'What I Loved' is a very good novel. Why? Because Siri Hustvedt understands people. She understands people *very damn well indeed*.
It's a ...more'What I Loved' is a very good novel. Why? Because Siri Hustvedt understands people. She understands people *very damn well indeed*.
It's a book about love and friendship (and the complex interminglings of the two), about age and loss. And it manages simultaneously to be both incredibly neat and wonderfully chaotic.
There's a thing that Henry James does. I've written about it before. It's called ironic inversion — whereby an implication or expectation that's set up at the beginning of a novel is turned on its head by the time you get to the end. *But*, unlike a short story's twist-in-the-tail, the inversion happens so slowly and subtly that you don't actually notice it unless you pause and reflect.
In 'What I Loved', Hustvedt executes a goddamn *masterful* ironic inversion. Her narrator, Leo Hertzberg, is an academic who studies, teaches and writes about art. And the novel's animating relationship is that between Leo and Bill Wechsler, an artist. In the early stages of the novel (the first third), much of Leo's narrative occupies itself with analysis of Bill's art. Whilst not *dry*, it's certainly not immediate.
The beautiful thing that the novel does is, over the rest of its course, to dismantle the artificial distinctions between writing about life and writing about art and writing about people and knowing people and understanding art and understanding people and understanding yourself. This is what makes it both neat and chaotic: it reconciles and unites by expanding, rather than reducing. Which is a wankily abstract way of putting it, I realise.
Essentially, Leo begins the novel engaging with Bill's art via the traditional mechanisms of academic analysis; he ends (implicitly) by simply writing Bill's — and his own — story. Which tells us more (of course) than any analytical essay.
What's more, the ponderous pace of the novel's beginning is transmuted to an extraordinarily (almost vertiginously) compelling final stage.
Hustvedt writes (to my mind) with superb emotional insight, and she examines — unflinchingly — scenarios of powerful emotional intensity. Her feeling for the nuances in relationships between characters — once again — reminds me of Henry James. Which is one whopper of a compliment, in case you were wondering. Like James, Hustvedt is never lazy. She never skates over the hard bit. She restlessly examines and reexamines her characters and their relation to one another. The whole of the novel (like many of James') concerns itself with the ambiguities of friendship and love — which too many novelists treat as discrete constants.
So, again, there's a refusal to accept artificial barriers, to categorise baldly.
And that's why I liked this novel so much. That and the fact I had to stop reading it *immediately* on the London Underground, because — had I not — I'd have started crying.
Which isn't the done thing on the Piccadilly Line.(less)
… now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face … Any human face is a claim on you, because y...more… now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face … Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and the loneliness of it.
This is a beautiful novel. Like all my favourite literature (and, I guess, art in general) it wields its immense power with restraint, subtlety, modesty.
It is not a pacey novel. It has relatively little in the way of plot. But it is all about characters. And, hey, here's a thing — have you noticed? — so is life. Or my life is, in any case. It is a wonderful study of a truly good man, a truly humble man and a truly brilliant man. The novel takes the form of a long, digressive journal-cum-letter from an old father, left to the son he does not expect to see grow up.
But what's it about? I guess in a large part it's about religion. Which might put a bunch of you right off. But that would be a gaping great pity, because it's about the sweet human face of religion:
When you love someone … you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself.
That's amongst the most beautiful ideas I've read for a while. And however staunch an atheist you may be, if that sentence doesn't give you pause and move you just a little, I'm pretty sorry for you.
(For the record, I'd call myself agnostic — not that this really matters much.)
This book made me think a fair bit about TS Eliot's Ash Wednesday (in fact, at times, Robinson approaches poetry — of the most modest and admirable kind — in her prose: 'Ashy biscuit, summer rain, her hair falling wet around her face'). If you know me, you'll be aware that I powerfully admire that poem (and that poet). Gilead has in common with Ash Wednesday a preoccupation with transience and the frustrating, tantalising beauty of this imperfect world. The difficulty of imagining anything sweeter (heaven) than the fleeting, intoxicating experiences of life on earth:
Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!
