Artful

Ali Smith in Artful is accomplishing her own creative fusion as she defines the term and creates her own simultaneous example. Creative fusion is basically a blurring of the lines of form, where one type of literary form is seamlessly blended with another. Words are only the symbols within the symbols of thoughts. For example, the form of poetry can be used to discuss political thought; a novel can really be a group of short stories; or a novel can be created from a number of auto-biographical events blended with fictional ones. One of the first major literary works that accomplished this last example was Tom Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel. The author wrote of his own life through thinly veiled fictional characters, but in a larger-than-life way. It is not until near the halfway point of her book that Ms. Smith begins to discuss the great novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Then later on she begins to reference the character of the “Artful Dodger” within the novel, until softly you realize that her book, which you are reading, is an artful reference in itself to the artful dodger, and therefore a salute to a literary giant that went before her.Personally, I had appreciated Dickens’ love of the redemptive salvation theme of orphans in Great Expectations but my appreciation of his Victorian ebullience of phrase was satiated once I completed A Tale of Two Cities. Therefore, I never could bring myself to yet another Dickensian task of Oliver Twist, with its now modernly predictable ending of rags to some form of wealth, spiritual or otherwise. So ironically, I was only familiar with the literary term, “Artful Dodger”, because it was embedded in the social psyche of my own culture in sumptuous proportions. In my reality, the awareness of the term “Artful Dodger” was akin to people quoting Bible or Shakespeare’s verses and not knowing the source, except this time it was me in my own spotty literary knowledge base.The book is also quite shocking in its intimacy, because we walk right into her continuous soliloquy regarding the loss of her partner. She celebrates the literary skills of her lost love through this spiritual journey of writing as her own cathartic outlet. Her painstaking personal reckoning with grief is cloaked in their joint love of literature. This personal journey through grief reminds one of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, but in a more non-fictional vein. This work is a fusion of literary criticism, personal healing from grief, and it extends reverence to the creative process as salvation in itself, simply because the process provides personal meaning for each one of us. The finding of meaning through the daily slog of one’s own life’s ups and downs rings true with Viktor Frankl’s seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning. Summarily, if one finds meaning in all things, one touches eternity and can live forever. Viktor Frankl found this on his knees in a concentration camp, and survived to teach others through psychotherapy of the same accord.Ali Smith quotes Virginia Woolf suggesting synergy of thought, essence, reality and form in the quote “the born writer’s gift of being in touch with the thing itself and not with the outer husks of words”. More simply put a writer’s gift of communication comes when you can reach out and touch a new thought with your mind without the fabric of the words impeding your path. This is delicate balance. This is the definition of artfulness. I have heard some teachers focus on teaching form really well, because they believe that if the form is driving towards perfection, than the content will naturally come and fill the worthy vessel. In my view, the risk in relying too heavily on the teaching method of emphasizing the importance of form over content is that the joy of creation in all of its tenderness can quite easily be killed. Of course, form is easier to grade objectively rather than content, so this is a natural out flow of our instruction system. Many a student has left the English department with a sour taste and mumbling, “But I’m not good at writing…” because they struggled with mastery of form. Yes there is balance in all, but whatever you do, write for your own joy and no other. Worshiping at the altar of form alone, which is quite easy to do in our “Just the facts, Ma’am” culture, can suddenly be akin to worshiping a death mask of the face of your beloved.I am about half way through Ms. Smith’s work of non-fiction, and I look forward to slowly imbibing the rest, and see how my thoughts have evolved upon completion. Until then…

Not as fine as Ali Smith’s fiction but with all the hallmarks of her erudition, wild inventiveness, lyrical voice. At times poignant and compelling, at others, convoluted and abstract. Needs the quiet intervals and dynamic variations of Smith’s novels.

If I were a writer, I could possibly write a review that would do justice to this book. But I'm not, I have a cold and need more coffee, so all I can simply say is that this book is undefinable. Page by page, it takes you through loss and grief, poetry, the visual arts, on a journey that entwines life and art. As Artful itself recommends, it is a book to be re-read. Perhaps many times. I was blown away by it. Read it!

Absolutely loved this book. The lingering aura of a previous love devastates the reader by its pernicious poignancy. I read and then re-read the book and still enjoyed it. The essay form that Susan Sontag so brilliantly revolutionized comes to life here in ways she would have found admirable. There are not enough stars to stamp on this book. It's novel as poetry, essays as journal, fiction as criticism and vice versa. I can't praise Artful enough. It is not overly long or cryptically short. Just right!

I've read Ali Smith's fiction and loved it. Usually I choose to read fiction, but this small volume of essays/lectures pulled me right along. She's a beautiful writer and following her brain as she pulls disparate poems and novels and essays about art and the act of creation is a joy.

I had read a clever novel by Ali Smith that I liked ("There But For The...") and had read a glowing review in the New York Times book review of this new set of essays by Smith,so I really wanted to like it. But I simply couldn't get any traction, even halfway through the book, so I gave it up. Maybe it was my frame of mind, but the writing was just too obscure for me to get anything out of it. Maybe next time...

