Fictional men

I should be reading Middlemarch. I am 300 pages behind and it really is fascinating. Whenever I am deeply appreciative of art of any kind, I find myself fleeing from it in an agony of creative restlessness. Thoughts beget thoughts and ideas, ideas. Wonderfully written descriptive passages make me want to draw and beautiful images make me want to sing, and wonderful music makes me want to write. Hurray for the liberal arts!
So here I am, typing away to try and alleviate the creative pressure that has built up as a result of George Eliot.
I am reading Eliot because Heidi invited me to join her college friends for a book club. Otherwise I would be much too distracted to get through any such literary work. I loved Silas Marner when I picked it up some times in high school, but I seem to have lost the stamina required for deep reading since my motivation became all entangled with that highly prized and practically useless black smudge on paper (or on my computer screen) known as a grade point average. Self motivation is a luxury of the home scholar and the exceptionally gifted. I'm slowly turning into a drone.

(A bottle of bright purple nail polish remover sits innocently on the desk next to me. I keep absently picking it up as if to drink it. When did my subconscious accept neon purple as an edible color? I'm starting to worry about myself.)

This book club, which has so advantageously saved my brain from the plague of summer idleness, is made up of five or six girls with bachelor's degrees and a female English professor. Perfect. Middlemarch involves several plots and subplots that can be more or less classified as romantic. At least they involve courtship and marriage. Naturally, we girls have more or less given our allegiance to one or the other (or several) of the young men in the story. I was surprised to find, on reflection, that I was actually rooting for two men who are seeking to marry the same woman. I see that both characters are not people I would want to have a relationship with in real life, but this doesn't keep me from kind of liking them. That seems to be true of many of the fictional men on whom I have had "crushes" in my career as a sappy romantic reader; I wouldn't actually like to know many of them in real life. What strange relationships we have with characters in books. That is the power of the author, I suppose. My class last semester in reader response theory has made me hyper aware of the author's power to shape my opinions of the fictional people I love. Sometimes they misjudge me and fail utterly to get the reaction they are attempting to prompt. Other times I find myself completely sucked in and there is nothing I can do about it. And this makes me want to write.

I find myself rather fascinated by those elusive personalities that may or may not be the voice or the author, known as "narrator." I really liked my reader response class, and not at all for the reasons I thought I would like it. Traditionally, if that word can be used in a free and developing form like fiction, the narrator is not strictly a person, and you can safely assume that he or she is the voice of the author giving you fact, impressions and whatever bias serves the purpose of the moment. Narrators who step out of these guidelines are an interesting breed. The impression they make is subtle. Jane Austen follows the rules and still manages to make you love her personally because of her wit and intimate tone. We get an impression of knowing Jane personally. I don't think I would like her. I seriously doubt that she would like me. But in any case, we assume that the narrators voice conveys something of the author's personality.

(Who decided that purple was a good color for nail polish remover?)

George Eliot is kind of interesting, first of all because she is not really George at all. The male pen name gives an aura of dishonesty to her writing. I can't help but wonder if she would have written some things a little differently if she was using her own name. Female authors always seem a bit self conscious. They have a distinctive voice, as they should, that is different from a male author. Some of them are preoccupied with giving special depth to female characters, as if to rectify the violence done to us by men who write about female symbols more than female characters.

("Dear Mr. Dickens, I hate your female characters... and most of your other characters too. But that's okay because you are amusing anyway and you certainly couldn't be expected to see the feminist movement coming.")


On top of that, she breaks the fourth wall. George, the narrator, speaks in the first person, talks about his opinions of the character he is creating for us, and tells us little anecdotes about his social life. These are all in the service of the story, or commentary on the story for the reader's benefit, but it is still remarkable. He is certainly not a character in his own story. But like Toni Morison's narrator (oh Queen of the post-modern novel), he questions his own conclusions and assumptions about his own characters. He stops in the middle of a description of one character's thoughts to question why he always tells the story from that character's point of view.

("Warning: ...Harmful if ingested. In case of accidental ingestion, give fluids liberally and consult with local POISON CONTROL CENTER..." see Zita, no drinking the nail polish remover unless you want to spend the night in the ER)

I was paying so much attention to the narrator of Middlemarch that for a while I wasn't really paying attention to the characters and the plot. They are all very engaging and everything, but I just got done with Dickens and Stoker who pretty much beat you over the head with clues as to who are the "good guys." Eliot gives her characters enough depth and realism that they have as many obvious flaws and inconsistencies as they have lovable traits. She allows readers to suspend judgment, or make up their own minds, more or less, at least for a while. Slowly it becomes clear who the virtuous characters are that she is upholding and prompting her reader to fall in love with. They are not without their flaws, but we see that they are generally a good sort of people with the important things set straight. And one odd consequence of this subtlety is that I like Fred (who is what we call a Loser) and Will as much as Mr. Stuffy-Procrastinating-Scholar and whatever that other curate's name was. I certainly would not want to be the object of their affection - any of them - but I find them equally interesting as characters and I hope they all end happily. I remember my reaction was similar with Silas Marner. The characters were painted so vividly that I could not fully approve of any of them, but I was interested in all of them.

("Strengthening Nail Polish Remover is formulated to help soften cuticles and add strngeth and resiliency for more beautiful nails" and drive dehydrated writers to violent distraction by it's unnaturally bright and appetizing color.)

I begin to wonder about my previous book crushes. The next time I manage to get through The Lord of the Rings without running away to draw a picture, I will have to pay attention how Tolkien sets me up to be hopelessly in love with Faramir. I'm pretty sure he doesn't do it on purpose, while some of my favorite female authors are obviously trying to get me fall in love in order to create sympathy for her female characters. Eliot is doing her best to dissuade me by making flaws obvious. This makes me wonder if I only fall in love with flat, unrealistic characters. Vices are hard to live with, but sometimes a charming demeanor can cover them in real life. They are harder to ignore when they are printed in black and white.

(The smell of nail polish remover is especially unappetizing. Gives me a head ache.)

However, I can never allow that. First of all, because I have an inflated opinion of my own ability to resist the charms of characters designed to be too perfect for real life. Secondly, I would never let anyone say that Faramir is a flat character.

I'm not sure what I wanted to say with this post. The goal was something between intellectual reflections on my reading experience and how it has changed since I pretended to be an English major, and a humorous exploration of the cultural phenomenon of book crushes. (By the way, I am pleased to hear rumors that boys have book crushes too.) I guess I pretty much failed on both counts. I'm blaming the nail polish remover.