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Oh, No You Don't!
Sep. 25th, 2005 02:28 amConfound Walter Kirn! Confound him, I say!
My stack of Books To Read Right Away is already too big. I will never get through them all, even if I stop picking up new ones. And could I stop even if I wanted to? It's not a kindness to show me that I urgently need to read a book that isn't already in the queue.
And yet, and yet.
Consider the following excerpts from Kirn's review of E.L. Doctorow's The March:
The rampant destructiveness of Sherman's march is, of course, the stuff of high school textbooks, but what isn't so obvious is the way that destruction transfigures and transforms, pulverizing established human communities and forcing the victims to recombine in new ones. Inside the churning belly of Doctorow's beast, individuals shed their old identities, ally themselves with former foes, develop unexpected romantic bonds and even seem to alter racially. Yes, war is hell, and "The March" affirms this truth, but it also says something that most war novels leave out: hell is not the end of the world. Indeed, it's by learning to live in hell, and through it, that people renew the world. They have no choice.
...
In their quest to live another day, Will and Arly, two clownish Rebel stragglers, swap uniforms rather than racial identities and end up taking fire from both sides at various points along the march. War, for Doctorow, is a masquerade, a life-or-death circus of desperate opportunism that isn't merely forgivable but mandatory. Pretending to be what one is not, concealing what one is, and devising a whole new self if necessary, is the legitimate animal response to overwhelming political violence. It may even be an integral component in cultural evolution. When Emily Thompson, the pampered socialite daughter of a prominent Georgia judge, takes up with a stoic Union Army surgeon, her prejudices fall away as she learns that all head wounds are created equal. It's a trick we've seen before in similar books - dip the princess in gore for a humanist epiphany - but it isn't labored over here, and not every cliché can be avoided (including the field doctor with nerves of steel). When the subject is as large and old as war, the pursuit of pristine originality can thin a story down to nothing. To get through such tales aesthetically unscathed is a finicky, slightly cowardly objective that works against basic honesty and passion.
Those of you who've been reading my drafts will see right away why I feel it's necessary to go to school on this novel. But I haven't even managed to get around to the novels of Cory Doctorow--the Doctorow who actually writes in my genre. Dammit dammit dammit.
Let the edict go forth: Everybody But Me Has To Stop Writing New Books Until I Catch Up.
My stack of Books To Read Right Away is already too big. I will never get through them all, even if I stop picking up new ones. And could I stop even if I wanted to? It's not a kindness to show me that I urgently need to read a book that isn't already in the queue.
And yet, and yet.
Consider the following excerpts from Kirn's review of E.L. Doctorow's The March:
The rampant destructiveness of Sherman's march is, of course, the stuff of high school textbooks, but what isn't so obvious is the way that destruction transfigures and transforms, pulverizing established human communities and forcing the victims to recombine in new ones. Inside the churning belly of Doctorow's beast, individuals shed their old identities, ally themselves with former foes, develop unexpected romantic bonds and even seem to alter racially. Yes, war is hell, and "The March" affirms this truth, but it also says something that most war novels leave out: hell is not the end of the world. Indeed, it's by learning to live in hell, and through it, that people renew the world. They have no choice.
...
In their quest to live another day, Will and Arly, two clownish Rebel stragglers, swap uniforms rather than racial identities and end up taking fire from both sides at various points along the march. War, for Doctorow, is a masquerade, a life-or-death circus of desperate opportunism that isn't merely forgivable but mandatory. Pretending to be what one is not, concealing what one is, and devising a whole new self if necessary, is the legitimate animal response to overwhelming political violence. It may even be an integral component in cultural evolution. When Emily Thompson, the pampered socialite daughter of a prominent Georgia judge, takes up with a stoic Union Army surgeon, her prejudices fall away as she learns that all head wounds are created equal. It's a trick we've seen before in similar books - dip the princess in gore for a humanist epiphany - but it isn't labored over here, and not every cliché can be avoided (including the field doctor with nerves of steel). When the subject is as large and old as war, the pursuit of pristine originality can thin a story down to nothing. To get through such tales aesthetically unscathed is a finicky, slightly cowardly objective that works against basic honesty and passion.
Those of you who've been reading my drafts will see right away why I feel it's necessary to go to school on this novel. But I haven't even managed to get around to the novels of Cory Doctorow--the Doctorow who actually writes in my genre. Dammit dammit dammit.
Let the edict go forth: Everybody But Me Has To Stop Writing New Books Until I Catch Up.