The autor caught me unaware that literature and philosophy can be fun. She made me feel like re reading the great Dickens under a new light. No doubt I dowloaded her new book and read it in one sitting

Odd...is it a series of essays/lectures or really a novel? I would come down on the side of a series of essays/lectures that never really attains novel status. Literary allusions preclude a novel pace and become annoying.

So I had to get this as a course-reader for my degree, and I read it in four weeks (there are four chapters in total, and we read one per week prior to class). Honestly though, I don't know what to make of it. The literary style is interesting, but I found it really difficult to follow the content. Even after getting help from my lecturer to better interpret the pages, I still don't understand this book.Perhaps it's the genre that doesn't appeal to my tastes (being one of Smith's 2 non-fiction novels, who is predominantly a fiction writer), or the writing style which I found hard to read (I haven't read any of Smith's other works, so I can't compare). That's not to say that it's bad - quite the opposite - but this is certainly not my cup of tea.As for the quality of the physical book itself, my copy was fine. It was delivered sooner than expected, which was a pleasant surprise. It's not too big: fits comfortably in your hands, with a very smooth front and back cover, and you can easily carry it with you in your bag when out and about.If you're into a deep exploration of the mind of a person who has lost someone they cared about, in a creative literary style with different events and themes that the narrator refers to, then you might like it. Otherwise though, I'd say give this one a miss. It seems to be for a niche audience and overall isn't a very accessible book in my opinion.Nevertheless, as with virtually all books I take the time to read from cover to cover, I respect it for what it does accomplish, even if I fail to see what those accomplishments are.

"Here’s to the place where reality and the imagination meet, whose exchange, whose dialogue, allows us not just to imagine an unreal different world but also a real different world – to match reality with possibili…" (Smith, Artful, 197)Ali Smith is one of my all time literary heroes, so it’s kind of difficult for me to be objective about her writing. I understand some of the criticisms that have been levelled at Artful – that it’s too selfconsciously, well, artful, with its puns and its wordplay and its dizzying array of references to high art and low, to cinema, painting, TV, novels, poetry, songs and anecdotes. But, to be honest, that’s what I really want in essays or lectures. I don’t want some dry as dust expostion on the role of aesthetic form. It’s precisely the kind of grasshopper style that drew me to this book in the first place: the ability to cruise from Oliver Twist to Oliver! or from Miłosz to Rilke via Sappho. These associative leaps open up genuine dialogue, not just between the reader and author, but between the texts themselves.But it’s not just those bold associations that Smith conjures, her linguistic pyrotechnics or the intellectual fizz of Artful which makes it such a wonderful collection of studies. It’s also the way that, at the same time, the author plays with the genre itself, inserting her essays within a narrative framework. Smith fictionalises herself, as the now dead author of a series of lectures which are read by her grieving lover. This is, I believe, one of the most beautiful examples of literature as love letter since Woolf’s Orlando, a gift of startling generosity since, as the narrator later realises, “To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.” (188)This is what is so characteristic of Smiths’ writing. “Art,” she writes, “is always an exchange, like love, whose giving and taking can be a complex and wounding matter” (166). It is this perception of writing as an act of exchange, as a circuit between reader, writer and text, “the place where reality and imagination meet,” which forms the bedrock of her literary project. Because, beneath the wit and wisdom of her prose lies compassion and warmth, an empathy which, she explains, is ‘art’s part-exchange…its inclusivity, at once a kindness, a going beyond the self.’ (178)

From a thread of reflection concerning the power of literature Ali Smith develops something that is itself deliciously like a story; - albeit a story that wilfully breaks all the rules, and is more like a thought-stream that darts across otherwise unbridgeable spaces. Demanding similar inventiveness on the reader’s part, the resulting encounter shapes its own story; a sharing that testifies to its own rare, living truth.

It starts with a ghost story, a story that weaves its way around four linked lectures. Smith is playing with form and function here and at the beginning I couldn’t understand the switching from the narrator telling us their story and then switching to the lectures on time, on form, on edge and on offer and on reflection but there was a point where I stopped being annoyed by the lecturing tone and relaxed into taking on board what was being said, even if the messages were being mixed together.You see the narrator is reading you the unfinished lectures from her partner and ghostly visitor, which makes it quite moving the more you read.I was left thinking that people haunt themselves with the idea of the dead but if the dead actually did haunt them they’d react and cope completely differently – a lesson our narrator leans quite harshly in the end.

This is not really a novel, although there is arguably a vague storyline. It is rather a collection of 'talks' delivered by the author, which pursue familar concepts in a variety of new and extended directions. I would describe it more as a philosophical exploration of literary and artistic ideas, which are supported by a wealth of examples. This is a very erudite compilation, with a vast number of literary and artistic references, and probably is best read slowly and very thoughtfully. There is much to be learned about our language and the way we use it to be found here. The title itself opens the door to many levels of meaning. An interesting and often stimulating read, but it is the "journey" that matters here, not any "destination".