Reading Notes:
Two Great Novels
This morning, I finished the few pages of Rachel Kushner’s Telex From Cuba that I didn’t read last night. I was sorry to say goodbye to K C Stites and Everly Lederer, the first a narrator, the second a viewer*, both of them American adolescents living in a Cuban-American version of the imperial Raj on the eve of Fidel Castro’s seizure of power. I wasn’t nearly as sorry to see the last of Christian de la Mazière, the decayed aristocrat and unsavory arms dealer whose swampy amorality oozes in rich counterpoint to the crispy oddness of the young Americans’ experience.
The Hollywood version: Ms Kushner has imported Scout Finch (of To Kill A Mockingbird) into a novel by Alan Furst.
A few weeks ago, I read one of the most beautiful novels in the world, possibly the most beautiful, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland. Although not a lengthy read, it struck me as too immense for a casual write-up. Novels often do — and I end up writing nothing about them. (Last summer’s read-agog, Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, is still waiting for a few words from yours truly.) As a rule, I’m quite comfortable dashing off some quick impressions of a book that I’ve liked — in this age of information overload, a sketch seems more than enough. But deeply impressive novels demand more thoughtful, more “worthy” responses. The danger of sounding like an intolerable gasbag is sharply increased.
So here’s my idea: reading Telex From Cuba, I was struck by how I wasn’t struck by the beauty of the prose — and yet there was no denying that Ms Kushner’s prose is extraordinarily effective. I soon saw that the it strengths were the opposite of Netherland‘s. Whereas Mr O’Neill demonstrates an uncanny gift for wrapping up an intense and complex impression in the lace of a few brilliantly chosen words, Ms Kushner creates corners that her characters can’t see around, although we can. Dramatic irony and understatement dictate her language no less rigorously than a fine but very masculine sensuousness dictates Mr O’Neill’s.
Compare and contrast. When I get around to it.
* as in, “owner of one of the novel’s points of view.”