June 13, 2012 · 3:50 am

On Reading

I read novels as a way to think about my responsibilities without having to think about my responsibilities. I read novels about characters who create new identities for themselves, or who question the dangers of too much compromise, or who contemplate the brevity of life and the challenge of making meaning in a world of such surplus and scarcity, a world of such disparity. While reading these novels I think that I understand the questions the author is asking. I pause after a poignant paragraph, I write essays on completion of the novel that summarize my impressions of the narrative, I emphatically recommend books to anyone who will listen and enthusiastically agree with the declaration that such and such a book is just incredible. I don’t do these things without sincerity; in each moment I attend to the narrative itself I am committed to being with and in the narrative.

I tell people – family, friends, colleagues – that the value of reading Literature is its capacity for changing perceptions, for inviting questions, for provocation, challenge and for altering the way readers look at everyday life. I passionately argue for an engaged readership that sees novels as a way to explore societal ills and potential solutions, as a space to wrestle with historical and contemporary grievances and injuries, and as a conversation about who we are as people, what we value and what defines us as (ir)rational, meaning-making, meaning-seeking beings.

Any regular reader will know that what I’ve written so far can only be followed by a “but,” because this is not an era of sincerity and we are not inclined to the optimistic observations about simplistic goods. My but is not dependent on an admission of the failings of fiction, far from it; I remain earnest in my stated beliefs about the power of novels. But. For all my acclamation of beauty, power and potential, I, myself, refuse these opportunities for sustained reflection. I make routine resolutions to sit quietly with my thoughts and to ask myself what I value, what my purpose might be, what makes for a meaningful relationship. I run, I swim, I cycle and each moment I’m engaged in these expressions of body – these intense experiences of breath, heat, movement – I remind myself that I should be thinking about the Big Questions (and that I should be writing my own novel while I’m at it). In the moments on transit when each rider fills the car with their separate, silent dialogues I think I should be thinking right now. I see my days as moments when I should be thinking about myself and my community, but I instead fill my mental landscape with headphone music, cellphone conversations, internet television, food, radio, sex and sleep. This admission is not intended as an indictment of “modern society” and its ills of isolation; this admission is meant only as confession.

I confess that I do not know how to spend time with my own thoughts. I do not want to ask the questions I read in novels. I do not want to know how little substance I have available to shape an answer. I will avoid the risk of inevitable silence by cramming my mental space with all manner of other distractions, not the least of which are novels.

I read because I do not want to think about myself, my complicity in inequality, my failure to meet my own expectations of citizen engagement, my frustration with my friends, family and colleagues, my dissatisfaction with the promises made and undelivered, my hurt and loneliness, my secret belief that I’m destined for great things.

Am I sad? Do I want to quit my job? Do I love my partner enough? What are my responsibilities to my family? What do I owe my community? Why do I get paid as well as I do? How can I live in a country that denies health care to refugees and exploits the environment for economic gain? I can’t answer these questions because I won’t answer them. I won’t give up the mental real estate required to be sad. To be hurt by injustice, by my selfishness, by exclusion. Instead I’ll read stories that let me feel just a little bit, just enough to assure myself that I’m engaged and that I’m politically active. I will read novels that grant me the self-assurance to say “oh this is an important question” and to flag it as such when I present the story to someone else. As if I can take credit for the thematic heft by identifying its existence. As if I can claim depth by knowing where the deep end lies.

I read, still. I love reading because I love feeling like I’m doing something.  I’m asking the questions, but only to you. After I finish this sentence I’ll close my thoughts, pick up a book, and let someone else take responsibility for giving the answers.

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June 12, 2012 · 10:02 pm

The Orphan Master’s Son: Choose Your Own Identity

       So there are a few people who suggest books to me and I immediate go and get the book. Actually only two – my mum and N. And this isn’t because I play recommendation favourites, but more because these two a) consistently take MY recommendations (so it’s a selfish thing, really) b) consistently suggest books that I find fascinating c) happily talk about the book with me when I’m done reading it

In any case, I read The Orphan Master’s Son on the recommendation of my mum. She suggested I’d enjoy it because of its introduction to North Korea. Yeah, stop and ask yourself: what do you know about North Korea? If your answer is “axis of evil” and nothing else, then I can’t urge you strongly enough to pick up this book. While written by an American, the book provides what I think (and granted this is an extremely limited thought given how little I *do* know about North Korea) is a thoughtful introduction to North Korean history and the current political climate in the country. An introduction that covers everything from naming practices, to economic policies, to familial and international relations, to marriage practices and forced labour camps/prisons.

This introduction is accomplished by following the chameleon character Commander Ga/Pak Jun Do as he navigates the worlds of North Korean society. His shifting identity – routinely created and recreated – focuses the thematic interest of the novel: what makes us the people we are? The novel makes a case that identity is something as simple as a chosen declaration: you are Commander Ga, or something as complex as the assembled memories of a person, written down in biography and stashed on a forgotten shelf. The questions of how we determine who we are, how others decide who we are, and how we will remember/retain identity in a world of shifting expectations makes this a novel much more complicated that a simple introduction to NK. 

That said, the novel really only has this one thematic focus and for better or worse (I think for worse) the narrative makes really, really sure that you know that this is the thematic interest. Some passages explicitly calling out: I changed my name and changed my identity. More frustrating is the predictability (to some extent) of plot events given the thematic interest. And while the theme is attacked with some complexity and some nuance, the narrative as a whole lacks a certain depth because it is only (thematically) about identity, and misses opportunities to be asking other kinds of questions.

