The Known World by Edward P. Jones
My rating: 3/5 cats
there is that old adage that a good book will tell you how to read it. and i have no idea to whom that should be attributed, only that my undergrad professors seemed to have been born to quote that thought endlessly: in my gothic lit class, my enlightenment class, my victorian lit class… the african and irish lit professors mostly kept their mouths shut on the subject. but the rest – hoo boy – did they love to drag that old chestnut out…
and it makes sense, to a certain degree. but this book doesn’t tell you how to read it so much as it presents itself to the reader, like a fat man in a speedo lolling around on an undersized towel saying, “look at me ladies, you like it?? this is what you get!!” it almost demands that you read it and like it.
but i was disobedient.
every sentence, every paragraph, seemed to be trying to contain multitudes. and i am a fan of “thick” writing, but the manner in which this book presented itself quickly soured on me. there were too many stories or episodes ending with, “years from now, when celia was on her deathbed, she would think back to her third year of marriage,” in a scene where she has yet to even be married, or right after two characters are introduced to each other, “this would be the last time they would meet until the hailstorm of aught-six” – and i am making up all the names and situations here, but you get an idea of the shape of my complaints. it’s constant foreshadowing and some of the foreshadowing is just teasing, as the events never come to pass in the novel itself. it’s like sitting down to tea with a god in his dotage, rambling and making connections only he can understand; seeing the past and future simultaneously.
“hey, karen, didn’t you really like that kjaerstad trilogy, where he basically did what you are complaining about here??”
yeah, what? so? shut up – isn’t it past your bedtime??
yeah, but sure, that’s true. but for some reason, it bothered me here. all i wanted was a straightforward linear narrative about a fascinating subject matter: free black men and women who owned slaves. when i read roll of thunder, hear my cry last summer, the whole transition period between slavery and freedom really excited my brainparts. i dunno. and mister jones was a real sweetheart when he came for the new yorker festival and i waited in line to get a book signed for a friend and i really wanted to like it because it seems like a nice fat sprawling sweeping story the way i like, but i just got lost in the names and the timeline and my confusion turned into apathy.
it’s like this guy you date who seems really perfect – he is smart and looks like gabriel byrne and he dotes on you and everything is fun and on paper it all looks great and you know you should really like him, but he just doesn’t make you laugh so you run off and leave him for a rockstar. you know?
i feel like i should like this one because it is award-winning, and my experience with the african-american novel is middling (although i love the african novel, the west indian novel and the afro-canadian novel – go figure) so i feel like as someone who appreciates literature in general, i should totally love this. but it wasn’t there for me.
oh, chris wilson, i am sorry. now you are going to want full custody because your baby is being raised among heathens.
years from now, when my and chris wilson’s book-baby became the mayor of littleton, he would read this review and a tear of sorrow would come to his eye at my short-sightedness.
