Sunday, July 23, 2006
Pedestal
I'd forgotten how satisfying it is to read a book from cover to cover over the course of a weekend. Considering the bulk of my reading is done in-transit or during the occasional lunch break, I'd forgotten the pleasure of rangy, drawn-out sessions. The term self-indulgent comes to mind, although I wish I didn't think of it like this. I also wish my book selection protocol were different. It's like I'll purposely choose that book on my shelf--always about a dozen unread, a combination of mine and the library's--that's least appealing (of course they're all appealing, just to varying degrees), as if to 'get it over w/' so that I can then move on to the real good stuff. Weird. Library books win out often over my own stash, for obvious reasons.
So w/ this book due back a few days ago, it was the w/e's fated read. Not long, nor particularly dense: a perfectly breezy summer novel. Plus, I had little doubt as to its goodness, having recently read Prep and fallen easily into step w/ Sittenfeld's style: sweet, accessible, nostalgic. The premise isn't complicated, basically one woman's quest for romantic love, beginning in adolescence and spanning her 20s. As expected, Sittenfeld finds a way to bring language to mental events that don't readily correspond w/ words, events that another author might write about reductively, if she even attempts it at all. At best this author's descriptions would read flatly; at worst, cheesily. But again, I think that more often such events just aren't regarded as important or crucial enough to include, which is too bad.
Another of Sittenfeld's strengths is dialogue, and it's more than the fact that her characters never sound wooden or affected. It's the content, it's that they sometimes have really boring conversations, or better, they say things that never go that far, that never result in any substantial conversation. Not always, you know, just enough to make you believe they're the real thing. The first time I picked up on this--and I can't recall anything about the sentence I read, probably because it was so random and meaningless--it kind of bothered me. I was like, 'what's this about? what's the point of it?' But I kept on, and the character(s) got back on point, and then it made sense. Actually, I have the same complaint of most TV shows, less notably w/ my beloved SFU (prepare for the obvious): Conversations are always so on point, always so relevant to the scene that's unfolding, so action-oriented. There's never any spontaneity. I don't know, maybe I don't tune in enough.
It's so clear to me that Sittenfeld, although she's termed both Prep and Man works of fiction, drew heavily from personal experience--not necessarily actual events, but emotions that she then assigned to similar enough, fictionalized events. She's just so ridiculously on-target so much of the time. Maybe this all sounds common; like a number of writers, I'm probably not coming up w/ the right words.
Some great passages from Prep:
[I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that’s almost unbearable.]
[It was Charlie Soco, a senior, another person I’d never spoken to. I glanced at his eyes and saw that he wasn’t looking at me, and then I looked down and then as we came closer to each other, I slid my backpack off one shoulder so it was in front of me and unzipped one of the outer pockets and pretended to rummage in it. In this way, when Charlie and I passed, I avoided saying hello.]
[The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, or your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it’s hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like--for one thing, all-consuming--and this isn’t it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.]
["I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a piece of scrap paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed ... never decreased my fear."]
Read or Post a Comment
I too read this book and you are spot on with your commentary. Like Prep this book made me think- my god other people thought that way too! And the in all in one weekend read- divine!
Love you.