Miscellaneous Reading Notes

It was going to be the year of classic American authors. Hemingway, Twain, Faulkner, Melville. It hasn’t exactly turned out the way I planned, but I still consider it a year of American literature. Here are some notes on some of the books I’ve read this year.

1. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

I initially thought this book was an exception to the year’s theme of classic American literature but then after reading it I thought, Shame on me for being so exclusive. It was terrific. Heartbreaking and entertaining. I liked how it weaved Dominican Republican history into the story, presenting DR folklore, like the “foku,” as just another part of the fantastical world in which Oscar lives - reminiscent of Danticat, in a way.

2. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Bridge bomber befriends gypsies living in a cave. I think it was about duty. The terse, violent scenes reminded me of McCarthy. Wasn’t really about America, although Robert Jordan, the hero, is American. 

3. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

Great voice but it gets old. By the end I was bored. She just starts telling you things (like why she chose to become a vegetarian or being a bridesmaid) without explaining why you should care. Rather than making any surprising connections (which is what I want out of an essay) she just tells anecdotes.

4. Netherland by Joseph O’Neil

Dutchman finds solace in cricket after his wife leaves him in New York after 9/11. A perfect welcome-back-to-New-York book. Lived up to its praise. Rich prose but modest at the same time. Impressionistic, to some extent, but easily followed. I probably missed some of the most important pieces - one of them identity, and another recovery, it seems - but I still loved it.

5. Miscellany

I also read a few John Cheever and Leonard Michaels stories. All amazing. Wasn’t expecting Micheal’s fiction to be experimental after reading his book of essays, which was terrific. His fiction is great too, though. His image of a hairy, naked man walking on his hands into an elevator in an attempt to pass his pubes off as a beard in his story Cityboy stayed with me. 

I caught the first few chapters of the The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat on audio book and was blown away. Need to pick up a copy. Now. Danticat’s style is understated but forceful. But first, I have to read Bleak House for law school. Better than a casebook.

Link → Mystery In Flannery O'Connor

Patrick Galloway’s take on Flannery O’Connor’s use of mystery:

“The Catholic mindset accepts mystery as a fact of life, that there are certain things we are simply not meant to know, certain workings of the cosmic machine that only God understands. O’Connor utilizes this as a plot option, this mysterious, unexpected turn. She is not satisfied with the limitations of purely realistic prose, being rather of the opinion that her kind of fiction ‘will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery.’”

This sounds right to me—and it takes a little pressure off of me as I reader her Complete Stories. Writing about O’Connor is a little intimidating because so much has been written about her, and I have never read her before. I am reading her without a clue as to how I am ‘supposed’ to read her, if there is such a thing.

At first, I found her style a little jarring. I found myself unprepared to handle her sudden plot twists and unresolved endings. As I continue to read, I appreciate the mystery at the heart of her stories. She respects the limits of fiction and does not ‘tell’ her readers how to read her stories.

In a weird way, when reading O’Connor’s stories, I feel like my ability to read is under examination, judged in the same way that God will judge her characters. My struggle to follow her narratives reflect the struggle of her characters to know the will of God. At the heart of her narratives is a mystery that I am shut out of, just because.

More and more, I am finding this mystery one of the most compelling things about her stories.

When such [Christian] believers are gifted with imagination (and what is imagination but, in part, a mysterious metaphor-making capacity), the “natural” world scarcely exists except as a supernatural manifestation; surfaces are masks through which an underlying, far more significant reality asserts itself in ways that may be startling and original and sometimes grotesque.

Joyce Carol Oates on Flannery O’Connor - from an essay on O’Conner’s “The Artificial Nigger”

Misreading White Noise

My response to 52books’ review of Don Delillo’s White Noise, which may or may not still be one of my favorite novels:

Maybe you were expecting too much from the narrative. The story was not meant to “grab” you. Isn’t a big part of this book playing with the idea of plot (it always leads to death)? DeLillo’s not Michael Grisham or Tom Clancy or whatever.

Your review is a disappointment. I am surprised that your review does not even try to understand all the stuff about death, simulacrae, etc. in the novel? This superficial review of the book makes me think that your whole project is detrimental to your reading experience. If you have to just gloss over these books to keep on schedule, what’s the point in reading them at all?


Originally posted as a comment by marshponds on 52books using Disqus.

The Frame is a commonplace book by Marshall.

Reach me at marshall[at]theframe.org.

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