A Mercy v. My Revolutions
presented by
ROUND 2, MATCH 4
A Mercy
v. My Revolutions
Judged by John Hodgman
John Hodgman is the author of The Areas of My Expertise and More Information Than You Require. His writings have appeared in the Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, Wired, and the New York Times Magazine. He is also a contributor to This American Life and an occasional commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Known connections to this year’s contenders: I am a Dutton author for hardcover and Riverhead for paperback. I believe that Kunzru is a Dutton/Plume author, but I do not know who his editor is there. Mine is Brian Tart. At Riverhead, my editor is someone called “Sean McDonald.” I know Hemon works with him of course, and perhaps others, but none on the list I know of.
I am going to be really honest with you, Internet, and confess: Before this contest, I had never read a word of Toni Morrison.
I realize it does not make sense. I went to college in the early ‘90s, when they were basically printing Beloved on the table tents in the dining halls in order to get you to read it.
I don’t quite know how I missed out, and by the time I was done with college I was working at a literary agency reading only unpublished novels—typically mean, joyless thrillers by lawyers who hated themselves, and/or 1,000-page-long imitation-beat novels, sent in banker’s boxes, wrapped up in duct tape, followed by threats. Enough of these, and you begin to distrust all novels, even the published kind. They all start feel a little wheedling, a little like a long con. A 200-page-plus letter from a usually deranged person who demands to be taken seriously and does not care about your time. It’s a sad attitude to have, but one that’s difficult to shake once it grabs you. And so there are holes in my literary education, one shaped just like Toni Morrison, and that’s what made this small internet contest suddenly a kind of reckoning.
And that’s why I read the Hanri Kunzru first. First, I don’t have to apologize for not having read him. He is younger and un-Nobel-ed, plus My Revolutions is wrapped around a boiling pot of a plot: a nice, prosperous, aged British hippie named Michael Frame turns out to have had a previous life as a William Ayers-like domestic terrorist. (In fact, the book is blurbed by Ayers, though it’s unclear whether this was before or after his demonization last fall. But I love how the quote just hisses there like a little bomb, beneath Time Out New York’s review and above The Evening Standard.)
The book begins with Frame realizing the gig is up (an old colleague from the bomb-making days invites him to lunch at the Soho Club); his current happy life begins to unravel, as his past gets conjured before him. And it is a sort of magic act, Kunzru’s virtuosic unveiling of radical London in the ‘60s, his detailed depiction of life in squats, his incredible knowledge of the various factions of leftist thought, their charismatic and loathsome and sexy leaders, and Frame’s plausible, awful transformation from long-haired leafleteer into a shaven-headed terrorist. It’s uncanny—it would be completely convincing as a hoax autobiography. And Kunzru reveals the hidden cards of his plot so deftly the book has motion even when nothing is really happening. And the truth is, it turns out nothing happens a fair amount in the book, especially at the end. Which would have been more of a problem had I not enjoyed it so much.
A novel is always a strange decision. It’s such a demanding, time-consuming way to tell a story, and few stories really earn the length or need it. The opera folk know how to keep people in the seats for hours for what amounts to a pretty basic revenge tale: give them lots of songs and scenery. Be generous enough to provide pleasure. Granted, my novel-reading experience is more traumatic than most, but it seems so many novelists forget this simple principle that I’m willing to forgive Kunzru almost anything for remembering it, for giving us some stemwinding scenarios and purely stunning literary word arias, even if the ending is kind of a dud. I was sure he was going to win.
Then it was time to read Toni Morrison’s A Mercy. It was everything I worry a serious novel will be. Somber and important. Meditative and evocative and poetic. The stuff back cover quotes are made of, but not necessarily a fun read. It is a short book, but big not only in its byline, but also in its subject: how slavery corrodes the lives of a 17th-century American homesteader, his wife, and the three indentured women whom he keeps but never fully admits he owns. What thin story there is exists only so that each character may illuminate every corner of sorrow in this arrangement. It is everything I worried it would be, and it is amazing.
One thing a novel can do better than almost anything else is to get inside a human’s head. That’s why there are so many bad stream-of-consciousness novels, and a few really good ones.