… and …
I wish I could give you the memory I have of your mother that day. I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness.
Listen, is your face aching with suppressed tears, yet? Because this is beautiful, powerful stuff. Don't you think?
What Gilead also ends up being about is this: true worth, true wisdom. And I applaud any work of art that celebrates the modest, the unassuming, the loving. Like most of the 'points' this novel makes, it makes this one implicitly, subtly and ambiguously — but in its way it's as much a celebration of the Everyman as was 'Ulysses'. It's a wonderful demonstration of the unshowy brilliance of reflection and self-awareness and humility.
"'You want to use this a second?' Lane said abruptly. He was holding out a folded, white handkerchief. His voice sounded sympathetic, kind, in sp...more"'You want to use this a second?' Lane said abruptly. He was holding out a folded, white handkerchief. His voice sounded sympathetic, kind, in spite of some perverse attempt to make it sound matter-of-fact."
Christ alive — here's another 5-star.
I go nuts (I don't mind telling you) for books that can manage to be profound and clever and insightful and compassionate and, in the end, just goddamn funny.
And this is a sweet and lovely book, believe me.
It's about ego and cleverness and religion and self-indulgence.
I once heard someone say (on the strength of their memory of 'Catcher in the Rye') that Salinger was 'a bit of a teenage writer'. And I don't mind telling you: that person was a fucking idiot. Because Salinger is a goddamn superb writer, and I'd love — really love — to meet a teenager that had a hundredth of his psychological insight and lightness of touch.
What do I mean by 'lightness of touch'? Remember that bit in 'Catcher…' when Holden talks about his dead brother Allie and uses his familiar idiom 'she killed him' to describe how his sister used to make Allie laugh. Then corrects himself:
'And when Allie and I were having some conversation about things in general, old Phoebe'd be listening. Sometimes you'd forget she was around, because she was such a little kid, but she'd let you know. She'd interrupt you all the time. She'd give Allie or I a push or something, and say, "Who? Who said that? Bobby or the lady?" And we'd tell her who said it, and she'd say, "Oh," and go right on listening and all. She killed Allie, too. I mean he liked her, too. She's ten now, and not such a tiny little kid any more, but she still kills everybody—everybody with any sense, anyway.'
(Yeah. Tell me that's 'teenage', you glib piece of crap.)
Anyhow, yes. I like Salinger's writing a hell of a lot. And 'Franny and Zooey' demonstrates this same ability to slip in a piece of astoundingly powerful and moving psychological observation in the most unexpected places, the most offhand way. And the same ability (incidentally) to create astonishingly charismatic characters.
It is also the most eloquent and intelligent thing I've read about religion in as long as I can remember. But don't let that make you think it's dry; it's not remotely so. It's a wonderfully compassionate examination of the sentimentality of belief, and the whole thing is shot through with the most beautiful, realistic portrayal of family love.(less)
'I did not deceive myself into believing that I was good looking, but I had heard that girls were relatively indifferent to that. I hoped they were; f...more'I did not deceive myself into believing that I was good looking, but I had heard that girls were relatively indifferent to that. I hoped they were; for as I inspected my face in the mirror, I came to the regretful conclusion that it was not the sort of face I should fall in love with myself. There was nothing fragile about it. I tried smiling winningly at myself, but the result made me grimace with disgust.'
I didn't expect this book to make me cry. So much of it is written with an exceptionally witty, darting lightness that I wasn't entirely prepared for the cumulative weight of its emotional insight.
It's a powerful, deft, *modest* novel that brilliantly marries comedy and nostalgia.
William Golding is an outstanding writer. His books are all about — and turn upon — perception. He has a clear-eyed way of inhabiting his characters. In this respect, I think there's a quality of (early) Joyce about his writing. And that's a massive great compliment, I should add.
