litany of suck

[ironymaiden]

i'm about halfway through The Poisonwood Bible. thus far, the story is one long litany of suck - our POV characters are fundy southerners trying to be missionaries in africa - where no main character goes anywhere, learns anything, changes, or is involved in the sweep of history. so what we get is another dysfunctional family story, spun by dropping it in an interesting setting, except that no one in the family is interested in the setting and it's told from their POV so i am not able to actually feel immersed in the thing that is unique about the book and enjoy it. yes, the white people don't understand africa and won't try. yes, the withering garden of seeds from the US is a metaphor. club me a few more times, it might not have penetrated.

i'm debating whether or not i want to finish it. the thing that is missing for me is that the family is humorless. as a reader, i have plenty of opportunities to laugh *at* them, but never a chance to laugh *with* them. it makes them inhuman, in a story i'm sure is intended to be more "true to life". the way that people deal with absurd hardship is that they recognize the absurdity and freaking laugh. it's how humans deal with overwhelming pain. there is some point where it bursts out. these people haven't laughed for over a year so far. i believe that humans can be this parochial, idiotic, self-centered, and single-minded, but i do not believe that they can take everything completely seriously every moment of every day. i'm wishing that some form of peril that is always looming around the edges (lions! malaria! crocodiles! revolutionaries! starvation! plague of insects!) would show up and put them out of their freaking misery.

so, for people who have read it, is something going to happen soon? (we're presently fleeing the ants, as a point of reference. the mirror is broken! OMG another vestige of civilization stripped away!) am i supposed to be enjoying it as a parable about exploitation?

Comments

[craftyasparagus.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that book sounds so incredibly boring.

On a semi-related note: I almost always finish the books I read, even if they suck, and ESPECIALLY if they're considered classics or are getting high praise in the media. The reason? I want to be able to debate the merits of the book - if I happen to meet someone who loved it - and know that I've given it a full and complete chance to win me over.

Example: I didn't like 1984 (http://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell/dp/0151660387) at all. The premise and vision of the book were amazing, but the writing left something to be desired. I finished it anyway, and will likely read it again in a few years to see if my impression still holds true. Whenever someone tries to argue the writing style of the book they tend to push the "well, I bet you didn't read this part" theory, and I can always quash it. :)

[ironymaiden]

i like to think that i read all of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell so that others don't have to. it's right up there with A Brief History of Time on the list of books people bought because the media told them to and it looks good on the shelf but they still haven't gotten around to it.

i agree that 1984 is big because of the ideas, not because it would otherwise be a good book. i'm curious what you would think of Brave New World.

[craftyasparagus.livejournal.com]

I just read the article, and it sounds really interesting. I especially like that it was initially a parody of positive-utopian novels, which were so common throughout the middle 1900s.

[mrdorbin.livejournal.com]

Spot on with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (it's still in the cellophane). Ilium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilium_%28novel%29) holds the longest-running spot on my shelf right now though.

[raevnos.livejournal.com]

Huh. I read Ilium in one sitting, it was so much fun.

Strange and Norrell falls into that category of books I SHOULD like but just can't get into.

[joyful-storm.livejournal.com]

I read JS&MN because I saw Clarke do a reading of very funny material that was left out of the book because of time constraints. I thought that if what had to be left out was so good, it meant the book would probably be excellent. That was an erroneous conclusion.

I never read The Poisonwood Bible. I saw enthusiastic reviews when it came out, but it just sounded too much like mainstream "modern literary fiction" to me ("modern literary fiction" = pretentious, tiresome and aggravating). With missionaries! I can skip books based on Christian evangelic impulse, thx.

I like Brave New World a lot better than 1984. That may be due to the satire and better sex, though, rather than any lofty intellectual comparison.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

I liked 1984 a lot, but then I read it when I was about 9. I don't know how I'd like it if I were to re-read it as an adult. I read Animal Farm in junior high, and liked it better.

As for Poisonwood, it sounds like a rare case of a book that I could give up on after having started reading it, at least based on ironymaiden's description. However, my wife loved it, and she had no use for the religious side of it either. She even started reading a lot of other stuff by the same author.

[sinthrex.livejournal.com]

Haven't read it. But it pretty much sounds like a big bound bundle of suck.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

I told you I had no idea about what you demanded from the books. The tone doesn't change much, so if you don't like that I'd quit now.

