s) and The Kraken Wakes. (More on the reissued novels here.)

- The Brian Aldiss-edited anthology A Science Fiction Omnibus, a collection of outstanding short stories by such authors as Clifford Simak, Kim Stanley Robinson, James Tiptree Jr, J G Ballard and many others. I want to write about this book at greater length sometime, so I’ll keep it quick for now: my favourite stories here include Walter M Miller’s “I Made You” (a frightening modern take on the Frankenstein story), Aldiss’ own “Poor Little Warrior!”, Bertram Chandler’s “The Cage” (with a closing line that gives us a succinct, cynical definition of what a "rational being" is) and especially Ted Chiang’s very beautiful “Story of Your Life”, in which a woman’s attempts to understand the language used by visiting aliens leads to her perceiving all the events of her life in simultaneous rather than sequential terms.

The anthology also includes John Steinbeck’s wicked “The Short-Short Story of Mankind”, a condensed history of our species. I'll close this post with these memorable lines that end the story:

Right from the cave times we’ve had to choose and so far we’ve never chosen extinction. It’d be kind of silly if we killed ourselves off after all this time. If we do, we’re stupider than the cave people and I don’t think we are. I think we’re just exactly as stupid and that’s pretty bright in the long run.

Year-end books round-up

Every one else is doing it so why shouldn’t I? (As the crowd chorus in Life of Brian goes: "YES! We are ALL different!") So here go scribblings on The Reading Experience, 2004.

Some highlights:
The Plot Against America (Philip Roth): Easily the most accessible of Roth’s recent fiction, because much of it is written in the voice of a frightened 8-year-old – Philip Roth himself, living in an alternate world where Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh becomes US president and makes peace with Hitler.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susannah Clarke): struggled with the first 200 pages but after that, wow! Magical, entrancing, bewitching and plenty more. The brief, unrecorded appearance of the Raven King, John Uskglass, towards the end was one of the most poignant passages I read this year, and the fact that it was in a book about magicians and evil fairies probably says disturbing things about me. (Added plus: with a book this heavy, who needs barbells? Downside: I developed tennis elbow without once lifting a racquet, or a cricket bat.)

Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell): infuriating, bombastic, often impenetrable book, but one I couldn’t help but regard with awe. Sometimes great ambition can be its own reward. There’s no way I’m ever going to recommend this to anyone unequivocally, but I’m bloody glad I saw it through myself. Learnt an important lesson about not dismissing something just because it seems pretentious and overblown; inverse snobbery often grows out of laziness.

Corridor (Sarnath Banerjee): probably my favourite Indian read of the year, and it had a welcome side-effect, plunging me headlong into the world of the graphic novel. Art Spiegelman’s Maus was the only book I bought when I visited England earlier this year, and I subsequently devoured Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis I and II as well. Next on the list: Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, which I’ll have to keep out of Putu’s claws.

My Life as a Fake (Peter Carey): A mesmerising Frankenstein story for the literary world, examining the truths and the deceptions that are a necessary part of any written work. Loved the very Aussie rhythms and cadences; very distinctive while not as difficult as the writing in Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang. Already on my to-be-reread list.

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (M G Vassanji): probably the book that affected me most strongly at a personal level this year, perhaps because the idea of "in-betweenness" – sitting on the fence, never completely sure about what side to take – has a private resonance. The In-Between… is also my strongest argument for carrying on with book reviewing, which I sometimes get so fed up with: there’s no way I would have read it if it hadn’t been given to me for reviewing.

My Name is Red (Orhan Pamuk): have to admit I drifted off in parts, but was still enthralled by Pamuk’s device of different chapters narrated in the first person by different people, each of whom is unaware of what the others are up to (which means the novel’s structure exactly mirrors its story of a group of miniaturists working separately on components that will make up a larger design).

The Sari Shop (Rupa Bajwa) Refreshingly unshowy debut from a young writer. Didn’t completely succeed in avoiding the "India in a Bun" syndrome but at least it wasn’t a shameless exercise in pretentious Exotica. I was probably influenced by the fact that I read it around the same times as the wretched The Last Song of Dusk.

The Line of Beauty (Alan Hollinghurst): firmly in the "admired a lot but didn’t enjoy all that much" category. It beat out Cloud Atlas for the Booker Prize, but I’m on David Mitchell’s side.

Favourite older book read this year:
Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, his first novel but the one I read last. Agreed with Ajitha that it doesn’t read like a first book. It’s a circular narrative with hints of surreality, much like his last two novels, and seems to belong with his later work. (After A Pale View... Ishiguro’s next two books were An Artist of the Floating World and Remains of the Day, which were both straightforward narratives.)

Some cherished short stories:

Robert Bloch’s "The Legacy";
Douglas Clegg’s creepy but affecting "Where Flies are Born";
Ian Watson’s sometimes-facetious but entertaining "The Eye of the Ayatollah";
Manjula Padmanabhan’s collected stories in Kleptomania, especially "Betrayal" and "The Girl Who Could Make People Naked";
Many Asimovs, notably "Breeds there a Man...", "The Billiard Ball" and the masterful "The Final Question";
loads of classics by S J Perelman and Woody Allen, notably Allen’s "The Kugelmass Episode" about a man who can enter any literary classic he chooses to and ends up having an affair with Flaubert’s great heroine. ("I’m doing it with Madame Bovary," he marvelled, "Me who failed freshman English.");
the essays in the Granta Book of Film, especially Maarten 't Hart’s compelling "Rats", written, paradoxically, by a man who doesn’t think that much of cinema as an art form but who finds himself mesmerised into inaction during his work as a consultant on Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu.

