To a certain degree, though certainly not to the degree that they imagine, novelists are gods. For the duration of their story, they get to control all of the events, to manipulate characters lives, to bring about natural disasters, to mete out life and death. Within the context of the tale, they are the Creator--omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Now one of the most mystifying aspects of God, and a frequently raised objection to belief in him, is his willingness to allow bad things to happen to good people. We are understandably disconcerted by the idea that the Supreme Being does not intervene to make our lives peaches and cream. But why don't we ever ask why authors decide to have such horrible things to their characters? Surely if we're going to hold God responsible for every bad thing that happens to us, it's fair to ask why authors torture their own creations. I mention all of this because Annie Proulx's Shipping News seems to me to represent a signal example of an author who really doesn't much like her characters.
The book (which won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, the 1993 National
Book Award for Fiction
and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize) relates the misadventures
of Quoyle, a loser of epic proportions. A third-rate newspaperman,
but then he's not good at anything else either, upon the death of his slatternly
wife he takes his daughters to Killick-Claw, Newfoundland to live with
a maiden aunt. There he writes the Shipping News column for the local
newspaper, The Gammy Bird, and endures the horrible weather and the bizarre
quirks of coworkers and neighbors. If you think serial adultery,
incest, sexual molestation of children, car wrecks and the like are the
staff of life, this is the book for you. I found it all pretty tedious
and despite Ms Proulx's skillful utilization of a novel setting, local
slang and lyrical prose, by the time the characters actually achieved some
kind of personal breakthroughs she had lost my interest. After all,
when an author takes such obvious pleasure in making her characters' lives
miserable, it's hard for a reader to muster much empathy for them.
Dorothy C. Judd's review:
When I saw that Orrin had given only a C- to Annie Proulx's
The
Shipping News, I had to write a rebuttal because I really liked the
book and would give it an A.
Orrin asks why authors have horrible things happen to their characters. Hey, that's life; perhaps I've just seen more of it, but when people confide their secrets, you hear lots of horrible stories. In my opinion writing that does not reflect this is fantasy. He accuses Proulx of disliking her characters, but again I disagree. She likes Quoyle and Wavey enough to let them grow past their horrible experiences and find love. I find that amazingly hopeful:
For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar,
if a bird with a broken neck could fly away,
what else might be possible? Water may be
older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood,
mountaintops give off cold fire, forest appear in
mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught
with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the
wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And
it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain
or misery.
I was cheering when Quoyle, a bumbling goodhearted oaf, finally realized the truth of that last sentence. It is a triumphant moment when he and Wavey let go of the romanticized versions of their former mates and admit to themselves and each other the truth, at last freeing themselves to love.
At first I found Proulx's style off-putting, especially the staccato of two or three word sentence fragments. However, I was quickly won over by her powers of description and her wonderful sense of humor. I laughed out loud at Quoyle's thought headlines, at Dawn's job queries, at the scene where Quoyle and his family are stuck in the motel room, at "Oh, go spell 'pterodactyl'" The newspaper itself is at once sad and hilarious.
I wondered how Proulx knew so much about knots and discovered that research is one of the most important parts of her writing. She picks up books at yard sales and secondhand bookstores and uses the information in these to inspire her own books rich in authentic detail. I did not always see the connection between the knot and the chapter, but some day I intend to take the time to do that.
December 24th is my favorite day of the year: the wrapped presents sit
in shining array under the tree, each holding a carefully selected present
which just may be the perfect gift. Perhaps there is a perfect gift
waiting there for me. I call this time the space of possibility:
it could all still happen, it could all still turn out right. This
space of possibility is a recurring theme in the book, and perhaps that
is why The Shipping News is one of my favorites. On page 11 Proulx
notes, "A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either
direction." No matter what happened, my mother used to say, "Everything
will be all right," and I always believed her. Even now in that moment
before the coin
falls, it really seems like everything will be all right.
GRADE: A
Orrin responds:
Far be it from me to pick a fight with my own blessed mother, but I
believe that the difference in our reviews is a perfect illustration of
the political dichotomy between the genders. It is said that a liberal
views life as a tragedy, a conservative views it as a comedy. And,
of course, as I've often discussed in these pages, women are fundamentally
liberal and men are constitutionally conservative. So when I dismiss
the book for picking at the emotional scabs of weak willed characters and
say that I lost interest in them, I am merely displaying my own phallocentric
prejudices. I can not respect Quoyle who blithely suffers through
serial cuckolding and mopes around longing for this trollop of a wife even
after her death. His essential passivity and acceptance of "fate"
are anathema to everything I believe in. Grab the bull by the horns
and change your own life or don't come crying to me. Our freedom
as human beings is a privilege, but it imposes a responsibility.
You have to take care of yourself and improve your own life.
On the other hand, women do actually believe that life in general is like Quoyle's, that is why they support government intervention in all of our lives. In the ideal gyneocracy, there would be government programs to help Quoyle get over his lost love, help him raise his daughters, get a better job, move somewhere else, etc. In general, women assume that life is so difficult and unpleasant that we shouldn't expect to be able to survive on our own. Thus, Quoyle's miserable existence is not even his own fault; he is merely playing the hand that was dealt him as best he can. Women are more sympathetic than men precisely because they believe that there, but for the grace of God, go I.
Now, don't get me wrong, I understand the inherent attraction of the
female world view. I disagree with it, but I appreciate its powerful
narrative strength. Which of us has not felt the need for help at
some point, or even often, in our lives? We have so many relationships
with more powerful people and institutions it is easy to see why folks
would want the government, that ultimate institutional power, on their
side. But at the same time, continued belief in this ideology
seems to be rendered increasingly dubious by recent events and trends.
Despite the still bloated size of our domestic government, a repressive
skein of regulations and a confiscatory tax system; despite the Chinese
intransigence which keeps a quarter of the world's population subjugated
by an authoritarian regime; despite the virtual kleptocracy in much of
the Third World; and despite the basically socialized economies of Europe;
we are living in the greatest epoch of freedom in man's history.
Never before have so many people had so much control over their own economic
and political destinies. And the result? Predictably in my
view, we are experiencing the greatest expansion of wealth and the highest
levels of living standards in human history. Turns out that greater
freedom and greater comfort appear to have a pretty strong correlation.
And you know what? Life is good. As many of us suspected all
along, the Quoyles of the world simply need to marry better, work harder
and stop moping.
(Reviewed:18-Mar-00)
Grade: (C-)
