I hoped that this weeks book would follow the general trend of the books leading up to it, that it would be more modern and thus easier to grasp. There’s also another way I could look at it, that each book was getting “easier” because I was getting better at reading. I think this weeks book has broken those thoughts into a tiny tiny pieces. The levels of meta fiction with Owen and the woman throughout 2 points of her life serves to be confusing to me, obviously because the books reads like separate streams of consciousness or like someone with adhd/schizophrenia trying to tell a story or stories.
Watching the lecture and reflecting more on the book actually served to make things more confusing for me as I realized that these streams of fiction (or nonfiction idk which is right) are more connected than I thought. The fact that she wore a red jacket and thought she thought she saw him on the subway has me a pretty shocked as it was a detail I sort of glossed over. Now that I look back at it, there are a lot of connections that bridge the different stories in this book. Not only are the different streams interwoven, they also make it unclear what parts of the book are real, as in nonfictional or autobiographical and which are fiction. I definitely had a hard time determining exactly what was what.
Initially I was frustrated with the book, thinking that it wasn’t for me, something too convoluted and tried to do too much. I think now that I’m done trying to get through the novel, I can appreciate it more for a piece of art much like music or painting. This book serves to challenge what I view as storytelling and the very rules that govern what makes a story and how a stream of thought should be constructed. I think that it is fitting that this would be one of the last books as in many ways it was similar to the first of which we read, Swann’s Way. However I get quite a different reaction to this one than the previous book, I think that might be due to a different perspective that this course have given me! 3.5/5
For this weeks blog question: if you could choose a writer that sort of reflects your life or you as a person, who would you choose?