Is it right to write swoony soft-porn prose?

James Naughtie

For years I've been listening to book progams, in which interested readers chat with authors under the careful stewardship of an omniscient host, the chap pictured on the right being my fave to date. An aspiring author (henceforth AA) learns interesting tidbits from these programs, and in listening to a string of them in close proximity, as one can in the age of podcasts for iPods, certain commonalities (metatropes?) emerge. They are less likely to do so when such programs are broadcast once a month, the BBC's Book Club being a case in point, owing to the greater demands placed on our memory. Who needs a memory when you've got Voice Memos on your iPod? Whenever I think I've made an observation worthy of posterity, I dig my iPod out, interrupt the slow mvt of Mozart's A Major piano concerto, to record my afflatus so that it can  be retrieved and embedded in such worthy blog entries as this one or my journal, or if they pertain to a particular activity such as courses I create and teach, grants I might apply for, course books I have drafted and got nowhere with, or most eponymously my current novel that'll never see me on a book program ...

The authors often brag about being scavengers of people's lives, whether those close to them or a snippet overheard on a train. Some talk about the extensive research they did, while some say they did none. Some tell us that they wrote the book from beginning to end with barely an edit before submitting it to their publisher, while others tell us that they have rewritten the book countless times. I even heard one say the other day that he used to listen to the BBC program and imagine how he would field these questions if he ever he got to be on it. The largesse of their tone deserves comment: I always like this question, or I always try to dodge this question (+ belly laugh), generous ways of saying that they've fielded this question innumerable times.

What prompted me to pen this post was a chat with Madeleine Miller, the author of The Song of Achilles which has just won the Orange Prize for fiction (see below). 

It "is cast as Patroclus’ autobiography and concentrates on the love affair" (NYT) with Achilles. The jolly discussion on this morning's The World Today may contribute to one's prowess in a trivia quiz but is unlikely to hone the AA's  ability to see their writing through the critical eyes of the Other.

To correct this leaning, here are a few excisions from Daniel Mendelsohns' review of said book in the NY Times. Before reading on, do note that the book cover pictured here reveals it is a NYT best seller.

Now, what can we AAs learn from the following:

• The result is a book that has the head of a young adult novel, the body of the “Iliad” and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland.
• Miller’s Patroclus observes, in one of the numerous asides that sound irritatingly as if they were lifted from SparkNotes
• ... adolescent Sturm und Drang ...
• “I am sorry for your loss,” ... You wonder just which funeral home this took place in. (Achilles says this to Priam whose son he has slain).
• .. the “love affair,” which begins with an embarrassing breathlessness
• Why is this so awful? Partly it’s the swoony soft-porn prose: the heavy breathing and soft-focus skin shots ... make it hard, in the end, to take these characters seriously.

OMFG, does this AA's novel do these things? Sure it does but at least the reader (= the AA) gets the pisstaking way it does so. I wonder if another reader would get it, or if s/he would dump à la Mr. Mendelsohn.

Now, remember this book won the Orange Prize, which as Wikipedia tells us, is annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. In awarding the prize, Ms. Trollope said, "This is a more than worthy winner — original, passionate, inventive and uplifting. Homer would be proud of her." (from here). Again, Mr Mendelsohn would surely beg to differ.

And so to conclude with a bit of swoony soft porn, let's wrap up with a photo of Garrett Hedlund who plays Patroclus in the excruciating Troy film(s?). If you need more even more of him, you can find plenty on this Fan page.


Final word - big fat cheers to those authors who can write from beginning to end without editting. Even this wee post has taken over two hours and quite a few revisions to get it to this beta version, and which has only put off the inevitable day of marking ahead of me.