Is William Buelow Gould truly less sane than any other person would be in such circumstances? It's hard to believe that anyone can remain fully in touch with their sanity after spending time in prison. Even the most grounded of human beings would likely indulge in wildly surreal thoughts when faced with the prospect of torture and death. Though it is my guess that many people who are exposed to such things learn to seperate their emotions from what they encounter, such as in the case of soldiers and doctors in war-torn countries, I can't imagine that one can entirely desensitize themselves to the kinds of horrors described in the first 138 pages of Gould's Book of Fish.
Though Gould's manner of narration is lyrical and sated with imagery that often seems to correspond to a more fantastic world than the one in which he lives, I believe that Gould is merely a poet (or an artist, if you will) trying to come to terms with the experiences that have befallen him. The circumstances in which he has come to build a life do not permit him to surround himself with only moralistic people, and thus he is constantly exposed to criminal activity and corruption. His descriptions of those he encounters as well as the situations in which he finds himself imply an imaginative and arguably brilliant perspective on what is construed as a fraudulent world.
I'm glad that you called Gould a poet. I wonder if our class would be more willing to accept this book as a lengthy poem rather than a novel. There are poems in literary history that have been much longer than this one, and while this book doesn't follow the conventions of an Epic, and does feature some passages that are prosaic, I think on the whole it probably could be classified as something in between those two categories (Greek epics and prose). The passage at the bottom of page 132, which we discussed in class today, in which Gould paints an image of a thrush feeding in winter to stand in opposition to the horridly unemotional scientific classification of the world, reflects many conventions of poetry. Many of our most favorite poets, such as Frost and Keats - the second of whom is mentioned more than once in this novel, and so is clearly a contemporary of Gould - wrote extensively about birds, and often about thrushes. The language of the passage reflects that of the time period's poets, as well. I'd say that if we are willing to consider this book, or at least its more enigmatic parts, in the same realm as "Come In" by Robert Frost, we may see it in a new and more welcomed light.
ReplyDeleteP.S. that sentence "many of our most favorite poets" is not worded well. I'd like to correct it to "most renowned poets"
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