Americans Prefer “McNovels”?
If you’re an American, would you be inclined to buy, or even to read, books written by someone with this attitude:
But Americans also tend to look for the quick, digestible McNovel: the one with the happy ending, the one with chapters you can read in one bathroom break, the one you’ve forgotten by the time you turn the last page.
I’ve thought long and hard before posting about this issue. The quotation is from Jodi Picoult: Going Global. The subject is one my book club members mutter about almost every month. “It was a fast read!” one reports gladly. “There was nothing to it!” another complains. Then I explain, “Now, this is a commercial novel and the one we read last time is what I mean by ‘literary’.”
Picoult has the luxury of pandering to her own interests and choosing her readers, such as the Australians, whom she praises with “… readers in Australia prefer a certain kind of book: one that’s meaty, raises discussion and makes them think. In other words, a book like mine.” Really? Do all Australians and [insert almost any nationality except her own] read high literature? None like “a summer read” or just something trashy to pass time and provide some harmless pleasure? Maybe the readers of Picoult’s books want weighty matters, unresolved, vague and controversial, but that doesn’t mean all readers must feel the same, nor all writers choose the same subjects and style. Why the indictment?
Robert W. Chambers - The King in Yellow
The book gathers several short stories, all of them being linked by a specific thread, that of The King in Yellow, a play in two acts with a reputation of danger and totally immoral content, both beautiful beyond compare and able to cause anyone to fall into eternal damnation. In short, those who dare read it can never be the same again–when they don’t end up dead, mad, or with their soul utterly destroyed.
In the facts, the first stories in the book are more focused then the others about that cursed book and its mysterious protagonist, a King who apparently exists independently from the play. The very first of these ‘tales’ would even have to be classified as speculative fiction, since it takes place in a fictional New-York in the year 1920 (Robert Chambers published his writings in 1895). The following ones also focus on the theme of innocence forever lost, of a knowledge that should be left alone and never unveiled, but their fantastic side gets somewhat lost to leave more room to a painting of the Latin Quarter in Paris, depicting the life of its “French artists” at the end of the 19th century. One may or may not appreciate that; nevertheless, I thought that the atmosphere around those stories was quite poetic, even though, for a French reader of the 21st century, it may appear as idealizing the so-called boheme side of Paris a little too much.
Oddly (or not?), the short story I liked the most was The Street of the First Shell, a romanced account of the siege of Paris in 1870. Feelings of sheer despair (will the inhabitants ever manage to break that siege, or die there like dogs?) blended in it with hope (the end of the story, when that ’street of the first shell’ is finally revealed). No Hastur nor King in Yellow here, only human beings trying to believe as much as they can in a better future. And this is in fact what the reader will find at the end of the book: a dive toward hope, rather than horror.
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
The story is that of Stevens, who was for more than thirty years Lord Darlington’s butler. When the old manor was bought by a rich American man, he remained there and resumed his service with the new master. One day, Stevens is allowed to take a few holidays, and decides to go on a trip through the English countryside. This journey will be an opportunity for him to remember several episodes of his life at Darlington Hall, some not as insignificant as they could seem at first, when his former master was engaged in diplomacy tasks with other great personalities of his era, between the two World Wars.
This is a dive in the past that I’ve found particularly fascinating, a peek behind the scenes of a social order long gone, in the customs of the old nobility as well as in those of its servants, and in the relationships, ambitions and professionalism meant to exist in such an environment. Stevens devoted his life to Lord Darlington, in spite of the latter’s many mistakes, and to the concepts of responsibility and ‘dignity’, which in his eyes represented the peak of what a butler should be and accomplish. But wasn’t all of this in vain–and doesn’t he regret more than he thought the departure of Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper, and the end of their sometimes stormy, sometimes conniving relationship?
No need to say that this story will not please a reader on the look-out for lots of ‘action’. On the other hand, if you revel in the idea of a novel diving deep into a detailed psychology of its characters, I think you too will appreciate The Remains of the Day.