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Dial W for Wednesday
Nov. 13th, 2019 10:34 amWhat I've Finished Reading
Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition - a short 1901 novel about the (then contemporary and terrifying) post-Reconstruction white-supremacy push in Southern US politics, and a surprisingly smooth blend of journalism and melodrama. The riot that ends the book - really an armed coup deliberately organized by the white supremacist press to run prominent black citizens out of government and out of the town - is based on a real riot in Wilmington, North Carolina; the characters are based on types. There is a white heiress who fears and resents her mixed-race doppelganger half-sister, a hot-tempered "overseer class" race-baiter whom all the gentlemen despise for his bad manners but are perfectly happy to use as a weapon, a devoted nurse who has faithfully served the family for 28 generations (give or take), a saintly black doctor whose saintliness is severely tested, a kindly old gentleman's neer-do-well son, and so on.
Chesnutt is really at his best in his didactic or quietly observant passages. There are several large dramatic plot machines that keep the book moving but don't necessarily pierce the soul the way they're supposed to. What does: the half-overheard conversations before a lynching (making sure to start early in the evening so the kids can stay up for it), or the young doctor's musings after being strong-armed into the "colored" car when the train crosses into Virginia.
One of the plot points strains credulity a little more than necessary (I'll let you find out which) but this is well worth reading if you are interested in the period and don't mind lots of spelled-out dialect. It has the William Dean Howells Stamp of Approval! If you are interested in the period and DO mind eye dialect by the bucketload, I feel for you.
I've had a cold for the past week, which is a bad state in which to do most things but a good one in which to speed-read magazines you really only brought home for the cover. Thanks to my diminished attention span, I burned through several New Yorkers that had been waiting around for months.
What I'm Reading Now
( Warning: The Telephone Book is going to resist you )
I probably won't finish The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech by Avital Ronell - it's about philosophy and Heidegger, neither of which I understand, and I've decided that I'm too old to stand still for a self-indulgent critical pun-shower if I'm not actually enjoying it. I bought this book for its beautifully weird typography and because it's a technological-theory book (copyright 1989) whose once-ubiquitous technological cues have drifted toward obscurity. But I don't think I'll end up loving it very much as a book, and it's too water-damaged for me to want to keep it as an object.
Seventy-five pages into Creation I seriously doubt it's going to either save or ruin my life; it's more of a popcorn book, but very pleasant and chatty. I mean, there are guys getting their balls lopped off left and right and all kinds of grotesque religious and court drama among the Greeks and the Persians. . . but in a chatty way, and the chapters are short. It's good to have - I had reached a point for a while where all the books I had to read were slightly tougher nuts, and needed a break.
What I Plan to Read Next
I decided to test the ordering-a-book capabilities of the new bookstore in town, and they seem to be pretty good! In any case, I have Maaza Mengiste's The Shadow King with remarkably little trouble, though I probably won't get to it for a while.
Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition - a short 1901 novel about the (then contemporary and terrifying) post-Reconstruction white-supremacy push in Southern US politics, and a surprisingly smooth blend of journalism and melodrama. The riot that ends the book - really an armed coup deliberately organized by the white supremacist press to run prominent black citizens out of government and out of the town - is based on a real riot in Wilmington, North Carolina; the characters are based on types. There is a white heiress who fears and resents her mixed-race doppelganger half-sister, a hot-tempered "overseer class" race-baiter whom all the gentlemen despise for his bad manners but are perfectly happy to use as a weapon, a devoted nurse who has faithfully served the family for 28 generations (give or take), a saintly black doctor whose saintliness is severely tested, a kindly old gentleman's neer-do-well son, and so on.
Chesnutt is really at his best in his didactic or quietly observant passages. There are several large dramatic plot machines that keep the book moving but don't necessarily pierce the soul the way they're supposed to. What does: the half-overheard conversations before a lynching (making sure to start early in the evening so the kids can stay up for it), or the young doctor's musings after being strong-armed into the "colored" car when the train crosses into Virginia.
One of the plot points strains credulity a little more than necessary (I'll let you find out which) but this is well worth reading if you are interested in the period and don't mind lots of spelled-out dialect. It has the William Dean Howells Stamp of Approval! If you are interested in the period and DO mind eye dialect by the bucketload, I feel for you.
I've had a cold for the past week, which is a bad state in which to do most things but a good one in which to speed-read magazines you really only brought home for the cover. Thanks to my diminished attention span, I burned through several New Yorkers that had been waiting around for months.
What I'm Reading Now
( Warning: The Telephone Book is going to resist you )
I probably won't finish The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech by Avital Ronell - it's about philosophy and Heidegger, neither of which I understand, and I've decided that I'm too old to stand still for a self-indulgent critical pun-shower if I'm not actually enjoying it. I bought this book for its beautifully weird typography and because it's a technological-theory book (copyright 1989) whose once-ubiquitous technological cues have drifted toward obscurity. But I don't think I'll end up loving it very much as a book, and it's too water-damaged for me to want to keep it as an object.
Seventy-five pages into Creation I seriously doubt it's going to either save or ruin my life; it's more of a popcorn book, but very pleasant and chatty. I mean, there are guys getting their balls lopped off left and right and all kinds of grotesque religious and court drama among the Greeks and the Persians. . . but in a chatty way, and the chapters are short. It's good to have - I had reached a point for a while where all the books I had to read were slightly tougher nuts, and needed a break.
What I Plan to Read Next
I decided to test the ordering-a-book capabilities of the new bookstore in town, and they seem to be pretty good! In any case, I have Maaza Mengiste's The Shadow King with remarkably little trouble, though I probably won't get to it for a while.
