Goodies vs. Baddies-- the war wages on

As I progress in Little Bee, I can't help but notice a constant struggle to define "goodies" and "baddies," as Charlie so eloquently puts it. Each character has both good and bad traits, and it's hard to really decide which will win out, or if one has to win at all.

For instance, from the beginning of the book, I saw Bee much like Lawrence did-- as someone who was entirely foreign. Not in the you-aren't-my-problem-get-out way, but in the way that she didn't have the same amount of depth as the British characters. Even as I saw her in the detention center or at Andrew's funeral, I assumed she wasn't capable of the "baddie" qualities the rest were so easily practicing. But as we find out in the pages leading up to p. 200, she very much is, even if her choice wasn't made completely in malice. She started out plotting revenge on Andrew and, whether on purpose or not, she eventually got it. A life for a life. And she was so sneaky as to not mention it to Sarah, even when she had given her finger for her and then taken her in on the day of her husband's funeral. Though somewhat understandable, that's still a pretty "baddie" thing to do. Yet I know regardless of what happens in the rest of the book, I will see Bee as a "goodie" because of how strong she has stayed throughout her struggles and the impact she has on the O'Rourke family after Andrew dies.

Sarah also has a lot of qualities of both goodies and baddies. She has been having an affair for two years that, in a lot of ways, led up to her husband’s depression and suicide. That’s certainly not a cause for praise. But she has the wonderful qualities of wanting to be a good mother and wanting to “save the world” as she later explains.

Even Charlie has “goodie” and “baddie” qualities, even though he demands that every person be either one or the other. He is sneaky and tricks Little Bee into watching TV with him when he knows he isn’t allowed, which definitely doesn’t have as many consequences as, say, letting someone die, but is underhanded regardless.

The line between goodies and baddies, as it turns out, may be incredibly thin, and probably doesn’t exist at all in this novel or the world we live in.

Buzzing about Little Bee

I decided, before writing this entry, not to read anyone else's thoughts on Little Bee so that my post would be as honest and unaffected as possible. The biggest reason for this is that I don't want to read anything negative that might sway how wonderful I think this book is thusfar.

From the moment I read the back cover, I was intrigued. If you haven't read it, it basically says that they won't give away any of the story because it needs to be experienced personally, and after 100+ pages, I can see why. The story, if taken from a really general view, could come off as cliche. "White woman and African girl bond, white woman saves African girl, in turn becomes saved herself by the girl" etc etc. Upon reading, though, it's so much more than that.

The characters themselves are, despite their very unique nuances, incredibly relatable. Unlike Auster in Sunset Park, Cleave doesn’t list all their traits up front in an obvious manner so readers can either identify with them or not. He introduces them in a vague way, and allows readers to become more and more attached as they progress by slowly revealing parts of them, much like a natural relationship progresses. So much so, in fact, that after reading about half the book, I feel like these characters are my acquaintances, like I’ve known them forever even though they are a world away (and, you know, not real).

One aspect that I find most interesting so far is the relationship between Sarah and Andrew. At the beginning of the novel, he seems like the strong one, namely because Little Bee keeps referring to the man she met on the beach instead of the woman. As the story moves along, though, you see that their relationship was incredibly complicated and, in the end, that it was actually Sarah who sacrificed for Little Bee when Andrew couldn’t. Also, the shift between how distant they were, as shown by the lack of emotion on Sarah’s part upon his suicide, and how deeply she felt for him, like on their honeymoon, was interesting. I feel like I have yet to really nail down their dynamic, which is really refreshing in a “Popular Genre” book.

Needless to say, I honestly can’t wait to get back to this book.

Initial Reaction & Feminist Reaction to the end of Sunset Park

Well that was disappointing. I’m referring, of course, to the ending of Sunset Park, wherein everyone ruins their hopes and dreams by finally get evicted from the house. Auster built my hopes dramatically toward the end, as Alice, Ellen, Bing, Miles, and Morris all began having closure to their stories, but the final twenty pages caught me completely off guard.

