Euphoria - The Book as a Whole (March 2015)

[Lily]

I got confused on the above sequence about who is talking about what book! ? lol.

[Violet]

I recently read C by Tom McCarthy which I really enjoyed so I'll check out Satin Island. Thanks for the recommend Poingu.I share your reservations about Euphoria. I too found it skimpy.

[Lark]

Violet wrote: "I recently read C by Tom McCarthy which I really enjoyed so I'll check out Satin Island. Thanks for the recommend Poingu.I share your reservations about Euphoria. I too found it skimpy."

Violet, Remainder is my favorite McCarthy novel by far. But a lot of people I recommend it to really hate it.

[Violet]

I've only read C but I noticed it has one of the worst average ratings I've ever seen here - 3.10 - so he must be an acquired taste!

[Violet]

Regarding Euphoria were people saying it should have been longer or that King should have spent longer researching and writing it? I'd concur with the latter. It's what i meant when i said i never felt she was quite in command of her research. For me the anthropology was like encrypted messages she never quite succeeded in decoding, a language she never quite managed to translate. Thus it never related to the fabric of the narrative as lucidly and penetratingly as it might have done. I think there were many things King did well in this novel but for me she could have gone an extra mile.
As for Nell relating to her time I don’t think this was a strong feature of the novel. Little that happens to Nell couldn’t happen now. Compare Euphoria with Out of Africa for example – Karen Blixen was constantly fighting prejudices and you felt this struggle was paramount in evolving her character. Nell on the other hand can get on with her work largely unmolested, except of course by a jealous bullying husband but that could just as easily happen now. I know we’re talking different periods but women were no less disenfranchised in the 1930s. I don’t think this was a flaw in the novel though as King never sought to portray Nell as a woman of her time.

[Lily]

The little exploration of Mead's life that I have done suggests that there was plenty of "dark" there for the writer to plunder and explore if he/she so chose -- "dark" on the part of all the characters and the environment for receipt of their work. King has given the contemporary audience perhaps certain aspects. It will be interesting to see what the film industry does. How different will producing this one be than say one of the life of Queen Elizabeth I or Shakespeare or Thomas Cromwell? Will this be about anthropology or about Mead et al? My hope is the more the former, with some realistic characters "inspired" by three gifted albeit flawed pioneers of the profession.

[Violet]

One thing the film will do is show many of the dramatic moments King told and to do that I suspect they'll have to give more body to the character of Fen unless they use Bankson as a voice-over narrator which i doubt they'll do. That'll probably mean they're compelled to do a bit of further research about Mead. No doubt though the film will focus on the love triangle with the anthropology providing exotic stage settings.

[Marc]

Terry wrote: "Have we discussed somewhere in this about Nell as a woman of her time? How atypical was she? Did this come across in the writing, or is it something that's more obvious if you know a lot about that..."

It's my understanding that Nell (like Mead) would have been very atypical of her time, but I think a reader would really have to know a fair amount about the time period because Nell is not placed in the social environs with which she grew up or where a reader would see the full extent of pressure to conform to sexual/marital/gender expectations. This is no criticism of the book--you're just not going to get a real feel from reading the book for how extraordinary it was to be a woman anthropologist at that time with the accolades and renown she had.

Does anyone know if Nell and Bankson's unpublished grid theory had any influence on the development of personality tests like Myers Briggs?

Welcome to the group and the discussion, Poingu!

The always entertaining Brain Pickings blog just did a post about A Rap on Race, which captures the discussion between Margaret Mead and James Baldwin.

[Marc]

In reading some of the interview links Lily provided, it sounded like King did a ton of research and chose not to use a lot of it because she let the story go where HER characters led.

[Violet]

Marc wrote: "In reading some of the interview links Lily provided, it sounded like King did a ton of research and chose not to use a lot of it because she let the story go where HER characters led."

Did she choose though or was it a failure of imagination? The way she related each of the tribes to her three protagonists was very simplistic and superficial for me. And no doubt involved distorting those cultures to suit her needs. Fen was like the symbolic chief of the patriarchal Mumbanyo, Nell was the symbolic priestess of the feminist Tam and Bankson the symbolic emissary of the laissez-faire Kiona. Not much subtlety going on here.

[Marc]

She chose to follow her imagination instead of facts/accuracy. I wasn't implying any value judgment on this decision only pointing out that saying the book was poorly researched might not be accurate. Subtlety didn't seem like an aim of the book either.

