I. A [good] novel should make the reader…
want to turn the page and keep reading, for better or worse, till the very end. The Uses of Enchantment was kind of a let down in this respect. I was so close to the end, for days, and when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I never felt absolutely compelled to pick it up and finish it. Last night when I finally got home, after doing a half dozen things, I settled down to read. Reading novels, unlike some other assigned texts in classes, is not a chore for me, and I look forward to curling up and devouring the words on the page. It’s not that it was a chore to finish Enchantment but I wouldn’t say it was a necessity for me either. I knew I had to get up at 6 am for field experience this morning, and it was already getting late so I just told myself I’d read for an hour. I told myself this, knowing full well that I might end up with only a few hours of sleep because I’d stay up to finish it. I didn’t. I put it down after an hour and went to bed. Why am I telling you all this? For me, Enchantment, was not fundamentally a “good” novel, because it didn’t hold me till the end. I got bored with it! Bored! I am shocking even myself as I come to this conclusion, because while it spawned some great class discussions and gave me some food for thought, and there’s something to be said for the form of it, I feel like I could have lived if I never knew how it ended. I might sound like I’m contradicting myself, after all the whining I did in class about wanting a conclusive ending from this book and just wanting to finish it. But yea, I got bored. Julavits lost me. She drug it out for too long. I can’t seem to think of a good analogy to compare this let down to–maybe watching a really good movie on tv, only to find that an hour is added to it by annoyingly frequent commercial breaks, so you just give up and turn it off. I got annoyed, and my interest was turned off, and the ending no longer seemed important because it was taking too much to get there. I can’t marvel at her brilliance the way I could with Morrison and Vidal’s novels (sorry, Kim). And the ending itself…hardly seemed worth all the trouble. I guess it’s as good as I could have hoped for, but nothing to rave about. If you ask me tomorrow I might change my mind though, just like Mary said, you can find evidence for any thesis you are trying to prove.
II. William Lyons Phelps (1916) said the novel is “A good story well told.”
I would have to agree, and by this qualification, Enchantment doesn’t work. A good story? More like a bizarre unreliable disjointed story, told in fragments–not really my thing.
Hey great minds think alike…Turn the page. However, I kept wanting to turn the pages of Julavits’s novel. I know it was frustrating at times because it was confusing. I think I enjoyed the subject matter. I was in high school in the 80′s. I also went to a (mostly all-girl, all white) prep school. So I could relate to the cultural aspects of the time period. I also did like the mystery of the narrative. I know I didn’t make all the connections because there were so many, but a good novel for me is one that you can read again and again.
Tabitha, I completely agree with you that a novel should make you want to keep reading and turn the pages. I think that this is completely true and I feel like the books that we have read so far in this class have all done that. I agree with you that The Uses of Enchantment was a let down at the end, but I did still keep wanting to turn the pages to find out what was going to happen!
Your idea of a novel has to be entertaining and make a reader want to turn its pages to be a good novel. I agree with this theory because a reader gets more ideas out of the novel when it is entertaining for them. It was easier to read Beloved because it did keep my interest unlike Myra which was really disturbing. Maybe by finding back stories of novels you don’t like or ideas would make it easier and more enjoyable to read.