“Faces in the Crowd” by Valeria Luiselli was definitely not an ordinary novel. Its complex style of writing made it very hard to find meaning through the novel, which made me kind of sad because this is the last reading and I was expecting a lot from it. Luiselli deftly weaves a fragmented and profound narrative, exploring themes of identity and time. There is no doubt that we all encountered a dizzy array of stories within stories, where past and present and facts and fiction blurred as we navigated through the pages of this novel.
Although the novel has multiple narratives, it primarily focuses on a woman who is writing a novel whilst researching a Mexican poet named Gilberto Owen. She soon starts unhealthily obsessing over the life of the poet. The novel soon fluidly shifts with the introduction of Owen, where his narrative runs parallel to the woman’s own, creating a dual perspective that progressively switches between paragraphs, with stars (⭐) separating them. This chaotic style of narration made it difficult for me to follow the plot, and I had to flip back and forth between the reading to understand the novel’s perspectives.
I saw the woman’s obsession with Gilberto Owen as a coping mechanism that allowed her to reconcile the disparate parts of her identity. Living in the present, which feels increasingly disconnected from her vibrant past as a young woman in New York to the mature, grounded woman with familial responsibilities in Mexico constrained by the roles of a stereotypical woman in a patriarchal society, I feel she turns to Owen as a means of escape and connection. I feel Owen’s story became a vessel for her own unvoiced desires and frustrations, for she finds comfort in the parallels between both their struggles in recognition of their writing. This obsession serves as a way to cope with the invisibility she feels in her own life. It allows her to assert her identity in the face of societal expectations, using her connection with Owen to navigate the complexities of her own existence, and she is able (or rather feels that she is able) to establish her place in the world.
To conclude, the book embraces its own intricacy, turning uncertainty into an asset for exploration rather than a barrier. It invites us readers to accept the disorientation, make sense of the fragmented narrative, and view the world through the spectral reflections of its characters. Under Luiselli’s direction, the book develops into an in-depth reflection on the nature of humanity, a kaleidoscope of lives that converge and diverge in the tangled spaces of memory and imagination.
Question: What do you think obsessing over the poet symbolized?