Dat retrospective...

Time to look back on all the books we've read this semester. I'll rank them in a Top 10 list sort of way, except that there are only 5.

5. Libra
     DeLillo's novel comes in last in the rankings largely due to two things: first, his writing style really threw me off, and second, I am bored out of my skull by conspiracy theories, largely because I am satisfied with the explanation that Oswald did it alone. My inability to separate the fictional Oswald from what I know of the historical Oswald probably also kept me from fully enjoying the book. It got much better towards the end, with the various threads of the plot coming together in a grand mess of an assassination, but I feel that Libra would have been better if it had more in common with Mumbo Jumbo and presented its conspiracy in terms of absolute ridiculousness. DeLillo seems to be taking his own writing a bit too seriously.
     My favorite part was probably Weird Beard. Or the Jack Ruby chapters, since he had the weirdness to fit into Ishmael Reed's world.

4. Kindred
     Knowing ahead of time that Butler did not intend this to be a science fiction novel saved this book from suffering the fate of Never Let Me Go*. Even so, this book gets #4 on the list because I felt the story was stretched out too much and I never felt invested in the characters. Mostly the characters.
     I'm not entirely sure how to explain why, so I'll just give some examples: I felt no pity whatsoever for Rufus. Dana had some nice cynical moments, but just as many where she seemed incredibly naive. Kevin seemed like an add-on. The character I could empathize the most with was Tom Weylin, who at least had a twisted moral code.
     Maybe this all boils down to my general dissatisfaction with emotional characters. I like self-repression in fiction. I like it when characters throw away emotion because something needs to get done. Give me Mrs. Dalloway and Bruce Wayne, but keep your Romeos and Juliets at home.
     The main problem I faced with this book in class discussion was that I took this book fairly literally; I felt that with the heavily plot-based narrative, a lot of things didn't have to have any hidden meaning. Time travel? Well of course it's time travel and not Dana imagining the past while studying genealogy! She LOSES HER ARM.
     My final criticism is that for such a horrific subject matter, Kindred just doesn't have the bleak tone required to pull it off. There's too much of a sense of finality (due to the reliance on plot) in the semi-hopeful epilogue.

3. Slaughterhouse-Five
     Third, second, and first place in this ranking are all very close, so their placements are somewhat arbitrary.
     Slaughterhouse-Five was the funniest of the novels we read; after all, it's about a massacre! Reed and Doctorow have more subtle humor with a few laugh-out-loud moments, but Vonnegut goes all-out with writing that veers towards Douglas Adams.
     Billy Pilgrim seemed like a much more varied character than any of the other protagonists we encountered, shifting from super chill (everything was pretty much all right with Billy Pilgrim) to silently weeping to just plain bewildered.
     And who doesn't love telepathic toilet plungers?
     As with Kindred, I took this novel literally, and got really defensive when an article for a panel presentation suggested that Billy Pilgrim wasn't really unstuck in time.

2. Mumbo Jumbo
     Reed's style and formatting choices threw me off initially, but I came to enjoy the weirdness and lack of standardization. I didn't find the overall story all that exciting, but each scene was fun to read on its own. Mumbo Jumbo packs a lot into a small space and doesn't take itself too seriously, so it doesn't feel drawn-out like some of the other novels.
    I'm having a hard time pinning down exact reasons for liking this novel, so I'll just say that it was fun to read and felt more substantial than Libra or Kindred.

1. Ragtime 
     I love cynical narrators. I love stuff that's too weird to be made up. I like Doctorow's writing style. What more is there to say?
    For one thing, characters. Even though we're not always inside their heads, I was more invested in the characters in Ragtime than in anyone in the other books. Goldman is rational. Houdini is repressed. MYB knows exactly what he wants to do, but doesn't know why. Coalhouse is self-destructively emotional, but finishes up nicely. It just boils down to Doctorow and his characters having brains that function similarly to mine, though with different starting values.
     Another thing I like about Ragtime: it's so bleak! Everyone dies or gets deported or vanishes except for the abusive, patriotic psychopath, while history just keeps rolling on. Great ending.
    I thought Doctorow's story was strange before I read any of the other novels for this class. Now it seems pretty tame. This is good because it kept the story easy to follow while still allowing for entertaining craziness and hidden references (like "Warn the Duke").

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* I went into Never Let Me Go expecting it to go really deep into discussing the ethics of cloning and societal reactions to clones. Instead, it was basically a story about people with terminal illness having relationship problems. The cool premise about citizens whose only purpose in life is to replace other peoples' organs was just an excuse to have the main characters die young.

I will not go so far as to say that the film The Island did a better job at this, though.