On the Importance of Character

not mine, I'm talking here about book characters. And I'll begin with a confession. I loved being an English major, but it changed the way I read. I think the chore of always thinking about texts theoretically will do that to anyone. If you are/were an English major and you escaped this joyful and nasty tendency, congratulations to you! I, on the other hand, am still torn when I read a book that engages me on a purely emotional level and doesn't really have much to offer stylistically, theoretically, whatever-ly. I feel guilty, like I ought not be wasting my time. I feel led by the nose when texts are too obvious, like those movies we can conjure the ending to after ten minutes of viewing.

Years ago I read Elizabeth Berg's Talk Before Sleep. I loved the characters, how they invested so much emotion in the situation at hand. The book is about how a group of women who really don't know each other come together to support a mutual friend who is dying of cancer. Berg takes her reader through all kinds of surprising emotional developments, and in the end we're stunned at the book's outcome right along with Berg's characters, even though we all knew from the start what that outcome would be. I read Berg's second novel and was disappointed. So Elizabeth Berg and I parted ways.

It seemed like in graduate school we weren't supposed to love characters; ironic, I think because engagement with texts was probably why we'd become English majors in the first place. Don't get me wrong: I love a good debate, but I love a good book even more, and it seems to me that all that theory has a corrupting effect. I read with either a literal or figurative pen in hand, always thinking, thinking too much.

Over the summer I picked up Berg's Open House at the Clinton Village Book Sale, an annual event that is quite surreal in nature because true shite is lined up on tables next to true gems. I eyed the Oprah seal of approval warily (to say the least) and, half-ashamed, bought it anyway. Now that my pain level has decreased and I can actually read, it's on my bedside table because it's the book that I can pay some attention to, and it's the book whose intricacy won't stimulate the way too analytical part of my still befuddled brain. Why?

Because I love the main character. Maybe when I get my more sophisticated brain back I'll only focus on how formulaic the book is, but for now I'm going on a roller coaster with Samantha that is giving me opportunity to identify with her, to compare and contrast my experience with hers. That's what books can do, right? That's why we love them, yes? Well, maybe not, but that's why I love them. Good characters are thrown for a loop and they either sink or swim (hey two cliches in one sentence)! Is Jude Fawley better written than Berg's Samantha? Yes, definitely, yes for a hundred reasons no one wants to hear me rhapsodize about right now. Will there be a Little Father Time moment in Open House, one that shocks me and makes me think for days? No, I think not. But Jude and Samantha share one thing that makes them equally good characters; they're making due with what they have and what they have is stunningly sad and unfair, to them.

My natural inclination when faced with adversity is to read true crime books, but I think I decided that was just a little too prurient right now, and who knows what impact it might have on my juror objectivity. So Open House is my mac and cheese, my ramen, something that'll get me through until I can take on a book that seductively demands more attention. It's somewhere between eating dog food and eating the best steak on the menu. How unscholarly of me!

What do you read? What do you read for? What's it do for you? Good things, I hope.
Happy Saturday.
To all of you who are grading papers, believe me I feel you pain.