Deep Woods Wednesday
May. 1st, 2019 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
OH MAN you guys. I couldn't remember a thing about why I hated Hatchet before I started reading it, but as soon as I did, it all came crashing back like a needy ghost on the ghost of a motorcycle. It's the writing style. Or, as Gary Paulsen would have it, The Style.
The Style.
The book opens with Brian, a thirteen-year-old Child of Divorce, thinking about divorce and secrets in one-word paragraphs stacked on top of each other like compact bricks of emotion:
Divorce
Secrets.
Fights.
The Secret.
These stacks get repeated and on the third repetition, the previous owner of the book has drawn a puffy cloud around the stack of word-bricks and written "repitition" (underlined seven times). I love notes in used books. The previous owner of this book has also underlined several instances of simile, metaphor, personification ("He had a friend now. A friend called fire") foreshadowing, and flashback.
I'm no longer capable of hating this style (THE STYLE) as hotly as I did when I was twelve. I don't know if I would hate it at all if I hadn't hated it so much back then. Why did I hate it so much? Where did I get the idea that single-word paragraph stacks were the worst crime in literature? This is a mystery, but perhaps not a very interesting one.
The story of Hatchet: Brian's plane crashes in the middle of Deep Woods Canada (the target market for Deep Woods Off!); Brian washes up all alone on the edge of a lake in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, the plot has contrived to give him a hatchet, so he can chop things up and make a fire and so on. It's all very down-to-earth and detailed, and THE STYLE becomes slightly less grating as it becomes more functional, as Brian paces around talking to himself and trying to get himself geared up for more survival tasks by laying down para-bricks. He survives for a while and is eventually rescued, but He Has Been Changed Forever.
It's not bad. You can read it in a day. The author seems to have some bones to pick with the alienation of man from his environment by technology and civilization. I can't share in this lament because I need my glasses to read it.
I didn't love Station Eleven. In fact, I almost put it down forever when I saw the "reveal" about the identity of the boring creepy survivalist prophet heading toward me in the distance - but it was close enough to the end that I decided to keep going. I don't regret finishing it, but I also don't feel that I got much more out of seeing all the loose ribbons tied up than I would have from leaving them untied, or from spending the same amount of time re-reading an old favorite or staring at a blank wall. That doesn't make this a bad book. Sometimes when I read a book that doesn't "click" with me I put it down to being a bad reader, but I don't think that's the case here. As Marie Kondo might say, some books come into your life to teach you to read a sample before buying.
What I'm Reading Now
I took some books back to the library and picked up three. It was supposed to be just one, but I couldn't remember if Humbolt's Gift or Herzog was the other Saul Bellow book on the 99 Novels list. The third book was an unrelated title that caught my eye as I was looking for Saul Bellow.
Humbolt's Gift is an almost ludicrously easy book for me to love - being a highly digressive Troubled Artist Retrospective narrated by a successful but incredibly hapless writer about and around his dead, difficult poet friend - and I'm sorry to say that as soon as I started reading it, I started neglecting all my other books - Black Spring and The Coup and The Canterbury Tales and all the rest of them. Even Kristin Lavransdatter, to some extent.
However, I'm still making progress in Kristin Lavransdatter, though I think I missed a couple of nights through allowing myself "one more chapter" of Bellow.
Erlend and Kristin still want to get married; Kristin's dad is still reluctant. Her mother thinks Lavrans should relent unless he wants Kristin to do something really stupid, unaware that Kristin and Lavrans have already been sleeping together at every opportunity. Erlend continues to be either a devilishly well-drawn douchebag or a deeply flawed hero, depending on whether you're everyone else in the world or Erlend.
I've spent a lot of time not blaming Kristin for her terrible decision making, because she's seventeen and Erlend has no scruples. He thinks he's tormented by scruples and fine feelings, but he's clearly (and conveniently) mistaken. But when Erlend's former mistress and the mother of his children turns up to hold him to his promise to marry her, and tries to poison Kristin when he refuses, Erlend and Kristin force her to drink the poison, thus saving Kristin's life and solving the breach-of-contract problem and giving themselves a terrible secret to bond or tear each other apart over for the rest of their lives all in one. WHAT A PROMISING START TO THIS MARRIAGE. Just pour it out on the ground!
