OK, I have to ask this question, especially in light of Shanxi's bringing up "Jane Eyre."
Schutt's book seems to have no plot, at least not a plot or storyline that you could readily describe to someone else, the way you could, say, with "Jane Eyre." If I were to describe this story, I'd say it's something like: Girl loses father. Mother is kind of unbalanced. Girl is raised by relatives, grows up, discovers books, has some dysfunctional relationships, including one as an adult with her mother.
The "action" is minimal.
The narrator refers to her lit teacher Mr. Early and says "He loved sound, the way a sentence sounded. Mr. Early did not hang his hat on plot."
Then a few pages later she begins a chapter with "Plot abandoned in favor of insight..." referring to Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads." She also refers to Wordsworth's "spots of time" vs. linear narrative. (more lit professor showing through).
Do you think Schutt's own book is meant to be a work of "insights" and "sounds"? And does it succeed, with all of its admitted narrative gaps, on that level?
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Each bit of text—not really chapters—is short and self-contained and may be far removed from the previous in time or space. “Insights” are often rather particular as contrasted with broad “understanding” of the big picture. So you might be right about the purpose of this approach. I was wondering what sort of work this could be if it was even shorter and composed of just a few of these bits: “ten views” or maybe it should be “ten sounds”. This would make the work even less narrative, but would it make it more poetic?
ReplyDeleteAs well written as they are, these episodes don’t strike me as sharp or resonate enough to be the kind of insight you hope to get from good poetry. And if it is not poetic, I don’t think having many rather than few fills the gap left by lack of narrative.
What he said.
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, dw summed up my thoughts better than I knew how.
How do you guys think this compares to "House on Mango Street," then? It's another book about moving from girlhood into adulthood. But it was a conscious series of vignettes vs. linear narrative, and it certainly had a poetic feel and rich sense of place. Is that a more successful collection of "plot-less" insights? I think I'll remember the tone and color of "Mango" long after I've forgotten "Florida" (even though I think Schutt is awesomely talented at stringing together words).
ReplyDeleteConsidering these comparisons also makes me think of "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone," which is really another coming-of-age story. I think in that book Tennessee Williams quite expertly and poetically conveyed a sense of how Mrs. Stone went from being the girl she was to the woman she became. All the dots are connected in a very, very brief space. I mean, didn't Mrs. Stone seem whole and real with no gaps? I can completely picture her, down to what she'd wear and how she'd talk, etc. Maybe that's partly a function of writing in the third person vs. the first person, because I think our narrator in "Florida" is better at conveying a sense of the other people in the book (like the fabulous Nonna or even her own mother) than she is at coming across as a flesh-and-blood person herself. Or maybe it's just that Tennessee Williams is the master of melancholy and especially empathy, and the mood of his writing never seems labored as Schutt's sometimes does.
Yes, that’s interesting. I partly chose “Florida” because I thought it might be interesting next to “Mango”. “Mango” indeed seemed richer and fuller both in each vignette and in how each one illuminated the life of the girl and her community.
ReplyDeleteBy coming-of-age, do you mean Mrs. Stone from actress to the woman at the end, or the brief view of her actual childhood?
Well, Williams hits the high (or low, depending on your perspective) points of her whole life, but I was thinking she really came of age not when she reached adulthood but as she moved past her prime and fully understood that she couldn't trade on her looks and fame anymore but had to become something of different substance to live the remainder of her life with any hope of self-fulfillment. She reached in her 50s a point that most people who aren't blessed with great beauty and popularity reach when they're 20!
ReplyDeleteRight, that is what I thought you meant. The traditional coming-of-age is set when the character is still very much in childhood. But Williams shows us that something comparable can happen at a much later age. Might we have some sort of variation on the usual coming-of-age story in our book that we should note?
ReplyDelete