Geraldine Brooks's March
Sep. 16th, 2006 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zenithblueI hadn't heard of this book until it won the Pulitzer this year, but as soon as I read the description I was excited. Geraldine Brooks' March is the story of Mr. March, the father from Little Women, and his wartime experiences. It is described as an exploration of the ways war can challenge ideals, an examination of the male part of the open-minded domestic novel Alcott set out to write. How could I, Alcott-obsessed as I am, pass up a chance like this?
But while I admire the ambition of Brooks's work, and the research that went into it, and the ideas she wants to toy with, something in the writing fails. Alcott's book is of course optimistic, an idealized portrait of domestic life. To add adult depths to that optimism is a worthy task. I've always had a thing for the New England intellectual movements of the mid-nineteenth century, and I was curious to see these philosophies pressed to their limits by war, deepend by experience. Not least of my reasons are that there's an unfortunate parallel between then and now. But unfortunately, the book fell short of my hopes.
Because something about Mr. March is (and I hate to even say it)...annoying.
The book is written in first person form, and I half wonder if that's part of the problem. We are talked to by Mr. March, who spends much of the war angsting over his failures, his white guilt, his survivor guilt, his impotence. All of these reflect man's experience at war, of course--I don't have a problem with March's feelings so much as with the expression of those feelings. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll admit that some of my annoyance might stem from him reminding me of the worst parts of myself--the neurotic, anxious, fearful self-loathing that is at the worst end of progressive thought. But near the end I was rolling my eyes at the protagonist more often than not.
You don't have to be in love with your protagonist, or think he's perfect (who would want to read that, anyway?). But a better writer could have found a way to express these parts of March without bogging the narrative down entirely in his fear and self-abuse. On the one hand, she captures the idiom of flowery 19th century rhetoric. The preachy didacticism, the eloquent metaphors, it's all there. But that flowery language and lofty hope is never counterbalanced by the grittiness of war. We see the grittiness of war--the battles and injuries are terrible--but the only response they provoke in March is another round of angst and worry. That's all we get out of him.
The main problem is that Brooks doesn't create an intimate enough relationship between character and reader. Nabakov had me feeling for a child molester, for christ's sake, so it's possible, it's feasable, to write a damaged, flawed protagonist that the reader will still care enough about. I think part of Brooks's failure has to do with the way time passes. The book is only about 200 pages and she crams several seasons' turns into that space, as well as a number of long flashbacks. And the time March spends in his own head, worrying and fretting and dwelling on his own failures, is not crafted exquisitely well, nor is it counterbalanced by anything more tangible or balanced.
That said, there are things she does well, and the best parts of the book are the ones that explore the complexities of domestic life. The Marches are a happy and loving family, but a flawed one, like any family. Miscommunications, mistakes, petty irritations, the complicities and mistaken messages between a man and a woman. The parts that took place with both Marches present were wonderful. But all in all, I'm rather surprised this book won a Pulitzer. It must be because it's about the Civil War. The Pulitzer folk love Civil War narratives.
But while I admire the ambition of Brooks's work, and the research that went into it, and the ideas she wants to toy with, something in the writing fails. Alcott's book is of course optimistic, an idealized portrait of domestic life. To add adult depths to that optimism is a worthy task. I've always had a thing for the New England intellectual movements of the mid-nineteenth century, and I was curious to see these philosophies pressed to their limits by war, deepend by experience. Not least of my reasons are that there's an unfortunate parallel between then and now. But unfortunately, the book fell short of my hopes.
Because something about Mr. March is (and I hate to even say it)...annoying.
The book is written in first person form, and I half wonder if that's part of the problem. We are talked to by Mr. March, who spends much of the war angsting over his failures, his white guilt, his survivor guilt, his impotence. All of these reflect man's experience at war, of course--I don't have a problem with March's feelings so much as with the expression of those feelings. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll admit that some of my annoyance might stem from him reminding me of the worst parts of myself--the neurotic, anxious, fearful self-loathing that is at the worst end of progressive thought. But near the end I was rolling my eyes at the protagonist more often than not.
You don't have to be in love with your protagonist, or think he's perfect (who would want to read that, anyway?). But a better writer could have found a way to express these parts of March without bogging the narrative down entirely in his fear and self-abuse. On the one hand, she captures the idiom of flowery 19th century rhetoric. The preachy didacticism, the eloquent metaphors, it's all there. But that flowery language and lofty hope is never counterbalanced by the grittiness of war. We see the grittiness of war--the battles and injuries are terrible--but the only response they provoke in March is another round of angst and worry. That's all we get out of him.
The main problem is that Brooks doesn't create an intimate enough relationship between character and reader. Nabakov had me feeling for a child molester, for christ's sake, so it's possible, it's feasable, to write a damaged, flawed protagonist that the reader will still care enough about. I think part of Brooks's failure has to do with the way time passes. The book is only about 200 pages and she crams several seasons' turns into that space, as well as a number of long flashbacks. And the time March spends in his own head, worrying and fretting and dwelling on his own failures, is not crafted exquisitely well, nor is it counterbalanced by anything more tangible or balanced.
That said, there are things she does well, and the best parts of the book are the ones that explore the complexities of domestic life. The Marches are a happy and loving family, but a flawed one, like any family. Miscommunications, mistakes, petty irritations, the complicities and mistaken messages between a man and a woman. The parts that took place with both Marches present were wonderful. But all in all, I'm rather surprised this book won a Pulitzer. It must be because it's about the Civil War. The Pulitzer folk love Civil War narratives.
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no subject
on 2006-09-18 08:23 am (UTC)You really are a dud.
You're as doleful as a bloodhound,
You're as interesting as mud.
Mr. March.
Your angst is as overprocessed
as a thrice-digested cud!
no subject
on 2006-09-18 05:02 pm (UTC)And thanks a lot, by the way, for making me snort my coffee across my keyboard.