02.06.08
Norman Rush and two of his novels
I read Norman Rush’s Mating a few years ago—a novel that I couldn’t put down, and a novel unlike other novels (review here). Highly recommended, and undoubtedly in your library. And then I came across this comment on his later novel Mortals:
Most books are fun to read for money. No matter how dry the season, reviewers can be depended on to churn out cheerful–grateful–appraisals of doorstoppers that no one in his right mind will ever read for free. Reviewers like long books. They pay more, they take longer and you can summarise without feeling bad.
That’s why it’s curious that “Mortals” (Knopf, 2003) should have got mostly bad or tepid reviews. Rush won the National Book Award for his previous novel, “Mating” (Knopf, 1991), another long book and a commercial success. “Mortals” is every bit as exciting as “Mating.” It is one of the few authentically great novels of our new century. And yet if you go to Amazon, as of this morning, you’ll find first printings going for $5.95.
“Mortals” is one of those rare long books that’s fun to read but no fun to review. The characters–expatriates in Botswana, as in “Mating”–are full of ideas (about marriage, Christianity, race, economic development, etc) and you can’t tell which ones the author shares. Ordinarily the plot would sort these things out in a hurry. Most novels are justice machines. But Rush keeps you in suspense. Real, uncomfortable suspense–ideological suspense. The kind that reviewers tend to find “messy”. (”Rush’s attempts to meld political reality with domestic tragicomedy occasionally make the narrative unwieldy,” Publishers Weekly)
In fact, “Mortals” is one of the best-plotted novels I’ve read, partly because Rush’s hero, Ray Finch, keeps making excellent guesses about what’s going to happen to him next. He thinks like a reader–the way characters in novels used to think. Nowadays, if you want a character to introspect, to think in complex sentences, you have to give him a professional excuse: Ray’s a Milton scholar by training. By occupation, he’s CIA.
Ray is also a writer born too late. When the novel begins, his controller has just told him to stop writing reports. He must deliver his impressions into a tape-recorder instead–the 1980s equivalent of blogging. Ray’s immediate response is to quit the Agency. He doesn’t believe in transcripts.
More at the link. And there’s also this review.
