Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books

by Tim Parks

Overview

Why do we need fiction? Why do books need  to be printed on paper, copyrighted, read to the finish? Do we read to challenge our vision of  the world or to confirm it? Has novel writing turned into a job like any other? In Where I’m Reading From, the novelist and critic Tim Parks ranges over decades of critical reading—from Leopardi, Dickens, and Chekhov, to Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Thomas Bernhard, and on to contemporary work by Peter Stamm, Alice Munro, and many others—to upend our assumptions about literature and its purpose.

In thirty-seven interlocking essays, Where I’m Reading From examines the rise of the “international” novel and the disappearance of “national” literary styles; how market forces shape “serious” fiction; the unintended effects of translation; the growing stasis of literary criticism; and the problematic relationship between writers’ lives and their work. Through dazzling close readings and probing self-examination, Parks wonders whether writers—and readers—can escape the twin pressures of the new global system and the novel that has become its emblematic genre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590178843
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	05/12/2015
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Tim Parks has written seventeen novels, including Europa, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and most recently, Painting Death. He is the author of several works of non-fiction, including Italian Neighbors and Italian Ways. Parks has also translated the works of Alberto Moravia, Giacomo Leopardi, and Niccolò Machiavelli, among others, and he is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He lives in Italy.

Table of Contents

Part I: The World Around the Book 1


   1.  Do We Need Stories? 3
   2.  Why Finish Books? 9
   3.  E-books are for Grown-ups 15
   4. Does Copyright Matter? 19
   5.  The Dull New Global Novel 25
   6.  Reading It Wrong 29
   7.  Why Readers Disagree 35
   8. Where I’m Reading From 41
Part II: The Book in the World 47


   1.  What’s Wrong with the Nobel? 49
   2.  A Game without Rules 55
   3.  Most Favored Nations 61
   4.  Writing Adrift in the World 67
   5.  Art That Stays Home 73
   6.  Writing without Style 81
   7.  Literature and Bureaucracy 89
   8.  In the Chloroformed Sanctuary 95
   9. Writers into Saints 101
Part III: The Writer’s World 107


   1. The Writer’s Job 109
   2.  Writing to Win 117
   3.  Does Money Make Us Write Better? 123
   4.  Fear and Courage 129
   5.  To Tell and Not to Tell 137



   1.  Stupid Questions 143
   2.  The Chattering Mind 149
   3.  Trapped inside the Novel 155
   4.  Changing Our Stories 161
   5.  Writing to Death 167
Part IV: writing across worlds 173


   1. ‘Are You the Tim Parks Who...?’ 175
   2.  Ugly Americans Abroad 181
   3. Your English Is Showing 189
   4.  Learning to Speak American 195
   5.  In Praise of the Language Police 201
   6.  Translating in the Dark 207
   7.  Listening for the Jabberwock 213
   8.  In the Wilds of Leopardi 219
   9.  Echoes from the Gloom 227
   10.  My Novel, Their Culture 233

Editorial Reviews

02/23/2015
In this lively collection of 37 essays, novelist (Painting Death) and translator Parks, who is also one of the most eloquent and provocative critics, explores a range of topics in contemporary literature and publishing in essays with titles such as “Do We Need Stories?,” “The Dull New Global Novel,” “Does Money Make Us Better Writers?,” “Why Readers Disagree,” and “Translating in the Dark.” Parks ponders the ways that translating a text challenges both readers and translators, observing that the act of moving a text from one language to another allows for better understanding of it. Elsewhere, he points out that creative writing programs seldom serve the function of teaching students how to write, instead advancing their careers by introducing them to established writers so they can make valuable professional connections. In a brilliant take on copyright, he notes that the concept is not “essentially driven by notions of justice or theories of ownership, but by a certain culture’s attachment to a certain literary form.” As the character of the printed word and the nature of reading continue to change, Parks’s essays probe the positive and negative effects of these changes for our reading lives. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Parks...seeks to puncture readers’ complacent assumptions about books and publishing in 37 pithy, discerning, adept, witty, and mischievously impertinent inquiries...Parks offers a tart assessment of the Nobel Prize, an intriguing discussion of literary style and what is lost in translation, and provocative forays into the complexities and mysteries of writing and reading, from the influence of “fear and courage” to the conflict between idealism and the need to earn money too—in the autobiographical title essay—what has shaped his literary hunger, perceptions, and preferences. Parks’ bold and subtle, passionate and clever musings on the history and future of books will elicit both umbrage and delight." —Booklist

Selected as one of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring 2015 Literary Biographies, Essays & Criticism titles.

