May. 14th, 2012 09:52 pm
Unconvinced
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muckefuckAfter six weeks with a lovelorn 19th-century Frenchwoman, I knew I needed something completely different. A literary thriller about murder among polygamous Mormons seemed just the ticket. It's a shame, then, that author David Ebershoff bites off more than he can chew with The 19th wife, because the parts he can chew are pretty tasty. Rounding out the contemporary tale of a true believer Jailed for a Crime She Did Not Commit and the lost boy who returns to prove her innocence is the story of the woman who divorced Brigham Young. And it's here where the author loses his way.
Ann Eliza Young actually authored her own narrative of her life. Naturally, the extensive "selections" included in the novel are all the work of Ebershoff and while (from what I've skimmed of the original just now) they seem true in spirit to what she wrote I don't feel he convincingly counterfeits the voice of a 19th-century suffragette. That would be more forgivable if he didn't compound this flaw by inventing another narrative, that of Young's mother, so that he can flesh out incidents Young wouldn't have been old enough to recall (such as the revelation of the doctrine of plural marriage to her parents) along with a backstory to explain its existence which is hardly more plausible than that one about the metal tablets).
But that's not enough, so he invents more narratives, the work of husband and son, and then introduces another contemporary voice, that of a young LDS woman doing research into the live of Young, in order to provide a medium for uniting them. It's a multiplication I might be able to forgive if each new source was correspondingly distinctive. But, no, he has to go and fall afoul of one of my biggest literary pet peeves: unconvincing first-person narrative.
Do any of you remember when the Onion's "A Room of Jean's Own" completely jumped the shark? We were supposed to swallow that some college students had stumbled upon Jean Teasdale's columns and decided to deconstruct her personality. Bad enough that Jean's creators felt the need to explain the joke, but the worst part was having this all conveyed to us by Jean. Somehow, a friend overheard their discussions, relayed them all to her verbatim, and then she did the same for our benefit--all the time ostensibly having no clue what their criticisms meant! It was like hearing a dog describe how his owners got divorced.
Ask yourself this question: When was the last time you heard someone repeat an overheard conversation verbatim? When the last time you did this? It's not something you hear from ordinary people. They may remember a few particularly salient exchanges, but mostly they paraphrase and they summarise. And know what else they don't do? They don't add descriptive embellishments concerning the glint of someone's hair or the manner in which they handle a pitcher. That's because ordinary people aren't graduates of creative writing programmes, which Ebershoff obviously is because he simply cannot help himself. Every account is composed the same way: novelistically. Even the research paper has dialogue. The man is at a university and yet he can't convincingly adopt the voice of an academic.
It's frustrating, because the story itself is pretty interesting and well-told. Instead of trying to ape a half-dozen narrative voices unconvincingly, he should've stuck with one. Go third-person omniscient and call it a day, like de Bernières in Birds without wings. The only thing worse in writing than being too clever is attempting it and falling short. Not everyone can be Peter Carey or Roberto Bolaño--or even Stephen King--and if you're not, work within your limits.
I'm sure I'll finish it--after all, I'm 125 pages in after just two days--and I'll probably end up having more good things to say about it than I did about Magician's wife or Bend in the river. I guess the secret is to increase my speed to the point where the voices blend together and I no longer waste time thinking about whether I'm supposed to believe these are the words of a woman long dead instead of a man my age who knows Hyde Park better than he does Salt Lake.
Ann Eliza Young actually authored her own narrative of her life. Naturally, the extensive "selections" included in the novel are all the work of Ebershoff and while (from what I've skimmed of the original just now) they seem true in spirit to what she wrote I don't feel he convincingly counterfeits the voice of a 19th-century suffragette. That would be more forgivable if he didn't compound this flaw by inventing another narrative, that of Young's mother, so that he can flesh out incidents Young wouldn't have been old enough to recall (such as the revelation of the doctrine of plural marriage to her parents) along with a backstory to explain its existence which is hardly more plausible than that one about the metal tablets).
But that's not enough, so he invents more narratives, the work of husband and son, and then introduces another contemporary voice, that of a young LDS woman doing research into the live of Young, in order to provide a medium for uniting them. It's a multiplication I might be able to forgive if each new source was correspondingly distinctive. But, no, he has to go and fall afoul of one of my biggest literary pet peeves: unconvincing first-person narrative.
Do any of you remember when the Onion's "A Room of Jean's Own" completely jumped the shark? We were supposed to swallow that some college students had stumbled upon Jean Teasdale's columns and decided to deconstruct her personality. Bad enough that Jean's creators felt the need to explain the joke, but the worst part was having this all conveyed to us by Jean. Somehow, a friend overheard their discussions, relayed them all to her verbatim, and then she did the same for our benefit--all the time ostensibly having no clue what their criticisms meant! It was like hearing a dog describe how his owners got divorced.
Ask yourself this question: When was the last time you heard someone repeat an overheard conversation verbatim? When the last time you did this? It's not something you hear from ordinary people. They may remember a few particularly salient exchanges, but mostly they paraphrase and they summarise. And know what else they don't do? They don't add descriptive embellishments concerning the glint of someone's hair or the manner in which they handle a pitcher. That's because ordinary people aren't graduates of creative writing programmes, which Ebershoff obviously is because he simply cannot help himself. Every account is composed the same way: novelistically. Even the research paper has dialogue. The man is at a university and yet he can't convincingly adopt the voice of an academic.
It's frustrating, because the story itself is pretty interesting and well-told. Instead of trying to ape a half-dozen narrative voices unconvincingly, he should've stuck with one. Go third-person omniscient and call it a day, like de Bernières in Birds without wings. The only thing worse in writing than being too clever is attempting it and falling short. Not everyone can be Peter Carey or Roberto Bolaño--or even Stephen King--and if you're not, work within your limits.
I'm sure I'll finish it--after all, I'm 125 pages in after just two days--and I'll probably end up having more good things to say about it than I did about Magician's wife or Bend in the river. I guess the secret is to increase my speed to the point where the voices blend together and I no longer waste time thinking about whether I'm supposed to believe these are the words of a woman long dead instead of a man my age who knows Hyde Park better than he does Salt Lake.