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highlyeccentricWhat Are You Reading Wednesday:
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
More or less the same as last fortnight, actually, except I've picked up Alice Monro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories and am a few stories in. I'm finding each story quite compelling, and I enjoy her deft touch for describing landscapes, but I haven't yet got a sense of the book as a whole.
What did you recently finish reading?
Aside from 'a friend's chapter on the Roman de la Rose' (useful but a bit simplistic, as she warned me when she gave it me), and the Clerk's Tale (wahey, spousal abuse!), we have...
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was not as good as it could have been. I picked it up, having heard it recommended on two fronts: one, as a sort of YA-for-20-somethings, and two, as self-conscious metafiction attempting to rewrite/revitalise the marriage plot (... as if there aren't 900 million books about people getting together out there already. But, what, those are written by laaadies and are therefore not literature? IDEK)
It was a reasonable read on both those counts, but ultimately, could have done better. Where both genres, YA and 19th c marriage novels, typically do better than this book is in prioritising the heroine's perspective. This is true even when the heroine is relatively passive due to circumstances or social constraints (eg, Austen's Persuasion: Anne is constrained by her personality and the social structures around her from taking any significant action in favour of her desired marriage, but the novel focuses on her inner experience, the way she chooses to react within herself and regard herself under these constraints). YA is to a great degree *based* on teenage girls - many books which are about and for young men are just Literature (see: the Catcher in the Rye, the Secret History, etc etc).
The Marriage Plot seems to be emulating Austen, Elliot, etc in its treatment of Madeleine's perspective, and combining that with the narrow perspective and consequent sense of entrapment which some YA focuses on (unsurprisingly, I prefer the kind of YA which is bursting with curiosity and laced with optimism even when the protagonist is depressed / in a screwed up situation / etc). What I found strange was that, once she and Leonard had moved out to the Cape, so few of the sections in her POV focused on decision-making processes, aside from reactive ones (how to deal with Leonard's latest stunt, be it marriage or mania). I guess the house-hunting episode was, but it was so hampered by Leonard's choices. I was expecting the denoument to involve Madeleine *deciding* something, somehow, but the possible candidates (annulment, sex with Mitchell) were all treated obliquely. We didn't get to see her in her new surrounds, or taking control/ownership of her choice to enter grad school... It frustrated me.
Similarly, I wasn't happy with the romanticising of 'Nice Guy Friend gets a clue and decides to stop hanging around girl forever'. I understand that was an important step for Mitchell, and I'm glad he made it, but as a substitute for 'finally Mr Darcy asks you to marry him', I wasn't impressed. Couldn't Madeline SAY something? Apparently not. Also, Mitchell's great revelation reminded me hilariously of a testimony once given at my school by an earnest lad who had been in painfully unrequited love for some time, much to the pain of the girl he adored. 'Finally God revealed to me that just because I have feelings for someone doesn't mean God wants us to be together!' No shit, dude. And now you've publically turned this girl's experience of being bothered and badgered into your personal growth narrative - in front of her. Good work. In the same way, I feel like Eugenides lost the sense of which POV character was his *protagonist*, and Madeline's story became about Mitchell's redemption.
What I WAS happy with was Leonard's narrative arc. That was really well handled. His point of view was withheld for a long time, which was quite effective. By the time his POV came up, I resented him fiercely; by the time the narrative ended, I wanted him to get out of the marriage as much for his sake as Madeleine's. There's no easy ending for him - he's out of the environment where he's babied and out of social step, but he will always be ill. I'm OK with that, and I'm OK with the lack of resolution to his narrative - we get no POV narration after he leaves, and have to live with the knowledge that he probably won't be OK.
I probably should've noticed earlier than I did that the book was screwing with my mood patterns. Madeleine's POV is, I found, quite a convincing portrait of what it's like to be dating someone mentally ill and destructive, and to be dragged down with them by the compelling attraction of their personality. And Leonard's POV was very well used to enhance that - you went for a spin with him and then spun out with Madeleine, back and forth. Both perspectives a bit close to home (oh, Leanard, if only we could give you modern antidepressants!).
Finally, if academia is meant to replace the saviour-husband in Madeline's narrative, I am not convinced! There *was* period around about 1988 in which the number of jobs advertised exceeded the number of PhDs granted (in history, at least; other humanities apparently similar but I can't find graphs), but it was a brief blip in a market that had begin sliding in the early 70s. I could buy academic endeavour as a process of self-definition, if only Eugenides had invested more than one brief episode of Madelein's POV in her new Victorianist embitions, but happily ever after it aint.
Except, oh, wait, she's got parents who can apparently shell out for BA and MA; she has enough resources to warrant a pre-nup; and her parents could afford to swoop in and pick up her and her husband and pay all their bills. Madeleine will be fine. I wanted to slap her upside the head with some reality, much as Leonard wanted to.
As a coming-of-age narrative, this book lacks a LOT. And yet it is skillfully and compellingly told. Hrrmph.
What do you think you'll read next? I've just got the booklist for the high school exams I'm marking, so Raymond Carver and Tracy Chevalier lie in my future...
