I've realized over the last couple of years, that my definition of literature, having attended primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools in Canada, is distinctly Commonwealth/British. I took one American lit class as an undergrad (and loved it! but that's because the prof was amazing - too bad he moved on to bigger and better things). But aside from that, most of the American lit I've read is SF or other popular fiction. There's a huge segment of literature written in English that I know little of. Hence, reading Faulkner.
Since a colleague and good friend is teaching a Faulkner class, it seemed the perfect opportunity to read at least some Faulkner, and start expanding my American lit repertoire beyond SF.
As I lay Dying employs multiple narrative voices, and Faulkner is able to balance those voices in such a way that they each project a unique image of the character who speaks them, but he also makes each narrative work to fill in gaps left after the narratives of other characters. Case in point: The "I" of the title is Addie Bundren, who dies in the first 20 pages; from there, the story follows her family's journey with her body to her hometown where they intend to bury her.
The narration moves between (I think 17 total) narrators, but primarily through her children, which means that most of your impression of Addie comes from her family, people who presumably have either affection for her, or a sense of obligation toward her. As each narrator takes his/her turn, the reader begins to develop a sense of what this family is like. Dysfunctional isn't the right word for it, since 'dysfunctional' implies a kind of active inability to function, an attempt to function that goes awry. These characters are far too lackadaisical, particularly Addie's husband Anse, to be described like that. A better description may be "inertia-sensitive" since when they are at rest, they tend to stay there, but when they get going, they stubbornly continue going despite good advice against such action.
The family's sensitivity to inertia and the dearth of emotional expressions of mourning, make them seem cold-hearted in the face of their wife/mother's death. Until Addie narrates her own story.
Then the reader realizes that the feeling is mutual. Addie never cared much for her husband or for her family, and her response (after a brief affair) seemed to be to distance herself from everyone around her, including her family. The only time she seems connected to them is through bodily pain or suffering.
This revelation, which comes at the center of the book, and is the only time Addie speaks, changes the reader's perception of her family's narrations till the end of the book.
In the undergrad class that I sat in on (the one my friend is teaching), they seemed to think that Anse's actions at the end of the novel were justified, or at least that they could empathize with his decision. I was disturbed by what I saw as his callousness however. Is that because as a mother I could understand Addie's attitude to her family? Is it because I'm older? What is it that I bring from my own experience, whether personal, or my experience of reading other books, that compels me to read Anse's final actions of the book as a betrayal, rather than a suitable ending that they seemed to see? Perhaps not all of them felt that way, or perhaps they discussed the ending more when I wasn't there, but I certainly had a different opinion of the ending when it came up in the discussion that I attended.
I will admit it was a difficult book for me to get into. If I'd been browsing in the library and picked it up, I would've put it down again because it took me a while to get into it, but the multiple voices of the text started to fascinate me and kept me going through the rest of it. I'm glad I read it.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Lullaby Chuck Palahniuk
Aside from not knowing how to pronounce this author's last name, reading this book was quick and easy (I read it in three days worth of bus rides to school and back). But just because it's an easy read doesn't mean it's not thought provoking.
Palahniuk wrote Fight Club which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. (If you haven't seen the movie, go see it - it combines the uncertainty of a Sixth Sense or the confusion of a Memento with the light hearted social critique/commentary of Trainspotting or The Big Lebowski.) The movies I choose as metaphors to describe Fight Club probably say something interesting about me, but I'd rather not psychoanalyze myself right now.
Anyway, Lullaby is about what it sounds like, a lullaby, but it's also about death, guilt, and the corruptive force of power as it affects a reporter, a real estate agent and a couple of vegan Wiccans. It begins with an unexpected twist, and shortly follows that up with an explanation of what the lullaby is all about. At this point, after only about 20 pages in, you begin to wonder what Palahniuk was thinking when he wrote the book since he seems to have thrown all the good stuff into the beginning. But it continues to mystify, and then reveal those mystifications at odd moment throughout the novel, with the final twist being held off until the last few pages.
If you're looking for a quick, easy summer read and something a little edgier than a romance, feel good story, or chick lit, this is a quick and dirty book I would recommend reading, particularly if you liked Fight Club or you're looking for something out of the ordinary.
