What I [Don’t] Like in a Novel, or, I Hate Sun-Warmed Flagstones

My require­ments are pretty simple. A book only has to do one of these:

• Enlighten me
• Make me laugh
• Astound me
• Break my heart

Easy and rea­son­able, right? What you don’t see on that list, and what I’ve found in all the books I’ve been half-finishing lately, is:

• Describe things so vividly and per­fectly that I want to throw up

Three ter­rific books I did not like

There is no shortage of prodi­gious skill in the books I’ve been reading. The writing in The Amazing Adven­tures of Kava­lier and Clay had me in awe from the first page. I was sim­i­larly impressed by The Por­trait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Book Thief–which is uni­ver­sally loved, and which I may have put down too soon.

How­ever, while each of these books deliv­ered pol­ished words, I couldn’t feel much for the sto­ries or char­ac­ters. Per­haps the defect lies in me, but while I mar­veled at per­fect metaphors and watched the verbal cin­e­matics unfold, in the end, I found myself frus­trated and praying for the sun to please set on those smooth, dusk-warmed flag­stones that cooled like the color of a whis­pered memory … and let me get on with my life.

I realize it’s a matter of taste. Everyone has their little antipathies and pref­er­ences, and these are mine. In truth, I’d love to have the time to develop the level of descrip­tive skill these writers show, but I hope I wouldn’t use it to the same artistic effect.

Here are some books that I think deliver where it’s important:

Three books I love

#1  Les Mis­érables : Victor Hugo (Norman Denny translation)

“The crowd waited, expecting nothing except the moment when he would relax his hold, and heads were turned away, in order not to see. There are occa­sions when a length of rope, a pole, or the branch of a tree is life itself, and it is a ter­rible thing to see a living being lose his grip and fall like a ripe fruit.”

What some writers do with adjec­tives, Hugo does with ideas. His metaphors are simple, but ulti­mately more pow­erful than the most florid and artic­u­late descrip­tion. There is some­thing simple and earthy and pro­found about his writing. We feel that we are wit­nesses, and each moment, how­ever small, seems to carry the weight and con­se­quence of the entire world. Here’s more of that scene.

“Making the rope fast to its fur­ther end, he swarmed down to it, and the spec­ta­tors suf­fered the agony of seeing two men sus­pended over the void instead of one. It was like watching a spider grapple with a fly, except that the spider was bringing life, not death.”

Les Mis­érables, as well as The Hunch­back of Notre Dame, are both enlight­ening and heart­breaking, even if I must admit that the numerous, 50-page digres­sions into French his­tory are some­times a challenge.

#2  The Worm Ouroborus: E.R. Eddison

Rel­a­tively unknown, this novel from the 1920s reads like the child of Shake­speare and Gravedigger. Eliz­a­bethan mon­ster truck power. Aside from a few clas­sics, I’m not gen­er­ally a reader of fan­tasy lit, but this is a unique animal.

“Gravely and without ges­ture Lord Juss harkened to the Ambas­sador, leaning back in his high seat with either arm thrown athwart the arched neck of the hip­pogriff. Goldry, smiling scorn­fully, toyed with the hilt of his great sword. Spit­fire sat strained and glow­ering, the sparks crack­ling at his nostrils.

“Thou hast deliv­ered all?” said Juss.

“All,” answered the Ambassador.

“Thou shalt have thine answer,” said Juss. “While we take rede thereon, eat and drink”; and he beck­oned the cup­bearer to pour out bright wine for the Ambas­sador. But the Ambas­sador excused him­self, saying that he was not athirst, and that he had store of food and wine aboard of his ship, which should suf­fice his needs and those of his following.

Then said Lord Spit­fire, “No marvel though the spawn of Witch­land fear venom in the cup. They who work com­monly such vil­lany against their ene­mies, as wit­ness Recedor of Gob­lin­land whom Corsus mur­thered with a poi­so­nous draught, shake still in the knees lest them­selves be so enter­tained to their destruc­tion;” and snatching the cup he quaffed it to the dregs, and dashed it on the marble floor before the Ambas­sador, so that it was shiv­ered into pieces.”

Here’s another admis­sion: anyone who reads this book will dis­cover that I’m a hyp­ocrite, because one may never come across a book with more ornate or bela­bored descrip­tions than this one – but there’s some­thing about the hyper­bolic grandeur of the action that makes its osten­ta­tious clothing fit.

#3  Catch-22: Joseph Heller

Bril­liant, hilar­ious, and sub­ver­sively poignant, and the Jim Weiss audio ver­sion drips with sar­castic perfection.

“Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged indi­vid­u­alist who held that fed­eral aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advo­cated thrift and hard work and dis­ap­proved of loose women who turned him down. His spe­cialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The gov­ern­ment paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa that he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the gov­ern­ment gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not pro­duce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa.”

In closing, I was reminded lately that com­paring the best of today’s book list with time­less clas­sics might not be fair, and that is true. How­ever, part of working out one’s own path is deciding what to avoid and what to aspire to, and that is what moti­vated this post.