Chapter 8 of The Aphanes completed
Chapter 8, Blackburn Hamlet, is done. (Read from the beginning)
Also, I just finished reading Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers. The good news: it can still provoke a reaction, after 40 years, and it is readable. Not every hippy po-mo novel can say that for itself. The bad news: F. still comes off as a disgusting, inconsistent bully. And he's your hero. I found the unnamed narrator much more sympathetic, at least until the end when Cohen decided to make him a pedophile. WTF, Leonard? No. Just -- no.
The Kateri Tekakwitha plot is intriguing, though, and Cohen does produce real insight with it (particularly the Mohawk journey of the dead). The separatiste plot feels more tacked on, less honest. I didn't even realise the characters were supposed to be French themselves until halfway through. (This is one pitfall of not naming your characters.) The truest moment in it is when F. confesses that he envied his friend, who understood suffering, who had power in his weakness. That's a Canadian literature moment.
But I confess that I'm still amazed and delighted when I read about someplace I've been. Rue Ste-Catherine! Kahnawake! It almost makes up for the line where F. praises the rape of a 13-year-old girl. Almost.
Also, I just finished reading Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers. The good news: it can still provoke a reaction, after 40 years, and it is readable. Not every hippy po-mo novel can say that for itself. The bad news: F. still comes off as a disgusting, inconsistent bully. And he's your hero. I found the unnamed narrator much more sympathetic, at least until the end when Cohen decided to make him a pedophile. WTF, Leonard? No. Just -- no.
The Kateri Tekakwitha plot is intriguing, though, and Cohen does produce real insight with it (particularly the Mohawk journey of the dead). The separatiste plot feels more tacked on, less honest. I didn't even realise the characters were supposed to be French themselves until halfway through. (This is one pitfall of not naming your characters.) The truest moment in it is when F. confesses that he envied his friend, who understood suffering, who had power in his weakness. That's a Canadian literature moment.
But I confess that I'm still amazed and delighted when I read about someplace I've been. Rue Ste-Catherine! Kahnawake! It almost makes up for the line where F. praises the rape of a 13-year-old girl. Almost.