CONCEPT
Part of the noir reading list I put together for my thesis with the help of Robert Polito and Jeffery Allen. As such, it was “required reading.”
Something that wouldn’t have changed my choice of thesis project, but that would have nevertheless been good to consider, is the fact that where one is writing about serial killers, institutional dysfunction, adolescent rage, and the holocaust, research will delve into the same subjects. It’s been an interesting juxtaposition. My life is great. I’m in touch with friends here and elsewhere, the future looks bright, and I even have a new Smashing Pumpkins album to look forward to.
On the other hand, I’m reading the most depressing stuff in the world.
So it went with The Collector by John Fowles. Not only did the creepy, first person noir launch Fowles career, but has purportedly turned up in the collections of all kinds of sex murders. Even though I was reading the book at Tom’s of Seinfeld and Suzanne Vega fame, when it was over I had a headache and wanted a good cry. So. Taking a look at that.
It would be wrong to say to say that the story does not have a plot, though this is a simplified statement of my impression. More to the point, the novel has the texture of having been crafted only on the levels of character and setting, and that the plot moves deistically: the pieces are put into motion and swing about according to their own laws.
The storytelling itself doesn’t suffer as a result of this. Sometimes the characters themselves are surprising. Throughout, conventions of perspective are disrupted in a way that not only challenges readers to empathize with a somewhat loathsome narrator, but also requires second guessing in both other characters as well as the narrative itself.
That being said, a byproduct of the deistic approach is a feeling of inevitability. The ending feels as predestined at page twenty as at page one fifty, and in a book that dwells in the muck of sociopathic hungers, this is more than exhausting. It feels enervating.
Yes, I learned something about writing from unconventional points-of-view. Yes, I learned something new about the progression of sociopathy. But it’s not the sort of book I’d read for pleasure. As I picture it in my mind, everything just seems to wind down.
This is, ultimately, a call I’m making based on taste and not craft.
Then again, I also start to think that a case can be made that inertia itself can be seen as a social and critical liability.
In short, if you like dwelling on criminal obsessions in a stifling environment, Fowles storytelling will surely work for you. Mxzzy?
END OF POST.