Really, though, I suppose I shouldn’t have been terribly surprised. After all, these people had been living illegally in a house for months, and had gotten several eviction notices already. What was the alternative, realistically? I also shouldn’t have been surprised based on the rest of the book’s plot, since nothing ever turned out how I (and I assume most readers), wanted.

The ending left me with many unanswered questions. What ever happened with Willa? Did she accept Miles’ confession and forgive him, making Morris’ life easier? What happened to Alice’s computer? She worked so hard on that dissertation that I can’t bear the thought of it being forever lost. Could PEN help her get it back? I’m less concerned with the lives of Ellen and Bing, since Ellen seemed to be relatively blameless in the police invasion and Bing sort of asked for his fate. Also, both worked through their own issues, sort of, before the book ended. Also, why did Pilar suddenly decide to leave Florida for school in New York when she had previously been so adamant about staying near her family.

I think the end of the novel, for me, affirmed a lot of what the reviews said—there were just too many characters with too many details to realistically tie everything up. Maybe it was a statement by Auster, after all, that real life is messy and never quite tied up.

Regardless of the message, though, I can’t help but feel let down by Sunset Park. I believe that good novels should leave you questioning things, but not regarding the plot. The questions should be about the lessons learned, about your assumptions and how they were played out, about the novel’s impact on your own life and what that means. Not skipped-over plot points that leave me feeling unfulfilled.

From a feminist perspective, Sunset Park’s ending was just as, if not more, disappointing than it was from the initial reader-response reaction. Auster wrapped up (if you can even call it “wrapping up”) all of the female characters in ways that leave the characters unfinished and, more importantly, oppressed.

Ellen, whose appearance was one of the first things mentioned about her, was framed as a character who was attractive but felt ugly inside. The narrator set readers up to ask the question, “Why is such a pretty girl so sexually frustrated?” Of course, the answer was that she had been impregnated, a plight only ever experienced by women, and abandoned by boy she didn’t even feel comfortable enough to tell. She bore unspeakable amounts of pain simply because she thought it wasn’t the boy’s problem—it was hers since she was the one with the womb. Due to the pressures of society viewing young, single, pregnant women as promiscuous and irresponsible, she aborted the child. Auster wraps up her story not with a redeeming transformation of character for herself, but with a transformation for a man—the same man who used her for sex and abandoned her nine years before. The narrator originally says that the change in appearance was just a reflection of a change in her “innermost self,” but goes on to say that her transformation was “inspired” by meeting Ben Samuels again, so apparently her innermost self is just a reflection of the man she’s dating at the time. So Ellen gets a boyfriend and a makeover and suddenly she is a whole person again and the novel is over.

Alice, who stands out from the other Sunset Park characters as the “normal one,” struggles with her self-image and her boyfriend. Original. I find it interesting, and a double standard, that Bing, who is unofficially described as the least attractive housemate, doesn’t seem to worry much about his looks, his weight, etc. He is even comfortable enough to pose nude for Ellen. Alice, however, deems herself unfit due to the fact that she doesn’t feel she meets society’s standards for an attractive woman despite the fact that she is, at most, only a little bit overweight for her height. Alice finally breaks up with her boyfriend toward the end of the novel, and instead of complimenting her empowerment or remarking on her intellectual abilities, Auster writes that Ellen is sure “it won’t be long before Alice finds herself another man.” Because that’s the end-all-be-all of womanly success and happiness.

Finally, Miles’ girlfriend Pilar, who at the beginning of the novel is committed to staying close to her remaining family in Florida while she’s in college, ends up dropping everything and moving to New York with her boyfriend (assuming he wasn’t put in jail for an extended amount of time). No matter that the only thing waiting for them in New York was Miles’ family who he didn’t even tell her about and a more expensive education than she would have received in Florida. In the end, it was the woman (well, girl) who gave up everything instead of the man, despite the fact that the only mistake Pilar made in her life was falling for a man who kept a lot of secrets from her.

