I went on an emotional roller coaster while reading this, but it's not what you think. Rather than being deeply moved by the book, I went through waves of interest and disinterest. At first I was bored but still curious. Then when I found out he was Jewish I got all excited! But then the vignettes got all tiny in the middle of the book and I lost interest again. I find super tiny vignettes (a la House on Mango Street) irritating because the author is relating a very brief incident, but is including it because they feel they have something profoundly brilliant to say about this otherwise mundane moment. How presumptuous.
I understand that Bernard Cooper is a writer, and that writers are nearly the only people to use uncommon/big/pretentious words. (Others include the makers of the SAT and GRE tests and users of thesauruses.) I did not feel like Mr. Cooper was just using the most appropriate word for the situation; I felt that he wanted to use some obscure word, and looked for a situation in which it could be applied. Here: sibylline, sachets, baroque, heraldic, leitmotif, hibachi, rococo, portentous, porcine, aphorisms, attenuated. I could understand the words in context, but I could not use them myself. Except for "If it's not baroque, don't fix it." That was from Disney's Beauty and the Beast. And I know what rococo is because it came up on my GRE and I was super offended that they produced a word I had literally never come across before. But both my parents knew what it was. But my mom was an art history major and my dad lived in a city where rococo things were in style. Ok I don't really know what rococo is, but I could ask my mom and that wouldn't be as embarrassing as getting a brand new word when I'm trying to do the GRE.
The point of language is that it is used to communicate. Communication is a 2-way street. When Mr. Cooper uses these high-falutin' words, it alienates all but the most sophisticated readers. This leads me to believe the point of this book is to prove what an expansive lexicon he has at his disposal, rather than to communicate/ commune with people.
I don't know why I'm on some kind of anti-intellectual bender. I just can't stand people (writers included) who take themselves too seriously! So I don't think Mr. Cooper's writing voice lends itself to credibility. In fact, I think the only people who could see themselves in his writing are people who have equally large vocabularies, regardless of similarity of experience.
I just needed to express how much I appreciated the title of your post.
ReplyDeleteSuggestion: go back to the syllabus to see what a reader response is--examining the literature can include a personal response, but the essence needs to be literary examination. There's always this ? moment when a reader responds by saying something has no value because it doesn't respond to them, or their world or contains their language. Literature is a historical document in terms of language, content and style--it is a way at looking at the world in full, rather than leaving it to historians alone. Your job as a student (ultimately a teacher) of literature is to recognize how time and place and character contributes to the writing and informs us and literature.I know there's more in sight in you than this. e
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was hard to read with all of the large words thrown into difficult scenery. I found myself looking up every other word, which was very annoying. And it definitely took away from the piece for me as well. I also noticed he liked to make up words. It was one of those books you easily get lost in if you aren't following every single word in the process. It sort of seemed like the book was written more for him than an audience at some points.
ReplyDeleteBut in the end I sort of tried to understand why he might write the way he did, and found, it was rather artistic. It sort of alienated the reader… maybe to mimic his feelings? Than again, I probably got that feeling out of nowhere.