a magnificent distraction

thoughts sparked by works of literature

This is the second novel by LeAnne Howe that I've read, and there's a strong chance that at least one of the two books (the other one was Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story) is going to have to go in my dissertation. Shell Shaker was incredible. I love the way Howe weaves together different eras and different lives to form a novel that's not quite historical fiction, not really magical realism, and not actually a family drama...but has elements you could find in all three of these genres. Really, this novel is in a genre all its own. The slipperiness of time in this story makes it all the more interesting to read, and the relationship of the ancestors' lives to the present-day characters' lives is ... I can't think of an adequate word. Something like fascinating, captivating, and engrossing all rolled into one.

Howe has created a diverse cast of characters here. Perhaps one of my favorite is the man who goes by the alias "James Joyce" -- an agent who works for the IRA, speaks in stream of consciousness, and is just about as incoherent as Finnegan's Wake unless one happens to be well versed in Irish history, legalese, and Choctaw history. Another of my favorites is Hoppy/Hopaii Iskitini (Little Prophet) -- Tema's son who recently dyed his hair emerald green and appears to be the next great leader of the Choctaw Nation. I also loved Dolores and Isaac -- the couple who have endured a half-century-long courtship only to discover that they are crazy about each other. But it's not just the quirks of the characters that make them so interesting -- it's the way Howe has breathed life into them. By intertwining their lives with their ancestor's lives (and consequently their thoughts and emotions as well), she brings a different kind of depth to them that is hard to attain if one is writing about characters who only have one lifetime worth of history.

I also think the novel is very ambitious with its message. There are so many things Howe seems to want to communicate, and so many issues she's got her characters addressing...yet it's not a preachy novel. It never really gets to that point that sometimes occurs when authors use their characters as personal mouthpieces through which to spout political convictions. These characters seem so alive that their thoughts and words seem to belong to them. In fact, Redford McAlester/Red Shoes turns out to be a really complex character, and his ideology is complicated (to say the least). His perspective -- one founded on greed, revenge, and resentment...oh, and love, pride, and survival -- is prickly. I mean, for a large part of the novel you just don't want to be sympathetic to him. But...then he gets a chance to speak and you realize it's not so easy to villanize him because while many of his motives were less-than-honorable, some of them were also admirable. What do you do with that? Can't place him easily into any category...no more black-and-white.

At first, I had a hard time getting into this novel. Perhaps this is because I was trying to read it in 5-minute increments.... Anyway, once I dedicated a more significant amount of time to reading it, I really got into it. The world Véa created in this novel is so full of life -- and so much of it revolves around the lives of people who don't have a lot of money but who live their lives to the fullest possibility. Interestingly, the people who feature in this novel are people who are forgotten and ignored by the rest of society. They are the poor, the transsexuals, the disowned, the alcoholics, the unemployed, the emotionally unstable, the sexually abused, and just about every other kind of marginalized there is. Véa makes some complicated statements about the value our society places on certain kinds of lifestyles and on certain types of lives. In this case, his characters illustrate the beautiful things these undervalued people have to offer their fellow community members, and the tragedy of not recording their daily lives and wanderings. There's a beautiful passage in here about the notes Boydeen (the reclusive court-reporter who lives in her basement room beneath the Rainbo Market and records everything within earshot on her machine) keeps: "If ever read, they would show that asphalt would eventually come to Buckeye Road, that the Blue Moon would burn down under suspicious circumstances. She would record Mr. Lee's eventual loss of the Rainbo to an eminent domain action. She would type that he cried quietly on the porch, and the record would reflect that he spat on Gold Mountain. [...] In the middle of the night, desperate mothers would come to the porch to pray and have it written. Young black nobodies from nowhere would walk together, hand in hand to the porch and say words to marry each other in writing, on this fringe of life. People with so little to have and so little time to have it would come to the porch and say their words to someone. [...] Nothing within earshot of the Rainbo Market would go unchronicled. Anyone who wished to say a thing and have it kept could come to the porch and speak into the depths." (184) I love this passage -- it's moving, and gets across the loss everyone suffers from not knowing about these people's lives.