Golding is stylistically restrained, pellucid. Consistently, he pulls away from the melodramatic, the glib, the tritely resonant. He understands how people — real people — speak and think and feel. He doesn't *give them lines*, like some second-rate dramatist. Again like Joyce, much of the book is concerned with (admirably) stunted, partial exchanges between characters intent upon their own purposes. And when, finally, Golding allows dialogue to erupt into blazoned feeling, it is extraordinarily powerful in its fractured incoherence:
'That's right. That's it exactly—Everything's—*wrong*. Everything. There's no truth and there's no honesty. My God! Life can't—I mean just out there, you have only to look up at the sky—but Stilbourne accepts it as a *roof*. As a—and the way we hide our bodies and the things we don't say, the things we daren't mention, the people we don't meet—and that *stuff* they call music—It's a lie! Don't they understand? It's a lie, a lie! It's—obscene!'
This is a book about growing up and understanding people retrospectively. About the arrogance of adolescence, the sad recognition of one's own limitations. And about the slow, late, partial acquisition of compassion.
I think Nicholson Baker is an extremely good writer. A cliche-bustin', sentimentality-defyin' writer, impatient with taboo and glib generalisation. Th...moreI think Nicholson Baker is an extremely good writer. A cliche-bustin', sentimentality-defyin' writer, impatient with taboo and glib generalisation. The kind of writer I admire, who can make you see the mundanities of everyday life anew. His novella 'The Mezzanine' was my first encounter with Baker's work, and I liked it more than anything I'd read for a very long time.
House of Holes ain't no Mezzanine. For a start — on the face of it — it's bizarre and outlandish as hell. It's about sex. About pornography. About the differences between male and female sexuality. It's an X-rated Alice in Wonderland — a series of surreal sexual escapades, virtually bereft of plot. It's as if Baker recognised (correctly) Lewis Carroll's novel for the brilliant portrayal of dream logic that it is — and decided to do the same, but for a *wet* dream.
It's kind of hard to tell what exactly Baker's up to with this. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I'm still not sure.
At times, it's pretty sexy. In a hilarious sort of way. And I wonder whether this is what he's getting at: that the excesses of human sexuality can be simultaneously arousing and laughable. Sympathetically laughable. There's a kind of submissive pathos to it all — even in the midst of a sex theme park in which characters say things like, 'Mm, twat yourself, Mindy, bat your bug, that's the way' and 'Pump your lovely Lincoln Stiffins' — that seems to me to be bang on the money.
And there *are* moments that are genuinely touching (in a briefly asexual way). I love the way that — despite the crazed pornographic excesses open to the characters, they nevertheless all too often resort to sweetly stunted prosaic exchanges and awkwardness. I read in a review somewhere (maybe the Guardian?) that the novel's all about sex without love. But that's not true. It's in these flashes of the prosaic that Baker grounds us. Even in a world of detachable penises, masturbation chambers and arse-enlargements, we humans have this lovely yearning for the simple:
"'It was good but I don't think we're really soul mates.'
'And what after all is a soul mate?'
'A soul mate is when you really think someone is great. You really like her a lot. You like when she explains things to you. You love her. That's a soul mate.'
'Oh,' said Trix.
'Will you take me to the groanrooms?'
They went to a groanroom…
…
'Just remember, we can't talk in here at all, only groan,' said Trix, her hand on the door. 'It's like meditation except it's more fun.'
They went in together and closed the door very quietly."
(My italics)
***
It's that line 'You like it when she explains things to you,' that got me. A beautiful piece of clearly-observed modernist realism slipped into a surreal sexcapade.
So it's actually doing something pretty clever, and (as is Baker's wont) telling us something pretty acute and unexpected about human psychology.
That said, I'm not convinced it delivers its insightful payload as effectively as it might've done. And it's arguably a bit long. Its dreamlike shapelessness is understandable — but a little wearisome at times, nevertheless.(less)
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