Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

While book lovers almost universally malign their favourite books being turned into movies, reading books simply because one has seen the movie is also often frowned upon. After the books are tarted up with movie covers and showered in media coverage, their new mass appeal gives them a sort of nouveau-riche celebrity. But really, this knee-jerk snobbery is founded on an overly biased and likely faulty assumption that film is somehow inherently inferior to literature, and that the two mediums can’t enrich one another. Or perhaps I’m just saying that because I can think of two books I’ve read recently that jumped up in the interminable “to be read” queue by virtue of their film adaptations.

Of course having seen the movie already inevitably affects our experience of the book. Most importantly, we already know the plot, so the book itself is forced to rely on its other strengths. And as I picked up Charles Frazier’s celebrated novel Cold Mountain, I hoped that my reading experience would be undiminished by my familiarity with (and appreciation of) the movie (2003, Directed by Anthony Minghella, who also wrote the adapted screenplay).

But before we get into it, a brief synopsis for those who haven’t seen the film. Set in the American South during the civil war, Cold Mountain follows two lovers separated just as their relationship was beginning to blossom: Inman, who was injured at Petersburg and ends up deserting the army to start the long walk home to his lover whom he is unsure will still want him, and Ada, a spoiled only child, who is left to attend to a failing farm on her own, but who lacks basic survival skills. Enter Ruby, a no-nonsense woman who essentially raised herself, and promises to whip Ada, and her farm into shape .

One of the ways in which movies  can perhaps never touch books is the reader’s engagement with a character. Regardless of stellar acting, we can never really match the time we spend reading a character in both duration (hours more than during a film), and in our level of engagement. We are often privy to a character’s every thought, and furthermore, all characters are dependant on our own engagement to bring them into being. And despite the fact that I already had a sense of the characters (and the actors playing them unavoidably playing a return engagement in my mind), Frazier’s characters are fully realized and engaging people that I was happy to spend more time with. Ruby especially shines –  practical, no-nonsense, and  tough as nails,

Zellweger (as Ruby) won an Oscar for her exceptional performance

but with brief moments of softness. She is admirable survivor, and a feminist ahead of her time.  Her friendship with Ada, her polar opposite, is particularly touching, and strikes me as completely genuine.

I also was interested in the relationship between Ada and Inman, the epic romance of the film, which I’ll confess, leads to the best sex scene I think I’ve ever seen in a movie (and this, sadly, was the only way the novel just couldn’t compete . . .  even with Jude Law resuming his role in my head, I was dismayed to discover my favourite line of the movie (perfectly delivered by Jude Law) was not part of the book). But that aside, Inman and Ada’s relationship is more subtle in the novel, both are more cautious, each hardened – Ada willingly, and Inman unwillingly. Our lovers circle each other like wary boxers, and Frazier manages to paint an epic love story without being saccharine or melodramatic.

Another way in which the book exceeds the film is in the rich sensory and historical detail that is bursting out of each page.  I’ll confess I love reading about pioneer life – I think it started with an obsession with the Little House on the Prarie books as a young girl. And here my interest was richly rewarded  — what you can eat, the properties of different kinds of guns, how to butcher a pig or roast a squirrel (I couldn’t help smiling as Ada looks at her roasted squirrel, with head still attached and Ruby’s father says “That head’ll twist right off if it’s bothering you.” — Now that’s authentic).

My only complaint with the book was Frazier’s attempt to enhance the scope of his novel by giving random characters a chance to tell their story. Not only were these digressions largely unnecessary, but they more importantly, they were handled clumsily, relying heavily on chance encounters and convenient section breaks. But then again, it’s worth remembering this is Frazier’s first novel and such stylistic quibbles are of little import compared to this evocative portrait of a brutal period of American history. It manages to be grand in scope, but subtle in its message, avoiding diatribes on slavery, achieving its argument through the essential humanity and compassion of its characters, while  providing a moving testament to the perseverance of the human spirit.

