we lift our hands and pray over your body but nothing ever happens
Happy 2010! I haven't quite gotten my New Year's resolutions worked out yet, though I've been asked about them repeatedly. I would, however, like to use my LJ more, since I accidentally renewed my paid account in November (meant to turn automatic payments off and did not)!
I was with old friends over New Year's, in the city where we all studied, which was lovely. We watched firecrackers go off in the streets and danced until five in the morning and staggered out of bed in search of Chinese food in the morning which was, alas, nowhere to be found. After that we lounged in bed and quasi-napped and I, in the process, finished reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
I went into that book completely unspoiled save for the blurbs just inside the cover, and I really think that's important for this book, being as unspoiled as possible. N.B.: I would not really recommend reading the blurbs. The blurbs speak very highly of the book, obviously, but they also told me more than I would have really wanted to know, going in -- even though the prologue is a huge ol' chunk of foreshadowing itself, the reviews give it a little too much color.
Having said that, I know how I feel about spoilers, which is that I HATE them a whole lot for things I am really invested in (I was invested in this book from the moment I opened it, which is a very high rec right there), but I know not everyone is like that. I already spoiled walkawayslowly (who would have been pretty pissed had she not known the spoilers I gave her) and one of my RL friends massively for Edgar Sawtelle. I can say, without spoilers, that David Wroblewski's prose is beautiful, and that that level of richness is what I aspire to.
Spoilery from here on out.
Having said all that, I was so, so disappointed in what he chose to focus on in the ending. I know we had hints of tragedy throughout, and those damned blurbs at the front of the book had me forewarned that I was getting into a modern retelling of Hamlet, though I did my best to put them out of my mind. But the thing is, Edgar Sawtelle's strengths had shit nothing to do with Hamlet. In fact, the first time I felt really thrown out of the narrative was when the ghost of Edgar's father appeared in the barn. I was incredibly relieved when the story returned to what it had been doing so well all along -- being a story about an intensely insular family, Wisconsin, and a bunch of remarkable dogs -- and damned pissed off about the last seventy-five pages or so of the story.
It felt to me that there were two novels going on here. On the one hand, there was the novel Wroblewski wrote, which was fantastic and beautiful and rich. On the other hand, there was the novel Wroblewski wanted this to be, which was a Wisconsin retelling of Hamlet, plus dogs and some details and, you know, stuff, and in the last seventy-five pages, Wroblewski sped the pace up madly from where it had been throughout the rest of the book, made Claude ridiculously, unbelievably evil (and not evil where you sit there HATING him, because I can really get behind a character who makes me want to SCREAM for the injustice of how they treat a character I empathize with; but evil where I sat back from the book and went, "That just cannot even be happening, nobody actually acts that way," which I cannot get behind at all, because I'm thrown right out of the story again) and then finally, Wroblewski shoveled the novel he had into the wheelbarrow he wanted it to fit into, made Trudy weak and useless (the woman, how FITTING.), and sent the most WORTHY of the dogs off to live in a wilderness utopia where they will, presumably, all mate with Forte and create the master race of creatures.
Haha! I'm just a little bitter.
Here's the thing. All the reviewers are sitting there eating the Hamlet shit up with a spoon! BUT IT IS NOT GOOD. There is no part of the high tragedy bullshit that is good. About two sentences in to this novel I knew that I was going to love it, that its language was going to curl around me like, yes, one of those extremely magnificent Sawtelle dogs and that I was going to carry it everywhere with me and read it at all the moments I could and never be apart from it for an instant. And you know what, the language, the writing itself, really is that good. Sentence for sentence, it is truly that wonderful. And funny! And damned inventive! And I absolutely despise that it fucked with me so thoroughly.
The line where Trudy's thinking about Edgar's feelings about Gar's death, thinking about how they were never going to have what they had had before, because what they had had with Gar had been the golden thing, the perfect life that only came once and never again -- that line made me gasp with how wonderful and bittersweet it was, and that's kind of how I feel about this book, except also ANGRY, because it could have been right up there, you know? It had a nice place on my favorites list all warmed up for it, and I absolutely ache for what could have been, with this book. It's a damned shame.
