This week, I’ve been restlessly reading bits and pieces of old story anthologies because I’m ‘in between’ full-length books. Any recommendations? My local Oxfam has a pretty dazzling choice, and after scanning the spines a few afternoons I wound up with the following few questions to answer:
If you could have written any book, which would it be?
If you could be any literary character, which would you choose?
And finally, if you could change the ending to any book?
For the first, I’m going to have to pick an exotic, adventurous autobiography. Perhaps Beryl Markham’s West with the Night – so that I get to stylishly recount my pioneering solo airplane flights – or Lesley Blanch’s Journey into the Mind’s Eye – so that I get to reminisce about a wild youth spent rambling across Siberia with the mysterious Russian Traveller. It’s an amazing feat when a memoirist writes something that makes the reader dream big, and that makes another time come alive.
For the second, probably Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. It’s a cheesy answer, but Elizabethan times hold a real charm, yet I’d be allowed to live on for centuries after that. And I’d start out a graceful young man and end up a liberated 1920s woman!
Finally, and most difficult, is the question about endings. I’ve read books with devastatingly sad endings, but for the most part they were also impressive works and I couldn’t even begin to think about changing them. I started this bit writing about a hip American novel published a few years ago, but on reflection this is the one I would rewrite first: Jane Eyre. She should have gone to Africa.
Guest
Date: Sat Oct 25, 2008 05:49 PM GMT
Great questions!
First, I'd love to have written 'The Dark Labyrinth'. Actually, I'd love to have written most of Lawrence Durrell's books. In favt, I think I'd like to have been Lawrence Durrell. The girls were crazy about him... but enough of that.
I suppose most men want to be James Bond, although I'd imagin the health insurance would be crippling, even if the life-style wasn't.
I think the ending to J le C's 'The Constant Gardner' was so dispiriting as to be nihilistic, and left me feeling that there is really nothing anyone can do in the face of corrupt multi-nationals. A book that could have been truely inspirational instead left me feeling hopeless and helpless.
Now, then, what did I do with that rather fine bottle of Portuguese red?
RJI
Date: Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:18 AM GMT
Tough questions indeed! I would like to have written Lolita, not only because of its controversial cult classic status, but because it is beautiful, funny, sensitive and discomforting all at once.
Spex
Date: Fri Oct 24, 2008 10:03 AM GMT
I want to have written the Mr. Men series. I still love them.
I would like to be YT in Snow Crash.
And if I could change any ending, I would change the ending of... well hey, I can't think of book ending I would definitely want to change. The Bible?
Scribbles
Date: Fri Oct 24, 2008 08:25 AM GMT
I seem to remember reading that Dickens was pressured to change the ending of Great Expectations after it was originally published in serial form - the public were distraught that Pip and Estelle didn't end up together so he had to write in that ambiguous 'never saw the shadow of another parting' line for the book publication.
