The Not-So-Way-Back Machine

OK, well maybe now I get it.  Just finished ‘CivilWarLand in Bad Decline’, the first George Saunders short story collection (1996).  I raved about the latest highly lauded collection ‘Tenth of December’ (2012), and I wondered where I had been to have missed him totally for so many years.  Now I understand that while the Saunders of 2012 has lots in common with the Saunders of 1996, there are also striking differences that put his recent work squarely in the mainstream, whereas the earlier collection sits closer to the fringe.

Yes, there are many similarities, many common strands.  But the earlier work relies more heavily on futuristic sci-fi post-apocalyptic scenarios, and those earlier stories downplay the straightforward human aspects in favor of a more narrowly focused hard-edged view.  The later stories feel softer and exhibit more ambiguous empathy for multiple viewpoints within a single story; they are more deeply rooted in a more universal world of human emotion.  The earlier stories are more insistently ‘out there’, more experimental, more cynical, and for the most part less rewarding.

Nonetheless in the early collection there is much memorable writing.  Some pages are stunning, indeed.  Some made me laugh out loud, and in others I just plain delighted in Saunders' virtuosic command. I particularly enjoyed ‘The 400-Pound CEO’.  It’s heart-breaking, and I savored that.  But no single story in the early collection matches the emotional breadth shown in almost every story of the later collection.

So the trend is promising, indeed.  What next?

Mostly Cloudy

‘Cloud Atlas’ so impressed me that I’ve pledged to read everything that David Mitchell has published.  ‘The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet’ is his most recent novel.  Some of the literary virtuosity that produced ‘Cloud Atlas’ is on display here, but this is at heart a much more traditional novel.  It’s well researched and skillfully written historical fiction.  The underlying message is similar to that of ‘Cloud Atlas’.  Greed and self-interest are at the center of most human interaction.  Simple selfishness motivates most of our actions.  Evil is common as the ultimate expression of that selfishness.  Compassion and empathy are rare, perhaps temporarily self-promoting, but ultimately self-effacing.  Beauty matters to those that perceive it, but it rarely plays more than an incidental role in the larger historical procession.  And that’s OK.  It’s just the way that it is.

The chronology is straightforward.  There is only one story here, though there are subplots and threads that keep the reader engaged.  Dialect is not nearly so prominent an issue as in ‘Cloud Atlas’.  This is a more unified, less risky, less ambitious, and perhaps more wholesome book.  It’s a good read, even if it lacks the high-wire literary thrills that characterize ‘Cloud Atlas’.

The movie ‘Cloud Atlas’ was IMHO extraordinarily beautiful, and the writers and directors did a masterful job of translating literary wizardry into cinematic magic.  I’ve never seen a more creative and far-reaching film adaptation of a novel.  ‘Jacob de Zoet’ would be a much easier transition to film.  The characters are striking, the plot has dramatic turns, the language is straightforward enough to work on the screen.  I’d see it in a heartbeat.  Just please don’t sentimentalize the ending.

I’m not completely ignorant of history, but I knew only the simplest facts about Japan circa 1800.  The colonial rivalries and complex interactions with traditional Japanese society are fascinating and are portrayed with no axes-a-grinding.  History is indeed messy, and human nature is at the root of much of the disarray.  But there are individuals of real merit, and Mitchell portrays them as everyday heroes.  He seems to have a profoundly pessimistic view of our innermost tendencies and our ultimate fate, and his specialty may turn out to be spinning out that destiny in engaging narratives which include a few truly admirable characters, a few fascinating evil ones, and even more simple folk that live without much of a plan or purpose.  It’s a worldview that on most days I can subscribe to, though I do have days imbued with more optimism and hope.  I’d like to believe that our own nature does not doom us to unhappiness and the obligation to inflict suffering on others.  Maybe the bright spots outshine the gloom?

But maybe not.

Meta: When It Works

‘Disgrace’ blew me away when I first read it years ago, but some of Coetzee’s later works have left me a little cold.  Hadn’t read him a quite a while, and was pleased to find a pristine and inexpensive copy of ‘Slow Man’ at a used bookstore in Lincoln, Nebraska.  (Rather a large store with a big fiction section where there was not one book by Philip Roth.  So much for New Jersey Jews in Nebraska.)

He did win the Nobel, after all.

‘Slow Man’, like ‘The Fourth Hand’, centers on a main character that experiences severe injury from a disabling accident.  In both novels the devastation is significant, but the loss is also a spur to human and psychological growth.  The disability is sudden and shocking, and recovery takes time.  In both cases the characters do not return to their pre-accident states, but move forward (in ways both uncertain and complex) to new more complete and true modes of being.  Interesting parallels.

 So happy to reconnect with Coetzee’s prose style.  Very direct, almost terse, quite masculine, but at the same time curiously graceful without being the least bit self-conscious or ‘poetic’ in a forced way.  Not a common combination.

But for me the most appealing aspect of the book is Elizabeth Costello, a character that appears in many of Coetzee’s works.  Here she materializes from nowhere to poke and prod Paul (the injured man) into significant movement away from his customary reclusive and passive habits.  Costello is an author, and Paul is her character.  She’s somehow stuck with him.  She doesn’t know what to do with him.  She has to wait for him to act.  She makes many suggestions about what he might do, but she can’t make decisions for him.  He has to figure it out for himself.  Coetzee manages all of this with a very light touch.  It’s both humorous and serious.  It’s real and it’s not.  Reminded me of the gods in Banville’s ‘The Infinities’.  They do their best to direct human affairs, but their influence is limited and they are preoccupied with their own all-too-human concerns amongst themselves.  Here Costello too has her own needs which play into the action, especially at the end. I’m really not sure how Coetzee brings it off with such grace.  It doesn’t feel like science fiction, and it doesn’t have a preachy modern meta-literature (“Watch me do something really cool here”) feel about it either.  It’s playful, fun, and telling.

There’s also much here about the differences between love and care, about the concept of home, and about family connections.  Lots of food for thought.  Ultimately we do have the power to revise our own rules and definitions as we choose.  We are our own authors.  But as authors we have to work with the human material we have.  We can reconsider, make suggestions, cheerlead, wag a finger, or cajole.  We can hope that our characters reward us with complexity, change, humanity, and insight.  Sometimes we are pleased with the result, sometimes not.  But we can always try just one more draft.  Maybe this will be the one?