Symbolic? Or not?

Question suggested by Barbara H:

My husband is not an avid reader, and he used to get very frustrated in college when teachers would insist discussing symbolism in a literary work when there didn’t seem to him to be any. He felt that writers often just wrote the story for the story’s sake and other people read symbolism into it.

It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

Well, when I was in college, we had a teacher who actually cautioned us not to go too far in foisting symbolic mass upon constructions not built to withstand their weight--sometimes "The Heaven of Animals" is precisely what the title says it is--but I do agree that some teachers are so desperate to have the literal-minded make any kind of association that they succeed in scaring them away from literary works for good. Which, of course, doesn't allow the literal-minded to live a life free of symbols, not at all. How well we function in life has a great deal to do with how adept we are in interpreting the ways we communicate with one another symbolically.

I don't agree that symbolism is a literary device that's fallen out of use. I've been mulling over a symbolic aspect of Reif Larsen's The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet for a week now. T.S. goes on a journey (and we all know how symbolic journeys are) and at one point unexpectedly travels through a wormhole. T.S. is a cartographer who draws maps and diagrams of everything, but the wormhole is something that defies visual representation. It was only at the end of the book, when T.S. enters into another unmappable region, that I felt I understood the symbolic relevance of the earlier wormhole.

Granted, most of us don't mention symbolism when we're trying to convince someone else to read a book we've enjoyed--plot and character are much bigger draws--but that doesn't mean symbols aren't there, that we don't pick up on a great many of them without consciously thinking "Oh, look! Symbol!" They're just there, an undercurrent of understood meaning that helps move us along. (Remember the Under Toad, as mentioned in another work with a protagonist named T.S.)

Likewise, I suspect most writers focus first on the characters and the plot, the same way readers do, seeding their works organically with material, images and events, that only in later drafts will be seen by the writer as the appropriate little plants to be taken to full symbolic bloom. But to say that symbols are not a part of the intended finished story, but are instead strictly manifestations of the reader, particularly the reader who doesn't want to think about symbols at all, strikes me as an attempt to shut down conversation and thought, not continue it.

Booking Through Thursday

Diversity in Reading Meme

This is depressing. I'd somehow convinced myself that my reading was quite diverse this year--books written by New Zealanders! Germans! books set in Australia! Korea! Krishnapur! parallel universes and Iceland!--but this meme exposes just how white bread my reading actually is.

1. Name the last book by a female author that you've read.

Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood. On Sunday.

2. Name the last book by an African or African-American author that you've read.

A Quiet Storm, Rachel Howzell Hall's story of a young woman dealing with her bi-polar sister in California, is the most recent. Before that, Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam by Rhodesian Lauren Liebenberg, which probably ought not to count since she's white, and Half of a Yellow Sun by Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. And Obama's memoir. All last year.

3. Name one from a Latino/a author.

I have a copy of 2666 on hand, but of course I haven't read it. I read Cristina Garcia's
Dreaming in Cuban with the Slaves last spring.

4. How about one from an Asian country or Asian-American?

This is where it really gets shameful. If I count Kazuo Ishiguro, I still have to go back to 2005--further than that to find a Gish Jen or an Amy Tan.

5. What about a GLBT writer?

Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry in January and Peter Cameron's Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You last summer.

6. Why not name an Israeli/Arab/Turk/Persian writer, if you're feeling lucky?

Orhan Pamuk's Snow in 2004, but I bought Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace a couple weeks back.

7. Any other "marginalized" authors you've read lately?

Afraid not.

(via Reading the Leaves)

Escape

Books offer an escape, but it is an escape into something larger, not from something larger; it is an escape into hazard, not from hazard. A dictator escapes not by fleeing into a library, but by a midnight flight to the Dominican Republic.

--Harry Golden

Q&A

JaneGS has given me the One Lovely Blog Award (thank you kindly, Jane!) and posed a question down in the comments of the final readathon post. I thought I would paste her words and put my answer here.

