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A review by sherwoodreads
The Delighted States by Adam Thirlwell
A meandering excursion in search of the evolution of style. Thirwell's sympathies lie with Flaubert and Maupassant, and those influenced by them: writers who create a puzzle with fiction, whose readers will promise not to sink into the narrative, but remain outside, perusing the work through the lens of the intellectual. He relates his anecdotes with sympathy and humor, he doesn't hector like some of the more earnest critics, or browbeat, like Bloom tends to do.
My favorite bits are the difficulties in translation, highlighting where cultures do not quite overlap, and the sympathetic exploration of experiments in style. Pluses are lovely bits I hadn't know, like Diderot wrote fan fiction for Tristram Shandy, and James Joyce was inspired to write Ulysses after reading an experimental novel by a French aesthete, who was friends with Malormee. I love the cross-pollinizing of personalities and ideas.
Thirwell does tend toward judgments as though they were self-evident, but the rest of the work is a delighted state.
My favorite bits are the difficulties in translation, highlighting where cultures do not quite overlap, and the sympathetic exploration of experiments in style. Pluses are lovely bits I hadn't know, like Diderot wrote fan fiction for Tristram Shandy, and James Joyce was inspired to write Ulysses after reading an experimental novel by a French aesthete, who was friends with Malormee. I love the cross-pollinizing of personalities and ideas.
Thirwell does tend toward judgments as though they were self-evident, but the rest of the work is a delighted state.