[Violet]

Yep, agreed there. i don't think the book was "poorly researched" either but i do think she could have applied more intelligence and imagination to integrating it with her characters.
You got across better than i did the little interest King showed in making Nell a woman of her time. :)

[Terry]

I applaud choosing where-the-story-takes-you over research in many ways. It's so easy to feel that the research was so painstaking and hard-won that you have to shoehorn it all in, or as much as possible.

In large part, choosing what the story actually is and following it rather than the other possibilities is the most important decision a writer can make. As we see with the critiques here, it can make or break whether a reader clicks with what's on the page or not.

I clicked. I see intelligence, imagination, integration and subtlety. I see these things because to me it rang true, it seemed very much like life, it caught me and it made me feel that she made the right decision about where the story was.

I think she left space for you to inhabit the story, to make of it what you will. I generally dislike novels that don't leave that space. I think if she'd have made more explicit links between the characters and the anthropology, it would have been the very definition of unsubtle. I don't agree at all that there's any lack of intelligence or imagination in what she put in. She doesn't overdo it, she doesn't feel she needs to inject more craft than life, more cleverness than reality.

In many ways, it's a very old-fashioned, straight-up novel. It tells a story, and the way that story resonates with your life and your feelings *is* the novel, for you.

Clearly, it resonated far better for some than others.

[Lark]

The whole question of whether this novel would be better served if it were closer to historical/anthropological reality is complicated for this novel because the words "based on the life of Margaret Mead" kept showing up in reviews. I think that particular shoe-horning of the novel did it a disservice. Reading the novel made me curious about Mead, but mostly I read this book as a fantastic exaggeration of reality, more like Henderson the Rain King than anything close to realistic fiction.

[Lily]

Poingu wrote: "The whole question of whether this novel would be better served if it were closer to historical/anthropological reality is complicated for this novel because the words "based on the life of Margaret Mead" kept showing up in reviews. I think that particular shoe-horning of the novel did it a disservice...."

Thank you, Poingu. I happen to agree with you, as is probably obvious to anyone who has been following this discussion at all!

[Lark]

Lily wrote: "Poingu wrote: "The whole question of whether this novel would be better served if it were closer to historical/anthropological reality is complicated for this novel because the words "based on the ..."

Lily, I just joined the group yesterday and I've been catching up on your comments and also enjoying your links. Thanks.

Yes, the book may fall for some readers into an 'uncanny valley' of sorts, to borrow a term from computer graphics, where it's too close to reality to not be accountable on some level for accuracy.

Maybe if King had set the novel in the Amazon in the fifties, or in Africa in the 1890s,or in some definitive way had repurposed Mead's story out of the framework that identifies it unquestioningly as Mead's story--in other words if she had distilled the story of her imagination more completely from fact--then it may have raised fewer of these uneasy concerns some reviewers apparently felt about it.

[Casceil]

Terry, thank you for your comment. You said very well things I have felt but been unable to express.

[Violet]

With you all the way, Poingu.

[Jane from B.C.]

I am enjoying the discussion here.

@Poingu - I agree with you that "Euphoria" was not served well as being flogged in the reviews with the emphasis on M. Mead.

@Terry and @Casceil - I am in your 'camp' as this book worked well for me.

I had a very immersive experience reading "Euphoria". I read it over only a couple of days and it really pulled me in. For me it was a 5-star read. (I only had one little quibble about the monkeys, but at the time I let it slide.) I thought the novel was beautifully written and I enjoyed the story and the manner in which it unfolded. I do wish it had been longer, but not because I felt that it was lacking, more like I just wanted to linger in that world King created for a while longer.


On a side note that has nothing to do with "Euphoria" specifically:
Today while I was reading over the Tournament of Books (ToB) decision (which proved to be a pretty poorly developed judgement ...and I caution you not to read the judgement as it is ridiculously spoiler filled!); I was struck by something commentator John Warner brought up when condemning the judgement. Something he called a reader's “empathy of intention”. Warner discusses this here:

What I see lacking here [in today's judgement by Stephin Merritt of "All the Light..." vs. "A Untamed State"] is an “empathy of intention,” where we grant the best possible motives to the writer and the story being discussed, where we seek to understand the author’s intentions, and offer criticism in that vein. This doesn’t mean we automatically approve of all choices, but neither do we reflexively disapprove of choices because we can’t imagine taking them.

