Half way through and am finding it surprisingly enjoyable. On the back of Daniel Fuchs there's something clean, unfussy about the writing (had I read it after Stoner would my views be different?).
There are some lovely lines about the summer dark, about London in the rain. That, for me, makes it good enough. But the book also makes me think about one word, namely: competency.
Not just talking about my own incompetency which verges on the useless in just about every kind of endeavour I can think of. I'm constantly surprised that I've survived this long with a job and a roof over my head-part grateful, part smirking child, given my knowledge of what an absolute fraud I am. I'm sure if I was starting out all over again today I'd be homeless in two years. There's something to be said for the old-world inefficiencies and ignorance. As long as they don't reach alarming levels they clear a space for human sensibilities and possibilities. To work and live in a way that isn't determined by the machine or by accountants or a rigorous and narrow rationality.
No, and not even the competence of a judge or any professional to make assessments- given the complexity of human behaviour- is something that fascinates you beyond a kind of mild interest in the interface between technique and freedom. Poets and mullahs, too, have an over-inflated view of their own competence, their own self-appointed right to legislate on affairs of the human heart.
No, what interests me about McEwan is time and again you asked yourself: is this real? From what vantage point does he write? It's not that the writing grated-far from it-but it does leave me uneasy. Does he really understand what a woman feels about childlessness? Can he? There's almost something glib about the way he races over twenty years in three lines. Then again, perhaps that is how we think. if asked to explain what you've been doing in the last twenty years you don't suppose you could muster more than a paragraph. But I'm not sure that's what we'd expect a writer to do.
What's my beef? I think that his Britishness somehow gets in the way, takes too many things for granted (gender, the power structure, the world of appearances). Someone in court, an ordinary person, dresses as if they could have been from the judiciary themself. Then there's the repeated reference to the judge thinking about how her bottom has become too large or heavy. That's just another tired cliche.
And then there's religion. To what extent can someone who is not religious really understand a religious perspective? Sure, one can read about things in the papers, but at the end of the day there's a sneaking suspicion that there's really something quite childish about the depiction of religious people by those who have rejected it. It's as if one can only see something in its external manifestations and mechanisms and avoid getting to the heart of it (is this the same problem when it comes to men writing about women?).
Anyway, that all sounds overly critical when the book is, so far, not that bad.
'Last time she had looked, the Thames at high tide was also swollen and a darker brown, sullen and rebellious as it rose against the piers of the bridges..But everyone pushed on, complaining, resolute, drenched. The jet stream was broken, bent southwards by factors beyond control..
[Those three words could summarize a thousand years of British history: 'complaining, resolute, drenched.']
'The notes strained at some clear human meaning, but they meant nothing at all. Just loveliness, purified. Or love in its vaguest, largest form, for all people, indiscriminately.'
No comments:
Post a Comment