The Green Man: Stories vs. novels

The word "novel", says Reality Hunger author David Shields, is related to the word "new". Similarly "essay" relates to the French word for "try". It is fitting that a genre of wordsmithing should be one of the most experimental media (House of Leaves, The Road, and those are only the more mainstream). Yet The Green Man, by British author Kingsley Attis, attempts to be more than a novel. It intends to be a story.

I'm jaded. Two of my last three novels have not aimed for standard build and climax of narrative. Fine, different, experimental, but less escapist. Gulliver's Travels was political satire in disguise, and may as well have been called Four Shipwrecks and a Soapbox. Meanwhile, One Hundred Years of Solitude meandered and repeated itself. Neither was bad - indeed, both were well-written. But not what I was looking for, so ultimately boring.

But whereas Solitude and Travels were at base words, The Green Man starts with no such assumptions. We open on the owner of an English pub, and we're treated to the unfailing British hardworking minutiae so beloved in the Harry Potter series. But soon things take a turn for the creepy and The Green Man becomes a ghost story - one of those sit-around-the-campfire tales, most thrilling when read aloud. Simple, but effective. Stephen King (author of Carrie, the only other novel I read this summer and truly loved) says the most primal and effective emotion is to horrify. In that sense, The Green Man never really had to work hard to be fun.

Yet it does. First, we are lulled into a sense of calm. Even after ghosts begin appearing, our protagonist and narrator lives a normal life. We, and others around him, chalk up his visions to his alcoholism. Meanwhile, he tries to get a three-way set up between himself, his wife, and his mistress. This ends poorly, isolating him just as his family is isolated from him.

But then the author plays two major cards that give the story its power, and raise it - not demote it - to the rank of novel. First, he kills the narrator's father. Suddenly all - isolation, alcoholism, orgies, visions - are cast under the shadow of death. I said that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a 2.5-hour slog because everyone always ruminated on death, and I stand by that. Here, it's appropriate. Having a debilitating illness himself, having seen his father die and spirits rise from the grave, the narrator goes on a quest for the nature of the afterlife. But not right away, and not without pauses and pacing. Death comes slowly but surely.

Pacing is parcel of Kingsley Attis's other card: the spirits. There are around ten major visions, and each related pair is given a separate section. The visions begin rather innocuously, and similar to most ghost stories - a view of a woman here, mysterious footsteps there. But as the mystery of their presence deepens and our narrator begins to investigate their reason for being, the visions take a turn for the strange. Time stops and reverses itself, a terrible creature emerges, and evidence of dark magic surfaces. The spirits surprise and delight with every twist and turn. Even the most implausible - the Young Man of section four - is handled with British charm and wit enough to dispel any qualms I had with his summoning.

Themes, philosophical discussion, historical research, and the visions themselves escalate towards a satisfying yet heartbreaking conclusion. The story completes, the fun is over, and we are left with questions of the afterlife to ponder. Best of all, authorial influence is negligible. Whereas Gulliver's Travels was a smart but (I felt) indulgent satire, where fantastic images and questions served the whims and beliefs of the author, here the author serves the story. The reader, by extension, feels more involved, more welcomed to both enjoy and ponder. The power of the best novels, like this one, is not to solely explain the author's point of view, but to invite the reader to develop his own. And, of course, to tell a good story besides.

Reading List 2.0

After a couple of misfires, I have decided to revise my reading list. There were more books that I'd wanted to read than I remembered, and they currently take priority over the books suggested by others. (Not that I mean offense in ousting the majority of those suggestions, nor is my intention to ignore them completely; and even the ones I've already begun, and not quite enjoyed, those being One Hundred Years of Solitude and Gulliver's Travels, I intend to finish if I can in the future.) This list is not ordered, either, but categorized. And so the second half of the summer begins!

SELECTIONS FROM
Stephen King
H.P. Lovecraft
Jorge Luis Borges
William Shakespeare
Bedford Anthology of World Literature

NOVELS
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
A Game of Thrones
Catching Fire
Super Sad True Love Story
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

CURIOSITIES
Packing for Mars
Nation
The Waste Land
Paradise Lost
Dubliners

COMICS
Essential Marvel
Runaways
Y: The Last Man
The Walking Dead
Bone
Tintin
Sandman

EPICS
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Infinite Jest

CARRY-OVERS
The Green Man
Boy's Life
Dandelion Wine
The House of the Spirits
Invisible Man
Neuromancer
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Kafka on the Shore
The Instructions
Invisible Cities
Someplace to be Flying
Original Sin: A Cultural History