The back cover of my edition of Moby-Dick declares that it is the greatest novel ever written by an American. After finishing it this afternoon, I don't think I would qualify to defend that statement. The first page and a half (which I reread to Dee today) immediately keeps the expectations pretty high, and all through the novel are wonderful metaphors and large-scale comparisons of almost everything to the whaling business (it seems to me that Moby-Dick is as much about writing as it is about anything else), but, my word! - how detailed a description, however poetic, do I really need of every part of a whaling ship? (The exclamation point in the last sentence was my own personal imitation of Melville's, or Ishmael's, enthusiastic writing style.)
There are sections of Moby-Dick that I loved. Two examples are the chapters named "Moby-Dick" and "Cistern and Buckets." The later chapters of the book, when we actually read about Captain Ahab's mad quest to kill the white whale, are also wonderful. But I confess to having lost interest many times along the way. I found that when I read very slowly, I enjoyed it more, because I could appreciate the metaphors and wordiness. But when I got tired of doing that (I could usually keep up the slow reading for several pages at a time) I just got frustrated by it.
I've spoken to three people in the last couple of weeks who have told me that they shared my experience to one degree or another. I'm glad I've read it, but the trouble was that from about halfway I was only really reading so that I could say I'd read it. I don't think it was a waste of time or anything, but I probably won't reread it, except for certain sections.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
When the 60s rock group The Band has been asked to explain their signature song, "The Weight,"
Robbie Robertson usually describes it as being about the impossibility of doing something good, or something like that. The narrator of the song is taking greetings from "Miss Fanny" to the town he's visiting, and everywhere he goes suffers for his willingness to do her that favour. Everyone wants a favour, and he suffers their requests one after the other until he's been loaded down with the weight that everyone puts on him.
Nathanael West's very short novel Miss Lonelyhearts reminded me of that song. The title character, a male who writes an advice column for a newspaper under the Lonelyhearts pseudonym, starts out mocking his correspondents, but eventually is overcome by an unbearable identification with their suffering. The novel depicts what happens when he tries to get involved and alleviate some of the suffering. It's not a pretty picture.
The idea is simple enough (and powerful as it is), but the book held my attention only partly because of the story. Interspersed throughout the narrative are transcripts of the letters he receives from readers, complete with grammatical errors and awful spelling. But these letters evince a naive desire for help arising from real trials, and they make it almost impossible not to identify with Miss Lonelyhearts' sympathy for his readers.
Things don't turn out well, and there is a cynicism about life that I don't really share, but as extreme as some of the situations and characters are in Miss Lonelyhearts it somehow gets at something of life that we all experience from time to time.
Robbie Robertson usually describes it as being about the impossibility of doing something good, or something like that. The narrator of the song is taking greetings from "Miss Fanny" to the town he's visiting, and everywhere he goes suffers for his willingness to do her that favour. Everyone wants a favour, and he suffers their requests one after the other until he's been loaded down with the weight that everyone puts on him.
Nathanael West's very short novel Miss Lonelyhearts reminded me of that song. The title character, a male who writes an advice column for a newspaper under the Lonelyhearts pseudonym, starts out mocking his correspondents, but eventually is overcome by an unbearable identification with their suffering. The novel depicts what happens when he tries to get involved and alleviate some of the suffering. It's not a pretty picture.
The idea is simple enough (and powerful as it is), but the book held my attention only partly because of the story. Interspersed throughout the narrative are transcripts of the letters he receives from readers, complete with grammatical errors and awful spelling. But these letters evince a naive desire for help arising from real trials, and they make it almost impossible not to identify with Miss Lonelyhearts' sympathy for his readers.
Things don't turn out well, and there is a cynicism about life that I don't really share, but as extreme as some of the situations and characters are in Miss Lonelyhearts it somehow gets at something of life that we all experience from time to time.
Friday, January 4, 2008
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Between his winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year, Oprah's surprising choice of The Road for her book club, the "exclusive interviews" with the press-shy author, and the current critical acclaim for the Coen Brothers' adaptation of his previous novel No Country for Old Men, I became quite curious about Cormac McCarthy late in 2007. I didn't know much about him before, and I suppose I still don't, but I read The Road just before Christmas, and it was an unforgettable experience.
The book is about a man and his young son walking along a road trying to get to the coast of a literally burned America. It is so bleak at times that you wonder if there can be any light coming at all, but just at those darkest moments there is some small but shimmering beauty seen in an event along the way, like the part when the man (the characters are never given names) finds a can of Coke among the ruins of an old pop machine and gives it to his son who has never tasted a Coke before and doesn't even know what it is. "It's really good," the boy says, and the father simply answers, "Yes, it is." Those moments happen more than you might expect in this novel. The reader starts to be faced with the question of what is really necessary for one to have in life, and to learn the importance of appreciating what he has. The man and his boy have nothing but an old shopping cart, which they fill with whatever food and clothing they can find along the way. Ash is everywhere. The man is losing hope, facing death, and finding it harder and harder to be good, while the boy is all hope and idealism and desperately wants to be reassured that they are still "the good guys."
McCarthy is famous for his style of punctuation, which is to say, his lack of punctuation. He's not very fond of commas, never uses a semi-colon, and doesn't employ quotation marks to identify speech. He claims that if you write well, the page doesn't need to be cluttered with all kinds of squiggly little marks. It's surprising at first, but very easy to follow. He is also well-known for using a fair bit of archaic language, and I'll admit that the words on the page in The Road often pointed out the limits of my own vocabulary. That's not his fault, though.
