A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

Reconsidering Michael Ondaatje’s Hana in The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion

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the english patient michael ondaatjeI have a confession to make. I am a bad reader. I chew up books and then cast them aside. I suck the marrow of inspiration from them and then leave them to gather dust. Sometimes I even discard them entirely–selling off boxes at a time at used bookstores. So when I read The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, I read it wrong. And it wasn’t until years later as I was reading his In the Skin of a Lion that I realized my mistake.

Is There a Wrong Way to Read a Book?

There are one hundred and fifty thousand right ways to read a book. More than that even. And there are very few wrong ways to read one. You can pick up factual errors along the way or misread a line of text. But my sin was greater. I came to The English Patient with an agenda. I had watched the film over and over and loved its golden hues and the story of Katharine and Almásy. I’d been told the book was difficult to read so I ignored it too long. When I finally did read it, I read in search of that love story. I was hungry for Ondaatje’s gorgeous language and how he’d describe a love affair.

Isn’t That What The English Patient is About?

I actually hope you’ll never ask yourself this question. I hope you’ve read this beautiful book and saw in it what I failed to… Almásy, eponymous though he may be, is not the protagonist. Hana is.

“Words, Caravaggio. They have a power.” – Michael Ondaatje

It’s been years since I read The English Patient and I might never have discovered my mistake if I hadn’t been rushing through In the Skin of a Lion this week. I was feeling fitful and hoping once again that Ondaatje could quell my inner fuss. I read a few pages a night and then fell asleep and forgot what I read. I wasn’t considering the book. I looked for Hana and Caravaggio because the jacket copy said they had first appeared in this book, but when I didn’t find them, I convinced myself I’d misread that.

And then I had lunch with a writer friend and we talked about In the Skin of a Lion and how it was her husband’s favorite book and that she enjoyed it as well. I started to think about how much I enjoy Ondaatje and why I was so impatient with him just then. I thought back to a gorgeous scene on a bridge as Nicholas saves a nun. I decided to slow down. I read the book when I had time for it instead of trying to make it bend to my sleep schedule. And like a flower in the desert, I met Hana.

Hana isn’t a main character in In the Skin of a Lion. In fact, I’d wager Caravaggio gets more pages. But it didn’t matter. All of a sudden I realized that Hana and Caravaggio came first. When Ondaatje wrote The English Patient, it wasn’t Almásy and Katharine at the front of his brain. It was Hana and Caravaggio.

How Did this Change the Book for Me?

“Do you understand the sadness of geography?” – Michael Ondaatje

With Hana at the front of my mind, I was compelled to pick up The English Patient again. You can ask my husband, it was one of those things where I picked up the book and was reading snippets of it between conversations or when he went outside. I even read a couple of passages aloud. What I realized is that the book starts with Hana. Almásy is there and there are allusions to Katharine, but that love story I’d rushed to find doesn’t actually start until page 142. A page on which I’d had the audacity to write “Now it starts.” That’s more than one third of the way through the book.

As I started reading for Hana, I saw the tenderness between her and Caravaggio and their history. I saw the connection to a life she could no longer relate to–to parents who had died and to a continent and a life far away. I could see her struggle against the pains of her very short adulthood. I realized the big role that Kip plays in her life and the smaller one that Almásy does. I watched Hana open herself up, even against all the pain in the world. I saw her become.

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he loved her when he had understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.” – Michael Ondaatje

And of course the book is about the other characters as well and what’s most beautiful is how they interact and form in relation to one another. But I was so grateful I had this opportunity to reconsider Hana. To find the girl who became a woman and who chose, in the face of war and loss, to blossom instead of wilt.

I can’t promise that I will always read books well. I think I failed Danilo Kiš last week. But I hope I will always be lucky enough to re-encounter those beautiful books when I am ready to read them for what they have to offer.

If this review made you want to read more about Hana, pick up a copy of The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lionfrom Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying in Pen and Ink

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William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying

In Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, the title character tells Hana to read Kipling slowly because he “is a writer who used pen and ink…Think about the speed of his pen.  What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.”  William Faulkner writes as though he was using pen and ink—creating gnarled sentences that unfold when read slowly.  In reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner slowly, the voices of the characters become distinct and they reveal information about themselves and each other through the observations they make.

Darl

In a section narrated by Darl, Faulkner writes, “I could lie with my shirt-tail up…feeling myself without touching myself.”  This is a quiet passage, one that I overlooked on the first couple of readings, but it sexualizes Darl.  Because this passage follows shortly after Cora observing Eula’s attraction to Darl, an entire relationship blossomed in my mind.

Cora

I loved the way Cora’s commentary changed my understanding of characters I had already formed opinions about.  For example, Darl spoke of Jewel as though he was protective of Addie and upset over the noise Cash was making in building her coffin.  To Darl he was “a little boy in the dark.”  Cora takes a much harsher view of Jewel, saying that he wouldn’t “miss a chance to make that extra three dollars at the price of his mother’s goodbye kiss.”  Because of the choral way Faulkner constructed this novel, it is easy to have the reader’s understanding of the characters grow as each new character beholds them.  This observation also speaks to the nature of the observer.  Although Cora was not able to lash out in anger at the woman who reneged on her promise to buy cakes, Cora does have ill feelings toward Jewel.  She is not as saintly as she might have us believe.  In the first person narration of my novel, it is more difficult to get a myriad of views on a particular character.  However, I can better use my dialogue to this effect.

Cora’s character is further developed as she rants against transporting Addie’s body to bury her, “She lived, a lonely woman, lonely with her pride, trying to make folks believe different, hiding the fact that they just suffered her, because she was not cold in the coffin before they were carting her forty miles away to bury her, flouting the will of God to do it.  Refusing to let her lie in the same earth as those Bundrens.” It seems as though Cora is spiteful against Addie and against the Bundrens. Addie lies dying in the upstairs bedroom and in one sentence Cora talks about how the woman has isolated herself and that people didn’t want to be around her. In the same sentence she foreshadows that God’s vengeance will be wrought on this family (although the degree of flood, putrefaction, and other disasters isn’t even hinted at).  And of course the language that Faulkner uses speaks to Cora’s background and upbringing (each of the characters has a slightly different manner of speech).  In fact each of the characters has their own speech patterns—something else that escapes immediate notice—when read quickly the novel can come off as merely difficult rather than intricately crafted.

Reading Slowly

I am a modern girl: I write and think at a hundred miles an hour, but I also like to muse and rethink and ponder. This novel (and The English Patient) reminded me that good writing takes time and should be savored over time. I am certain that in spending more time with As I Lay Dying, I would see more and more layers in it and come to appreciate Faulkner’s craft all the more. As is, it serves as a good reminder for me to slow down in my own writing and take the time I need to in order to get the details and feel right.  And if I want a reader to ponder slowly, I can craft my own gnarled sentences.

If this review made you want to read the book, support indie booksellers (and reviewers—I get a commission) by picking up a copy of As I Lay Dying from Powell’s Books.