July 25, 2011 · 12:09 pm

Lemony Snicket: Teaching Tone and Plot

    If I were teaching a course with the objective of students describing “tone” and “plot structure,” I might assign Lemony Snicket. The book adheres to a simple – here simple means predictable, but enjoyable – plot structure and adopts an informal, didactic and occasionally sarcastic tone. Characters are not developed, rather they are assigned single character traits from which they operate.

Despite what sounds like complaints, I enjoyed Lemony Snicket. I found the predictability of the plot, the evenness of the tone, and the simplicity of the characters to be… soothing. There is something reassuring about reading a book that sets out with the explicit warning that it will be a “disturbing tale,” all the while knowing – because the plot structure tells you so – that things will (in the end) work out okay. Similarly there is something enjoyable about forming a “contract” (see D.Coleman) between the reader and the text that says “this is the kind of book you will be reading,” and to have that delivered.

This book is not a triumph of character, plot, or theme. It is instead enjoyable for its tone and for its measured assurance that it is exactly what it claims to be.

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July 24, 2011 · 3:34 pm

American Psycho: Impressive Point of View

      American Psycho may be a lot of things – a remarkable exploration of the gap between self-perception and external recognition, a metaphor for the grotesque imbalance between rich and poor and the exploitative conditions that support such an imbalance, an exercise in reader self-reflection – but it is not a book that ought to be banned (have yet to encounter a book, really, in the banned books category that makes me seriously reconsider my stance on no-banning-of-books). Above all it is a book that thoughtfully explores the possibilities presented by narrative point of view.

With the notable exception of a half dozen pages in a climactic scene the novel is narrated in the first person point of view of Patrick Bateman a wall street worker (of some kind) and psychopathic killer (maybe). Whether or not Patrick actually kills anyone is a question I don’t have an easy answer for, though the novel certainly details the rape, torture and murder of many, many men, women and (one) child. How can it be that the novel could narrate these events but I still be unsure whether they actually took place? Such is the marvel of the untrustworthy and “mad” narration. Patrick interweaves his descriptions of torture with his obsessive (really obsessive) descriptions of what people wear, where he has eaten, when Les Miserable will be playing and how long he has worked out for. The imbalance among what Patrick thinks about, how he describes himself behaving, and how others react to his behaviour alert the reader to a consequential disconnect between the ways Patrick describes himself and “reality” as it is experienced by those around him. That this gap describes how every individual reader operates in the world should go without saying, but the novel does a spectacular job of highlighting in the extreme how detrimental and alienating this fissure must be. That we ought to spend more time listening to one another and more time trying to explain how we understand the world isn’t the solution offered by Ellis; rather, I think the book gets at the tragedy – the real horror – that we must all experience the world alone, from our particular (insane) point of view.

That the book includes scenes of extreme violence is interesting because these chapters precede exceptionally dull chapters recounting Patrick’s review of the body of work of artists like Whitney Housten. The result? This reader *skipped* the dull chapters on album reviews in order to return to the (truly) captivating narration of Patrick’s life. What does this desire to return to the horrific over the banal say about this reader? Well, it really is a most impressive point of view.

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July 18, 2011 · 11:03 pm

50 books and 18 days

I’m halfway through 10-10-12 and I’m 18 days behind schedule. Will I catch up by reading 20 books this month? Probably not. Will I catch up by reading 20 books between December 25 and 31st? Probably.

In any case… yay me.

For more details on 10-10-12, see my posts of December 2011.

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July 18, 2011 · 11:01 pm

A Gate at the Stairs: Sort of unbelievable

                I say “sort of unbelievable” not because any of the events in A Gate at the Stairs are unbelievable, but rather because there are sentences in this book, full paragraphs really, that so capture some essence of the world or of worldly experience in ways that would be, well, unbelievable, were they not regularly happening. Each page, each paragraph offer up gems – what is it when gems are not rare, but simply precious? – that left me feeling like I had been punched (such accuracy in describing (my) human experience does feel, for whatever reason, visceral) and hugged (such palpable beauty cannot but feel like an embrace?).

Suspending (however difficultly) my adoration of the descriptions in the text, the plot and characters are closer to pretty good than to outstanding. The protagonist, Tassie, does not always behave in ways I might expect her to, and I suppose this might be meant to get at the unpredictability of human behaviour, and yet, it didn’t feel like a reasonable level of variability, and more an unevenness in character development. (SPOILER: This was particularly the case in the scene when Tassie climbs in the coffin – while her decision to do so allows for a captivating description of Robert and a thoughtful meditation on grief and uncertainty, her action does not properly align with Tassie as we know her. This sort of “surprise” character decisions extend to secondary characters like Sarah and Edward, and are, for this reader, distracting and disappointing (as the text is otherwise… brilliant).

I sat for a few minutes with the conclusion of the book. I felt at the point that Mary-Emma leaves that the book ought to end with her departure. My sense that the book could have concluded there asked me to reconsider the central themes and foci (yeah! foci!) of the novel: was the book to be about the relationship between Tassie and Mary-Emma or about the relationships Tassie has (and ignores) more generally? Given that the book does *not* end with Mary-Emma’s departure we must give credit to the latter idea that this is a book about Tassie and her interactions with the world – with her family, with her roommates, with her ridiculous (and poorly constructed) boyfriend. If that’s the case I might have liked fuller, and earlier, development of her relationship with her family. Except that perhaps the poignancy of the conclusion might be lost had she “attended” to her family better. Ah… let it be that I am unsettled by the conclusion both for the material it contains and for its impact on how the rest of the novel reads.

I’ll suggest reading this book because of its forceful beauty in capturing the essence of moments, places and people. With the caveat that the plot and character may leave you frustrated – not because they are (in any way) bad, but because they are only very good.

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