Those senseless moments cannot make a novel, but they do constitute a story

 On Sunday I posted a grumpy, dissatisfied response to the Guardian Weekend’s Summer Fiction Special. I’m still dissatisfied with the fiction they published but it is time to step beyond general irritation and think in more detail about why I dislike the stories, particularly when, to judge from some of the comments they’re gathering, other readers think they’re wonderful.

Holiday reading

Yesterday's Guardian magazine was the summer reading special. I worked my way through the five stories and one illustrated feature over lunch today and couldn't help thinking how dreary, with one exception, the selections were. Dreary in content, dreary in what they represent, dreary in their very sameness. It may be that 'summer reading' suggests 'holiday reading' and invites thoughts of something a little lighter, or simply that the news these past few days has been so terrible it merely underlined how tedious these stories  actually were.

Let's start with the exception – Shaun Tan's 'A Day In The Life', which is needless to say not on the Guardian's website, presumably because it's graphic art. If you're familiar with Tan's work, you'll know what to expect. If not, his illustrated interview with Der Spiegel will give you a flavour. Either way 'A Day In The Life' is a delightfully weird take on the banalities of such features.

Taking the five stories in the order in which they appear, we begin with Jon McGregor's We Wave and Call in which a primarily second-person viewpoint narrator tells you the reader what you are doing. I have never particularly cared for second-person viewpoint, not least because I've never been entirely clear what it is for. With this story, it suddenly came to me that second-person viewpoint is very often a particularly aggressive, in-your-face, dictatorial sort of narrative, manipulative. It is as though the author doesn't trust the reader to draw the right conclusions without controlling every moment of the encounter between reader and prose. I understand now why I dislike it for the most part. Possibly I don't need to say much more about the story, given that it prompted this revelation. However, I will add that it was clear from the first paragraph what was going to happen; if this was unintentional, I think it says a lot for the banality of the story that it was so obvious from the outset. If it was intentional, it was crudely so, and the journey was insufficiently engaging to justify the writer/narrator/whoever toying with the reader. 

Jennifer Egan's 'To Do' is either the height of postmodern chic or else a little conscious of itself for its own good. It's a list, a list that gradually reveals what's really on the compiler's mind, except that it is just a little too studied and amused with itself for my taste. I shall still read A Visit From The Goon Squad but not because of this. This story, which was apparently written in 20 minutes, is tangentially related to the novel, so definitely one for the completists.

David Nicholl's 'Every Good Boy' has the narrator reminiscing about how he came to take piano lessons although singularly lacking in musical ability, and what happened to his piano teacher. It was a slight piece. One might congratulate it for reading like a chunk of someone's unpublished memoir, but I can't help thinking the world is awash in these thin short stories which hang on a reminiscence of a childhood experience, as though this were somehow enough to justify their existence. 

I felt similarly about Tessa Hadley's  'In The Cave', a delicate little observation of unsatisfactory sex and a small moment in time that changes everything. I've read other things by Hadley and found them equally unsatisfactory so wasn't surprised that I didn't like this. I don't like the kind of fiction that focuses minutely on small events in the lives of middle-class London women. I couldn't find it in my heart to care about this one and her disillusionment, or her realisation that her lover was wrong about something.

And finally, Fan Flaherty is the winner of the Guardian's most recent short story competition with 'Trade'. She breeds horses. Her short story is about horses. It is probably very wrong of me to get to the end of this story and feel less than I think I ought to. I think I am supposed to be shocked by its callousness but mostly I was struck by the way the author closed down the story rather than opening it out.

And as if to confirm my suspicions that beach/holiday reading is indeed at best a mournful concept, at worst something downright sinister, Boyd Tonkin offered Indy readers a survey of novels featuring beaches in The literary beach. Nevil Shute, J.G. Ballard, M.R. James – and people wonder why, despite living on the coast, I look inland rather than seawards.

Discuss

Reputedly said by Pablo Picasso, and attributed to him all over the internet, with commendable consistency but a complete lack of context, this comment seems to have already achieved what I can only think of as tea-towel status. It's a nice thing to say, or to turn into 'art' itself, or to use as an inspirational quote at the head of your blog, etc. but what exactly does it mean? 

Or, rather, am I the only person who looks at this and thinks, no, the dust of everyday life is part of what makes art, and,  is the function of art really to act as some sort of universal cleanser, to make everything nice? 

Because, really, that is not at all how I see art.

Surely it is not merely some sort of anodyne for life.

I continue to be rather quiet at present. Sometimes the thinking takes precdence over the writing, and it seems to be one of those times. However, I haven't been entirely idle. Or rather, people have been busy on my behalf. 

The British Science Fiction Association has just brought out a chapbook of some of my past critical writing. It's my first book and I am thrilled by it. Thanks go to the people who put the idea to the BSFA in the first place, to the BSFA for agreeing to publish it, to Jonathan McCalmont for making the selection of material, and to Martin McGrath for making it look so beautiful. And of course to Paul Kincaid for encouraging me to start writing reviews and criticism twenty-seven years ago.

 And on the same day that the BSFA mailing arrived, Interzone #235 also hit the mat, with my name on the cover because of my interview with Lisa Goldstein. Momentarily, I felt famous.

Mercifully for all concerned, life's back to normal, mopping up cat vomit and doing the supermarket run. And getting some more writing done.