On another note, I love the way the world of the living fuzzes out into the world of the dead and the world of the undead. Worlds bleed into each other here -- an Irishman's ghost walks his dog, silently apologizing to everyone he encounters, J.B.'s ghost follows Vernetta around with the noose still around his neck, and Apache (Josephina's dog) returns after a two- or three-year visit to the underworld. Cultures blend and melt together in Buckeye Road, and so do cultural beliefs and practices. African American residents of the town close their eyes and pick up their pace when they walk past the Mexican graveyard. Chinese convenience store owners honor debts to a Spanish curandera who's married to a Yaqui elder. A white "Arkie" pines for her son (borne to a half-African American, half-Filipino father). Even Beto's mother -- half Yaqui, half Spanish -- is in a relationship with a Filipino American. It's a slice of a beautiful culture that exists from the mingling of multiple cultures...a dream idea of what America could be like, except that Buckeye Road is no dream. The people are so poor that half of them live in abandoned cars or drain pipes; many of the inhabitants are alcoholics, and about an equal number are prostitutes, whores, or transvestites; when a killing happens (not infrequently), bodies are left in the street until the authorities come to pin the blame on someone. It's a place that will eventually be absorbed by Phoenix, but whose inhabitants have actively resisted that occurrence for a long time.

I'm eager to read more of Véa's writings, especially since this one is so perfect for my dissertation project. Perhaps his other novels will also be really ripe with possibility, and my options will multiply....

First impressions: interesting, entertaining, puzzling. I'm really interested by how the form of this novel -- alternating chapters that initially appear to be in separate worlds but ultimately converge -- mirrors the content. Not only does the isolation of the End of the World suit its reason for being, but so does the cold technology-obsessed nature of the Hard-Boiled Wonderland suit its money-grubbing, self-serving characters. More than that, the End of the World turns out to be a much more imaginative (if somewhat grim) place full of interesting characters and possibility...beneath the surface, anyway. The Hard-Boiled Wonderland -- future-Tokyo -- is also full of interesting characters, but they're all characters with serious flaws and no real desire to be changed or saved in any way. Plot spoiler coming now: I think that's why the narrator chooses to allow himself to transfer his consciousness to the End of the World (a "place" that exists within his own mind only -- one that he has created for purposes of self-preservation in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland that is his "real" life) in the end -- because despite the fact that the Town's inhabitants have all allowed their shadows (and therefore their minds) to die and have no real emotions, they have the potential to be awakened to new things. The narrator makes friends there, and his love-interest (the Librarian) shows a genuine desire for his help -- she wants him to help her find her mind. He believes there is work for him to do, and that the people he has created in his subconscious need him. In the Hard-Boiled Wonderland, they don't need him. He's just another worker engaged in the trading of information that doesn't belong to him. His wife left him after just a few years of marriage, and his life is empty except for work, whiskey, and old books and movies. The End of the World offers him something the Hard-Boiled Wonderland cannot: meaning. Significance, importance, other people who depend on him (whether or not they are aware of this dependence). His actions mean something there; in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the do not. His neighbors don't even peek out of their doors when his apartment is being decimated by the two Semiotecs, and the Professor's granddaughter informs him that they didn't come out when she shot one of the Semiotecs' ears off either. His life or death are immaterial there. In the End of the World, he will never die and his life will have meaning.
I didn't expect the ending Murakami wrote. In fact, I was really surprised when the narrator backed out of his escape plan at the last minute, leaving his shadow to escape on his own. ... But. ... Upon reflection, it makes sense. I was just so firmly rooted in our world that I figured he'd want to stay in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland. Also, I was sentimentally attached to his shadow (more so than the narrator himself was, apparently) and wanted to see them reattached. At the same time, his relationship with the Librarian in the End of the World did seem more complex and interesting than his relationship with the Librarian in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and I didn't consider that too much either. I guess throughout the novel the space allocated to him in the Hard-Boiled Wonderland was being filled in (or erased, depending how you want to look at it) bit by bit. Once the Semiotecs trashed his apartment (destroying his favorite things before anything else), he was basically homeless. Then, his relationship with the Librarian looked like it could be fruitful, but there were indications that it would ultimately go the same direction as his marriage went. So...I guess that just left one option: the End of the World.

