What's the Difference Wednesday

[evelyn_b]

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What I've Finished Reading

It stung him to see that Furness had so little appreciation of his life -- the supposition that he might have been a Communist was not so far-fetched as all that. To be told that we would be ludicrous in any life-role, even an uncongenial one, is an insult to our sense of human possibility.

The plot of The Groves of Academe is almost as confusing and sticky as a real-time college faculty intrigue. (NB: I am not "an academic," but I have taken the minutes for more than one departmental meeting in my day). That's not why I read it twice in a row, though; that just happened. Henry Mulhaney has never been a member of the Communist party, but he might have been for all anyone knows, and anyway he can't see why he shouldn't benefit from Jocelyn College's principled stand against the persecution of Communists just as much as all those people who had the bad taste to actually join the party. In fact, he deserves the college president's protection more than they do. Because he's not actually a commie. But he could have been! Anyway, he ought to keep his job because his wife is dangerously ill -- or could be, as far as anyone knows.

It's persistently funny but (almost?) never laugh-out-loud funny, and the broad-stroke satire is constantly being tugged on -- not exactly "undermined" -- by awkward little physical and psychological details that are painfully intimate, especially the ones about Mulhaney's children and the disheveled state of his house. The Group had a similar quality, though it "feels" like a different kind of book. I have a terrible weakness for lists of objects and other broad-stroke descriptive writing. McCarthy's lists are like candy to me. I like that illusion of world-weary familiarity they create as I'm reading them, even though most of the time I don't actually have a clue about e.g. the social significance in 1952 of most of the listed details re: haircuts and pedagogical theories.

(This book should not be confused with The Graves of Academe, which is a collection of one guy's angry letters about how badly written all his university's interdepartmental memos are).

On every channel they are broadcasting images of the crowds inside Parliament. After the building was occupied, [. . .] the idea emerged, born from the collective nebula from which tales, rumors, and legends spring, that each person would climb the steps, take his or her place at the Assembly rostrum, and propose a solution to a problem facing the country. Since then, every channel on every television station -- public and private, network and cable -- has broadcast nothing else.

A redheaded woman approaches the microphone and says we ought to pay more attention to city parks and gardens. A man in rolled-up sleeves says that the problem of public debt could be solved by printing new bills at the Mint or at the Bank of Portugal or wherever it is they print such things. An unkempt boy draws the audience's attention to the spiritual side of things. A woman on crutches says we should have more children so the Portuguese people don't become extinct.

I got to like The True Actor after a very funny first page and a rocky first few chapters. By "rocky" I just mean I didn't care about the main guy and kept mentally tapping my foot while I waited for the book to amend or make up for it somehow. Americo Abril is a very ordinarily unlikable character - unemployed creative professional, young father who doesn't know his son very well despite spending all day watching him, young married guy whose mistress is a collection of musky adjectives and whose breadwinning wife comically takes her comical job at the Olive Oil Ministry comically seriously.

I always seem to end up liking or not liking characters, even when the book makes it clear that that's not the point. In this case, I was extra interested in the likability of Americo because I'd just read The Groves of Academe, where the main guy is unlikable in a fascinating way instead of a boring one. Sometimes I don't mind "unlikable" characters at all, and sometimes I do. What makes the difference?

Anyway, as the plot surrounds Americo and carries him into art-film dream territory, the book as a whole gets better and the question of Americo's worthiness as a protagonist gets pushed to the back of the room where it belongs. I didn't entirely love it, but I enjoyed reading it. There are some great moments (like when Americo's phone rings just as he's being pushed up to the Assembly microphone to offer his solution to the country's problems) and it ends just about as it should.

What I'm Reading Now

I accidentally ended up re-reading a bunch of the Anne of Green Gables books at once, and I'm predictably full of feelings. I still can't stand Davy and Paul Irving, but there's a lot of great stuff in Anne of Avonlea that I'd forgotten, like the return of Mr. Harrison's wife and the time Anne and Diana put together The Greatest Lunch Ever for their favorite girlhood novelist, only to have her show up on the wrong day with nothing to eat in the house and Anne covered in feathers from changing the bedding. But it turns out all right anyway, thanks to quick thinking and Anne and Diana being unstoppable housekeepers.

Also: I thought I was over my dislike of Gilbert Blythe, but it turns out I am not over it AT ALL; he's worse than I remembered in House of Dreams. Anne tries to sympathize with Leslie's feeling that her life and gifts are being wasted, and Gilbert's all, "Oh, Anne, SOME PEOPLE might say that YOU'RE wasting your life by marrying the man of your choice and living in a rural community like you've always wanted! Aren't you going to reassure me even though I know the answer :D ??" SHUT UP GILBERT not everything is about you and your stupid happiness. >:(

Gilbert aside, though, Anne's House of Dreams is great, even if a huge chunk of what makes it great is "Anne gets confronted with loss and suffering."

I've gone back and forth on Anne of the Island all my life -- first I loved it, then I didn't, now I'm back up to strong liking. I'll never find Phil's cutesyness as funny as I did when I was 10, but I appreciate the last days of Ruby Gillis a lot more.

Other than the Annes, I'm reading a non-fiction book called The Spiritual Life of Children by Robert Coles. It's a collection of conversations with children about their thoughts on religion and spirituality. The author is a lot more into Freud than I'm used to, but the conversations are good.

What I Plan to Read Next

Wise Blood! Probably some other things, too. Witches Abroad as soon as I finish this little stack I'm supposed to be working through.