Related News
Reservations about sequel
By Julie Myerson |
August 7, 2011, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
JOHN Burnham Schwartz's 1998 novel, "Reservation Road," was acclaimed by critics and readers alike, translated into many languages and, almost a decade later, turned into a well-regarded movie of the same name.
Ricocheting in brief, staccato chapters among the perspectives of its main characters, Schwartz's narrative depicted the shattering consequences of a hit-and-run accident on two Connecticut families. It ended with Dwight, the driver who killed a 10-year-old boy, about to confess to the police and go off to jail. But it also hinted that the families' two surviving children - Dwight's son, Sam, and the dead boy's sister, Emma - would suffer the true emotional fallout of this tragedy.
I can see why Schwartz believed a sequel was justified. The effects of random violence, grief and loss on the human psyche are endlessly interesting, and there seemed plenty left to explore as the first novel came to a close. You could argue that Dwight's incarceration was as much a beginning as an ending.
This new novel moves us 12 years on. Dwight, having served his prison term, is now working in a sporting goods store in Southern California, attempting to rebuild his life, far from his ex-wife and son. Back on the East Coast, the dead boy's parents have separated. Struggling to run her gardening business, Emma's mother is demanding that she help out while on vacation from her studies at Yale.
Just like its begetter, "Northwest Corner" begins with a violent episode. In a barroom brawl, Sam, now a senior in college, hits someone with a baseball bat, sending him straight to the intensive care unit. And, as his father had once done, he flees the scene of the crime. Although Sam hasn't seen or even spoken to Dwight in all these years, his first impulse is to seek him out.
This novel - a structural twin of "Reservation Road" - ought to work. Both its characters and its situations at first appear robust and real, and Schwartz seems genuinely interested in exploring their moral complexity. This is exactly the kind of setup I normally admire, so it's with great reluctance that I have to report that "Northwest Corner" is one of the most maddening pieces of fiction I've encountered in some time.
Conversely, Schwartz often doesn't seem to work hard enough. The devices he uses to suggest his characters' emotional states are lazy and forced. Chapters end with someone gazing contemplatively at the telephone or brooding behind the wheel of a car.
Schwartz seems to have secured a place among America's serious novelists, and many readers have clearly been moved and convinced by his prose. Yet for me, "Northwest Corner" is the antithesis of what a serious novel should be. If such writing can pass for muscular fiction, what hope is there for authors who spend long hours deleting easy cliches and pointless similes, working hard to create something that feels startling and real and true?
Ricocheting in brief, staccato chapters among the perspectives of its main characters, Schwartz's narrative depicted the shattering consequences of a hit-and-run accident on two Connecticut families. It ended with Dwight, the driver who killed a 10-year-old boy, about to confess to the police and go off to jail. But it also hinted that the families' two surviving children - Dwight's son, Sam, and the dead boy's sister, Emma - would suffer the true emotional fallout of this tragedy.
I can see why Schwartz believed a sequel was justified. The effects of random violence, grief and loss on the human psyche are endlessly interesting, and there seemed plenty left to explore as the first novel came to a close. You could argue that Dwight's incarceration was as much a beginning as an ending.
This new novel moves us 12 years on. Dwight, having served his prison term, is now working in a sporting goods store in Southern California, attempting to rebuild his life, far from his ex-wife and son. Back on the East Coast, the dead boy's parents have separated. Struggling to run her gardening business, Emma's mother is demanding that she help out while on vacation from her studies at Yale.
Just like its begetter, "Northwest Corner" begins with a violent episode. In a barroom brawl, Sam, now a senior in college, hits someone with a baseball bat, sending him straight to the intensive care unit. And, as his father had once done, he flees the scene of the crime. Although Sam hasn't seen or even spoken to Dwight in all these years, his first impulse is to seek him out.
This novel - a structural twin of "Reservation Road" - ought to work. Both its characters and its situations at first appear robust and real, and Schwartz seems genuinely interested in exploring their moral complexity. This is exactly the kind of setup I normally admire, so it's with great reluctance that I have to report that "Northwest Corner" is one of the most maddening pieces of fiction I've encountered in some time.
Conversely, Schwartz often doesn't seem to work hard enough. The devices he uses to suggest his characters' emotional states are lazy and forced. Chapters end with someone gazing contemplatively at the telephone or brooding behind the wheel of a car.
Schwartz seems to have secured a place among America's serious novelists, and many readers have clearly been moved and convinced by his prose. Yet for me, "Northwest Corner" is the antithesis of what a serious novel should be. If such writing can pass for muscular fiction, what hope is there for authors who spend long hours deleting easy cliches and pointless similes, working hard to create something that feels startling and real and true?
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
