{"id":177,"date":"2014-03-28T16:28:01","date_gmt":"2014-03-28T16:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/?p=177"},"modified":"2014-03-28T16:32:17","modified_gmt":"2014-03-28T16:32:17","slug":"spring-reading-series-alan-hollinghurst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/spring-reading-series-alan-hollinghurst\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Reading Series: Alan Hollinghurst"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keynes SCR: fresh paint, beige carpets begging for red wine spills, standing room only at the back. A suitably salubrious setting for Alan Hollinghurst, \u2018one of the guiding sprits of the Creative Writing Department\u2019, whose novels The Line of Beauty<\/i> and The Stranger\u2019s Child<\/i> are set texts on Undergrad and MA courses at Kent.<\/p>\n

\"Alex<\/a>

Alex Preston & Alan Hollinghurst<\/p><\/div>\n

Alex Preston cited Hollinghurst as \u2018one of the greatest living prose stylists\u2019, a title that foreshadowed the main point of debate for the evening. Laurence Norfolk famously complained that Hollinghurst \u2018doesn\u2019t do plot\u2019. A fair comment? \u2018Plot is the thing that interests me least in a book,\u2019 he admitted, \u2018but I concede that it has to be done\u2019. In poetry, image and sound are what matter, skills which Hollinghurst, first published as a poet, continues to bring to his prose. Starting a novel is not about sharing a story but \u2018establishing the detail, the atmosphere\u2019 from which the book can grow. He begins each novel with a new notebook, \u2018and anything germane to that book goes in it\u2026building up a world.\u2019 From there, narrative style and characters grow, and eventually, something of a plot. (Reassurance for those in the audience who struggle with narrative structure.)<\/p>\n

This interest in the atmosphere of a book is reflected in Hollinghurst\u2019s literary benchmarks, in the \u2018intimate, domestic scale\u2019 of Woolf or Henry James, where chronological elision piques the reader\u2019s interest. \u00a0Time passing without extended commentary causes the reader \u2018to scramble to work out what has happened\u2019 and to follow the development of character and action more keenly. Hollinghurst also places great emphasis on the pattern of the prose itself, of \u2018wanting sound and rhythm in a paragraph to matter\u2019.\u00a0 Is this his poet\u2019s ear at work? \u2018I know when words are not sitting right\u2019, he said, but also admitted that he dreaded \u2018poetical novels\u2019. \u2018Somehow there is a need for the novel to be more robust.\u2019 While he would love to go back to poetry, \u2018it wouldn\u2019t have me\u2019. Aside from his pastiche of Rupert Brooke in The Stranger\u2019s Child<\/i> \u2013 a novel that Preston described as \u2018the biography of a poem\u2019, Hollinghurst has been bereft of \u2018poem-shaped ideas\u2019 for some time.<\/p>\n

Preston praised the authentic feel of The Stranger\u2019s Child<\/i>, and asked how much research matters, given that we are in a \u2018literary culture obsessed with historical authenticity\u2019. \u2018Who wants to shed daylight on magic?\u2019 Hollinghurst replied. The \u2018act of imagining\u2019 matters more than being able to explain \u2018how everything in the room is made\u2019. A shunning of the historical novel that wears its research on its sleeve, but an admission that the writer \u2018has got to get things right\u2019. Easy enough in the age of the Google search. \u2018The etymology of words is important\u2019 too, not only to ensure credible speech for characters, but perhaps to create that illusive web of atmosphere that holds Hollinghurst\u2019s fictional worlds together.<\/p>\n

When his \u2018twenty minutes of fawning\u2019 were over, Preston requested a reading of \u2018the most beautiful paragraph\u2019 of The Line of Beauty<\/i>, which closes the first chapter (page 19 in the paperback: read it and see why). Hollinghurst consented, summoning in delicious tenor tones the cloistered communal gardens of Kensington, \u2018the dingy glare of the London sky\u2019 fading into \u2018weak violet heights\u2019, the cool accomplishment of other people\u2019s lives where Thatcher\u2019s darlings hold al fresco supper parties, the open windows backlit with success. Like Nick, \u2018leaning out over the iron railing\u2019, the audience was rapt, \u2018swept to the brink of some new promise, a scented vista or vision of the night, and then held there\u2019.<\/p>\n

After the readings, questions from the floor about finishing \u2013 or even starting \u2013 a first novel, the financial implications of writing a long novel, Hollinghurst books as style guides and writing gay sex. And after the applause, the unfurling of audience members from islands of unspoiled carpet, where the dangers of red wine and enthusiastic dialogue were clearly far from over.<\/p>\n

Next Wednesday, the School\u2019s own Patricia Debney will be joined by Jane Monson for a final Spring Reading. 2nd<\/sup> April, 6pm in Keynes SCR.<\/p>\n

See you there.<\/p>\n

Sonia<\/p>\n

Alan Hollinghurst is the author of five novels, including the 2004 Man Booker winner The Line of Beauty<\/i>. His latest novel, The Stranger\u2019s Child<\/i>, was published by Picador in 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keynes SCR: fresh paint, beige carpets begging for red wine spills, standing room only at the back. A suitably salubrious setting for Alan Hollinghurst, \u2018one of the guiding sprits of the Creative Writing Department\u2019, whose novels The Line of Beauty and The Stranger\u2019s Child are set texts on Undergrad and MA courses at Kent. Alex […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38085,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[49772,49764,21640,49732,8814,48315,49728,49725,49769,46589,49731,49773,49774,49727,74,49726],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforcreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}