Mark Ravenhill writes about the ‘hunger for the epic’, the apparent need in a world devoted to the soundbite and fleeting images, a world where ‘brevity is everything’, for something meatier: the doorstop novel (he cites Harry Potter), the epic movie (Pirates of the Caribbean) and the hours-long stage play (David Edgar’s popular adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby for the RSC).
Ravenhill has been presenting a series of breakfast-time plays at the Edinburgh festival. The fact that people have got up early (after late festival nights) to pack out his houses he sees as another example of this hunger, because the plays are interconnected and thus episodes in what he views as an epic project.
I think he’s looking at this the wrong way round. As Ravenhill himself comments, ‘Many critics pointed out how much the Harry Potter books would benefit from an editor’s pencil’. What does this mean? It means that those who read Harry Potter don’t mind this, probably don’t notice it, they read it passively, even unthinkingly, rushing on through the narrative in a way which is not at odds, as Ravenhill would have it, with an accelerated world and an impatient culture. It’s the short thing, the tightly-packed thing, the short story or the short play, which requires the leisured and thoughtful response and close attention to language, not the longer work, as Ravenhill claims.
Maybe Ravenhill is right that people are now hungering after more intellectually-challenging literary or theatrical experiences. But could it not be that the popularity of his festival plays is down to their shortness and the linguistic compactness which this allows, the piecemeal presentation which gives the audience the chance to breathe and think and ‘gradually see the rules and patterns’ of the larger project? And could this be why short stories now seem to be on the up?
2 comments:
Hi FB
I don't know - aren't we talking about a couple of different things here? There is obviously a question about whether the Harry Potter books could have been more ruthlessly edited, but as you point out, their extraordinary ability to leviosa themselves from the shelves suggests that the cost/benefit analysis works for readers. You say
'What does this mean? It means that those who read Harry Potter don’t mind this, probably don’t notice it, they read it passively, even unthinkingly, rushing on through the narrative in a way which is not at odds, as Ravenhill would have it, with an accelerated world and an impatient culture.'
Well, maybe they do and maybe they don't. I've just read Cloud Atlas and there's a lot of flannel in that I could have done without but I made a choice as a reader to trust the author for the duration of the book. It's a pact. No guarantees from either side that the bargain will be fulfilled. You decide when you get to the end. The author's gambit is the future of his/her next book or back catalogue.
And yes, there is and always has been an appetite for short pieces. You'd need to confer with both the chicken and the egg about which one hatched the idea for festivals.
xxx
Pants
Hi Pants,
Well, yes, I think Ravenhill is causing the confusion (and quite frankly, I think he's cooked up a specious argument simply to promote his plays!).
He's lumping all long books together - Harry Potter and the classics - yet obviously there are different kinds of the uncritical reading one often needs to bear with long works, the kind you say you operated for Cloud Atlas, and the kind which I do feel pretty sure you need for Harry Potter (I'm a language freak when it comes to novels, and I couldn't get past the first sentence of HP1).
Secondly, he's stretching it calling a series an epic, in my opinion. However,I don't actually care what he calls it - I just think he's way off the beam in claiming that something (his play series) which is divided into discrete sections and linguistically compact, and thus
bearing characteristics of the short form, requires the same kind of reader/audience attention as prolix novels.
xx
Post a Comment