Reading Wednesday
Dec. 4th, 2019 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhLet Me Breathe Thunder by William Attaway. An early (1939) novel by a Black writer, focusing on the life of two young white hobos, Step and Ed, who open the story by meeting an orphaned ten-year-old Mexican boy and stealing all the cash he has. They then, with the short-sightedness typical of them throughout the book, realize that they feel too guilty to abandon the kid and so decide to bring him along on their aimless wanderings. Their relationship with the kid, whom they christen "Hi Boy" since they never learn his real name (Hi Boy doesn't speak much English, and neither Step nor Ed knows Spanish), catches the attention of kindly orchard owner Sampson, who invites them all to come work for him. They do so, and Sampson's teenage daughter promptly develops a crush on Step which he takes advantage of.
There's an obvious comparison here to Of Mice and Men: two closely bonded men riding the rails during the Great Depression, a woman's sexual desires setting off the climax, an anti-capitalist dream interrupted by accidental death, a lynch mob, tragedy all around. But the more distance I put between myself and the end of Let Me Breathe Thunder, the more certain I am that Attaway, unlike Steinbeck, felt no pity for his main characters. You don't quite notice it during the experience of reading Let Me Breathe Thunder itself; Step and Ed are written with sensitivity and attention to both the joy of their freedom and the pain of their rootlessness. They struck me as sympathetic, even likeable, particularly Ed, who is the less cynical and more tender of the two, and the book's narrator. Nonetheless they are thoughtless and selfish and by the end their actions have resulted in at least one death, with others possibly implied. I suspect we're not meant to cry for Step and Ed so much as for all the ruined lives they leave behind. I don't think it's an accident that a Black author made his main characters white men, not when they reach the end curiously safe and sound – the only ones who do.
I liked Let Me Breathe Thunder a great deal, and wish it was taught or critiqued in parallel to Of Mice and Men more often, instead of simply being overshadowed by it. It's not a lesser version of the same story but one that casts similar events in a quite different light.
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. A novel about a classical musician, a violinist in modern-day London (well, modern-day at the time the novel was published, which is to say the 1990s, as is evident by the number of faxes characters send to one another), and the woman he loved and lost. Ten years ago Michael was a music student in Vienna, deeply in love with fellow musician Julia and studying under a demanding professor; he spectacularly flamed out and abruptly disappeared from both relationships without a word. Now he works with a string quartet – his professor, who envisioned a solo career for him, would be disappointed – and pines for Julia – who refuses to answer his sporadic letters – while sleeping with one of his own students. Until he catches sight of Julia on a London bus, and discovers that she's a) married, and b) going deaf.
I'd been looking forward to reading An Equal Music because I love Seth's other work, but this is absolutely no A Suitable Boy. The writing itself is fine, even wonderful: sparse but evocative, lyrical and descriptive, particularly about cities, landscapes, and music. Unfortunately everything else about the book is completely terrible. The concept of a musician losing the ability to hear is a bit trite, but could also have tremendous potential in the hands of the right author. Unfortunately An Equal Music is very much not Julia's story – it's Michael's, and that of the manpain he feels at her loss. Everything about Michael is awful. It's been quite some time since I hated a main character as much as I hate him; by the end of the book, I was actively rooting for bad things to happen to him and felt annoyed whenever fate gave him a break.
Let me list the things Michael does over the course of An Equal Music:
– actively stalks Julia, ignoring her clear wishes to be left alone, to the extent of popping up unexpectedly at her parents' home and asking his agent to call her agent
– once he meets Julia again, nags her into having an affair with him (I suppose she acquiesces to this, though An Equal Music never really explains why)
– ghosts his current girlfriend once he has Julia's attention
– throws tantrums when she continues to express affection for her husband
– after he finds out that she's going deaf, makes it all about him, continually bringing it up and asking questions despite her stating that she doesn't want to talk about it
– lets out the secret of her deafness despite her explicitly asking him not to, because she's afraid it will either destroy her career or turn her into a novelty gimmick
– makes the final time she's able to perform with others all about him by having a major nervous breakdown in the green room, forcing her to comfort him and to miss the rest of the concert
– physically and emotionally abuses her because he finds an affectionate letter she wrote to her husband
– actively tries to expose their affair to her husband
– after she breaks things off, shows up at her young son's school to force a confrontation
– witnesses the fact that the widespread knowledge of Julia's deafness has indeed turned her music into a publicity stunt; feels no remorse
– creates disasters for his quartet to clean up because he's too obsessed with Julia
All of this could make for a decent novel, I suppose, if it was about a horrible, selfish monster and the disasters he causes. An Equal Music is not that book. We're clearly supposed to find Michael sympathetic and his love and struggles tragic. The only question I came away with was how the insightful and astute Seth I'd read before could possibly have produced this book.
There's an obvious comparison here to Of Mice and Men: two closely bonded men riding the rails during the Great Depression, a woman's sexual desires setting off the climax, an anti-capitalist dream interrupted by accidental death, a lynch mob, tragedy all around. But the more distance I put between myself and the end of Let Me Breathe Thunder, the more certain I am that Attaway, unlike Steinbeck, felt no pity for his main characters. You don't quite notice it during the experience of reading Let Me Breathe Thunder itself; Step and Ed are written with sensitivity and attention to both the joy of their freedom and the pain of their rootlessness. They struck me as sympathetic, even likeable, particularly Ed, who is the less cynical and more tender of the two, and the book's narrator. Nonetheless they are thoughtless and selfish and by the end their actions have resulted in at least one death, with others possibly implied. I suspect we're not meant to cry for Step and Ed so much as for all the ruined lives they leave behind. I don't think it's an accident that a Black author made his main characters white men, not when they reach the end curiously safe and sound – the only ones who do.