The Gatekeeper continues to creep me out a bit, and I'm not sure what Murakami was really trying to do with him. The Caretaker at the Power Station remains one of the most interesting characters to me, as does the Colonel. I'm still curious about the presence of all these Townspeople -- they all seem to come from different backgrounds like the narrator does, having been separated from their now-dead shadows for different amounts of time and at different parts in their lives. I'm left to guess at whether they were supposed to be brought there like him, and this place has more of a life of its own than I originally thought (i.e. it might not exist solely within his mind), or whether as a figment of his mind they were just all given different backgrounds and histories for whatever reason. That one is going to have to remain a mystery, though. This book is awesome! I can't wait to read more of Murakami's stuff, although ironically, I'm going to have to. :)

Now I can see why so many people recommended this book to me. It's a very interesting read, especially for someone who's interested in the things I'm interested in. For one thing, the politics of this novel are really complex. The chapters alternate between two narrators, and they're both characters in the novel. However, they're characters who represent very opposite values. Erdrich's decision to start and end with Nanapush (an older traditional Chippewa man) and to leave Pauline (a younger mixed-blood Christian fanatic) mixed up in the middle of things puts the reader's sympathies with Nanapush right off the bad. Add to that Pauline's mental instability and sneaky nature, and you have a character nobody really wants to sympathize with. The political implications of this authorial decision are many, but perhaps most significant is the fact that Nanapush (a likable character) has the first and last word against Pauline (an unlikable character) is highly likely to make the reader sympathetic to his point of view on all things -- views on other characters, political ideology, cultural beliefs, etc. The fact that Pauline is so irritating just adds the likelihood that readers will not only be unsympathetic to her, but will actively hope for the demise of her and everything she stands for.

I also think Nanapush is an exceedingly interesting character. From the beginning he is characterized as a trickster figure, and his actions throughout the novel are consistent with this. Most of the time he fights his battles with his tongue, preferring to humiliate his adversaries rather than physically harm them. Second, he's very clever and he uses his cleverness to his advantage. Third, he likes to do things on a whim (such as naming Fleur's daughter Lulu Nanapush) and these offhanded decisions tend to end up working in his favor. Interestingly, he also harbors a deep distrust for all things white. He won't allow his name to be documented, he doesn't particularly care for the church, he is saddened by the land being lost to whites (and Native Americans who have become too interested in white ways) -- the list goes on. Since trickster figures were around long before white colonizers, it's interesting to think of this extra aspect of Nanapush's personality. I wonder what the implications are if I consider this anti-white aspect of his character to be part of his role as a trickster as opposed to part of his unique personality....

But wait, there's more! Since I'm really interested in the issue of magical realism and contemporary novels, Erdrich's novel offers an opportunity to think about some of the problems with the label "magical realism." Since this is a novel by a Native American author that incorporates cultural beliefs and practices, it's a classic example of the issue of exactly what constitutes the "magical" in magical realism. Is it an entirely Western concept that the scene where the ghosts of the dead play cards with a living character, gambling for her life, does not qualify as "realism"? Is the presence of Misshepeshu (the lake man) to be considered a supernatural event, or cultural folklore incorporated into the fiction? Is the tornado in Argus to be considered an exceptionally well-timed natural disaster, or Fleur's vengeful powers reaching out to cut down those who harmed her? In other words, there are a lot of events and characters in the novel that, by Western standards, would be considered supernatural; are we to consider them as such, or is that another classic example of the West imposing its belief structure on a culture that doesn't subscribe to it?

On a much more personal note, I really enjoyed this story. It was interesting and I enjoyed reading it because it made me think more deeply about some of the issues I've been grappling with in my own studies. I am looking forward to reading Love Medicine and The Plague of Doves now...or rather, this summer when I (theoretically) have the time. Also, this novel made me realize how much the CIC-AISC seminar I participated in this previous June helped deepen my knowledge of Native American history during the removal process. This is one of the few novels where I feel safe in saying that I understood the context for the taxes, housing loss, and redistribution of land that was happening throughout the story, and it added a depth to the novel that I might have missed out on if I wasn't familiar with the history.

