The true test of this book I think will be if it sticks with me. I won’t know that until a few months from now. At this point I am laying myself open a bit to those who better understand the mechanics of the art of writing.* Please be gentle with me. I hope this post can serve as a way to pull in feedback and more for me to chew on so I can grow as a writer and a reader.

This book is triggering some sort of artistic attack. I read this because I wanted to understand the work of another writer I admire who cited this book as an influence.

As an aside: Robert Penn Warren’s  poetry works for me. That says quite a lot since I only have about three poets I can say I enjoy at all. This I found to be a relief! I have always been drawn to vivid imagery (Henry Miller being another example). It is maybe easier to focus on the words and images when I am not trying to keep track of a story--something I had a hard time doing in Wilderness.  

What interests me about the book are the poetic tricks my writer friend talked about. I LOVE the idea of laying down a code that only people who are really paying attention will tune into, or even better to maybe paint a picture they themselves aren’t aware they are looking at. Yet one more reason to get back on the poetry study I was working through a while back.

The author uses basic color in a vivid way, repeating words like white over and over, or green, or going on and on mixing the way he repeats the word stone with other descriptions of words like gray, slate, and other things that call to mind a certain solidity and coolness. (I am starting to sound like an English professor wannabe on meth.) 

What bugs me about myself here is that I am giving the author my patient attention and thoughtful consideration because I know he is someone to pay attention to. Would I have caught this if I was reading the words of one Stanley Kotex or Philbert H. Schlong from the PNWA conference last year? I doubt it. This scares and bothers me.

One thing I can rave about: the characters in the story are not black and white, they are all in the middle of moral and ethical difficulties. They are real. This renews my faith in the human mind’s ability to see the various shades of gray in our experiences and characters (ourselves). So I am thrilled to say I didn’t miss everything!

One example from Wilderness:  A character who studied the bible all his life, wanted to be left in peace and found he had to kill the “’scripters” who came to collect him to avoid going off to war and  killing any more people. After this he had to live in the wild to avoid being found.  One night he wakes his wife up laughing (the giggling and laughter throughout the book make me think half of the cast is insane) and says:

“…the Lawd God said thou shalt not kill and then put a fellow in a tight whar he had to kill to keep from killen.”

What would the writer’s digest book on dialogue say about that one? Here is probably an example of knowing the rules and then bashing them to smithereens.

Back to the character’s dilemma:  when you read what this guy turns into, it does make you think the entire fucking world must have been then, and still is, totally off it’s rocker and there is no such thing as sanity, morality, or right and wrong. I compare this to the way things work today and feel not a little silly for believing anything different.  

Earlier in the book one character explains the necessity of conscription.

“…when the heroes are dead, you have to fill the ranks some way.
Even with ordinary mortals. Who much prefer to stay at home and make money and sleep with their wives.”

None of that sounds familiar right? All war books seem to end up being relevant at least in this way.

Again, what bothers and humbles me, is how I will read and consider a writer’s work when I know the author is important (this author won three Pulitzer Prizes for God’s sake!)  but if I just read this as a manuscript submission I would not have given it more than ten minutes, if that. Too hard to follow.  Great details I would say, but if you lose your reader by the second page what good is the rest of it? I would have made suggestions that would have been detrimental to the vision of the book. As an editor, and as a reader, I wouldn’t have finished the book to draw the conclusions about madness, because I wouldn’t have seen the way he pulled it all together later on. The reason I would miss all this is because it wasn’t obvious by the first two pages eh? To sink in, to be effected takes time. Something almost nobody gets anymore in an age of kindle samples where the first few pages are critical, the same with trying to grab the attention of overworked agents and editors. **

If Robert Penn Warren changes the way he refers to characters--changing from a name, to a description, to a pronoun-- and it confuses me and I can’t tell what is going on, or I am annoyed because I have to go back and reread, what does that say about me? I have no generosity or open mind apparently when it comes to my reading material. I want it to be safe, comfortable and easy to move through.

I have been fighting this--the most depressing thought imaginable: maybe Jonathan Franzen is right that I am losing my ability to concentrate and focus! I always want him to be wrong, but continue to come across some stinky slimy nugget of truth to what he says when I least expect to.

Here are a few of the more random lines that make me feel like I am missing something because they don’t sit right:

“Adam uttered a grunt, or moan.”

Or how about this one:

“He found himself against a little door. The door gave under his pressure and he slipped in, into total darkness. At least it was totally dark as soon as he pushed the door closed behind him. Then he fell.”

Really?

“At least it was totally dark as soon as he pushed the door closed behind him.”

That line had me shaking my head, scratching my scalp and wondering what was wrong with me because I wanted to laugh. It was like Twilight all over again.

Here’s another that begins a chapter:

“The eight maniacal scarecrows burst into the glade.”

Is this a place where a great author made a boo boo? I doubt it. I have to believe someone of this caliber means what he says and says what he means. So where does that leave me if I just don’t like it? Don’t appreciate it and read it as downright bad writing?

As a faithful reader I have to believe that RP Warren  knew what he was doing. I have to. He slips into passive voice at random times and you see the word “had” over and over and then it disappears. At times you almost can feel the silence and stillness in the room by the way he shortens the lines, repeats words, etc. The author slips a few times into addressing the audience as “you” and I can’t see any reason for doing this.

Again, is there some technique I am woefully unaware of?  All of these together made this a difficult read, though strangely it went fast if that makes sense, even with all the rereading I did to backtrack and figure out what I missed when something happened that didn’t make sense.

About the content, I think anyone looking for time period details would find lots of good ones in here: the sutlers, the way people talk, the funky facial hair, the games people played outside their tents, the awful things people did to each other, and what people on the ground really thought about the whole business. I really appreciate when people don’t fall into pat moral categories and just want to get on with their lives. This resonates and feels honest. We are not all heroes in the face of injustice, racism, apathy, greed, bullying, lust and all the rest of it. Some people overcome and some just try to get by.

In the interest of further understanding this author I will also read All the King’s Men. That may be a different read.

Any insight would be appreciated. In the end I felt I got out of this book more than I put in but the experience of reading in general has me feeling again like I have to buckle down, study harder, read more and figure out why I didn’t get most of what the author was trying to do here. I have also been reminded why I may need to be a more generous reader. OR, do I need to knuckle up as it were and be more confident in my opinions? I know what I like and what I don’t. Somehow blowing this particular author off as I would Suzanne Collins doesn’t sit right with me. Something tells me there is an opportunity for growth here. I call on my friends who like to discuss books and exchange ideas to give me feedback and insight.

Thanks for reading.

*I can imagine that MFA or PHD who needs to believe that 100K in school loans is worth it can now be secure in the knowledge that you do know something valuable and indeed, at least in this tiny corner of the world, life altering! 

** Except that I did it and continue to do it. Several of us are reading Infinite Jest over the summer. MUCH more accessible, humorous, and still wordy as all get out. Maybe the difference there is the voice? It speaks to the part of me that loves all things McSweeney’s, the part of me that can’t give up the run on sentence or going off on tangents that may only seem relevant or humorous to me. It is a spiritual thing, I think.

Really good, important books are still being read and talked about and even with technoplogy and tiny attention spans. I am just one example of how literature is still working even at this level.