Read the book. Watch the movie. Whatever order you do it in is up to you…

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The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

It is one of the greatest acts of literary audacity that I can think of not only to write as Virginia Woolf, but to write Virginia Woolf herself. One of the essential modernist writers who reconceived the novel, her prose is instantly identifiable with its rivers of breathless clauses. Of course she is also infamous for her struggles with what appears to have been bipolar disorder, and finally ended her life midway through the second world war. So it is safe to say writing as Virginia Woolf and writing Virginia Woolf herself requires an enormous amount of talent, research and audacity. And in my humble opinion, Michael Cunningham pulls it off beautifully.

Before I sat down with The Hours, I spent the time rereading Mrs. Dalloway, which was my first Woolf in my second year of university, and I don’t think I really grasped it. On a second reading I appreciated it much more (though still less than The Waves or To the Lighthouse). In any case, for those who wish to read The Hours, your appreciation of it will increase significantly with Mrs. Dalloway fresh in your mind.

There are three stories in The Hours. The first is Mrs. Dalloway almost three quarters of a century later, where Clarissa Vaughn is having a party to celebrate her’s friend Richard’s prestigious poetry award. Don’t be mislead by the name, for this Richard is much more Septimus than Clarissa’s husband, yet he also replaces Peter Walsh in Clarissa’s early love triangle. This is a Septimus not broken by war, but by the ravages of AIDS, and like Septimus he has gathered (in the words of Eliot) “fragments I have shored against my ruins.” And while this narrative follows Woolf’s pattern closely while modernizing it (the Queen in the car is replaced by a modern movie star, Miss Kilman goes from religious fantatic to ardent lesbian feminist), departures such as the one with Richard/Septimus are what really demonstrate Cunningham’s understanding of the original text.

The second narrative is that of Virginia herself, starting with her suicide, which with a lesser writer I would suspect was a ploy for shock value, but here it not only anchors the novel in Woolf, but casts the spectre of death over the remaining stories as each of the women fight routine, but precarious battles. The narrative then goes back to the writing of Mrs. Dalloway and Woolf fighting her demonic headaches that threaten to undo her. We witness a visit by her also-celebrated sister, Vanessa Bell, and her children. Having read portions of Woolf’s extensive journals, it was a pleasure to be in Woolf’s head again, and to see it done so well. Cunningham integrates many of the main image patterns from her journals (of water, of a shark fin emerging, etc) and preserves the rhythms of her writing.

The third story provides a temporal (and eventually a narrative) link between the two previously mentioned stories. Mrs. Brown is a housewife in a suburb of LA in the 1950s. Her story, for me, was the most painful to read, and I approached each new section with dread as she struggles with each moment of being the perfect wife and mother, and wanting nothing more to run away. She is riddled with guilt at the dissonance between who she is and who she should be: “She herself is trapped here forever, posing as a wife. She must get through this night, and then tomorrow, and then another night here, in these rooms, with nowhere else to go. She must please; she must continue.”

In each of these narratives we see three women trying desperately to make, as Mrs. Dalloway says in the original, “an offering.” A book, a party, a cake. Some physical object to assert their right to existence, their contributions to the world. Like Septimus, they struggle with “proportion,” and these undertakings carry much more weight than perhaps the should. They live for the moments when their aspirations and reality meet: “She is herself and she is the perfect picture of herself; there is no difference.” Yet these times of perfect convergence happen so rarely, and they must live through the intervening hours.

And The Hours is a brilliant title, evoking not only the insistence of Big Ben’s chimes in Mrs. Dalloway, but also the endless march of time, of hour after hour of tiny battles which need to be continually fought – the battle to be a good wife and mother, to fight the darkness of mental illness, to support those we love on the brink of despair. As Mrs. Brown says it well: “Think of how wonderful it might be to no longer worry,  or struggle, or fail.” It is also fighting the claustrophobia of modern life that Woolf evokes so well at Clarissa’s party and on the crowded streets, finding pauses without forsaking crucial ties to other people.

