About His Futile Preoccupations….

Rather impetuously, I started blogging a few years ago with no experience and, more importantly, with no idea of what on earth I wanted to do. Needless to say I made a lot of mistakes, but throughout it all, I just wanted to write about books and with any luck exchange some ideas with other like-minded readers along the way.  To quote John Donne: “No man is an island….”

The blog name His Futile Preoccupations (www.swiftlytiltingplanet.wordpress.com) is NOT a reference to Madeleine L’Engle’s book,  A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but to the poet Conrad Aiken from his poem Senlin: His Futile Preoccupations. It’s a poem I think about a great deal.

When it comes to reading tastes, well I have a tendency to prefer the classics, but I also have a soft spot for noir. It seems that the older I get the darker my reading becomes, and the classics serve as an antidote to noir. When reading the classics, I tend to prefer the 19th century–Russian, French and English. Classics provide safe havens, and there’s a sort of reassurance–at least for me–in knowing that centuries ago, people were wrestling with many of the issues that trouble us today.

And now to the subject of genre: I recently had a conversation with one of my nearest and dearest on the subject of genre. He maintains that genre is ruining modern literature, and after mulling it over, I think he’s right. So many modern books are a horrible disappointment even while they stick to genre standards and rules and become distilled down to almost unreadable rubbish. In pandering to the conventions of genre, other vital issues are diminished and ignored.

That said, there are no genre classifications on this site–although I have some entries tagged as noir. Noir is a term that’s bandied about these days and is in danger of becoming meaningless in the process as publishing houses and agents sense potential markets to exploit.

Are there great novels being written today? Absolutely, and that’s what makes it vital to find those great novels in amongst all the mush and rubbish being churned out and shoved upon readers in the flurry of advertising campaigns. It’s a sad fact that many great books have faded–and are fading–into obscurity while new books are being pumped out at a furious rate. It’s nothing less than a crime that some books are out-of-print and ignored while new rubbish is promoted.

Books have always been a consolation for me. I can remember learning to read, and I still feel a thrill when I sink into a new book and realize that I’m engaged in reading something wonderful, something I’ll always remember….

Finally, I am not an authority, so there are no lectures here, just my opinions–no more–no less–and for more of my futile preoccupations, I also have a film blog: www.phoenixcinema.wordpress.com