I always taught you that history has its uses, its serious purpose. I always taught you to accept the burden of our need to ask why. I taught you that there is never any end to that question, because, as I once denied it for you (yes, I confess a weakness for improvised definitions), history is that impossible thing: the attempt to give an account, with incomplete knowledge, of actions themselves undertaken with incomplete knowledge. (Chapter 10) Tai viena tų istorijų, kurioje man nėra labai svarbu iki kur nuves, kaip baigsis. Joje svarbu būti, išgyventi, jausti. Ir nors tikrai buvo smalsu, kaip ta baigta dėlionė atrodys, procesas džiugino daug labiau! Mėgavausi, kai buvau viliojama ir už rankos vedama, pastūmiama prireikus, ar tiesiogiai pabaksnojama faktais prieš akis.💛 There is an excitement, a sense of tension that builds in the novel. You want to know more and more and more. A sentence is started and then left hanging. You know exactly what was to be said but is then not said. This writing style is unusual; I have not run into it before. It’s good, very good. It draws your attention, keeps you alert and adds suspense. There is an underlying satirical tone that has you questioning what is implied. The prose is thought provoking.

This was Swift's first published collection of short stories. It preceded Waterland by a year. It also is in a vastly different Style to Waterland. Most of the stories in the collection have a very reserved Style. Swift was influenced by Isaac Babel when he was younger, and kept a photograph of the Russian writer on his desk. Although "deeply attached" to the English language he sees himself as European and is against the decision to open the Man Booker prize to US writers. "Each prize has its own remit, why expand it?" he asks. "It's like saying at the Commonwealth Games, 'Let's have the Americans!' The reverse is not the case: the Pulitzer prize is not open to British writers. It's almost like saying they deserve to win the prize, and I don't think so." We will now take a look at a selection of Swift's best-known works. Waterland (1983) by Graham SwiftWaterland is a story about storytelling, a narrative about narration that analyses the meaning and the necessity of history.

Environment and Human Communities: The novel explores the impact of environmental change on human communities, specifically the draining of the Fens in the 17th and 18th centuries. The traumatic event disrupted the social and economic structures of the region and forced its inhabitants to adapt to new ways of life. But while magnetised by this glimpse of the world of books – and still keen on lunches, though publishing has moved on from the days of long, boozy meetings in restaurants – his fiction remained closely focused on the ordinary lives of undistinguished people. Or rather, people whose distinction was unnoticed by the world at large, but which it became Swift's mission to portray in his books. Bir tarih öğretmenimiz var ve onun kişisel tarihi, ailevi tarihi, meslek olarak tarihçiliği –tarihte kesintiye gidiyoruz- ve dünyanın sonunun tarihi özel bir anda eşzamanlı olarak çökmek ya da kitaba yaraşır bir şekilde söylemek gerekirse batmak üzeredir ama hiç batmamış olsak da biliriz ki batma eylemi bir çırpıda gerçekleşmez, zamana yayılır, ağır ağır gerçekleşir, yardım çığlıkları, ağıtlar, küfürler ve söylenmeler batış anına eşlik eder. Son kertede çırpınmadan geriye determinizm kalır, olması gereken olur ya da kitaba uygun bir şekilde söylemek gerekirse akacak kan bacak arasında durmaz. Ama yine biliriz ki “bebeklerin sevgiden neşet etmesi” gibi tarihte hikayelerden neşet eder. Graham Swift kulağımıza yer yer güçlü çığlıklar haline bürünen çok özel bir hikaye fısıldıyor Su Diyarı kitabıyla. Tarihe geçmeden mekâna bir uğrayalım zira öğretmenimiz tarihçi olduğu kadar yetkin bir coğrafya bilgisine de sahip. Su diyarı namlı Fens, İngiltere’nin kuzey doğusunda insan emeği ile yaratılmış bir bölge, yüzlerce yıla yayılan bir süreç ve çaba sonucunda su diyarının göbeğine bir toprak diyarı inşa ediliyor. Anlatıcımız buranı yerlisi su diyarı insanları ile bölgeye toprağı taşıyan toprak insanlarının soyundan geliyor. Bu iki diyar iki farklı insan türünü de ortaya çıkarıyor. Su insanları doğaları ile barışık ve doğanın sunduğu nimetlerle –yılanbalıkları nereden geliyor- yaşarken toprak insanları sürekli bir gelişim, çatışma ve doğayı hizaya sokmanın tüm ard anlamları ve olumsuzluklarını bağrında taşıyorlar. Bu iki dünyanın çatışması metni ekolojist bir yoruma da açık kılıyor olsa da yazar bunu ve çatışmanın gerilimini büyük sözler sarf etmeden metnin son sahnesine kadar taşıyor ve nihayetinde topraktan gelen soy –dünyanın kurtarıcısı- karanlık sularda nihayete eriyor ya da kitaba sadık kalarak söylemek gerekirse doğanın tarihi büyük anlatının tarihine baskın geliyor.Loss is very prevalent in Waterland. Many of the central characters lose very significant things throughout Swift's novel. The impact of loss is also shown. Graham Swift's novels deal with the extraordinary in the ordinary. In their settings, language and characterisations Swift's novels are sparse and consciously drab. His protagonists are often ordinary men, middle-aged clerks or teachers or accountants. In their voices Swift ponders some of the bigger issues of life - death, birth, marriage and sex - as well as the everyday politics of relationships and friendships. His intricate narrative patterns raise questions about the relationship between personal histories and world events, between personal and public perceptions. He highlights the impossibility of creating a single objective reality, fictional or otherwise, and through fiction investigates the very nature of fiction. In 1992, a film version of Waterland was released, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal and starring Jeremy Irons. The adaptation retained some major plot points but moved the contemporary location to Pittsburgh, and eliminated many of the extensive historical asides.

