H.G. Wells

[poliphilo]

One of the things I like about Wells as a novelist is that he is completely fearless about tackling contemporary issues. The new excites him. He doesn't recollect in tranquillity or wait to see what the rest of the world thinks, but snatches at things while they're hot. Ann Veronica participates in a suffragette raid, the narrator of Tono-Bungay builds experimental gliders and airships.  I don't think there are many novelists around today who are prepared to risk burning their fingers like this on the utterly up to date. Instead our biggest names seem happier getting things out of books (as opposed to life) and setting their stories in the past. Hilary Mantell, for example, just won the Booker for a novel about Thomas Cromwell. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're right, I'm in danger of pushing the argument too far.

I have a problem with books that foist a modern literary sensibility onto real historical personages. Peter Carey did it with the outlaw Ned Kelly. I read a few sentences, thought, "The real Kelly couldn't possibly have written like this" and put the book aside.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Heh, heh. The idea of a book written from the viewpoint of Ned Kelly, in Ned Kelly Speak... Lovely...

When I wrote my historical, I just assumed I was translating it from the original Scots, which would've sounded like a cross between Chaucer, Shakespeare and Rab C Nesbitt...