A spectre is haunting the Web–the spectre of the comeback. The off-hand comment and the casual dismissal will be noted, and, if erroneous or slipshod, you will sooner or later be brought to book.
For example, several weeks ago, I made a fairly niggling criticism of Claire Messud’s novel, The Emperor’s Children, on the basis that she gratingly described a character (Ludovic Seely, in fact) as sporting a “Nabokovian brow.” The blogger Disillusioned Lefty noted my precious quibble, but came across the following in V.N.’s novel, Glory:
I’ll defend myself by suggesting that only Nabokov himself has the licence to use the “N word” when describing facial characteristics. But I should at least assume a gesture of humility because I persevered with Messud’s novel and discovered that, despite its sometimes arch tone (skateboarders are described as “zealous”, for example, which makes them sound more like 19th-century cavalry officers than contemporary anomic youth), it’s an absorbing read that achieves the near-impossible: making us care about the existences of a circle of New York City movers and wannabes in the months bracketing the events of 9/11. I think Messud pulls it off because her tone when dipping in and out of her characters’ minds is poised between empathy and derision. The approach echoes, in less dark tones, Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, in the sense that we’re never entirely sure if the aspirations of the characters to a purer, more engaged existence are being mocked or saluted.
For example, the “Emperor” at the centre of the book, the egomaniacal Murray Thwaite is clearly a monster, a self-satisfied pundit who appears to live according to the same code as Kingsley Amis: “I want more than my share before anyone else has had any.” Not only does Murray enjoy the fruits of worldly success, he also has the nerve to want to be seen as a moral lodestar, by which the masses can orientate themselves. Yet Thwaite does not descend into caricature*, because we also get a sense of the ambition and determination that has dragged him from the boondocks of Watertown, in upstate New York, to the glittering heights of Manhattan society. He may be a fraud, but he has energy. Our sympathy for Murray even survives him embarking on an outrageous affair with his daughter’s best friend, Danielle, perhaps the most sympathetic and vulnerable figure in the book.
As with 95% of all novels, The Emperor’s Children loses its way a bit in the last 50 or so pages. And the naivety of the cathartic figure of “Bootie” Tubbs is a bit difficult to swallow. But the book is never less than a pleasure to read–after zooming through 60, 80, 100 pages, you can surface from Messud’s tale happily dazed–an experience akin to blinking in the brightening cinema as the credits roll. What more can you ask from fiction?
*In passing, the figure of Thwaite bears a strong resemblance to Tim Park’s narrator in Cleaver, a novel that didn’t get the recognition it deserved.