Book review and Englishy stuff
Aug. 29th, 2006 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieI finally finished A.S. Byatt's Possession last night. I saw the movie when it first came out on DVD, but was only dimly aware that it had first been a book. Picked it up from the library a little while ago.
I have to admit, it was difficult to get through at times--she is very good at imitating that style of Victorian letter-writing where they took three pages to say what could've been conveyed in three words--but it was quite excellent. And also rather sad, in places; I think the part that made the biggest impression on me, besides the end, was when Maud and Roland are traveling in Yorkshire on the trail of the poets Ash and LaMotte. After three days of following the footsteps of long-dead poets, they decide to take a day for themselves and go to a place called "Boggle Hole," just because the name is funny. They have a good time, and all is well. In the next chapter, we have the first of three sections that actually show the earlier of the two timelines, the one with Ash and LaMotte, via a third-person narrator, rather than through the numerous letters and journal entries we've seen them in before. It turns out that they, too, went to Boggle Hole just because they found the name amusing. Maud and Roland, thinking they were acting independently for once, actually were still impersonating the poets. (I suppose you're meant to feel this kind of sadness because Byatt foreshadows it early on with James Blackadder, Ash's foremost biographer/editor, musing on his mixed feelings about "sublimating" his life to that of Ash, but either way, it was quite effective.)
The ending was absolutely excellent. (I am enamored of good endings because I myself find them so hard to do, and because it seems like most books I read have the same problems. I squee when i read a good one.) I had my own mixed feelings about what all of the researchers were doing in pursuing the relationship between Ash and LaMotte; I like a good 'ship as well as anyone, and I wanted to find out what had gone on with them. I also know what it's like to learn something about an author and then have your interpretation of his or her work do a complete turnaround, so I knew what they were going through, wanting to find out as much as possible in order to have a fuller interpretation of the poets' works. But at the same time--and I imagine you're also meant to feel this way--it did seem like a horrible invasion of their privacy. I agreed thoroughly with Roland's desire not to publish anything until he felt he knew what Ash would've wanted. Cropper, of course, was a complete ghoul; I didn't want him to get the box that had been buried with the Ashes...but at the same time, had I been there, I don't know that I could've stopped myself from being in on the opening. Although I was hoping that the characters wouldn't, I guess because I wanted them to be better than me at allowing secrets to be secrets.
But yes, at the end, I loved that the participants in the mystery got the last word--Ash did know about his daughter, even if the girl forgot to tell her mother what she'd seen. And because it was just a chance meeting on a summer day, with no record of it, none of the modern researchers will ever know that Ash had met her, and knew she wasn't dead. Fantastic.
Of course, I particularly liked the novel's rejection--or at least serious critical look at, and definite implication of some parts being disposable--of postmodernism. It's surely no secret that I'm no big fan of large swathes of that particular school of thought; particularly of the deconstruction aspect (i.e., postmodernism applied to "text"). Actually, no. It's not that I disagree with the central premise of texts containing multiple meanings, or even that these meanings are dependent upon the interpreter. We've all run into poems or song lyrics or whatever that describe exactly how we feel at a given moment in our lives, despite the fact that they were written years ago, and for other reasons, yes? It's just that the people talking about it who tend to get published are the ones who think you can successfully deconstruct a shopping list.
And that's only part of it. I mean, come on. No self? I am here to tell you that I damn well have a self, okay? I think, therefore I am, etc. If this makes me hopelessly bourgeois and anti-intellectual, um, yeah, not caring. I also really don't like the constant banging on about the world being made of text, and text never being able to capture the...whatever...it "signifies." Well, yes, a table is not the same thing as the word "table," but if I say, "I'm going into town to buy a table," then you know what I'm talking about, so what's the problem? I just feel like there are bigger things to worry about, you know?
