Another book for my Early American Novel class, Pointed Firs is a regionalist story set on the coast of Maine. It’s interesting for two reasons, but since the first would take too long to explain, I’ll just stick to the second: nothing happens in this book.
Every writing teacher since the dawn of writing workshops has harped on conflict. Conflict reveals character, they say, gives the reader a chance to understand who these people are. Conflict is exciting, be it a fist fight or an argument, it absorbs the attention. And conflict moves the plot along, one resolution leading to another until you get to the end. Since Pointed Firs is devoid of any conflict, it neither reveals, excites, or moves. It’s just a lump of text on a page about some trees in Maine.
But that’s just my opinion. General critical opinion holds that The Country of the Pointed Firs is a feminist masterwork, and this lack of conflict that I despise actually reflects the feminine construction of the book and reveals my prejudices as a male reader, always obsessed with forward motion and action and interest. You see, Freytag’s pyramid is not the model of the book, which rather employs the more womanly “O”. It starts and ends nowhere. At which point I have to wave the flag and say that while this book might be interesting academically, it’s not even close personally.
2 responses so far ↓
zhiv // November 10, 2008 at 9:13 pm |
What’s the first reason?
Firs definitely takes some getting used to. Not a lot of conflict in a lot of classic modern novels, or story either: To The Lighthouse, Proust, etc. Firs is proto-modernism (like a Chagall), notable for its lack of conflict. You might want to try A Country Doctor for a more standard plot. But just let Firs sit for a decade or two and maybe come back to it.
Revolutionary Road is the way to go–will be hunting around here to read about more favorites–and there’s plenty of other Yates that you’d like, although RevRoad is the stunner and the champ.
Erik // November 11, 2008 at 2:17 am |
zhiv – The first reason is the backlash against the Romantics and guys like Melville. I detected this in the handling of the seafarers in the books, Cap. Littlepage and Elijah.
Littlepage relates this fantastic story of a voyage up north, to the “waiting-place between this world an’ the next.” After he finishes, the narrator, who was never that interested to begin with, “saw, as I turned a little, that his eyes were fixed upon the northernmost regions [of a map of North America] and their careful recent outlines with a look of bewilderment.”
It’s a subtle but marvelous detail, I think – all of Littlepage’s magic and wonder on the high seas can’t exist anymore in this world where everything’s been mapped.
This also fed into my idea that The Country of the Pointed Firs mourns the closing of the frontier. You wouldn’t expect it, since Maine was at this point about as far as the frontier as you could get, but throughout the book you can see nods to this idea. First off, it’s a book depressed about it’s own future, reflecting some of the panic Americans felt when the census proclaimed the frontier (and the individualism, opportunity, and hope that it offered) dead. Notice how the characters talk about the aboriginal indians, now gone or much diminished from their mythic stature, leaving only the mysterious Shellheap Island for the whites to ponder.
They’re all fixated on the past, swapping stories about women like Joanna because their present is moribund, filled with misty-eyed old sailors like Elijah, bereaved and useless.
So yeah, that’s my long-winded explanation of my interest in the book.
Thanks for your comment and the tip about Yates. I’m almost afraid to read another of his works. Since I liked the first so much, I’m probably bound for disappointment.