tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post2321952827971293430..comments2024-03-26T23:41:10.319+00:00Comments on Authors Electric: CATCHING THE READER’S HIGH TIDE by John A. A. LoganKatherine Robertshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17196712319655603442noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-25502612001031983432013-09-08T13:37:12.372+01:002013-09-08T13:37:12.372+01:00Hi John,
Very interesting blog.
I can certainly re...Hi John,<br />Very interesting blog.<br />I can certainly relate to not being able to get a publisher in one's own country. The agent bit resonates with me also.<br />I am afraid I haven't read most of the books you mention.<br /><br />Regards<br /><br />MargaretMargaret Tannerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07123830410502520003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-9477881564737064882013-08-11T12:35:17.588+01:002013-08-11T12:35:17.588+01:00Yes, Dennis, Jude the Obscure was a very significa...Yes, Dennis, Jude the Obscure was a very significant one for me too...but I'd have had to include a "23-26: Tidal Phase 4 - University Years" to get it in...along with Hardy's other novels (Return of the Native really struck me too...and Tess)...<br />Before my Dad was a farmer he was a stonemason, like Jude.<br />Through illness and other circumstances, I missed about half of primary school, and most of secondary school. <br />So when I left school at 16 university did not seem on the cards. Like you, no-one in my family had ever gone there. Took me until 23, therefore, to get myself onto the 4 year MA(Hons)English course at Aberdeen. <br />Changed my life too, friendships. travelling outside UK for first time aged 24.<br />I really identified with that searing sense of injustice/exclusion in Jude's gut too.<br />After university ended in 1994, though, I sort of returned to working alone on fiction, like I'd done before starting university in 1990.<br />Which, of course, led to 17 years of writing unpublished novels in the UK, even more of a Jude the Obscure situation.<br />That would actually cue in "Tidal Phase IV - The Fiction Writing Years"...during which the only way to survive psychologically while writing novel after unpublished novel...even while having literary agents and famous UK authors tell me regularly they "loved" my work (which made it all harder really)...the only way to survive was to accept fully I'd never be published in the UK, or in Space for that matter...and then my reading inspirations gradually became:<br />THE MASTER AND MARGARITA<br />A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES<br />THE LEOPARD<br />...all books not published during the author's own lifetime...which, over Time I realised was exactly what gave these books their sense of spiritual freedom/liberation/anarchy, almost as though these authors intuited their Socially-Unpublishable-In-Their-Times positions even while writing Page One of those books. <br />It's an unusual psychology in those Backs-To-The-Wall authors, quite a bit of desolation/despair thrown into the Mix. <br />Knut Hamsun had it in bucketloads in his novel, HUNGER, too, one of my favourites...but for him it ended in life-changing publication aged 30. <br />Jude the Obscure had it about Oxford, of course; those being the Gatekeepers keeping him (and his Class and his rural background) Out. John A. A. Loganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03613779477853664598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-1575101077581327022013-08-11T12:01:01.963+01:002013-08-11T12:01:01.963+01:00Thanks Kathleen. Wide Sargasso Sea is one I've...Thanks Kathleen. Wide Sargasso Sea is one I've set aside to Read Later on Rainy Day...for twenty years it's been satisfying enough to just mull the rolling title over in my head, while I wait for the instinct/impulse to start reading it at the "right time". I'm saving up The Brothers Karamazov too... John A. A. Loganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03613779477853664598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-58355508558776911812013-08-11T11:21:17.800+01:002013-08-11T11:21:17.800+01:00Interesting to note the places where our respectiv...Interesting to note the places where our respective reading histories coincide and then veer away again. Jude the Obscure? I read that first at the time that I was getting used to the idea that I, the first person in the family to have a secondary education let alone go to a university, had been more or less ordered by the Head to start applying for them. I REALLY identified with Jude and, when now I take the book off the shelves and dip into it again, realise that I still do.Dennis Hamleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15781139870037634374noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2429560125838989988.post-81627408399738414912013-08-11T10:57:34.025+01:002013-08-11T10:57:34.025+01:00I really relate to this John - my high tide was Wi...I really relate to this John - my high tide was Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Definitely!<br />Kathleen Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07645566938871914385noreply@blogger.com