Cunningham not only manages to evoke Woolf’s themes and images, but also distills her language wonderfully, making it less overwhelming but maintaining its original rhythms. Take this passage of the narrative of Mrs. Woolf, which, fittingly, Woolf herself could have written [She remembers a kiss with her sister, Vanessa]:

“It will serve as this afternoon’s manifestation of the central mystery itself, the elusive brightness that shines from the edges of certain dreams; the brightness which, when we awaken, is already fading from our minds, and which we rise in the hope of finding, perhaps today, this new day, in which anything might happen, anything at all.”

It gives me shivers, as much of this novel did. Its writing is luminous, shining through the dark menace that it also creates. It is complex, intelligent, and unbelievably sensitive. This is essential reading for any Woolf fan, but also recommended to whom the hours echo too loudly.

…..

And because the movie is also incredible, and because, having seen the it first, I was certainly picturing these actresses as I read, here’s the trailer [though I hate this Hollywood action movie treatment of it, I couldn't find a better one in English]:

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The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink

There are many books out there that claim to be about morality (two I’ve read recently – Mercy Among the Children and Fifth Business), but some seem to encourage a more passive, guided exploration of morality, while others leave the readers adrift in the situations, daring them to reach their own conclusions. Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader belongs to the second category.The back of the book states that is is “hailed for its coiled eroticism and the claims it makes upon the reader” and so I’m going to try and explore these two areas (and how they often intersect).

The first major moral question of the novel concerns how we judge what is moral or immoral, as a sexual relationship develops between the 15-year-old protagonist, Michael Berg, and Hanna, a local woman who is over twice his age. The relationship seems generally tender, with the lovers sharing their love through sex, and literature – for Michael reads aloud to her frequently. We only ever get Michael’s perspective, and he seems to look upon the relationship as a positive thing. For him, it is not just sexual; he is completely in love with Hanna. Take this passage of peaceful fulfillment:

“As the days grew longer, I read longer, so that I could be in bed with her in the twilight. When she had fallen asleep lying on me, and the saw in the yard was quiet, and a blackbird was singing as the colors of things in the kitchen dimmed until nothing remained of them but lighter and darker shades of gray, I was completely happy.”

Furthermore, his seemingly mature affair benefits his life as a young man in many other ways:

“I am amazed at how much confidence Hanna gave me. My success at school got my teachers’ attention and assured me of their respect. The girls I met noticed and liked it that I wasn’t afraid of them. I felt at ease in my own body.”

Between the sensual descriptions and Michael’s comfort and confidence, it becomes more difficult to condemn what is statutory rape. Of course the rationale behind statutory rape laws is that a minor is unable to make a mature decision about sexual intercourse, especially in a situation where  someone older is in a position of power. And there is certainly a marked power imbalance between Hanna and Michael. Even their sex itself is initially dominated by Hanna: “When we made love, too, she took possession of me as a matter of course.” But in the face of such positive assertions by the person who was the victim (even as he is looking back as an adult) are we able to condemn the situation? Perhaps not so easily given Michael’s intimate understanding of the situation, although, as I’ll discuss shortly, does this involvement support the validity of his views or compromise them?

If you’ll forgive me a slight digression on this subject, I want to mention a similar case. For those unfamiliar with Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, they are a series of monologues based on the experiences of hundreds of women that she interviewed, but written by Ensler herself. My opinion of the work itself is generally favourable: I am willing to overlook its rampant essentialism because it raises awareness and generates discussion about so many “unmentionables.” But if I had one specific difficulty with the VagMons, it is one monologue called “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could,” about a young girl who is sexually assaulted by one of her father’s friends at a party, and who despises and fears her vagina and her sexuality until at age 16 (in earlier drafts it was 13)  an older woman gives her alcohol and seduces her, teaching her about sexual pleasure.  In the context of the monologue, it’s a positive thing, a healing moment, despite the illegality and the power structure involved. I’ve heard this monologue many times (I performed in the production one year in fact), and it bothered me then and it still bothers me. Why is it okay? Is it because it’s two women? (although this is considered far worse by some people). I’m particularly interested by the gender politics. How would it change if it were two men, or an older man and a younger woman, or, as in The Reader, an older woman and a younger man? Does having a woman in the position of power make the situation seem less threatening? I’m not sure, but my gut instinct says it does. Or is the situation acceptable because,  as in The Reader, it is a positive experience? The girl in the monologue says, “I realized later she was my surprising, unexpected and politically-incorrect salvation.” I couldn’t get it out of my head in the first few chapters of The Reader, because Ensler is asking the same question as Schlink – is morality allowed a certain amount of relativity, and further, who decides?

