The unquiet grave

First of all, a confession with precisely the structure (or so I am told) of La Chute: even though I bought a copy of Atonement fresh from the bookstore for class, because I had forgotten that, in fact, I already own a copy, I'm reading the copy I already had, simply because it's an advance.  It's of noticeably different dimensions than the paperbacks that everyone else will have, so when class meets next to discuss it, I will be able, with an ostentatious absence of ostention, simply be able to put it on the table, and be inwardly disappointed that no one notices or gives the slightest sign of caring.

Also I'm rather amused by mix of generality and specificity in the first sentence that greets the reader, written by Nan Talese of Doubleday: "It is hard to imagine that an author could top his own 1998 Booker Prize novel, but Ian McEwan has done just that.".  Well, he'd be the one to do it, right?  Off the top of my head I can't even think of anyone else eligible. (Elsewhere in the opening missive Nan writes that Atonement is "McEwan's most brilliant work to date, and one written on his largest canvas.".  I wasn't aware it was a continuation of an earlier work.)

Arguably, spoilers below!

Anyway.  I'm not entirely sure why I ultimately disliked it, but it wasn't for the reason I thought I might not and the whole thing definitely took a form for the "who cares?" around the time Briony gets her letter from Palinurus.  Exactly how to take the last chapter will change things, but on the more interesting ways it seems to be exactly analogous to Frank Stockton's "Our Story" if it had an exaggerated sense of its own interestingness [1].  Perhaps it's simpleminded of me, but the question "how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God?" just seems bad. The structure seems to imply that one might at first have thought that novelists could achieve atonement, but that the fact of outcome-decision ought to instil grave doubts about the proposition.  But why would anyone have thought that in the first place?  (Given that Briony's written so many drafts, and makes a point of saying so, perhaps one should say that novelists don't achieve atonement, they work through trauma under the influence of a repetition compulsion—but there's no special novel-related mystery about how that works, if you think it does work.)

[1] Not that there's anything wrong with Stockton or his tricks.  But they seemed a little unnecessary here.

Comments

[bitchphd]

You were just determined to hate that book from the outset. I am beginning to think that you might have appalling taste in literature, Tristram notwithstanding.

[ben wolfson]

That's an absolute lie and gross mischaracterization.

Would you like to talk about it?

[ben wolfson]

Plus I seem to recall that you liked At Swim-Two-Birds, of which I am a big booster.

[bitchphd]

Yeah, but you said you wouldn't. and actually I'd probably need to have a look at the novel to refresh my memory.

[bitchphd]

I did like that. But even the proverbial stopped clock is right twice a day. So far, you're right on target.

[ben wolfson]

I would like nothing better than to talk about it with you and all my other readers (who number, I'm sure, at least in the fives) here in this forum Six Apart is kindly letting me use. Please, take some time to reacquaint yourself with the text if you like, only not too much time! I have a poor memory, after all, and don't know how much longer the details will remain with me.

[ac]

Is the theme of all art, particularly literature, the reflexive one that, hey, you can do something with potentially useless or bad stuff, mistakes/wrongs/suffering/awkwardnesses--namely, turn it into art?

[ben wolfson]

I would be very surprised. But one could grant or deny that without thereby thinking that such making art righted wrongs, cleared up awkwardness, lessened sufferings, excused mistakes, or anything like that. (I'm no Freudian, but it seems like the trauma interpretation would fit that idea pretty well.)

[ac]

Wouldn't the notion that you are an artist or potentially an artist add another layer of meaning to these things in the act of them? Which could possibly influence the experience of them, making them seem less arbitrary or out of your control?

[ben wolfson]

That's pretty different from saying that the theme of the art you produce is your ability to have produced it. But it does seem to be Briony's experience:

It made sense, surely, to see if the twins were there, fooling about with the hoses, or flaoting face-down, indistinguishable at last in death. She thought how she might describe it, the way they bobbed on the illuminated water's gentle swell … There was nothing she could not describe: the gentle pad of a maniac's tread moving sinuously along the drive, keeping to the verge to muffle his approach

and so on (from the beginning of chapter 13).

[ben wolfson]

Actually, I could live with a reading of the novel on which it was an indictment of Briony.

[rone]

Nan Talese, that bitch, she's the one responsible for foisting the whole "Million Little Things" fiasco on us.