Non-fiction:
I’m not that much into non-fiction as a rule, so it’s surprising that there are quite a few titles on this list. Finished delightful memoirs by Luis Bunuel (My Last Breath) and Peter Ustinov (Dear Me) and was pleasantly surprised by Lance Armstrong’s two autobiographies, especially the first It’s Not About the Bike. There was also Ved Mehta’s The Red Letters, which closes the "Continents of Exile" series, and Ali, Rodney Hartman’s biography of Ali Bacher which was, by extension, a history of the politics of south African cricket. And perhaps the best of them all - because it could be picked up and read from anywhere - Isaac Asimov’s I. Asimov, less a chronological work than a collection of his thoughts on various topics, ranging from fellow science fiction writers to Jewishness to writing prolificity.

Guilty pleasures:
The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown): this is where I meet the P3P. But I’m not going to deny the sheer thrill of reading this. (Besides, with all my time-management issues, any book that takes just 3 days to finish has my approval.) And Brown’s Angels and Demons, which had me thinking very seriously about ambigrams for all of two days.

Five Point Someone (Chetan Bhagat): yes, I admit it, I enjoyed this fluff about the misadventures of three IIT students! Flunk me! (My defence: it took two hours to finish.)

Plain guilt:
Still haven’t found time for Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide, though it’s been four-and-a-half months since I coerced a friend into giving it to me for my birthday.

Currently reading:
Pamuk’s Snow, which will easily make it onto my 2004 or 2005 top 10 list, depending on when I finish it (oh yes, I’m a pedant); Sebald’s Austerlitz; McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories.

Looking forward to:
Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled; Ishiguro’s latest, worryingly titled Never Let Me Go; and Thomas Harris’s new book with the Hannibal Lecter back-story (the last with a mix of dread and anticipation; Harris is a favourite writer but this prequel is likely to be a cynical, money-motivated exercise). And oh yes, Samit Basu’s Simoqin sequel. (Plug, plug.)

New year’s resolution:
Will not buy books with small fonts. Eyes can take it no more. If this means only hardcopies, well then so be it; will learn how to steal.

Book of the Year:
Ha! I’m not officially doing this, but if I absolutely HAD to, I’d probably go with Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Vol 1, a book that is every bit as frustrating and unclassifiable as the man himself. Written in a style that marries Mark Twain with Jack Kerouac with Hunter Thompson, it still has "Dylan" stamped all over it. Full of awkward, ungrammatical sentences, colloquialisms, odd twists of phrase, it leaps madly about like a kangaroo with a pouchful of steroids, doesn’t cater to popular perceptions of the "defining" people and events in the author’s life - and is nevertheless unputdownable all the way. The reverence in Dylan’s voice when he speaks of people like Hank Williams, Roy Orbison and even Harry Belafonte is an eye-opener for anyone who can’t reconcile the image of the great wordsmith with the wide-eyed, unsure boy who came to Greenwich Village in 1961 with a long list of his own idols.

[Phew, this has turned out to be cathartic. I keep complaining that I don’t get to do as much reading as I’d like to, but looking back now at this list (and I’m sure I’ve left out quite a lot) it doesn’t seem all that bad. And I even managed to watch 3-4 of my DVDs...]

Time management

At least once a day now, I find myself making the following lament (or a close enough variation) to anyone who cares to listen: “I wish each day had 36 hours in it, and that I could make do with only four hours of sleep! There’s so much to DO that never gets done!”

It’s become a motif of my life, this obsession with time -- with trying to get as much as possible done, fast, while simultaneously feeling crippled by the hopelessness of it all. I empathise with Pink Floyd’s madman – how CAN you expect to hold your own successfully in a race against the Sun?

Why this despair? To begin with, I’m lucky compared to many others, in the sense that I don’t have a high-stress job. I work for the weekend (Saturday) section of a newspaper and don’t have daily deadlines. Friday is the one indubitably tough day in the week; during lighter weeks, there’s little of substance to do on Mondays and Tuesdays, and it isn’t even that tough to conjure up an appointment and sneak away early. (Reminder to self: do NOT send site URL to senior colleagues.) Certainly, I don’t have the excuse available to millions of working professionals, who leave for office at 8 in the morning, work hard all day, return home at 9 pm and consider themselves lucky if they get a reasonable amount of sleep in.

To put it succinctly, the problem in my case is books. Ever since I decided to dedicate as much of my time as possible to reading – both for interest and for professional reasons – I find there’s rarely enough time for other things. Reading is such an inclusive, time-consuming hobby and unlike some people I know, I can never mix it with other things – with, say, listening to music or even watching a game of cricket on TV.

The result? Some things that used to be very important to me have taken a back seat. I’m especially peeved about the dust gathering on my precious DVDs. I bought 24 of them when I visited London earlier this year, and have watched exactly three in the last four months (of course, many of the others are films I’ve already seen and wanted to own – but that’s hardly the point). In some ways, I still consider myself a cineaste first and a bibliophile second – I feel a protective fondness for cinema, especially popular cinema, which is so much more susceptible to pillory and condescension than literature is. But I have been giving movies the step-fatherly treatment in recent months.

Is there a solution? I fear not – unless I make the difficult decision to bring some moderation to my reading. Writing about his prolificity, Isaac Asimov said there were times when he felt like he wanted to write every book ever written. I can relate to that manner of gluttony – there are times I want to read everything ever written. But sadly, one must be realistic.

It’s 5 pm on a Sunday as I write this; I’ve been awake nine hours and have (not counting the newspapers) read only around 25 pages today (Martin Amis’s The Rachel Papers).

The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older: shorter of breath and one day closer to death -- Roger Waters