Why Good Books No Longer Satisfy
By Eric Olsen
Reading and re-reading a good novel is always a learning experience. You might learn something about other times and places, or about human nature, or good and evil, or in the case of so many contemporary American novels, family dysfunction. And if you approach a novel from the point of view of a writer, you might also learn something about the art and craft of good writing. But another great thing about a terrific novel is that it can also be a learning experience even when you’re not reading it—or not re-reading it, to be more accurate.
For example, in “When the Re-read Affair Ends Part 1,” I wrote about what I learned not re-reading Catch-22, a novel I’ve always loved, after bogging down only 13 pages in.
Not long after not re-reading Catch-22, I decided it was time to re-read Anthony Burgess’ Earthly Powers. I’ve probably re-read this novel more times than any of the several other novels I regularly re-read (see my previous post for these titles), and I was looking forward to re-reading it once again. I love all of Burgess’s novels. And his nonfiction. Everything. But especially Earthly Powers. I even met Anthony Burgess once, when I was a student in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the mid-70s. Burgess came as a visiting writer for a few weeks. I thought he was brilliant, perhaps the smartest person I’d ever met. He seemed to know everything there was to know about literature, music, art, politics (American or British, take your pick), or for that matter any other topic you dared to bring up. By then I’d already read Clockwork Orange, Enderby, and The Long Day Wanes, his “Malayan Trilogy.” In fact, by then I’d already read Enderby a couple times, and now that I think about it, it’s probably time I re-read it again—Enderby, the poet who worked in the loo.
And so, as I say, once again I settled down to re-read Earthly Powers, savoring the anticipation of reading this wonderful novel and, hoping as ever, that some of Burgess’ genius would rub off.
And then I bogged down just 106 pages into it. I couldn’t go on. I tried, I swear it. But….
But maybe no matter how great a novel is, there are just so many times you can read the thing before it goes a little stale. Still, I fret that something else was going on. The novel hadn’t changed, of course; it hadn’t gone stale. It was just as wonderful as ever. So the problem, I concluded once again, was me….
The story is told first-person by Kenneth Marchal Toomey, a novelist and playwright who achieves a certain fame as a writer and public figure in the first several decades of the 20th Century. It’s a tale of love, of good and evil, of momentous historical events, and of faith and the loss thereof. So, really, what’s not to like?
Raised a Catholic, Toomey’s homosexuality leads to his rejection of the Church, and the Church’s rejection of him. But later, rather to his chagrin, his sister marries the brother—a composer—of a Catholic priest named Carlo Campanati, and Toomey ends up rather reluctantly part of the extended Campanati family and a friend to Carlo, who in 1958 becomes Pope Gregory XVII.
The novel opens a few days before Toomey’s 81st birthday, on the island of Malta, where he lives with his secretary and sometimes lover, Geoffrey. The opening line of the novel is certainly memorable: “It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”
The archbishop, we find out soon enough, is there to enlist Toomey’s help in the canonization of Carlo, now deceased, and while the narrative jumps around in time and place and weaves in stories of Toomey’s family, his travels, and his many affairs and encounters with this or that historical figure, the story of Carlo Campanati—priest, glutton, gambler, drinker, occasional enforcer of the faith and caster-out of demons, and perhaps also source of miraculous intervention—is a significant narrative thread throughout the book’s 700-plus pages.
So, like I say, what’s not to like? Well, for me, something….
I quit reading just where Toomey describes meeting Carlo and his younger brother Domenico—future brother-in-law—for the first time. The meeting takes place in an outdoor café in Cagliari, Sardinia, as World War I is still underway. Thanks to a vaguely defined irregularity in Toomey’s heartbeat, he’s managed to avoid military service, and so has the luxury to sit in cafes and write:
“Then a bulky shadow blotted the sun out. I looked up. My God, they were sending a priest after me. A bulky priest, his black rusty. A layman was with him. He flashed a handsome mouth at me, indicated the free chairs and said, ‘Possiamo?’”
I’ve always been fascinated by the Catholic Church, mainly as a subject of some terrific novels, usually involving Vatican skullduggery of one delicious sort or another. I even like—well, I have to admit it—I even love Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, though I must say the writing itself leaves much to be desired; he’s no Burgess, certainly, but then who is?
Anyway, Carlo Campanati has always been one of my favorite fictional characters. Or had been. And now? Now I think in a way Burgess’ wealth of vivid detail works against Earthly Powers this time around, at least for me. The reality that is the Catholic Church today has far outstripped in preposterousness even the fictional Church of Burgess’ fiction, what with rampant abuse of children by priests and official cover-ups of same; financial misdeeds by the Vatican bank that when all is known may dwarf even the evil machinations of Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Bain Capital put together; and the Vatican’s recent persecution of American nuns who’re simply trying to do good work in their communities. Suddenly, by comparison, the Church in Earthly Powers seems a little tame.
But I haven’t given up hope, quite. A great work of art may not always become a “classic,” a part of the “canon,” until enough time passes. Maybe with more time, the Church in Burgess’ wonderful book will seem less particular and more universal, expressive of some grand truths rather than a failure of a fiction to match an absurd reality.
Meanwhile, I’m looking for more books to add to my list of “must re-reads.” Any suggestions?
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