This post isn't really about chocomuts, or chocolates for that matter, so move along now if that's what you're expecting or hoping for. I only borrowed the title from the "American Voices" column in The Onion, in which they ask the same six faces (with different names) every week what they think of a particular current issue? Anyway, one time the question was about US-Cuba relations or something and one of the guys said, "Uh, I likes chocomuts."
But what I really wanted to post about was this: remember when Jonathan Franzen was here, and he said -- either at his round table or his lecture, I can't remember which -- that the greatest novels are all comic novels? It emerged, subsequently, that he had people like Gogol in mind, but the comment got me thinking (I know, I've been thinking about it a long time). There are some amazing comic novels out there that say profound, uncomical things -- even if we want to talk only about 20th-century-and-later books, _Midnight's Children_ comes immediately to mind (or, really, any of Rushdie's books, but I don't know whether the rest of them qualify as great novels), as does Peter Carey's work in general.... But recently, for reasons of my own, I've been taking another look at _Atonement_, which I consider a great novel, and not comic at all. I also think it's one of the most moving novels I've ever read, as is _The Story of Lucy Gault_, also patently un-comic (if you haven't read these, bear with me, because I'll soon be getting to a point for which you won't have to have read them, and you'll probably come up with lots of examples I haven't read).
The point is this: I can't really think of a novel that combines the high humor and boundless energy of _Midnight's Children_ with the cathartic, punch-in-the-gut, let-me-just-lie-here-and-cry-for-a-week sadness of _Atonement_. _The God of Small Things_, at the mere mention of whose title our esteemed faculty (and many other people besides) shudder (but oh, I love that book, I do!) comes pretty close, I think (though how comic is its comedy to people unfamiliar with South Asian culture? I can't really tell). But I'm having trouble coming up with another recent novel that combines comedy and tragedy like that. Is it even possible to write a novel that's both comic in the grandest sense and moving in the best way? Because I just love bawling when I get to the end of a novel, but I also love wit and silliness and nonsense and playing with words, and I love a writer who can show off those aspects of his or her writerly personality. I really do. As writers, do we always have to choose? Is this a very foolish question with very obvious answers? Am I missing something? Are your bookshelves full of flawless tragicomic novels?
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5 comments:
Maybe it's because I'm a man.
I don't know, I just don't cry that much from novels--does this happen to you often, CWAS? I did at the end of GoST, hell I did for most of the last 40 pages, I started to in the goddam law library last year, exactly in the middle of prime time for that place, a Thursday night I think, a beautiful girl who had probably been flirting with me just minutes before, and me there weeping furtively because of a fucking novel. Because of literature, and while I'm at it right now can I say, for the record, that all those people who hate GoST are stuck up morons, or worse. No offense. The book's just plainly written by someone who cares about life and about how words can convey it. She writes like she's in love. Would it that we could all sound so enthralled with life.
But the crying thing--don't do it much. The first time was the last two pages of A Farewell to Arms, shut up I was 16, and then I seriously think I took a hiatus from literary crying until, I don't know, fuck--I don't know. Like I said, maybe I'm a man; maybe I just don't do it that much.
Thing number two for the record: this Jonathan Franzen guy, and can we please not take him seriously? I don't like the looks of him. Like that ogrish alien in the chthonian bar in Star Wars, the one who didn't "like the looks of" Luke--I don't like the looks of him. Not one bit.
And he's singing the same Ironic Age song of jocularity when he says something stupid like the greatest novels are all comic. The fuck is that? I give him a straight-up 'youpeople' for saying shit like that. What about The Catcher in the Rye? What about Lolita? What about Night? The English Patient? 10, 20 pages of yuks between all of 'em put together, no and more. And in the first two, please note, the humor that is at the beginning never technically ebbs, but, rather, we as readers become increasingly uncomfortable with how irretrievably sad the narrators are, and so we can no longer laugh at them, we can no longer laugh anywhere near their presence.
But I'm supposed to be answering a question here. Shit--you know, I don't fuckin know CWAS. Tragi-comic? Make you cry? Punch-in-the-gut cry? Well how about do you count stories? And will you fudge it and allow punch-in-the-gut I-can't-believe-he's-saying-this, I-can't-believe-I've-had-my-eyes-open-my-whole-life-but-have-never-seen? Does that count? Because if it does then I'd like to offer Jesus' Son, which I will never stop thinking is amazing, and I think it might count because it's also a little sad, just a little bit, though maybe, okay, sad in the same way Humbert's shooting Quilty and thinking he's a hero, thinking somewhere he's a hero, is sad.
And you know what--this gets me to thinking. I'll get back to all of you on this in a few days. Thanks for letting me write just now. Gauloise Gauloise Gauloise....
Yes, I thought of Lolita but dimissed it for the same reason you did, for that sinking, oh-wait-this-isn't-funny-after-all feeling that encroaches upon you after the first 20 pages or so....
I'll gladly count stories -- last night, after I wrote my post, I thought of "Sea Oak," which definitely qualifies..... But still, it seems like most stories strike one or the other note and stick with it. Or maybe I'm just not reading the right people.
Last year I invited this history professor and her husband to my house for dessert, and the husband, a crusty old geezer of about 65, spent the entire evening shitting on GoST (I should point out that both of them are South Asian historians, not as in ethnicity but as in field of choice) for being "precious" and "saccharine" and god knows what else, and this after he had asked me for single malt scotch and I had none (and THAT after I had specifically offered wine, beer, tea, and coffee as the available choices). Which just goes to prove the moral lesson of this comment: It's people who don't like GoST what cause unrest.
Cheese--
Since I have you here I'm going to ask you if you think that Harper's will now shift away from the WUP's (Windbagge of Utter Pretension) ceaseless, histrionic plaintiveness. I mean, you know this guy Hodge, right? Will thoughtful essays and probing interviews and cultural epistemology win out over politics?
And also: might he be persuadable to quit with the New Yorker, we-only-publish-renknowned-authors bullshit? Because it's bullshit.
Finally, to the general public: Who deleted their comment?
I deleted that comment, actually, and it was exactly the same comment as I ended up posting, but with an egregious typo in it that I somehow did not notice when I read it over the first time.
I do know Roger Hodge, but I can't say whether he'll deviate from the path the magazine has been on for the past.... six? years. I mean, in the interview in the NYT Roger said he had no plans to change anything about the magazine, but on the other hand, he does have a very wide range of interests (he has an almost-PhD in philosophy, among other things, so maybe eclecticism will prevail? but then, as you know, I'm a Lapham fan, so I haven't been devoting too much thought to what will change and what will stay the same.....
As for what fiction they'll publish, to be fair, I think they're already doing a much better job than the New Yorker. I mean, the New Yorker only publishes Murakami, Alice Munro, and John Updike these days (except for that one time they published Uwem). Seems to me Harper's already takes much bigger chances.... No? Do you have a different impression? Maybe it's just that the fiction in Harper's is sometimes actually decent -- maybe that's where I'm getting this impression from -- whereas I don't even usually read the New Yorker fiction anymore. I haven't read any of their stories since the William Trevor story months ago.
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