Great American Novels

I recently read The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow and it's hard to describe it as anything else than The great American novel. I'm not quite sure what it means for something to be an American novel, let alone a great one, but it certainly has features that make it distinctly American beyond its author and setting.

When one looks at Augie March, Gatsby, Steinbeck novels, and perhaps Streetcar Named Desire (which i'm aware is not a novel), there is definitely something unifying. Of note, they're all reasonably bleak - presenting chracters that live almost an antithesis of the American dream: down on their luck, unable to escape circumstances and history. I found it interesting to read that A Clockwork Orange was edited when published in America, removing the final chapter (the happy ending). And then you can even think of other important episodes in the American psyche like Gone with the Wind - it's American to leave things unhappy, and yet it's also American to make a Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (maybe not everyone in America is the same? who knows...)

When beginning to read Augie March, I wondered whether Saul Bellow was one of those authors that I could not relate to, writing characters that are shallow and conceited. It was a nice surprise to find that every one of those suspicions, arising throughout the book, were quashed by some rejuvenating or explicating passage. I felt like the narrator grew with Augie March, i.e. that reflection was minimal in earlier passages, Augie seeming almost like a blank slate (indeed, it's a running theme of the book that that's what people take him to be) but with no opinion of his own, innocent and undiscerning. Later, however, he started to pronounce his opinion, bringing out his full character.

The book is somewhat episodic, and the emotions conveyed in some are unbelievably authentic (oxymoron?). After so much description, it is so easy to feel and empathise with the distress of his mother who's mentally slow son is taken away from her. Further on in the book, a break-up is described that articulates so well the complexity of run-down relationships that I couldn't help but feel a little sick to my stomach : that complex mixture of emotions where one has no right to feel betrayed, and yet the betrayal is felt all the more poignantly.

I guess part of the Americanness comes from the character's adventure, being able to sample many careers, lifestyles and people, something that was taken to the extreme in Forrest Gump! Augie reminds me somewhat of Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, with his descriptions of events touched by a melancholia that one cannot quite locate until the end. Some of the episodes are told Gatsby-style, where Augie really just sings everything he sees. Despite him seeming a bit naive and shallow in parts, the breadth of insight we are given into his character makes him human, and therefore forgivable for human faults. I was very glad to have read this book.

Gatsby, Meaulnes and Nagasawa

I read The Great Gatsby - that classic American Novel - well after reading Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) and shortly after Le Grand Meaulnes (Alain-Fournier). The former had reidentified it as one of those books I should read, while the latter's title (obviously) reminded me to get to it. The similarity between the titles apparently might not have been accidental, with Fitzgerald having recently read Le Grand Meaulnes but I'm not sure of the facts here - the stories are different enough, however they do share the first person removed third person perspective - i.e. the title character's story is told from the perspective of a friend.

I think it's this narrative device that might be why Gatsby is so important as a text - beyond its essential Americanness. What this enables is a projected authenticity concerning the plight of the subject (e.g. think of the difference in impression one gets from "i am good" and "he is good"). Gatsby and Meaulnes are similar characters, sharing a similar friendship with the respective narrators. Both are talented, driven, and caught up in a romance that has strayed from the more genuine feelings of love to those of obsession and objectification. The narrator's friendship is undervalued (which is accepted gracefully in both cases) and it just seems to become more and more clear that these admired men, have somehow missed the point (sort of a Kurtz-esque fall).

In Norwegian Wood, Watanabe befriends Nagasawa, and what they share is a love of Gatsby. Nagasawa is of course, a reincarnation of the Gatsby character, and so reading Fitzgerald's novel fleshes out their friendship and allows us to better understand his function in the novel. This is my favourite thing about intertextuality, so much is inferred just from a deliberately placed reference... I think it's why I want to read so many of the "classic" texts - so that my reading of everything else can be enhanced.

I loved Gatsby, but mainly for a passage at the end, which I think justifies everything that precedes it (I didn't find the style to really flow so well... lots of re-reading to work out what's going on - but that's probably my fault - who am I to say it's not perfect?). The passage is this:

"It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."

Sometimes books will use 150 pages of description and skeleton story, just to allow a reflexion like this to make an impression on the reader, so powerful and beautiful, that might not otherwise have been made.