paired readings

[ursula]

jinian linked recently to kate_nepveu's Paired Readings Page; the conceit offers a (perhaps more concise?) way to organize my thoughts on certain novels.

Here, then, are two pairs of books which I admire but don't like.

Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
White Apples, Jonathan Carroll

Each of these books has a protagonist who sleeps with incredible numbers of women because of his deep appreciation for every individual; the beauties (even the intellectual beauties!) of these women are described in lyrical lists. Each protagonist also has a True Love, one particular person whom he is fated for. The fatefulness of this love must in some sense counterbalance the infidelities, the small lies and the larger ones.

In my reading, the balance failed. I was genuinely sorry that the heroine went on loving the hero. Kundera-- consummate stylist-- drew me along anyway, but Carroll grated often enough that I eventually stopped reading altogether. The telling moment, I think, was a conversation that the lovers in White Apples hold. "What do you want most in the world?" one asks, quite early in their acquaintance; and the other responds, "To be understood."

The hero (our viewpoint character) thinks this is intensely romantic, uncovers some deep truth. But instead I was intensely irritated. That's in part an allergy to cliches; but also, I think, the response uncovers a personal set of romantic ideals which are not at all aligned with the ideals of either novel. I don't want a lover who understands me on a mystical, cosmic level. I want a man who will be my friend in mundane ways, who will tell me the truth about everyday things such as whether he's slept with most of the city of Prague, and who will treat me like a rational human being.

The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
The Scar, China Miéville

Miéville has been justly praised for worldbuilding, but Franzen's St. Louis matches Miéville's floating city for detail so immediate that it leaves grit under your fingernails. I enjoyed each of these books a great deal until the very end-- I was eager to know what happened next-- and then when next did happen, I was frustrated and disappointed.

The plot of each book depends on a literal plot, put together by a woman with grand ambitions. This plotting drives the stories; our putative heroes and heroines don't even realize there is a plot for hundreds and hundreds of pages. These heroes are decent people-- not terribly imaginative or generous, but decent-- who are confused, misled, unhappy, a touch bitter. And meanwhile the plots grow tighter and tighter and more and disaster nearer and nearer--

And then things fizzle. The grand plots fail, but they fail as much through their own massive weight as from any effort of the heroes. And in the last shuddering moments of failure, characters whom we rather like die pointless deaths, deaths which are marked as Ironic with a capital I.

Both Franzen and Miéville seem to have intended a tragedy (Franzen's a tragedy in Death of a Salesman mode, while Miéville's more along the lines of Dickens; but tragedy either way). They don't produce tragedy, though. They produce anticlimax.

And in me, at least, they produced the sense that irony is more real to these writers than the characters themselves . . . That, even, the real goal was to jerk the reader around, on invisible puppet wires?

Comments

[stepleton.livejournal.com]

80% of The Twenty-Seventh City took place within walking distance of the house in Webster Groves where I grew up.

To be completely absolved of the responsibility of dreaming up the sights and sounds of a novel is a strange experience. Franzen may have described the city in detail, but the minute he mentioned the places, I knew what they looked like anyway.

Having said that, I found the writing and plot to be second-rate, so much so that Franzen's accomplishment of The Corrections (with some scenes also cherry-picked from suburban St. Louis) is for me a source of encouragement. The Corrections is another book that just kind-of ends in the same way you describe, except nobody dies a dramatic death.

[ursula]

I thought he had moments of truly spot-on characterization, though admittedly the best was the daughter's college list, which told you exactly what sort of student she was in about seven words.

[emsariel.livejournal.com]

Am I a Bad Geek for being frustrated with Neal Stephenson for exclusively writing books that just-end? He gets such wonderful stories going and then... boom! There's the last page, with perhaps a few pages of attempted closure.

[ursula]

No, I think everyone realizes that Stephenson sets up a bunch of cool things and then starts thinking, "Oh, crap, I only have fifty pages left-- must resolve-- ack!" Certain varieties of geek are happier than others to play with the shiny things along the way . . .

With Miéville, though, the problem was less that he needed another couple of drafts before deadline, and more that he had constructed a very tight plot with no room in it for the viewpoint character.

[glowing-fish.livejournal.com]

I read a book by Kundera. It seemed rather mediocre.
The language was interesting but it didn't actually go anywhere.

[reasie.livejournal.com]

This is why you so totally rock. I really enjoy your literary posts. :)

[reasie.livejournal.com]

and, incidentally, I haven't read ANY of those books. I am lame, lame lame! If I did a post like this... I'd have to come up with some lame connection between two of the five books I've read in the last decade...

[ursula]

Well, I read one of these books two years ago-- I am sometimes hampered in literary discussions by the fact that I retain intense opinions about books even after I've forgotten most of the plot, but at the moment it's coming in handy.

[betzle.livejournal.com]

The only one of these books I've read is Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is one of those books that I both love and hate at the same time. I enjoy the ways the words are used, but the plot and meaning of the whole thing makes me want to throw up and/or fall into a deep pit of anxiety so sneaky that it takes me a week to wonder why I haven't left the house. Ugh. I very much enjoy your literary posts as well.

[ursula]

Oh, good, I'm glad to know I'm not the only one to respond with strange uneasiness . . .

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Wow, what a great set of responses. I haven't read any of them, but I didn't like the Carroll I did read. Did you send them to Kate Nepveu? There are parallels that aren't solely detestation-based.

[ursula]

Indeed, I wish I did like China Miéville, as his settings are so fascinating.

I haven't passed these on to Kate, mostly from a sense of inertia.