lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2006-10-09 07:50 pm
lightreads) wrote2006-10-09 07:50 pm
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Ahab's Wife: or, The Stargazer by Sena Jeter Naslund
“Captain Ahab was not my first husband nor my last.”
Oh come on. Of course I had to quote the first line.
This book is derived from a single, glancing reference in Moby-Dick to the beautiful young woman Captain Ahab has married. This is Una Spencer’s story, in her own words. The book is massive, complex, written as a companion, a tribute, an argument, a twentieth-century female response to a nineteenth-century male book. It’s couched in the Moby-Dick style, from the choppy chapters to the capital R Romantic school of writing and its dedication to individual power in the face of society, to natural ideals, to characters who are both individuals and avatars.
As derivative fiction, this is brilliant. From that first sentence, this book plants its feet solidly bestride the old classic and takes a broader view from a new height. Una’s story encompasses Ahab’s and surpasses it; it must to draw a complete portrait of the unusual woman who would capture driven Ahab’s love. Obviously, I find fanfiction on this scale absolutely delightful.
I admire the hell out of this book: the scope, the layered, image-saturated prose, the philosophy and the art of it. And Una is a powerful narrator and person – agnostic, abolitionist, thinker, mother, sailor, seamstress, lover. She dresses as a boy and goes to sea, and finds herself in the path of a number of famous people like Margaret Fuller and Maria Mitchell and, glancingly, Henry James. It’s a broad and faithful portrait of the times and of the style, but laying some of it out here, perhaps you see the problem. I feel as if this is sometimes a book before it is a story, if that makes sense. Una is extraordinary in ways that, yes, some women of the 1840’s probably were, but this book is as much about holding up the prism of Una against the nineteenth century as it is about holding her up for her own sake. But I can’t really put the teeth into this to make it criticism, because even it is faithful to the style, and Naslund is absolutely deliberate and controlled in what she is doing:
I do think that this book can stand alone, both from Moby-Dick and from literary and social history, though maybe not as much as the author wishes. But knowledge of both adds and explains a whole lot – I rather suspect that the casual reader, who did not know that Moby-Dick was dedicated to Melville’s good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, would find Una’s encounter with a strange veiled man on her walk to see her friend Margaret Fuller nearly inexplicable. This book puts the literary back in literary fiction, and I think it would be helped a great deal by a proper introduction and overview of the relevant historical and literary movements. And even with a solid grounding in the period, like I have, it’s still hard to fathom why in the world Naslund made a few particular stylistic choices (when you don’t really know until page six hundred why the absolute first person narration was briefly broken by a small chapter in script format at page three hundred, maybe there’s some rethinking that should happen).
Still, this is damn impressive for its vision, its thought, its very existence. It’s about the woman standing at home on the widow’s walk, about how she is not passive, about how as time passes she stops looking out to sea and starts looking up at the stars. It’s fanfiction to a particular work, to a place and a time, to the female experience, to history itself. And yes, if you couldn’t tell, it raised more intellectual admiration in me than emotional resonance, but to be fair, this really isn’t my favorite genre. This is exactly the sort of thing you will like, if you like that sort of thing, which I leave each of you to judge for yourself.
Oh come on. Of course I had to quote the first line.
This book is derived from a single, glancing reference in Moby-Dick to the beautiful young woman Captain Ahab has married. This is Una Spencer’s story, in her own words. The book is massive, complex, written as a companion, a tribute, an argument, a twentieth-century female response to a nineteenth-century male book. It’s couched in the Moby-Dick style, from the choppy chapters to the capital R Romantic school of writing and its dedication to individual power in the face of society, to natural ideals, to characters who are both individuals and avatars.
As derivative fiction, this is brilliant. From that first sentence, this book plants its feet solidly bestride the old classic and takes a broader view from a new height. Una’s story encompasses Ahab’s and surpasses it; it must to draw a complete portrait of the unusual woman who would capture driven Ahab’s love. Obviously, I find fanfiction on this scale absolutely delightful.
I admire the hell out of this book: the scope, the layered, image-saturated prose, the philosophy and the art of it. And Una is a powerful narrator and person – agnostic, abolitionist, thinker, mother, sailor, seamstress, lover. She dresses as a boy and goes to sea, and finds herself in the path of a number of famous people like Margaret Fuller and Maria Mitchell and, glancingly, Henry James. It’s a broad and faithful portrait of the times and of the style, but laying some of it out here, perhaps you see the problem. I feel as if this is sometimes a book before it is a story, if that makes sense. Una is extraordinary in ways that, yes, some women of the 1840’s probably were, but this book is as much about holding up the prism of Una against the nineteenth century as it is about holding her up for her own sake. But I can’t really put the teeth into this to make it criticism, because even it is faithful to the style, and Naslund is absolutely deliberate and controlled in what she is doing:
In the quest of writing, the heart can speed up with anticipation as, indeed, during the very chase of whales. I can swear it, having done both, and I will tell you though other writers may not. My heart is beating fast. I am in pursuit, I want my victory that you should see and hear and, above all, feel the reality behind these words. For they are but a mask. The mask that conceals, not a mask that I would have you strike through as mere appearance or worse, deceitful appearance. Words need not be that kind of mask, but a mask such as the ancient Greek actors wore. A mask that expresses rather than conceals the inner drama. But do you know me? Una? You have shipped long with me in the boat that is this book.
I do think that this book can stand alone, both from Moby-Dick and from literary and social history, though maybe not as much as the author wishes. But knowledge of both adds and explains a whole lot – I rather suspect that the casual reader, who did not know that Moby-Dick was dedicated to Melville’s good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, would find Una’s encounter with a strange veiled man on her walk to see her friend Margaret Fuller nearly inexplicable. This book puts the literary back in literary fiction, and I think it would be helped a great deal by a proper introduction and overview of the relevant historical and literary movements. And even with a solid grounding in the period, like I have, it’s still hard to fathom why in the world Naslund made a few particular stylistic choices (when you don’t really know until page six hundred why the absolute first person narration was briefly broken by a small chapter in script format at page three hundred, maybe there’s some rethinking that should happen).
Still, this is damn impressive for its vision, its thought, its very existence. It’s about the woman standing at home on the widow’s walk, about how she is not passive, about how as time passes she stops looking out to sea and starts looking up at the stars. It’s fanfiction to a particular work, to a place and a time, to the female experience, to history itself. And yes, if you couldn’t tell, it raised more intellectual admiration in me than emotional resonance, but to be fair, this really isn’t my favorite genre. This is exactly the sort of thing you will like, if you like that sort of thing, which I leave each of you to judge for yourself.