I tried three times to read this one. First two times on an ereader where the need to flip back to the family tree on the first page (the book is a memoir that spans several generations) made getting absorbed by the book nearly impossible. The third time I got the book from the library and made it a least a third of the way in and then… nothing. I just couldn’t commit I guess. And I feel like a first rate reading fraud as the rest of the world assesses this book as one of the very great, and I know I *should* as a literary sort, think the same thing, but I don’t. I just wasn’t interested in the family, in the reasoning behind the acquisition of the art objects, I wasn’t concerned with the attempt to write a meaningful, deep memoir of objects, memory and family. I’m very willing to admit this as my failing rather than that of the book. So take the advice of the heaps of others and read it, but know that I found it resistant. And a little dull. Does this make me a terrible reader? Person? Maybe. But I made the commitment to stop reading books that didn’t move me (either for better or worse) and so I have with this one.
Category Archives: Fiction
Still Alice: Moral Abnegation
I was so prepared to like Lisa Genova’s *Still Alice*. I come from a family with Alzheimer’s disease. I’m fascinated by questions around euthanasia – when is not only morally right, but a moral right in and of itself? I found the idea of a novel narrated from the third person limited perspective of an Alzheimer’s patient (though how incredible would that first person narrative be?) compelling on its own terms: offering a voice to the people afflicted with a disease that renders them – or subjects them to voicelessness.
And for the first two thirds of the novel I played along. Sure I took issue with the cinematic qualities of the narrative that screamed ‘MAKE ME INTO AN OSCAR WORTHY SCREENPLAY’ and the unidimensional cast of supporting characters (family members). But I was intrigued by Alice’s (albeit narratively superficial) attempts to make sense of a changing identity: and a violent forced change at that.
Where I lost respect for the novel as a social enterprise interested in asking what the rights of an Alzheimer’s patient might be (or anyone cognitively impaired) was in the singular dismissal of Alice’s express wishes to end her life when she lost her ability to identify herself as a self. Don’t mistake me – it’s not that I’m unhappy that she was kept alive (though I *am* unhappy that she was kept alive) my complaint is one with the narrative: rather than engage with her request, with this question about right-to-death, the narrative – in one tidy slip between chapters – forgets (!) to even ask the question: should we as a family kill Alice? Do we owe it to her sense of self, to her identity, to her wishes, to let her die? to assist her in her death? Nothing. Just a skip between paragraphs and she’s happy as a mindless, identity-less clam.
Filed under Fiction
I Am Charlotte Simmons: Lost Potential
This book is meant to be both a character study (as the title suggests) and social commentary on the state of higher education. In both tasks it fails.
I read Tom Wolfe’s *I am Charlotte Simmons* because of a call-for-papers from a journal looking for articles about higher education written by humanities scholars. The scholarship of teaching and learning (my general academic field these days) is dominated by social scientists and their methodologies, and so I was excited by the call because it signaled a space for my training and as impetus for me to “investigate” novels about higher education.
There are fewer such novels than I imagined (name some, if you can). I remember hearing about Wolfe’s novel when it first came out either in a print review of a radio interview, I can’t remember. What excited me at the time was the idea that the changing nature of higher education was being explored from “within” as Wolfe reported spending months of time *at* American institutions embedded in the student population to get a sense both of the language of students and of their motivations.
The portrait he paints is one of universities gone sour: spoiled by a neoliberal agenda out to make a profit from education, tainted by students more interested in employment outcomes and sex than lifelong learning and the continued social stratification (more pronounced in the American system) of students based on income (rather than, as our protagonist had hoped, based on scholastic ability or ambition).
While this portrait has all the promise of a rich expose, it falls apart as Wolfe seems utterly preoccupied with sex and its details. Scenes of lost virginity, oral sex in public places, lewd behaviour and dress could have contributed to a sense of disturbance or moral debauchery, but as these scenes are void of round characters – and characters are instead rendered as animals – the poignancy of the critique is lost as the characters, made caricatures, are so removed from the readers experience or the fullness of a human character as to be yet more tedious pornographic scenes rather than rich critique.
Interesting stuff, sure, but so poorly executed *as a novel*. Charlotte, our protagonist, is insufferable. We’re meant (I suspect) to root for her as she overcomes social isolation and puritan prudishness and ambitiously climbs the social ladder at the expense of her prodigious genius and scholarly dedication. I didn’t root for her. Instead I much wished she’d return to late night studying and embracing her inner/outer geek/loser. Not for any reason of wishing her ill, in fact I don’t care about her as a character enough to wish her ill or otherwise, but rather because as a late night studier Wolfe seemed to have a much better sense of her thoughts, feelings and reactions. Which is to say, Wolfe utterly fails in developing this character – she doesn’t adjust her thinking/reactions/feelings as her outward experiences shift (as any character would, even if the adjustment was just a retrenchment of existing thoughts/feelings). Instead we’re left with the same character who began the book only we’re told in didactic moments of third person narration that she *has* changed, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Couple this mystifying inability to develop character in a book purportedly focused on character with a tedious 700 pages and you have a tiresome exploration of what could have been an insightful critique of the neoliberal university. Perhaps that’s my overall complaint – the lost potential in this book. Not the lost potential of Charlotte – because really *who cares* – but the lost potential of a novel exploring the state of higher education. I suppose I’ll just have to write one.
Filed under American literature, Fiction, Worst Books
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