Book Report

It's been near twenty years since the last time I felt that I needed to do a book report. However, just recently a reader of this blog thought I should read a book, and sent it to me. Under those circumstances what can one do except read and report?

The book in question is entitled Tinkers, a first novel from Paul Harding, the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.

The first thing to understand about this book is that it is an attempt at high art. This book is not aimed at the common denominator, but rather it is aimed at those who consider themselves experts, connoisseurs of literature. This book is about the artistic use of words. That is the primary objective and any reading of the book must start from this understanding.

Usually a report on a book would give some idea of protagonist, character and plot. This is largely missing the point with Tinkers, the book contains moments from the lives of three generations of men, from the childhood of the oldest to the death of the youngest. The time frame skips around, perhaps justified from the fading abilities of the dying man that is the core of the book, so that place and people can easily become confusing. If you require fully developed plot and a story, this book is not for you.

It is a little difficult to say what the book is good at because it doesn't aim for conventional results. The book produces a mood, a dreamy sense that is yet remarkably consonant with the feeling one has (or at least I have) with the experience of memories. I have never read a book that was so faithful to the proximate feeling of remembering. The book does this by a combination of extreme depth of description of certain aspects of a scene with an extreme lack of narrative detail. When we remember we remember the senses and the mood, only later does the narrative of where we were and what we were doing come in. The book goes straight to the heart of what it is to remember.

If I were to say what the book reminded me of in terms of other writers I would say Gabriel Garcia Marquez in terms of form, and Herman Hesse at his most esoteric in terms of style.

The book has a commentary about what life is about, conveniently encapsulated in a single sentence on page 72.

Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in the world, it is all that we have, that it is ours but it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing, isn't it? And as you split frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God's will and Hid grace towards you and that is beautiful, and part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home. And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted by the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it. And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: you will be dead and buried soon enough.

The book is rather more poetry than novel, and a very modern form of poetry at that. You can see in the above paragraph that the "rules" of grammar and "good writing" are deliberately flouted. There are insertions of purported other books within the novel (perhaps a tribute to Moby Dick?) and these demonstrate quite clearly the author's ability to write conventionally. The unconventional nature of the writing is clearly deliberate. If you enjoy modern poetry of this nature, without rhyme, meter, or form, this book may well appeal to you simply for this aspect.

There is a simple metaphor for life in this work, that of clocks. This seemed contrived, which is odd for such a conventional metaphor. I think the book would have been better without it.

I would recommend this book to those interested in literature for the sake of literature, for poets who are poets for the love of words rather than for the emotions they provoke, for those who have never thought about how we think or what life is about, and for those who wish to have read a recent Pulitzer Prize winner in order to be able to sound clever at dinner parties.

I would not recommend this book for those who wish to feel something deeply from a book, or who want conventional plot and character, or for anyone who doesn't like loose ends.

For those who like this book I would recommend the writings of Herman Hesse's, particularly Journey to the East, which will hopefully lead you to Siddhartha.