Like Kunzru, Morrison here summons a painful past so fully it is almost overwhelming. But rather than live within one person’s head, she possesses half a dozen with heartbreaking, intimate authenticity: African-born, English-born, half-Dutch, amnesiac, slave and free—Morrison alternates easily through all of their voices, from the slave Florens’s unmediated, unpunctuated first person to her master’s callously proper third. He’s casual in his sense of privileged destiny that he undertakes to build a grand, doomed mansion in the middle of the wilderness. It is as pointless and vainglorious and evil a construction as slavery itself, and it kills him, and undoes his family. Soon, his wife falls to smallpox, and Florens is sent into the wilderness to find the blacksmith who (maybe) can cure her—a free African whom Florens adores so much, every word she speaks in the novel is addressed to him.
To say Morrison made each narrator a fully realized character is a cliche. But through empathy, research, and sheer chops, she makes them human, and underscores the hardness of a time when so few of them would have been considered as such. Sure there isn’t much plot, but what movie could show what Florens feels when, lost in the wilderness, she is stripped and examined by the elders of a neighboring town, her dark skin so alien they think she is a demon? Sure, it’s not always fun to read, and I found Kunzru easier to turn back to. But in a way a short story can’t, the slow accumulation of these sad stories has a cathartic gravity. And unlike Kunzru, Morrison sticks the landing. She also wrote one of the most lovely lines I’ve ever read, as Florens gazes at the blacksmith, instantly smitten, though he does not yet know she exists: “Before you know I am in the world, I am already kill by you.”
So given that they’re both great books, does Morrison win on points? I guess so. But she also wins because, unlike many other novels I’ve had to read in the past, it can’t be anything else. It needs to be.
Advancing:
A Mercy
Match Commentary
with Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner
John: I’m glad to see that John Hodgman reminded everyone that before he became better known as a tactless neurosurgeon on Battlestar Galactica he was indeed a literary agent, and a good one at that. I have a distinct memory of him talking you and I off a ledge over some contract issues we were having over My First Presidentiary. (An uncompensated favor to two internet acquaintances no less.)
Hodgman illustrates another of our reoccurring themes in judging books that our transparency makes apparent, the weight of expectations.
With a couple of weeks of hindsight, as I look down the initial tournament list and reflect on my reading experiences, I see how significantly expectations have affected my responses. With Netherland, I’m certain my comments are overly judgmental, mostly because I was all-too-aware of the critical hype (and the locus of said hype) for the book. I think I initially put it towards the bottom on my personal rankings, but if pressed, I would’ve chosen it over the books it was matched up against in each of its first two rounds.
For The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, I entered with literally no expectations one way or another. Freed from prejudice, the book was allowed to soar on its own terms. I can’t say I was surprised because I wasn’t measuring it against anything, but I was, for sure, delighted.
2666 I had mixed feelings over. On the one hand, I tend to like the somewhat messy and maximalist (Pynchon, Foster Wallace). On the other, it’s just really fucking long. After I read the first 30 pages I told a friend that I thought it was going to be really good and interesting. I was intrigued by the deadpan tone and the oddness of the story, and the mysterious setup regarding Archimboldi. But after another 60 pages I already found myself ground down and defeated by the book. It became impossible for me to see any virtues because all I could think was how bored I was and how far there was to go. Reading out of duty isn’t going to get anyone anywhere and surely caused me to pile up more than my share of resentment.
To bring this thinking around to the current match-up, my initial take on A Mercy was much cooler than it is today. In my personal rankings I had it third from the bottom. In my comment on its first round contest, I called it, “Morrison reduced calorie.” I’m sure some of that was disappointment over my buddy’s book going down to defeat, but primarily it was me comparing the book against the best of what Morrison had done in the past. A Mercy never had a chance against the weight of those expectations. Now, I tend to think of it as “Morrison concentrate” instead. Add water and you get Beloved.
Here and there in the comments or blog postings about the tournament I’ve read people saying that thanks to what the judges and/or we have to say they’ve been induced to give a book a shot (City of Refuge) or not (2666). While on the one hand I love the thought that my opinions carry so much influence, the truth is that all our opinions have done is allowed someone to confirm their previous judgment and expectation and in some ways, I think that’s a shame.
I’m not saying people should stop commenting on books. It’s the opposite; the more the merrier. I am saying, however, that in the end, you shouldn’t necessarily listen to anyone but yourself.
