Category Archives: Fiction

January 25, 2011 · 1:33 pm

The Quiet American: Some brilliant sentences

                                          Perhaps the title for this post is misleading: I don’t mean to suggest that Graham Greene’s The Quiet American is bad writing peppered with brilliant sentences; rather, the novel is well written on the whole, but there are some sentences that made me stop and gape: such brilliance with images, such tidy and punchy sentences. I made mental notes of them all so that I could include them here (reading in the tub is not conducive to underlining, nor, I think, is reading for ‘pleasure’), but (of course) I’ve forgotten them now and the book is packed away for its return to the library.

I realized about twenty pages in that I knew the plot. After consulting others I realized I’d seen the film (the Michael Cain version). Happily, my often failing memory served me well in this instance, as I couldn’t remember what was *going* to happen, but as events unfolded I experienced a rather uncanny recognition that I had known what would take place. I wonder if that is what my middling years will be like? A constant sense of displaced familiarity?

In any case. Fowler is terrific as the caustic, apparently disengaged and whole self-serving anti-hero. Pyle doesn’t come across as much of a character, just a symbol for American arrogance and American quasi-innocence in international policy. A perfect book to read against current global conflicts as the book brings into sharp relief assumptions made about foreign populations (not the least their docility, childishness and happiness at the arrival of the ‘liberators’) and crimes perpetrated under the claim of good will, or worse still, good intention.

I admit to being surprised by the turn of the ending. I suppose I’d accepted the reliability of Fowler as narrator, and hadn’t expected – though in retrospect the novel gives every reason for me to do so, an altogether too trusting reader – his betrayal not just of Pyle, but of the reader, too.

Finishing The Quiet American means I’ve read one book in each of the ten categories. Celebration! I’m having a very good time with 10-10-12. I’d never have read The Quiet American without it, and despite my misgivings about the reliability of Fowler, I enjoyed it a great deal.

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January 24, 2011 · 11:45 pm

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Vol 3: A Most Impressive Business

               I downloaded the audio book of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from the very tech-friendly Hamilton Public Library and delighted in listening to some British accented fellow read me bite sized mysteries. I took the voice and the book first to the grocery store (but not *in* the grocery store; I detest listening to anything whilst shopping – far too distracting), then to cook a cake, and then about the library browsing books. I ended up relistening to the browsing books story, as it turns out I am not capable of attending to two things at once (somehow walking doesn’t count as a ‘thing’ – I seem capable of walking and listening. thankfully.). 

I enjoyed both the pace of the stories – neither too winding, nor too abrupt – the tantalizing clues that you just *know* are clues, but cannot work out, and the focalization of Watson. I was telling M. yesterday that I like Watson’s point of view because it somehow subjects Holmes to the same kind of scrutiny Holmes brings to mysteries, clues, witnesses and suspects. I dig the relationship between Watson and Holmes both because its represented as simultaneously intimate and utterly professional: a careful balance to strike and one which I admire in a narrative ostensibly about other matters.

Oh, and clearly from the tenor of this post (or perhaps only clearly to me) I enjoy the diction of the stories. I’d support the return of the countenance and the aspect and the most serious and grave business. Perhaps not the damsel in total distress. The representation of women is my chief complaint with the stories. Hapless and helpless women abound. All too often they are also waif like. I don’t go in for the waifs. I suppose this criticism could extend to include the non-British (villains appear from South America and India) and the physically impaired (“cripples” and “hysterics” populate two of the three stories), but I was most bothered by the women, perhaps because they were always the victims. Not that I expect one of them to spring up and solve the mystery – I fully accept that Holmes and Watson are a (homo-social) male partnership, but I could do with a story where a big brutish man falls victim to a hysterical bout or comes to the two cold with fear.

That said, I’ll be downloading another set of of Holmes/Watson for my walks about. Check of the HPL for your own out-and-about-town Adventures.

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January 18, 2011 · 2:43 am

The Girl With the Glass Feet: Okay.

My brother gave me Ali Shaw’s The Girl With the Glass Feet for Christmas, and so I slotted it in to “First Novels,” for no other reason than I wanted to read it and it fit the category. Turns out it really is a wonderful first novel (the New York Times say so too), full of imagination and magic. The plot is the title: a girl (Ida) has glass feet, a problem because the glass spreads and cannot be ‘cured’ (though the novel goes to some pains to remind the reader that the glass is not a disease, it is part of Ida, not a disease to be cured or caught – something to be lived with and accepted).

It’s a novel about how to be in the present. Midas – the erstwhile emotionally stunted photographer and eventual lover of Ida – must abandon photography as the barrier between himself and human connection; other men must figure out how to be in relationships, how to confront their pasts and the failures of their (misguided) choices.

And Ida, while, Ida more or less serves as the metaphor/tool by which the men figure out how to be whole, feeling people. Sure she feels love and gets consumed by glass, but I can’t help but wonder whether she isn’t the one-dimensional fairy tale figure who enable plot action and character change at the expense of having these things happen for herself. Such is her lack of depth (if her solid glass-ness wasn’t enough) when she concludes she will die she writes a letter to her father and this reader gasped – having forgotten Ida might have a family, connections, feelings (fears!) about her own death. And this reader wasn’t at all moved by her death, more a reaction of wondering how Midas will respond.

I will say the richly imagined world that sees cow-dragonflies and a creature that turns all other creatures white on sight is pretty neat: though the (apparent) lack of connection between these magical things and the glass feet left this reader a little bewildered as to what all the magic was meant to (thematically?) achieve. Nonetheless, cow-dragonflies: pretty cool.

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January 15, 2011 · 10:38 pm

Alice in Wonderland: This is it?

     I confess to be somewhat underwhelmed by Alice in Wonderland. With all the pop culture boo-ra-ha-ha I had thought it might be exciting and entertaining, alas. Maybe the problem is not with the book at all, but with all the pop culture reference, maybe I knew too much to let myself be captivated? Or maybe it was that the ending – poof! it was all a dream! – remains my least favourite way to end a story, ever. Ever. Such lack of commitment to a fantasy world, to the reality of the fantasy, blah. Bleh. Meh.

I did like the cheshire cat. I could have done without Alice and the Queen. Also the King. A far better story if narrated by the cat? Someone has written that alternate version, I’m sure, and if you know where I could read it, let me know.

It’s a sad moment to realize I might not like the book because I know the story too well from movies, television, and *being* in the world. A sad realization because the appeal of a book – in particular a book of fantasy? – is that it promises the realization of another, different (however allegorically or metaphorically similar) world in which to consider the problems and questions of the world in which we live; yet as I read this book I spent much of my imaginative time comparing what I read with what I had seen, scattered in images and references, across my life. A lesson to myself to always read before I watch? Or to accept that the canonical and commercial become something other than simply books or stories, and must be considered as more expansive enterprises. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I had – in delusion, perhaps – expected when reading this classic.

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