Anyway, now they're conspiring to fake a suicide and pretend it was all Tragic But Inevitable, and Kristin's back with her parents, pining and pretending. And at a certain point, seventeen just isn't enough of an excuse any more. At some point the poor duped kid has to cross into adulthood whether she knows what she's doing or not. I'm angry with Kristin and feel bad for her. I want to split this book into two books, one where Kristin marries Simon Darre or Arne or some nice rando or nobody, and has a peaceful life doing normal Norwegian farmer stuff with no serious regrets, and one where whatever is going to happen in this one goes on happening, while all the sad passions of their neighbors go on slowly coming into focus around them like a landscape at sunrise. But Kristin only gets one life and maybe that's the point.
What I'm Not Reading In Favor of the Trashy TV Version
We've been trying to catch up on Game of Thrones so I can watch the finale in real time. This means Dragons Every Night for the past week or so - we've just started Season 7. I'm relived that Ramsey Bolton, the show's most useless and annoying character, is finally off the board, but not so relieved that it makes up for all the time wasted by putting Ramsey on screen. There's just been a sad reveal about Jon Snow's origins and I'm a little heartbroken that Ned never told Catelyn the truth AND NOW THEY'RE BOTH DEAD without the possibility of a reconciliation on the Jon issue. I can't say I'm rooting for anyone at this point, except poor scrub prince Theon and Theon's sister (the rightful queen of Dirtbag Island) and Davos and Hot Pie, and the Stark girls as always, though I have mixed feelings about Arya's transformation into The Littlest Mass Murderer. I was overjoyed when Brienne FINALLY got to fulfill her oath and pledge fealty to Sansa, since Brienne clearly needs fealty to live.
I'm enjoying it a lot, is what I'm trying to say here. The writing has gotten noticeably worse in some respects, but I don't mind. I'm looking forward to catching up and to a maximally dramatic final season.
What I Plan to Read Next
Once Humbolt's Gift stops demanding all my time and attention, there's the other book I got from the library: When Found Make A Verse of by Helen Bevington. Apparently, it's poems! After that, I'm not sure. I decided to go ahead and order the missing 99 Novels from 1964, so those should be arriving soon.
OH MAN you guys. I couldn't remember a thing about why I hated Hatchet before I started reading it, but as soon as I did, it all came crashing back like a needy ghost on the ghost of a motorcycle. It's the writing style. Or, as Gary Paulsen would have it, The Style.
The Style.
The book opens with Brian, a thirteen-year-old Child of Divorce, thinking about divorce and secrets in one-word paragraphs stacked on top of each other like compact bricks of emotion:
Divorce
Secrets.
Fights.
The Secret.
These stacks get repeated and on the third repetition, the previous owner of the book has drawn a puffy cloud around the stack of word-bricks and written "repitition" (underlined seven times). I love notes in used books. The previous owner of this book has also underlined several instances of simile, metaphor, personification ("He had a friend now. A friend called fire") foreshadowing, and flashback.
I'm no longer capable of hating this style (THE STYLE) as hotly as I did when I was twelve. I don't know if I would hate it at all if I hadn't hated it so much back then. Why did I hate it so much? Where did I get the idea that single-word paragraph stacks were the worst crime in literature? This is a mystery, but perhaps not a very interesting one.
The story of Hatchet: Brian's plane crashes in the middle of Deep Woods Canada (the target market for Deep Woods Off!); Brian washes up all alone on the edge of a lake in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, the plot has contrived to give him a hatchet, so he can chop things up and make a fire and so on. It's all very down-to-earth and detailed, and THE STYLE becomes slightly less grating as it becomes more functional, as Brian paces around talking to himself and trying to get himself geared up for more survival tasks by laying down para-bricks. He survives for a while and is eventually rescued, but He Has Been Changed Forever.
It's not bad. You can read it in a day. The author seems to have some bones to pick with the alienation of man from his environment by technology and civilization. I can't share in this lament because I need my glasses to read it.
I didn't love Station Eleven. In fact, I almost put it down forever when I saw the "reveal" about the identity of the boring creepy survivalist prophet heading toward me in the distance - but it was close enough to the end that I decided to keep going. I don't regret finishing it, but I also don't feel that I got much more out of seeing all the loose ribbons tied up than I would have from leaving them untied, or from spending the same amount of time re-reading an old favorite or staring at a blank wall. That doesn't make this a bad book. Sometimes when I read a book that doesn't "click" with me I put it down to being a bad reader, but I don't think that's the case here. As Marie Kondo might say, some books come into your life to teach you to read a sample before buying.
