tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7030175198419285984.post1863359609969036196..comments2024-03-06T19:29:28.444-08:00Comments on Getting Oriented: A Novel about Japan: The ChangelingWally Woodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17653591053915868274noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7030175198419285984.post-38251641459996908112011-01-10T12:29:25.030-08:002011-01-10T12:29:25.030-08:00You're right. Williams did not successfully br...You're right. Williams did not successfully breach the pre-existing categories in my mind. That is, I will admit, more my failure than hers. I come to any work—short story, novel, play, movie—willing to suspend disbelief. In the context of a given work, I will accept time travel, vampires, zombies, miracles, extra-sensory perception, and much more.<br /><br />I have a real difficulty, however, when I cannot trust the narrator. This is different from an unreliable narrator where we, as readers, understand by reading between the lines, through various clues the writer drops, that the narrator does not understand her own story or the implications of what she is accounting. Because I felt I could not trust The Changling's narrator—because of her alcoholic haze, her perceptions were skewed, and as a reader I had nothing else to go on, nothing, that is, from the author—I did not trust the book and could not suspend my disbelief.<br /><br />I don't see this as a moral issue. I do not condemn the narrator because she is an alcoholic. I do not believe that addiction is a moral failure or a weakness of will. I do not say the narrator is a wicked person (whatever that means). I tried to say that I did not understand her. I could not sympathize with her, and because I could not sympathize (and, again, this is likely my failure, not Joy Williams's), I finally did not care what happened to her.Wally Woodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17653591053915868274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7030175198419285984.post-64764333961397804692011-01-05T06:33:00.136-08:002011-01-05T06:33:00.136-08:00Interesting post about Joy Williams, and her novel...Interesting post about Joy Williams, and her novel, The Changeling, which I have not read and think I should, to see whether it is really as terrible as you and Broyard assert, or whether it is as stunning as its cultish fans claim, or neither.<br /><br />But I have read your review, and Broyard's, and I can say that neither of you, in this case, exemplifies the attributes of a worthy reviewer. In my view, any condition of humanity or reality that exists or can be said to exist, deserves literary representation--and not on my terms, or yours, but on its own terms. It is the lowest form of literary criticism to assert a work's failure or lack of quality on the basis of an ill-disguised contempt for that condition of humanity or reality. This is not literary criticism, but something more like narrow-minded, snooty, suburban moralizing.<br /><br />The dismissive, moralizing tone of your post is perhaps best exemplified by the dismissive, moralizing use of the term "a drunk" to describe Williams' protagonist, as if use of that term were enough to say it all, and to explain your inability to deal with her story or her writing. Again, her writing may well be bad in this instance, but your post does not offer convincing evidence of this, nor does it offer convincing evidence that you worked very hard to understand or appreciate it as a reader.<br /><br />Your post essentially says that Williams did not successfully breach the pre-existing categories in your own mind. There are already too many readers who refuse to leave their cushy smugness and travel into a novel, into another quite alien world or consciousness. We don't need more reviewers, too, who advise us to dismiss any novel that does recreate, flatter or confirm our precious, suburban, consensus ideas, or comforts. Any novel that asks us to provide the slightest effort of our own.<br /><br />Poor Broyard has such trouble with Williams' edgy metaphors. He doesn't know what a mouth with eyes is. He just can't conceptualize a woman grasping her breasts, eyes and head in a simultaneous gesture. I mean, how does she do it, right? It makes no sense. One imagines he could not conceptualize such a woman standing on line at the Madison Avenue & E. 72nd St. Balducci's. One assumes he could not understand Scot Fitzerald's "blue lawn" and "voice like money" metaphors and similes either. One shudders to think of Broyard's precious terror confronting something like On The Road. But apparently, there is always room in literary criticism for the literal-minded and narrow-minded. God save us. Is it any wonder how poor and flat our national literary output has become with these sorts of reviewers to guide us?Robert Crookehttp://www.robertcrooke.orgnoreply@blogger.com