Category Archives: American literature

December 30, 2011 · 6:39 pm

Game of Thrones: Worth the Wait

       So in the end I might have spent more time reading over the Christmas holiday then I did with my family, but happily my family loves to read, too, and so didn’t mind (or at least claimed not to mind) when I retreated to my room for several hours to get caught up in the world of George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series. “Caught up” might be something of an understatement, as I found myself reading until 2, 3, 4am with eyes propped open rather than quitting the seductive, mysterious and utterly ruthless world of the Seven Kingdoms (and beyond).

I admit that the first six or seven chapters were something of a struggle as I tried to keep track of the scores of characters that get introduced at something of a whirlwind rate. I’d suggest for new readers to bookmark the appendix that lists the relationship of all characters, or failing that, to make their own list. I’m sure this is my own failing and not that of the text, but I do think there’s something to be said for slowing the introductory pace just a little so as to allow readers the chance to become somewhat more familiar with characters before they are jerked into another sequence.

That said, one cheery consequence of a rapid introduction is that the reader isn’t offered the chance to fall completely smitten with one character or another, and so loyalties are early divided in a text that does not follow the usual trajectory of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ but rather suggests that loyalties (and characters!) will shift depending on characters’ actions and evolving relationships.

The usual cadre of knights, princesses, dragons, swords and sworn allegiances make for an intoxicating plot and atmosphere. But it isn’t the well paced plot that  makes Game of Thrones totally irresistible (to me) it is the characters who make catastrophic errors, who act without honour, who deceive themselves and others – in other words characters who are human rather than fantastical archetypes.

I’m promising to alternate a book from Fire and Ice with another book recommended so that I don’t find myself lost in the Seven Kingdoms until March, but it won’t be easy.

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December 10, 2011 · 3:35 pm

Of Mice and Men: Delicate Dreamers

                    Of Mice and Men asks a number of questions: what sacrifices are we willing to make for those we love? (as in George’s decision to continually uproot himself to protect Lennie) How do we know when we’re acting in the best interest of those we love, or acting selfishly? (as in Candy’s inability to put down his dog; and George’s climatic decision) What effect does intention have on culpability? (as in Lennie’s responsibility for crushing Curly’s hand, or *spoiler*)

But the issue that interested me the most was that of why, when we’re given the opportunity to have the things we’ve dreamed about and schemed for, why, when those things are within grasp we intentionally sabotage the opportunity, we turn away with two hands the (not even chance) promise of realizing our (supposed) dreamed future. Steinbeck’s novel proposes that there are two sorts of people: those who live for the perpetually postponed dream; and those who, when the opportunity for realization occurs, seize it. I’m not sure I accept such a stark dichotomy of people, indeed, I might rather have liked Steinbeck to have been a little more nuanced in his explanation of why this kind of personal sabotage takes place. It can’t be a simple as some people live in/for dreams, can it? And yet, Lennie’s childish interaction with the world, his constant deference to George work to build a character that is delicate, innocent, and for that, a fool. A fool not because he isn’t bright, but a fool to not just pass up, but actively refuse, the realization of his (or George’s?) dream. And George’s ultimate decision and action reveals him as the kind of man who will seize the opportunity, regardless of personal or ethical cost, the kind of man who will act selfishly and call it a benevolent or generous act. Though at the same time the selfishness – the at long last selfishness – is somehow its own kind of realization of a dream, to finally act for one’s own interest, rather than a constant deferral for the needs of the other (Lennie).

So I think I need someone else in my immediate circle to read this one so I can talk about it out loud. It’s only 100 pages, or an afternoon of reading, so if you’re so inclined, give it a read and let me know. I’ll buy the coffee, if you’ll help me get George and Lennie (or me and me) out of my head.

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December 2, 2011 · 4:10 pm

Everything is Illuminated: Brilliant.

     So Jonathan Safran Foer sounds like a prat on the radio. He sounds like a self-assured genius, who is maybe also judging you for eating meat. And so I put off reading Everything is Illuminated because I thought it might be infused with self-righteousness or self-congratulatory brilliance. But after finishing the novel I no longer care what Safran Foer sounds like on the radio, or whether he is arrogant and self-congratulatory. I don’t care because the book is brilliant. And so I’ve been (again) reminded that books are not their authors, and while Safran Foer probably is a prat, that’s no reason not to read (and love) his book.

