#43 - "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood

I suppose in a way, I'm now more Canadian than I was last week.  Why, you ask?  Because I've finished my first Margaret Atwood book, The Blind Assassin.  No doubt one of the most popular and most highly respected authors to come out of Canada, I think of it as some sort of rite of passage to have finally read one of her books.

I'm happy to report, it was one I truly enjoyed.  I say I'm happy I enjoyed it because of the two types of reactions I seem to encounter when I mention to fellow Canadians that I'm reading an Atwood book.  For the most part people say, 'oh, I really like her books' or something to that effect.  But others look like they just bit into a lemon as they same something like 'She's okay, but I'm not crazy about her..."  It's almost as if they don't want to say they don't like her because it might be considered unpatriotic.  Being the honest guy I am, I'd probably just say I didn't like her, and could then be accused of being a maple leaf-hating traitor.  But, I liked it, so I guess I'm safe from those accusations.

The Blind Assassin starts out with a series of newspaper clippings outlining a young woman's death in a car accident in 1945, her brother-in-law's death of a stroke in 1947, and her niece's death in 1975.  From there, the story begins with the birth of Iris Chase Griffen, the dead woman's sister, the brother-in-law's husband, and the niece's mother.  She narrates the story of her childhood in a wealthy family, her marriage, and in the end, her tragedy.  And tragedy is really what the story is, as she explains the details and events which lead to said deaths.

Iris is the only person left who knows the truth behind the deaths, and looks to set the story straight for her estranged granddaughter.  The book jumps from present to past frequently, as Iris talks of her life now, and the changes that she has experienced, then revisits her past to make sense of those changes.  The book also uses passages of a novel-within-a-novel entitled The Blind Assassin, which her sister became posthumously famous for writing, and tells the tale of a wealthy woman and her elicit affair with a local vagabond.

At times I find books that use time shifts like this to be confusing, as I did in Faulkner's Light in August, but Atwood's use of them is very accessible.  Instead of losing the reader, The Blind Assassin is able to hold their attention, and the technique is very adept at piecing the plot together.  I found it fun in a way to guess how the combination of stories from the past and the allusions in the novel-within-a-novel would turn out in the main story.

I also really enjoyed Atwood's writing style and her use of words.  She uses a lot of similies and metaphors, so many of which I found create really vivid descriptions.  Plus, she writes with a wit I wasn't expecting.  There were so many great lines in this book, many of which left me smiling, if not giggling.  My list-reading counterpart in Nashville, Robert Bruce, has assembled many of these lines in a recent post on his site, 101 Books.

This was truly an enjoyable read and I'll be sure to revisit Atwood in the future.  After I read the next 57 books from The List, that is.


Click here to read TIME magazine's review from September 11, 2000.

You can hear me talk about The Blind Assassin on the Calgary Eyeopener right here.


Notes: This is the only truly Canadian book on The List. Neuromancer was written by William Gibson who holds dual citizenship but was born and educated in the United States, and Saul Bellow was born in Montreal but moved to Chicago when he was nine years old.

As a funny aside, I noticed in Time's explanation for why this book made The List, they refer to the book's setting as 'a chilly Canadian town.' I never got the feeling it was really cold in the book, save a couple of mentions of snow or ice in the dead of winter, but nothing to make me think they lived in a particularly cold place, and certainly nothing worth noting. Perhaps it is assumed all Canadian towns are really cold. But then wouldn't that be redundant to mention it, like saying a book was set in a warm Hawaiian town?


Next up is still to be decided, but I'm leaning toward Malcolm Lowry's 1947 novel, Under the Volcano.

Was i, to take this drunkard for a god

My reading has continued at a good pace this week and according to my Goodreads account, I'm 80% through The Sheltering Sky.  I'm enjoying it very much, and as soon as I'm finished writing this, I look forward to returning to it.

I've decided that part of my good progress since 'the big one,' since Infinite Jest, is due to the fact that I've been throwing in a little non-fiction on the side.  As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I find reading some non-fiction works as a motivational tool, causing me to actually read more often.  When I have two books I'm enjoying, I'm eager to read both, but must split my time; therefore I read more often.  If I'm not enjoying one of them, I make reading some of it mandatory before continuing with the book I am enjoying, so again, I read more often.  So far I haven't run into an instance where I don't like either book, so I'll have to cross that bridge when I get to it.

The non-fiction book I just finished is called God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens.  Obviously this is a very polarizing book, and I don't really have any desire to get into any kind of religious debate, despite my feeling so passionately toward one side.  What I can comment on is what a good writer Hitchens is.  I'd never read anything of his before, and had only seen him in interviews or debates, where he carries himself as well as anybody, mostly due to his uncanny ability to recall quotes, facts, examples, etc.  Said Martin Amis (author or the book Money, which is on The List), "With his vast array of geohistorical references and precedents, he is almost Google-like; but...Christopher's search engine is much more finely tuned."  In God is not Great, Hitchens uses this 'google-like' ability to explain why he doesn't believe in any god, and why he feels 'religion poisons everything.'

