These two books don't have very much in common, other than being the two novels that I have most recently completed. Why am I discussing them together? Maybe because the alternate title for this post could be "Literary fiction".
I don't read much literary fiction. Mostly I find it dull or I assume that I will. I think of literary fiction as books about the boring problems of boring middle class people much like myself. Who could possibly want to read that?
But in fact, that sort of literary fiction has been out of fashion since at least the 1970s. You can read A portrait of an artist as a young man if you want to, but The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen or A gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles are a lot more au courant.
So why do I think of literary fiction as dull and/or simply unattractive, especially given that I quite liked both Underground Railroad and Ragged Company, and wasn't tempted to put either book down despite my new resolution not to waste time with books when they aren't working out?
Good question.
When I'm reading for relaxation, I want books that are both engaging, and predictable in certain prescribed ways. If I'm reading crime fiction, I need to know that the heroine's beloved pet cat will not be harmed and that the villain will be brought to justice by the last page. If I'm reading "junk SF", I need to know that there will be a strong coherent plot with lots of action and adventure, relatively few inconsistencies, and an engaging protagonist.
If I'm reading for ideas, I want a novel that explores "what ifs" about society, human nature, or science. I want a novel that stretches my mind, and makes me think about what could be, what might have been, and why things are the way they are. In other words, there's a reason why I never say "SciFi". My best-loved genre is "Speculative Fiction", thank you very much.
Where does that leave "literary fiction"? On the shelf, usually. Literary fiction can be very unpredictable. There may not be a predictable story arc: in fact, there might not be much of a plot. Characters might be unsympathetic and difficult to empathize with. If it's very literary, literary fiction can be dense and difficult to read. Bad Things are very likely to happen, because this is Serious Fiction. You are (or at least I am) constantly suspicious that there's More Going On Than Meets the Eye...which means that I feel like I really ought to be trying harder.
In short, I don't try to read literary fiction for relaxation.
If I'm interested in reading something "harder"....well, there's lots of good SF that I haven't gotten to yet, and good SF seems to ask more interesting questions.
All that being said....when I was trying to take out an e-book for my Christmas trip, I couldn't find anything that looked interesting that was available to download now. So I reluctantly defaulted to Underground Railroad, because I'd heard that it was based on the conceit that underground railroad for escaped slaves had been an actual physical undergroud railroad. That sounded interesting....almost SF-like.
Underground Railroad reminded me why one wants to read literary fiction. It is not dull. It is not predictable (in the Bad Way of having a hackneyed plot and stale characters). It is beautifully written. It tells a searing story. And while the novel might not be necessary reading for me, as a non-American -- I don't live in a society where I have a visceral need to be reminded of the realities of this particular horror because of the way that it continues to scar every day's social and economic reality -- it's still an important reality to understand. I really enjoyed it, insofar as you can enjoy something like this or like Slave Narratives of the Underground Railroad (a nonfiction collection of stories collected from contemporary books, pamphlets, and newspapers, which I read in 2017).
It inspired me to finally download something by Richard Wagamese, who I've been meaning to read since running across his obituary in 2017 (a sad way to learn of an author's existence). Reading stories by and about Canada's indigenous peoples IS a visceral need for Canadians, given that the ongoing story of colonization is the equivalent Canadian scar.
Ragged Company is the story of four homeless people who band together as a "street family", and what happens when they unexpectedly find a lottery ticket worth $13 million. It's not one of Wagamese's best-known books. I'm also assuming it's not one of Wagamese's best: the characters are well-drawn, but the story doesn't move quickly and it's a bit predictable. But it is an interesting read. Three of the five main characters are indigenous, although First Nations identity and traditions are only truly important to one of them. All of the homeless characters are deeply traumatized (which is something far more likely to happen to indigenous peoples here in Canada), and the point of the book is not so much the story of their unexpected good fortune as it is the story of how those past traumas have made them the people they are today, and what a path out of that trauma might look like.
It's a book that made me think: not about the novel's structure or its literary conceits (which is the kind of question that Underground Railroad left me with), but about the people who surround me. Who are the homeless people that live around Granville and Broadway? What are their stories?
It made me see them as people again, not as panhandlers to be guiltily avoided or as a Social Problem personified.
That's a valuable thing.
So, maybe I've been too hard on literary fiction. Maybe I should be more open-minded. Maybe if I select the books I want to read, instead of having them selected for me (via a bookclub), I can actually enjoy and appreciate more literary novels. Maybe I should start adding them back to my literary diet.
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