I happened to be at the gym and looked up and the movie version of Life of Pi was on one of the screens. I'd seen very short bits of this from the trailer (back at that time talking about how amazing the CGI was, though it was sort of showing its age in 2019), though I hadn't had much interest in watching the film. Now having seen some longer clips during my workout, I clearly made the right decision. Things that were pretty far-fetched in the novel (but "symbolic") become outright ridiculous when made so literal in the film. I liked the novel well enough when I read it a while back, though I suspect I wouldn't care as much for it the second time around. I'm not actually sure whether to pair my reactions to this novel to The Namesake (where the film version was decent enough but eliminated all the complicated games with time in the novel) or Midnight's Children (where I thought the film made a few things too literal but was fairly faithful to the novel). I know that I did not like Midnight's Children nearly as much on a second reading, so maybe that is the appropriate pairing.
I'm not entirely sure what is wrong with me these days, though probably I am a bit too pressed for time and generally a bit more down on the human race in general than I was in my twenties, but there have been quite a few novels that I didn't enjoy as much (or much at all) on second readings. This includes Kafka's The Castle (The Trial still worked for me, however), Madison Smartt Bell's Waiting for the End of the World, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (where I found it quite terrible and actually unreadable on a second reading) and, most recently, Powers' Morte d'Urban. Perhaps not all is lost: I did enjoy DeLillo's White Noise the second time around (though even there slightly less than the first time through), MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night and Slesinger's The Unpossessed (in fact, I probably did get more out of the second reading, which is always what one hopes to achieve).
Minor SPOILERS ahead
My specific problem with Waiting for the End of the World is that one of the novel's anti-heroes turns on his compadres and foils a plot involving setting off a dirty (atomic) bomb in Manhattan. It's not that one really wants the plot to succeed (sort of a precursor to Ozymandias's mad plans in Alan Moore's Watchmen), but there is no good reason for this character to have suddenly broken ranks and "seen the light" as it were. It's basically a cheat after the author realized he had painted himself into a corner and didn't actually want the plot to succeed. The closest analog I can think of is the movie (and play) Rope. I may already have mentioned it in the blog, but I loathe everything about this film and Saboteur for that matter. Even if I do get around to going through Hitchcock's film in order, I am going to skip these two.
The bigger mystery might be why I liked Morte d'Urban so much in the first place. It's a novel about a Catholic priest who moves in fairly high circles in Chicago but then is banished to rural Minnesota. He largely learns the lesson of humility in this more modest parish, then returns to Chicago. At least this is a very superficial gloss. While Father Urban never openly rebels against the Church hierarchy, it is clear that he feels he is being wasted in Minnesota and still feels that way at the end of his time there. However, he undergoes some serious misadventures in Minnesota and a health scare, and this more than anything else humbles and changes him. The ending is fairly downbeat, all things considered. As an aside, I am sorry to report that I think interested readers should skip the NYRB edition of this novel. Not only is the cover completely misrepresentative of the novel, but the introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick is very poor. It gives away far too many plot points. In addition, I'm fairly sure that she gets a few points factually incorrect (about the aftermath of Billy's falling out with Father Urban), and her interpretation is suspect in a few other places. With all that said, I didn't really dislike the novel on the second time through but I was more impatient with Father Urban's puffed up view of himself, which lasts nearly 2/3rd of the novel. He probably never should have joined the Church in the first place, and his fever-dream of being an important business executive seems much more appropriate for a person of his talents and outlook. I also found it really hard to read any sections where Billy turns up, as he is such a jerk (and Father Urban really was quite weak in trying to suck up to him to get money for his order). As a second aside, the novel pretty much all hinges upon Billy grabbing a deer by the antlers and trying to drown it in a lake (while sitting in a boat no less) and then Father Urban's actions and Billy's further reactions. I'm sorry -- this just seems so completely implausible at every level that it does undermine the novel. The sheer physics make it impossible. Nonetheless, perhaps if I didn't have such high expectations, I would have enjoyed it more this time around. I can't see reading it a third time, so I put it out in the Little Free Library.
The last pairing I will discuss is Robert Stone's A Hall of Mirrors, which is about an alcoholic musician who washes up in New Orleans and starts working for a right-wing radio station. He takes up with a young widow, who is also a bit of a drifter. I haven't gotten that far into it to be honest. There seem to be a few parallels with Rabbit Redux (the general craziness of the 60s lies heavy on both novels), though structurally this reminds me a bit of Murakami's 1Q84 with the alternating chapters featuring the two main characters. Goodreads reviewers say a third character pops up, but I don't know if he will get his own running set of chapters or not.
Edit (8/5) There was a really interesting passage about a soap factory (operated by convicts and people from halfway houses and shelters as part of the shadow economy) that seemed somewhat related to Ellison's Invisible Man. I'm not sure if we will be returning to this setting now that Rheinhardt has landed his job at the radio station, but it was a neat set piece. The third main character (Rainey) has turned up and does have his own chapters. At least for now he is conducting some kind of survey of welfare recipients. (I wouldn't at all be surprised if this is paid for by Mr. Bingamon who owns the soap factory and the radio station.) This brings up some uncomfortable parallels with the super obscure late 60s novel, The Bag by Sol Yurick, which focuses on how the welfare state is designed to keep African-Americans in poverty. Perhaps ultimately the most appropriate pairing is A Hall of Mirrors and The Bag. (I had no idea that A Hall of Mirrors was made into a film, WUSA. While two of Yurick's novels in his 60s trilogy were made into movies (The Warriors and The Confession), The Bag has not been and is likely unfilmable, at least if the director stayed true to the source material.)
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