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[malsperanza]

Finished Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell last night. Can't quite decide about it. Big chunk in the middle dragged terribly, but she pulls it off in the end. Keeps the reader at arm's length throughout, which is not to my taste, as a rule.

But hovering just under the skin--under the pastiche of the 19th-century novel and the satire upon the historical novel in general, not to mention an adroit critique of the fantasy novel genre--is a massive, massive allegory about England.

Curious book (in both senses).

On to Jonathan Foer's new one, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Started it over coffee this morning, and am (so far) not disappointed. But am a little dismayed at the advance poster for the movie of Everything Is Illuminated, posted courtesy of cleolinda. Is Liev Schreiber going to blow it? Is this going to be a ribald thigh-slapping slapstick comedy? Hollywood lost the skill to make that kind of movie in 1949. And anyway, WTF?

Comments

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much my response to Strange'n'Norrell. And yet, a few months after finishing the book, I am hoping for more from Clarke, and soon.

But also -- allegory about England? Or was it an allegory of European imperialism more generally?

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Despite all the Peninsular Wars stuff, I did not see the book as being terribly interested in imperialism. Zero mention of India, frex, during the great age of the East India Co. Or perhaps the critique of Imperial England is implied in the inward-turning, domestic nature of the novel's discourse. Much as one can--should one choose--critique Jane Austen for refusing to mention Napoleon, or war, or slavery (though Mansfield Park's Thomas Bertram, owner of plantations in Antigua, is undoubtedly a slave owner.)

Rather, the allegory on England, as I read it, is a riff on the England of Literature--the England of which we are all citizens who grow up reading Those Books: Chaucer and Shakespeare and the Andrew Lang fairy tales and Mother Goose and Tolkien and The Princess and the Goblin and Five Children and It. Alice in W. And the poets (O, to be in England/Now that April 's there,/And whoever wakes in England/Sees, some morning, unaware,/That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf/Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf etc.)

England features potently in all those books--not to mention the Brontes and Austen. But it figures rather apolitically: It is England and English, because it is England and English.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.


For Clarke the "fortress built by Nature ... this ...sea, which serves it in the office of a wall" is literalized by the magicians (as one of their more pedestrian tasks). The magicians--and the fairies--replace Nature as the agent of Englishness. Hence the swipes at Welshness, Scottishness, and so forth.

The England of Literature and the England of Magic are close cousins, are they not? The dark, twisted branches of trees in a storm, the howling moor, the scented heather, the autumnal country road at twilight--these are Wordsworth, Wilkie Collins, Emily Bronte, AE Houseman, Tolkien, WW Jacobs, MR James, Conan Doyle, Dickens, Hardy, RL Stevenson, E. Nesbit, even the Edwardian macabres of Saki and the frilly divertissements of EF Benson and Agatha Christie. And where the trees and heather are, there too are pixies and pucks, and malicious magical troublemakers of all sorts.

I especially love the character of the gentleman with the thistledown hair, whose irrationality and incapacity to understand humans bring him very close to Nature itself.

I just wish there were a deeper engagement with the main characters, a greater passion for the outcome of their adventures.

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I see what you're getting at now. What I was more vaguely thinking of, when I said imperialism, was more the relationship between the magical and mundane worlds of the book -- so that one of the (I thought) conscious jokes of the book was that England itself started to look like a former colony in some important ways. (Thus the king's resemblence to the dictator in Autumn of the Patriarch, say.)

And yes, evrything about S&N was great except for th main characters. Odd that.

[azdaja-dafema.livejournal.com]

Same here about Strange and Norrell. It was quite a strange book, and I did like the idea, but it was very dull in certain aspects. Plus, the constant footnotes (which were neither amusing nor witty) irritated me to no end. Quite textbook in other places too, which is not my usual taste. I was absolutely delighted though to see a word of mine (I say it's mine. I have adopted it. "Thermatage" Which is an old old word for a wizard. It's used once, in an adjective (thermataugic law) . But, it stuck out. ^^

Perhaps I should go back to it, when I have enough patience for it.

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

Aw, the footnotes are funny. They're spozed to be boring and distracting. That's the joke. No?

[azdaja-dafema.livejournal.com]

*blushes* Perhaps that went over my head. Serious books tend to have serious thoughts behind them, and I thought.. Oh well. I think I was just comparing it to say: the footnotes of "The Amulet of Samarkand" By Johnathan Stroud. They are funny. *nod* Then again, the narrative is also funny, so, perhaps.. I'm rambling now, aren't I?

[malsperanza.livejournal.com]

I don't know "The Amulet of Samarkand"--what is it? Is it good?

[azdaja-dafema.livejournal.com]

It's a book, told in the perspective of a Djinn called intot he service of this apprentice magician who wants revenge against his master and an aquaintance of his who humiliated him. It's really quite funny, and I enjoyed it. Not incredibly intellectual substance, but interesting if you find magic/summoning demons interesting, as you have names and dates supplied by the djinn (Bartimaeus) about when he last saw [insert djinn protecting enemy magician] ect. I'd recommend it, certainly.

[azdaja-dafema.livejournal.com]

Something you might enjoy though, are Jasper Fforde's books. The first is The Eyre Affair. Just, combine Douglas Adams with travelling into classical books, and a lead character who has a Dodo and lives in Surrey, in the Literatec offices. I can't explain it further but... ♥