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
What are you currently reading?
More or less the same as last fortnight, actually, except I've picked up Alice Monro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories and am a few stories in. I'm finding each story quite compelling, and I enjoy her deft touch for describing landscapes, but I haven't yet got a sense of the book as a whole.
What did you recently finish reading?
Aside from 'a friend's chapter on the Roman de la Rose' (useful but a bit simplistic, as she warned me when she gave it me), and the Clerk's Tale (wahey, spousal abuse!), we have...
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey EugenidesMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was not as good as it could have been. I picked it up, having heard it recommended on two fronts: one, as a sort of YA-for-20-somethings, and two, as self-conscious metafiction attempting to rewrite/revitalise the marriage plot (... as if there aren't 900 million books about people getting together out there already. But, what, those are written by laaadies and are therefore not literature? IDEK)
It was a reasonable read on both those counts, but ultimately, could have done better. Where both genres, YA and 19th c marriage novels, typically do better than this book is in prioritising the heroine's perspective. This is true even when the heroine is relatively passive due to circumstances or social constraints (eg, Austen's Persuasion: Anne is constrained by her personality and the social structures around her from taking any significant action in favour of her desired marriage, but the novel focuses on her inner experience, the way she chooses to react within herself and regard herself under these constraints). YA is to a great degree *based* on teenage girls - many books which are about and for young men are just Literature (see: the Catcher in the Rye, the Secret History, etc etc).
The Marriage Plot seems to be emulating Austen, Elliot, etc in its treatment of Madeleine's perspective, and combining that with the narrow perspective and consequent sense of entrapment which some YA focuses on (unsurprisingly, I prefer the kind of YA which is bursting with curiosity and laced with optimism even when the protagonist is depressed / in a screwed up situation / etc). What I found strange was that, once she and Leonard had moved out to the Cape, so few of the sections in her POV focused on decision-making processes, aside from reactive ones (how to deal with Leonard's latest stunt, be it marriage or mania). I guess the house-hunting episode was, but it was so hampered by Leonard's choices. I was expecting the denoument to involve Madeleine *deciding* something, somehow, but the possible candidates (annulment, sex with Mitchell) were all treated obliquely. We didn't get to see her in her new surrounds, or taking control/ownership of her choice to enter grad school... It frustrated me.
Similarly, I wasn't happy with the romanticising of 'Nice Guy Friend gets a clue and decides to stop hanging around girl forever'. I understand that was an important step for Mitchell, and I'm glad he made it, but as a substitute for 'finally Mr Darcy asks you to marry him', I wasn't impressed. Couldn't Madeline SAY something? Apparently not. Also, Mitchell's great revelation reminded me hilariously of a testimony once given at my school by an earnest lad who had been in painfully unrequited love for some time, much to the pain of the girl he adored. 'Finally God revealed to me that just because I have feelings for someone doesn't mean God wants us to be together!' No shit, dude. And now you've publically turned this girl's experience of being bothered and badgered into your personal growth narrative - in front of her. Good work. In the same way, I feel like Eugenides lost the sense of which POV character was his *protagonist*, and Madeline's story became about Mitchell's redemption.
What I WAS happy with was Leonard's narrative arc. That was really well handled. His point of view was withheld for a long time, which was quite effective. By the time his POV came up, I resented him fiercely; by the time the narrative ended, I wanted him to get out of the marriage as much for his sake as Madeleine's. There's no easy ending for him - he's out of the environment where he's babied and out of social step, but he will always be ill. I'm OK with that, and I'm OK with the lack of resolution to his narrative - we get no POV narration after he leaves, and have to live with the knowledge that he probably won't be OK.
I probably should've noticed earlier than I did that the book was screwing with my mood patterns. Madeleine's POV is, I found, quite a convincing portrait of what it's like to be dating someone mentally ill and destructive, and to be dragged down with them by the compelling attraction of their personality. And Leonard's POV was very well used to enhance that - you went for a spin with him and then spun out with Madeleine, back and forth. Both perspectives a bit close to home (oh, Leanard, if only we could give you modern antidepressants!).
Finally, if academia is meant to replace the saviour-husband in Madeline's narrative, I am not convinced! There *was* period around about 1988 in which the number of jobs advertised exceeded the number of PhDs granted (in history, at least; other humanities apparently similar but I can't find graphs), but it was a brief blip in a market that had begin sliding in the early 70s. I could buy academic endeavour as a process of self-definition, if only Eugenides had invested more than one brief episode of Madelein's POV in her new Victorianist embitions, but happily ever after it aint.
Except, oh, wait, she's got parents who can apparently shell out for BA and MA; she has enough resources to warrant a pre-nup; and her parents could afford to swoop in and pick up her and her husband and pay all their bills. Madeleine will be fine. I wanted to slap her upside the head with some reality, much as Leonard wanted to.
As a coming-of-age narrative, this book lacks a LOT. And yet it is skillfully and compellingly told. Hrrmph.
What do you think you'll read next? I've just got the booklist for the high school exams I'm marking, so Raymond Carver and Tracy Chevalier lie in my future...