The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
What did it win?
Booker Prize 2000
What's it all about?
Couldn't tell you.
Was it really any good?
At what point, as a reader, are you justified in giving up? This is a serious question, and arises more often than you might think.
After all, reading a novel is a big investment of time and you have to know when to
cut your losses. I know one fellow who is prepared to call it quits after the
first paragraph. "You should be able to tell right away," is what he
says. While I wouldn't go that far, I do think it's fair to say that if you
don't like a book after the first few pages then it's unlikely you're going to
change your mind as things progress. As a reviewer you are sometimes obliged to
make an extra effort, but there are still limits.
I read five pages of The Blind Assassin.
What made me give up? Well, if you've been reading the News you
know that I was initially repulsed by the Acknowledgments. But I think I've
already said enough about that.
The next thing that threw me off were the epigraphs. Now as a matter of
personal preference I have to say I like epigraphs. They always run the risk of
making the author seem a little pretentious, making grand claims to profundity
for the book you are about to read, but I like them all the same. Two epigraphs
can also work. With two epigraphs one can be played off against the other, like
a verse from the Bible followed by some lyrics from Led Zeppelin. Two epigraphs
tell you that this is a really complex work, one whose themes can't possibly be
addressed by a single source.
The Blind Assassin has three epigraphs.
One senses that the author is
now laying it on a bit thick. This sense is heightened by the epigraphs
themselves. The first is from Ryszard Kapuscinski (don't ask) and describes an
act of historical barbarism that probably could have been introduced at some
point within the text just as easily. (Maybe it is. I didn't get very far.) The
second epigraph is an "Inscription on a Carthaginian Funeral Urn," and it is
clear that we are beyond the point of seeming pretentious. Finally there is a
quotation taken from Sheila Watson: "The word is a flame burning in a dark
glass." This throws me completely, and not just because I don't know Sheila
Watson from Ryszard Kapuscinski or Carthaginian funeral urns. In order to be effective
an epigraph has to have a specific relation to the text it introduces. But how
specific can "The word is a flame burning in a dark glass" be to
anything? Such a flabby line could just as easily have been the epigraph to Heart
of Darkness, The Waste Land, To the Lighthouse, or Middlemarch.
Full of misgivings, I finally approached the text.
Since I don't have any idea what The Blind Assassin is about, I have
to limit myself to a consideration of style. There are a number of curious features to Atwood's style, none of which are
very pleasant. The first thing that strikes you is the sentence structure, which
seems to be a transcription of bad free verse poetry into paragraphs, with a
profusion of colons and semi-colons used to indicate where the line breaks were
supposed to be. This is not at all to say the prose is "poetic" (the
most overused and incorrectly applied adjective in the reviewer's lexicon).
Whatever else it would require, for any prose to be truly poetic it would have
to have some kind of regular rhythm to it and not just be a pile of dreamy
images. Atwood's prose is like bad free verse in that it has no rhythm at all:
Also I ought to warn Richard, at his office: he would wish to have a
statement of grief prepared. I went into my dressing room: I would need black,
and a handkerchief.
What is it with these colons? There are seven in the first two pages (big
print, wide margins),
along with three semi-colons (in my opinion a rather affected and usually
needless piece of punctuation). In the third chapter the semi-colon pops up
everywhere, including at least four sentences (again within two pages) with two
each. There is something lazy about such writing, as though
Atwood doesn't want to put the mental effort into writing a well-constructed
sentence with a natural flow. The artificiality of the style draws attention to
itself, as though it wants to force us to recognize how important it is
by grinding to an inarticulate, inexpressive halt. Take the end of the
first chapter:
But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They
can't ever stop howling.
And the end of the third:
His smoke-stained fingers. The distant glimpse of water. All drowned
now.
Drowned, but shining.
This is Very Important, Very Serious stuff. It is writing that is being put
on display, which is something bad writing should always avoid.
And it is bad writing. The second feature of Atwood's style that strikes one
is the imagery. Again, one gets the sense that this is the prose of a lazy poet.
On the first page we are confronted with this:
A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting
and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water.
Huh? How so? Hair blowing in the wind doesn't look at all like ink spilled in
water. And how on earth can the narrator describe it in such a way when it's
her own hair? Is she looking at herself in a mirror? An apt image that would
be. More likely though she is
imagining herself in a movie, the strands of her hair gently stirring as if in slow motion. Very poetic, that slow motion stuff.
Five pages was enough. There was no point in continuing. Perhaps the most
disturbing indication that things were not going well was the brief extract
supposedly taken from a newspaper. Atwood's idea of newspaper writing apparently
means getting rid of the semi-colons. Otherwise it is yet another false note.
"She denied any possibility of intoxication as Miss Chase did not
drink" is not a construction found in many dailies. In fairness, the
newspaper piece is not as badly handled as the newspaper style of most writers
of literary fiction, but that isn't saying much. After the newspaper report
things return to their usual groove. The third chapter ends with another
obtrusive but utterly useless image: "The trace of brown cloud in the
brilliant sky, like ice cream smudged on chrome."
Hair blowing like spilled ink. Ice cream smudged on chrome. Striking similes
only work when they are appropriate, when they not only surprise us but work as
descriptions of reality. Unfortunately, reality is not the province of fine
writing. Maybe that third epigraph has a point: that Atwood's words are not
meant to be read but rather placed behind glass. Such books should be left to admire themselves.
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