I liked Let Me Breathe Thunder a great deal, and wish it was taught or critiqued in parallel to Of Mice and Men more often, instead of simply being overshadowed by it. It's not a lesser version of the same story but one that casts similar events in a quite different light.
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. A novel about a classical musician, a violinist in modern-day London (well, modern-day at the time the novel was published, which is to say the 1990s, as is evident by the number of faxes characters send to one another), and the woman he loved and lost. Ten years ago Michael was a music student in Vienna, deeply in love with fellow musician Julia and studying under a demanding professor; he spectacularly flamed out and abruptly disappeared from both relationships without a word. Now he works with a string quartet – his professor, who envisioned a solo career for him, would be disappointed – and pines for Julia – who refuses to answer his sporadic letters – while sleeping with one of his own students. Until he catches sight of Julia on a London bus, and discovers that she's a) married, and b) going deaf.
I'd been looking forward to reading An Equal Music because I love Seth's other work, but this is absolutely no A Suitable Boy. The writing itself is fine, even wonderful: sparse but evocative, lyrical and descriptive, particularly about cities, landscapes, and music. Unfortunately everything else about the book is completely terrible. The concept of a musician losing the ability to hear is a bit trite, but could also have tremendous potential in the hands of the right author. Unfortunately An Equal Music is very much not Julia's story – it's Michael's, and that of the manpain he feels at her loss. Everything about Michael is awful. It's been quite some time since I hated a main character as much as I hate him; by the end of the book, I was actively rooting for bad things to happen to him and felt annoyed whenever fate gave him a break.
Let me list the things Michael does over the course of An Equal Music:
– actively stalks Julia, ignoring her clear wishes to be left alone, to the extent of popping up unexpectedly at her parents' home and asking his agent to call her agent
– once he meets Julia again, nags her into having an affair with him (I suppose she acquiesces to this, though An Equal Music never really explains why)
– ghosts his current girlfriend once he has Julia's attention
– throws tantrums when she continues to express affection for her husband
– after he finds out that she's going deaf, makes it all about him, continually bringing it up and asking questions despite her stating that she doesn't want to talk about it
– lets out the secret of her deafness despite her explicitly asking him not to, because she's afraid it will either destroy her career or turn her into a novelty gimmick
– makes the final time she's able to perform with others all about him by having a major nervous breakdown in the green room, forcing her to comfort him and to miss the rest of the concert
– physically and emotionally abuses her because he finds an affectionate letter she wrote to her husband
– actively tries to expose their affair to her husband
– after she breaks things off, shows up at her young son's school to force a confrontation
– witnesses the fact that the widespread knowledge of Julia's deafness has indeed turned her music into a publicity stunt; feels no remorse
– creates disasters for his quartet to clean up because he's too obsessed with Julia
All of this could make for a decent novel, I suppose, if it was about a horrible, selfish monster and the disasters he causes. An Equal Music is not that book. We're clearly supposed to find Michael sympathetic and his love and struggles tragic. The only question I came away with was how the insightful and astute Seth I'd read before could possibly have produced this book.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 01:33 am (UTC)Where did you find this?
(I was thinking about it recently due to watching the 1939 film of Of Mice and Men, whose book I have not read in about twenty-five years.)
[edit] – makes the final time she's able to perform with others all about him by having a major nervous breakdown in the green room, forcing her to comfort him and to miss the rest of the concert
DO NOT PASS GO GO DIRECTLY TO HELL
no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 01:38 am (UTC)The Brooklyn public library dug up a copy for me from their reference collection, which I feel fairly certain hasn't been checked out in at least a decade! I wonder if you could ILL it?
I've actually never read Of Mice and Men myself, having narrowly escaped being assigned it in school, but it's one of those books that's so often referenced and parodied that I'm familiar with the story nonetheless.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 02:07 am (UTC)I will certainly give it a try!
I've actually never read Of Mice and Men myself, having narrowly escaped being assigned it in school, but it's one of those books that's so often referenced and parodied that I'm familiar with the story nonetheless.
I believe I was assigned it in school, although it's hard to be sure since I read a bunch of Steinbeck around the same time whether I was assigned it or not; I remember liking it. I thought the film was both good and quite close to the book except in its more sympathetic portrayal of the one woman in the story, which is an adaptation decision I can definitely live with.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 10:58 pm (UTC)I think you may quite like Let Me Breathe Thunder, then!
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Date: 2019-12-05 01:41 am (UTC)I know!! And there's never any repercussions for Michael. Or rather, there's a lot of discussion about what his breakdown will mean for his quartet, and if he can be trusted to play in public again, and will the management of the concert hall forbid him to return, but no one ever considers if Julia felt like breaking down or what her finale means to her.
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Date: 2019-12-05 02:07 am (UTC)Phooey.
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Date: 2019-12-05 04:17 am (UTC)oh my god
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Date: 2019-12-05 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 07:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-06 11:14 pm (UTC)