In the Lake of the Woods

Apologies for not posting more this week.  I was teaching a class in Chicago, and when I returned I had a very bad bout with insomnia that's left me unable to think clearly for the past several days.  But I have finished my first book of 2007 and wanted to tell you why I loved In the Lake of the Woods.  It wasn't published in 2007, but as always I'm playing catch-up.

(I'm still 20 pages from the end of White Teeth and am afraid to finish it.  Literally afraid, because nothing that's happened since page 50 has surprised me and I want desperately to see something unpredictable happen at the end. The book in so many ways is brilliant and clever and a huge, massive achievement, and I am afraid of being disappointed by a totally predictable and dull ending.)

So.  On to Tim O'Brien.  I read Going After Cacciato in college, and it was awesome, great, etc., but overshadowed by the fact that I read Housekeeping, which rocked my world, in the same course.  Then I read The Things They Carried (short story) in grad school, which lead me to the story cycle of the same title and then If I Die in a Combat Zone, his absolutely riveting memoir.  In fact, Tim O'Brien is one of the few writers for whom I can say I've read most of his stuff.  And it's all good.

My father is a Vietnam vet, the kind that tells his stories over and over rather than keeping them boxed up, so I grew up hearing about the war--in bits and pieces, in anecdotes in which I got to "know" the people in my father's unit--so much of O'Brien's work (especially The Things They Carried) gave me that kind of shiver of recognition that occurs when you read something that is capital-T Truth (rather than simply facts, which rarely tell us anything true). 

But my friend Katie from Northern Michigan U, where I taught for a year, lent me this book last summer when I told her I was thinking of writing a kind of literary murder mystery.  I told her I was terrified, since I don't know squat about writing a murder mystery (I never read them) and she lent me her copy of In the Lake of the Woods. 

I could hardly put it down.  I kept making the mistake of reading it at night before bed, which is why the insomnia got to me--I kept thinking about it when I closed it for the night.  The story of a man whose wife disappears one night while he's asleep, it offers no easy solutions to the mystery.  It's as much a mystery to the main character, John Wade, what happened to his wife as it is to the people who are searching for her, and yet he may in fact have been responsible for her disappearance.  The story offers both fact and conjecture and weaves the secrets of love and marriage with the massacre at My Lai with equal weight.

In short, it's a psychological study with a mystery at its heart, and a true gem of a book.  As always, I am in awe of O'Brien's skill and the way in which he will allow his characters to be deeply flawed and sympathetic at the same time. 

I don't know if I'm any closer to feeling like I can write my own murder mystery, because I was so awed by this book, but I can tell you to go read it.  You won't be sorry.

Comments

[Wayne]

You keep saying that White Teeth is predictable, but I didn't think it was, or if certain elements were, I certainly didn't give a damn. It was always great fun, following around these crazy and vivid characters and living in their tortured little worlds. Plus, I saw a culture or at least a social environment up close, one to which I'd never been exposed before, and that was wonderful, too. Plus, I do not think it's always sound to judge a book on the "plot" factor alone. You know that Tom Jones will end up with his Sophia, but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun taking that 900+ ride with Henry Fielding before you get there.

[churlita]

I love your book review posts. Illiterati is quickly becoming my favorite book suggestion blog. I read some of O'Brien's short fiction a while ago and I remember liking him. I'll have to check out his novel next.

[tlb]

It's not the plot that's predictable, Wayne--it's the characters, and that's the worse in my book. The characters (Millat and Magrid especially) have evolved exactly as predicted--as the embodiment of the ideals the author is placing at odds rather than as human characters with ideas of their own. They feel, and behave, like puppets, and their strings are showing, which is robbing the narrative of aspects that might make it (for me) more compelling. This is why I'm afraid to finish it--I don't want to see the predictable play out in the finale, the clash of ideas and ideals that was inevitable from the moment Magrid was sent to Bangladesh. I don't want to see everything tied up in a bow. Good endings are both surprising and inevitable, and right now I'm only seeing inevitable.

In many ways, as I said, the book is a brilliant achievement. Like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot it seems to predict the current world we live in, and for that alone Smith could be hailed as an unqualified genius. But ultimately the book, for me, is too crystalline perfect, too simple to be truly satisfying, unlike In the Lake in the Woods, which had no one-note answers to anything.