This idea intrigues me and I think the reason that I enjoy reading the threads in this group (yes, I read more than I comment) is that readers here do an excellent job of this kind of discussion here.

[LindaJ^]

Thanks Jane from BC for the comment from John Warner. I agree with him - as a reader I am uncomfortable with reviewers that question the author's intention rather than provide a review on how the book affected them, i.e., whether the reader liked or disliked and why.

[Terry]

Yes! Yes Yes Yes.

+1,000, Jane/John Warner.

For me, this is rule #1 of crit/discussion. If you ever see me break it (I'm human), pull me up, and I'll say, thank you.

A conversation I had with a reviewer around his review of Paul Auster's New York trilogy crystallised this for me some time ago. It was the review most opposite to the concept of 'empathy of intention' that you could imagine, and the particularly interesting thing was that, after I (and some other reviewers) took issue with him, he backed down completely (fair play to him) and said he was wrong and that this wasn't how one should critique books.

If you're interested, it's here (messages 30 and 32 are my critique of his critique, and his turn-around):

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Lily]

So, I shall be so simple minded as to ask, what would you suggest saying to my friend who would like to read Euphoria to learn more about the life of Margaret Mead?

(For a totally different conversation, I ended up pulling down the Wiki article on Claude Levi Strauss today. It discusses his work as an anthropologist. More stream of consciousness than relevance, but some other soul with my sometimes strange quirks of curiosity might find it fun to skim. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L...)

[Lark]

Lily wrote: "So, I shall be so simple minded as to ask, what would you suggest saying to my friend who would like to read Euphoria to learn more about the life of Margaret Mead? Especially since she has in the..."

Lily, I would suggest the opposite to a friend--to read this book without any thought of it being related to biography. The novel stands in opposition to historic/biographical truth, as an act of imagination. As fiction it succeeds so much better than it does as historical fiction.

[Peter]

Lily, that's a can of worms the size of the UN building! However, unless your friend is going to personally interview the surviving people who knew Mead, fiction and non-fiction are your friend's only option. If I was interested in the life of Margret Mead, would start with a biography, read some of her work and some of its criticisms and counter-criticisms, and then maybe read Euphoria for some color and speculation. It would not be high on my list as a factual source though.

[Jane from B.C.]

Lily wrote: "So, I shall be so simple minded as to ask, what would you suggest saying to my friend who would like to read Euphoria to learn more about the life of Margaret Mead?"

Hi Lily,

I think that I would quote from King's acknowledgements at the end of the novel...

"I have borrowed from the lives and experiences of these three people [Mead, Fortune and Bateson],..."
"...and their few months together in 1933 on the Sepik River..."
"...but have told a different story."

From my perspective this is NOT meant to be a story about Mead et al, but I feel it is still a story worth reading.

I agree with Peter, a biography or other work of non-fiction is the way to go if you want to learn about Mead.

[Lily]

Marc wrote: "Does anyone know if Nell and Bankson's unpublished grid theory had any influence on the development of personality tests like Myers Briggs? ..."

No, and would be interested. But also more about its influence in Nazi Germany? I don't recall that the book went into that either, although it did allude to Bankson being forced to use his knowledge of the natives to some less than humane ends during the WWII. Anyone know where more of that story is told well?

[Maureen]

For fans of this novel, tomorrow the Diane Rehm show on NPR at 11 ET is doing a readers' review: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/201...

To be honest, I gave up on this book because it wasn't capturing me, but I am going to listen to either the live show tomorrow or a podcast if I miss that just in case the combination of the reviews of the novel, this group's discussion, plus tomorrow's discussion persuade me to pick it back up again!

[Kirsten]

I just finished reading Euphoria by Lily King which was inspired by actual events in the life of Margaret Mead.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Also, Diane Rehm has selected this book for her May Readers Review and will be discussing it tomorrow.

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/201...

[Lily]

Kirsten *Dogs Welcome - ....which was inspired by actual events in the life of Margaret Mead...."

A positioning of the story that I continue to find so troubling. I am having a similar problem with Vanessa and Her Sister. It feels to me that deep ethical issues arise when real life people are fictionalized, at least real life people for whom substantial biographical non-fictional records exist.

But how different is it than George Washington and his cherry tree? [g]

[Kirsten]

Interesting comment from the Diane Rehm Show's discussion on the book. That the author is letting us be the anthropologist. She puts all the clues about abuse out there, but wants us to put the clues together.