Ben Winters interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svH_x4KKbSE
Winters responds (again) to whether or not he - a white man - should have written a book about slavery. However, a follow-up question regarding the world he creates in Underground Airlines startles him, I think.
^ I think that, ultimately, he answers the question well: “We live in a world that is not nearly far enough away from the America that I describe in this novel, and I think that is what is unsettling to people.”
Shameless plug for a BBC podcast on eugenics, produced by a friend and released today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04rcyw3
Although not focused specifically on race, it’s pertinent to our books, as it discusses selective breeding and forced sterilization in America. 27 minutes long, if you’ve got the time.
Hearing Ben Winters interviewed about this book has helped squelch any notions I had about the author’s prioritizing the “thriller,” aspects of this novel over the weighty subject of racial division. He’s very clear about what motivated him to take on this sort of book: considering what is the real contemporary America after its long history as a slave holding nation.
I didn’t mind being pulled away from the narrative because the detour was usually short. Ethel’s chapter is only from p. 191-96. Having dipped into Harriet Jacobs’ autobiography, I’m really seeing its influences in The Underground Railroad. This passage, from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, echoes the relationship between young Ethel and Jasmine, the slave playmate who “was like a sister to her”:
Harriet Jacobs’ early years as a slave were spent in a home where “I was so fondly shielded that I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment.” When she ages, though, things change:
Similarly, in The Underground Railroad, Ethel thinks at first "that a slave was someone who lived in your house like family but was not family,” but learns the truth as she grows up and witnesses Jasmine’s fate:
I wondered why Whitehead chose to make Ethel gay. At least presumably she was—I don’t think I’m reading too much into those sentences, e.g., never being able “to give love in the way she wanted,” disliking “the game of husband and wife,” finding sex to be a “humiliation,” and perhaps most telling, during Cora’s illness, “She kissed the girl on her forehead and neck in her restless slumber with two kinds of feeling mixed up in those kisses.”
I didn’t know if such descriptions were there simply to add layers to Ethel’s character, or to hint at another kind of prejudice, another way in which a person can be imprisoned by society.
I think perhaps both. I thought Ethel’s complicated background made her more interesting and her motivations clearer.
Gee … I missed the Ethel-might-be-gay bits.
When I mention an overabundance of backstory, I’m not referring to Caesar, Ridgeway, Mabel but rather minor characters such as Stevens, even Ethel. Learning all and sundry facts about fairly minor characters abruptly stops the flow of the story on more than one occasion - Ethel being a good example. Cora has just been discovered and Whitehead pulls away to tell of Ethel. I tired of all the backstories woven into the ongoing narrative - each person Cora meets along the way - Ethel’s husband, leaders of the plantation, and so on and on. Maybe I shouldn’t have felt “stop, already” because I understand Whitehead’s purpose (as @mathmom points out, the motivations behind the actions), but after a while the backstories felt intrusive.
I don’t know, too me t,here was so little actual story that I didn’t mind the back stories. I think they added a depth to this strange world he has created. Life isn’t simple plot leading from A to B. People are complicated, some of their impulses are good and others are bad. To me it almost was like showing a series of alternate futures, each one perhaps created by the complicatedness of the people in them. So perhaps, not so much The Odyssey, but more Back to the Future, but structured physically instead of in time.
Opposite view - there was so little actual story because the reader spends so much time learning about peripheral characters. I don’t disagree that the backstories add depth. I do balk at the sheer number of them.
Your post makes me think though. Whitehead definitely wants each “state” to have meaning. I guess he also feels for that to work we need to understand its inhabitants. Confession: I missed the connection between the doctor Cora visits in South Carolina and the interlude with Stevens in Boston. I obviously need to pay better attention to names but, in truth, I had no idea why I had just landed with a gravedigger in the North. In my defense, I had just started realizing Whitehead’s intent. Still, when I put the book down while in S.C. and later picked it up to find myself in Boston, I was confused. Only much later did I connect names/facts. Maybe I’m a simple-plot-leading-from A-to-B reader (though I did figure out almost immediately that Whitehead intended his states to be microcosms of black history.)
The inclusion of the gravedigger sequence was a bit baffling. I’m not sure what Whitehead’s intent was.
But I thought there was plenty of story!
Whitehead’s intent: to throw shade at a doctor who would participate in a Tuskegee-type experiment by cluing us in on Steven’s somewhat shady (ha) past. Of course, I only figured out Whitehead’s intent long after the fact, since I didn’t link the doctor in Boston to Cora’s doctor in S.C for the longest time. I just thought Whitehead digressed - farther afield than usual.
^ Yeah, probably. I did realize who Stevens was but still thought, “Wha?”
Randall was a monster. He was never punished for his crimes and died of a heart attack in a brothel, so I guess he got off easy. Beyond that, I didn’t really think much about his fate–I certainly didn’t expect there to be a scene where the wrath of God descended upon him, as satisfying as that might have been.
Unfortunately, I may have to go back into the hospital soon. It’s hard for me to post from there because the WiFi is not good.
So I was wondering if I could jump-start our process of choosing the next book by offering my suggestions?
These two books were recommended by a friend, and they look good to me:
Previously suggested books that I’m still interested in;
^ sorry to hear about a return to the hospital @NJTheatreMOM -
@NJTheatreMOM Rats! Sending healing thoughts your way.
@NJTheatreMOM, I’m sorry to hear that you may have to go back into the hospital! I hope it’s a short visit and you are restored to full health.
Of course, we can go ahead and choose the next book. Everyone should feel free to toss out suggestions and I’ll put a list together.
And, as always, the current discussion is ongoing if anyone has more to add. I just want to say that I’m very glad I read these books with all of you, especially The Underground Railroad. If I had read it on my own, I would have missed a great deal and come to incorrect conclusions about the author’s intentions.
The Underground Railroad was beautifully written and Whitehead is something of a genius; however, the experience confirmed for me that I’m not a big fan of magical realism. Either give me straight-up magic ala Harry Potter, or give me gritty realism, but please don’t smoosh them together. My brain doesn’t work that way.
Here’s what we have so far. @NJTheatreMOM, you are right about two duos in a row, so I’ll take off Camus/Daoud for now.
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
The Water Museum: Stories by Luis Alberto Urrea
@NJTheatreMOM: Ugh. Tell any doctors involved that you intend for this to be the last time - and make them listen! (If only it worked that way - sigh.)
@Mary13: I decided that The Underground Railroad has its moments of magical realism - i.e. the underground tracks, the trains, … However, I see the “states” Whitehead depicts as alternate history rather than a dip into magical realism. Think of Whitehead’s S.C. as marching along the same path as Winters’ USA - both writers use US history as the baseline and then create a world. My problem - I couldn’t slot Whitehead’s book easily - the plantation, realistic; the railroad, magical realism; and then I hit S.C. which I briefly took at face value but quickly realized, nope. I’d peg each “state” under alternate history. Again, I’m not completely comfortable with how Whitehead handles the alternate history. History and alternate history “smoosh” together in such a way that Whitehead’s alternate history can be mistaken for actuality. With Winters, I could easily separate the two. Anyway, in my humble opinion, classify this duo as our foray into alternate history (and leave magical realism as a genre yet to be explored.)
My suggestions:
The Dry - Jane Harper
Paradise Sky - Joe Lansdale
The Nix - Nathan Hill
*The Gloaming/i
I really want to read Commonwealth with you guys, but I sense vetoes coming so am not including it on my list. However, I reserve the right to whine about not doing so.