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?