Imaginary Books

I recently read a novel I had wanted to for a few years, since I first heard about it, The Spire, by William Golding. It came up during a tutorial earlier on, due to issues of created space, and so it became time to track it down and read it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/TheSpire.JPG(accessed 23rd May 2011)


Oh, what a disappointment some things can be in reality. The novel in my imagination had become moving and magical, but I sadly found it mannered and irritating. It is indeed a marvelous tale - the building of a cathedral spire in the dark ages, a feat of faith by one man, and told from within the thinking or paradigm of the time.

Although I have also recently read that this novel is considered an almost perfect form, I'm afraid I just couldn't get into it and only finished it through sheer bloody mindedness.

I remember many years ago encountering a similar disappointment when I finally read The Glass Bead Game, by Herman Hesse.

http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n7/n35312.jpg(accessed 23rd May 2011)


At the time I had read many other Hesse novels, and was for some reason saving this one for last and best. I had imagined this book, and was already well used to the Hesse genre. Again, without having realised it, I had already imagined the book as being different and much better than I found the real one. Actually, I cannot now remember what the actual novel is about, but I can clearly remember my imagined version.

Similarly, I do remember occasionally finally seeing a painting in the flesh finding some a little disappointing or underwhelming. More often, great famous paintings, that one has seen for years in books and lectures, are shockingly unfamiliar and brilliant live, like meeting a living, breathing person from a photograph, with all their flaws and irregularities and sensations.

Some pieces live in the imagination whether you see them or not - in fact, most of us will never see all the works we think we know well and that we have taken in to our hearts and minds.

needs no introduction

http://www.artquotes.net/masters/vangogh/vangogh_sunflowers1888.jpg(accessed 23rd May 2011)


We talk alot with the MA about the ideas in art. We rarely talk in purely visual terms like painters talking shop.

Once an artist's work has entered the viewers' imagination, it seems to reside there. Sometimes the reality exceeds expectation, and sometimes it would better be left unseen or unread, perfectly unformed.

23rd May 2011