I'm restraining myself from defending this book, because I love it intensely, but obviously not everyone needs to love everything that I do.

[ironymaiden]

actually, i'd like to hear the defense, because it's apparently saying something to other people that it isn't saying to me, and you may be able to turn someone on to the book who wouldn't have picked it up otherwise. i'm sorry that i'm scaring people off. i had expected more people to have read it since the library has a billion copies and it was an Oprah book.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

Personally, I found myself very drawn to the Adah character. I liked her use of language, and I liked the sense of being immersed in the shadowy underside of history, the parts that aren't told by the victor. I liked seeing how the experience changed the characters, and I liked Kingsolver's characterizations of certain people and societal forces as functionally equivalent to forces of nature. I like the tone and the language and the characters, and I enjoyed laughing at Rachel, who as time goes on does get a few poignant moments to redeem her. I'm also big on cultural relativism and the support and challenges to it that she presents. I just found it really fascinating and evocative. I did find some of the "Eyes in the trees" bits a bit overdone, and the character of Nathan is possibly a bit overblown. But I do enjoy it. And while the "Things we brought" metaphor does get old, I felt that it made a good enough point to make up for the heavy-handedness.

[ironymaiden]

i went on read and skim through to the end. the turning point is the combination of the hunt and the death that follows, which i hadn't gotten to at the time i wrote the post. i got much more out of what happened in the portion of the book after the death. probably my favorite bit was the description of what it was like to come back to Georgia after Africa. i think i needed some of that self-aware observation earlier.
the twins were the most interesting and well-written of the bunch, but i feel like after a brief flowering Adah went right back to using her physical state as a way of isolating herself. i think Leah was the one who grew the most.
i had a hard time with the all-female narrative, since it meant that everyone in the family had a voice except for Nathan. he was set up as a villain, and we never got to see why Leah loved him so. and that meant that i saw everything coming - oh, a lovely china platter, Nathan will break it - Leah just worships him, they're going to have a major falling out - and the weight of inevitability took all of the surprise out of events. hell, we know one of the kids dies and mom makes it out from the first chapter, so from the beginning i was not concerned for her well-being and was totally prepared for one of the kids to go.

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I will take my unread copy and send it to the local charity shop ASAP. It sounds like reading Atlas Shrugged.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

One thing in favor of reading Atlas Shrugged is that it allows you to debate Rand fans. "What, you mean you agree with the idea that a self-selected group should have the right to define itself as meritorious, take all of the world's resources for itself, and let the rest of the world starve? How do you know you'd be part of that self-selected group?"

[sinthrex.livejournal.com]

Barring that, with the hardcover, if you're pinched for time you can always whack them in the head with it.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a much more emotionally satisfying way to settle such a debate.

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, HAW! I did actually make it to one chapter short of the last and then said, "Why am I reading this crap?" And then the book went away.

[sinthrex.livejournal.com]

Being a bit more precise, it's impossible for a family new to Africa to not be deeply effected by it. Even more so if they are missionaries, since they don't have the option of walling themselves away. They _have_ to go out amongst the people to do their work.

All the missionaries I know (3) that have worked in Africa were deeply changed by the experience. I know I got a lot out of my time there. I would have many of the same issues you're having, I'm thinking.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

And the characters in the book ARE deeply changed by the experience. Read it if you're interested.

[ironymaiden]

i finished it, with some skimming. after the point i was at when i wrote the post, one of the kids dies (we know this in the first chapter, so it's no spoiler) and that point is when everyone seems to shake themselves out of their stupor.
one of the things that's tough about me dealing with the idea of these guys as missionaries is that they do no works other than the weekly service and dad's crusade to baptize everyone in the (crocodile-filled) river. and it's not a book of "christians suck" because we meet other missionaries who do work for public health and education.
the best bit for me was a chapter that talked about the experience of landing at Fort Benning and getting used to no smells, the supermarkets, the roads...it was the sort of reflection that i wanted to read much earlier. i think i probably need to read some nonfiction.
(also, if you're able to codify some of what you feel you've brought home, i'd love to talk about it some time or read some future eljay posts. i was fascinated with the photos and posts from during your assignment.)