We help you get
closer to your customers.
This site is best viewed with Flash 8 plug-in or higher.
If you don’t have the Flash player installed, you can still see most things on the site.
But you’re just going to miss seeing the really good stuff.
-
Book Review: Another Simple(ton) Story
February 3, 2008By Alan CohenIn Sandra Kring’s debut novel Carry Me Home, we once again encounter the literary device of a story told from the view of a mentally handicapped narrator, or “simpleton”, as the character is called in this novel. Why, why, why can’t writers stop doing this?
The earliest use of this literary device that I have come across is William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and in my opinion, no one else needed to try to improve on his approach.
Faulkner did a nice job (I’m sure everyone has been waiting for my approval) even though I needed Cliffs Notes to understand what I was reading. C’mon, growing up on the mean streets of St. Louis , I didn’t have the opportunity for a teacher to hold my hand through this book in Advanced Placement English in high school, like you did.
Anyway, back to Kring’s book. The protagonist is Earl “Earwig” Gunderman, a teen who is left somewhat mentally impaired after a childhood illness. He is growing up quickly in 1940s Wisconsin, having to deal with his parents marital troubles and his older brother Jimmy leaving for war and coming back a changed man years later.
I enjoyed this book because the characters were engaging and it gave insight into how families of soldiers might deal with war. I also liked that the momentum of the story was very strong.
I hated this book because it made me enjoy it even though it used a tired literary device that wasn’t needed. Furthermore, the use of the device was poorly executed because the author wasn’t consistent in the levels of intelligence and emotion of which Earwig was capable. I suppose nobody has intelligence or emotion in consistent levels, but Kring never achieved the believability of Earwig: I felt like his mental state was used only to add humor, which is more than a little insensitive. And being such a politically correct guy, you can only imagine my self-righteous anger.
As you can see, I’m conflicted. It’s kind of like when you’re at Panda Express and what you really want is candied meats in the form of, say, Orange Chicken wih chow mein, but you know you should get the Tofu with Vegetables and steamed rice.
In finality, I’d just like to say to talented and untalented writers everywhere: “Please don’t use write a story told from the view of a mentally handicapped person unless that is really essential to the story you are trying to tell. Instead, why don’t you try something original like writing a memoir about your transient childhood and impending drug-riddled adulthood caused by your under-attentive parents who were busy taking drugs, rebelling, etc. in the 1960s?” Oh wait, that’s been done about 10,000 times in the last five years. If I provided a link here to all those books, the internets would oxidize and explode.
OK, I’ll take my anti-rage pill now. Talk to you soon.
Copyright ©2008 closerlook, inc.