"Quiet" Writers

When I was younger, I liked nothing better than a highly vivid style and subject matter in a book - with, eg, tentacles and cloven hooves to the fore. Now I also like to read what, for want of a better term, I'll call "quiet" writers, who achieve their effects more softly and subtly. Note, I don't say these are "better" or my reading has "progressed": they're just different (and I still like to indulge in the swashbucklers of literature too).

I am enjoying the sort of story where, as my wife put it, "something may or may not have happened". Examples of authors who succeed in this are de la Mare and Kawabata. The term 'quiet' doesn't imply "cosy" - very often these may be as insidiously unsettling as more rattling work. But the stories smoulder rather than leap up in bright flames.

Does anyone else like this sort of story and have other writers to recommend?

And are there any films in this form? I've only seen two - Into Great Silence, and After Life.

I suppose he's fairly well known by the thread-starter, but W.G. Sebald springs to mind as an almost perfect example (without there being any hints of supernaturalisms) on the type of fiction you're looking for.

The Rings pf Saturn (and, for that instance, his other novels, especially Austerlitz) is a true masterpiece and of the finest books I've ever read.

And don't forget Pessoa's Book of Disquiet. If there's a volume where less happens than in that, I'd be mighty surprised.

Beckett's Malone Dies is also a beuatifully lyrical hymn to silence and the void.

On a more popular note, I found the George Clooney thriller The American from a couple of years back to be a beautiful movie. Set in a remote Italian hillside village with very little dialogue and a gorgeous soundtrack. Well worth a look.

I'd like to recommend Michel Butor's Passing Time.

MadsPLP said:

I suppose he's fairly well known by the thread-starter, but W.G. Sebald springs to mind as an almost perfect example (without there being any hints of supernaturalisms) on the type of fiction you're looking for.

The Rings pf Saturn (and, for that instance, his other novels, especially Austerlitz) is a true masterpiece and of the finest books I've ever read.

Click to expand...

I just looked up the blurb for Rings of Saturn and it looks fascinating, thanks.

Malone, regarding the Beckett Trilogy.. I agree, great book there. But, although there's no tentacles, I'd possibly say the horror isn't 'quiet' - it bludgeoned me over the head with existential horror! And it's also a very funny book.

In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
The Glastonbury Romance - John Cowper Powys
Man Without Qualties - Robert Musil
The Avignon Quincunx - Lawrence Durrell
Elizabeth Bowen, Frances Oliver, Phyllis Paul...

I am currently re-reading the John Cowper Powys book and collecting my favourite quotes from it here: Quotations from by John Cowper Powys | WEIRDTONGUE:

I agree with the WG Sebald suggestion.

Malone said:

And don't forget Pessoa's Book of Disquiet. If there's a volume where less happens than in that, I'd be mighty surprised.

Beckett's Malone Dies is also a beuatifully lyrical hymn to silence and the void.

On a more popular note, I found the George Clooney thriller The American from a couple of years back to be a beautiful movie. Set in a remote Italian hillside village with very little dialogue and a gorgeous soundtrack. Well worth a look.

Click to expand...

I thoroughly agree with your first two recommendations.

The American, however, is one of the films that I have hated the most in recent times, and managed to epitomize a lot of the things I dislike about movies in general.

A happy prostitute with a heart of gold. Strings telling me exactly what to feel and when to feel it. A camera lens smothered in vaseline. An extremely predictable plot twists. Looooong helicopter of George Clooney driving a very nice car of the brand "Product Placement Car". Product placement car always clean, despite being driven on dirt roads. George Clooney going undercover in small Italian village - undercover including driving big, nice product placement car, striking up a friendship with local priest, etc.. The whole thing feels like watching an overlong, extremely sanctimonious car commercial.

Please don't take it personally. I just really, really hated that movie.

MadsPLP, I have indeed read Sebald, but am glad to be reminded of him. He is certainly in this category. I recall being awed, in Austerlitz (was it?), by how he wrote so absorbingly about Belgian railway station architecture, not (one might think) the most promising topic. Nemonymous, that is a good list, and indeed I almost cited Elizabeth Bowen myself. Powys is perhaps a bit too restless and, well, cosmic, to fit with the others, but well worth reading on other counts. Lawrence Durrell is another good reminder. I have a sense his is a fallen star these days, but fallen too far. Certainly worth reconsidering. I'm following up many of the titles in these responses, thanks to all. And indeed happy for more.

Sand> That scene from Austerlitz remains one of my favourite scenes in literature. In Sebald's oeuvre, I think it may be surpassed by his lament for the elm trees destroyed by Dutch elm disease and those destroyed in a hurricane in 1987 (!), from The Rings of Saturn. I know this may sound weird, but that is one of the most fascinating and moving passages I have ever read.

The first author that comes to mind, for me, is Ramsey Campbell.

Interesting, Nicole, thank you, and I sort of see what you mean, although a lot of Ramsey's work does have strong incident. Which do you recommend as the "quieter" stories or books?

The American, however, is one of the films that I have hated the most in recent times, and managed to epitomize a lot of the things I dislike about movies in general.

