It Was Seven Minutes After Midnight
I have just uncovered a vast conspiracy. Remember all those books we had to read in high school English classes? Sometimes they didn’t make sense and when we asked why, we’d be told that the novel was stream-of-consciousness writing and an unreliable narrator, and James Joyce was BRILLIANT and obviously if we didn’t think so, it was our failing as a teenage English student.
Well, it turns out that not all stream-of-consciousness writing is miserable allusions to Irish politics. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is the journal of Christopher Boone, a teenage boy with high-functioning autism, or Asperger’s syndrome. Not that he ever states that — Christopher is the most unreliable narrator imaginable. He tells readers what he considers important, when he thinks of it, with little asides for number problems or mention that he needed to “do groaning” until he felt better.
The chapters are headed by prime numbers, and in case you’ve forgotten about those, Christopher tells you how to find them. His method is to write down every number in the world and then cross off the multiples of two, of three, of four, of five, etc. until you have only the prime numbers left.
Thoughout the novel, Christopher is constantly conscious that he is writing a book. Some find this hard to accept in fiction, but I like when the person telling you a story knows it’s a story. Much better than a creepy omniscent narrator who goes head-hopping.
The actual plot is secondary to the amazing narration, and hinges on a few dramatic events — so dramatic that they are soap-opera staples. You’ll only notice this later, since Haddon’s narrator makes the most monumental events extremely believable. I don’t want to give away any more, so here’s the opening:
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.
Final rating: As good as Morrowind.
Alas, Babylon
The other day, Stick lent me Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. I’m not sure whether Stick remembered my penchant for post-apocalyptic novels, or if he just wanted me to stop kibbutzing his WarCraft game.
Alas, Babylon is yet another post-apocalyptic novel, written in 1959. Frank writes like he’s a military technical writer. (Stick: That’s because he is, Meggy) There is absolutely no metaphor in the descriptions. Nothing is “blue as the ocean”, it’s just blue. (If Frank were writing it today, he would have included the HTML color number) It’s not a “flowery description” unless the character in question is talking about horticulture. This is strangely effective because the author doesn’t give way to anything wild and crazy like a creative turn of phrase, but writes about nuclear holocaust as if it’s a trip to the store for lightbulbs, razor blades and soap.
Also, Frank has a weird fixation for listing things in threes, which Stick claims not to have noticed, but admits is direct military training (consider duty, honor and country, life, liberty and property and, blame my hippie parents, I can’t think of another one!).
But his dialogue is brilliant. His characters see nuclear war and the fall of civilization, and you suspend your disbelief because you don’t — even for a second — doubt what they’re saying.
Unfortunately, the author falls prey to Heinlein feminism. Heinlein feminism is best summed up when Mark tells his fiance “Darling, you are my right arm. Where I goeth you can go — up to a point” (pg 242) It’s when the protagonist pays lip service to the amazing strength of women, he doesn’t know where he’d be without them, etc., etc., but when there’s plot to be done, all the female characters are either swapping catty gossip or having hysterics.
I’m actually ok with dividing chores along the traditional gender roles because I don’t see one set of work as having any more inherent value than another. But even as the post-apolcalyptic horror puts an end to most of the race-assigned roles (and Frank espouses some pretty shocking ideas about racial equality), gender roles are competely inflexible, and they stay rigid even in the face of starvation. Which actually says quite a lot about race and sex in 1959.
Anyway, I’m glad I read it because it gave me and Stick something else about which to argue. He disagreed with almost everything I thought was important, which is typical of another round in the Stick Vs. Meg gender roles debate.
…but I can’t complain too much because he’s way too good at cleaning, laundry and bedmaking.
Reading Lists for Grownups
A few years after I left college, I began to realize that there was a lot of literature I hadn’t read. (I still haven’t read a lot of good stuff that everyone reads, like anything by Mark Twain or Charles Dickens.) I decided I wanted to do something about it by giving myself reading assignments.
I decided to start with American literature. Being an aspiring novelist myself, I thought it would help me to know what great works had been written in my own country. So I started reading all the books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. (You can find the list by clicking on this link, clicking on archive and selecting fiction under the category search. Before 1948, the category was called novel, so you’ll have to do a separate search for that.)
It took me about two years to read all the books, and I just finished last year’s winner, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, last weekend.
Reading these books taught me a lot about what passes for great at different times. Some of the books are truly wonderful, like The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. Some are truly dreadful, like Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (which I swear is a romance novel masquerading as literature) and A Fable by William Faulkner (which I’m pretty sure was given out of sympathy).
I learned that great characters make a book memorable much more than the plot. Think Confederacy of Dunces, The Shipping News, The Old Man and the Sea. Mostly I just got to read some really great books.
I’d love to have time to read the books that have won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and, of course, some international awards like the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. I’d also love to read some of the books by the Nobel winners, when they have been translated or were written in English.
If there’s a kind of book you love, odds are you can find an award that is given to the best of them. I’ve seen awards for mystery, science fiction, gay and lesbian fiction, romance and many more genres. Seek out a list of great books and read them all. You’ll be greatly entertained and you just might learn something about what makes a book good.
5 Fantastic Fiction Books
I read as much and as often as possible — ficiton, nonfiction, magazines, newspapers, cereal boxes… anything with words, really. And usually when I’m done reading something (usually some sort of book), I’ll write a quick review I can refer to later, to jog my memory.
As I was skimming through the reviews of the past year or so, I noticed that these five fiction books really stood out from the rest:
Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
(published in 1994)
Proulx was making headlines long before the Brokeback hooplah had started up — The Shipping News won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1994. The characters in this book were quirky and wonderful, and I loved the maritime-themed scenes. This is the best book I’ve read in a long time.
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
(published in 1925)
I avoided Lewis after Babbitt, so unfortunately I didn’t get to Arrowsmith until years later (after forgetting why I’d reacted so strongly to Babbitt in the first place). I’m glad I finally read it. The conflicted main character, Dr. Martin Arrowsmith, is torn: he loves scientific research and loathes commercialism, yet he can make more money treating patients than he can slaving over test tubes in a lab. The book follows him as he tries to decide which path to choose…
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
(published in 1974)
You may have seen E. L. Doctorow’s name recently — his latest, The March, has been winning awards left and right. Ragtime, perhaps his best-known book, convincingly weaves fiction into the fabric of history; Doctorow’s characters interact with historical personages like Harry Houdini, Robert Peary, Emma Goldman and J. P. Morgan. (I also appreciated the refreshingly simple prose style — in terms of clarity, Doctorow is the dead opposite of Pynchon.)
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
(published in 1921)
This book is so character-based that there really isn’t a discernable plot, but for some reason I liked it all the more for that. It’s a rambling little gem that transports you to the first decades of the 20th century for a look into the lives of a Norwegian farmer, Isak, and his family. It has its own sort of magic that some may find dull, but that I found fascinating.
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
(published in 1915)
Why do high schools teach Hemingway and never Maugham? It’s a question asked myself after The Razor’s Edge, and again after Of Human Bondage. This was a long book and it was slow in a few parts, but overall I found the Philip/Mildred dynamic fascinating.