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Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

October 24, 2013 by rachelreadsfiction 1 Comment

WiseBloodWise Blood by Flannery O’Conner is a strange book.  In the Author’s Note to the Second Edition, she describes it as a comic novel dealing with matters of life and death, wherein protagonist, Hazel Motes, struggles with his faith in Jesus “like a monkey swinging back and forth in his brain.”   I found little comic in the novel.

At the outset, Hazel is on a train going to “the city” later identified as Eastrod, Tennessee.  He’s wearing a brand-new suit which is a “glaring” blue and still has the $11.95 price tag stapled to the sleeve.  His hat, noticed by everyone he meets, looks like a “preacher’s hat.”  Haze has nowhere to go after serving in the army for four years and losing his family one by one.  He is preoccupied by the deaths of his younger brothers and his mother, especially wondering where they go as their coffins are closed over them.  He says he wanted to put his elbow into his mother’s coffin to keep it from closing her into the darkness.  Everyone he meets seems to be attracted to his eyes, trying to see into their impenetrable depths.  Like his name, which reflects the protagonist’s state of mind, there’s a lot of imagery around “seeing” in this novel.  And, while everyone takes Hazel for a preacher, he insists that he is not now, and never will be, a preacher.  Methinks he doth protest too much.

When Hazel reaches his destination, he decides to prove that he’s a sinner by visiting a prostitute and then proclaiming himself a preacher for The Church Without Christ.  Much of the action of the novel takes place between Hazel and a simple young man, Enoch Emery who follows him around and tries to befriend him “because there’s nothing worse than having no friend in the world.”  I think that many scenes involving Enoch and his wanderings around the zoo and his fascination with a mummy encased in glass in a museum there are meant to be comic.  But for me, the portrayal of this simple, uneducated man is less funny and more pitiful.  When Enoch hears someone preach about “a new Jesus” he decides that the mummy is this new Jesus so he steals the mummy and gives it to Hazel.

Try as he might to avoid the role of preacher, Hazel cannot stop himself fromBible preaching or from thinking about Jesus. This is not surprising since the bible is the only book he’s ever read, and “when he did he wore his mother’s glasses” which tired his eyes.  Nor can Haze avoid the scammers who try to hook up with him to make a buck — a charlatan who shows up while Hazel is preaching and makes fifteen dollars and some change for his trouble; another preacher who pretends to be blind and his bizarre daughter who decides she wants to marry Hazel.  But Haze becomes more and more tormented and deeply withdrawn.  In desperation, he blinds himself with a bucket of lye, then wears barbed wire under his shirt to add to his suffering and stays mostly in his room.  When his landlady, who has been caring for him, suggests that they get married, Hazel runs out into the icy rain with his cane wearing his now threadbare suit, preacher’s hat and shoes lined with broken glass and rocks.  The next day he’s found unconscious in a ditch by two policemen who take him back to his landlady to pay his rent even though Hazel tells them, “I want to go on where I’m going.”  Hazel dies in the back of the squad car but no one realizes he’s dead.  His landlady remarks that she “has never seen his face more composed.”  The more she looks into it, the more she sees him “moving farther and farther away, farther and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light.”  Whew.  I close the book and am glad it’s over.

Okay, I know Flannery O’Conner is considered one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.  And I’ve read some terrific short stories she’s written, but Wise Blood leaves me cold.  There, I wrote it out loud!  It’s always hard for me to admit that I don’t like a novel which is considered by literary critics to be genius — it makes me feel ignorant.  That said, I now understand why O’Connor only wrote two novels.  The long form is not her strength.  Or, more likely, it’s just me.  I’m not interested in reading about the quest for religious belief.  But that’s not entirely true.  I’m simply not interested in reading about that quest when it involves an absurd and twisted set of characters, self-mutilation and martyrdom.

