Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Tragic Realism

Mrs. Noyes, Mottyl and Lucifer embody stark, imperfect reality. There are numerous scenes depicted in the book that follow Mrs. Noyes around, and allow the reader to understand completely where she's coming from. A particular scene which sent me into uncontrollable tears was when Mrs. Noyes discovers Lotte. (Emma's visibily deformed little sister). Mrs. Noyes desperately tries to save her, telling her everything will be fine, that the dead man in the boat is just sleeping, and that she's leading Lotte to safety. Upon bringing Lotte onto the Ark, only to have Lotte slaughtered as an ape, sends Mrs. Noyes back to her music and her gin. Her seeming mania conveys a humanity that has been beaten out of Noah, Hannah and Japeth. She sings to her little corpse, wraps her in bandages and buries her, remembering all the while that she and Noah had conceived an autistic child. That Emma was chosen so that if Japeth should pass on the deformity, Emma could be blamed and not Noah. Not her. I cried and cried and cried as I read this. It's really unfair that Mr. Findely should capture human sadness, helplessness, self-righteousness, love, and hatred so accutely...so seemigly real. Later on their is a similar tragic moment for Noah. Yaweh is dead. He is abandoned; he is despaired. He reverts to a Stalin-like paranoid madness, eventually being able to rationalize the destruction of such a delicate creature as the Unicorn. This realism, too, is unfair. This book probes so deep-so terribly true and authentic that it changes the reader. It is among the greatest pieces of literature I have ever read.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Bwahaha

Mr. Findley has pulled me into his story almost immediately. His sense of humour is gorgeous! There is a passage that had me laughing for a solid minute. Mrs. Noyes (Noah's Wife) is sitting on her porch remarking on how beautiful things are. She "loved to sit and watch the sun" and hear the "sounds of the birds flying" and the "bee noise and cattle lowing". This seems perfectly dull and ordinary until she thinks to herself: "And the songs, way down by the road, of the itinerant work gangs-peasants by their campfires, singing of their distant homes... Oh, it was grand in the evening, she thought-truly a kind of heaven." This mockery of historical obliviousness is so tantalizing that I can't put the book down! What a true observation of ancient culture: slaves are just there, and they are there to serve you. What's especially interesting is that this is obviously intentional. Almost all historical hilarity I have encountered has been accidental. Such as "Have some Madira. M'Dear!" by Flanders and Swan, or "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" from "The Little House on the Prarie". That Mr. Findley included a nod towards this phenomenon immediately endears me to his book, and I'm excited to continue the story.