In the middle of Middlemarch

I’m keeping up with one of my 2017 reading resolutions — that is, to read one book of  Middlemarch a month. Today I finished Book IV: Three Love Problems, which puts my bookmark right in the middle.

As I’ve been reading, I’ve thought about how I might or might not want to comment here in my blog. I think with Middlemarch, as with many famous and classic novels, the world doesn’t really need any more reviews, so this is more a scattershot of some thoughts and impressions. And they might only make sense if you’ve read Middlemarch — or even a part of it.

I find reading Middlemarch that I have to give my utmost concentration to the writing. There are sections of dialogue and storytelling when I can read along with ease, but when the narrator steps in, as she so often does, I have to really slow down and parse the train of thought. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about. It tempts me to describe the narrator’s style as turgid, but I think it’s really the opposite. Eliot’s use of language is so precise and dense with meaning that it often demands my full engagement to reckon the complexity of the idea she’s putting across — and/or it exceeds my ability. But when I do get it, most of the time, the narrator’s ideas seem to express human truth in a fresh way:

Innocence & Authenticity

Does authenticity matter in fiction? Do we need to believe in the truth of the characters and their behaviors to stick with or appreciate a novel? I think that my answer to this question is yes, at least me for me. If I can’t believe in the character, it is like watching a poorly acted movie. The suspension of my immediate reality never occurs, and I am never sucked into the book (or movie) in a deeply satisfying way.

The Big Sky

“Serena  Claudill heard a step outside and the squeak of the cabin door and knew that John was coming in.  She kept poking at the fireplace, in which a hen was browning. “ – The Big Sky, A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

Why have I not read this book before? The Big Sky could be considered, in my humble opinion, a contender for the status of the Great American Novel. I am surprised it is not more widely read or referenced. Where Lonesome Dove is described by many as the ultimate novel of the wild American West, McMurtry definitely owes a debt to Guthrie who perhaps launched the genre with this much grittier, atmospheric, and perhaps literary song to the lost wild places and people of this country. The Big Sky is set decades earlier than LD, in the 1830s when the northwest part of the US was the territory of the Crow, Blackfeet, and Sioux.  The only white men in those parts were a few mountain men and trappers.

Little Women

“”Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.” — Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

I  was observing my son’s class one day and noticed a copy of Little Women tucked into the cubby under a desk a few rows ahead. I was in a classroom for a 5th grade class–and was surprised and impressed that a 5th grader would be reading Little Women in this day and age of Wimpy Kid books (not that I am dissing them) or the Twilight series (ditto). Then again, I may have been about that age when I first read it myself. And I loved it then, as I really enjoyed it now.