(no subject)

I finished The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter over the weekend, and I'm still fascinated by it. As I was reading, I had the feeling that there were vast forces massing beneath the surface of the story. There was an ominous quality to the narration, and I was aware of dark currents of race, sex, and class flowing through the book. I kept expecting these issues to suddenly manifest themselves in a huge, cataclysmic event; I thought that the book was building itself up for major tragedy. And although horrible things did happen in the story, there was no single, massive event like the one I was looking for. Nothing happened that unified all the different narrative threads, or that brought all the half-hidden forces out into the light. In a way it felt a little bit anticlimactic, but I wasn't disappointed because it occurred to me that McCullers's story is much more realistic and true-to-life without such a cataclysmic event. Most of us have felt the effects of race, gender, and sex on our lives, but only rarely do these issues manifest themselves overtly in the form of major happenings in our lives. Instead, we do what McCullers's characters do: we try to be conscious as best we can of our thoughts and feelings and the ideas that shape us, we feel deeply about the people and events in our lives, and we keep on going.

All in all, I thought The Heart Is... was a beautiful book. I was very impressed with the quality of McCullers's writing, and profoundly affected by her story. I am also both impressed and jealous that she was only 23 when she wrote it. Damn! What I wouldn't give to be even half as good as she was! I know I've got to work on my own novel tonight, but I'm not sure I can bear to after reading this.

After finishing The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, I started A.S. Byatt's The Game. I read Possession years ago (and again just a few months ago, almost forgot about that), and have not read anything else of Byatt's since then, despite how much I liked it. So when the lovely Ms. E picked up The Game at a used bookstore a week or two ago, I saw my chance to read a little more Byatt and promptly stole it from her. (See, Ms. E, you ought to read this journal; it's the only way you'll know when I steal your books! Heh heh.) Anyhow, I'm not very far along yet, but so far it seems to share many of the qualities I liked about Possession: characterization that is both strong and swift, erudition that is appealing rather than off-putting, and just little hint of creepiness to keep me turning the pages. I'll post more thoughts as I progress.