Okay for Now, by Gary D. Schmidt, by contrast, is unreservedly recommended, and I didn't even know it had birds in it until I got it home from the library. Schmidt's Wednesday Wars was fabulous, part of the series of YA books that convinced me that I need to read more well-written children's books (rather than poorly written adult books) and I need to read more Shakespeare so that I can understand the likes of The Wednesday Wars and The Dairy Queen. Okay for Now is a follow-up to The Wednesday Wars, and I was not going to like it as much because 1) the main character of Okay for Now is a jerk in The Wednesday Wars (and much as I believe Amateur Reader when he suggests that shouldn't matter, it does for me) and 2) It is about Jane Eyre.
Somehow, though, Okay for Now has everything going for it. Unexpected birds for one! Each chapter is named after a bird from an Audubon painting. It would seem like Schmidt is trying to do too much-- coordinate every chapter with emotions visible in a bird painting, re-tell Jane Eyre, update readers on perspective drawing, preparations for the moon landing and the Yankees, and arouse our sympathies for alcoholics and their families, Vietnam vets, and middle school teachers while telling a story from the perspective of a 13 year-old jerk. It so worked for me. I want to go read Jane Eyre just so I can fully get Okay for Now.
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| "That afternoon, after our Cokes, I drew that Snowy Heron like I was John James Audubon himself. Except, my heron, he was strutting out into the world like that hunter would never, never come" OfN, pg. 204. Image by Audobon, Plate CCXLII |
And who is going to read Jane Eyre with me now?
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6 comments:
I am pretty sure my suggestion was otherwise, but who knows. I'll warn you that there is no shortage of jerks in Shakespeare. Same goes for Jane Eyre.
I am one of those readers who likes a book less if I don't like any of the main characters.
You questioned this, and I think that I responded that likability mattered more to me if the book is set up as a romance (one of the reasons I am not fond of Wuthering Heights and probably one of the reasons I don't remember liking Jane Eyre). And I don't mind jerks, and I certainly like complex characters, but I don't have much time for reading about jerks as romantic heroes.
I do not believe I questioned the fact that many readers most enjoy books where they like the main character.
Many outstanding works of art will be easier to enjoy if the preference for likable characters can be relaxed, and I would suggest that it is generally worthwhile to cultivate a taste for such art. I want people to like books more.
I'll note that Wuthering Heights was not "set up as a romance," in the way we use the word "romance" now, by its author. Maybe re-frame that picture? Come to think of it, it sounds like you can just assume that no books are set up as romances and then the issue will go away.
You are, of course, correct that you did not question that likability matters to us, but I recall questions suggesting we try to articulate exactly why likability mattered to us, and, in my case, why it mattered more in one type of book than another.
And I certainly don't disagree that there are many good books with unlikable characters but then at some point it comes down to an issue of time, which we have discussed before. I do not lack for plenty of books to read. Limiting the pile is not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm aware that Emily wasn't trying to put Heathcliffe in competition with Mr. Darcy, but having read ample books that do, I have a hard time reading WH without romantic notions. I could read it again . . . but there are so many books I haven't read, and so many others that I would love to re-read, that it just doesn't seem like a good use of that chunk of my life (not, by the way, that I am in any way claiming to optimize use of chunks of my life).
You're "no books are romances" suggestion makes sense, although sometimes I actively seek romances.
In Jane Eyre, by the way, older Jane spends the second page of the book describing 10-year-old Jane reading Bewick's History of British Birds, with special emphasis on the strange engravings. It is a long passage. I do not know why it is given so much space. Otherwise I do not remember Jane Eyre being much of a bird book.
Very interesting. I will need to read it again, as I really wonder how much of Okay for Now is re-telling vs. just referential.
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