Is this a minor quibble? I’m not sure. I think so, because on the whole the richness of the setting, the complexity of the narration – switching narrative voices require some dexterity on the part of the reader, but great reward too as the layers of the plot are unpeeled – and the fascinating exploration of North Korea far outweigh any gripes about heavy-handed theme. And it’s not even heavy-handed (all the time) so much as it is overdetermined. Yeah, that’s my beef.


(If I was marking a first year essay right now I’d tell myself that I’ve just arrived at the thesis of this blog post and that I should go back to the introduction and revise, but I’m not, and I’m not.)

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May 23, 2012 · 6:16 pm

Half-Blood Blues: My thoughts on “Plot”

                          When I ask people what they’re reading, or they ask me, the next question that usually follows is: “Well, what’s the book about?” Invariably the answer to this question has something to do with the plot of the novel. Oh it’s about WW1, or about a catholic priest who molests children, or a trial, or a wizard fighting evil. In the case of Esi Edugyan’sHalf Blood Blues, I had heard the book was about jazz musicians living in Paris during World War Two. I’d be lying if I said I found that rough plot sketch engaging. In fact, having heard a great deal about the book – as it was up for a number of major awards in Canada last year and I attended a reading – I remained steadfastly disinterested because the way the book was described; what it purported to be “about,” didn’t interest me at all. I’m not keen on jazz and so a book that was described as a plot about jazz musicians, well, it just didn’t pique my interest. Much in the same way I’ve turned down books described as “about” other “boring” (to me, at least) topics, people, eras.

And so as I started readingHalf Blood Bluesand realized that I was very much enjoying the book I began thinking about the limits of the question “what is the book about”? Because inevitably the answer to that question has something to do with plot, or, more rarely, character. But great novels aren’t “about” plot. No, great novels engage with questions, issues and ideas – questions and ideas that get worked out in the formal elements of theme, plot, character, setting, tone and diction.  To say a book is “about” WW2 or “about” jazz misses the purpose of the book entirely. By reducing novels to their plot elements we concomitantly, and mistakenly, reduce their value to something of an informational snapshot. Read this book to find out about depression, or read this book to learn about the Russian Revolution. Novels, really great novels, are about persistent and provocative questions and ideas. They are those novels that ask the reader to reconsider their position on current issues, common humanity, identity, etc.

The “etc” is in itself indicative of the breadth of “big” questions novels engage with. There’s no list that can neatly encompass (nor should there be!) the wealth of what novels can be, and are, “about.” Rather, we’d do better when reading to describe the novel not as a plot line, but as an engagement with/consideration of/investigation into whatever question, or idea, or problem. Does this risk slipping back into plot? Sure, to say it’s a consideration of “the challenges faced by black musicians under Hitler” is no less a description of plot. But to sayHalf Blood Bluesexplores the limits of bravery, considers selfishness and jealousy, and investigates the persistence of guilt over time… well, that might well get closer to what the book is “about.”

And the caveat that these are the descriptions of what a book is “about” that are better left to those really great novels is not without consideration. Perhaps this is one of the distinguishing features of really great novels: they are about much more than their plot. Here’s a hypothesis: Terrible fiction, that stuff that I’ve started giving up mid-way through, are stories reduced to a core element: character, setting, plot.The Night Circus,for instance, was terrible because it was *only* about its setting andGame of Thronesis awful because it’s overwhelming driven by plot.

And so Half Blood Blues is good, or even great, fiction because it is a story that asks and tries to pose half-answers (but never complete ones) to enduring questions, and it poses those questions not through the single element of plot or character, but through the complex weave of the formal elements: the melodic diction and tone of our first person protagonist; the symbolic repetition of those things mixed in colour (that Sid can’t stomach black coffee, that he *needs* milk, is, I think, no accident); the artful shifting in chronology that upsets teleological plot expectations and requires the reader continually shift expectations about what happens when and to whom, and more critically,why, characters do what they do; the complex characters that develop over time, but who do not (as we might well expect from observing those people who surround us) fundamentally change all that much. It is a book that is about jazz musicians as much as you might say Genesis is a book about a snake in a garden, or Moby Dick is about hunting a white whale, or Crime and Punishment is about a murder.

Great novels are not about their plot; they are about their readers.

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May 9, 2012 · 5:05 am

I am the Messenger: Little things matter

      In Markus Zusak’s I am the Messenger the reader is presented with the argument that we determine the course of our lives not only in grand decisions about where we live, or what our occupation might be, but also in the smallest of actions – buying icecream for a stranger or reading to a friend. While the novel seems intent on driving home this message of “little things matter,” it seems to me that in doing so it overwrites the stronger thematic messages of the narrative: that choices require intention and bravery; that close relationships demand not just rote participation, but sustained attention; and that presumed satisfaction with our lives does not, in fact, guarantee we are living with our fullest integrity, our greatest enthusiasm.

That the novel doesn’t itself seem clear about its argument matters less given that the arguments about choice come through all the same. And perhaps it’s just this reader that would rather attention be paid to the complexities of “will” and the limitations of our histories, than to platitudes like “little things matter.”

I’m again impressed with Zusak’s sincerity in arguing for the importance of stories in understanding our lives and our relationships with others. I was a little irritated with the heavy handed metafiction of the past few pages, if only because it appears there for the first time, and reads as if he couldn’t quite work out how to end the novel. *spoiler* I was also irritated with the neat ending between Ed and Audrey – far too pat for the complexity of his character development.

All that said, a hugely engaging plot, a great sense of humour, and an accessible thematic landscape good for young adults, but also for those in the grip of a twenty something (code: me) searching for what it might all mean and how I might go about living with intention and sincerity. A good read.

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