The Wake of Forgiveness

 

Bruce Machart’s forthcoming novel (to be released in October 2010) has been garnering lots of positive buzz, and it is well-written with some striking imagery, but the themes are so bleak and depressing that I struggled to finish.   Set in a community of Czech immigrants in 1890s Texas, the novel chronicles the struggles of the Skala family, moving through thirty years of their life.  Cruel patriarch Vaclav Skala supplements his farming income with racehorses, with his motherless sons literally taking their place in the plow harness. 

I wanted to like this book a lot more, but the darkness and violent emotion of the narrative overtake the high-quality prose.  (Advance copy thanks to the publisher and netGalley)

This book got me to wondering…why the dark themes, why the implication that suffering equals quality in literary fiction?  Why is lighter, more escapist, or comedic fiction seen as inherently less worthy?  Don’t even get me started on genre fiction and its perceived merit.

My personal taste runs to larger than life fiction most of the time.  I don’t want to read hyper-realistic domestic drama – I can look all around me for that.  I love bloody thrillers and lush historical romance.   I love quirky social-history nonfiction and the occasional celebrity memoir.  I actually have not read a lot of the ‘classics’ – and though I agree that there are books that stand the test of time, isn’t it presumptuous to label something a classic?   Dickens was considered crass commercial serially published fiction in his time…who is to say that Stephen King or Jodi Picoult or Alexander McCall Smith won’t be on high school reading lists a few decades from now?