I can certainly see why comparative lit degrees, programs, classes, etc. exist. It makes sense, really, that using other books can give new insights or bring out aspects or themes that you wouldn’t have noticed taking a work (or genre) on its own. My process for this blog certainly can’t be called systematic or intentional. That said, these random juxtapositions still raise interesting insights. I recently finished Amsterdam and The Light of Day. Aside from superficial commonalities (both are set in London and feature middle-aged men as protagonists), they also both explore the ways that a choice – large, small, impulsive, planned – can have profound impacts, be irrevocable, and reverberate in unexpected and at times tragic ways.
Amsterdam is not my favorite McEwan (I’d probably rate them Saturday, Enduring Love, Atonement, Amsterdam, in all honesty). While it still had the beauty of his style, there were no moments that took my breath away. At one point everything seemed to crystallize and have this clarity – beautiful but so tragic – that I love about McEwan’s works, but the end felt hallow to me for some reason.
The story focuses on the friendship of two men, a friendship based in experiences from their past/youth that has endured but is more brittle than they believe. Each man makes a terrible, self-centered choice which the other condemns, and which set them up for possible self-destruction and destruction of their friendship. I think part of the problem for me was that the character of Molly, a former lover to both who dies at the start of the story and is meant as the catalyst for the novel in more ways than one, never seemed sufficiently real to me. She needed to be amazing and a powerful force, and she wasn’t.
The Light of Day has earned a place on the list of books that make me glad I am doing this project: that I would never have read otherwise, but that are just so wonderful and beautiful. It likely will make the top 10 for 2011. There were so many passages that I need to write down somewhere. Just these beautiful, tragic, insightful and incising passages.
I think it would make a wonderful book to assign papers on, since there are so many different topics; the book is extremely rich. From symbolism – the role of flowers, smiles, light – to themes/motifs – what does it mean to create a home, people’s relationships with food and the process of creating food, the role of language and words, how different characters say good-bye – to the characters themselves, you could go in so many different directions. I am particularly interested in the role of chance and coincidence in the story, coupled with its exploration of how global events like the war in Bosnia shape personal tragedies.
The book would also make an interesting read in conjunction with Crime and Punishment, exploring questions about redemption, the ways murder shapes and changes people, and whether people lose their humanness or part of their humanness when they kill another human and if they can come back from that.
Of course, I shall never assign these paper topics since I would be incredibly surprised to find myself ever teaching lit (the only reason to want to teach lit is to force people to write papers on topics that interest me, which is a bad reason to teach lit, rather like how it would be a bad reason to have a child just so that she could do competitive jump rope; on the other hand, though, competitive jump rope is amazing).
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