Jane said:

I am all amazement--I love to read, but I can't imagine doing this. You clearly enjoyed the experience (i.e., you said you would do it again), but..but..are there any of the books you wished you didn't have to race through. Or maybe you didn't have a racing feeling, but just a reading for a long time feeling.

I participated in Dewey's very first readathon back in October 2007. I confessed then that I had the tendency to turn into a zombie-brain by 9 pm most nights, that I rarely read for more than two to three hours at a time, but that I still found the idea of a 24-hour reading session downright appealing.

And a 24-hour reading session that's shared with a couple hundred kindred spirits instead of embarked on all by your lonesome, that has cheerleaders for heaven's sake, and prizes and links to the other readers and mini-challenges, to spur you all on through the adventure makes it easy to shrug off the fact that your family and your friends and co-workers find the whole excessive-reading thing quite silly.

Except for one book, all the ones I read this time were short and chances are I would have read them in a single sitting no matter when I read them. The only book I had a sense of racing through was the children's book of Norse myths at the end, and all guilt there was assuaged by adding the Prose Edda to my wishlist before I'd managed to finish it.

The Kate Atkinson was longer and part of the reason I'd not read it before now--she's one of my favorite authors and I bought it last fall--is that I knew I'd want to read it straight through whenever I did read it. I started it Saturday afternoon knowing Atkinson's style and characters would hold my attention for hours on end. I'd intended to read The Behaviour of the Moths, but didn't think it fair to start a book of its length after midnight; better to read something short that I had a chance of finishing before my brain completely closed down for the night.

While I can read fast, I generally don't. I timed myself at some point in the middle of the Atkinson; I was reading at a rate of about 75 pages an hour, which is a respectable speed, I'm sure, but nothing to get excited about. (Maybe I'll get anal in a few days and figure out how many wpm that translates into.)

I think it would be interesting to use the next readathon to read a humongous book like Drood or The Story of Edgar Sawtelle; I read primarily short stories and essays in the first readathon and while I enjoyed doing so, all the stopping and starting kept the total page numbers down and I didn't feel as accomplished at the end as some of participants who'd read double or triple the amount.

Anyway, this is my meandering way of saying that while I read plenty of books throughout the year at a ruminative pace, sometimes taking a day or two off after finishing one before I start another, having a weekend once or twice a year where I don't pause for reflection between them is one lovely experience.

And did I forget to mention the fact that there are cheerleaders?

The dark matter

In our always-connected, everything-linked world, we sometimes forget that books are the dark matter of the information universe. While we now possess terabytes of data at our fingertips, we have nonetheless drifted further and further away from mankind's most valuable archive of knowledge: the tens of millions of books that have been published since Gutenberg's day.

--Steven Johnson, How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write

After reading this article, I no longer feel guilty for using this blog as a commonplace book.

Readathon Final Update

Five books completed for a total of 1,013 pages.

Genesis. Bernard Beckett
The Fire Gospel. Michel Faber
When Will There Be Good News? Kate Atkinson
Great Granny Webster. Caroline Blackwood
D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths. Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire

*Edited to add Final Event Meme

1. Which hour was most daunting for you?

1-2 am, whatever hour that was. Then I gave up and went to bed until 5:30 am.

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?

The Atkinson, the Faber.

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?

Perhaps have the readathon last a few hours longer so everyone could have some sleep without feeling guilty about it.

4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?

Everything.

5. How many books did you read?

Five

6. What were the names of the books you read?

Listed above

7. Which book did you enjoy most?

Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News?

8. Which did you enjoy least?

The Norse mythology simply because I was reading at too fast a clip by then so that I could finish it before the readathon ended (finished with one minute to spare).

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders?

n/a

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?

Very likely. Reader

Readathon 23rd Hour Update

I made it to 20 pages from the end of Caroline Blackwood's Great Granny Webster before calling it a night and catching a bit of sleep. I'm awake again, more than a little bleary-eyed, but I've finished the Blackwood and am casting about now for something short and not too taxing to read next.