Exploring Childhood - A British Genre?

This post guest-blogged by Preeta Samarasan, whose first novel Evening is the Whole Day is published by Houghton Mifflin (in the US) and Harper Collins (in the UK) in May.

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Reviewing UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion’s memoir, In The Blood (what a great title for a visceral meditation on family, no?), Richard Eder begins thus:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."The British novelist L .P. Hartley was referring to childhood or, more exactly, to the memory of childhood. It’s the foundation of any explored adult consciousness, of course, and particularly that of the poet and often the novelist. It is most particularly true of British writers, who have made a virtual genre of traveling back to that foreign country and treating it as Arcadia.

(Read the whole review from the New York Times here.)

The quote is the famous opening of Hartley’s masterpiece, The Go Between. I’ve always been partial to novels that revolve around children’s mistakes, so Eder’s observation got me thinking: is it true that British writers tend to explore childhood more than, say, American writers? And the more interesting question is: if so, why? (I’m talking about writing that is for adults but about childhood, of course, not writing for children, which is a different subject entirely and obviously as popular in the US as it is in the UK.)

I’d always assumed that few of my examples in this “genre” were American because I’m less familiar with American literature, but I think of contemporary American novels and few are about children or from a child’s point of view. I even skimmed the lists of Pulitzer winners and National Book Award finalists. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; possibly The History of Love; can anyone think of others?

On the other side of the Atlantic -- for the purposes of this post I’m going to include Irish writers as well, though I know they’re not British -- childhood continues to be a popular subject not just among serious novelists (McEwan, Frayn, Roddy Doyle, Jeannette Winterson, Trezza Azzopardi, M.J. Hyland, and this is just off the top of my head -- I’m sure you can come up with lots more!) but among poets we well, as Eder says. One of my favourite Seamus Heaney (yes, Irish, I know) poems is Mid-Term Break, with its chilling closing rhyme.

What is that drives some writers, but not others, back to childhood for inspiration and insight? In Heaney’s case -- and Motion’s, too, as you’ll see if you read the whole review -- it’s a traumatic event that seems to need “processing,” to use the psychological term. But this isn’t always the case, and certainly not for writers of fiction. Is it cultural? Linked in some way to geography or history? I really shouldn’t attempt to draw grand conclusions when I have only two American examples, but I’m going to throw this final question out there anyway: is it possible to make any distinctions between American and British styles of writing about children? (I think it is, but I’m not going to say anything more because I’m curious to see what other people think!)

And The Next Big (American) Writer Is ...

The guys at Granta magazine bring their crystal balls out of the cupboard every ten years to predict the most important writers of the future. They've done it with British writers with a great degree of success: a glance at the lists for 1983, 1993, 2003 reads like a Who's Who of the British literary scene.

And now, for the second time they are doing the same with American writers, the Guardian reports.

They didn't do a bad job last time with Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore and David Guterson making the list. But most of the writers, I still haven't heard of, despite a more than average ear to the ground. (It's probably something to do with my Britlit bias: apologies to my American friends.)

These then are the chosen ones, and if you want to read more about them, there's a biodata of each on the Granta website.

Daniel Alarcón
Kevin Brockmeier
Judy Budnitz
Christopher Coake
Anthony Doerr
Jonathan Safran Foer
Nell Freudenberger
Olga Grushin
Dara Horn
Gabe Hudson
Uzodinma Iweala
Nicole Krauss
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
Yiyun Li
Maile Meloy
ZZ Packer
Jess Row
Karen Russell
Akhil Sharma
Gary Shteyngart
John Wray

How many have you heard of? If you said "All of them", sorry, you're bluffing. Seven have not been published yet and make their debut in the latest edition of the magazine.

A.L.Kennedy (herself Granta listed twice) on the Guardian blog admits she's only heard of one them.

I feel nicely smug because I've heard of Jonathan Safran Foer, have bought Uzodinma Iweala's novel, and have read (and loved!) Yiyun Li and Rattawat Lapcharoensap. (Come to think of it, it seems that some good writers from elsewhere have been conveniently appropriated. Poor Yiyun Li probably doesn't even have her green card yet!!)

The age limit for "young writers" has now apparently been lowered from 40 to 35. Says Granta editor Ian Jack:

People seem to be writing (and publishing) fiction sooner ... they have, at least in theory, a head start on their predecessors and should be getting better, quicker.

In the introduction to the current issue of the magazine which brings together samples of the writing, Ian Jack points to a changes in focus: writers' interest in social class has "ebbed" and in its place is "a concern with death, uncertainty and the outside world". He also observes that nearly all of the writers on the list have attended creative writing courses.

But won't be all sunshine and roses for listed writers from hereonin if Kennedy's own experience is anything to go by. She described the dubious pleasures of:

... touring the country for readings, largely to tiny audiences, and sitting in a cupboard with my fellow authors to sign so many copies of Granta that by the end of it all, my signature was so permanently mangled I had to notify my bank. And it meant I attended a party at the Saatchi gallery and got to see the Blood Head and Patrick Stewart.

But come to think of it, the first time I heard of A.L.Kennedy was on a Granta list, and I have, since, bought her books.

I think I will make my predictions about the most promising young Malaysian writers, but hey, I'm going to seal up the paper and bury it in a time-capsule ... and blog about it ten years hence!