Andalusia Farm - Main House
Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia Farm – Georgia southernliterarytrail.org

What have I learned about Georgia as a place through reading Wise Blood?  Sadly, not much.  I imagine that in the Bible Belt during O’Connor’s time there were plenty of circuit riding preachers – fake ones as well as true believers, and maybe some individuals who, like Hazel Motes, had been taught to read and write “but that it was wiser not to.”  And I know that O’Connor was interested in faith — Catholicism v. Fundamentalism particularly, and, while this story sets forth one side of that equation, it feels mean-spirited to me.  Flannery O’Connor once said: “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”  (Mystery & Manners:  Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor.)  I know the characters in Wise Blood are not meant to be realistic — they just might be too grotesque to speak to this Yankee.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Andalusia Farm, Flannery O'Connor, Georgia Fiction, Wise Blood

Southern Hospitality

October 16, 2013 by rachelreadsfiction 1 Comment

Southern Hospitality

I have to admit that I’m kind of happy to be leaving the Northeast, if only for this brief stop in the South.   The South produces great literature, right?  I’m ready to find out — beginning with Georgia.

Photograph by Walter Bibikow/Getty Images - National Geographic
Photograph by Walter Bibikow/Getty Images – National Geographic

Usually, when moving to a new state, I check out a map, look for a place that seems geographically interesting, and go from there.  I’m not necessarily interested in the biggest city in that state — I’m looking for a place with character.  For Georgia, someone recommended Savannah to me, selling it as a beautiful spot, so I start by researching independent bookstores there.  At first, I’m draw to a bookstore that looks like it’s in an historic part of town, but when I start reading the Yelp reviews, more than one person remarks about the poor customer service, so I move along.  Now I find The Book Lady Bookstore http://www.thebookladybookstore.com/ which, according to its website has been around since 1978, is in a hundred year old building and is jam-packed with books.  Their About page tells me that they have a knowledgeable (opinionated!) staff.  Perfect.  I make the call. [Read more…] about Southern Hospitality

Filed Under: Bookstores Tagged With: Georgia, Savannah, The Book Lady Bookstore

Jernigan, by David Gates

October 10, 2013 by rachelreadsfiction Leave a Comment

JerniganThe protagonist in David Gates’ novel, Peter Jernigan, is a mess.  As the novel opens, he’s been up all night driving through the New Jersey snow.  The sun is up and blinding now as he makes his way to Uncle Fred’s camp.  He longs to get the car off the road, feed lots of wood into the stove to warm up the cabin then drink what’s left of the gin in the bottle on the seat next to him, washing down four Pamprins with it and sleep the sleep of the just.  We know he gets into the cabin and anticipates cutting some wood and getting warm.  Chapter Two opens with Jernigan reflecting that he has Uncle Fred to thank for getting him into this place.  And for calling the state police, who carried me out of the trailer and rushed me to the hospital.    But he doesn’t remember any of that and, horribly, he says, They got there too late for my thumb and forefinger — the surgeon almost had to do (meaning cut off) the whole hand — but the essential man, was, and is, still intact.  Which is the big thing, right, the essential man? Jernigan.  And, of course, we wonder, who is this guy? How did he end up here?  Who’s Uncle Fred?  Turns out Uncle Fred is not anyone’s uncle, just a friend of Jernigan’s from college who got the nickname Uncle Fred because he looked like some kid’s uncle. 

The book is written in a casual, tossed-off kind of way which I found particularly jarring when Jernigan’s story gets pretty serious, and then seriously dire.  Turns out Jernigan is the master of the off-hand comment, a clever literary device that keeps me wondering and guessing throughout the novel.  And Jernigan is written in a self-consciousness style.  Often, in Dickensian fashion, he talks directly to the reader.  Like when he veers off the main story and into a vignette about Judith and we’re wondering who’s Judith? though we understand that Jernigan’s had a relationship with her and that she didn’t understand him as well as Uncle Fred always has.  After the vignette, he says, But we’re jumping all around here and losing track.  Not that I mind losing track, far from it.  But.  Okay, I easily fall into the style.  And at the end of Chapter Two, when Jernigan says, End of reminiscence, I’m ready for the real story.  Except not.  Because the real story is how Jernigan got into this mess — injured and off by himself in a musty-smelling shithole of a trailer.  He tosses off a kind of a prayer, asking forgiveness from his son for being a drunk and for knowing he’s probably not capable of doing better, since he has failed at least once before at getting sober. [Read more…] about Jernigan, by David Gates

