I’m aware that neither author will pay the slightest heed to my opinion, but that’s never going to stop me saying how I feel.
As a vocational writer who’s made a living for three decades from his scribbling, I have the right to say what I think.
Truth is we all do. That’s what’s so great about the Arts. All opinions are important.
I finished reading Prophet Song a week before it won the Booker Prize. Although it offers more than a pure thriller, its greatest quality is that it is thrilling.
Lynch builds a terrifyingly credible justifiably paranoid 21st century Dublin, and although the political undertones are fascinating, the story sticks to the war narrative like hot tyres on molten asphalt.
Personally I would’ve liked more backstory of how this rightwing autocracy gained power, but that would be a different book.
I did however reach that wonderful point in a reader’s relationship with their book, when I looked forward to going to bed so that I could rejoin the story.
As the book that Lynch wanted to write, it was almost perfect, except for the writer’s refusal to hit return on the keyboard, so that we might know who is talking to whom at all times.
Ever since Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the absence of quotation marks and character identifiers (he whispered, she said) has become de rigueur dwaaahhlinng for the Literati.
So eager are some authors to write in a fashionable style, they forget to ask themselves the two questions every writer must ask, when considering a narrative device of any kind:
Does it work?
and
Is it necessary?
Students on my Craft of Writing Course inevitably ask
“Charlie, can I do ‘this’?”
or
“Is ‘that’ allowed?”
to which I always reply
“You can do anything you want, as long as it works.”
The decision about whether the device is necessary comes only after it has been proven to work. When I read McCarthy’s The Road I never had any doubts who was saying what to whom.
Not only did his decision to omit punctuation work, it actually enhanced the reading of what was, essentially a double-header between father and son.
We knew who they were and had no need for identifiers or quotation marks.
It worked, and it was necessary.
When Paul Lynch decided to do away with paragraphs, quotation marks and identifiers, he did his book no favours.
As a reader, I want to be utterly engaged at all times. I want to feel sucked whole into this world on the pages in front of me, enveloped by the author's thoughts, dreams, rhythms and feelings.
I don’t want to be aware I’m on the bus or in bed, reading. I want to be there, in the book, seduced by beautiful simple stunning prose.
What I do not want is to have to read a sentence twice to understand its context, or to revisit a paragraph, so that I can work out who’s talking, when their speech ends and at which point it’s replaced by a narrative voice.
Does it work?
Yes, it works. It’s stumbling and inelegant, but it works.
Is it necessary? Does it enhance the reading of the book?
Absolutely not, in any way.
Welcome
to the perilous territory of ‘Art with a Capital F’ wherein the writer
considers how the book is written to be more important than how it is
read.
Whilst busy criticising other
scribblers, I’ll now take the risk of disappearing up my own hole, by quoting from the introduction to my Craft of Writing Course:
'Never write to impress.
Never try to appear clever.'
Prophet Song is an outstanding book. I was gripped, and felt sad when I finished it. Very possibly Mr. Lynch employed his block narrative style to create a sense of claustrophobia in his reader.
He underestimates us, and the power of his own language. The device was not necessary. It just felt he was trying to be clever, to write Literature, and in the process forced me to feel disengaged, thrust out of the book, time and time again.
Had he not tried to be clever, it would have read so much better. Just my opinion, for which I make no excuses. I can’t read it as you.
What a joy it was then, to pick up The Bee Sting and encounter simple, hilarious and knowing prose.
What a relief.
So accessible was Murray’s narrative that I felt my criticism of Prophet Song (oh but how I loathe this word) validated
From Son to Daughter we stray, and then to the voice of Imelda, the Mother and oh, Lordy Miss Maudy, Murray’s at it too.
Maybe he's using the device to portray how frantic and non-stop Imelda is, so her passages have no quotation marks, although, strangely, they do have identifiers.
Equally odd, while there are no paragraphs, there is a capital letter at the start of each sentence, even though there’s no full stop/period before it, to announce the end of the previous sentence.
It’s a kind of mish-mash half-arsed version of the style employed in Prophet Song and several other contemporary novels.
Tragically, yet again, it adds nothing to the book, and serially breaks my engagement with the narrative, as I reread a few lines for clarity.
Yet again a talented writer tries something he believes to be clever, underestimating both his readers and his own skills.
Nevertheless I’m thoroughly enjoying the book, and hoping that when we reach the Father character, we’ll be back to using paragraphs, punctuation and all that standard stuff…
... unless Murray tries something else that works, which proves necessary and keeps me more engaged as a reader than ever before
06.12.2023
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