"In this lively collection of 37 essays, novelist and translator Parks, who is also one of the most eloquent and provocative critics, explores a range of topics in contemporary literature and publishing...As the character of the printed word and the nature of reading continue to change, Parks’s essays probe the positive and negative effects of these changes for our reading lives.” —Publishers Weekly

"Why do books matter? British novelist, essayist, translator, and critic Parks considers the current state of writing and reading in short, contemplative literary musings...'Do We Need Stories?' 'Why Finish Books?' 'What's Wrong with the Nobel?' 'Does Money Make Us Write Better?' Readers vexed by such questions will welcome Parks' thoughtful responses."–Kirkus

“Brilliantly skewers the pieties of the literary world.” —Lionel Shriver, Prospect Magazine

“Quietly incendiary.”  —Tim Adams, The Observer

“He asks why people want to become writers and his wry and well-evidenced answers are ones that Dr. Johnson would have perfectly well recognized.”  —John Mullan, The Guardian

“If by its end you still feel writing is the career for you, then don’t say you were not warned.” —Alan Taylor, Herald Scotland

From the Publisher

★ 03/15/2015
Parks, an author (Europa), professor (literature & translation, IULM Univ. in Milan), and regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, poses many questions in this thoughtful collection of 37 blog entries on reading, writing, and translation. He challenges readers to investigate the importance of stories, asking if they are really needed (he doesn't think so) and furthermore, if it is really necessary to finish every book. In "E-books Are for Grown-ups," he likens the transition from print to electronic to the natural movement of a child from picture books to chapter books. The title essay is the most heartfelt; in it, Parks describes his childhood family reading experiences and that sense of togetherness. The author's humor shines in "Stupid Questions" when he examines author book tours, in which the public "fires shots in the dark," groping for a connection between the writer and the book. His expertise as a translator is evident in "In Praise of the Language Police," which investigates the influence of personality on the syntax and standards of language in translated works. VERDICT Parks's collection is not meant to be read alone—the entries are designed for discussion. An excellent work to guide readers to examine their book choices.—Joyce Sparrow, Kenneth City, FL

Library Journal

2015-02-14
Why do books matter?British novelist, essayist, translator, and critic Parks (Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo, 2013, etc.) considers the current state of writing and reading in short, contemplative literary musings. Organized into four sections—The World Around the Book, The Book in the World, The Writer's World, and Writing Across Worlds—the essays focus on the challenges writers face in defining their literary boundaries. In the author's view, creative writing programs teach novelists "how to create a product with universal appeal, something that can float in the world mix, rather than feed into the immediate experience of people in their own culture." This "standardization and flattening" of narrative reflects students' anxiety about getting published, which in turn often makes literary fiction predictable and unimaginative. Pressure to market books globally has led, the author believes, to "a slow weakening of the sense of being inside a society with related and competing visions of the world to which writers make their own urgent narrative contributions." As a teacher and practitioner of translation, Parks devotes many essays to its problems: the struggle to translate unexpected syntax or subtly novel ideas and the relationship between semantic sense and "the acoustic inertia" of a language. Translated texts, he notes, "tend to be cooler, a little less fluid" than their originals. Although translations make up only 3 to 4 percent of novels published in America, English dominates publishing in other countries, leading some European writers to emulate English syntax. Parks refers often to writers he esteems, such as D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Beckett, Peter Stamm, and Henry Green. Jonathan Franzen, who he thinks is overrated, is not among them. "Do We Need Stories?" "Why Finish Books?" "What's Wrong with the Nobel?" "Does Money Make Us Write Better?" Readers vexed by such questions will welcome Parks' thoughtful responses.

Kirkus Reviews