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: David Gates, Jernigan, New Jersey

American Pastoral

October 1, 2013 by rachelreadsfiction Leave a Comment

AmericanPastoralAmerican Pastoral begins with a vignette from the narrator, Nathan “Skip” Zuckerman’s, youth.  It’s a story about another kid in their Jewish neighborhood in Newark, Seymour Levov, nicknamed “The Swede.”  The point is that Swede was no ordinary Jew,  he was blonde and blue-eyed, beautiful and athletic, the All-American Adonis who transcended the Jewish experience.  He was kind and unassuming, seemingly perfect and loved by everyone, adults and his peers alike.  Flash forward and the narrator is at his high school reunion, remembering the past through the filter of nostalgia.  The story jumps back and forth in time — from the reunion in the 1990’s, to the pre-World War II Newark — a center for manufacturing in the Northeast, filled with second generation Jewish immigrants working hard to succeed — to the period of post-war enthusiasm and prosperity, through the devastation of the Vietnam war.  The history is told through the lens of Skip Zuckerman, but it is the life of Swede Levov, the Golden Boy.  And what a life he’s had.  He enlists in the Marines but spends most of his military career as a recreational specialist in South Carolina since the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima just after he finished basic training.  He leaves the military, goes to college and takes a job in his father’s glove factory.  Later he marries “a shiksa,”  Miss New Jersey of 1949, no less.  From all outward appearances, The Swede continues to lead a charmed life.

Zuckerman runs into the Swede a couple of times over the years, but as an adult the Swede appears to have  “ended up bland .”   What could have happened to turn the Swede into “a human platitude?”  Of course, once he discovers the real story of the Swede’s life, Zuckerman says, it has been a little bit like Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych, most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.  The narrator is obsessed with the Swede’s life, wondering whether anything “had ever threatened to destabilize the Swede’s trajectory?  What brooding, grief, confusion and loss had come his way in life?”

This is the setup for the real story, the story of Swede Levov’s life, which the narrator has imagined — from golden boy to broken man.  The Swede’s daughter, Merry, it turns out,

New York Times Photo Archives - Patrick A. Burns
New York Times Photo Archives – Patrick A. Burns

was a Vietnam war activist who bombed the post office in their small New Jersey town, killing the local doctor and sending her into hiding.  With this act of violence, Merry destroys the Levov family’s unbearably idyllic life.  A major theme that interests Roth in this novel is parent-child relationships.  Parents must do everything they can to help their children succeed.  It is impossible for a parent to give up on a child, to believe the unthinkable about a child, to confront the evil which is “ineradicable from human dealings.”  Even though Swede Levov had a second chance, a second wife, three normal, healthy children, he had experienced “the worst lesson that life can teach — that it makes no sense.”  He can never really be happy again.  Merry’s violent act “transport[ed] him out of the longed-for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence and the desperation of the counter-pastoral — into the indigenous American berserk.” 

American Pastoral is pretty grim, though there are bits of Roth’s sharp humor throughout.  And the setting of Newark is equally grim — a place changed from a manufacturing hub to “the worst city in the world,” abandoned now that everyone has moved to the suburbs.  Newark-manufacturingWhile Newark used to have “a factory where somebody was making something in every side street.  Now there’s a liquor store in every street — a liquor store, a pizza stand, and a seedy storefront church.  Everything else in ruins or boarded up. ”  Even Swede Levov had to move his glove factory to Puerto Rico, after holding out as long as possible through the riots of the sixties.  His loyalty alone — to his employees and to the neighborhood –cannot hold back the tide of urban decay.

