Present Imperfect

That Danielle Steele is Good, Too | April 22, 2003

I have been remiss in my blogging activities. Oh well, another journalizing medium, another opportunity to procrastinate.

I'm now nearly finished with Ian McEwan's Atonement, which I put off buying until it was released in paperback a few months ago. It's certainly a lesson in perspective, as each character imposes his or her assumptions upon the occurrences of one evening. And, like all good books, it's about everything: love, war, cruelty, revenge, innocence, class and the family. After this, I guess it's back to Murdoch. I think I'll give The Green Knight a go.

Oh, and something I noticed in A Severed Head was the reference to Herodotus' tale of Candaules and Gyges in the final chapter. She certainly uses it in a more evocative way than Ondaatje does in The English Patient, but it struck me that this particular story seems to crop up a lot, particularly in modern literature. Why? Is it the voyeurism or the sex or the murder or the power of the only woman in the story? Or all of those things?

Then I ran across David Carpenter's essay, Hoovering to Byzantium, generally about literary "borrowing," whether intentional or unintentional, and specifically about A Severed Head, Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany and Carpenter's own Jokes for the Apocalypse. Well, and Herodotus. It's a great read, both because of the critical light it sheds on the works above and because of the questions it poses about plagiarism and influence. Plus, it made me feel a little better about Branwen, but that's probably a moot point, since I've only written a whopping one page and I'm the laziest person in the world.