I’m about halfway through Octavia Butler’s Kindred and I’ve got the same reaction to this book as I did to Parable of Sower and Parable of the Talents: I like it, but not as much as I feel like I’m supposed to. Many people are ga-ga over Butler’s books but I’m only lukewarm on what I’ve read.
For me, Butler falls into the same category as Philip K Dick, meaning they’re science fiction writers who have fabulous ideas but the writing is somewhat clunky. Dick’s prose rarely shines (decent dialogue and nuanced characterization are frequent casualties) but he makes up for it with tightly plotted stories and awesome, brain-bending ideas.
Butler has a real knack for conveying grim situations but she suffers from a ton of “As you know, Bob” dialogue, and I find I’m not a huge fan of her protagonists. Lauren Olamina and Edana come from the same mold, strong female protagonists who seem to have the whole world against them. The problem is that they’re both too good—their brief moments of indecision and doubt ring hollow for me. More often than not, they come off as overly-well-prepared know-it-alls. As odd as it might sound, I would like them a lot more if there were more reasons to like them a lot less (follow that?).
Still, Kindred (like a lot of Dick’s work) has many moments of brilliance—like the moment Dana realizes that in her situation in traveling back in time, she’s got three strikes against her being a black woman who is also smart. And (like a lot of Dick’s works) the story clips on from there where a more strictly literary-minded text might mull this over a little more and thread this through the entire narrative. Butler and Dick have what I consider a classic “science fictional” tendency to churn out many ideas that have wide-reaching ramifications without always taking full advantage of them. Like Dick, I also note that Butler’s works tend to be pretty short.
I have a feeling my final verdict will be that Kindred is a good book, but not a great one. Here, as in the other Butler works I’ve read, her character spends a lot of time planning for contingencies and doing a lot of talking that helps build the world rather than fully develop the character. I would compare this against Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, a much more outwardly literary text, that has the opposite problem—back when I listened to it, I felt it spent way too much time dwelling on relationship tensions. I’d be happiest with a book somewhere in the middle, but maybe leaning more towards the Butler/ideas/plotty style.
Current Mood: Feh | 
4 Comments
The other day on Alas, a blog someone claimed the experience of reading Butler is the equivalent of hearing a choir of angels singing.
I haven’t read through any of Butler novels yet, so I am really not in much of a position to judge, but I did check out the prose on the first page of Wildseed after hearing this person speak so strongly about Butler’s work, and from my cursory glance I’m with you about the writing. I am perfectly open to the fact that Butler’s story might be awesome and mind-blowing, but the writing itself of the little I read sort of just left me feeling “meh.”
Choir of angels? Um, no. I take a great deal of pleasure in wonderfully crafted sentences or exceptionally vivid imagery. I can’t think of a single instance in any of Butler’s books where I was awed by her prose. This isn’t a slam on Butler since I could say the same thing about other authors I adore—I mean, I love China Mieville but I can’t remember any one passage that looms large in my mind for its sheer aesthetic perfection. Mieville’s scenes are often genius, but that’s different from the sentence-level writing.
I think Butler gets a lot of credit (and deservedly so) for writing strong, confident African American women characters and bringing to the fore deep seated cultural biases. She is well deserving of her reputation but that doesn’t mean she’s a stylistic genius. Toni Morrison? Yes. Louise Erdrich? Yes. Butler? No.
The problem that we always seem to run into in these discussions of genre vs. literary fiction is that stylistic skill is always equated to worth, i.e. since Toni Morrison writes prettier sentences than Octavia Butler, then Toni Morrison is a better writer than Octavia Butler. But that’s only one very specific quality to judge a work of literature, and hence a writer.
Maybe the example I gave in the post shows this. As far as sentence-level prose goes, I would guess that line by line Niffenegger writes with more subtlety and style than Butler, but I have no desire to read another of her books whereas I’m already on my third of Butler’s and I would by no means rule out reading many more. Why? Because I get more out of Butler’s ideas than I do out of Niffenegger’s pretty sentences.
Yeah. I seem to have the opposite problem with Morrison. I am impressed by her prose and aesthetics, but I’ve had trouble getting into the actual stories themselves; keep in mind, I have only read The Bluest Eyes and Jazz. On the other hand, I haven’t read any of Butler’s novels besides a page.
I don’t completely agree with you about Mieville. It maybe true that there isn’t a single sentence that stands out for me, but I’ve seen him put together paragraphs that I thought were well-written and fairly impressive:
“We are in new times. Perhaps the Viae Ferae have grown clever, and stealthy. Maybe this is how they will occur now, sneaking in plain sight, arriving not suddenly but slowly, ushered in by us, armoured in girders, pelted in new cement and paving. I think on the idea that Charles Melville is sending Varmin Way to come for me, and that it will creep up on me with a growl of mixers and drills. I think on another idea that this is not an occurrence but an unoccurrence, that Charles has woken –ley Road my home out of its domesticity, and that it is yawning, and that soon it will shake itself off like a fox and sniff the air and go wherever the feral streets go when they are not resting, I and my neighbours tossed on its back like fleas, and that in some months’ time the main street it abuts will suddenly be seamless between the Irish bookie and the funeral parlour, and that –ley Road will be savaed by and savaging Sole Den Road, breaking its windows and walls and being broken in turn and coming back sometimes to rest.”
There is some really pretty turns-of-phrase: “. . . creep up on me with a growl of mixers and drills.” The prose does a nice job to capture the subject matter and theme. And it really is a powerful ending for the story that I think works through the imagery of the prose to create its effect.
From the opening of Perdido Street Station:
“Veldt to scrub to field to farms to these first tumbling houses that rise from the earth. It has been night for a long time. The hovels that encrust the river’s edge have grown like mushrooms around me in the dark.”
This a fairly evocative image. Nice diversity of sentence structure. Excellent word choice, especially liked “encrust” as a verb. I think the writing is actually really good.
In my opinion, Mieville comes very close to that balance of plot and literary prose. Either way his prose his clearly a cut above the usual genre writing. I don’t know if I would call aesthetic perfection, but I do think there is some really good writing in his books.
Yeah, on second thought my statement about Mieville was probably a little hasty. He’s definitely one of the best writers in the genre and I admire him greatly. I take it all back!
Still, the best writers have a way of working with metaphors, making them powerful without being corny. I am of course thinking of my favorite Cormac McCarthy novels (but not all of them), but I guess I was thinking of some of the books I’ve read in the last couple years that have had some staggeringly wonderful lines: the first part of The Tin Drum, much of Louise Erdrich’s work, many parts of Catch-22, and many parts of Titus Groan all come to mind when I think “perfection.”
As for Morrison, I think Beloved is top notch, and I really enjoyed Song of Solomon, although I felt it flaunted its literariness too much. I get bored with sheer aesthetics pretty quickly.