Slow Read: Little, Big by John Crowley
All the details for our upcoming read!
Here we go, everyone! It’s time to begin our first slow read. Today I’ll cover why I think you should join us, and an idea of how it will work over the next few weeks.
At the end of the post, there will be details of how to adjust your notifications so you receive the right selection of emails from me. I think I’ve organised it so that apart from this post, I won’t be pushing emails to your inbox about this book unless you tell me to! So do make sure you change any settings you need to according to the instructions below.
Why should you read Little, Big?
I don’t know about you, but my brain is completely fried at the moment (summer brain?), and summarising why this book is so great feels beyond me, particularly because there’s something about it that eludes description. Still! I’ll make an attempt. (And here is my original review/attempt from last year.)
For me, this is a candidate for the ‘Great American Novel’, but it’s often overlooked because of its more fantastical elements. And as I pointed out in my original review, it uses these fantastical elements in quite an unusual way, with the resulting effect that it becomes truly enchanting in the literal sense of the word.
We all know that great books can feel like magic, but there is something about this one that really intensifies that feeling. Partly, I think, because of this layering of genres: the myth-making impulse of the Great American Novel; magical realism (is it magic? or is it just in the characters’ imaginations?); and outright fantasy. The combination of these three—even though they technically fall under the same category, at least the latter two—makes for an uncanny but bewitching atmosphere. They shouldn’t go together, and yet they do.
When I was at a low ebb at the end of last year, I turned towards this novel, and started listening to it before I went to sleep. I wanted to be back in its world. This is rare for me; my reading is usually pretty oversubscribed and I don’t make a lot of time to dip into books. But this draw I felt to Little, Big clued me in to how special this novel is!
Whilst I was listening to it, I realised I could talk about this book for hours. Practically every sentence is dripping with meaning. And the idea for the slow read was born.
And if you’re not convinced by me, let this bevy of critics convince you (I found most of these in the front matter of the editions above):
This book is indescribable: A splendid madness, or a delightful sanity, or both. . . . Persons who enter this book are advised they will leave it a different size than when they came in.—Ursula K. Le Guin
An original in every sense . . . A fantasy so extraordinarily well told that it escapes easy categorization . . . The writing is simple and pure; it is the window through which we watch the amazing goings on inside . . . Little, Big raises questions about reality. It finds rings within rings, worlds within worlds, lives within lives. Crowley makes us believe in a trout’s wisdom, the voice of a flame.—John Gabree, Newsday
Magic is elusive stuff to dissect but this has the genuine shimmer.—Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian
This book is a world-embracer. . . . I found myself making notes so that I could go back to pages that were important to me, and I think that many other readers will do the same. Mr. Crowley’s strength lies in the extraordinary range of what he can put into words. He is one of those necessary writers for whom one has been waiting without knowing it.— Russell Hoban, author of Riddley Walker
To read this tale . . . is to live again once upon a time that never was.—Andrew Sinclair, The Times
It has a meandering, sunlit quality that makes crossing many of its pages seem like a summer evening’s walk in a beautiful country.—Isabel Quigley, The Financial Times
I could go on . . .
What is it about?
It’s best to let this book unfold around you, but very briefly, it opens with Smoky Barnable. He is travelling from the City to a place called Edgewood to marry Alice Drinkwater, whom he has only met a few times. He is an “anonymous” man, strangely blank. But with Alice, he begins to feel the tug of personhood, of reality. Or perhaps it is unreality, because he slowly realises over their courtship that perhaps she and her family believe in fairies. And maybe Edgewood borders Faerie. He’s not sure. Does it?
Over the course of the book we follow Smoky and his new family in this setting which is at once completely familiar, and totally mysterious.
A word of warning: it does meander. It is slow at times; it is baffling at times. I hope that this will lend itself well to the slow read; we can take our time with it and really get to grips with why Crowley makes the choices he does.
How will it work?
Some of you may be really suited to the slow read, but for others of us it is an unusual way to approach a book.
If you want to follow the schedule to a T, according to the Harper Millenial Modern Classics version (bottom right, above), there are 535 pages in the book, and you could read about 8-9 of these a day, or 60 pages a week, from 30th June to 31st August.1
Whilst the idea of the slow read is, of course, to savour the novel and take your time with it, I understand that everyone has their own thing going on. I know that I struggle sometimes with a daily page count, or even a weekly one. So feel free to proceed at your own pace. But if you’re falling behind with it, perhaps the slow read schedule will help pick you up again and get you back on track.