Kevin: You and I and John Hodgman have known each other about 10 years now, since we were all writing for McSweeney’s in the days of the comparatively benign internet bubble. John H. did me another solid after I finished Cast of Shadows and as a result he is possibly the only person outside my family who was thanked in the acknowledgments of both my books, even though I don’t think we’ve actually ever been in the same room together (the fact that, when his BSG episode aired, I was watching at home dressed very convincingly as a Six doesn’t count).
As you and Hodgman both point out, A Mercy is a much better book after you’ve read it. It’s not a lot of fun while you’re in the thick of it, although Morrison’s prose contains many moments of pleasure. Still there’s hardly a paragraph of it that’s forgettable. When John mentions the scenes of Florens lost in the woods or her humiliation in front of the town leaders, I not only remember them I remember the sensation of reading them. I don’t just remember the “I am already kill by you” quote, I remember the twinge in my gut when I read it.
John Hodgman says A Mercy advances. So say we all.
My Revolutions isn’t able to crack the top four in the Zombie results, but since we’re at the end of Round Two let’s shake things up again. As we head into the pre-Zombie semifinals, we’re going to eliminate two more of the contenders and see what would happen if the Zombie Round were held today.
There could still be a reshuffling depending on which novels lose the next two matches, but as of right now the top two books in Zombie voting among those that have already been eliminated are (in alphabetical order):
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
The Lazarus Project
Reader comments
On March 25, 2009 at 5:02 PM Kim said…
While I enjoyed all the reviews of the ToB, especially the first review and it's basketball structure, as I was reading this review I thought it was the best written thus far. Thank you John!
I decided before the ToB to read "Mercy" and it's nice to have my decision affirmed. Friends who've read it believe it is best experienced in one sitting and not to read it too fast.
So this year ToB has a celebrity judge in John Hodgman! And the new literary celebrity Junot Diaz, last year's ToB Rooster winner. Has the tournament sold out?
No, I don't think so -- quite the opposite...
Knowing something about the judge, for me, has a real impact on how I evaluate his or her decision on a match. Last year the only judge I knew was Nick Hornby, author of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" -- both made into films. I liked Hornby's books very much and was prepared to be heavily swayed by his decision.
The fact that Hornby picked Junot's "Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" in that match -- which became the eventual 2008 Rooster winner could be cited as evidence that he was a good judge. But, in fact, it was the clarity of his writing, the reasons he gave for selecting it, which really helped me decide book was best. But then I read them and made my own decision...
So what's to be made of John Hodgman and his decision this year? I've seen him in "Battlestar Galatica" and on "The Daily Show" -- and, like everyone else in the universe -- as "a PC" on those Mac computer ads. No one mentioned the Mac ads... Was that because Hodgman played the bad guy, always complaining, always suffering, reliable for making bad judgments in every one? (And he was brilliant doing it!)
Now, of course, MicroSoft has retaliated with its own "I'm a PC" ads featuring near-infants and children ranging up to the distinguished age of 9 all using PCs with ease, saving the world for Windows' consumers. What's Hodgman got to say about that? (Actually, I'd really like to know, since he's a real blast as a comic!)
So the truth is: we have a comedian as a judge for this contest between Morrison and Kunzru. And since I like comedy so much, once more I'm prepared to be heavily swayed by this judge's decision.
And as it did last year, it turned out to be the reasoned argument of the judge which carried the most weight -- not my favorable bias toward the person. Hurray for good writing!
Hodgman wrote one of the clearest yet judgments in this year's tournament. He eschews basketball or sports metaphors (very wise) and dives right into the heart of the matter -- what are the merits of each work? I haven't read much of either Morrison or Kunzru except for a couple of short stories. Hodgman's writing makes me more interested and more willing to read both novels -- and left me feeling that his choice of winner was just. Bravo, John!
Previously I'd been mostly disappointed with the quality of the judges' reasoning and writing. Now my faith in the ToB has been restored.
Looking ahead....
As the Zombie Round approaches, I'm a bit disappointed that "The Dart League King" isn't one of the zombies ... since both commentators Guilfoile and Warner were so taken with it. And I read a chapter of "Dart League" online and it impressed me quite favorably...