If I open a book with low expectations, and the author precisely hits that mark, I probably won’t be angry. I will conjure a shrug or a “meh” and give it two or three lethargic stars on goodreads and say something like “it just didn’t make much of an impact.”
This was the Divergent series for me. I was never much for YA, and color-coded dystopian always seemed too absurd for me. So when I read the second book, I shrugged, but I wasn’t mad. I didn’t expect to be blow away. I turned the pages and forgot everything thereafter.
If I open a book with no expectations of any kind, truly anything could happen. I might find a gem that sticks with me forever (The Promise by Chaim Potok, or Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry). Or I might burn inwardly with fits of fury at the mere thought of a book I read ten or twenty years ago. Guys, I hated The Book Thief with the fire of a thousand suns. Hated. Loathed. It committed many crimes of soul and intent.
(It is a popular book, so it suffers nothing by my scorn)
What I’m saying is no expectations: total crapshoot.
But there is a very certain experience I have had when I start reading a book, and the author quickly shows me they are competent. They have a deft hand with characters and know how to weave depth and reality into the reactions and actions of these fictional beings.
But now this author is in deep trouble. Because now I have expectations of them. High ones.
If you show me that you can do the double back-flip, you better believe that I am going to expect you to do it.
Call it unfair. Call it whatever you like. If I KNOW you’ve got the goods, I’m going to expect you to show up.
Authors of Classics are most at risk for this, from all of us. We are handed a book that has stood the test of time, and we want to find out why. It doesn’t help that these are often forced on high school students who aren’t really desiring or willing to take the time. If we aren’t left in a stunned silence of awe, then someone might go make a video on Youtube about how ‘the classics aren’t that great’ or something like that. And then hundreds of people will comment with agreement (“They’re all dry and boring! They describe a building for 100 pages.”) and hundreds of people will comment with offense (“Dostoevsky has more talent in his pinky finger than most of these modern authors have in their whole bodies.”)
And the conversation goes nowhere.
That’s not what I’m here to do. I think Classics are wonderful. I also think they have jumped into the ring and can get knocked down same as anybody else. They just get back up, you know. That’s what makes them classics. That, despite their flaws and failings, something in them goes on standing.
Which means you can beat them to a pulp or ignore them and they will still be there. Some of them with more merit than others, obviously.
“What’s your point?” you may ask.
My point is that greatness does not exempt you from scrutiny. It, in fact, invites it all the more readily, because greatness can withstand it. So let me tell you where some of the greats angered me. And they angered me because they were great. And they knew better. The very text that angered me proved to me that they knew better.
East of Eden
I read this book on my sister-in-law’s recommendation. And it is a phenomenal book. Worthy of its place as a classic.
The characters (but one) are complex and interesting. The setting is so well-described it can be felt on the skin. This was my first Steinbeck novel and rest assured it will not be my last.
One of the central themes in the book rests on the Hebrew word in the Bible “Timshel” which is much discussed in the book. It’s to do with the translation of one particular verse in the Bible:
Does the Bible say:
“You SHALL conquer sin” (a command)
“You WILL conquer sin” (a promise)
Or “You MAY conquer sin” or “Thou Mayest conquer sin” (a choice)
The point here is that the characters who feel they are bound to evil and destruction because of their heritage have CHOICE. Not a guarantee, but a choice. One character, discovering the truth, loses their sense of self. That is a choice. Another wrestles and comes out, like Jacob, with a sense of blessing. That too is a choice.
Agree or disagree theologically, but that is the basic message of the book.
Except there is one person in the book for whom this message does not apply. And here comes my grand frustration. My “you knew better!!!”
Cathy is the villain of the book. It is made explicitly clear that she was a born psychopath. At no point in her life, not as a child, nor ever after, is there any indication that she could have been otherwise, that she could have resisted, tempered, or been redeemed from her evil tendencies. She is just evil incarnate. She is the satan of the story and we are not encouraged to look for her redemption. Nor is she encouraged to do so. This path is denied her.
She never appears to make a choice. She never even seems to have one.
With such a rich theme of resisting one’s sin nature, or one’s shameful birth, or one’s inherent flaws because “thou MAYEST” one of the characters doesn’t get to reside within that beautiful framework.
Some people really are born with psychopathic tendencies. It’s true. Are they irredeemable? Do they have no choice over their actions, even if their nature makes it ten times harder? This is an unacceptable premise to me.
East of Eden is a fantastic book. You should read it.
But, come on, Steinbeck. You KNEW better. It said so right there on the tin. Timshel!
The Brothers Karamazov
I read this book a few bites at a time over several months. I think it’s one I’m going to have to read again to fully appreciate. There were soaring heights in this book. There were moments of dragging tedium which seemed to go nowhere. There were beautiful monologues. There were grand themes. There were broken, selfish characters who showed signs of humanity, and characters who wished they were better than they were, and everybody is an absolute mess (except Alyosha, who is our moral center in the story).