I also feel like there's an inherent contradiction in deconstruction. (It's entirely possible that this is due to my own patchy understanding of the theory, but I'll forge ahead anyway.) If they're so certain that words don't really mean much, and everyone's interpretation of reality--or at least of "text"--is different, then how have we managed to get to the point where, apparently, all readers can't help but have a set of identical "assumptions" about a text that these people can then "deconstruct," in their holier-than-thou sort of way? I mean, where do these structures that they're trying to destabilize come from if it's not really possible to build them in the first place?
Bringing this back to the novel itself, I really like much of what this essay has to say on Byatt and the novel, particularly this section:
What she proposes is that fiction at its best is formed from metaphorical structures which are also true reflections of the reality beyond the text. Without this relationship with reality and its attendant emotional engagement of the reader in the story, fiction will lose one half of its gestalt-like character and become pure symbolic structure - more argument than fiction.
YES. Argh. Yes. And I loved when Roland realizes this, when he realizes that he and Maud were so constrained by their schooling that they couldn't think of things outside of that box of text and argument, and then he begins to break free of it with his lists of words, which he will eventually turn into poems. It was beautiful.
I also loved that Roland, Maud, and Beatrice all complain about feminist criticism's obsession with hidden sexual meanings in every. single. narrative. There's a hilarious section where Roland has read Leonora Stern's article on LaMotte, which redefines LaMotte's description of a cave in Yorkshire as representative of the female genitalia; he starts seeing it in the landscape as well, and basically says, "This is INSANE! What are we doing to ourselves? I can't even see grass without thinking of pubic hair anymore!" And Maud and Beatrice have a discussion about this kind of thing as well, about how no one questions the centrality of sex in feminist critique, and aren't we more interesting than that? God. Love.
So, yes. Some parts are definitely a trudge, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's an utterly brilliant book.
I have to admit, it was difficult to get through at times--she is very good at imitating that style of Victorian letter-writing where they took three pages to say what could've been conveyed in three words--but it was quite excellent. And also rather sad, in places; I think the part that made the biggest impression on me, besides the end, was when Maud and Roland are traveling in Yorkshire on the trail of the poets Ash and LaMotte. After three days of following the footsteps of long-dead poets, they decide to take a day for themselves and go to a place called "Boggle Hole," just because the name is funny. They have a good time, and all is well. In the next chapter, we have the first of three sections that actually show the earlier of the two timelines, the one with Ash and LaMotte, via a third-person narrator, rather than through the numerous letters and journal entries we've seen them in before. It turns out that they, too, went to Boggle Hole just because they found the name amusing. Maud and Roland, thinking they were acting independently for once, actually were still impersonating the poets. (I suppose you're meant to feel this kind of sadness because Byatt foreshadows it early on with James Blackadder, Ash's foremost biographer/editor, musing on his mixed feelings about "sublimating" his life to that of Ash, but either way, it was quite effective.)
The ending was absolutely excellent. (I am enamored of good endings because I myself find them so hard to do, and because it seems like most books I read have the same problems. I squee when i read a good one.) I had my own mixed feelings about what all of the researchers were doing in pursuing the relationship between Ash and LaMotte; I like a good 'ship as well as anyone, and I wanted to find out what had gone on with them. I also know what it's like to learn something about an author and then have your interpretation of his or her work do a complete turnaround, so I knew what they were going through, wanting to find out as much as possible in order to have a fuller interpretation of the poets' works. But at the same time--and I imagine you're also meant to feel this way--it did seem like a horrible invasion of their privacy. I agreed thoroughly with Roland's desire not to publish anything until he felt he knew what Ash would've wanted. Cropper, of course, was a complete ghoul; I didn't want him to get the box that had been buried with the Ashes...but at the same time, had I been there, I don't know that I could've stopped myself from being in on the opening. Although I was hoping that the characters wouldn't, I guess because I wanted them to be better than me at allowing secrets to be secrets.
But yes, at the end, I loved that the participants in the mystery got the last word--Ash did know about his daughter, even if the girl forgot to tell her mother what she'd seen. And because it was just a chance meeting on a summer day, with no record of it, none of the modern researchers will ever know that Ash had met her, and knew she wasn't dead. Fantastic.
