Close Eye
I read a book last week. That shouldn't surprise any of you, given how I'll read just about anything that's printed (or electronic). But this book was...not a classic or anything, but a proper, literary modern novel. The kind of thing we would have read in Jeff Abernathy's class (he is no longer at IC, or in the classroom, so I feel like I can use his real name). I hadn't realized how much I'd missed "real" reading.
I mean, I read a couple of magazines and several books a week, plus newspapers. (Do NOT tell anyone here, mmkay?) Some of those books are good...Gilead, the Penelopiad, The Time Traveler's Wife all come to mind. A lot of them, though, are not-terribly-complicated fiction that I read for the story. (Ayelet Waldman's new novel, for example. The characters were two-dimensional at best, everything was a cliche, but it was 200 pages of "oh no she di-int" and "what a psycho ho's beast!" Amusing. Not enriching, but no worse than the WB). As you'll notice from that list, though, most of my "good current fiction" is by women, features strong female characters, and is about relationships between individuals. It's like always eating brussels sprouts. Strangely, my "good books" tend to be pretty serious, unlike my fluffy stuff.
The book I read last week was very much a comic "man-versus-society" conflict. As I read, I kept asking myself things like "Okay, why does it matter that the guy can't have a good pee?" (I almost abandoned the book thinking I was dealing with another John Updike, infatuated with his own cock.) The thing is, it did matter, both as symbolic of some of the character's other traits (which the author did show, and well) and as a setup to a marvelously pivotal scene. The stupid, trite subplot I expected, thanks to my diet of crap, never materialized; the same clues yielded a far more storyworthy turn of events. Each character was necessary and believable (which is not the same as likeable--that's a post I'll get to some other time). There were moments when I wondered, "Why are you telling me this?" That happends a lot in crap novels--the answer is usually, "Because it amuses the author." This time, there was a payoff for each of those moments...one which was surprising but completely plausible.
This isn't necessarily a recommendation of the book. You might have to be familiar with academic circles to appreciate it the way I did (the place is eeriely similar to the Apple Butter Inn campus, which was another hook). More than liking the book itself, I liked the experience of reading closely, of being rewarded for investing in the story. Back when I was an English major, I had to think about the crafting of a piece as much as the plot (thank goodness; in a plot-only world I'd have majored in accounting). I'll be using my mind that way more often, in about four days.
I mean, I read a couple of magazines and several books a week, plus newspapers. (Do NOT tell anyone here, mmkay?) Some of those books are good...Gilead, the Penelopiad, The Time Traveler's Wife all come to mind. A lot of them, though, are not-terribly-complicated fiction that I read for the story. (Ayelet Waldman's new novel, for example. The characters were two-dimensional at best, everything was a cliche, but it was 200 pages of "oh no she di-int" and "what a psycho ho's beast!" Amusing. Not enriching, but no worse than the WB). As you'll notice from that list, though, most of my "good current fiction" is by women, features strong female characters, and is about relationships between individuals. It's like always eating brussels sprouts. Strangely, my "good books" tend to be pretty serious, unlike my fluffy stuff.
The book I read last week was very much a comic "man-versus-society" conflict. As I read, I kept asking myself things like "Okay, why does it matter that the guy can't have a good pee?" (I almost abandoned the book thinking I was dealing with another John Updike, infatuated with his own cock.) The thing is, it did matter, both as symbolic of some of the character's other traits (which the author did show, and well) and as a setup to a marvelously pivotal scene. The stupid, trite subplot I expected, thanks to my diet of crap, never materialized; the same clues yielded a far more storyworthy turn of events. Each character was necessary and believable (which is not the same as likeable--that's a post I'll get to some other time). There were moments when I wondered, "Why are you telling me this?" That happends a lot in crap novels--the answer is usually, "Because it amuses the author." This time, there was a payoff for each of those moments...one which was surprising but completely plausible.
This isn't necessarily a recommendation of the book. You might have to be familiar with academic circles to appreciate it the way I did (the place is eeriely similar to the Apple Butter Inn campus, which was another hook). More than liking the book itself, I liked the experience of reading closely, of being rewarded for investing in the story. Back when I was an English major, I had to think about the crafting of a piece as much as the plot (thank goodness; in a plot-only world I'd have majored in accounting). I'll be using my mind that way more often, in about four days.