Reading Barbara Rogan: Why The Teacher Loved One Novel and The Reader Loved The Other One

I discovered novelist Barbara Rogan on goodreads. She's the humorous writer mentioned in an earlier post, the one who thought that "elderly" referred to anyone ten years older than she was. A former editor and agent, Barbara occasionally blogs about writing and publishing. Because I enjoyed her blogs and liked her witty, common sense personality, I thought I'd read one of her books. There was one problem, however. I thought Barbara was a mystery writer, and I'm not a big fan of mysteries. But since I'm retired and have more time to read, I was willing to try one of her mysteries. I hoped she would help me find one that would interest me.

When I introduced myself as an "elderly" (leading to our discussion of the definition of that word), retired English professor, who wasn't a mystery fan but loved novels by Ellison, Fitzgerald, Morrison, and Twain, Barbara assured me that all of her novels were not mysteries. After modestly declaring that she had little in common with the great writers whose novels I had listed as my favorites, Barbara recommended that I read two of her early novels, CAFE NEVO and ROWING IN EDEN. But she thought I might also like her latest book, A DANGEROUS FICTION. Although that novel (unlike the other two) is a mystery, she thought I might find it interesting because it is set in the world of writers, agents, and publishers.

When I couldn't find CAFE NEVO, I purchased A DANGEROUS FICTION, but I read ROWING IN EDEN first because I assumed I would prefer it. As I read Barbara's early novel, I could see why she thought a woman whose favorite novel is Morrison's SONG OF SOLOMON would enjoy her book. The two novels have a great deal in common. Both present several equally important major characters and use multiple perspectives. And both begin with a death and with questions about why and how the death occurred. But the most interesting similarity is the way both novels make readers think about how they judge people and how they perceive reality. In SONG OF SOLOMON, Morrison gives different versions of events told by different characters, so readers have to figure out which character is telling the truth and how we determine what's true and real when people remember events differently. Barbara's novel raises different questions for the reader. In fact, her novel might more closely resemble another Morrison novel, PARADISE, in the way it challenges the reader's views. PARADISE begins with the sentence: "They shoot the white girl first." But since Morrison never identifies "the girls" by race, readers have to figure out which girl is white. Is it Mavis, who not only has that name but drives a Cadillac? As we try to determine which girl is white, we also have to figure out what clues we use to determine the girls' race. Do we examine what they drive, how they talk, what they eat (Mavis eats Spam; I argue black folks don't, but one of my black students disagreed)? In other words, Morrison makes us stereotype and makes us recognize that's what we're doing.

What Barbara does to her readers is equally clever (and mean). She helps us to judge her characters unfairly and then makes us recognize that we've behaved exactly the way some of the less sympathetic characters in the novel behaved. We've thought the worst of these characters because we didn't know them. Two of the main characters in the book have killed close relatives, and before we discover exactly what happened, we guess (if other readers are like me) motives that are more unsavory than the actual motives.

Even though I have been retired for almost five years, I kept thinking about how much fun it would be to teach ROWING IN EDEN as I was reading it. I would quickly cover the Emily Dickinson allusion and the obvious symbolic father-son relationship of the two major male characters and move to how Rogan, like Morrison, manipulates her readers. Because I enjoyed that novel so much, I was ready to read A DANGEROUS FICTION (I didn't need a Rogan break), but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much. However, by the third chapter, I knew that I liked the second novel even more than I did the first one. I wasn't interested in teaching it. I just loved reading it. Barbara was right in suggesting that I, a newly published writer, would be fascinated by the world she created. But I was also more interested in the characters portrayed in the mystery. In one of her blogs, Barbara discussed whether readers needed to like characters in order to enjoy a book. The answer for me is no; I didn't like most of the characters in SONG OF SOLOMON (Pilate was my favorite) and didn't really like any of Fitzgerald's characters in GREAT GATSBY. But I do like to be interested in the characters, and I was much more interested in the agents and writers in A DANGEROUS FICTION than I was in the carpenter and his young male apprentice in ROWING IN EDEN. Maybe because I was more interested in the characters and their world than in the plot, I didn't guess the killer, so I was surprised by the ending.

I could probably teach A DANGEROUS FICTION; after all, I reluctantly directed an M.A. thesis on romance novels and had no trouble finding parallels between the books. In fact, since I still can't completely turn off my analytical teacher app, I kept noticing parallels between Barbara's two novels--in each, a main female character has a tall, black female friend, there is a large dog whose name begins with M, a widowed main character is having trouble continuing life without his or her much beloved deceased spouse, and at least one main character was raised by someone other than his or her parents and was physically abused by a guardian. But I was having too much fun reading A DANGEROUS FICTION to consider what I would say about how Barbara's book did or did not fit the mystery genre or about her commentary on the relationship between fiction and the real world.

Rarely do we find novels like HUCKLEBERRY FINN and SONG OF SOLOMON that are as much fun to read as they are to teach. Most books are either more fun to teach, like Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN or Morrison's PARADISE, or more fun to read, like Eudora Welty's LOSING BATTLES. Readers interested in finding a good novel to teach should consider Barbara Rogan's ROWING IN EDEN. Those who just want to enjoy reading a good mystery should try her newest novel, A DANGEROUS FICTION.