If there were a 3.5 option, somewhere between "liked" and "really liked," that is what I'd actually rate this novel.If there were a 3.5 option, somewhere between "liked" and "really liked," that is what I'd actually rate this novel....more
Immediate musings after finishing: I'm waffling between a three and a four on this book. And maybe, as predicted, it is in fact the cliches that are gImmediate musings after finishing: I'm waffling between a three and a four on this book. And maybe, as predicted, it is in fact the cliches that are giving me all of the trouble.
I found a lot of these sections of prose moving, turns of phrase that entered the realm of "things I think are heart wrenching and beautiful," but I admittedly have a bent toward the melodramatic and overtly masochistic and still can't claim to honestly and consistently enjoy the "style" of this novel. Of course, I love conceptualizing the challenge: once I realized I was, in fact and despite my better training, trying to identify the gender of the narrator, I became much more impressed with the skill it must take to write a protagonist without an assigned gender that appears or pretends to be sort of beyond sexual identity politics. I understand what I am supposed to enjoy about this book, and I did enjoy quite a bit of it, but I am having difficulties overcoming a few obstacles.
It seems a little more than unfair to criticize a novel that is explicitly about naming and "writing" the body of the Other for being too concerned with taxonomy, so maybe I will say instead that this kind of thing might just not be for me. I am quite put off by the clinical conquest of the beloved's body in the beloved's absence. While it would be naive to pretend that these elements do not exist in real lived relationships, a lot of the (possessive) language regarding the beloved's body irked me. For a novel that is touted so often as "queer," is this probing (couched in medical language) into the blood and bones in the second half not a bit colonial (not to mention the references to the body as uncharted territory), even phallocentric? I am not necessarily opposed to the descriptions of the kind of inherent violence of intimate bodily interactions, the "goring" and "scarring" that argue for visible and visceral receptivity, only those that suggest conquest or possession, whether through knowledge, story, or touch. Additionally, reactions to other bodies in the novel (Gail's for instance, and the pain inflicted upon Elgin and Jaqueline) are problematic. I know that the novel seeks to obfuscate definitions, especially of "cliches" like "love," but I still find myself a little confused about the seat and consequences of pleasure, love and desire in the novel. I am comfortable with these being complex ideas that are difficult to grapple with and that manifest themselves in an infinite multiplicity in the realm of human relationships. But this story is written on paper, and is subject to slightly different rules. What is the cost of illegibility here, of rendering every desire or definition unclear or unintelligible? Is the ultimate argument of the book merely to "attempt to avoid the cliches" but fall to them if they are necessary and you are sad?
More than most I am on the side of both/and, but I'm not entirely sure Winterson accomplishes that here. I have a lot of thinking to do about this novel, and that alone is worth having read it.
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