Private Novelist by Nell Zink

Author:Nell Zink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

AFTER TRYING OUT ONLY THIRTY-FIVE thousand words, I learned that I had, through blind luck, happened on one utilized by Shats. He writes:

An albatross features in my Sailing Toward the Sunset, a specific one named Albert (details: www.zetnet.co.uk/sigs/birds/albert.html). Mary mocks the protagonist’s attempt to use it as a literary symbol of something.

The URL refers to the pathetic story of a solitary black-browed albatross, a species whose proper home lies in the far Southern Hemisphere. In Shetland, northernmost of the British Isles, Albert’s chances of finding love and starting a family are slim, but he returns nonetheless every year to a cliffside nook from whence he makes clumsy passes at neighboring gannets. He has become a tourist attraction.

Shats has also helped clarify two rather more urgent issues. Close reading of the excerpt above reveals: (1) that Mary is not the protagonist of Sailing Toward the Sunset, and (2) that “Zetland” and “Shetland” are very likely the same place. The translator of Proust, C. K. Scott Moncrieff, also provided the text for a lovely picture book about Scotland [note that this is false; the book about Scotland is by Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk], and when I was still quite small, I memorized its list of the seven crofting counties and resolved to visit each one. They were:

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