Oddly enough, this novel somehow ended up on my reading list as a magical realist novel. Now that I finished it, I'm not sure this is really where it belongs. The narrative style is, however, interesting. Each chapter is focalized around a different character; while the narrative is third person, it shifts its focus from one character to another character. At times, this is disorienting as the relationships between the characters are not always clear. The first chapter revolves around Ka, the daughter of the "dew breaker" (former Haitian torturer turned expatriate and father, now living in New York over 30 years after his crimes), and the dew breaker himself. After that, the central character of each chapter leaves the dew breaker's family for a while to be replaced with different victims and others who were affected by the dew breaker's crimes from when he lived in Haiti (including his wife). Eventually, it returns to his past, and then to his wife's present.

The journey through this novel was troubling. Danticat's exploration of the different ways a series of people were affected by one man's actions is a reminder of how all of our actions influence other people's lives. While the dew breaker's actions are admittedly much different than the action of most ordinary people, the complex web of relationships stemming from the violence of a time of violent politics in Haiti's history made me think about the way that our pasts are never really over as long as we (or those we affected) remember them.

The characters were interesting, although due to the shifting nature of the narrative, few of them were very thoroughly developed. This is not meant to be a criticism of the novel; my preference for reading novels is related to my fondness for getting to know the characters over a few hundred pages, and since this novel's mission lies elsewhere, this desire was not satisfied. However, the dew breaker's family is more developed than most of the characters, and I found the character of his wife (Anne) to be the most interesting of all. His daughter, Ka, was somewhat flat and mildly irritating -- she was whiny and unforgiving -- but his wife was far more complex. She had her own chapter about midway through the novel ("The Book of Miracles") and then returned again at the end to complicate everything. The novel opens with the dew breaker's confession of his past to his adult daughter, and in this chapter we only hear Anne through a brief phone conversation and Ka's incredulous wonderings. We don't even get her name at this point. By the end of "The Book of Miracles" we know more about her family, her love of miracles, and her desires for her family. When the end of the novel finally comes around, we see another side of her as her family history and her marriage are finally revealed to be in tension with each other and all of a sudden a conflict that was introduced as a father-daughter issue has been exploded to encompass father, daughter, and mother and has been revealed to encompass the deep-seeded husband-wife relationship as well.

Danticat's novel resembles the "iceberg" concept of literature: for everything that is revealed, so much more lies beneath the surface. It's different though, because most of the time when people talk about icebergs and novels, they're referring to the author's tendency to leave it to the reader to infer the more complex aspects of their novels. In Danitcat's case, I feel like so much of it was open and obvious to the reader, but the book's ending opened up a million more questions and made me want to reevaluate the rest of the events in the novel.

I've read this book a number of times now, but every time it has me from the first sentence: "There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name." After that, it's all over for me. I can't put it down until I finish every last word of it. It's a beautiful story, woven together from Rushdie's finest skills of wordplay and imagination. Someday, when I finally get to teach a magical realism course, I'll either start or end the quarter with this novel. Not only is it absolutely magical, but it's also rife with the political mission so much of the genre concerns itself with. While Haroun and the Sea of Stories is certainly closer to fantasy than much of the magical realism I read, it's such a powerful story that its flights of fancy make it even more meaningful.

As I learn more about the context surrounding the writing of this book, I continue to discover new meanings to add to the other meanings I've already caught onto in previous readings. For example, I always wondered about the possible connections between the Valley of K and the nations in our world, but I was never able to make the connection between the Valley of K and Kashmir (despite the now-rather-obvious-seeming discussion of its nicknames -- Kosh-Mar and Kache-Mer -- on page 40). However, now that that connection has been made for me, I'm able to see all sorts of other significances popping up off of the page.

