Sorry for my tardy arrival at the discussion — I’ve been in the land of flow charts. But I’ve been looking forward to talking about this excellent & striking novel, which is one of my favorites to come over the transom this year.
This may be one of those comparisons that’s more misleading than it is illuminating but as I’ve been thinking about Napoleon in Rags my mind keeps flashing on the bar scene in Ulysses. There’s some facile surface connections: Gann eschews quote marks throughout the book, a technique richly abused in writing workshops across the country when it’s inserted for no good reason except to look arty but works here, as it serves to embed the speech into the narrative to create a flow of community voice — and I agree with you, Gwenda, the novel is a tightly structured portrait of a mise-en-scene, not as the flap suggests, the story of a single “Napoleon.” And there’s the, uh, bar settings in common, of course.
But beyond this, my dear G., I guess I was thinking of the diction of the novel, which you aptly describe as “ornately straightforward” and which is one of the most intriguing parts of the book. It seems to me that Gann is interested, like Joyce, in locating the mythic-poetic in everyday life, of finding the grandeur in dilapidation — cue the name of “that sumptuous dive,” the Don Quixote, etc. — and language is part of how he arrives at it.
With the city of Montreux, Gann is working a “funhouse” Louisville, not Dublin. And in trying to re-create the town, Gann had put together his own style of narrative vernacular, one that suggests the grand mad formality of Southern oratory (the ornateness you speak of) but which is clipped of the more fulsome excesses that suggests, keeping the story moving along (the straightforwardness).
So you get passages like this one, where Haycraft is out canvassing in the neighborhood (which in a nice touch is uneasily partly gentrified, thanks to the Come Back to Montreux! campaign):
Haycraft came marching past empty playgrounds and vacant lots through a warren of rookeries, full of himself for having signed a new subscriber to his newsletter, a silk-hatted young man in a T-shirt inscribed with the maxim TATTOOS WILL GET YOU LAID. They had agreed that if his secession plans succeeded then Hay could promise the young man a place in his cabinet, or at least a position in the cabal or shadow government he expected to organize to unofficially run things. On that glorious October day of ecstatic light sinking on the crisping leaves and cigarette butts he crushed under sandaled feet, shreds of burnt tobacco streaking behind his heels, Haycraft hurried to stay on schedule (the modest summit meeting had forced an extension to his allotted hours), until he was struck still with the same intensity as Jesus realizing sight of his first disciple.
The T-shirt doesn’t “say” TATTOOS WILL GET YOU LAID, it is “inscribed” with a “maxim.” There is a plan for secession and an aping of government structure (oh, how we in the South like to set up our alternative governments!), with the Masonic nod at a cabal. The Biblical allusions, up to and including the sandals (like Jesus wore!). And then the poeticc rush of “On that glorious October day of ecstatic light sinking on the crisping leaves and cigarette butts,” with the “ecstatic light” and the “cigarette butts” an example of the beauty of decay (the contemplation of which is, of course, a popular Southern mode).
It’s not an unproblematic style — it can get stiff at spots, and Gwenda, like you I was confounded by the first pages of the novel, which even on rereading still feel overlabored, the way first pages of novels can. (Note to one’s own writerly self: Stop after two revisions.)
But in the main the style works beautifully, even more so on rereading. And style is what keeps the novel from devolving into Polemics or an Issues Novel, despite its inquiries into race, poverty, police violence, riots and (hey hey!) Internet porn. (For more on this, please see Kassia’s thoughtful linking of this novel to LBC member Laila Lalami’s recent essay for Powells.com on “"Fiction in the Age of Poverty".)
Gwenda, I’m interested in what else you noticed about the novel the second time through: Did it improve on acquaintance? What misgivings did you have about the novel?
Something else I’ve been thinking about, that I always think about when discussing the flaws of a novel I found to be excellent overall: Is there such a specimen as an unflawed novel — a novel where the writer never missteps: a technically flawless performance? If I had to I would put Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping there, Lolita too. Maybe a couple others would come to mind if I thought about it.
But for the most part, when I think of the books I love and admire, many of them masterpieces, there are always at least a few passages that are flawed. So why is it that when we talk about a novel’s flaws it always feels like we’re talking about the exception instead of the rule?
I'll join the fray of those who struggled to get into Gann's novel, and while I ended up enjoying it - and re-reading it myself after the ending - found myself once again, hitting stretches wondering if a large percentage of readers may never find their way to that ending. I think that while I enjoyed it, ONIR is a novel that I'd really have to think about suggesting it to another reader. I'd have to really believe they were the type of reader willing to put in a little work to fully enjoy a book.
Posted by: Dan Wickett | Oct 12, 2005 at 07:31 PM
I did cotton to it better, to use a southernism, the second time through. It's a richer experience, I think, with the lens of the ending to view things through. Romeo's section is all the more tragic for what happens later, for instance. And it's fascinating to keep a closer eye on L. as well.
I think you're right about the opening -- I, again, skipped ahead a few pages in the reread. I'm not convinced it's necessarily overwritten, more that it's just impossible to leap into a narrative in that particular style and have it feel completely natural. So it's a bit like swimming against the current at first. Interestingly though, as the book goes on, I actually do think the writing becomes somewhat less ornate. The final couple of sections I'm thinking of (Sutherland's obviously, but also the party and the final reveal).
The misgivings I have are mostly related to my own taste and the kind of stories I read when I have my pick. I'm grateful to Matt and the LBC for having read this, because I wouldn't have, unless there was a secret door at the back of the Don Quixote or I'd heard it was less dark. Dark because of the poverty angle, mostly. Being poor ain't easy. I like that the book explores this part of society and the politics that go along with it, but it's not my home country as a reader, if I'm being honest.
Posted by: gwenda | Oct 13, 2005 at 10:02 AM
A quick addendum on the last paragraph -- it's not that I don't like fiction that's dark, it's that I usually stay away from books that look like they will bring me nothing but pain and misery. I think from the outside, I'd have thought that about this book and, to a certain extend, have been right. But it also gives the book weight it wouldn't have otherwise.
Posted by: gwenda | Oct 13, 2005 at 10:07 AM
I thought Matt's reading of the later sections was right-on, how they shift in tone. On the first pages: I agree in part - with a style this distinctive there's an immersion the reader goes through (reading Ulysses was that way for me - it took a few running starts to get in). I think it was the vascular/heart metaphor that felt forced to me & slightly stiff, whereas the other writing, even when it was ornate, had this delirious flow to it that was very alive.
But this dogging on the first pages feels like quibbling, and it's not the kind of book I want to quibble with: It was pretty amazing.
Dan, your comment got me thinking about that Ben Marcus essay in the Atlantic, and his thoughts about how readers need different kinds of fiction to exercise their brain (I'm badly paraphrasing).
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