Please don't take it personally. I just really, really hated that movie.

Ha ha! No problem! Each to their own. I agree about the cliched elements, but I liked the quietness of it all. And take my word for it, it's infinitely better than the novel on which it's based.

But, although there's no tentacles, I'd possibly say the horror isn't 'quiet' - it bludgeoned me over the head with existential horror! And it's also a very funny book.

Draugen, try The Unnamable if you want real bludgeoning!

Sand, in the Campbell canon I think the novel The Influence and the recent collection Just Behind You are admirably low-key.

Of course, Charles L. Grant is famously a master of 'quiet horror', though not all his books are equally good: sometimes the quiet is authentic and sometimes he has just turned the volume down. But Tales from the Nightside is an essential collection and The Black Carousel an essential (episodic) novel. Both so quiet you can hear yourself shiver.

Alan Garner's Red Shift is quiet too. There's some noise in the foreground but that's just human bluster, the silence behind it is deep and eternal.

I wouldn't have said Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird (recommended by another poster on this thread) was a quiet novel – it struck me as rather turgid and overcooked. But maybe quietness is part of what the reader brings to a text.

I'd recommend Raymond Carver's short story collection Elephant as an exemplary quiet book, with more meaning in its silences than in all the frenzied plotting of most commercial novels. 'Boxes' in particular is heartbreaking.

Despite its title, Paul Sayer's Howling at the Moon is a beautifully understated and low-key account of a mental breakdown. So, in a different way, is Ron Butlin's The Sound of My Voice. And for a sustained note of quiet in the turbulent world of urban youth, I'd strongly recommend Gwendoline Riley's first novel Cold Water.

Algernon Blackwood and Robert Aickman have always struck me as the epitome of a "quiet" writer in the weird tradition.

I was thinking further that another characteristic of “quiet writing” is that it is unanalysable, or nearly so. The words have a profound effect on you, and you can glimpse some of the writer’s craft, but you can’t account for the complete effect. I’ve tried close reading of both de la Mare and Kawabata (in translation), the examples I gave earlier, to try to work out how they do it, but you end up mostly evoking rather than explaining. And, as hinted at in other postings, one other sign is that the subject matter is of no real consequence: the “quiet writer” can make anything interesting, by the quality of their attention, and their subtle precision.

I'm currently re-reading Aickman and he somehow doesn't strike me as quiet – understated and thoughtful, yes, but the emotions are so turbulent and the weird phenomena so disruptive that they scream from the page. 'Into the Woods' is quiet at least.

Nemonymous said:

I am currently re-reading the John Cowper Powys book and collecting my favourite quotes from it here: Quotations from by John Cowper Powys | WEIRDTONGUE:

Click to expand...

Wolf Solvent seems to fit the list. Which seems to be about books set in worlds of crisp existential loneliness viewed through the lens of poetic souls. So, this one. And most of the folks here.

I'll throw The Diary Of Opal Whitely out there, and if you haven't read it you're in for a real treat.

Also Robert Cormier's work. Particularly Fade.

Malone said:

The American, however, is one of the films that I have hated the most in recent times, and managed to epitomize a lot of the things I dislike about movies in general.

Please don't take it personally. I just really, really hated that movie.

Ha ha! No problem! Each to their own. I agree about the cliched elements, but I liked the quietness of it all. And take my word for it, it's infinitely better than the novel on which it's based.

Click to expand...

I shall take your word for it, and not look it up for myself. I think I can see what you mean - the opening scenes are quite good, and I can see that there is a sense of quiet to it. If I didn't absolutely hate it, I would probably also be able to see that the predictability could instead be viewed in a positive light, as if the movie follows some kind of ritualised logic.

Back on subject, I thought for a while about mentioning (and now I'm just about to do it anyway) L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between (I'm sure all British people here has read it) and Denton Welch' In Youth is Pleasure, since they are, with regards to what's happening outside of the consciousness of their protagonists, quite quiet, told in a quiet way, with seemingly nothing much happening. However, given the interior turmoil and the tension in those novels, I don't think they fit in perfectly in this thread.

Welch, however, has an uncanny way of infusing everything, even the most banal of circumstances, with a sense of gravity, meaning-just-about-to-be-imparted and, for lack of a better word, fatefulness, which could fit in here.

Sand said:

I was thinking further that another characteristic of “quiet writing” is that it is unanalysable, or nearly so. The words have a profound effect on you, and you can glimpse some of the writer’s craft, but you can’t account for the complete effect.

Click to expand...

I think I understand what you mean, but I don't think "unanalysable" is the same thing as "not being able to account for the complete effect".

I think a lot of the writers mentioned here a analysable, although not necessarily completely, as they are so rich with meaning and texture. Sebald has been analysed, as has Proust, Musil, Bowen, and many others (de la Mare should have been analysed more than what is the case), but their analysability may not include an account of the complete effect on the various readers, since that effect is, to a certain extent, individual.

Also, conveying the complete effect is not necessarily the goal of an analysis, though I personally prefer analyses that at least try to convey some of the effect on the reader(s).