Hi all,
Now that the term is wrapping up and quite a handful of novels are finished, I suppose it’s time to open the floor and, in retrospect, discuss which novels were your favourites and why.
I’ll start first. My first pick would be Money: A Suicide Note. For a novel within an academic curriculum, its content and subject matter were surprisingly quite refreshing. I’m not advocating indulging in vices altogether, but it’s just not every semester that everyone get a chance to explore content and topics deemed risque in today’s society. The novel seems akin to all those ‘sex drugs and rock n roll’ tales portrayed by celebrities and rock stars. The progression towards the novel’s ending also suggests a fresh outlook in life for the reader; sometimes we can find happiness in even a simple and humble life. And I have to admit; there were quite a handful of times I find myself chuckling whilst reading the novel.
I personally liked Mill on the Floss as well. Right on the first few pages and chapters of the book, the novel gives the reader a chance to feel sense of heartwarming childhood nostalgia. The lengthy passage of elapsed time (within the novel) to see how characters develop is always an enjoyable experience. Abrupt deaths are always a shock in fictionary tales; but almost often, every great and popular story always has an element of abrupt death (i.e. Game of Thrones…).
Would love to see everyone’s thoughts
Great question! I think Money was definitely a neat add to the reading list, and I think the juxtaposition of a “fringe” or “cult” novel so to speak with its very mainstream focus and thematic content posed a lot of questions concerning the role of literature in discussions of economy – how some texts are marginalised and others are held as authoritative versions of “truth” of economy so to speak.
I actually really enjoyed Capital. I think that was due in large part to the fact that it drew upon a lot of the themes that we had been discussing throughout the course, but I enjoyed the tension that the novel created formally by constructing multiple and separate storylines that intersected and interacted, pretending to be distinct and yet remaining beholden to the same narrative voice. I think the theme of cultural/economic space as it is reified in homes, cities, etc. was confirmed as an ongoing process of negotiation that manifested itself in the renovations of the novel, from re-doing the bathroom to re-renovating DIY home-improvements in the case of Zbigniew and Albert. Ultimately, I think what really made Capital the ideal book for me to consolidate upon and really meditate on the themes of the course was the explicit connection to economy in the economic journal articles by the author that accompanied our reading that allowed me to consider the role of time in negotiating the relationship between literature and economy in a place that wasn’t temporally removed from my own.
I totally agree with Rebecca! Capital was one of my favourite books from the reading list as well. It was probably due to the nostalgia the book invoked in me, for an England (or London…) I actually “know”. The straight-forward, simple, and modern narration also made it a smoother read, and because there were so many character perspectives, it was always kept exciting. I loved hearing the different perspectives on issues which really applied to every one of the characters – something I didn’t find as much in the other texts where we can be largely stuck in one characters’ POV (like Roxana).
That being said, I also really enjoyed Howards End. Something about the way it utilizes space was interesting to me. It had a more dreamy quality to it that I enjoyed; it was definitely one of the books I felt really encompassed “transition” in money, emotionally and physically.
Thanks for opening up this topic! I totally agree that the “risky” content in Amis’ novel was refreshing, particularly after some dense 18th and 19th century literature.The content, at times shocking, made for a fun and challenging read. My favourite novel overall though, was George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss. I thought it had a beautiful and expressive writing style, which I found quite different from both Roxana and Emma. The imagery expressed within the first few pages describing Dorlcote Mll foreshadows the mill’s importance and makes for good “book-ends” for the story, as the book closes with the return of the image of the mill in the flood. The image also made for a good opening for Eliot’s story, as it deals deeply with emotions and sentimentality, as well as shifting economic/social structure. In this class I found when we are learning about economic material in tandem with the texts we’ve been studying, it is easy let our attention be drawn away from authors’ writing styles to focus instead on the context of the economic market in which the novels are set. I had never thought about looking at the writing-style or literary tools the authors of these texts use to analyze what the texts have to say about the economy, and instead focused on the direct references to finance within the text to apply to my understanding of the course’s economic content. Eliot’s novel is the first text we looked at in class where I was fully able to apply my “economics brain” to the text and make connections, and spot potential metaphors relating to the economy before reading other critic’s work on the subject.
I will add that at times I was extremely annoyed by Maggie throughout her childhood; I found her too animated, whiny, and dramatic. Her relationship with Tom reminds me too much of my childhood relationship with my older brother; maybe Eliot encapsulates the despair of being a kid with limited agency in a world that exists independently of their input, too accurately for comfort? Such an intense depiction of the struggles in childhood follows suit with a writing-style that often appeals to imagery to represent nostalgia and sentimentality.