Despite the vibes you may pick up on from this blog, I sometimes read books that aren't classics for fun. Recently I devoured two Cornelia Funke books and both were quite delicious! I also reread some Jasper Fforde books. Both have led me to conclude that I just love books that love books. What makes them so special? It's the exuberance, the excitement, the pure joy that comes from books and their willingness to share it with everyone else. (I got that feeling from giving a presentation to my class on 17th century women writers..shh. Don't tell anyone how nerdy I am.) Plus, referencing and alluding to books you know is like an inside joke between you and the author. It adds flavor to the story and T.S. Eliot would agree that it adds depth.
In Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, a story all about the power to read people out of books, books take precedence. The father is a book binder, the daughter loves books, and the crazy aunt has a library for a house. They make so many references to classic children's/YA lit that part of my childhood came rushing back. There's no way you can mention the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, The Lord of the Rings, and Peter Pan without recalling something fond.
Jasper Fforde is a crazy man with a big library and a pen. His Thursday Next series is a playground for English Majors and book lovers. I don't know how much grammatical theory exists, but they would like this too. The series partially takes place in the "Book World" with "Jurisfiction" as the police force. Not only are major literary characters main characters in the books, but fleeting allusions appear just for the fun of it and the workings of the Book World are full of grammasites, feedback loops, and other quirky inventions. You won't understand all of the allusions, but they don't dampen your love of the books.
Really, allusions to other works are very old hat. I mean, who hasn't got hung up on some Greek work or another old work that doesn't mention the pop culture of the time. The 16th and 17th century are awful at it, really. I recently read Don Quixote, and he spends a chapter rating the Romance novels of the day (which back then were knightly adventures, not Nora Roberts). Satirists and "quick wits" in the 17th century ripped apart others in their works...not unlike rap artists today. Now that I think about it, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, Mark Twain and his generation were pretty brutal too. He was especially hard on James Fenimore Cooper. Not to bore anyone, but I've wrote a paper on The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish (17th century again) and half of her novel is a commentary on modern scientific theory...in which she makes fun of Issac Newton and Robert Hooke. Way to go Margo!
I guess this kind of digressed, but books that reference other books are usually amazing, excepting Twilight, but I suppose there must be an exception to every rule. While we're on digression, what is it called when an author mentions himself and/or the book you are reading? For example, Don Quixote does it, and Chaucer is shameless in promoting himself. Is it some kind of breaking the fourth wall? Does it have a name? Does anyone have more examples? It would be nice to know.
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