Of course on the larger scale, it is difficult to side with our lovers. For if we decide that their mutual consent and mutual approbation make it an acceptable action, how to judge the massive consent of the Holocaust? Granted, I know this is a big leap, for Hanna and Michael’s relationship involves only themselves, rather than millions of victims. But there is a reason for the comparison, for (semi-spoiler alert, though the trailer would do as much), Hanna is brought to trial for her involvement as a guard at Nazi prison camps – specifically  for one incident in which she and several other guards deliberately left female prisoners to burn to death in a church. Hanna seems willing to shoulder most of the blame – and is convicted to life imprisonment. She accepts the verdict calmly, later telling Michael that society cannot pass judgment on her for her actions – only the dead, those who were there, can judge her.  Of course this kind of extreme moral relativism is dangerous – capable of subverting the entire foundation of the law if obeyed. Once again, is direct involvement in something a case for fully understanding something and thus being able to act responsibly, or is that very involvement what sacrifices perspective and makes us unable to judge the situation? Of course ideally the law sticks to the basic rules, allowing some room to maneuver within them. While guilty or not guilty are firm decisions, sentencing can be influenced by situational factors based on the court’s ability to understand the accused’s motivations. But it, as in Hanna’s case, we are unable to figure out the perpetrator, the harshest penalty applies.

Add to these already hefty complications the fact that Michael loved/loves her, and feels that he cannot participate in the societal recriminations against the Nazis because he feels his love of this criminal makes him complicit in the crime. Unlike the rest of his generation, he cannot safely distance himself from his parent’s generation, from their complicity in Nazi atrocities. He is caught between love and revulsion, and, in perhaps the most important moment of the book admits: “I wanted simultaneously to understand Hanna’s crime and to condemn it… But it was impossible to do both.”

Consequently, love and morality, both intended to promote goodness, may also exist at opposite ends of the spectrum. Is it possible to love someone outside of morality? Or can love absolve someone on a personal level? In any case, love for the criminal can not undo the crime.

This inner conflict persists, and Michael stays in contact with Hanna by sending her recorded tapes of him reading while she is in prison. In doing so, he confines their relationship to what it had been in its seemingly innocent youth. For that part of their relationship seems to exist in a place before the intrusion of morality (aside from the statutory rape of course), before the intervention of the outside world (though in reality after the crime was perpetrated).Yet even this relationship is hopelessly crippled, unable to progress without coming to terms with Hanna’s crimes. Even as Hannah writes him letters, he refuses to write back, refuses to engage in any real dialogue that could sacrifice the static romanticism Michael must maintain to free Hanna, and himself, from their guilty burden.

I’ll stop there, for this post is already far too long. Moral debates aside, the book is short, but not a quick read, with the kind of careful, clear prose that creates spaces around itself and echoes within the reader. And of course brilliantly, the reader is not simply Michael, but also you, the person who like Michael, is a witness outside of events, but is compelled to act as judge. And it is an uncomfortable role, for though we understand Michael well, Hanna remains a disconcerting enigma, and though we should condemn her based on her actions, we can’t help but want to understand her as well. But perhaps this is part of humanity that defies understanding, for as Schlink says in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald:

“It’s a simplistic idea that only monsters can commit monstrous crimes. One of the tensions we have to live with is that people who were otherwise loving, good neighbours and good parents can commit awful crimes.”

I’m glad to see Winslet taking the role of Hanna in the film adaptation of The Reader, for it would take an accomplished actress to fully realize the role (for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe, and has been nominated for the Best Actress Oscar). And while I haven’t seen the film (but probably will out of curiosity), I’ll leave you with the trailer, which seems a fairly decent introduction to the novel as well.

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