I’d say I got a good sense of a narrow slice of the New Jersey Jewish experience from the 1940’s through the 1990’s by reading American Pastoral.  Through the story of Swede Levov, Roth handily demolishes the myth of the American dream.  The notion of creatingModernNewJersey some kind of perfect life in the bucolic suburbs where one can hide from the reality of life and the desperation of poverty and war is absurd.  Especially for Jews.  It is Roth’s tour de force about “the ritual post-immigrant struggle for success turning pathological.”

Is American Pastoral the quintessential New Jersey novel?  It definitely has that element described by Rutgers Professor Michael Aaron Rockland — characters trying to find a center, looking for meaning in their lives while living in a “never never land” of rural New Jersey and pretending to be living on a farm.  Levov’s wife actually buys cows and runs a successful dairy farm for a time.  Yes, this book has given me a fairly Dickensian feel for Newark at the end of the twentieth century.  And I’m glad to be moving on to Jernigan, wondering about the kind of New Jersey David Gates has presented there.

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: American Pastoral, New Jersey, Newark, Phillip Roth

On to New Jersey

September 23, 2013 by rachelreadsfiction 2 Comments

SlatefordJunctionPA-CourtesyChuckWalsh
SlatefordJunctionPA-CourtesyChuckWalsh

I’m kind of reluctant to leave Pennsylvania, the rolling hills and beautiful, though coal mining damaged countryside to head off to New Jersey.  New Jersey?  Yeah, I have all sorts of preconceived notions about New Jersey even though I’m most familiar with the airport, having flown to New York via New Jersey from Seattle several times over the years — there’s a nonstop.  New Jersey immediately conjures up images of mobsters, a notorious Mafia hang out. No surprise that The Sopranos was set in New Jersey.  Also, Jersey Shore and Real Housewives of New Jersey, right?  But I haven’t watched those so that’s no help.  I also know that Martha Stewart went to High School in Nutley, New Jersey, thanks to my good friend Robin who went there too — though years later than Martha so their paths never crossed.  Of course, these random facts don’t really give me a handle on what it would be like to live in New Jersey or what it’s like as a place.

My research into independent bookstores in New Jersey leads me to Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, New Jersey.  I’m drawn to Watchung because the bookstore’s website tells me that Montclair is “a town that really values the word,” and the store owner’s comment

Courtesy-Patch
Courtesy-Patch

that she estimates sixty authors live there. Perfect.  Someone at Watchung will definitely be able to recommend a New Jersey novel for me.  I call them up and speak with someone who seems perplexed by my request — a novel that takes place in New Jersey, one that would give me a sense of New Jersey as a distinct place.  Philip Roth is the first author who pops into her head but she asks if she can call me back, wants to think about it.  I’m good with that.  In fact, I figure she’s really taking me seriously.  When she calls me back, she’s come up with  a book called something like “Legends of New Jersey” which doesn’t appeal to me — mostly because it’s not a novel.  She then suggests that I do an internet search to find a book I might like.  “That’s what I would do,” she tells me.  Now I’m disappointed because I’m really counting on the expertise of independent booksellers to make recommendations for this project.  So I decide to get American Pastoral by Philip Roth and then take her advice and do some online research about a more current author who has written about New Jersey.