What I'm Reading Now
I took some books back to the library and picked up three. It was supposed to be just one, but I couldn't remember if Humbolt's Gift or Herzog was the other Saul Bellow book on the 99 Novels list. The third book was an unrelated title that caught my eye as I was looking for Saul Bellow.
Humbolt's Gift is an almost ludicrously easy book for me to love - being a highly digressive Troubled Artist Retrospective narrated by a successful but incredibly hapless writer about and around his dead, difficult poet friend - and I'm sorry to say that as soon as I started reading it, I started neglecting all my other books - Black Spring and The Coup and The Canterbury Tales and all the rest of them. Even Kristin Lavransdatter, to some extent.
However, I'm still making progress in Kristin Lavransdatter, though I think I missed a couple of nights through allowing myself "one more chapter" of Bellow.
Erlend and Kristin still want to get married; Kristin's dad is still reluctant. Her mother thinks Lavrans should relent unless he wants Kristin to do something really stupid, unaware that Kristin and Lavrans have already been sleeping together at every opportunity. Erlend continues to be either a devilishly well-drawn douchebag or a deeply flawed hero, depending on whether you're everyone else in the world or Erlend.
I've spent a lot of time not blaming Kristin for her terrible decision making, because she's seventeen and Erlend has no scruples. He thinks he's tormented by scruples and fine feelings, but he's clearly (and conveniently) mistaken. But when Erlend's former mistress and the mother of his children turns up to hold him to his promise to marry her, and tries to poison Kristin when he refuses, Erlend and Kristin force her to drink the poison, thus saving Kristin's life and solving the breach-of-contract problem and giving themselves a terrible secret to bond or tear each other apart over for the rest of their lives all in one. WHAT A PROMISING START TO THIS MARRIAGE. Just pour it out on the ground!
Anyway, now they're conspiring to fake a suicide and pretend it was all Tragic But Inevitable, and Kristin's back with her parents, pining and pretending. And at a certain point, seventeen just isn't enough of an excuse any more. At some point the poor duped kid has to cross into adulthood whether she knows what she's doing or not. I'm angry with Kristin and feel bad for her. I want to split this book into two books, one where Kristin marries Simon Darre or Arne or some nice rando or nobody, and has a peaceful life doing normal Norwegian farmer stuff with no serious regrets, and one where whatever is going to happen in this one goes on happening, while all the sad passions of their neighbors go on slowly coming into focus around them like a landscape at sunrise. But Kristin only gets one life and maybe that's the point.
What I'm Not Reading In Favor of the Trashy TV Version
We've been trying to catch up on Game of Thrones so I can watch the finale in real time. This means Dragons Every Night for the past week or so - we've just started Season 7. I'm relived that Ramsey Bolton, the show's most useless and annoying character, is finally off the board, but not so relieved that it makes up for all the time wasted by putting Ramsey on screen. There's just been a sad reveal about Jon Snow's origins and I'm a little heartbroken that Ned never told Catelyn the truth AND NOW THEY'RE BOTH DEAD without the possibility of a reconciliation on the Jon issue. I can't say I'm rooting for anyone at this point, except poor scrub prince Theon and Theon's sister (the rightful queen of Dirtbag Island) and Davos and Hot Pie, and the Stark girls as always, though I have mixed feelings about Arya's transformation into The Littlest Mass Murderer. I was overjoyed when Brienne FINALLY got to fulfill her oath and pledge fealty to Sansa, since Brienne clearly needs fealty to live.
I'm enjoying it a lot, is what I'm trying to say here. The writing has gotten noticeably worse in some respects, but I don't mind. I'm looking forward to catching up and to a maximally dramatic final season.
What I Plan to Read Next
Once Humbolt's Gift stops demanding all my time and attention, there's the other book I got from the library: When Found Make A Verse of by Helen Bevington. Apparently, it's poems! After that, I'm not sure. I decided to go ahead and order the missing 99 Novels from 1964, so those should be arriving soon.
