Connections

As I continue to hit my head against the brick wall that is my PhD thesis, I find I am seeing connections everywhere. My research is on theology and literature; more specifically, it concerns the act of reading from both a literary and a theological point of view. I'm drawing primarily from the literary criticism of Mikhail Bakhtin (which leads down paths towards Kant, Dostoevsky, Buber, Proust....), but I'm also very interested in engaging with various novelists, including Russell Hoban, Neil Gaiman and Andrew Crumey. I'm currently trying to deal with Einstein, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, as well as Goethe, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Schumann, H. P. Lovecraft and Umberto Eco. Not that this is just a random string of names (although it may appear to be so); these are the names that seem to cross-reference each other as I read through various novels and academic books.

I've just finished reading Andrew Crumey's Sputnik Caledonia, hot on the heels of his Mobius Dick. They are both excellent novels, making complex scientific concepts accessible to the likes of me! Obviously, approaching a novel that deals with quantum physics/general relativity doesn't necessarily sound like it's going to be an exciting read, but I was hooked by both: the plots are finely tuned and the characters incredibly engaging - points I only noticed on finishing both books, as I was entirely sucked into their world for the duration.

I'm particularly interested in the nature of time and space in the act of reading (is it a different order of time/space that we experience when reading? As far as it is any activity, it obviously takes place in this space and time, but our experience of a good novel/poem/story can somehow feel timeless in the sense of being outside time...) and I stumbled across this blog written by Mr. (I should say Dr.) Crumey: http://www.panmacmillan.com/Picador/ManageBlog.aspx?BlogID=d853b604-23d4-48ae-beb0-a7c018d8a6b5&BlogPage=Permalink. In it he compares our experience of time in the universe to the experience of reading, although drawing slightly different conclusions to some of the ones I had been coming to. I shall have to sit down and have another think about it (especially as he has a doctorate in theoretical physics, and knows rather more about it than I do).

My copy of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book arrived today. I'm keeping it as a treat - if I manage to do x amount of work, I can read a chapter! I'm definitely looking forward to reading it. I've enjoyed many of his other works, especially the short stories (why do short stories always get overlooked? Virginia Woolf's are some of the most moving pieces of literature I've ever read, yet hardly anyone knows about them). I realise The Graveyard Book is billed as a children's book - I think the publishers actually call it 'a story for children of all ages' - but my secret confession is that I love children's stories. They always seem to contain so much more possiblity than adults' novels. Adults' novels, whilst beautifully written and poignantly pitched, very often restrict themselves to observation or comment. Children's novels dream in a way that adult novels often do not, and it is this that made me fall in love with reading many years ago. So, I'll keep reading the adult novels, and enjoying them, but you'll never stop me reading the children's stories too! (On which note, I've just ordered a set of Roald Dahl novels...)