My search leads to me an essay by Bill Morris in an online literary magazine called, The Millions, titled, “Who Wrote the Great New Jersey Novel?”  Find it here:  http://www.themillions.com/2012/07/who-wrote-the-great-new-jersey-novel.html   In welcome-to-new-jersey-signit, Morris says, “New Jersey’s lack of defining character traits —  it’s facelessness, its rootlessness, its lukewarmness —  make it an ideal portal to get inside the soul of a nation that becomes more faceless, rootless and generic — more soulless — by the day. . . . In contemporary America, anomie is a moveable feast, and its template was exported from New Jersey.”  Oh, he’s wonderfully cynical and I can’t wait to read his list of nominees for the great New Jersey novel.  But first, he asks, “what, beyond a New Jersey setting, makes a novel a New Jersey Novel?  He then quotes several writers on this subject.  Michael Aaron Rockland, a professor at Rutgers who teaches a class in “Jerseyana” (really?) says that the whole notion of New Jersey is that “we live in a never-never land, where we pretend we’re living on a farm.  The real centers of New Jersey are these office parks in the middle of nowhere.. . . what every writer writes about is our trying to find a center in our lives.”  Another author who grew up in New Jersey says, ” New Jerseyness is a kind of vagueness.  It’s peculiarly indeterminate.”  And this makes me think about my interaction with the bookseller at Watchung.  She seemed unable to recommend a book that exemplifies New Jersey, maybe because it’s so hard to put your finger on this place.  It’s fuzzy, mercurial.  Is it a suburb of Manhattan or a distinct place with character all its own?

I scroll through the list of New Jersey novels offered by Bill Morris and find that I haveRichardFordBooks read many of them but have somehow missed that they were set in New Jersey.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I love Richard Ford and eagerly read my way through the Frank Bascombe trilogy, one after the other and loved them all.  But I agree with Morris, who says the thing about these novels is that they’re all about what goes on inside Frank’s head.  Since Frank is a failed novelist who turns to sportswriting and then to selling real estate, he, like his home state is the “poster boy for the uncelebrated.”  He offers this quote from Frank as one of the most left-handed compliments any state ever received:  “Better to come to earth in New Jersey than not to come at all.”

Philip Roth is on the list, American Pastoral, specifically.  So I decide to start my New Jersey reading here and also order up Morris’s favorite Jersey novel, Jernigan, by David Gates from Watchung Booksellers, as my second source since I’ve found that reading two novels set in a state gives me the sense of continuity and departure that I need to form a deeper understanding of the place.

Filed Under: Bookstores Tagged With: Montclair, New Jersey, New Jersey fiction, Watchung Booksellers

Back Roads by Tawni O’Dell

September 9, 2013 by rachelreadsfiction Leave a Comment

BackRoads2Back Roads by Tawni O’Dell is the story of a twenty- year-old young man, Harley Altmyer, who, on page one, is questioned by the local sheriff for the brutal murder of a woman.  From the looks of it, Harley is plenty guilty.  His hands are full of dried blood, the color of a dead rose and, while he claims innocence, he can’t stop talking about how the mining office where he and the dead woman were found is a favorite hideout of his, where he liked to come with his friend Skip, now off at college.  Harley rambles on about how he and Skip used to try to kill Skip’s little brother, but not seriously.  The only time they actually came close to hurting Donny by luring him to sit directly underneath the automatic garage door while they press the button to lower it, Harley pulled him to safety at the last minute.  Harley somehow naively believes that these stories he can’t seem to shut up about may help convince the sheriffs questioning him that he is not a murderer.

And Harley is no stranger to trouble.  He knows the sheriff because he’s the same man who investigated his father’s murder, when his father was shot in the back by his mother two years before the novel opens.  Wow, this is some dysfunctional family.  Since his mother has been in prison, Harley has been working two jobs, delivering appliances by day and working at the local grocery store at night to support his three sisters, ranging in age from eight to sixteen.  And he’s not happy about it.  Harley is consumed with rage over his situation.  He can barely keep his anger in check while going through the motions of caring for his sisters.  While he sometimes keeps his regular appointment with the court-appointed psychologist, he’s very careful about what he tells her about his feelings.  He can tell when she has tricked him into saying something important because she gives him a look, like I was suddenly naked and surprisingly well-hung.  Yes, Harley is angry and in trouble, but funny too.  I am completely on his side from page one. [Read more…] about Back Roads by Tawni O’Dell

Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Back Roads, Pennsylvania fiction, Tawni O'Dell

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