The Red Tree
Aug. 28th, 2009 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolven7It's raining like a bastard, here. Good metaphor. I don't do "reviews," usually. I always ramble or forget something or struggle not to tell too much. I do much better at focusing on A Thing, in a work, and telling you why it's amazing. Magic in comics, dreams and altered consciousness in books, things like that. It's just easier, and you get a sense of something I think is really important about the work, and why I love it so much.
So, I think the thing I love about The Red Tree is the exploration of psychological issues; what I mean is, I full embrace it's full-force throwing itself into Jungian Archetypal Experiences, on every level. People complain, a lot, these days, about "unreliable narrators," "reader-response theory" and "meta-narrative"--I'm guessing because two out of three hyphenated literary devices make people nervous-- but they forget several things, when they do this:
1) We're all unreliable. We're human beings, and we embellish, we forget, we lie ot make ourselves look good, we omit to make others look bad. Consciously, unconsciously, with only partial recognition of our motivation, we are all, every one of us, though we'd wish it otherwise, unreliable to some degree. It is disingenuous to ascribe your main character traits no subjective human has.
2) As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greygirlbeast herself has said, if you truly care about engaging the work you're reading-- not just having a story thrown at your head, whole cloth, but actually bringing some interpretation to the table-- then reader-response and an "unreliable narrator" are your best bet. These are the things which make House of Leaves, Oryx and Crake, Daughter of Hounds, American Gods, and others a joy to re-read. There are different ways to interpret the actions of the main characters, layers of complexity to their motivations, and every time you read them, you've changed a little, and you see it differently. Who's the Villain in Catcher In The Rye? Is Lord of the Flies a tale of mass hallucination and group madness, or is it a story about an arch-demon possessing the souls of little boys, and turning them into monsters? Both? Neither? This is reader-response. This is unreliable narration.
3) You gain something New, every time.
Reading The Red Tree, and thinking on it, later, I realise that Sarah Crowe teaches us something about herself in the things she forgets, the things she omits, and the lies she tells. What she chooses to hide tells us the kinds of things she's willing to hide, and when she notes that certain recountings have been embellished, we look for and expect similar flourishes in similar tales. We learn more about her psychological make-up, and the wholeness of her, through her lies, secrets, hallucinations (daylight or sleeping), and half-truths. I think, again, this is the genius of Caitlín R. Kiernan's writing: That we can gain something of the whole, from the absences it leaves. The missing pieces tell a deeply important part of the whole story, and it is the part where we are most likely to meet ourselves in the narrator, and understand what we're bringing to the table.
I love that.
So, I think the thing I love about The Red Tree is the exploration of psychological issues; what I mean is, I full embrace it's full-force throwing itself into Jungian Archetypal Experiences, on every level. People complain, a lot, these days, about "unreliable narrators," "reader-response theory" and "meta-narrative"--I'm guessing because two out of three hyphenated literary devices make people nervous-- but they forget several things, when they do this:
1) We're all unreliable. We're human beings, and we embellish, we forget, we lie ot make ourselves look good, we omit to make others look bad. Consciously, unconsciously, with only partial recognition of our motivation, we are all, every one of us, though we'd wish it otherwise, unreliable to some degree. It is disingenuous to ascribe your main character traits no subjective human has.
2) As
greygirlbeast herself has said, if you truly care about engaging the work you're reading-- not just having a story thrown at your head, whole cloth, but actually bringing some interpretation to the table-- then reader-response and an "unreliable narrator" are your best bet. These are the things which make House of Leaves, Oryx and Crake, Daughter of Hounds, American Gods, and others a joy to re-read. There are different ways to interpret the actions of the main characters, layers of complexity to their motivations, and every time you read them, you've changed a little, and you see it differently. Who's the Villain in Catcher In The Rye? Is Lord of the Flies a tale of mass hallucination and group madness, or is it a story about an arch-demon possessing the souls of little boys, and turning them into monsters? Both? Neither? This is reader-response. This is unreliable narration.3) You gain something New, every time.
Reading The Red Tree, and thinking on it, later, I realise that Sarah Crowe teaches us something about herself in the things she forgets, the things she omits, and the lies she tells. What she chooses to hide tells us the kinds of things she's willing to hide, and when she notes that certain recountings have been embellished, we look for and expect similar flourishes in similar tales. We learn more about her psychological make-up, and the wholeness of her, through her lies, secrets, hallucinations (daylight or sleeping), and half-truths. I think, again, this is the genius of Caitlín R. Kiernan's writing: That we can gain something of the whole, from the absences it leaves. The missing pieces tell a deeply important part of the whole story, and it is the part where we are most likely to meet ourselves in the narrator, and understand what we're bringing to the table.
I love that.