Of course, I particularly liked the novel's rejection--or at least serious critical look at, and definite implication of some parts being disposable--of postmodernism. It's surely no secret that I'm no big fan of large swathes of that particular school of thought; particularly of the deconstruction aspect (i.e., postmodernism applied to "text"). Actually, no. It's not that I disagree with the central premise of texts containing multiple meanings, or even that these meanings are dependent upon the interpreter. We've all run into poems or song lyrics or whatever that describe exactly how we feel at a given moment in our lives, despite the fact that they were written years ago, and for other reasons, yes? It's just that the people talking about it who tend to get published are the ones who think you can successfully deconstruct a shopping list.
And that's only part of it. I mean, come on. No self? I am here to tell you that I damn well have a self, okay? I think, therefore I am, etc. If this makes me hopelessly bourgeois and anti-intellectual, um, yeah, not caring. I also really don't like the constant banging on about the world being made of text, and text never being able to capture the...whatever...it "signifies." Well, yes, a table is not the same thing as the word "table," but if I say, "I'm going into town to buy a table," then you know what I'm talking about, so what's the problem? I just feel like there are bigger things to worry about, you know?
I also feel like there's an inherent contradiction in deconstruction. (It's entirely possible that this is due to my own patchy understanding of the theory, but I'll forge ahead anyway.) If they're so certain that words don't really mean much, and everyone's interpretation of reality--or at least of "text"--is different, then how have we managed to get to the point where, apparently, all readers can't help but have a set of identical "assumptions" about a text that these people can then "deconstruct," in their holier-than-thou sort of way? I mean, where do these structures that they're trying to destabilize come from if it's not really possible to build them in the first place?
Bringing this back to the novel itself, I really like much of what this essay has to say on Byatt and the novel, particularly this section:
What she proposes is that fiction at its best is formed from metaphorical structures which are also true reflections of the reality beyond the text. Without this relationship with reality and its attendant emotional engagement of the reader in the story, fiction will lose one half of its gestalt-like character and become pure symbolic structure - more argument than fiction.
YES. Argh. Yes. And I loved when Roland realizes this, when he realizes that he and Maud were so constrained by their schooling that they couldn't think of things outside of that box of text and argument, and then he begins to break free of it with his lists of words, which he will eventually turn into poems. It was beautiful.
I also loved that Roland, Maud, and Beatrice all complain about feminist criticism's obsession with hidden sexual meanings in every. single. narrative. There's a hilarious section where Roland has read Leonora Stern's article on LaMotte, which redefines LaMotte's description of a cave in Yorkshire as representative of the female genitalia; he starts seeing it in the landscape as well, and basically says, "This is INSANE! What are we doing to ourselves? I can't even see grass without thinking of pubic hair anymore!" And Maud and Beatrice have a discussion about this kind of thing as well, about how no one questions the centrality of sex in feminist critique, and aren't we more interesting than that? God. Love.
So, yes. Some parts are definitely a trudge, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's an utterly brilliant book.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 07:47 am (UTC)And while I must admit that I don't understand deconstruction, either, my main problem with deconstruction (I wouldn't necessarily use the term interchangeably with "postmodernism") is the fact that a paradox lies at the heart of the theory itself. Deconstruction deconstructs texts, meanings and grand narratives; but it is written in a text supposed to have a certain meaning, ending up as another grand narrative of criticism. I.e. it deconstructs itself.
And now you have made me want to reread Possession. I read it during my first uni semester and probably understood less than half of it because I lacked the background knowledge.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 04:56 pm (UTC)There's a Harry Potter version of Waste Land? I...think I need to read this. Link?
my main problem with deconstruction (I wouldn't necessarily use the term interchangeably with "postmodernism")
I probably should've been more clear about it being an aspect of postmodernism...PM is insidious, and goes beyond text and literature, as I discovered in a history class last semester.
is the fact that a paradox lies at the heart of the theory itself. Deconstruction deconstructs texts, meanings and grand narratives; but it is written in a text supposed to have a certain meaning, ending up as another grand narrative of criticism. I.e. it deconstructs itself.
