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sunshowerdandelion) wrote2024-05-29 08:09 pm
sunshowerdandelion) wrote2024-05-29 08:09 pm
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Day 14.1: Reflections in a Golden Eye
Finished reading Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941). An incredibly strange read. I think the novel brings Carson's obsession (or identification) with grotesques to the absolute fore, and I think it suffers for it. Maybe it's just me, but none of the characters felt truly 'full' to me. Captain Penderton is nearly void of sympathy: He hates everything, hates the things he loves, and his brief brush with wonder has no effect on his character nor on the characters around him (maybe this is the point?). His wife, Leonora, is equally void and I think Carson sort of saddles her with more 'quirks' than feels honest. The closest to a character, I think, is Alison: Carson's stand-in, being a sick woman who's fascinated by music (and other 'frivolous' things), and her Filipino manservant Anacleto. I think we should have spent more time with them, explored their dreams and actions.
I think Pvt. Williams is an extreme version of Singer. Pvt. Williams is opaque to the point where he feels barely human. The very short glimpses we see under his 'golden eye' are incredibly disconnected snatches that don't add up to a character. Whereas with Singer we see the fullness of his humanity, with Williams we never see that beyond his love for horses and his budding love for women. He is a mystery to himself. As a result, I didn't get that 'feeling' of a person, as I did with all the characters in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - to be honest, Pvt. Williams gave off the feeling of being a beefcake, sort of.
I do get the critique that The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is more a series of tragedies, but the fullness of the characters is felt more there. Reflections in a Golden Eye is a fuller tragedy, according to critics, but I do think it's less of a novel. The characters are sketches and I found empathizing with them a very difficult task.
Of course it's probably that I just don't understand the novel. Maybe the opaqueness is the point - this is a novel of emotional constipation, of people who can't express love because of their atypicality, their sheer outsiderness and alien-ness to love. Like The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith (Gwendolyn Brooks):
I think I can appreciate that, but it's rather lean appreciation compared to the fullness of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
I think Pvt. Williams is an extreme version of Singer. Pvt. Williams is opaque to the point where he feels barely human. The very short glimpses we see under his 'golden eye' are incredibly disconnected snatches that don't add up to a character. Whereas with Singer we see the fullness of his humanity, with Williams we never see that beyond his love for horses and his budding love for women. He is a mystery to himself. As a result, I didn't get that 'feeling' of a person, as I did with all the characters in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - to be honest, Pvt. Williams gave off the feeling of being a beefcake, sort of.
I do get the critique that The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is more a series of tragedies, but the fullness of the characters is felt more there. Reflections in a Golden Eye is a fuller tragedy, according to critics, but I do think it's less of a novel. The characters are sketches and I found empathizing with them a very difficult task.
Of course it's probably that I just don't understand the novel. Maybe the opaqueness is the point - this is a novel of emotional constipation, of people who can't express love because of their atypicality, their sheer outsiderness and alien-ness to love. Like The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith (Gwendolyn Brooks):
men estranged
From music and from wonder and from joy
But far familiar with the guiding awe
Of foodlessness.
I think I can appreciate that, but it's rather lean appreciation compared to the fullness of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.