I've just finished reading The Octopus by Frank Norris, which may well be the perfect summer novel: like a beach on a hot day it's long but shallow, it's crowded with chatty people, and it proceeds at a leisurely pace. It can be put down for hours or days or weeks at a time and resumed again later without much loss of momentum. The perfect summer novel.
Which is not to say it's the perfect novel. Some of Norris's prose is clunky, and the whole Vanamee sub-plot seems to have wandered in from another book while Norris nodded. Every time I read it I am newly impressed by the charming intrusion of modern technology into stock Western scenery, as if Hoss Cartwright were to suddenly pull a cellphone from his gunbelt and say, "Hold your horses, Pa, I've got to take this call."
Norris's lyricism is justly lauded and the section juxtaposing a lavish dinner with the starvation death of Mrs. Hooven is stunning, but I still can't decide whether Norris intended the ending to be read ironically. Last time I read the novel, probably ten years ago, I was certain the ending must be read ironically, given Presley's tendency to view the world through lenses provided by art or literature; however, this time I'm not so sure. Is it possible for a novel in which the primary survivors are the mystic Vanamee and the poetic Presley to end on an entirely cynical note? I have a feeling Norris's wide-ranging vision encompassed a bit too much, leaving him at a loss to provide real resolution.
But the perfect summer novel doesn't need resolution. Like summer itself, the novel ends with everyone in transit to somewhere else, leaving little piles of unfinished business scattered in the most unexpected places. Reaching the end, of course, is the worst part of reading the perfect summer novel: closing the book for the last time means I'm that much closer to closing the book on summer itself.
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