The really fun thing about this book is that there are these real-life political meanings that connect concretely to histories and politics in our own world (like the K/Kashmir thing), but there are also so many other connections that revolve around ideas and questions that, while perhaps no overtly political, bear significant political implications. The recurrence of the question, "What's the point of stories that aren't even true?" speaks to a functionalist tendency in our world today that threatens all manner of important things: creativity, imagination, critical thinking/questioning, etc. One example I can think of that is particularly relevant in contemporary America is the devaluation of the Humanities in colleges and universities around the country. While the scientific and technological fields most certainly have very obvious functions within our society (especially when it comes to making money and therefore gaining influence), the less obvious nature of the values the Humanities have to offer have resulted in the growing dismissal of these fields in the American academy. Rushdie's novel offers a well-imagined and dark look at what can happen to a world and its inhabitants when the balance between imagination and functionality is lost.

For anyone looking for a quick but interesting, thought-provoking, and fun read I hope you will consider reading this novel. It's a great introduction to Salman Rushdie as well, and will stimulate parts of your brain that you might not have used since childhood. Filled with Seussical passages ("The ship's entire power supply was cut off at once: stirrers stopped stirring and whirrers stopped whirring; blenders stopped blending and menders stopped mending; squeezers stopped squeezing and freezers stopped freezing; poison-storers stopped storing and poison-pourers stopped their pouring" [164]) and fascinating characters (Water Genies, Plenimaw Fishes, the Walrus), Rushdie's writing will make you ponder without realizing you're doing it. Let me know what you think when/if you read this!

If I had to describe this veritable tome of a book in one word, I'd have to say that that word is INTENSE. I've read Rushdie in the past -- Haroun and the Sea of Stories and The Satanic Verses -- and while these texts were whimsical and dense (respectively), they were nothing compared to Midnight's Children. In many ways, I feel like I missed a lot of the underlying meaning due to my shallow understanding of India's history. The knowledge I do have about India from 1947 on is enough to have given me a basic understanding of the key historical figures and events in the novel and prevent overwhelming confusion, but I'm still left with one thought on my mind: wow. Rushdie's ability to weave words together and create a magical world within our own still amazes me. Okay, so here are my thoughts on the novel.

The narrator and protagonist, Saleen Sinai, was not the most ideal narrator for a reader like me because of his tendency to provide vague details about the future only to snap back to the present and continue on chronologically with the story. In some ways, it felt like the foreshadowing technique Rushdie was using was unnecessary in that you had to read it, but it didn't advance the story. However, I have read enough Rushdie to trust that there is a reason for this -- a purpose that this storytelling style is working toward -- and now I just need to think about it and try to make some sense of this technique. So far, I haven't gotten that far. On another hand, Saleem's relationship to India presents an interesting basis for the novel. The fate of the Midnight's Children makes a strong statement that I can't quite unravel yet, but I have a lot of theories. I must admit that I really wish Rushdie had spent less time on Saleem's parents' generation and more time on the Midnight's Children themselves. Of course, that's just my obsession with "magical realism" talking -- I always prefer the more interesting to the flatly realistic (although I don't think you could actually call the other parts of the novel "flatly realistic" either) -- but even without the more unusual elements, the novel was an interesting interpretation of historical events through a somewhat magical story. This is where my lack of familiarity with Indian history became a true handicap: I knew Rushdie was making some pretty interesting political commentaries (especially with the India-Pakistan partition politics where Saleem was fighting for Pakistan...and also the part where Saleem lost "radio" contact with the rest of the Midnight's Children when he left India during his parents' separation), and I could only really get the basic gist of them but not the more complex implications of these messages.

I can see how people would argue that this novel is a counterpart to The Satanic Verses in that it's very much about India and what it means to be Indian in a newly-decolonized India, whereas The Satanic Verses is very much about what it means to be Indian in England (and hybridity and all that). I'm looking forward to rereading The Satanic Verses soon.

the distraction

Books. Reading. Words on a page. This is my magnificent distraction, a black and white obsession that has resulted in my pursuit of a PhD. This blog was born of a desire to write down my thoughts about the books on my reading list for the candidacy exams, and to share them with anyone who cares to read about them. Now it continues beyond that reading list (as my exams are behind me) and into the realm of my regular reading pursuits, whether they are for pleasureful or professional purposes. Enjoy!