May 24th, 2008 bhenricksen
Charles Baxter’s The Feast of Love was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2000 and has been made into an excellent film with Morgan Freeman. I’ve just finished reading the novel, finding it charming and moving. Rather than focusing on a single protagonist, Baxter coaxes together a wonderful ensemble of characters, each recounting his or her own amorous tale.
The unifying device is the notion that each character is speaking to the author, Baxter himself, as he seeks out people to tell him about their encounters with Cupid. Baxter is deft in creating the unique voice of each character, and perhaps he’s at the top of his game with the character of Chloe, a latter-day flower child who broke my heart and then put it together again.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Novels, Uncategorized, Writing Lessons | 1 Comment »
April 26th, 2008 bhenricksen
Since I do a little writing, I enjoy metafiction, stories and novels in which the creative process itself is part of the theme. A great one from a couple of decades back was The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. In this tale a shadowy figure representing the author makes an appearance. In the excellent film adaptation, the movie makers become the story in the last act. Another fine novel was Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler. It is interesting to speculate on how the expectations of readers, not to mention the way minds process information, help to shape the story, and Calvino’s novel begins with the reader browsing in a bookstore. At every stage in If On a Winter’s Night, the reader steps in to have a say. Narratives are driven by the desires of the primary characters, but also, Calvino shows, by the desires of readers. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Minnesota Literature, Novels | 2 Comments »
April 13th, 2008 bhenricksen
The older I get, the more I value short novels. It’s a ratio thing. When I sit down to read, I wonder what percentage of my remaining life will be devoted to the book that is now in my hands. And what percentage of that remaining life am I willing to live vicariously? In college we read War and Peace, a hundred pages a week for nine or ten weeks. I read it all and was impressed with myself. Last year I decided to read it again, just to see how the characters were doing. The second reading was simply a chore. Tolstoy had become long winded–all that theory-of-history stuff! All that editorializing! And Pierre . . . how did Professor Ramsland ever convince us that Pierre was an interesting fellow? Or had Pierre simply become plump and boring from dozing there on my bookshelf all those years? If I were in the book bizz today, I’d put out an edited version of War and Peace–all the lame theorizing would go, and definitely Pierre would be off the team. Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark? I don’t think so–it would be War and Peace without the dumb guy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Novels | 3 Comments »
