Sounds like a wonderful generous work, a very modern meditation. Thanks to Ellmann for trying to wrap her words around it all. It would take an exploratory unconventional style to capture something of it so I don't hold that against her.
I don't know what "impact" literature has any more. Though I do think writing like Ellmann's has a unique value. It encourages people to consider and honor the ebb and flow of their private interiority, as it intersects the circle of their important relationships, with more compassion for themselves and each other... and as our small selves butt up against the dark particulars of this wider modern world we've made, some words can help us name and navigate our condition, and so, be more present in our own lives as an antidote to that darkness. Ellmann seems to be constructing a literary psychology of hope, if hope is a kind of devotion to our unfolding selves (and vice versa) and each other.
That Ellmann seats an ordinary happiness at the center of the centripetal entropy she seems to be documenting is both appropriate and wise, heartening, and a welcome departure from much writing today. I appreciate her boldness. Don't we need more of that?
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Reverberations of "Miss MacIntosh, My Darling." (Sans the opium addict's paradise?)
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@John Wark: Yesterday I finished reading "Miss MacIntosh." When I checked it out of the library (no protective plastic covering, a tattered dust jacket, an old library card in the back with a date-stamp from the early 1970s), the librarian held the weighty book in her hands, looking from it to me and back again in seeming confusion. When I asked if anything was wrong, she replied, "I'm just trying to process this."
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I just finished "Infinite Jest" after three months. There's no way I'm reading this book now.
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@John from Watertown, MA
Hi John, Exactly what I was thinking. I have started Jest on three different occasions and have yet to finish. I need this new book like I need a hole in my head. I will now reread Confederacy of Dunces. Why torture myself?
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Ellmann's novel sounds very good, but a thousand pages seems too much of a good thing.
Reminds one of "Finnegan's Wake": very interesting, but nigh impossible to consume all of it. (I finally had to throw in the towel.)
"In all things, moderation."
-- Aristotelian guideline
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@Jim Muncy Including moderation.
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The novel "DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT" --- could it be the 21st century equivalent of James Joyce's "Ulysses"?
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@Wes I hope so, but...
The fact that it's about a middle-aged woman, a mother to boot. The author is a woman. The fact that there is no way a novel like this will ever be taken as seriously as one with a male protagonist and male author. The fact that men's lives in fiction are deemed to be universal; women's lives are deemed to be specific and trivial, especially when they are mothers and carers. The fact that Virginia Woolf wrote about this 90 years ago, and it is still true today.
The fact that it's visible in the simple phrase ''woman writer''. Have you ever heard the phrase ''man writer''? It sounds absolutely ridiculous, and it hints at heavily gendered ideas of literary prowess.
The fact that newspapers mostly review male authors' books (most of their review staff is male). Literary prizes are overwhelmingly given to men. Male authors dominate reading lists in high schools all over the world.
The fact that this is not a question of actual talent, but a question of perceived talent. Reviews, prizes, and reading lists are subjectively chosen. Our perceptions (whatever our gender) are informed by the world around us.
The fact that meritocracy in a patriarchal society is an illusion.
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I would read this but I have an aversion to sentences that just go on and on for no reason because I believe that books should just have a story to tell that's interesting and believable within the context of the setting of the story (which would include mysteries and science fiction) without the ridiculous stylistic hoo ha that is a barrier between the author and the reader much like a badly wrought stained glass window that has no appeal of its own but merely blocks the view of the beautiful landscape outdoors instead of clear glass which by the way was a lot more difficult to manufacture in the old days so was cherished more than stained glass thus giving evidence to my thesis that putting style before substance or more properly in this case letting the style interfere with whatever substance there is tends to be a bad idea unless you are a PhD in English literature and enjoy test that is written as experiments rather than as an enjoyable stories.
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@SS
Ditto visual art.
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@SS Beautifully written sentence!
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If the average teenager checked their phone 2,000 times a day, they would literally have to check it every minute of every day. Actually, if you do the math it's about every 43 seconds.
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@Randeep Chauhan I believe this is accurate
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Thank you.
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I cannot wait to read this. I am so under-read, it's embarrassing.
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As we would say in Newburyport, “Yeat!”
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