Essentially this whole thing boils down to a quote from yet another famous Russian, Solzhenitsyn: “the line between good and evil cuts through every heart.”
Through a goodly portion of the book we are trying to discover who did a certain evil deed. Since all of our characters are of such mixed morals and motives, we have good reason to think some of them could have done this horrible thing. The book forces us to wrestle with their baser instincts, the reasons why people might do such things.
But in the end it is a TOTALLY UNEXPLORED character who actually committed the crime!!!!! And his motivations REMAIN UNEXPLORED.
[SPOILERS FOR A 140 YEAR OLD BOOK THAT ISN’T REALLY ABOUT PLOT ANYWAY]
Behold, if you look on my goodreads, you might see that I rated The Brothers Karamazov 3 stars. “How dare you?” you might say. But first, ratings are misleading. And second, I dare. And third, I didn’t rate it 3 stars because I think it’s a mediocre book. I rated it 3 stars because that’s my goodreads shorthand for a book that I DON’T KNOW HOW TO RATE because my feelings about it were so incredibly mixed.
I am glad I read this book and I recommend reading it. That’s the whole point of this essay. These books I’m ranting about? THEY ARE GOOD. I wouldn’t be ranting if they weren’t. I would have forgotten about them.
So here is a quote from my review on goodreads, and my chief frustration of the novel:
“Smerdyakov: this too is very unresolved, in the story-sense. We can assume his motivation for murder, but only assume. We don’t know. And we never really understand his despair, or why he kills himself. Is it to try and destroy Ivan too? Whereas everyone else’s motives and thoughts are given lengthy explanation, Smerdyakov is left in the dark. His voice is not heard. Even Alyosha has nothing to say about or to Smerdyakov except that he was the murderer. I take it to understand we’re meant to have compassion on Mitya in his almost-crime, but not on Smerdyakov in his actual crime. Why not? I mean, he was guilty, but why no exploration for him as for Mitya? Is it a class thing? He wasn’t socially “important” enough? This bothered me.”
So, dear Dostoyevsky. You already know I’m going to continue with your work. I want to understand you, even if you are a טעם נרכש, as the song says (the song also says that black coffee, cigarettes, beer, and Cate Blanchette are “acquired tastes” alongside Dostoyevsky, so do with that what you will. Also that song is wildly inappropriate.)
But you shorted yourself, man. In your long, long book, you shorted yourself. You didn’t examine your culprit the way you examined all the other accused and compromised characters. You should have. I wanted you to. I wish you had.
You should have known better.
The Once and Future King
I haven’t yelled angrily in a book’s margins in a long, long time. This book made me do it. This book is beautifully written. By turns weird, whimsical, and introspective, it is an an unusual and tonally jarring book. Sometimes it is profound, other times it is nonsense. Like the aforementioned books, it’s been around for a while, and is cherished by many.
I cannot say I LOVED it. But there were passages that took my breath away, and the characterization of Lancelot in particular is some of the best I have EVER seen of a morally failing hero. He wants so badly to do right. And he so badly and repeatedly misses the mark. It’s epic and tragic and full of turmoil. Lancelot is, hands down, the most compelling character in this book.
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHO DOESN’T GET THAT TENDER, THOUGHTFUL TOUCH?!?!?!? WANNA GUESS????
Guenivere. Good heavens.
Every now and then the author would take a stab at making her something other than a petty, selfish, foolish, amoral nothing-of-a-figure designed to be no more nor less than Lancelot’s weakness. Sometimes he tried to flesh out her failings. To put breath in her lungs and blood in her veins. And then he would promptly excuse himself and go back to making Lancelot the most sympathetic failure you ever met and Guenivere nothing more than the means to that particular end.
Mr. White. I accuse you. I have ample evidence. It is clear beyond all reasonable doubt that you had the ability to craft a morally flawed and morally failing character while still making them dear, complex, lovable, and sympathetic and even heroic.
You could have done this with Guenivere too. But you chickened out.
You said, writing about Guenivere, “It is difficult to write about a real person.” In response I scrawled “well, you didn’t!”
One could argue that her being cold, heartless, amoral, and completely indifferent to the moral struggles of the man she loved WAS her personality, but I cry foul. This was a cop-out. It was the author being uninterested in giving her the level of complexity that he gave to Lancelot. He could see how a man like Lancelot might participate in adultery and betrayal while still desiring good and honor, while still feeling shame and sorrow and hope…but he could not conceive of how a woman might do so. She, inevitably, must have a blankness in her moral center, and absence of thought, a lack of conflict.
Now I hate adultery with the fire of a thousands suns, so it’s not that I wish to find it justifiable. I just wanted White to give the same attention to Guenivere’s conflicted wrongdoing as he gave to Lancelot’s. Apparently, she was not worth it.
You had the ability, my good man. You had it in you. You just didn’t do it.
Even the worst person you know is a person.
Lewis had a few words to say about this:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
He is talking about real people. But as both a reader and an author, I want to find the people in my books real. Even the ones the author forgot to think about.
J. L. Odom 