I was at the gym on Wednesday and the woman who got on the machine next to me was reading William Dean Howells! The book in question was A Hazard of New Fortunes.
(Why I'm so excited about this is that my good pal R.E. aka Howellsreader wrote her dissertation on Howells.)
So I asked the woman, why Howells? She said it was her book group's pick, and she wasn't so excited about it at first, but now she's into it.
She also said she read the literary introduction and was totally turned off by the introduction, so she skipped to the book itself, and that was much better. (Take that, high-falutin' litscrits!)
She said she liked the book generally. But, she was frustrated by the book because people back in those days never said what they really meant. So the characters have to spend a lot of time figuring out what the other characters really mean and then communicating in code about what they mean. She concluded it was just a different era then.
But she also said it was very readable, and a nice break from "plucky woman overcomes adversity and finds true love."
What do you say, Howellsreader?
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1 comment:
I say hooray! Howells is a virtually-unknown writer these days, and I'm so glad a book group picked him. His work is very thought-provoking. Personally, I really like the obliqueness of his characters' dialogue with one another. Postmodern novels seem to have lost some of the complexity of human relationships. I don't think real people speak to each other frankly. That's why Howells earns the label "realist," and why I like him so much. Howells's fiction actually follows the rules of drama, in which subtext and silent motivations are always at work under the dialogue. Postmodern writers tend to just jump straight into the consciousness of their characters, thereby voicing the subtext in a less subtle way.
Surely you didn't think I would be able to restrict myself to a SHORT response? :-)
And Happy Belated Thanksgiving.
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