July 7 to July 18, 1976
The Woman Said Yes, Encounters with Life and Death, Jessamyn West
I don't mean to be irreverent, and I did love The Friendly Persuasion, but my recollection is that this one was sad and the theme was basically, "the woman said, yes, Dr. Kevorkian." Um you know, without Dr. Kevorkian himself being involved. Oh, I don't know, maybe I do mean to be irreverent, it happens too often to be accidental.
All Her Children, Dan Wakefield
Something about soap opera actors...?
The World Jonas Made, Philip K. Dick
Break of Day, Colette
Wonderful
The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh
This was funny--particularly having seen the motion picture years earlier.
Magazine of F&SF October '75 (esp. novelette Down to a Sunless Sea, Cordwainer Smith and. novelette Deadpan, E. Wellen)
July 7 to July 18, 2006 I read:
Enchanted, Inc., Shanna Swendson
This was a fun read, about a heroine whose magical "power" is that she is so utterly normal that she can see through magical illusions. Having just moved to New York from a small Texas town, she assumes the gargoyles, elves and fairy beings with wings are all eccentric New Yorkers. It's a gentle funny book. Swendson has a
web site, web log, all that stuff.
Marriage of Sticks, Jonathan Carroll
Jonathan Carroll as a writer is beyond excellent. His strong suit is bringing you into the dreamlike state his characters exist in, and he does it very well. He did some powerful things with the narrative up to about the middle of this book that will stay with me for a long time. However, that is part of my problem with this book. I wasn't comfortable in the world that he has created here, and as the end got closer, I wanted it over. I began to actively dislike it until I got to the ending, which I hated. Part of that seemed to be that Carroll had a mild case of what I call Lady-or-tigerism (after the ending of the famous Frank Stockton short story The Lady or the Tiger, that is a trick worked once--for Stockton, and I've never seen it work yet for anyone else). Oh, hell, for all I know, Carroll may have been crystal clear about the ending for those paying close attention, but as the conclusion of the book got more and more irritating, I was happy to get to the end, unsatisfying though it may have been, and so glad to have the book over that I had no desire to revisit it to understand anything I might have misunderstood. Interestingly, a penchant for "unsatisfying" endings is discussed on Carroll's web site. Some people evidently find the unsatisfying endings "endearing." As they say on the net, "your mileage may vary."
6 comments:
Contrary to what you said here, I thought the ending of Carroll's THE MARRIAGE OF STICKS was both brilliant and totally satisfying. The woman discovered that she had been using others all of her life(s) and now it was payback time on many different, important levels. Of course that is uncomfortable when we think about ourselves in her role. She was a sort of psychic vampire who had constantly used other peoples' lives to enhance her own. Only at the end of the book was she able to rid herself of that "curse" by being utterly selfless. Consciously, contritely selfless. Brilliant. Carroll's endings are always difficult and often open ended. Sort of like life, you know?
He is truly one of the greatest living writers. Not for everyone but what great artist is?
Jane Bolanos
Thanks for commenting, Jane,
I totally agree with you on several points. Carroll is one of the most brilliant writers I've read, and he does some amazing things. If I had totally loathed the world he created, I wouldn't have finished the book. If I hadn't totally admired his writing (which has a kind of lucid dreaming quality), I wouldn't have been so tremendously irritated by the ending!
Actually your comment focused another thing that pushed my buttons with the ending--equating a rather ambiguous episode of self-sacrifice with an equally ambiguous sort of salvation (or maybe not salvation, such is the lady-or-tiger nature of the ending).
I'm glad you had a good experience with him, because his level of writing is, as you say, quite rare. I had a strong enough negative reaction to the journey that I'm not sure whether I would read him again. But it's good that he has found an appreciative audience.
Lynne Murray
I think there is no "lady or tiger" ambiguity at all about the end of this book. To be absolved, the protagonist has to sacrifice her own child for the unborn son of Hugh and his wife. She does that willingly. As a reward, at the end of the novel she is saved by that son who has now grown to be a man. I think it's also odd for you to say (particularly as a writer) that you loved the author's style but wouldn't read another of his works because you didn't like the ending. Reading is two things-- story and style. If someone is extraordinarily good with one (or both) I read and cherish them for that element whether I "like" the other or not. I think Fred Astaire films are ridiculous, but I love to see him dance so I watch them whenever I can and turn a blind eye to the silliness of the stories.
Jane B.