Ha! Yes, there's that, too. I hadn't even thought of that, but you're totally right. The whole thing just sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth, or at any rate a weird feeling in my head, like trying to contemplate infinity or something.
And now you have made me want to reread Possession. I read it during my first uni semester and probably understood less than half of it because I lacked the background knowledge.
I'm glad I didn't try to read it earlier on...I'm sure I didn't understand everything she was referencing anyway, but I definitely would've been lost as a freshman. I'm surprised I heard no mention of it at all during all four years of college, actually.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 10:29 pm (UTC)Here you are! Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Poet (http://ladysisyphus.livejournal.com/294368.html) -- enjoy.
Ha! Yes, there's that, too. I hadn't even thought of that, but you're totally right. The whole thing just sort of leaves a bad taste in my mouth, or at any rate a weird feeling in my head, like trying to contemplate infinity or something.
You could even go a bit further and say that the fact that deconstruction deconstructs itself only proves its general validity. But if it can prove its validity merely by being as instable as any other theory, I might as well choose any of those...
Which I would have done anyway. ;) I'm not much into Literary and Cultural Theory in general, I'm afraid. I'm all for close readings of texts as embedded in their specific historical contexts.
(Well, you could still argue that deconstruction at least implicitly knows about its own lack of a stable signifier. But I choose to ignore that... :P)
I'm surprised I heard no mention of it at all during all four years of college, actually.
Oh really? That's amazing! Possession is even on our recommended reading list, and it is taught quite often in classes on metafiction, too.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 05:51 am (UTC)Excellent. *bookmarks*
You could even go a bit further and say that the fact that deconstruction deconstructs itself only proves its general validity.
You could, at that. In fact, I think I may have read an article at some point mentioning that very thing, now that I think about it. (I obviously tried to put the whole thing out of my mind at the time. ;))
I'm not much into Literary and Cultural Theory in general, I'm afraid. I'm all for close readings of texts as embedded in their specific historical contexts.
That's my usual strategy as well. In fact, that's about all that was taught at my college; all of our discussions centered on close readings, with occasional forays into New Historicism. I'm sure it has to do with the guy behind New Criticism (i.e. the renaissance of close readings in the 40s) being head of the English department at my school. There was a certain amount of exposure, in the classes I took, to things like deconstruction, but mostly it was looking closely at the text, and that was fine with me. *g*
Oh really? That's amazing! Possession is even on our recommended reading list, and it is taught quite often in classes on metafiction, too.
Ah, see, we had no classes on metafiction. There were two seminars offered, one on Postmodernism in general, and one on Narrative Theory, which I think included some stuff on all the various meta- vocabulary words, but I didn't take either of them. To be honest, it was pretty easy to get through the program without having much grounding in the major theories. I did it. All of my work used the same techniques applied to different texts--looking closely at the text itself, trying to make connections among the bits and pieces of that text or between it and others, or determining how it fits into its historical background. But I never really knew what schools of thought these techniques belonged to. (Still don't really have a handle on it all, actually.)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 07:13 am (UTC)Heh, that sounds exactly like what I am doing most of the time. I sincerely hope, though, that it will be enough to get through my upcoming final exams... :)
My lecturers seem to be very well-versed in literary theory; it's just that our department lacks a mandatory introductory class for students, which makes it a bit difficult to acquire that sort of knowledge.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 09:24 pm (UTC)I ended up checking out a book on the subject once and skimming it; some bits stuck, while others went over my head.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 06:01 am (UTC)Hee. Now that sounds exactly like me, too. I also asked my parents for a special dictionary on literary theory as a Christmas present. It's been very useful so far -- one of my best presents ever.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-02 12:27 am (UTC)