recent reading
Sep. 6th, 2011 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitIain Pears, The Dream of Scipio
One thing I like in fiction is moral complexity; well, this book is so morally complex it hurts. The story centers around three men living in Provence during three eras when it seemed their civilizations might end: Manlius Hippomanes during the fall of the western Roman Empire, Olivier de Noyen during the Avignon papacy and the Black Death, and Julien Barneuve during the Vichy government and the German occupation. Essentially, each of them has to decide what he's willing to do, how far he's willing to compromise with evil in order to preserve a culture from barbarism. (There are three women in the book, each--of course--loved by one of the men. Two of them are interesting and almost well-developed, but none really becomes a character in her own right. They remain motives for the men.)
After a slow start I grew to like this book a lot, but I was a frustrated by the ending(s), as Pears tries to claim that none of the moral complexity was complex after all, and the fact that the characters ever saw their decisions as difficult was a sign of moral failure. I . . . am not convinced, especially in the case of Manlius Hippomanes, who as far as I can tell may have done more good than harm despite being the least likable of the three. Pears weights the scales a bit on the political level (some version of Godwin's Law may apply), and then argues that the only worthy values are personal ones, and it's a bit of a muddle. (I'm reminded of something one of my French teachers said about existentialist writing: Sartre was a good philosopher but a bad novelist, while Camus was a good novelist but a bad philosopher. Pears is in the latter camp too.)
Stephen McCauley, Alternatives to Sex
This is a breezy contemporary novel that's a world away from The Dream of Scipio. It tells the story of William Collins, a gay real estate agent in Boston who's trying to get his life and career on track as he struggles with a midlife crisis and with his long-standing tendency to be a passive observer of his own life. He's in love with his best friend Edward but can't bring himself to say so; he keeps trying to give up casual hookups but is terrified to lose the distraction and have to face himself; and he becomes obsessed with a straight couple he's trying to find an apartment for and keeps trying to fix their lives instead of his own.
This is so not the kind of thing I ordinarily read. But I found it for 50 cents in a thrift shop and, since it has a gay protagonist, couldn't resist. It was engaging, intermittently witty, and a fun romp whenever I could turn off the part of my brain that kept (a) hating everyone for having so much money and spending it so blithely, without any awareness of their own privilege, and (b) thinking that they were all going to be royally fucked come the economic collapse in 2007 (the novel was set in 2002 and written in 2006). Alas, the book suffers a bit from Literary Ambitions and therefore stopped ten pages before the emotionally satisfying ending it should've had, but I enjoyed it anyway. It's a page-turner: I read the whole thing in one three-hour-long gulp.
One thing I like in fiction is moral complexity; well, this book is so morally complex it hurts. The story centers around three men living in Provence during three eras when it seemed their civilizations might end: Manlius Hippomanes during the fall of the western Roman Empire, Olivier de Noyen during the Avignon papacy and the Black Death, and Julien Barneuve during the Vichy government and the German occupation. Essentially, each of them has to decide what he's willing to do, how far he's willing to compromise with evil in order to preserve a culture from barbarism. (There are three women in the book, each--of course--loved by one of the men. Two of them are interesting and almost well-developed, but none really becomes a character in her own right. They remain motives for the men.)
After a slow start I grew to like this book a lot, but I was a frustrated by the ending(s), as Pears tries to claim that none of the moral complexity was complex after all, and the fact that the characters ever saw their decisions as difficult was a sign of moral failure. I . . . am not convinced, especially in the case of Manlius Hippomanes, who as far as I can tell may have done more good than harm despite being the least likable of the three. Pears weights the scales a bit on the political level (some version of Godwin's Law may apply), and then argues that the only worthy values are personal ones, and it's a bit of a muddle. (I'm reminded of something one of my French teachers said about existentialist writing: Sartre was a good philosopher but a bad novelist, while Camus was a good novelist but a bad philosopher. Pears is in the latter camp too.)
Stephen McCauley, Alternatives to Sex
This is a breezy contemporary novel that's a world away from The Dream of Scipio. It tells the story of William Collins, a gay real estate agent in Boston who's trying to get his life and career on track as he struggles with a midlife crisis and with his long-standing tendency to be a passive observer of his own life. He's in love with his best friend Edward but can't bring himself to say so; he keeps trying to give up casual hookups but is terrified to lose the distraction and have to face himself; and he becomes obsessed with a straight couple he's trying to find an apartment for and keeps trying to fix their lives instead of his own.
This is so not the kind of thing I ordinarily read. But I found it for 50 cents in a thrift shop and, since it has a gay protagonist, couldn't resist. It was engaging, intermittently witty, and a fun romp whenever I could turn off the part of my brain that kept (a) hating everyone for having so much money and spending it so blithely, without any awareness of their own privilege, and (b) thinking that they were all going to be royally fucked come the economic collapse in 2007 (the novel was set in 2002 and written in 2006). Alas, the book suffers a bit from Literary Ambitions and therefore stopped ten pages before the emotionally satisfying ending it should've had, but I enjoyed it anyway. It's a page-turner: I read the whole thing in one three-hour-long gulp.
