I recently finished reading Atonement by Ian McEwan, a gift from a professor (many thanks, Dr. Allison), given with the promise that (is it ever not true?) the book was much better than the movie. I haven’t seen the movie, and having read its better origin, I am none too enticed to see it.
I enjoyed the book—I read it rapaciously, in two days time (and without staying up until the quietest hours to do so), but I have to admit that the first book—it is split into three books—was by far my favorite, and the latter two thirds were a bit disappointing.
Before going any further, it should be said that McEwan is a terrifically talented writer. He turned phrases that made me want to vomit, they were so beautiful. (Is that professional jealous? Perhaps. Intimidation? Most certainly.) His phrasing, his manner of painting a setting, and his characterization were all immensely enjoyable.
That being said, the book weighed uneven to me. The first third, in my reading of it, focused on a few simple tasks: introducing the characters, the setting, and developing the characters as a means to slowly move the plot. The language sprawled from chapter to chapter, and worked to add its depth within the context of the everyday. It was, simply, life. The latter portion focused more on events, it seemed, then characters, whose characterization seemed fairly static once Book II started. It focuses on World War II, a soldier’s experience and a nurse’s experience, and tries to encapsulate the horror of war, the tension of the times, the shame of retreat—and all within the framework it set in Book I. Certainly a daunting task, and one that is so major that the everyday realism of the characters was lost in the scope of major events. It was like the book started to be about people and life, and ended about events.
Perhaps it is just personal bias, but I have long felt that the most important parts of literature are the language and the characters. If the language paints a clear picture and the characters are real, and elicit emotion (positive or negative, or most likely positive and negative) I think the plot will come.
Maybe I’m wrong. I’m certainly no expert, and this blog is the closest I have come so far to publication, but that’s the part that I enjoyed the most, and the part I enjoy creating the most. We’ll see where it takes me.
Probably worth saying, too, as a disclaimer: For those who haven’t read it or seen the movie, Atonement is not a book for kids. Maybe not high schoolers either.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Book one complete: Family and the Santuzzus
I finished Ardizzone’s Satutzzu a few days ago, and while I’ve already reflected on most of what it meant to me—to be honest, for much if it I was too distracted with the how of the reading that the distilled what of the story was a bit lost. What I gathered, though, is it is a celebration of family.
Family isn’t an easy concept or an easy entity in our society. It’s hard to get my fingers around what a family is, or even what a family is supposed to be. Like so many of my generation, I am the product of divorcees, who are themselves products of divorcees. In fact, I know of one couple in all of my extended family who has had an enduring marriage.
Which is okay, because that doesn’t make us any less family. The Santuzzu family had their problems—separated by thousands of miles, separated emotionally and physically for a big section of their lives, in the end what mattered was family and one another. And my family, too, is separated by hurt, by psychological reactions to what’s happened in our lives, and I think maybe most of all by our respective searches for identity and self. And just like, whether in grief or in jubilation, the Santuzzus were still bound by mutual love and belongingness, so are the Eckhardts, so am I. And wherever I go searching for who I am and what I am meant to be, I am still bound by what my family is—I am an Eckhardt, complete with our traditions, our mythologies, and the string of love that ties them together.
Family isn’t an easy concept or an easy entity in our society. It’s hard to get my fingers around what a family is, or even what a family is supposed to be. Like so many of my generation, I am the product of divorcees, who are themselves products of divorcees. In fact, I know of one couple in all of my extended family who has had an enduring marriage.
Which is okay, because that doesn’t make us any less family. The Santuzzu family had their problems—separated by thousands of miles, separated emotionally and physically for a big section of their lives, in the end what mattered was family and one another. And my family, too, is separated by hurt, by psychological reactions to what’s happened in our lives, and I think maybe most of all by our respective searches for identity and self. And just like, whether in grief or in jubilation, the Santuzzus were still bound by mutual love and belongingness, so are the Eckhardts, so am I. And wherever I go searching for who I am and what I am meant to be, I am still bound by what my family is—I am an Eckhardt, complete with our traditions, our mythologies, and the string of love that ties them together.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Falling in Step with Literature
I have about 70 pages left in the book I’m reading—In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu by Tony Ardizzone. It’s been an odd reading experience; I sailed through the first 90 pages, then trudged through the next 100 or so, and now am sailing again. Of course, it’s fair to disclaim my reading with the fact that I was turning in graduate school applications in that middle section of it.
