Other Things To Read

I've been in an "I don't feel much like blogging" mood for a while.  I don't know how long it will last.  If it persists, I may shut things down for a while here until the spirit moves me again.

In the meantime, I'm still reading blogs.  I loved what my mom had to say about love that endures, here.  And Manhattan Fish wrote a nice post about networking that in other times might have prompted me to respond.  For now I'll just point you to hers. 

I finished The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint on the plane home from Miami.  I didn't like it.  But.  I don't know what the but is, except that there is one.  It's a skillfully written book that stays with you.  I resent it, for reasons I can't really identify.  I don't like the aesthetic -- it is deliberately harsh, overly eccentric.  It lacks subtlety.  The good writing makes this even more abrasive.  And there's something more about it.  I think there's something about the narrator that's inconsistent -- that makes the grittiness and the flat, unsparing light cast on an ugly reality seem contrived.  I think it's because the narrator is sweet, in some way, and we are to believe he is innocent and young.  And yet every descriptive choice, every turn of phrase is meant to convey bleakness.  So this narrator describes a brick house as being the color of dried blood.  Every metaphor is a dark one.  Nabokov did this wonderfully, and you'd get a glimpse into a narrator's mind from the way he described the world.  Something about it doesn't ring true here, because the things the narrator does and says and observes are a mix of innocence and jadedness that doesn't quite work.  But it ALMOST does, so the effect is a book you can't put down but don't really want to read.  The cheater ending is that the author lets up at the end -- good things start happening to the narrator, gentleness enters his life, and that is such a relief that I started to feel like perhaps the book was okay after all.  Maybe it is.  I don't know.  It's a book I'd like to read with other people because it is obviously well-written, and yet it is flawed in ways I don't really have words to describe.  If you've read it I'd like to know your take.  A bunch of smart people have told me they like it.  Is it the trick ending?  I mean, the ending is not a trick but it's a little like the old saw about banging your head against the wall because it feels so good when you stop.  Basically the author bangs the narrator's head against a wall for the first two thirds of the book, then bangs the narrator's head into something a little softer -- a sofa arm or something -- and then finally stops the banging.  Something about that ending feels so good that you look back on the book more fondly than when you were reading it.  I don't know if I recommend the book or not.  I guess I do; see for yourself.  And tell me what you think.

Comments

[wab]

As I am not a great reader of novels my view is prejudiced in responding to book reviews or sort of book reviews.... Yours was a terrific book review which screamed, "Don't bother with it!" to me.

[gretchen]

I couldn't put Edgar Mint down--but I have to confess that somewhere in the middle, I was so worried about him that I had to check the ending to make sure that he ended up okay. If the book had ended tragically, I'm not sure that I could have gotten through it. I was incredibly invested in the character. Having said all that, did I like the book? I'm not sure.