The story traces three threads, narrated by one old man; that of the narrator's family, beginning with his great, great grandparents and down to his own generation, a story of his childhood on the fens (a desolate low country prone to flooding), as well as a section about the more recent past in his own life. This approach lends a little bit of suspense to an otherwise quiet story, but I wish that it were just a little easier. I don't want to have to work quite so hard to decode a sentence, or to understand what just happened.
I'm not picking only on Mr. Swift. This obtuse spareness I've been discussing can be insidious, ugly even, if handled badly, and I don't think its a good trend. I certainly have a tough time coping with it. I prefer a slightly more straitforward prose when I'm reading in the evening. After interpreting irrational behaviors and incomplete communication from my preschool aged children all day, and I just want a story, not a puzzle.
3 comments:
DITTO. I think obtuseness sometimes gets mistaken for smartness. Or for superior writing.
Many, many years ago I wrote a senior thesis in college about three books. One was Waterland. Back then I LOVED this book. I haven't read it since, so my memory is a bit hazy. But this is what I recall loving: The narrator is a history teacher and he is always trying to "capture" history -- to tell the story in the one way that makes complete sense. But this is an impossible task. You can never fully understand history; you can never fully understand someone else's "story"; it's hard to even correctly capture your own "story." So the best he can do is to tell these stories over and over again, from different perspectives and angles, to try and make sense of where he has found himself in his life.
Again, I haven't read the book in years. Does my interpretation make sense to you or was I a completely lost college senior??
By the way, I compared Waterland to 100 Years of Solitude and Midnight's Children. The other two have similar themes but are much grander in scope and use a lot more magic realism.
Thank you Anonymous for your kind comment! It actually helps me understand and like Waterland a little more. But Waterland just didn't grab me. I haven't read 100 Years of Solitude, but read and didn't like Love in the Time of Cholera also by G.G. Marquez. I can't put into words why I feel so lost and uninvolved with certain books or authors. It's kind of depressing, like I've failed somehow. G.G. Marquez is so popular and universally praised, but is a yuck for me. Maybe I will give both authors another chance.
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