Category Archives: American literature

January 14, 2013 · 2:08 am

Canada: Plodding

I expect Richard Ford thought he was writing some substantial when he penned *Canada,* and if the weight of the book is to be the sole judge of success, it is indeed of weighty matter. Alas, we readers take more into account than the weight of the book (and perhaps this will be of increasing truth as the ebook encroaches on our habitual Sunday effort of hoisting books above our heads while sprawled out on the couch with the concomitant cognitive dissonance where we think the book incredible if only to justify the sheer physical effort of reading it) and find this book curiously short on the vital elements we might expect from a Pulitzer prize winner such as a compelling plot, developed characters or something approaching a complex or compelling thematic question. 

Instead we’re left with 300 odd trying pages about the parent’s bank robbery (no spoiler, it’s all revealed on the first page). In fact, I’d rather it was a spoiler because then it might feel like the 300 pages were leading up to something, rather than, as they are, a painful effort to cloak plodding plot in weighty short sentences that herald the end of another short chapter: “I felt it was so.” “I never saw him again.” “I wanted it that way.” etc. etc. that all culminate in what we knew was coming the whole time and had only hoped would be done already.

The second part – the murder early alluded to (also on the first page) – might be expected to be more interesting were it not for the improbability of the events, the lack of interest I had for the protagonist and the total inconsequence of what transpires: it appears that even Dell doesn’t care what takes place, so much so that the novel – in another demonstration of heavy-handed abrupt chapter ending – moves off to the “epilogue” third chapter that (I suppose) is meant to deal the blow of “we all have ordinary lives” or perhaps “there are stand-out moments in our lives, but they happen early on and are often not of our doing.” So that, in the end, the moments that make our lives consequential – at least for Dell (that’s another problem! the book doesn’t in any way speak to a “human” condition or create a character believable enough for me to think it could happen, more a well physically described, but poorly realized character)  – are not our own, but happen *to* us. 

This book happened to me. And I’m hopeful that nothing of consequence will come from it. 

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November 21, 2012 · 4:59 am

A Visit from the Goon Squad: PostModern Perfection

      I resisted posting this image of the interconnection of characters – and chapters – from Jennifer Eagn’s *A Visit From the Goon Squad* because part of what makes the book SO GOOD is its use of form – chapters narrated by different characters, at different points in time, who are all, loosely connected to one another through this odd web – to mirror how we (or me, at least) experience social life and memory. My experience of friendship, family and connection is one of loose recollection that ‘oh yes, I was at a party with so-and-so once’ or ‘I remember you from where exactly?’ but also that there are people who weave in and out of our lives with varying degrees of impact – some who spend short periods and leave (as they say) lasting impressions. And so I don’t want this image because it makes it easier to remember who everyone is and how they are connected than they have any right to be: our memory of these characters *should be* scattered and fragmented and pieced together with glimmers, because that’s how we go about remember people (again, I might be speaking for my own failing memory here).

So too the brilliance of the passage of time in these layered and asynchronous chapters. Midway through the first chapter I had a horrifying thought that perhaps I had started reading a short story collection (the record is quite clear on how I feel about short stories) because the plotting was so dense, the characters so rich and the evocative images, well, evocative. When I realized in the second chapter that no, perhaps these were *linked* short stories, and then as the thematic resonances and character repetitions continued I decided that I was, in fact, reading a novel, what became clear – through the muddy plot and disappearing/reappearing characters – is that our lives and our memories function in much the same way: we have crystallized memories that appear ‘out of time’ but that feel full and colourful, and then there are long blanks of no connection or seeming non-event. What we recollect – the sensational, the exceptional *and* the utterly banal – stays with us for reasons unclear (to me), but stays with us all the same in these sharp moments so beautifully and expertly captured by Egan.

I have nothing but praise for this incredible novel that so beautifully weaves characters together. I loved the questions it raises about what we decide to make of our lives, how we go about making decisions, overcoming grief, regret and our own impetus for self-destruction, how we decide to create *anything* in a world so bent toward massification, how we believe in the possibility of unique individuality in an era that simultaneously promises and scorns such a chance. It is a beautiful novel full of reasonable hope that we might do well with the little, parcelled time we have and that we might impress our lives and our singularity on those around us.

I realize I’ve made it sound overly optimistic or some kind of “audacity of hope” sort of thing. It’s not that. It doesn’t ignore or gloss the failures, the inadequacies, the regrets, but it also doesn’t *dwell* in these spaces, or declare these states to be the de facto position for humanity. It asks whether we might do something different (if not something more) with the little time we’re allotted.  

So read it, okay?

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November 19, 2012 · 4:49 am

Middlesex: Brilliant Narration

         I did it again. I’m midway through my next book and am now posting on *Middlesex* with the inevitable consequence that a lot of the thoughtful commentary I had stored up for this novel has seeped into the pages of the next. Oh well. Such is the life of this reader, and so you’ll be left with this less than fullsome review of what is a tremendous novel.

