Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Why Reading Other Novelists Helps Improve One's Own Writing

A Conspiracy of Paper (Benjamin Weaver, #1)A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As someone who has written an in-depth novel with lots of characters and intrigue, I can see my own shortcomings as a writer as they mirror my criticisms of the shortcomings of A Conspiracy of Paper.

Years ago, I had decided to read it while I was reading novels to learn how to tell my own story of complexity. This novel is recommended on its jacket as a novel similar to An Instance of the Fingerpost, the latter which I consider to be one of the most brilliant contemporary historical fiction novels ever written. Mind you, An Instance might be the first historical fiction that I had ever read, to my memory, so that could have been part of its mystique. But that book is brilliant.

I love brilliant writing. This author does a commendable job of writing in an English prose of perfection for the time period, although certain phrases are used ad nausea ("for the nonce..."). Nevertheless, Liss has a way of using witty, sophisticated dialogue, in a Jane Austen manner that makes you want to hear what the characters are saying. He also catches the time period brilliantly, and transports you to 18th Century England. You can almost smell the putrid smells of London, and the visuals of the time-period are like a movie. The clothing, the hackneys, the beggars, the streets, the filth, are conjured up admirably. He literally places you there.

The problem with the novel is the problem with my own: there are way too many characters. In his case, however, because they are all in the same field of employment (relating to business and stock-jobbing, in things of a financial nature) they all blend into one another. There are so many names, but the faces all look the same to me. So, I did not care for them. Luckily, my readers have told me differently about my own characters, thankfully.

The characters that did interest me were better defined and quite memorable, usually persons in whom the protagonist had an actual friendly relationship: Miriam and Elias, in particular, whose friendships with the protagonist Weaver were human and relevant to the story. As long as one of them was in the scene, I could be guaranteed to pay attention.

The theme of the book does come across, albeit in a muddled way, but just when you're about to give up, the author inserts a paragraph that sums up where we are in the book, and that guided me along. I wish, however, that I could have gleaned what was going on without his paraphrasing. I also didn't like that I could read the mind of the author as he was writing, not knowing exactly where he was going in telling the story. You could tell where he was stuck, where he had to pivot, and when he was lost in his own story-telling. His character spoke too much about this, which was part of the mystery, but which I could not help but hear the desperation of the writer. I could be wrong, however. But those musings jumped out at me.

Writing about fraud is very difficult. I know that as an attorney who takes on complex cases. He's done a commendable job, however, of explaining where financial fraud's beginnings lay: in England in the creation of the stock markets. Overall, the book is a cautionary tale for how we find ourselves where we do now, as a civilization, creating value in worthless paper that is manipulated by central banks, employed by persons of questionable repute.

I doubt I'll read this book again, whereas I will read An Instance of the Fingerpost again. I'm not sure I recommend the novel except for the complimentary aspects I mentioned above.

I will say though, that David Liss, as an American, has done a good job of copying the brogue and the feeling of the English, through the eyes of an outsider, a Jewish Englishman. There was no trace of his American background in his writing, except for his location for some of the major meetings in the novel, in a restaurant called "The Laughing Negro." Unless there is an actual place in English history, I would say his need to insert American pejorative parlance in a novel about England was totally out of place, and an indicator of why he may aspire to be English, but cannot think like a Brit, in the long run.

I should give this 3.5 stars, and maybe a 4.

View all my reviews

Why Reading Other Novelists Helps Improve One's Own Writing

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss My rating: 3 of 5 stars As someone who has written an in-depth novel with lots of characters and int...