is long really slow?

I am now at page 333 of Albert Cohen’s 1110-page love story Belle du seigneur. Before starting it, I had wondered how someone could write 1110 pages on love. My friend Carole, who is French and has read the novel a few years ago, jokingly replied that the French can talk endlessly about love. Though that might be true, Cohen’s tactics are a bit different. Almost through the third of the story, all the reader knows is that the “seigneur,” a top official at a fictitious United Nations agency in Geneva, is awe-struck by a beautiful young woman, who is a fallen aristocrat and married to one of his employees. The plot is still in its beginning, while the narrative treads along oh-so slowly. Every detail of some specific situations is given. The dialogues and discussions are given in full. Cohen expands so thoroughly upon the behaviour and speech of his characters that the reader cannot but be submerged in his world, or more precisely: his criticism of his world. When Solal, our hero, presides over an assembly of the directors of the United Nations with the simple order of the day to address the General Secretary’s enquiry regarding “actions in favor of the goals and ideals of the United Nations,” Cohen aptly exposes the directors’ useless rhetoric (so as not to lose face) to such a useless question (to which the General Secretary did not even fathom an answer). Solal’s opinion of his daily farce is discreet throughout. The author expresses the idiocy of the situation by transcribing the directors’ empty statements, and then sums up his opinion by writing that the stenographer was voraciously transcribing the discussion, all muddled up by their talk because she was intelligent. Quite a reproof. And quite funny. But the author’s humour, criticism and irony would be lost if his text were to be truncated. It is his style that must be savoured in its length or never explored, discouraged or intimidated by the width of the book.

Which brings me to think about length. I read Vanity Fair last Christmas. When starting it I braced myself. “This book is long. I won’t have finished it in two weeks. Before beginning, I must promise to give it time, the time it’ll take.” As ridiculous as it might sound, it demanded a commitment. It is an absolutely delightful book, but, being a book of which the chapters were published once a month for a magazine over a period of several years, it does not conform in the slightest to our present perception of time.

Then I think of Memoirs of a Geisha, which I haven’t read, having bought Inoue Yuki’s version instead, but that many girl-acquaintances of mine have. I remember that the main criticism was its descriptions. “I’m really not interested in reading about some flower for about two pages.” Knowing what I know about Japanese culture, a two-page description of a flower is the least to be expected. They are a people who avidly pursue throughout the nation the bloom of their cherry trees, incorporating this race into their nightly newscasts. A society that seems dichotomist as far as time is concerned, they are able to embrace the slow and more than willing to reflect upon the beauty of nature.

My background in communication studies tells me that our reading patterns have greatly changed with the advent of new media: TV, films, video games. Ben recently read Mcluhan, a text I should revisit for what he says about the types of media. I remember him stating that reading is a visual medium whereas television is an auditory one. But about narrative? TV stories don’t give details about the surroundings. The person watching sees the environment so doesn’t need it to be described to her. Meanwhile, the show must last a maximum of 45 minutes. To keep the viewers interested for so many minutes, and to have them zap back to that station when the commercials are over, the story must be suspenseful. It is therefore completely plot oriented. Plus, a teaser of each segment is introduced in the preceding segment, which I’ll call the hook. (A plot and a tease, it almost sounds Québécois…)

To say that readers don’t want any details is false. No details equals a story with wholes in it, one that must be recreated in the reader’s mind in order to make sense — this is an idea I elaborate in my MA thesis, hence an example of such books would be Anne Stone’s Hush and Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood — which demands a lot of work on the reader’s part, much commitment, and often simply much too much. The (popular) reader wants the story told to her, yet in the simplest of ways. The work of the popular author is to gage the amount of detail given to make the story understood easily while advancing the plot, and possibly/ideally infusing it with some sort of personal style. In a way, the (popular) reader must know where she’s going while being teased the whole way through. It is the gauge of these writing devices that either make a novel an “easy read” or not.

Last summer I read that the humanities department (if I remember correctly) at McMaster University incorporated a new reading schedule for their undergraduate students. The aim is to form their students with an added general culture that should help them to better understand the world around them. All entering humanities undergrads were therefore to read M.G. Vassanji’s The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. Curious about what so many fresh minds would be considering as general culture, I picked up a copy of the book. I was encouraged by it being a national best seller and the winner of the 2003 Giller Prize. The premise is an exiled man of Indian heritage brought up in Kenya. Hiding within the snow banks of a Northern Canadian town, Vikram recounts his story. Each chapter consists of a lengthy bit on his upbringing in Kenya and then the tease: a few paragraphs written in the present and of the present, something about how he became the man he is. It is the tease because the reader must continue reading the long chronological story if she wants to understand how he became the horrible and worst money-laundering criminal of African history. Meanwhile, the development of the character, in this book quite directly linked to the plot, is deceptively one-dimensional. His life’s crisis revolves around the brutal slayings of two of his childhood friends. The narrator keeps coming back to this one event to epitomize the racial pressure in his country. Other perspectives are addressed but only lightly so as not to give too much food for thought or to muddle the reader with an overly polemic text. Also, this repetition works as a refresher for the subway readers who might not be disposed to give their full attention to such a long (400 pages) novel. The novel’s topic is interesting and, to its advantage, post-colonial. It’s writing is simplistic and plot oriented and contains successful tease tactics. It is a perfect combination for a fashionable award-winning novel. Not exactly what I look for in a novel, but I guess it’s up to me to be wary of bestsellers and prizewinners.

Then again, Cohen’s novel won the Académie française’s Grand Prize for novels in 1968.