litany of suck
Sep. 12th, 2007 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaideni'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?
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?
