See, Hear, and Read Remarkable Things

It’s been a while since I’ve had the gumption to write anything. Life catches up, and you rush it through rather than pause to acknowledge it. So, with respect to this regrettable idea, the book of the month (from only my own biased perspective) goes to If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor.

I finished the book only minutes ago. Maybe it’s the freshness of the story in my mind, and the way the emotions it evoked are still pushing against my abdomen, but this novel might just be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever read. Of course, I felt the same way after reading Les Misérables, The Thorn Birds, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But then, if I’m already clumping McGregor’s first novel into the same hierarchy as these three literary giants, just think of where the author must be headed.

The beginning of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things was fascinating, but I was hesitant about the style. The book is a diluted form of prose poetry. It reads like a creative novel, except in certain, remarkable places where new paragraphs are started within the same sentence, and you feel like the words should be sung instead of spoken. In context, these areas are powerful, striking. But the beginning seemed a bit too entrenched with poeticism to suit my prose-mindedness. Take these paragraphs from the first page:

"If you listen, you can hear it.

The city, it sings.

If you stand quietly, at the foot of a garden, in the middle of a street, on the roof of a house.

It’s clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you.

It’s a wordless song, for the most part, but it’s a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings. And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each note.

The low soothing hum of air-conditioners, fanning out the heat and the smells of shops and cafes and offices across the city, winding up and winding down, long breaths layered upon each other, a lullaby hum for tired streets.

The rush of traffic still cutting across flyover, even in the dark hours a constant crush of sound, tyres rolling across tarmac and engines rumbling, loose drains and manhole covers clack-clacking like cast-iron castanets."

This is, undeniably, quite wonderful poetry—the repetition, alliteration, the construction of those clear, vivid descriptions. But as a novel, I was confused and reluctant to give the rest of the book a try. Once you get past the first few introductory pages, though, the narrative of the story and the complete grace of the style will catch you with its claws. And you’ll be happy for it.

You’ll be most happy when you reach the end--when think you have everything all figured out. Just as you know the writing and the story have run out of surprises, it will twist around again, leaving you maybe, or maybe not, sobbing (just a little) and maybe, or maybe not, dashing for that chocolate stash in your room that you’ve been keeping for emergency situations. Sorry to spoil the finale of the emotional journey, but it is quite sad. In all, though, the sadness of it serves as a reminder for just how much we fail to acknowledge every simple, remarkable thing. And that beauty will make every piece of spent chocolate so much sweeter.

What is a Blog, Anyway?

Today, all of today, is that awkward moment when school has been cancelled due to those strange, unpredictable Eastern Oregon snow flurries, and for lack of any other productive thing to do, you decide to write a blog. Or rather, I decided to write a blog; something I have never attempted before, and something that I will pretend to know at least a little about. So: Hey! I’m an English Writing major at Eastern Oregon University, and my name is Maggie (not Margaret). I’m also the current editor of Oregon East, and in this post, it's all about fiction.

As a Writing major, I find that I really like to talk about books. I thought about discussing the book I’m reading now, The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin, but because I haven’t actually finished it yet, I don’t exactly have anything to say except, “really, really good, so far!” Although, as an art non-expert, I’d give the cover of the 2008 Scribner edition a solid ‘A.’ Have you ever genuinely paid attention to the cliché, “you can’t judge a book by its cover?” I’m almost certain that doing this is impossible. For example, the only reason I bought Birds Without Wings was because I thought the cover was pretty. And, luckily, it turned out to be an absolutely amazing book that suggested an entire palette of emotions, and almost made me sob a little. Almost. But if no one actually did judge a book by its cover, then such effort wouldn’t be put into their design. So it goes, as Vonnegut would say. Anyway, the cover of The Lathe of Heaven is great. Pretty colors and flying turtles: definitely eye-catching. And it implies just enough mystery to make you want to pick it up and read what its contents hold. 

But, back to the point, I decided instead to get on the bandwagon and praise Karen Russell’s New York Times Bestseller, Swamplandia! I was first introduced to Karen Russell in a fiction class, where we read, discussed, and learned from St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. This was probably the most bizarre collection of short stories I have ever read, and I’ll admit that I didn’t care for all of it. But, I did like “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” a story that sets the precedent for Swamplandia! by introducing all the main characters under the same sorts of circumstances. I’m not sure if Russell began writing the novel first, or gained inspiration for the full plot of Swamplandia! via construction of the short story, but either way, both are dark, mysterious, and impose an unrelenting aura of magic.

The basic plotline of Swamplandia! revolves around Ava Bigtree and her family, who own and run an alligator-wrestling theme park in the Florida swamplands. Ava’s sister becomes convinced she has turned into a vessel for ghosts, and she runs away to marry one of these ghosts, Louis Thanksgiving. The two sisters have been left alone on the island, and this, coupled with the kind-of-recent death of their mother, prompts Ava to go looking for her sister and her mother’s ghost in the “underworld,” where a dangerous stranger by the name of the “Bird Man” has sworn her family has vanished into. As you can probably guess from this inadequate summary, the Bird Man isn’t exactly a protagonist. But, told from Ava’s perspective, the Bird Man becomes the most fascinating character in the book, even when you begin to hate him for what he is. There’s no spoiler alert here. I’m not going to say what he is or what happens in the end. Instead I’ll say, Swamplandia! is definitely worth reading, especially if you’re into magical realism.

To be perfectly honest, though, I had a really hard time getting into this book. The first forty pages or so were stamped in ornate language and unusual phrases so much that it just felt like she was trying too hard. Take this sentence, “But my sister, Osceola, was born snowy—not a weak chamomile blond but pure frost, with eyes that vibrated somewhere between maroon and violet” (6). Looking closely at this, I can’t find anything wrong with it. The sentence itself sounds rhythmic and pretty. The problem, in my biased opinion, is that Russell uses these sentences too often. Rather than a balance of simple and descriptive phrases, she tips the scale to the right. And I like balance in writing. But once the story really gets going, it sucks you in. I stopped noticing the differences between Russell’s writing style and my own, and I let myself be taken through the swamp with Ava. The greatest success of this book, I think, is that it is an adventure. And maybe that’s the real beauty of fiction, anyway. You get to go places you’d never go in reality.

But I want to know what you think. If there are any readers here, what did you think of Swamplandia!? Or, if you haven’t read it, what kind of writing do you like to read? And what do you guys want to hear from us, here at Oregon East?