It’s also for me! A weekly post will go up every Sunday covering the week’s sixty pages. At the moment, I think this will be podcast style, so I can chat through everything more easily.
I will also post something daily to the chat, with short thoughts on the day’s pages, and an opportunity to discuss further. I’ll define what these daily (and weekly) goals will be each week in the previous Sunday’s post using quotations, so that you know how to orient yourself even if you have a different edition.
During the How to Read and Analyse a Novel course, we didn’t have much time for secondary resources. But I’m hoping this time that I can get into the research a little more and make some interesting connections between this book, other books, and the wider world.
Obviously this is my first time doing a slow read on here, so do bear with me as I find out what works best! But I’m really looking forward to it.
Tips
Having participated in quite a few slow reads and buddy reads, here is my tip if you would like to follow along more or less with the schedule.
Pick a time of day, and read your pages then. Perhaps you’ll read them over your morning coffee, or on your commute, or after dinner, or just before bed. It’s best to pick something that you do absolutely every day that roughly equates to how long it takes you to read eight pages, and slot them in then.
The goal of a slow read is to let those pages settle, and then to catch up with the chat and any discussion we’re having there. So take it slow, don’t rush, and allow the world to wash over you. I’ll be marking the pages out at the beginning of the week so that I know where I’m reading up to. And I know I’ll be anticipating busy days where I’m not likely to get my pages done, and try and get ahead in the days leading up to them. (Of course, as I said, if you want to read ahead—please do. Just make sure any discussion stays spoiler free!)
If you’re an avid reader, I hope you’ll still be able to fit any other reading you have around this sort of schedule. Otherwise, I think this book will make a wonderful summer companion.
The first week
This book is slightly unusual in that it has these little subheads in the chapters.
I’m going to use these to help orient us. All the below page numbers refer to the Harper Perennial copy (but you should be able to orient yourself whatever copy you have). If I mention a subhead, it is included in that day’s reading, but it may span several pages, so the end page given below may not display that subhead.
Starting on the 30th June, we’ll run on the following schedule:
30th June: from the beginning up to and including section with subhead At First Sight (p. 11) (Up to “He had begun to thicken.”)
1st July: from The Young Santa Claus (p. 11) up to and including Life is Short, or Long (p. 19) (From “He had gone down the narrow back stairs . . .” to “. . . that he must beg or find but not pay for.”)
2nd July: from Trumps Turned at Edgewood (p. 19) up to and including Led Astray (p. 28). (From “He had not known how suddenly the industrial park would quit and the country begin” to “Suppose we go in.”)
3rd July: from An Imaginary Bedroom (p. 28) up to and including Just Then i.e. to the end of chapter two (p. 37). (From “The screen door was old and large” to the end of chapter two.)
4th July: from beginning of chapter three (p. 38) up to and including No End to Possibility (p. 45). (Up to “He was kissing the warm salt tears from her cheek.”)
5th July: from A Turn Around the House (p. 45) up to and including Tell Me the Tale (p. 53). (From “‘Perhaps,’ John Drinkwater said to Violet when all their . . .” to “‘Not a moment’s peace,’ she said, ‘in centuries.’”)
6th July: from All Questions Answered (p. 53) up to end of chapter three (p. 58). (From “After his marriage, John Drinkwater began to retire. . .”)
Final thoughts and adjusting notifications
Okay, here are some final thoughts before we begin!
First of all, this novel was written by a white guy in the late 70s/early 80s. There’s some stuff in here that wouldn’t fly today, and we don’t need to shy away from that fact—we can discuss it!
Secondly, I think I’ve organised it so that the Little, Big posts will not go to your inbox unless you tell me you want them there. So if you want to join in, you should adjust your notification settings now and make sure Slow Reads is checked on. It’s a bit of a faff to login if you’re on the app, say, but it only needs to be done once. This goes for new subscribers, too. I will also put links in The Minutiae and on the chat so you won’t forget. This slow read will be available to paid subscribers.
If you are a paid subscriber but not joining us for this, you may want to turn off notifications for the chat for the next couple of months until the slow read has finished—or you can keep up with it peripherally this way, too.
I think that’s everything! Paging through the novel again has me really excited for what’s to come. I really hope you enjoy reading this with me, and I’ll speak to you soon.
This is 63 days, so divide up accordingly based on whichever edition you have and that might give you a bit of a sense of where to look.
Love this style of getting through Little, Big. I’m just so excited!!
Isabel Quigley's review is amazing! 🤩 Makes me even more keen to start on this