Timely for me to finally read this one. I've worked out that it was about two years ago that things kind of ground to a halt for me on this front - that huge wave of enthusiasm about current literature and ideas slowed to a trickle, while my own writing came to a complete halt. And I think it must have been around that time that I first tried to read Our Tragic Universe, making it most of the way through but frankly not really enjoying it and bogging down completely near the end - which was all the more surprising, not to mention disappointing, given how brilliant PopCo and The End of Mr Y in particular were and Thomas's position at the time as my reigning literary crush.
Anyway, as I said, timely, seeing as I've finally been writing again these last few weeks, meaning that I'm ripe for a return to Thomas, whose writing has particularly struck me in the past because of the effect that she's able to achieve, at times with an air of the infraordinary, while not being shy of the extraordinary either. And timely because Our Tragic Universe is much preoccupied with the nature - and mechanics - of story and of literature (the universe is tragic, in at least once sense, to the extent that it may conform to, or be understandable in terms of, the structures of Greek tragedy).
Near the beginning, my heart sank when one of the characters describes a scene from Aristophane' play The Frogs: "Aeschylus proves that any of Euripides' clever but formulaic stories could be about someone losing a bottle of oil. The point seemed to be that every formulaic story starts with a conflict that's later resolved - like losing a bottle of oil and then finding it again." Because I realised that my own in-progress would, on one dimension, fit that description. But Our Tragic Universe turns out to be far from a simplistic condemnation of formula and conventional narrative and structure; rather, it develops into, while enacting, a treatment of the ways in which stories necessarily draw on certain structures without this foreclosing the possibility of something new and interesting being created. I found out recently that Thomas has put out a kind of 'how to' book for writers - a genre that I've never had any interest in, but would consider making an exception for in her case...though in some ways OTU itself serves that same function.
Anyway, as fiction - literature - I think it is more interesting than really outstanding, to be honest. It's always a bit problematic to make your central character a writer and then load up the novel with her (or him) having lots of thoughts and conversations about writing, even when - as here - it's in aid of a genuine intellectual exploration of the nature and possibilities of story-telling itself. The setting's deliberately mundane...but still mundane. And while there are a range of symbolic figures structuring the narrative - a Beast, a Labyrinth, a ship in a bottle, a prophecy - it has a tendency to feel a bit like an exercise, albeit a serious-mindedly literary one, more than literature itself as such.
Having said that, it clearly made me think and react, and if anything has deepened my regard for the author, even though I enjoyed it less than that great pair of PopCo and The End of Mr Y. Also, like The Unbearable Lightness of Being before it, it made me want to read Anna Karenina (a thought that I'd also had recently, thanks to that snowy train platform scene in The Grandmaster) - the one possible exception to my otherwise blanket ban on serious Russian novels.
Anyway, as I said, timely, seeing as I've finally been writing again these last few weeks, meaning that I'm ripe for a return to Thomas, whose writing has particularly struck me in the past because of the effect that she's able to achieve, at times with an air of the infraordinary, while not being shy of the extraordinary either. And timely because Our Tragic Universe is much preoccupied with the nature - and mechanics - of story and of literature (the universe is tragic, in at least once sense, to the extent that it may conform to, or be understandable in terms of, the structures of Greek tragedy).
Near the beginning, my heart sank when one of the characters describes a scene from Aristophane' play The Frogs: "Aeschylus proves that any of Euripides' clever but formulaic stories could be about someone losing a bottle of oil. The point seemed to be that every formulaic story starts with a conflict that's later resolved - like losing a bottle of oil and then finding it again." Because I realised that my own in-progress would, on one dimension, fit that description. But Our Tragic Universe turns out to be far from a simplistic condemnation of formula and conventional narrative and structure; rather, it develops into, while enacting, a treatment of the ways in which stories necessarily draw on certain structures without this foreclosing the possibility of something new and interesting being created. I found out recently that Thomas has put out a kind of 'how to' book for writers - a genre that I've never had any interest in, but would consider making an exception for in her case...though in some ways OTU itself serves that same function.
Anyway, as fiction - literature - I think it is more interesting than really outstanding, to be honest. It's always a bit problematic to make your central character a writer and then load up the novel with her (or him) having lots of thoughts and conversations about writing, even when - as here - it's in aid of a genuine intellectual exploration of the nature and possibilities of story-telling itself. The setting's deliberately mundane...but still mundane. And while there are a range of symbolic figures structuring the narrative - a Beast, a Labyrinth, a ship in a bottle, a prophecy - it has a tendency to feel a bit like an exercise, albeit a serious-mindedly literary one, more than literature itself as such.
Having said that, it clearly made me think and react, and if anything has deepened my regard for the author, even though I enjoyed it less than that great pair of PopCo and The End of Mr Y. Also, like The Unbearable Lightness of Being before it, it made me want to read Anna Karenina (a thought that I'd also had recently, thanks to that snowy train platform scene in The Grandmaster) - the one possible exception to my otherwise blanket ban on serious Russian novels.