Principally tremendous because of its narration. The first person narrator, Cal(lie), weaves her (fictional) autobiography with the biographies of her parents and grandparents in the style of the best of these genres: stories not so much about the people themselves, but about the eras in which they live and the collective movements that shape their individual  experiences. So it is that with Cal(lie) we traverse the economic booms and depressions of Detroit – in one of the better novels-of-a-city I’ve come across), the civil rights movement and the emergence of a queer politics in San Francisco. 

Not only that, but the narrator’s willingness to imagine the perspective of others allows a quasi third person limited narration that glimpses at the reaction of her family members. An subtle, but powerful narrative move, too, comes as the narrative shifts to a conscious third person – you know the sort teenagers use when they’re telling their friends something funny – but in this case it’s not for comic effect, but rather because the narrator is so far removed from what is happening to his body and his identity that he fully loses “voice” of these sections of the narrative.

The story itself is compelling enough without the masterful narration, but the compelling plot – hermaphrodite man raised as girl discovers his masculinity in a painful climax of scientific/medicinal control over the body and the hegemony of the “normal body” – certainly provides a rich space for the narrative voice to reverberate.

And it’s true, nearly a week after finishing *Middlesex* I’m still struck by the singularity of Cal(lie), not as a “monstrous” body (as some characters in the book describe him), nor as an exceptional story of medicinal mishap and the ubiquity of the intersexed child, but rather as a singular expression of the bildungsroman. I can think of no better narrative exploration of the challenges, delights, horrors and ecstasies of coming-of-age. Descriptions of Cal(lie)’s attraction to the “Obscure Object” and the hesitating, sputtering, development of their relationship is quite simply brilliant.

So yeah. I really liked this one. I didn’t think I would. I should say that it sat on my shelf for years. I guess I thought it would be some kind of obsessive trip into gender/sexuality politics and that the whole book would be about the “monstrous” hermaphrodite body, but really it’s a book about growing up, about falling in love, about finding yourself, about fitting in to your family, about self-acceptance, *and* a book about being a hermaphrodite in a world that doesn’t always know exactly what to do with slippery identities. 

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August 9, 2012 · 9:53 pm

The Marriage Plot: Not a plot, but a scheme

               So I’m 28. It’s true. No more hedging around with 20 something, or mid-twenties. I’m a happy, comfortable 28. And unmarried. By any measure I’m just fine with my unmarried status. Jeffrey Eugendies’ novel, *The Marriage Plot,* makes me even happier to be unmarried (would I feel differently were I single? maybe): the novel depicts the disintegration of a ‘phase one’ marriage (phase one referring to those who marry immediately after college) and implicitly suggests that this is not the time, and we are not the generation, who ought to pretend to something like a lifetime commitment.

The title of the book comes from the thesis title of the quirky protagonist, Madeline. Madeline writes this undergraduate thesis on 19th century novels, and argues for particular kinds of marriages that emerge in literature. The coy nod to the reader is, of course, that this is a novel about marriage, too. The circumstances of marriage here are not those of the 19th century courting rituals, and yet the “plot” here contains the same elements of poor timing, misplaced communications/letters, a love triangle (or two), unexpected illness (not scarlet fever here, but manic-depression) and interfering parents.

In revealing the traps of marriage – the required compromise of ‘self’ for the protection of the ‘we’; the abandonment of the lusty body in favour of the sick, wasting body; the despair/resentment that emerges from disparity in income – the novel implicitly argues that marriage is not a “plot” in the sense of a sequence of events, but rather a “plot” in the scheming machinations of society too attached to antiquated notions of how relationships ought to operate. Instead, it suggests that young people need to take time to ‘find themselves,’ – as the lovelorn Mitchell does in his spiritual and literal trip to India – before they can hope to legitimately connect with another person.

While I found the actual plot – the sequence of events, that is – compelling – shifts character perspective and overlapping and extending temporal sequencing – I wasn’t as taken with the characters as I think I needed to be in order to care one way or another whether a) Leonard recovers from his depression or whether he kills himself (I was much more concerned with whether he would shave) b) Madeline and Mitchell end up together c) Madeline works out what might make her happy. Instead I sort of hoped that things would climax in some way that would be a triumph of activity – perhaps the long hinted at suicide attempt? – because the characters are not compelling enough on their own to captivate or provoke this readers empathy.

This is not to say this is a “bad” book, or not one worth reading. Quite the contrary, I think it’s a terrific book for its perspective on marriage, on the compromises required of self and partners to make relationships “work,” on the lengths we might be willing to go to disguise what we want from what we feel is expected of us. I just think it could have been a *better* book had the characters been more fully realized, or their complexities more believable. Yeah, that’s it. So sure, read it! but don’t mind if you don’t care whether Leonard offs himself or not. Kind of like the thematic questions are so interesting they get in the way of the characters themselves…

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