That small caveat being what it is, I’ve never let responsibilities (work, sleep, eating, etc) distract me from a book that I’m heavily invested in. In fact, right now, my eyes and fingers are itching to get back at their work. But I think last night’s epiphany is worth documenting before I move forward. It is the progression of a reader contrasted with the progression of a book, and an important look at the delicate dance that both the book and the reader have to give themselves to.
When I first began the book, I enjoyed what I was digging into. It is well written, with poetic language and a real “storytelling” vibe. I also was stuck for a few hours doing nothing in the emergency room, so that helped motivate my reading. Then I stalled—the novel wasn’t exactly what I expected. I like experimental writing, I generally enjoy a book that jumps perspectives (if nothing else, I admire how one writer can capture multiple voices within one work), but something about this bogged me down. It was hard to read the book—which melds a realistic story of an immigrant family with a familial mythology, each chapter “told” by a different family member—because the interjection of mythology made it hard to cleanly follow the characters and their unraveling “real” stories. Realistic fiction is what I particularly enjoy, so while mythology is fun, I found it distracting.
Last night, though, I was able to shift my perspective, and it is amazing how easily a book can shift from tiresome to engrossing. Because I realized what this book is, and how to read it: it isn’t a novel, despite the stamp on the cover. It is a series of short stories, anecdotes, engaging tales told over a dinner of fresh sweet bread, minestrone soup, and a pasta whose name I likely can’t pronounce. While the ribbon of continuity is there, I was spending so much mental energy attempting to follow it rather than enjoy the individuality of each story. And the truth is, as I’ve relaxed my hold on the story as a whole, each anecdote has been easier to follow and insert into the weave of the “novel” in its entirety.
And so the book has changed. It is no longer a frustrating task I am trying to firmly hold, chart, and analyze, but it is a dinner amongst friends, whose stories elicit rolling laughter or heartbroken, sometimes bitter, tears. I knew from the beginning that the book was well written, and I have long held that any story, if it is well-written enough, should be enjoyable. So the stymieing effect this novel had on me was particularly unsettling; it assaulted my most basic philosophies of good literature. Instead, though, it just took work to shift my perspectives, and hammered home how much of the relationship of reader to novel really forms what the novel is. It is a dance, and I had to learn to follow the books’ steps before I could appreciate the tone, rhythm, and beat of the music.
That small caveat being what it is, I’ve never let responsibilities (work, sleep, eating, etc) distract me from a book that I’m heavily invested in. In fact, right now, my eyes and fingers are itching to get back at their work. But I think last night’s epiphany is worth documenting before I move forward. It is the progression of a reader contrasted with the progression of a book, and an important look at the delicate dance that both the book and the reader have to give themselves to.
When I first began the book, I enjoyed what I was digging into. It is well written, with poetic language and a real “storytelling” vibe. I also was stuck for a few hours doing nothing in the emergency room, so that helped motivate my reading. Then I stalled—the novel wasn’t exactly what I expected. I like experimental writing, I generally enjoy a book that jumps perspectives (if nothing else, I admire how one writer can capture multiple voices within one work), but something about this bogged me down. It was hard to read the book—which melds a realistic story of an immigrant family with a familial mythology, each chapter “told” by a different family member—because the interjection of mythology made it hard to cleanly follow the characters and their unraveling “real” stories. Realistic fiction is what I particularly enjoy, so while mythology is fun, I found it distracting.
Last night, though, I was able to shift my perspective, and it is amazing how easily a book can shift from tiresome to engrossing. Because I realized what this book is, and how to read it: it isn’t a novel, despite the stamp on the cover. It is a series of short stories, anecdotes, engaging tales told over a dinner of fresh sweet bread, minestrone soup, and a pasta whose name I likely can’t pronounce. While the ribbon of continuity is there, I was spending so much mental energy attempting to follow it rather than enjoy the individuality of each story. And the truth is, as I’ve relaxed my hold on the story as a whole, each anecdote has been easier to follow and insert into the weave of the “novel” in its entirety.
And so the book has changed. It is no longer a frustrating task I am trying to firmly hold, chart, and analyze, but it is a dinner amongst friends, whose stories elicit rolling laughter or heartbroken, sometimes bitter, tears. I knew from the beginning that the book was well written, and I have long held that any story, if it is well-written enough, should be enjoyable. So the stymieing effect this novel had on me was particularly unsettling; it assaulted my most basic philosophies of good literature. Instead, though, it just took work to shift my perspectives, and hammered home how much of the relationship of reader to novel really forms what the novel is. It is a dance, and I had to learn to follow the books’ steps before I could appreciate the tone, rhythm, and beat of the music.
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