It's a great book (and a fairly quick read, too), and it made me want to read more of his works soon, so I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian in the next month or so and then starting on the Border trilogy soon after.
The book is about a man and his young son walking along a road trying to get to the coast of a literally burned America. It is so bleak at times that you wonder if there can be any light coming at all, but just at those darkest moments there is some small but shimmering beauty seen in an event along the way, like the part when the man (the characters are never given names) finds a can of Coke among the ruins of an old pop machine and gives it to his son who has never tasted a Coke before and doesn't even know what it is. "It's really good," the boy says, and the father simply answers, "Yes, it is." Those moments happen more than you might expect in this novel. The reader starts to be faced with the question of what is really necessary for one to have in life, and to learn the importance of appreciating what he has. The man and his boy have nothing but an old shopping cart, which they fill with whatever food and clothing they can find along the way. Ash is everywhere. The man is losing hope, facing death, and finding it harder and harder to be good, while the boy is all hope and idealism and desperately wants to be reassured that they are still "the good guys."
McCarthy is famous for his style of punctuation, which is to say, his lack of punctuation. He's not very fond of commas, never uses a semi-colon, and doesn't employ quotation marks to identify speech. He claims that if you write well, the page doesn't need to be cluttered with all kinds of squiggly little marks. It's surprising at first, but very easy to follow. He is also well-known for using a fair bit of archaic language, and I'll admit that the words on the page in The Road often pointed out the limits of my own vocabulary. That's not his fault, though.
It's a great book (and a fairly quick read, too), and it made me want to read more of his works soon, so I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian in the next month or so and then starting on the Border trilogy soon after.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
I read Bleak House from the end of November to the middle of December, and it was the longest book I had ever read. Over the past year and a half I had read a few of Dickens' shorter novels. Twice in the past year I had gotten halfway through a longer novel and given up for one reason or another - this happened with both Dombey and Son and David Copperfield. I had been enjoying both of them, but was probably reading too sporadically or something, and felt as if it would take forever to get through them.
When I started Bleak House, I wondered if I was being foolish - finish what you've already started! Don't add another long Dickens novel to your list of half-finished reads! Maybe I'm starting to grow up, or am just becoming a better reader, but this time I read steadily through it over three or four weeks, and by the end found myself hooked completely, reading the final two hundred pages in two days.
I learned a little something about reading longer novels as I read Bleak House. Novel reading must be done with trust - trust in the story, in the development of characters, and in the author's plan for unfolding the whole thing. The introduction of new characters several hundred pages in could be frustrating for a reader, but if you trust that the author knows what he or she is doing, and how everything fits together, it's easier to find your way into the novel. That trust may be misplaced when reading some authors, but without that trust the great ones could all become those abandoned books still sitting on the shelf years after beginning.
Bleak House itself is full of wonderful people, from the three Jarndyce wards to the almost impossibly good John Jarndyce, from the admirable Sergeant George to the laughable but lovable Mr. Guppy. As I read Guppy's last appearance in the novel, I laughed and laughed out loud, unable to remember that with a sleeping baby upstairs it might be in my best interests to keep quiet! And all that is not even to mention the fascinating Lady Dedlock.
Among many perceptive and wise moments in the novel, my favorite passage came late in the book when Esther and Ada discuss Richard's steady decline. As his hopes turn into an obsession, Esther comments: "There is a ruin of youth which is not like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away." How many people have I known whose faces show the wear of years their bodies have not yet lived through?
All 989 pages of Bleak House were worth the time it took, and I feel like I'm now able to read longer books without fear.
In December, Dee and I watched the BBC miniseries of the novel, starring Gillian Anderson, and although it (even at 8 hours) has to trim events and characters from the story, it's really great too.
When I started Bleak House, I wondered if I was being foolish - finish what you've already started! Don't add another long Dickens novel to your list of half-finished reads! Maybe I'm starting to grow up, or am just becoming a better reader, but this time I read steadily through it over three or four weeks, and by the end found myself hooked completely, reading the final two hundred pages in two days.
I learned a little something about reading longer novels as I read Bleak House. Novel reading must be done with trust - trust in the story, in the development of characters, and in the author's plan for unfolding the whole thing. The introduction of new characters several hundred pages in could be frustrating for a reader, but if you trust that the author knows what he or she is doing, and how everything fits together, it's easier to find your way into the novel. That trust may be misplaced when reading some authors, but without that trust the great ones could all become those abandoned books still sitting on the shelf years after beginning.
Bleak House itself is full of wonderful people, from the three Jarndyce wards to the almost impossibly good John Jarndyce, from the admirable Sergeant George to the laughable but lovable Mr. Guppy. As I read Guppy's last appearance in the novel, I laughed and laughed out loud, unable to remember that with a sleeping baby upstairs it might be in my best interests to keep quiet! And all that is not even to mention the fascinating Lady Dedlock.
Among many perceptive and wise moments in the novel, my favorite passage came late in the book when Esther and Ada discuss Richard's steady decline. As his hopes turn into an obsession, Esther comments: "There is a ruin of youth which is not like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty had all fallen away." How many people have I known whose faces show the wear of years their bodies have not yet lived through?
All 989 pages of Bleak House were worth the time it took, and I feel like I'm now able to read longer books without fear.
In December, Dee and I watched the BBC miniseries of the novel, starring Gillian Anderson, and although it (even at 8 hours) has to trim events and characters from the story, it's really great too.
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