This is not to say that the women in Sunset Park were the only ones suffering. Miles, Bing, and Morris all had a lot of issues to deal with themselves. In the end, though, they all received real, not superficial or sacrificial, change. Miles, before he punched a police officer, reconciled his relationship with his parents and seemed to be coming to terms with his brother’s death. Bing began working out the questions he had about his sexuality in a judgment-free zone. Morris deepened his relationship with his son and his wife, and was forgiven for having an affair. It seems a bit unbalanced to me.

A Critical Look At My Opinions on Criticism

Writing about literature, though sometime frustrating, functions to better our understanding of a work. It’s easy to sit down and enjoy a novel, but it takes a lot more patience to critically read and write about a work. Literary criticism should further our own understanding of what we read (by delving so deeply into it), but also should help others read the work in a different way or realize something they hadn’t noticed before. That tends to be the way I judge a criticism I’m reading—did at any point I feel compelled to re-open the book and read a piece over again because the criticism opened my eyes to something new?

Criticism, in my opinion, is carried out through reading a work with something specific in mind. No critic, regardless of his or her level of education, can read a piece and critique it from every perspective at once. It’s just too much for one person to handle. Therefore I think good criticism comes from multiple readings with various theories in mind each time, and good collaboration. Having multiple critiques of one work from different readers, I think, would be a really beneficial activity to help create a well-rounded criticism.

I see literature as a way to expand our personal experiences without actually experiencing things. I will never know what it’s like to have lived in the 1930s or to have grown up in New York City, but in reading literature, I feel I can get a sense of those experiences from my small apartment in Carrboro. I see literature as an opportunity to spend time in someone else’s head, whether it’s the author, the narrator, the main character, etc. I look for quality characters in a work, first and foremost. I believe with well-developed, intriguing, believable characters, any story could be interesting. Also, I look for realism. Not necessary for the plot or happenings to be realistic, but for the characters to interact and behave in a manner that is believable and not forced.

Finding Depth in "Silly Bohemian Romanticism"

In blog group Biblioklept's review of Auster's Sunset Park, they focus not so much on Auster's style issues, as many other reviews have done, but on the plot of the book and the characters that are so tangled up within it.

Auster's biggest concern in the book, they argue, is trying to define what "home" means, whether it's a place, a person, or some combination of both. He tries to do this through a large cast of characters all struggling, in some way or another, with the idea of "home" (and in the case of the squatters, not having one at all). Biblioklept's opinion, though, is that in creating so many characters with so many individual problems, the plot gets too big for one book, resulting in an ending that isn't as definitive and satisfying as they, and apparently many other bloggers, wanted.

Biblioklept suggests that this lack of satisfaction may be due, in part, to the fact that the main characters (namely the four squatters), feel unrealistic. They put it best in saying the gang is "an unrealistic idealization of youthful and artistic resistance to a predatory capitalist culture." This observation really resonated with me, since as I was reading I couldn't help but feel like I'd met these characters in numerous books, movies, and television shows I've seen before. All of the squatters have similar problems-- inability to fully succeed in their art (whether that be drums, painting, or writing), doubts about their personal worth, disillusionment with society-- and no real individual personality.

The reviewer does give Auster a fair amount of praise where his writing is concerned.

His keen sentences, often unfurling for pages at a time, move from concrete to abstract, to present to past to future, to inside and outside, with a precision and skill that is admirable to say the least.

I found this to be true, as I flipped from page to page without ever having a moment of awkwardness. It did, however, make it much more difficult to try to judge the characters for myself, since I was constantly getting the narrator's view of what was happening both outside, in character interactions, and inside the characters' heads. I found it hard to keep track of who knew what about the other characters.

In the end, Biblioklept says they felt less than satisfied, though they couldn't quite put their finger on why. They did say, though, that the novel made them think and feel, "which is really the job of art–even if those thoughts and feelings are often negative and unpleasant." I agree that though the novel may not be an excellent work of thorough character development, or even as good as Auster's previous works, it still opened my eyes to a world outside my own, where I got attached to characters and felt personally invested in their lives. I think that has to count for something.