My second book in a row with a beautiful cloud cover. But that says nothing about the actual content of The Luminous Solution by Charlotte Wood!
The Luminous Solution is a collection of essays on the process of writing, creativity, and the ‘inner life’ of artists. Many of the essays had been published previously, and many had been rewritten or edited – none of this bothered me much because those that had appeared before were mostly in publications I don’t have access to – it was all fresh Wood for me.
It’s a dip-in-and-out kind of book. Wood draws heavily on the practices of other authors and artists to illustrate her points, which makes for a rich reading experience (the sort where I found myself frequently noting other books to hunt down). She describes the book as a synthesis of everything she’s learned about her own ‘creative impulse’.
Wood’s descriptions of how her own writing process varies, depending on what she’s working on, were interesting. Specifically, her experience of writing The Natural Way of Things compared quite differently to The Weekend. Obviously they are vastly different novels, but I was surprised that her basic approach was altered. Of TNWOT, she says it was –
…the novel that perhaps taught me the most about my own creativity – about trusting one’s instincts, about risk, about the potency of symbol and dream and archetype, about the exhilaration of departing from safe and familiar territory, of overturning expectations and understanding that there’s always more to discover lying beneath what you think you know.
After understanding what went on ‘behind the scenes’ when writing TNWOT, I am tempted to read it again, with an eye on the symbols, the themes, the writerly tricks.
As always with collections, some essays resonate more strongly than others. I loved the chapter about author Georgia Blain (in fact, the book is dedicated to her), and the essays on anger as a creative tool, and on ageing.
I marked dozens and dozens of passages in this book. Wood writes about the pandemic, muses, dreams, her writers group, classes she has taken, unfinished work and nature. But I do have to refer to a particular section on reading that struck an (uncomfortable?) nerve. Wood explores our current culture of rating everything –
…every interaction is followed by a request for a star rating, a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. We’ve been slowly but thoroughly trained to see the world in terms of its capacity to please us…
So yeah, I always give ratings (there to serve me more so than readers of this blog). But additionally, I do a little of what Wood also proposes –
…the anxious question, ‘Did you like it?’ – often arrives moments after the ‘consumption’ takes place. What if I were asked to think about what I’ve experienced and respond in a month, a year, a decade? It’s unthinkable.
In my end-of-year review, I turn my focus away from ratings and think about which books are still resonating (for whatever reason). I reckon thinking about an experience a week/month/year later is a grouse idea!
On that note, there’s no rating for The Luminous Solution 😉
As part of the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge, I’m comparing the Belfast summer and Melburnian winter. The results for the day I finished this book (June 30): Belfast 14°-19° and Melbourne 8°-14°.