The Modern Chonicle

A Loss to the Chronicle Form

2011-12-01T07:54:00.001-08:00

A great chronicle writer, Christa Wolf, is no more. Some of her exemplary chronicles (mislabeled as novels or memoirs in the U.S., of course): "In the Flesh," "Patterns of Childhood," "One Day a Year."

Carrère Chronicle Wins Prize

2011-11-29T15:55:00.001-08:00

The aforementioned Emmanuel Carrère has won the sales-boosting Renaudot prize with his latest chonicle, which is about the Russian activist Limonov.

See What Happens When You Don't Call It a Chronicle

2011-11-29T15:51:00.001-08:00

What happens is an absurdity like this, from World Literature Today: An Iraqi in Paris is Samuel Shimon's debut novel, detailing the author's real-world journey from his home in Iraq to Paris, France...

HOW CAN IT BE A NOVEL IF IT IS THE AUTHOR'S REAL-WORLD JOURNEY?

Emmanuel Carrère Explains What a Chronicle Is

2011-11-29T15:47:00.001-08:00

At Three Percent's Read This Next, I found Emmanuel Carrère, previously mentioned in this blog, explaining what a chronicle is — except that, lacking the term, he calls it a non-fiction novel, a la Truman Capote:
I write what Truman Capote called “non-fiction novels” and often, as you say, deeply personal non-fiction novels, which means I use all the tools and the tricks of fiction-writing, but on documentary material. I have nothing ideological against fiction, I enjoy reading fiction and maybe I shall write it again in the future, but right now, I feel at home in this real, a huge and partly unexplored continent of literature.

Alain de Botton -- Hail a Master Chronicler

2011-11-29T15:32:00.001-08:00

In the English language. Alain de Botton had already proved himself the best living essayist. (It was a relief to see him give up the novel form, in which his Proustian prose style had sat so uneasily beside his passages of flip dialogue and attempts at plot.) With his commissioned "A Week at the Airport," he proved himself to be a master chronicler as well.
And I've recently discovered his Twitter feed, which is very much worth following. Two recent gems from it:
1) There isn't any such thing as good writing: really it's just a covert term for good thinking.
2) Use mornings of courage, light and optimism to draw the roadmap that will work in the darkness.

More Chronicles in Poor Disguise

2011-11-29T15:31:00.001-08:00

Looking over the table of contents at the Los Angeles Review of Books, I come across the reviews of two chronicles flying uncomfortably under the wrong genre flag. Annie Proulx's "Bird Cloud," which her publisher infelicitously labeled a "memoir," and the reviewer struggles to see as such, is quite obviously the chronicle of building a house, with plenty of essayistic digressions and assorted musings characteristic of the chronicle form. To his credit, Adam Levy, the reviewer of Boris Pahor's "Necropolis," never calls it a memoir, though the editors of the review have placed it in the memoir section. He manages to call it nothing other than "an account." And so the endless groping for a genre's mot juste goes on. People, it's a CHRONICLE!

Misadventures in the Chronicle Form

2011-11-29T15:27:00.001-08:00

Kudos to another French writer, Emmanuel Carrère, for trying his hand at the modern chronicle -- especially given that, judging by his early work, he is a natural novelist. Unfortunately, his last two attempts at the chronicle -- "My Life as a Russian Novel," and, more recently, "Lives Other Than my Own" -- make you wish he had stuck to novels. He is one of those writers who do best to keep their silly egos concealed behind fictional characters.

It Is NOT a Novel!

2011-11-29T15:22:00.001-08:00

Jean Rolin's "The Explosion of the Radiator Hose" is clearly a chronicle, and a very good one at that; but, for some reason, Dalkey Archive Press felt compelled to append "A Novel" to the title. If you don't know what to call it, call it nothing -- let the title stand by itself. Why lie and brand it something which it clearly is not?

James Agee and the Modern Chronicle

2011-11-29T15:18:00.001-08:00

James Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" is to the modern chronicle what James Joyce's "Ulysses" is to the modern novel.

What Is a Chronicle?

2011-11-29T15:03:00.001-08:00

It is probably the world's oldest literary genre, but for too long now it has been sailing under foreign banners. This blog means to identify and promote contemporary and past examples of the art of the chronicle.