Metafiction refers to when a text makes the reader aware that they are reading a fictional text. It is self-referential. The story might examine the very means of storytelling itself. Mary also experiences significant losses in Waterland. These happen when she is a young woman but impact the rest of her life and the lives of those around her. Mary's botched abortion results in her losing the ability to ever have children. As she gets older, it becomes clear that she desperately wants children. Her infertility drastically affects her mental health to the point in which she is unstable enough to steal a baby. Not only does she lose the ability to have children, Mary gradually loses her mind throughout Waterland too. Swift suggests that history is cyclical, that any revolution for a better future is always based on a vision or an adapted reflection of a period of prosperity and wellbeing in the past. That a change leads to another change, which does not always mean progress. That there is also regression and repetition. The Fens, where the biggest part of the story is based, serve Swift as the main metaphor of this cyclicality. Despite centuries of efforts to drain and improve the land in the fens, the water had always found the way to return through rains and floods, bringing disasters to the inhabitants.Below is an explanation of Swift's Biography and some of his most significant books and short stories. You will also find an exploration of Graham Swift's main thematic focus as an author.

Kennedy, Maev (10 March 2009). "Graham Swift joins angling partner Ted Hughes in British Library archive". The Guardian . Retrieved 10 March 2009. The students in Tom’s school have grown increasingly scientifically oriented, and the headmaster, Lewis Scott, himself a physicist, has little sympathy for Tom’s subject, a fact that he in no way masks. One of Tom’s students, Price, an intelligent sixteen-year-old whose father is a mechanic, presses Tom with questions about the relevance of learning about such historical events as the French Revolution. The youth’s skepticism causes Tom to change his teaching approach from one of presenting historical facts to one that involves his telling tales drawn from his own recollection. By doing so, he makes himself a part of the history he is teaching, relating his tales to local history and genealogy.

Summary

It has a strong and veritable bearing on today, this history, the past, that incident; incidents. It shapes, shakes, cautions, humiliates, and intimidates – this history. Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life.” There’s this thing called progress. But it doesn’t progress. It doesn’t go anywhere. Because as progress progresses the world can slip away. It’s progress if you can stop the world slipping away. My humble model for progress is the reclamation of land. Which is repeatedly, never-ending retrieving what it lost. A dogged and vigilant business. A dull yet valuable business. A hard, inglorious business. But you shouldn’t go mistaking the reclamation of land for the building of empires.” Children, beware the paternal instinct whenever it appears in your officially approved and professionally trained mentors. In what direction is it working, whose welfare is it serving? This desire to protect and provide, this desire to point the way; this desire to hold sway amongst children.’ The telling shifts this way and that in time. The telling is fragmentary and nonlinear. This is a technique that usually does not appeal to me, but it works here!