Frightening books
September 8, 2007, 11:08 am
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Larry Cunningham posted below on abandoning books unworthy of reading. There, Barbara mentions books that are difficult but finally worth finishing. She mentions Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders.
So the question: books so painful to read that they can only be read a page or so at a time. My candidate from recent reading: Gilead by Marilyn Robinson. Others?
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion.
Good morning, Ms. Steinfels.
Interesting question. I can’t think of a book that has frightened me, but movies are a different matter. I wonder why. Maybe it’s because we can’t control movies (they’re like dreams), but we can control books — shut them, as you say, and lay them aside. That gives us a false sense of security,
Hmmm . . . Now which books *should* have frightened me, but didn’t? Well, there was “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson.
“Be Near Me” by Andrew O’Hagan. I knew what was going to happen, but hoped nonetheless that it wouldn’t.
Of course, if it hadn’t then the book would not have been written, so ….
Obviously Melville is the kind of author one is “supposed to” read, and I got through Bartleby the Scrivener approximately 12 years after it was assigned in school.
Anyways, I’ve been reading Moby Dick for like a year now. Haven’t gotten to the part about the whale yet. This is the one about the whale, right?
As I skim the NYT Book Review each week, especially the reviews of fiction, I am inclined to wonder why any one bothers to read any of the books that are reviewed. So little time, so much Dreck.
Ms. Olivier,
Perhaps Silent Spring should not have frightened you after all. I understand that it was largely a work fiction.
For my husband it would be The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang.
I can’t even bear to open it myself.
I’ll hope you’ll allow a bit of a humorous aside:
This question reminds me of the episode of “Friends” when Joey is trying to read “The Shining.” He’s not making quick progress, because every time he get’s to a scary part, he jumps up and throws the book in the freezer!
One slow read for me was Cormac McCarthy’s “The Crossing,” with its weighty subject matter and his challenging writing style–you really have to pay attention.
And, indeed, almost anything by Henry James must be digested slowly, because almost every word is packed with meaning, and his novels are often peopled by at least one or two characters who simply seem to enjoy manipulating the lives of others–e.g. “The Wings of the Dove” or “The Portrait of a Lady.”
The last two books by T.C. Boyle books I’ve read have been chilling, if not scary. “Drop City” and (worse) “The Inner Circle.”
I wanted to give up on “The Road” several times.
Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things.” Yes, it won a Booker Prize, but try as I might, I just couldn’t sustain interest.
I actually enjoyed Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead,” though it’s true that the book’s format and structure forces the reader, I think by intentional design, to slow to the narrator’s pace (an aged, Midwestern preacher composing a long letter to his son as the preacher’s health is deteriorating).
Gilead: you may be right, the author intends us to read slowly. But I was also filled with a dark sense of forboding: something terrible was going to happen–to his young son or to his wife. And, of course, he keeps reminding us that he is in failing health. And then there is the pain of watching such a man scrutinize himself so closely and to lay out so baldly his sins–usually of hesitation.
Henry James: I finally was able to read Portrait of a Lady through at about the age of thirty, though I first cracked it open at nineteen. It took me that long to understand something was happening! Fright did not keep me from reading James (unless it was fright of boredom), but inexperience.
“The House of Sand and Fog,” Andre Dubus. As someone else suggested above, I knew (or was pretty sure) what was coming, and dreaded it. At the same time, the story was inescapable.
Hint on reading Melville’s “Moby Dick”: Skip the boring parts. There are a lot of digressions (how a harpoon boat works, how to squeeze ambergris, types of whales, etc.) that you won’t miss much of the main whale/Ahab plot.
Then go back and read it again and pick up the digressions, which I have come to love for themselves.
I think I’ve been through “MB” about five times. It is a work of genius.
I came to Henry James in my 30s. I don’t think he makes a lot of sense until you realize what horrors people can be. His particular, almost fussy, style delineates the worst travesties of human behavior like nobody else, not even Edith Wharton.
I particularly like “The Spoils of Poynton,” the story of a woman and her knick-knacks.
I enjoyed Colm Toibin’s fictional James biography, “The Master.”
God of Small Things: I zipped through so fast I couldn’t remember it. Yesterday afternoon I picked it up to look again at B & N. Weird but not frightening.
House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus, III, son of II, another zip through. Not yet the writer his father was.
No surpise, group! We do not dread the same things
Thanks, Jean. I’ll give it a try!