I already gave this rec to walkawayslowly, but if you're looking for a book that is really fantastically well-written and also WILL NOT FUCK WITH YOU LIKE THAT, read The Gathering by Anne Enright. It's about an Irish family coming together for a wake, which sounds morbid and shit, but believe me when I say it's great.
I was with old friends over New Year's, in the city where we all studied, which was lovely. We watched firecrackers go off in the streets and danced until five in the morning and staggered out of bed in search of Chinese food in the morning which was, alas, nowhere to be found. After that we lounged in bed and quasi-napped and I, in the process, finished reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
I went into that book completely unspoiled save for the blurbs just inside the cover, and I really think that's important for this book, being as unspoiled as possible. N.B.: I would not really recommend reading the blurbs. The blurbs speak very highly of the book, obviously, but they also told me more than I would have really wanted to know, going in -- even though the prologue is a huge ol' chunk of foreshadowing itself, the reviews give it a little too much color.
Having said that, I know how I feel about spoilers, which is that I HATE them a whole lot for things I am really invested in (I was invested in this book from the moment I opened it, which is a very high rec right there), but I know not everyone is like that. I already spoiled walkawayslowly (who would have been pretty pissed had she not known the spoilers I gave her) and one of my RL friends massively for Edgar Sawtelle. I can say, without spoilers, that David Wroblewski's prose is beautiful, and that that level of richness is what I aspire to.
Spoilery from here on out.
Having said all that, I was so, so disappointed in what he chose to focus on in the ending. I know we had hints of tragedy throughout, and those damned blurbs at the front of the book had me forewarned that I was getting into a modern retelling of Hamlet, though I did my best to put them out of my mind. But the thing is, Edgar Sawtelle's strengths had shit nothing to do with Hamlet. In fact, the first time I felt really thrown out of the narrative was when the ghost of Edgar's father appeared in the barn. I was incredibly relieved when the story returned to what it had been doing so well all along -- being a story about an intensely insular family, Wisconsin, and a bunch of remarkable dogs -- and damned pissed off about the last seventy-five pages or so of the story.
It felt to me that there were two novels going on here. On the one hand, there was the novel Wroblewski wrote, which was fantastic and beautiful and rich. On the other hand, there was the novel Wroblewski wanted this to be, which was a Wisconsin retelling of Hamlet, plus dogs and some details and, you know, stuff, and in the last seventy-five pages, Wroblewski sped the pace up madly from where it had been throughout the rest of the book, made Claude ridiculously, unbelievably evil (and not evil where you sit there HATING him, because I can really get behind a character who makes me want to SCREAM for the injustice of how they treat a character I empathize with; but evil where I sat back from the book and went, "That just cannot even be happening, nobody actually acts that way," which I cannot get behind at all, because I'm thrown right out of the story again) and then finally, Wroblewski shoveled the novel he had into the wheelbarrow he wanted it to fit into, made Trudy weak and useless (the woman, how FITTING.), and sent the most WORTHY of the dogs off to live in a wilderness utopia where they will, presumably, all mate with Forte and create the master race of creatures.
Haha! I'm just a little bitter.
Here's the thing. All the reviewers are sitting there eating the Hamlet shit up with a spoon! BUT IT IS NOT GOOD. There is no part of the high tragedy bullshit that is good. About two sentences in to this novel I knew that I was going to love it, that its language was going to curl around me like, yes, one of those extremely magnificent Sawtelle dogs and that I was going to carry it everywhere with me and read it at all the moments I could and never be apart from it for an instant. And you know what, the language, the writing itself, really is that good. Sentence for sentence, it is truly that wonderful. And funny! And damned inventive! And I absolutely despise that it fucked with me so thoroughly.
The line where Trudy's thinking about Edgar's feelings about Gar's death, thinking about how they were never going to have what they had had before, because what they had had with Gar had been the golden thing, the perfect life that only came once and never again -- that line made me gasp with how wonderful and bittersweet it was, and that's kind of how I feel about this book, except also ANGRY, because it could have been right up there, you know? It had a nice place on my favorites list all warmed up for it, and I absolutely ache for what could have been, with this book. It's a damned shame.
I already gave this rec to walkawayslowly, but if you're looking for a book that is really fantastically well-written and also WILL NOT FUCK WITH YOU LIKE THAT, read The Gathering by Anne Enright. It's about an Irish family coming together for a wake, which sounds morbid and shit, but believe me when I say it's great.