i was stuck in anton's apartment in stockholm in mid february without means to get out. now, fatefully it seems, i am sweltering in the midmorning early july heat in iván's paris studio waiting for my baggage. not the most thrilling or hilarious of exploits, but nevertheless i am falling under the spell of rushdie´s newest novel the enchantress of florence, reminding me simultaneously of 100 years of solitude and the moor´s last sigh.
not to seem ignorant or judgmental but: i hesitate to succumb to any great writer's chef d'oeuvre because i prefer to be entranced by a book on its own merits, not by the reputation that precedes it. three cases in point: jonathan safran foer, everything is illuminated; milan kundera, the unbearable lightness of being; and dave eggers, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. the first i read having heard magical, transformative things, so in a sense i had already set myself up for failure. i found the narrative convoluted and contrived at best, and so i followed up a few months later with his second novel extremely loud and incredibly close, which i treasured for its precociously naïve and hauntingly poignant narrator, oscar.
...not that you signed up for my rarely astute literary ramblings, margaret vignola, but when i have had my share of heady narrative for the morning and foggily reminisce of my erstwhile turn as children's book reviewer for Junior Editions, such is the result...
the second novel, by kundera, had received brilliant and reverent accolades from every source, it seemed. the story for me was neither revelatory nor charming. i later gave kundera multiple chances, finally loving laughable loves if only for its sentimental proximity to hanif kureishi's spellbinding collection of short stories, midnight all day.
dave eggers sits in a strange place with me. i had first heard meta, a beautiful, if slightly spacey, cellist from rice rave about it the summer i spent a few weeks in colorado springs. i was still in the thick of my southeast asian lit phase, scribbling book lists for anyone who cared, espousing my passions for kureishi, roy, kunzru, mistry, et alia. so, when i approached this tome by eggers i was disgusted to discover word vomit from an american writer with an overwrought sense of self. when diving into the purchase library's collection of african literature in english, however, my interest was piqued when i discovered that eggers had ghostwritten the gutwrenching and staggering memoir what is the what.
my conclusion? just because you win a booker, or a pulitzer, or a great Times review, does not grant you license to follow up with crap literature. for me, i know i should stop with this negative slander and just buckle down and read joyce's odyssey, chased by the boris vian and italo calvino narratives that have thus far eluded me.
to be continued from acanthes...
