Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers Free Women 3 – p. 327 – 442


Free Women 3 – Left blinded by his unsuccessful suicide attempt, Tommy develops an unnerving sixth sense.


Black Notebook – Reminiscin' ‘bout pigeon pies on the veld.


Red Notebook – CP meetings, post-Stalin


Yellow Notebook – Ella continues playing the psycho dating game.


Blue Notebook – Anna argues about writing with her shrink. Later, she gets a close-up look at American psychodrama amongst the blacklisted.

It's a strange phenomenon, but the more I read this book, the more I realize I have no real sympathy for the characters. I'm enjoying the book, I'm very interested in what the characters do, and curious about what they might do next, but they're registering near zero on the sympathy meter. I don't think I've ever had a similar reading experience to compare this to. I've read books where I didn't sympathize with the characters before, but then I also didn't enjoy the book. This is something different.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Jim wrote: "I've read books where I didn't sympathize with the characters before, but then I also didn't enjoy the book. This is something different."

This phenomenon feels very Iris Murdoch-y to me. I once went to a lecture about her novels and the speaker described her attitude toward the characters as a kind of philosophical experiment: like she creates them as they are, puts them into a challenging situation, winds them up and then sees what they do. But the point is not really the characters themselves so much as it is a kind of philosophical question about how people behave or even how they are.

I think this feels a little bit like that.

It's weirdly....what? I almost want to say weirdly comforting, actually, as a reading experience. Does thwt sounds really strange?

Nicole wrote: "But the point is not really the characters themselves so much as it is a kind of philosophical question about how people behave or even how they are.

I think this feels a little bit like that.

It's weirdly....what? I almost want to say weirdly comforting, actually, as a reading experience. Does thwt sounds really strange?..."

Yes, it's definitely like this. Maybe philosophy written as fiction. I suppose I'm enjoying it as a learning experience rather than as an emotionally involving novel where I'm rooting for and/or rooting against the characters. The CP stuff is kind of like historical fiction, the dating stuff is kind of like emerging feminist consciousness history, etc.

Tommy shoots himself, but I'm completely unmoved. I don't relate to him or his mother emotionally at all. It's more like I'm reading a news item in prose.

But then why are we enjoying the book if we're at such an emotional remove?

Jim wrote: "But then why are we enjoying the book if we're at such an emotional remove?"

Asks the guy reading Walter Benjamin for fun....

By which I mean to say, I don't know, and will need to give it some thought, but a priori, I see no reason why emotional involvement should be necessary to an enjoyable reading experience.

It's a good general question I think; in the what is fiction FOR group of good general questions. I've been pondering that group of questions a lot lately, and then posting long, wandering, run-on sentence-filled reviews of things that get me nowhere, and ending up back at, "well, Trish, I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it!", like some kind of fascist talk show commentator bitching about NEA funding.

Clearly this is not a sufficient response.

You've gotta hand it to Doris, though, she's definitely got the stuff, however stuff may be eventually defined.

Oh yeah, and also, since my mouth runneth over today....

I think part of why it's interesting is that the book is, itself, pondering this question. I just hit the section with the parodies and also the reviews of Anna's novel in the communist press, and these are clearly giving some pretty solid examples of what literature is not (or should not be) for.

This novel is extremely philosophical, but it (and also Anna's fictional novel, which may or may not be some kind of analog to The Grass is Singing?), but it would not fulfill whatever criteria the fictional reviewers of Anna's book are hoping to find in an ideologically correct novel. And even though Anna seems in some ways to agree with them (hence her ongoing guilt about having written the book, her current unwillingness to write another, her qualms about the money she still earns, and even her own fractured self), it's clear that some part of her also sees that ideological correctness does not a novel make. A novel needs something more, a novel is something different.

For me, at least, the Golden Notebook is definitely a novel, and not just a philosophical exploration. But what that REALLY MEANS, I just couldn't tell you.

Nicole wrote: "For me, at least, the Golden Notebook is definitely a novel, and not just a philosophical exploration. But what that REALLY MEANS, I just couldn't tell you..."

It means she's a great writer...

I suppose I've just gotten used to the idea that empathy/sympathy/identification with/for fictional characters is a requirement for great fiction. Apparently, this belief is not always true!