“There were knotted growths like the malignance of abundance.”
Dear Lori –
Do you remember those plastic sliding picture puzzles we had as children? Parents used to put them in birthday party swag bags with candy and blowers. They were two-dimensional, with flat square tiles you would move around with your thumbs. When you put the tiles in the correct order, they form a picture. What were those things called? I should Wikipedia it…let’s see… they are actually called sliding block and/or sliding tile puzzles! I was close.
Why am I bringing up a cheap plastic toy? Because solving a sliding tile puzzle is an imperfect analogy to my experience reading a big, modernist novel like Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. In both cases, I’m frustrated the entire time, mentally shifting around ideas and passages, trying and failing to plan three moves ahead until the tiles (don’t ever ask me how) click into place and – usually in the last few chapters – a picture takes shape, and the author’s vision is revealed. More often than not, I’m delighted with the outcome. Would you be surprised to hear that I love (and also sometimes loath) French Oulipo and the writers who run with that crowd?
Now that we are at a quarter through Miss Macintosh, My Darling, have you decided the fun is in the journey, or do you, like me, hope the whole will be other than the sum of its parts? Your last letter posed several questions about the surprising events in Chapter 16. What do you think they mean? I admit I have no idea what to believe and would much rather be back on the bus where everything feels slightly more organized. But then, of course, we’ve been on the bus this whole time. At least, I think this is what we are meant to understand: Vera is narrating her memories as she takes the bus to her destination. Where she’s hoping to find…?
I struggle with how to write about Miss Macintosh, My Darling. But I was relieved to discover I wasn’t alone. Did you have a chance to read Drew Johnson’s review/essay on Lithub last year: Liquid Repetition, Drew Johnson on the Experience of Reading Miss Macintosh, My Darling? Johnson decided the plot was ultimately inconsequential for his purposes. “To say what the book is ostensibly about in a dustjacket sort of way misses the point, I think, and must serve the novel as it was written – even more than perhaps it was intended, badly.” He instead provides his notes, taken while reading, made up of personal impressions and synaptic connections. I suppose it’s a choice and, less I appear critical, one I agree with to a point – the excellent summaries you’ve been providing in your letters notwithstanding. For example, I appreciated your bringing up in your last letter how Young describes Miss Macintosh’s bald head, throwing a variety of metaphors and modifiers at it to see what sticks. But will she delve into the significance of this surprising encounter between Vera and her governess, other than intimating at the cost of Vera’s future therapist? When style is everything, plot is forfeit.
In Chapter 12, Young wrote about the garden of the blind, “There were knotted growths like the malignance of abundance.” I highlighted the sentence and marked the page with a brass dart.
Trapped in an overgrown garden without a machete,
Tara