This is a great book. It's the story of a quirky little boy living in New York, on a quest to find the lock to a key that he found that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on September 11th. It's juxtaposed against his own family history, one that he is not aware of, and the stories actually converge in a couple of twists of fate.
It's really sweet. It doesn't really have the "it's all gonna be OK" storybook ending, but given its subject, I don't think that it should. It's very healing, mostly for the characters, but also for anyone affected by the 9/11 tragedy.
Apparently the author also wrote Everything Is Illuminated, which of course, now I have to read. Here is my one concern, as a student of literature and as someone who dreams of some day publishing her own novel: The book deviates from the traditional form of a novel. It uses photographs, drawings, and blank pages to make its point. None of that is bad, in fact it's very good. It's effective and poignant. What scares me is that, since the generation above my own is already finding subversive and creative ways to challenge the conventional form, and since they are so acclaimed for it, what will my generation have left to challenge? Part of the allure of works that defy convention is just that; that they defy convention. If I ever get around to being published, there won't be any convention left to defy. There will never be novels published like the Bronte sisters, Jane Austin, or Hugo or Dickens ever again because that time and style have passed. And since we've already put standards into a box and chipped away at it, really there's no standard any more. It'd have to be one hell of a good story to make a decent novel in traditional form. Or a new creative one would have to deviate so far from the norm that the really wouldn't be a novel.
It doesn't stop with novels. What about music? The 20th century saw atonality break ALL the rules. If I wrote a piece that sounded like something from the classical era, people would call it boring-- it's been done before. And if I wrote something completely atonal, no one would be impressed at my initiative or anything. It's all been done before. What about theatre?
My generation won't be able to do anything for its shock value because all the conventions have already been taken apart. It worries me. I feel like with no more rules to break, we'll be stuck in a rut, with nowhere to go because someone else went there first.
2 comments:
what if we stop attempting to break rules or make theatre relative to anything we have seen before. like a vaccuum. what if we exist there?
you knew i would find this.
Touche, madame. My dad said, "There will always be conventions to shatter. They're just moving targets."
I'm not afraid to try and break the rules, I'm just afraid no one will care if I do. But I'll never stop trying.
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