Like with people, it is possible that one’s relationship with a book or an author is a slow burning affair that suddenly ignites.
I own a couple of Toni Morrison’s books, I dip into them occasionally only to set it aside. It’s not that I don’t like the books, indeed Morrison can be said to be my kind of author, which is why these books were gifted to me. Somehow I never get around to finishing them. So the other day when I picked up her new book, A Mercy, I expected it to meet a similar fate of being unread and yet being a comforting presence on my bookshelf. Instead I read it in a week. Morrison’s book of the United States at the dawn of the making of a new nation is a somewhat sparse work with multiple voices, though the principle voice is of its black narrator. There are a number of European characters, many leaving behind a continent riven by religious wars. There is the Native American. Morrison places her enquiry of the nation that is to come, complete with the sins of displacement and slavery, at a homestead where these characters meet. The enquiry feels incomplete however, for e.g. the central premise of what exactly freedom is remains strangely somewhat unexplored. The novel starts off promisingly enough and then peters off; perhaps this needed to be a longer novel. But you are very much aware that you are in the presence of a great novelist, a novelist whose prose is as rich and lyrical as her ideas. Indeed I had forgotten the pleasures of somewhat overwrought language and sentiment, every book after all need not follow the strictures of Strunk and White. Yes, there is a danger of it falling into cliché, as happens with Morrison’s sole Native American character, Lina, whose empathy with nature is a little over stressed. As is the colourless yet fierce piety of some of the Europeans. Nevertheless you are willing to forgive Morrison all this, because they are minor things in a book that is so imaginative and rich with treasure.
Jumping from A Mercy to the tres facile but staying with the African-American theme, I saw a rom-com on the perils of dating for modern Black American women-with a twist. Normally it is a genre I avoid but a Jezebel article piqued my curiosity. Something New is to a large extent very much in safe rom-com territory with an uptight, career minded heroine (Sanaa Lathan who has a quiet sort of charm) and a looser, earth boy hero (Simon Baker accessorised with a dog, orange truck, Rachid Taha tape and a nice line in mild snark) but happens to be a interracial romance. Everyone looks perfect, everyone moves through idyllic surroundings, every character and situation is slightly contrived. To boot, it has one of those unreal endings contrived to get the leads together. So much to my surprise, stripped to its basics, there was something curiously affecting about it. For one, it turns the spotlight on prejudices amongst an affluent, educated black community though it is somewhat of a gentle enquiry and a bit undone by not providing any background for its white hero. This itself sets it apart. Secondly, it doesn’t patronise it’s heroine. So many romantic movies these days have harridan, control freak, career women desperate for marriage and devoid of charm as protagonists that you wonder in which misogynistic hell these movies are dreamt up. Something New’s heroine is uptight, ambitious and prejudiced but the script and the actress playing her allow us to see her shyness, insecurity and basic decency. Yes, she wants to find the right man and get married but the movie doesn’t demean this desire. Further the movie places her in an unfashionable profession, accountancy. At her job she is honest, she is serious. This is one heroine who does loosen up but also makes Partner. I can’t remember any movie, let alone a rom-com, that last did that.
The film happens to be written and directed by women. Beneath the big name directors there seems to be a small swell of women film-makers making different kinds of films, which are not necessarily art-house. Which is kind of nice.
I own a couple of Toni Morrison’s books, I dip into them occasionally only to set it aside. It’s not that I don’t like the books, indeed Morrison can be said to be my kind of author, which is why these books were gifted to me. Somehow I never get around to finishing them. So the other day when I picked up her new book, A Mercy, I expected it to meet a similar fate of being unread and yet being a comforting presence on my bookshelf. Instead I read it in a week. Morrison’s book of the United States at the dawn of the making of a new nation is a somewhat sparse work with multiple voices, though the principle voice is of its black narrator. There are a number of European characters, many leaving behind a continent riven by religious wars. There is the Native American. Morrison places her enquiry of the nation that is to come, complete with the sins of displacement and slavery, at a homestead where these characters meet. The enquiry feels incomplete however, for e.g. the central premise of what exactly freedom is remains strangely somewhat unexplored. The novel starts off promisingly enough and then peters off; perhaps this needed to be a longer novel. But you are very much aware that you are in the presence of a great novelist, a novelist whose prose is as rich and lyrical as her ideas. Indeed I had forgotten the pleasures of somewhat overwrought language and sentiment, every book after all need not follow the strictures of Strunk and White. Yes, there is a danger of it falling into cliché, as happens with Morrison’s sole Native American character, Lina, whose empathy with nature is a little over stressed. As is the colourless yet fierce piety of some of the Europeans. Nevertheless you are willing to forgive Morrison all this, because they are minor things in a book that is so imaginative and rich with treasure.
Jumping from A Mercy to the tres facile but staying with the African-American theme, I saw a rom-com on the perils of dating for modern Black American women-with a twist. Normally it is a genre I avoid but a Jezebel article piqued my curiosity. Something New is to a large extent very much in safe rom-com territory with an uptight, career minded heroine (Sanaa Lathan who has a quiet sort of charm) and a looser, earth boy hero (Simon Baker accessorised with a dog, orange truck, Rachid Taha tape and a nice line in mild snark) but happens to be a interracial romance. Everyone looks perfect, everyone moves through idyllic surroundings, every character and situation is slightly contrived. To boot, it has one of those unreal endings contrived to get the leads together. So much to my surprise, stripped to its basics, there was something curiously affecting about it. For one, it turns the spotlight on prejudices amongst an affluent, educated black community though it is somewhat of a gentle enquiry and a bit undone by not providing any background for its white hero. This itself sets it apart. Secondly, it doesn’t patronise it’s heroine. So many romantic movies these days have harridan, control freak, career women desperate for marriage and devoid of charm as protagonists that you wonder in which misogynistic hell these movies are dreamt up. Something New’s heroine is uptight, ambitious and prejudiced but the script and the actress playing her allow us to see her shyness, insecurity and basic decency. Yes, she wants to find the right man and get married but the movie doesn’t demean this desire. Further the movie places her in an unfashionable profession, accountancy. At her job she is honest, she is serious. This is one heroine who does loosen up but also makes Partner. I can’t remember any movie, let alone a rom-com, that last did that.The film happens to be written and directed by women. Beneath the big name directors there seems to be a small swell of women film-makers making different kinds of films, which are not necessarily art-house. Which is kind of nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment