Nothing is entirely by itself: each thing as strange as the last, and connected

[decemberthirty]

[Photo by Jean-Louis Blondeau, NYT]

On August 7, 1974, after six years of careful planning, Philippe Petit strung a cable between the two towers of the World Trade Center and spent 45 early morning minutes walking, running, and dancing across. This event is the linchpin of Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin; it is the point around which McCann's several different narratives rotate, and (to mix my metaphors) it is the bright, extraordinary moment that sheds its light on all the ordinary moments that make up the novel. Let the Great World Spin is a novel of connection and, like David Mitchell's Ghostwritten or Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker, part of the purpose of the book is to expose the hidden relationships between events and characters that seem, at first, entirely unconnected. As the connections between different storylines and characters become clear, Philippe Petit's tightrope walk moves to the periphery and the stories begin to rotate around each other, bumping and jostling and creating more connections as they go.

But Let the Great World Spin is not only a novel of connection; it's also a September 11th novel. Since it's set in 1974, McCann writes less overtly about the 9/11 tragedy than other authors I've read (Pat Barker in Double Vision, Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), but it's there nonetheless. No book that takes the Twin Towers as its central image can avoid the implication. McCann's approach to writing about 9/11 is interesting, and perhaps the most successful of any of the attempts I've read. His setting forces him to tell it slant, so he chooses instead to depict another disaster for New York: the homegrown disaster of life there in the 1970s. The most powerful part of the book is McCann's description of the South Bronx in the 1970s, an urban wasteland sprawling under the smoke of uncontrolled arson. Although a number of characters actually live in a housing project in the midst of this devastation, the grit seems realest when seen through the eyes of Solomon Soderburg, a judge who lives on Park Ave but in his courtroom comes into contact with every variety of human abasement on show in New York.

There's a lot of technical skill on display in Let the Great World Spin: McCann's prose style is usually quite good, and there are occasional sentences where it's great; he managed to make me believe in some of the most implausible links in this book of links between people and places; there were a few really lovely moments when we got to watch characters tiptoe gingerly out of the self and onto the tightrope of connection to another person. Yet for all that, the book never quite came to life for me. It took me a whole month to read, and I spent seemingly the whole month flip-flopping. I liked McCann's writing and then I didn't; I thought he had a lot to say and then I thought he had nothing to say; I liked the fact that every story arc lifted toward redemption and then I thought that was foolish and unrealistic. Endlessly back and forth. I've tried and tried to figure out why I was so ambivalent towards the book, but I haven't been able to hit on an answer. Was I resisting it? Was it just a case of wrong book at the wrong time? Or wrong book for wrong reader? I don't know. I don't think it's a bad book, and it is, of course, useful for me to read in light of my own book of interconnected storylines, but somehow it didn't sing for me.

Comments

[glazed-glitter.livejournal.com]

that image is beautiful. you've seen man on a wire, right?

i started this book forever ago and completely forgot that i hadn't finished it until i read this (which is not rare for me in my gradschool life, sadly). but i had the exact same ambivalence about it. i was loving it at first, and then i was "eh." but it was that paragraph that was a whole list of "death by x, death by y, death by z. . . " that irritated me to the point of not wanting to finish (though i did read a bit further). it felt like an exercise. and not an interesting one. and then the whole book sort of felt that way. the formula of taking all these seemingly unconnected and supposedly irresolvable different characters and showing how all their lives are interconnected is actually an interesting project, and one that makes a lot of sense in light of the 9/11 implications. but it's been done better before. this one didn't seem to have anything particularly new to it. nor did i feel invested in the characters, which didn't help.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it, but this book certainly piqued my interest in it. I felt like one of the things that McCann did best was capturing the beauty of what Petit did and the crazy wonder it inspired in people who saw him.

You're totally right about that "Death by..." paragraph. I felt like it was supposed to carry all kinds of emotional weight, but ended up just being a chore to read. The copy that I read had one of those "Book Club Discussion Guides" in the back, and even though I usually find those aggravating, I took a look at it. McCann made a comment there about how, in the days and weeks after 9/11, he really *felt* the interconnectedness of everyone in New York, with a few examples from his own life. And it just seemed like that one paragraph was a perfect distillation of the idea, whereas the whole 350 pages of the book just diluted it.

[eat-you-up.livejournal.com]

I love that photo. I may need to own that photo.

I actually didn't read the post since I'm planning on reading the book soon and I don't want my perception to be coloured by it. But I'll return when I've read the book :)

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Do a google image search for Philippe Petit--I found so many wonderful pictures of his World Trade Center walk that it was hard to choose which one to post!

Please do come back once you've read it. I'd love to know what you think.

[kilbapk.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book, but I did see Man On Wire and I found it kind of annoying. The tightrope walker seemed really full of himself and the act itself seemed more like an act of ego than to really inspire anyone else--of course, if it had I'm sure he would have been basking in the glory of all that.

If you're interested, I found it on the netflix instant streaming option. It's short, but the first five minutes of it really grated on me; the guy seems like a dick :-/

If the book had more events mentioned that did NOT revolve around male ego, maybe there would have been more of a balance? Just a thought ;) Books never "sing for me" if I'm being talked AT, you know what I mean??

[floor3hbic.livejournal.com]

Man on Wire is on my Netflix instant play queue. That's the docu about Petit and his feat.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible that, in terms of this particular feat, the only person who could do it was the person who did do it. It seems to me like a unique confluence of vision and perfectly honed skill.

[nightfall404.livejournal.com]

Well, if I wasn't convinced by your entry on addme25_and_up that we should be friends, I certainly am now.

I'm Richard, pleased to meet you. Add?

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Hello, Richard. Thanks for dropping by! I've added you.