As far as The List is concerned, I have been able to find some relevance.  Throughout my quest, I have been noting when one book from The List mentions another book, or at least an author.  Well God is not Great takes the cake, making references to eleven different authors and five different books from The List.  Some references tied in nicely to the book's theme, like C.S. Lewis, a tireless promoter and defender of religion, and Salman Rushdie, whose work offended some religious types so much they ordered him executed.  Other times, such as when Hitchens quotes The Adventures of Augie March, it doesn't pertain to religion necessarily, but rather he quotes them because great writers are so good at putting their thoughts on paper, why not borrow from their genius to make a real impact.  After some background research, I did discover Hitchens' love of literature, it seems to be his true passion.  Perhaps this is why he turns to the literary world the way many would turn to, ironically, religion.  I guess Hitchens prefers to look to the good books for advice (Hitchens also can't resist a bad pun).

For those interested, the authors mentioned in one way or another in God is not Great are Salman Rushdie, George Orwell, Saul Bellow, C.S. Lewis, Ian McEwan, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Philip Roth and Joseph Heller.  As for books, Hitchens refers to Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-four, The Adventures of Augie March, Brideshead Revisited, and A Dance to the Music of Time.

I don't have any non-fiction reads ready to go right now, so my concentration will return solely to The List for the next few days.  I'll hopefully have number thirty four finished soon.  I'm still unsure of what thirty five will be, but am currently, as I type these words, staring at Gone with the Wind. And it's staring right back at me, I think daring me to read it.

#25 - "Herzog" by Saul Bellow

So I finally finished my 25th book and I'm now a quarter of the way through the list.  Herzog took me a little longer to read then planned, but I'll blame that on the Christmas season, which has not only occupied my reading time, but obviously also my blogging time, as I haven't written anything since the 4th of December.  However, I was able to get some reading done over the Christmas weekend, relaxing in B.C.  As I already mentioned, I finished Herzog, but I was also able to read Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion on Christmas Day (that's right, old molasses read an entire book in a single day...).  So actually, I've already read 26 books, and am fifty pages into the 27th.  But I digress, back to number twenty-five.

Moses E. Herzog is forty-seven and a father of two, who is newly divorced (again), unemployed, more or less homeless, and unsure of where life is taking him.  Or rather where he's going to take his life.  He spends his time writing letters, usually to people he doesn't know, to complain about things they may have said or written, but really he's writing the to merely pass the time and vent his frustrations.  But despite so many things in his life spiraling downward, he remains oddly upbeat through everything he faces.

When I first picked this book up from the library, I had a feeling, for unknown reasons, I would enjoy it.  There wasn't anything exciting on the cover to make me think one way or another.  Nor, did I know anything about the story or the author.  But none the less, it was an instinct I had.  Now that I've read it, I'm not sure what I think.  At times I found it funny, other times suspenseful.  Some parts were interesting, others were, a little on the dull side.  There were times I simply became disinterested in the plot.  Because of the ups and downs of the story, it ended up being the characters that held my interest in the book, and ultimately, were what I enjoyed the most.  Herzog himself is a likeable man, who it would be difficult for somebody not to like (his two ex-wives notwithstanding.)  His most recent wife, Madelaine, who serves as the book's antagonist, is an annoying, yet intriguing character brought to life, like all the others, with Bellow's wonderful descriptions and excellent dialogue.  I found myself simply enjoying reading the exchanges between the characters more than the pesky plot.

I'm curious as to what the reaction would be to a book like Herzog, if it were released today.  In 1964, many of Herzog's situations were probably a little edgier than they are today.  Having two ex-wives, children from different women, career changes, or sleeping with a woman out of wedlock, are no longer even remotely taboo.  In fact, I'd argue they're more the norm than the exception.  With so many of Herzog's 'predicaments' being so common place, I wonder if this book would have even close to the same impact today that it had so many years ago.  Of course having said that, good writing is good writing, regardless of the era.  Good books stand the test of time because they are well written and because ultimately, they have good stories, even if some of the background are a little old fashioned.




You can read the original TIME magazine review from September 24, 1964 right here.


My next book will be--sorry, my next book was Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion.  I'll post my review tomorrow.



Notes:  I returned yet another book I had borrowed from the library, but never read, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.  I first took it out almost three months ago and have been subconsciously avoiding it ever since.  Last week, after having already renewed it four times, I was forced to return it.  I believe that's the library's way of making sure I haven't lost or destroyed it.