September 2009 Archives
A slow reading week…
I haven’t read much in the last week or two, and before that was not reading much that really excited me (other what I’ve already posted). I have allowed myself to become addicted to a television show (Grey’s Anatomy) and have been watching it on DVD – between that, work and having a life, not much reading going on. Pretty unusual.
I saw the movie Watchmen when it was in the theater (the best friend is a huge Jeffery Dean Morgan fan, and I am a big comic book geek). We were both horribly disappointed and irritated that we’d wasted money and time on such a bloody, violent, depressing and (most important to me) pointless flick. I can do without the blood and violence, but that wouldn’t be enough to turn me off of a movie. And I am fine with depressing and meaningful, or pointless and fun. But depressing and pointless – well, that’s a load of crap. I had been meaning to read Watchmen because it was highly lauded by critics – surprising for a graphic novel. After seeing the movie, I was compelled to read the book and find out what the movie had screwed up on.
Alan Moore’s graphic novel is much, much better than the movie based upon it (a movie that Moore refused to be affiliated with because he didn’t believe it would work). But I still didn’t like it very much. I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t seen the movie, I would have had a different reading of the book, but it’s too late for that now. The book has three or four sub-plots that are completely missing from the movie and added much to the point Moore seemed to be trying to make – that you cannot do evil things and not become evil. The comic book is as violent and bloody as the film, but in comic-book form, the impact of the violence is more cerebral and less disgusting. The book was compelling (while the film dragged on) and while still be depressing, at least was not pointless. There is a lot of irony and contrasting of stories that is completely missing in the movie. The character of Dr. Manhattan is much more developed in the book, and there is some fascinating stuff about the nature of time and experience that adds much to the backbone of Moore’s concept. All in all, the book was enjoyable, if not something I would highly recommend.
I also read Kaye Gibbon’s The Life All Around Me by Ellen Foster – follow-up to her first hit novel Ellen Foster. Ellen is a girl who’s lost her mother and somehow manages to stay driven and positive in the face of abuse, crushing poverty and racism in the South. Both books are written in the first person. I remembered liking Ellen Foster, so I picked up the sequel (written a decade or two later) when I saw it for $3. TLAAMbEF was not the powerhouse the first novel was, but those who loved Ellen from the first book would probably enjoy seeing what came next.
I recently got a gig reviewing books for a newsletter/website called BookBrowse.com – soon I’ll get paid (a tiny bit of money) to review new books! My first book is The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt – and it’s due in two weeks, so I had better get back to reading soon!
Just Can’t Find the Love
Did you ever read a book that you didn’t like – and you didn’t know why? It doesn’t happen to me very often (I can usually tell you exactly why I didn’t like it), but this is the story of one of those books.
Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd is a book I read in my graduate Contemporary Fiction class. The book follows several writers in a few different eras, all connected to each other. Sounds good so far, right? Thomas Chatterton ( a real person) was a young poet in the mid-1700s that invented a medieval poet monk and published poems he himself had written, claiming that he’d found them in a church. The poems were very popular and critically acclaimed. Chatteron died before his 18th birthday – apparently a suicide – so we’ll never know if his talent would have grown. He is known as a forger, but of course he wasn’t really a forger. He just lied about being the ghost writer for a non-existent person.
We also meet George Meredith, a real poet who posed for a ‘portrait’ of Chatterton fifty years later, painted by Henry Wallis (the portrait image is on the cover of the book). In modern-day England , we have Charles the poet (fictional) and his family as well as Harriet the novelist (also fictional). Harriet is getting old and still ruled by her guilt and shame for plagiarizing the plots of a few of her novels, and Charles is ill and thinks he’s discovered new information about Thomas Chatterton – like the fact that he faked his death and wrote some of the most famous works of the late 1700s pretending to be famous poets.
The whole book is an exploration of art: What makes art great? Do we read/see art differently based on biographical information about the artist? Where is the line between inspiration and plagiarism? Is any work of art ever truly original? And how can you really know, even if you are the one who ‘created’ it? I don’t think there are any simple answers to these questions, and the book does not try to answer them, it merely gives the reader plenty of food for thought.
I can’t explain why Chatterton does nothing for me. It’s not a bad book. It’s not a boring book. It has interesting themes and characters, and my favorite professor loves it. I reread it to see if I could figure out what I missed the first time around. I did like it better this time around. But in the end, it just didn’t excite me. No light bulb in my head. Maybe because I didn’t feel like Ackroyd really added anything to the conversation on art he was so interested in. Maybe because all the writers in the book are sad creatures that come to sad endings (not poetically sad or lyrically sad, just sad). I don’t know. Still.
A Master of Illusion
Paul Auster sticks in my mind as one of the most challenging authors I read while working towards my B.A. in English. We read The New York Trilogy and I liked him mostly because he was really difficult, yet I could understand him. Not to say it wasn’t a great book – it was – just a very complicated, multi-layered text full of obscure references and stylistic flourishes not always easy to understand. When I had to write my first ten-page paper ever, I chose his book because I knew there was more to write about in that book (all 384 pages) than any two other novels we read that semester. I got an A, and my professor (thank you, Patty) suggested I present it in a Student Showcase, which I did. Maybe that was more information that you really needed to explain my positive associations with Auster, but I have a bit more. I picked up The Brooklyn Follies early this year and thoroughly enjoyed it – another great book by Auster, but much less challenging (though no less interesting).
The Book of Illusions I picked up on that fabulous sale rack at Powell’s. Now looking at it, the eyeball shot on the cover brings hints of Lost (which I’ve recently become addicted to and watched voraciously for weeks on end). I must have bought it before I started watching that show, because it never occurred to me before. I suppose at some point you’d like me to actually tell you about the book I read? If you insist.
I really enjoyed The Book of Illusions. It is the story of a man who loses his wife and children when their plane (which he was not on) crashes. He drinks and drifts for almost a year until he sees a clip from an old silent film on TV that actually makes him chuckle for the first time since their deaths. He becomes a bit obsessed with the comedian in the film and decides to find and watch all the films he made. In the process, he discovers the actor is alive and is invited to meet him. It is a sad, powerful story about grief and guilt and the strange things it makes us do.
I liked the book for several reasons. It is written almost completely in the first-person (as many of Auster’s books are) and the internal monologue rings true, painting a vivid picture of David’s internal life. The narrative is convincingly erratic (like the thought processes of a human being) without being inconsistent or difficult to follow. I love a story that takes the scenic road to get to the point and doesn’t always give you clear directions. His descriptions of the movies he ‘sees’ are so rich, you feel as if you are watching the films with him.
Some of the themes embedded in this narrative are also favorites of mine – the mechanics of how and why stories work, and why they are important. The conviction that we all write our own lives (stories), and therefore we can change our lives if we work hard enough. Affirmation that – regardless of the present moment – the future always offers hope. So it’s not surprising that I devoured the book and closed it feeling happy, uplifted and wishing I could write half as well. He is never boring, never predictable, yet entirely convincing.
