The Author is Always Right?

Ah, books with an author as the protagonist. These seem to fall into two categories, ones where the protagonist happens to be an author (there’s a whole subgenre of mysteries, I’d argue, where the protagonist is an author of mystery novels, who then gets caught up in mystery after mystery), versus books where the author is narrating/writing the novel that you are reading, leading to a nice meta experience. Both The Black Prince and Vanishing Point were of the latter variety.

The Black Prince affirmed my love for Iris Murdoch; it was very similar to Under the Net in many ways, but still felt fresh and interesting. Murdoch’s wry humor is present throughout; I also thought that the random, literary and/or philosophical tangents were better integrated than in Under the Net. Some of the characters, notably the ex-wife, felt underdeveloped, though. In some ways, it seemed like Murdoch bit off more than she could chew and/or the story went in a different direction that she had originally planned.

The novel also features a classically unreliable narrator. This is hinted at near the beginning in the author’s forward (that is, “the author’s,” not Murdoch’s, of course), and becomes very evident near the end, and is solidified in the various post-scripts from other characters. It’s not clear, though, what happened. We know that the version is not exactly as presented by Pearson, but the veracity of the post scripts (all self-serving) is certainly in question.

Side note, but this is a book that likely reads better if you are familiar with Hamlet/get the title reference. Another reason to be annoyed that the list really only includes novels.

Vanishing Point is not for everyone. Actually, I’m not sure who it would be for; I can’t imagine ever recommending it. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but man: you have got to invest in this one. Don’t worry about making sense of it, just read it through to the end. It will all become clear and then it will seem amazing. If you give up part way through, though, it will just seem weird and irritating I would think.

Until near the end, it won’t even really feel like a novel. It’s essentially a collection of quotations, facts, and insights; the premise is that the “author” has pulled out a shoebox of note cards he has collected throughout the years and has put them in order to create a novel, interspersing the cards with occasional musings on his current situation. Nothing is random here, though, and it will make sense and it is a novel. But you do have to really invest in this one (it’s not long, though).

Again, this is likely more enjoyable/comprehensible the more you get the references. I certainly didn’t get all of them, so clearly it’s not completely necessary, but I’d suggest reading a lot before tackling this one.

Side Note: There are multiple novels with the name Vanishing Point; I'm talking about the David Markson one, not the Victor Canning one, which Wikipedia described as "lively and entertaining. The central character, Maurice Crillon, is a French art forger who suddenly discovers that he is the son of an English baronet. His father gives him a picture, which turns out to be a dangerous burden and involves him in a pursuit through Switzerland, Italy and France." Don't go into Markson's excepting lively entertainment. I read the Wikipedia entry for the Canning one, and thought I was missing something. And I was: my ability to read and remember author names.

Short But Not Exactly Sweet. . .

When I put The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Castle of Otranto on hold, I honestly had no idea how that they are so short. I was, perhaps depressingly, thrilled by this fact, however. When one slogs through many books that are closer to 1000 pages than 200, the occasional 120 page novel is a welcome surprise (thanks, Daisy Miller, Turn of the Screw, A Christmas Carol, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Of Mice and Men, and The Garden Party!).

The Castle of Otranto was. . . weird. Yeah, that’s probably the best word for it. It rather made me think of this fairy tale book we got while we were living in Germany. Those stories were rather odd as well. The one from that book that stands out in my memory is about this woman who went to church on the opposite side of the Rhine from where she lived, and she did that just by walking on water. Which worked fine until one day she was all, this is weird, I wonder why I can do this. And then she couldn’t anymore, and I think she drowned. ‘m not sure what the moral of this story is, but I think it is something like, find a church near where you live and cut down on your commute time! Or maybe I just have commutes on my mind.

There really isn’t much to say about the story itself. I did appreciate that the romance went the way it did – well, up until she died, anyway. Usually the smart, interesting one ends up working with the guy to solve the problem, before being dismissed, while the vapid blond sweet young thing the guy was crushing on after seeing from afar ends up with the guy for no apparent reason (think Woman in White and Ivanhoe), and this story did not go that route (though she did die).

Speaking of death, Tolstoy’s little novel was all about death, as the title would lead you to likely guess. I actually really enjoyed this one; I hated War and Peace with a passion, but I definitely found The Death of Ivan Ilyich to be engaging, thought-provoking, and strangely moving. It’s shortness was definitely an asset, since for me, with Russian novels a little bit goes a long way.

What struck me most throughout the story was something I had read awhile back in an interview with an author for a book about chronic pain/what causes some people to experience more pain than others/some to have a higher pain tolerance. And in the interview, the author said something along the lines of, to care about someone’s pain, you have to care about that person. Which may sound obvious, but in many ways it isn’t. We are expected to show superficial sympathy and concern, but how often do we really care about someone’s headache, someone’s cold, someone’s knee that always aches when it rains? How often do we mostly think, this is very inconvenient for me, this sneezing is really irritating?

I kept thinking about that as I read the story and we see Ivan’s family, who to a large extent do not really care about his pain except in terms of how it affects their own lives. I found that to be the saddest piece of the novel.