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Oct. 19th, 2023 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretNorthanger Abbey by Jane Austen
A very satisfying and fun read until the last few chapters, where Austen's wry, parodic narratorial voice delivers a profoundly anticlimactic conclusion, apparently intentionally. Austen explains that she cannot tell us anything about Eleanor's husband because he's not a character in the story, preventing us from making sense of the saving deux ex machina, for example. So she's very clearly doing it because she's telling a story about the expectations of a reader and how those can lead a reader astray in the world. I think I might enjoy it more on a reread, where I can see how Austen pushes us towards anticlimax more clearly.
I was describing the book to my girlfriend and she compared me to Catherine because I am certainly invested in narrative and the power of narrative, but I like to think I am not as naive as Catherine.
The first scenes at the Abbey are fantastic, it is so funny and yet illuminating to see how Catherine approaches the sights and sounds of this oft-dreamed of location and tries to reconcile them with her imagination.
Yellowface by RF Kuang
Savage parody of the publishing industry that reminded me of the work of Percival Everett (Erasure; A History of the African-American People (proposed) by Strom Thurmondand Ishmael Reed (Reckless Eyeballing) but up to the minute in terms of modern publishing culture.
Kuang writes in a short afterward that her novel is a story about loneliness, and I think that's really interesting. She pulls off a fascinating trick by using first person narration from a woman perpetrating a horrible moral breach. It's very hard to find her sympathetic, but it is not at all hard to empathize with Kuang's portrait of her loneliness, as well as the reflected portrait of Athena's loneliness. I was struck many times by the paradox that the narrator and Athena are among each other's closest friends and yet they know so little about each other.
A very satisfying and fun read until the last few chapters, where Austen's wry, parodic narratorial voice delivers a profoundly anticlimactic conclusion, apparently intentionally. Austen explains that she cannot tell us anything about Eleanor's husband because he's not a character in the story, preventing us from making sense of the saving deux ex machina, for example. So she's very clearly doing it because she's telling a story about the expectations of a reader and how those can lead a reader astray in the world. I think I might enjoy it more on a reread, where I can see how Austen pushes us towards anticlimax more clearly.
I was describing the book to my girlfriend and she compared me to Catherine because I am certainly invested in narrative and the power of narrative, but I like to think I am not as naive as Catherine.
The first scenes at the Abbey are fantastic, it is so funny and yet illuminating to see how Catherine approaches the sights and sounds of this oft-dreamed of location and tries to reconcile them with her imagination.
Yellowface by RF Kuang
Savage parody of the publishing industry that reminded me of the work of Percival Everett (Erasure; A History of the African-American People (proposed) by Strom Thurmondand Ishmael Reed (Reckless Eyeballing) but up to the minute in terms of modern publishing culture.
Kuang writes in a short afterward that her novel is a story about loneliness, and I think that's really interesting. She pulls off a fascinating trick by using first person narration from a woman perpetrating a horrible moral breach. It's very hard to find her sympathetic, but it is not at all hard to empathize with Kuang's portrait of her loneliness, as well as the reflected portrait of Athena's loneliness. I was struck many times by the paradox that the narrator and Athena are among each other's closest friends and yet they know so little about each other.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-10-21 05:56 pm (UTC)