Perhaps the last 20 pages will redeem all this and convince me otherwise. But I'm afraid to find out, because as I've said before, I thought Zadie Smtih was witty and charming in person and I wanted so much to love this book without reservations.

[tlb]

Thanks Churlita. I read yours every day--and it always gives me a chuckle.

[babelbabe]

You like Wilco? I KNEW I loved you : )

I just picked up Going After Cacciato at a library book sale on the recc of another friend, and now I really really want to read it - then I will go to Lake. Thank you!

[tlb]

Babelbabe, I love Wilco and its predecessor, Uncle Tupelo, which I saw in October 1989 at the Old Blue Note in Columbia, Mo, while dressed as (don't laugh!) a newspaper.

[traca de broon]

I finished White Teeth last week and do know what you mean, tlb, although I did enjoy it overall. I actually found On Beauty much wittier, but it did decline toward the end, when the way things were all going to wrap up quite neatly became pretty obvious.

[Wayne]

"It's not the plot that's predictable, Wayne--it's the characters, and that's the worse in my book."

Okay, but I thought you were talking about plot because you wrote in your post that "nothing that's happened since page 50 has surprised me." In my book, stuff happening=plot.

But to be fair, not every character in the book is, well, wholly original, or completely nuanced, or whatever. I agree that the twins are particularly contrived to be opposites of each other, but I don't see why that is necessarily bad, you know? Plus, I absolutely love the way Millet (I think -- he's the bad one, right) is taken in by the sympathetic white family, who clearly fails to understand him, the culture he comes out of, etc. Smith is using characters to comment on something she sees in society, and when novelists do that, the risk is that they'll become pedantic and preachy, but Smith keeps it literate and entertaining. (You've read the book more recently than I have, and have the details at your fingertips -- correct me if my memory is inaccurate.)

What I'm saying, then, is that I don't see how it's wrong, or bad, or detracting, if a novel decides to let its characters be the "embodiment of the ideals the author is placing at odds." If the ideas or ideals are good, used interestingly, and the novel is showing us something fresh and vigorous, I think that's terrific. And I think White Teeth is doing all that.

So, I'm in the position of seeing what you mean, but feeling compelled to defend the book anyway (despite your qualified praise). "Predictable" still seems like the wrong word to me. Maybe it's that Smith sacrifices characterization in the interest of Big Ideas. So is that a good way to put it? And then the question would be, are Smith's Big Ideas worth thinking about, since the characters are in service of them?

[tlb]

Well, I have no desire to get into a semantic discussion, but in my book, characters drive the plot (or should). There wouldn't be much to Hamlet if he were a more active, take-charge kind of guy, for example. The story would have been over in the first act.

I agree that if the characters are pedantic and preachy, that's a problem--and that's what I'm seeing in White Teeth.

In a book with ostensibly political goals, once those goals become clear (as they did for me as soon as Millat and Magrid were separated), the characters and plot develop in completely expected ways--in order to put the politics embodied in those characters on a collision course.

Despite my admiration for its political agenda and its prescient qualities, its careful construction and the quality of the intelligence behind it, White Teeth feels too coolly inhuman to be a completely satisfying read. Other writers have managed to make their characters the embodiment of ideas and ideals (Fitzgerald did it in Gatsby, for example) without robbing them of their beating human hearts. That was the difference for me with White Teeth--unfortunately all the difference.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

What kind of course were you teaching in Chicago?

[tlb]

I teach a creative writing class every winter at one of the local libraries near where I grew up. It's usually fun.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

That's very exciting.

What can you recommend for a sad soul like AG who lacks writing skills all around? Is there a good course or book I can look into?

[tlb]

Well, ahem, I do teach a beginning novel class through UCLA Extension. The winter one's already started but the summer one won't begin until June or July.

There are several accomplished writers who teach through the Extension besides me, though.

Also, I always recommend Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction as a great textbook on craft.

[Wayne]

Oh God, I hated The Great Gatsby.

[Adorable Girlfriend]

I will have to check out your course. I am very much interested in learning how to be a better writer.

[tlb]

It would be fun to have you in class, AG. But I'm sure you'll find something great even if it's not with me.