![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Writing his name in water
Feb. 9th, 2007 05:46 pmI finished Wonder Boys this afternoon, and my feelings about it are decidedly mixed. I warmed up to it considerably after my initial post, but I still find myself unable to truly embrace the book. I was drawn in by an extended episode in the middle of the book when Grady Tripp goes to spend Passover with his wife's family in rural PA. It's unclear (Grady himself is not really sure) whether the trip is a last-ditch effort to save his marriage or an opportunity to end things once and for all, but it's really a lovely moment. Grady's uncertainty is rendered convincingly, the family's eccentricities, while perhaps more numerous than those of most families, are nonetheless believable, and the dynamic that exists among the family members seems very real: sometimes exasperated, sometimes truly hurt, but always underscored by palpable affection. This was the first moment when I felt that the book actually had a heart, that it was about more than just absurdity for absurdity's sake; the reading went better for me after that, but I never fully overcame my dislike.
I don't know why I was unable to truly like Wonder Boys. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I've never been able to enjoy books or movies where you're forced to just sit back and watch someone fuck up over and over again--no matter how well things turn out in the end, I always find the experience uncomfortable. And, speaking of things turning out well in the end, I found the end of Wonder Boys rather unsatisfying. I find it very hard to believe that Grady is actually happy in his new life of fatherhood and good behavior. Maybe that's the problem with this book: Chabon has created an unresolvable story for himself. It's clear for 350 pages that Grady's life is untenable--he can't possibly go on living the way he's been living for 40+ years--yet Grady's faults and fuck-ups and flaws are so integral to our understanding of him as a character that any manner of reform rings false. Hmm, that could be it.
An odd tidbit about Wonder Boys: this book represents one of the very rare cases when I've seen the film adaptation of a book before I read it. I saw the Wonder Boys movie ages and ages ago--five years, at least. I had forgotten most of the plot details and all the important stuff, but the movie did have one strange effect on my reading: I couldn't stop hearing Tobey Maguire's voice saying all of James Leer's lines. At first the whole thing sounded a bit like Michael Douglas--that went away very quickly, but Tobey Maguire stayed. Weird!
Also, because I'm attempting to do a better job keeping track of the short fiction I read, I want to note that I recently read an excellent story: "The First Sense" by Nadine Gordimer, from the December 18th issue of the New Yorker. (Yeah, I'm way behind. Wanna make something of it?) The story, about the wife of a famous cellist, is a subtle study of enduring devotion. It's beautifully written and very short--just a tiny little luminous thing on the page.
I don't know why I was unable to truly like Wonder Boys. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I've never been able to enjoy books or movies where you're forced to just sit back and watch someone fuck up over and over again--no matter how well things turn out in the end, I always find the experience uncomfortable. And, speaking of things turning out well in the end, I found the end of Wonder Boys rather unsatisfying. I find it very hard to believe that Grady is actually happy in his new life of fatherhood and good behavior. Maybe that's the problem with this book: Chabon has created an unresolvable story for himself. It's clear for 350 pages that Grady's life is untenable--he can't possibly go on living the way he's been living for 40+ years--yet Grady's faults and fuck-ups and flaws are so integral to our understanding of him as a character that any manner of reform rings false. Hmm, that could be it.
An odd tidbit about Wonder Boys: this book represents one of the very rare cases when I've seen the film adaptation of a book before I read it. I saw the Wonder Boys movie ages and ages ago--five years, at least. I had forgotten most of the plot details and all the important stuff, but the movie did have one strange effect on my reading: I couldn't stop hearing Tobey Maguire's voice saying all of James Leer's lines. At first the whole thing sounded a bit like Michael Douglas--that went away very quickly, but Tobey Maguire stayed. Weird!
Also, because I'm attempting to do a better job keeping track of the short fiction I read, I want to note that I recently read an excellent story: "The First Sense" by Nadine Gordimer, from the December 18th issue of the New Yorker. (Yeah, I'm way behind. Wanna make something of it?) The story, about the wife of a famous cellist, is a subtle study of enduring devotion. It's beautifully written and very short--just a tiny little luminous thing on the page.