Book club update: My tolerance for "ickiness" seems to be much higher than some of my book club members because the overwhelming response to this book was that there were some really despicable and graphically descriptive parts (despicable characters and a lot more description of dead/damaged bodies than some people cared for). I was the only one who found the main character, Streacher, interesting. Although I couldn't condone the character's behaviour, I could certainly understand it, and I think Palahniuk did a pretty good job getting into the mind of an uptight middle-aged man with an excessively large amount of emotional baggage. So a caveat to my sense of the book would be that if you don't like to hear icky descriptions of the body, don't read this book... though if you've seen Fight Club, you've already seen that kind of icky when Robert gets shot, or when Norton's character pulls out his tooth.
Palahniuk wrote Fight Club which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. (If you haven't seen the movie, go see it - it combines the uncertainty of a Sixth Sense or the confusion of a Memento with the light hearted social critique/commentary of Trainspotting or The Big Lebowski.) The movies I choose as metaphors to describe Fight Club probably say something interesting about me, but I'd rather not psychoanalyze myself right now.
Anyway, Lullaby is about what it sounds like, a lullaby, but it's also about death, guilt, and the corruptive force of power as it affects a reporter, a real estate agent and a couple of vegan Wiccans. It begins with an unexpected twist, and shortly follows that up with an explanation of what the lullaby is all about. At this point, after only about 20 pages in, you begin to wonder what Palahniuk was thinking when he wrote the book since he seems to have thrown all the good stuff into the beginning. But it continues to mystify, and then reveal those mystifications at odd moment throughout the novel, with the final twist being held off until the last few pages.
If you're looking for a quick, easy summer read and something a little edgier than a romance, feel good story, or chick lit, this is a quick and dirty book I would recommend reading, particularly if you liked Fight Club or you're looking for something out of the ordinary.
Book club update: My tolerance for "ickiness" seems to be much higher than some of my book club members because the overwhelming response to this book was that there were some really despicable and graphically descriptive parts (despicable characters and a lot more description of dead/damaged bodies than some people cared for). I was the only one who found the main character, Streacher, interesting. Although I couldn't condone the character's behaviour, I could certainly understand it, and I think Palahniuk did a pretty good job getting into the mind of an uptight middle-aged man with an excessively large amount of emotional baggage. So a caveat to my sense of the book would be that if you don't like to hear icky descriptions of the body, don't read this book... though if you've seen Fight Club, you've already seen that kind of icky when Robert gets shot, or when Norton's character pulls out his tooth.
Monday, May 03, 2004
Dracula - Bram Stoker
I'm still reading this book three weeks after I started it. [Ed: It actually took 4 months total to finish the book] Right now it's taking forever to get through it... mostly because there's a lot of other stuff that I must read (usually on a deadline), but part of it is becaues it's also a very long and very Victorian novel as well, which means it packs a lot of detail in - not descriptive detail, but detail of the sympathetic kind. By sympathetic detail, I'm referring to the literary identification of the relationship between characters in Victorian novels that is revealed not through their actions toward one another, but through their thoughts and refined sensibilities.
Dracula is narratively interesting from a structural point of view. It employs multiple narrators (which means if you gloss over the section headings, which I sometimes do, you can become very confused about who it is who's speaking), and it presents their narrative view through written texts, mostly journals and diaries, but newspaper accounts are also brought in at times.
There are only three primary journal writers in the text, so everything is from their point of view, though they also report second hand what other people say they have done or felt. These reports are in addition to their own reports, which leads one to trust these multiple narrators, particularly since they reinforce what other writers have narrated before (which also contributes to its 500 page length).
There are also situations where an alternate narrator fills in what the previous one could either not know, or might not be able to be honest about. In this case, the flitting between narrators increased verisimilitude and also narrator reliability - narratoring characters aren't required to step beyond the boundaries of their own experience and personality to relay information that might otherwise be difficult for that character to describe.
Dracula is narratively interesting from a structural point of view. It employs multiple narrators (which means if you gloss over the section headings, which I sometimes do, you can become very confused about who it is who's speaking), and it presents their narrative view through written texts, mostly journals and diaries, but newspaper accounts are also brought in at times.
There are only three primary journal writers in the text, so everything is from their point of view, though they also report second hand what other people say they have done or felt. These reports are in addition to their own reports, which leads one to trust these multiple narrators, particularly since they reinforce what other writers have narrated before (which also contributes to its 500 page length).
There are also situations where an alternate narrator fills in what the previous one could either not know, or might not be able to be honest about. In this case, the flitting between narrators increased verisimilitude and also narrator reliability - narratoring characters aren't required to step beyond the boundaries of their own experience and personality to relay information that might otherwise be difficult for that character to describe.