Hi Jane, I think the main common ground we have here (aside from admiration of Fred Astaire's dancing!) is that we can definitely both agree that Jonathan Carroll is an excellent writer. However, I have to say that if I don't enjoy the experience an author puts me through as a reader, I'm not going to go back. At my age (58 next month), life seems a lot shorter, I'm neither obligated nor tempted by the many, many "well written but depressing as hell" books. There are a couple of books that I read when I was going through very bad times that wish I had not read at that point (or maybe ever). Example--I read William Kennedy's Ironweed, in various hospital waiting rooms while my husband was going through a major medical crisis. That book, a Pulitzer Prizewinner, is exceedingly well-written. But I think it should come with a "Do Not Read If Already Depressed" warning label and/or a scratch n sniff antidepressant. A few years later, going through more hard time at the VA hospital, I re-read The Name of the Rose instead, and it was a much better companion in hard times.
Re The Marriage of Sticks ending ambiguously. Maybe I was projecting my own ambiguity about finishing the book! The subject matter did not bring me closer to the text. The first example that leaps to mind is the recurring theme of the dog set on fire by one of the positive characters as her "sacrifice." It sounds like the dog's sacrifice to me. I also was distressed to find from looking at his web page that dogs come to bad ends in more than one of Carroll's books. No doubt there are psychological reasons why this author is working out this theme in his writing. All authors do that--it comes with the territory. But that doesn't mean I have to read it.
As far as ambiguity at the end: it seemed to me that the woman was sacrificing herself for her own unborn child rather than the other woman's child-that-wouldn't have been born. But you're saying she was sacrificing her own unborn child. Okay. I do prefer that to setting another dog on fire. While I was reading, I didn't get that, so I was a little confused about what happened to the pregnancy. Magical mystical miscarriage? Alternate time path where she never was pregnant? It must be the latter.
At the very end, while it's true that the other woman's son did rescue the old woman from her immediate freeway crisis, I wasn't so sure to what degree she ultimately COULD be rescued by anyone. According to the book's rules for reincarnation, by her sacrifice she had given up her status as a reincarnatable vampire and was going to die soon--permanently. Unless the son could somehow change that. I didn't see an indication of it but maybe it was there and I missed it. Or unless this was an illusion as in the end of DM Thomas's The White Hotel (another gorgeously written book that should be read only in the most serene of life conditions) where the heroine seems to escape death in the holocaust, but actually it's her life just after dying that is being lyrically described.
As you enjoyed The Marriage of Sticks, by reading more closely you may have found the answer to these questions. Myself, I had already starting to detach from the text, and was only finishing the book (a) because of the author's skill, and (b) to see how he ended it.
Lynne
I think we read different versions of this novel. Neither the old woman or any of the positive characters set the dog on fire in the book: "After I heard that someone had set it on fire, I realized I could no longer wait for you..." p.106 British edition. Until that time, she had treated it with great love and kindness. Your saying what you did makes me think your take on this book is a little skewed. PS I am the same age as you. I read the book in and out of a hospital watching my brother die. It made the experience an inch easier because I was able to see that right up until the end, there is always hope for redemption. And that is why I think it is a great novel because it was able to, in part, heal. Perhaps that is why I see it in my skewed way.
Hi Jane,
I'm sorry for the loss of your brother and it is good that you found consolation in this book--even though I had the opposite reaction, and found (and find!) my consolation in less solemn works. I don't think either of us is skewed (or maybe both of us are with that whole Fred Astaire thing). It does sound like we may be differently wired as far as what we find fictionally appealing and healing.
I was sure that the dog thing came up more often in Marriage of Sticks, and my inner pit bull about details got its jaws into it. I had borrowed and returned the book but I looked it up on the (US) Amazon "Look inside the book" feature. I found the earlier instance you mention on p.103-105 of the US edition. But on p. 234, the 100-year-old lady, Frances (my favorite character) is explaining how she transferred her vampire immortality and incidentally got her magician lover, the Great Shumda off of a murder charge, "I set a dog on fire. … it was necessary. When I realized that was what I had to do, I also understood it would cause the change…"
Then on p. 260, when the Great Shumda shows up to take Miranda away, he says he tried to tell her he was coming by setting her dog on fire (back when she was a kid!) She didn't get the message and he says, "It was dramatic but obviously not very effective."
So the score is two dogs--at the very least, the last one of which seemed to me weirdly gratuitous. This could just be my own bizarre writer's mind. See, if I were writing that scene (and I wouldn't put a dog in jeopardy, let along incinerate one fictionally, but for the sake of argument) I would have Miranda say, "You did that to send a message? Hadn't you ever heard of Western Union?" Sorry, I just can't help the way I think.
It just occurs to me that there may be some kind of Christian symbolism here with cryptic messages conveyed by the Dog/God sacrifice thing and that might tie into the Sticks/Styx symbolism. As a Buddhist raised by scientists, I frequently totally miss Christian symbolism. So I don't know.
As some of us used to say when we were both young critters, peace!
Lynne
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