What do I love about it? Let me describe the ways:

Character voice: While the characters themselves appeal to me in the way all brilliant characters do – in their unpredictable, yet believable, reactions; in their failings; in their changes over the course of the novel; in their revelation of something about me – the voices of the characters in this novel are staggering. I don’t simply mean Sasha’s (genius) voice as a translator come to English that reverberates (I’m not sure if that’s the technical word for it, but whatever it is when you’re still hearing the voice hours later), I mean the kind of distinct clarity of a singular character: when grandfather is speaking the diction, the meter, the pacing could only belong to him. The characters are each unique and complex, but they are made exponentially more so by the lilt and precision of their voices.

Form: Postmodern play with form can be annoying. There are occasions, I think, when adding blank pages, or runonsentences, or cacophonous ellipses (if ever there was an oxymoron….) are nothing but authors trying to show that they too have read Paul Auster, William Faulkner, and Kafka, and that they too recognize the dismemberment of form can parallel the collapse in certain truths. But here! But here! Oh but here formal play does not distract, does not serve as formal play for the sake of formal play. Here the introduction of unusual and unexpected formal elements provoke, they punch, they do something to meaning that makes the words mean MORE. And that’s it, I think. That instead of the postmodern ennui, here the formal disintegration is meant to emphasize just how acutely we feel, just how poignant love and loss can be and are, just how sincerely feelings are emphatically FELT. The form makes you feel  – perhaps, and individually, disoriented or annoyed or awed – in order to remind you that living is an exercise in feeling.

Plot: Neither too saccharine or too cold, the simplicity and elegance of this story is brilliant. Unfolding over protracted time, but an isolated location, the plot weaves in ways that both surprise and satisfy. A cliched expression on my part, but nevertheless true.

And then, and then! The questions this novel raises around responsibility to others are devastating. It points a finger at all of us for being selfish, for not being capable of truly understanding the other (in such exact Butlerian terms that I’m tempted to see who wrote their work first), for acting out of cowardice, for acting out of grand delusions of self-importance. It accuses each of us of a piracy of spirit and then says, but you are human, this is the only way you could be, and so perhaps, in this predetermination, you are forgiven.

So yeah, I liked this one.

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October 30, 2011 · 2:40 pm

City of Glass: the Mystery of Self

                 A few pages into Paul Auster’s City of Glass I realized I’d read the book before. Except this realization proved false, as I soon worked out that I’d read the first few chapters before, but never the whole thing. From this uncanny beginning of recognizing what I thought ought to be unfamiliar, the book proceeded to confirm my initial suspicions: this is a book I’ve read before, but forgotten, as all books are those we have read before, but forgotten – as all people are those we’ve already met. And ourselves? We are perhaps people of convenience, decision makers of circumstance, individuals without a tether: kite strings caught in a hurricane.

The narrative follows Daniel Quinn Paul Auster William Wilson Henry Dark Paul Stillman a character as he wanders the city trying to work out the mystery – or the potential for a mystery – of who is (or might be) (or will be) out to harm Stillman and moreover who is (or might be) (or will be) Daniel Quinn. The plot itself is brief and focused, principally the actions of Quinn, but peppered with thoughtful conversations with other characters that meditate on authorship, credibility and the continuity of self.

A passage to clarify this kind of embedded musing (that masterfully does not annoy as some quasi-philosophical ramblings do, but does not go unnoticed as a passage on Who We Are): “Was ‘fate’ really the word he wanted to use? It seemed like such a ponderous and old-fashioned choice. And yet, as he probed more deeply into it, he discovered that was precisely what he meant to say. Or, if not precisely, it came closer than any other term he could think of. Fate in the sense of what was, of what happened to be. It was something like the word ‘it’ in the phrase ‘it is raining’ or ‘it is night.’ What that ‘it’ referred to Quinn had never known. A generalized condition of things as they were, perhaps; the state of is-ness that was the ground on which the happenings of the world took place” (207-8).

This passage well captures the tone of the book – somewhere between detached third person omniscient (a suitable choice given the premise that the events are being reported by a third person who has stumbled on Quinn’s account recorded in a red notebook) and minimalist. The passage also highlights the preoccupation in the narrative with the parallel opacity of language and selves. In this sense Auster (reasonably we might think) connects the post-structuralist boo-ra-ha-ha about the permanence of language, the (supposed) crisis in epistemology and extends this to the condition of individuals as patchwork pieces continually reconstituted.

The book was written in 1985. An important date only if you’re concerned that these ideas are old hat. Not so, I think. I’m sure there too many narratives written that ask the same questions: who are we? why do stories matter? how can we know anything? anything about ourselves? But Auster’s text is simply masterful in asking these questions as genuine concerns. The narrative wants no answers, it argues against the possibility of answers, instead it contents itself with being as the New York Times Book Review says on the back cover “for all those who seek the truth behind the fictions they read and the fictions they live.” And why shouldn’t I end with the NYTimes? Their words are mine, too.

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