It might seem like the epitome of self-indulgence to devote an entire post to my dissatisfaction with a number of books, but there is actually a point to this.
Drumroll, please, as we begin with...
The History of Love pulls the reader in with exquisitely wrought language and a heartbreaking concept. What it appears to be, at the start, is a postmodern angle on the Holocaust--instead of dwelling on the details as many, many other novels and films have done in the past, the focus is instead on the far-reaching consequences whose tragedy is none the less wrenching for being muted. Simultaneously, a plethora of characters are introduced, one of whom is the author of the novel-within-the-novel, The History of Love. As the plot unfolds, twists, and folds again, it becomes at once the mystery of who wrote History, and an exploration of the psyche of Leopold Gursky--a Holocaust survivor whose former love married another man--and the girl Alma, who was named for the magnetic protagonist in the novel-within-the-novel.
I could explicate and analyze every plot twist of this book, but other reviewers have done that already, and it's not necessary. The problem with this book lies at its heart, not in the individual strands of the tapestry that Krauss took such pains to weave. More to the point, the problem is that the overt complexity of the plot acts as a mask to conceal the emptiness underneath. Line by line, the prose is expertly written (if a bit precious and overworked at times). The tone of the novel is unquestionably intelligent. But all these elements are coming together as if by rote. The elderly escapades of Leopold Gursky are too reminiscent of Philip Roth's iconic anti-heroes, and without the underlying sense of purpose that gives Roth's novels their poignancy. Krauss's characters, like dutiful Literary Figures, go through the motions of being exactly that. The book ultimately trails away into emptiness in a chain of pointless "revelations" precisely because it never had any underlying meaning in the first place. Various "themes" are introduced, certainly, but not in a genuinely profound manner. They are the same themes that recur throughout literature--mortality, lost love, the innate tragedy of innocence--but it feels like they are there because Literature demands their presence rather than because they grew organically from within the text.
And this is the peril of contemporary, so-called literary fiction: the emphasis is on style, an illusion of depth, characters doing little, often eccentric things that are symbolic or are intended to contain hidden meaning. But too often there is no depth at all, and the lack of a plot is not because the book is too intelligent to need one, but because Plot is apparently a bourgeois device that pales in comparison to intensive, unending introspection. Yet I'd argue that few books are better off for being aimless and preoccupied with themselves. Plot can act as a catalyst to plumb the depths of a theme--in fact that is why we have stories in the first place. The power of storytelling since the beginning of human speech has been, I would argue, in the themes that dance in and out of the shadows; a dance whose beauty comes from its combination of deliberate art and spontaneity. Dwelling consciously and exclusively on theme leaches the power of stories, as well as the potential for exploration in the most elusive and profound territory--that of the unconscious mind.
As a result, The History of Love is a poster child for the worst of what contemporary literary fiction has become--empty, navel-gazing, but ornate and falsely contemplative on its surface.
So now that I've made my spiel, it's probably clear where I'm going with this. Because Ann Patchett's The Patron Saint of Liars is another such example: a beautifully written, intricately wrought novel about nothing. Or more accurately, the story of a pregnant woman who leaves her husband in order to escape her dissatisfaction with the marriage. The opening chapters explore her childhood and the people in her life with thorough and loving detail; these chapters are a pleasure to read. It is a pitfall of contemporary literature, however, that its authors delight in description for its own sake, without giving sufficient thought to where they are taking the reader and why. In this case, the result is that the main character, who seemed so eager to escape the shackles of marriage, is only exchanging one set of shackles for another: for the rest of the novel she consigns herself to a dull, sterile existence as the cook in the home for pregnant women that she escaped to. She gets herself into another, even more loveless marriage than the first. She serves as a cold and ungenerous mother figure to her child. Yet with all this, people love her, possibly because she is physically beautiful.
The reader is certainly given no hint as to why anyone would love someone who is so purposefully aimless and self-centered. She has deliberately closed herself off even from the the mother she loves, and we are never given the faintest clue why she even bothered to run away from her empty marriage if it was to enter into a similar one and become joylessly obsessed with cooking. There is--surprise!--no plot whatsoever. We see this uninteresting character from the perspective of the man she married and her unfortunate daughter, we see how she affects them--far more profoundly than she deserves--and then she is gone, and it's hard to understand why anyone would care.
Patchett in general has this problem, as it was manifest in The Magician's Assistant as well: she has characters doing unconventional things, like choosing to live with a man who will never love you back, or taking off to become a taciturn cook for the rest of your life, but without providing the slightest inkling of motivation for these actions. It's as if she believes that the actions are already so interesting as to be sufficient material for a story, apparently without realizing that actions that have no seeming motivation are not interesting, but merely confusing. Maybe it's the postmodern addiction to quirkiness playing itself out here, but in that case the quirks are taken too seriously to be either charming or ironic, and those are the only legitimate purposes that quirkiness serves.
And now we come to The Game by A.S. Byatt. Yes, it's an early work, but it's been reprinted in a beautiful Vintage edition, and besides--it's A.S. Byatt, rendering it Great Contemporary Literature almost by default. But, as Nicole Krauss would so stylistically say: and yet. This is essentially a Tale of Two Beeyotches that masquerades as a profound meditation on illusion and self-deception. Or rather, it is a meditation on those things, but it is not particularly profound.
The two sisters around whom the story revolves are both self-involved, but one is a frustrated, passionate academic while the other is a status-seeking, self-deceiving, shallow writer of self-centered potboilers. Guess which one has Byatt's sympathy. But both of them are types, intellectual constructs meant to aid the author in her cool, delicately written exploration of her chosen themes. The language is convoluted, the novel peppered with philosophical ponderings, yet in the end--who gives a damn? Why the game is even mentioned, let alone the title of the novel, is purely a symbolic conceit; the game is never fleshed out enough to be plausible as the catalyst of so much pain and dysfunction. The book is old enough that the television is used as a representation of the power of illusion, rather than being a simple fact of life. Everything in the book is a carefully chosen symbol, all the conversations are meant to contribute to the themes.
This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but in this particular case, the subject matter is simply not as deep as the author seems to think. What is real? How much of our lives are preoccupied with illusion, and can illusion wreck a human life? Interesting question. I'd rather watch the Matrix again, though, than slog through this arched-eyebrow, pretentious and repetitive contribution, which says a great deal but doesn't convey any genuinely powerful ideas.
Does that make me anti-intellectual? I'm sure some would say so. In my opinion, though, such cool discussion actually evades real discussion; the words are an intricate web of craft without substance or daring. Powerful art must come from the gut as well as from the mind; it is that synthesis which makes it art rather than academia or philosophy. Pure gut, and you get a Mary Higgins Clark or Danielle Steel; but pure mind, on the other end of the spectrum, is bloodless and without impact. Meat and wine can each be enjoyed separately; but put them together and you have a meal, and at last--true satisfaction.
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