One of the things I found so striking about TGB was that Makkai doesn't clean up the spectacular messiness that was the 80s, just as she doesn't clean up the messiness that is Fiona's life, but doesn't lose her narrative thread. Nora's life is a little more cleaned up, but only because she is old and so we only really get one perspective on what happened. Narrative is partly about which details to include and which to exclude, and there's a real temptation to eliminate detail to streamline the narrative. TGB does not do that. At the same time, I think because TGB is so very solidly grounded in its time and place, it almost invites in our own time and place. The specificity calls to us to compare and contrast, and that's such an interesting and subtle way to tell the story, I think.
Mind you, I have no idea if this is what Makkai intended. I haven't read any interviews. But boy did it work for me.
I guess the other thing I wonder is, how does it work for people who don't remember the 80s, people who didn't live through ACT-UP and the outing of Rock Hudson and numerous Catholic bishops, the arguments about whether gay marriage would make gay sex boring. Again, these are details that are in the background, but Makkai doesn't foreground them, and I do wonder how much of the picture she paints is legible to people who weren't there.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-09-03 11:17 pm (UTC)Mind you, I have no idea if this is what Makkai intended. I haven't read any interviews. But boy did it work for me.
I guess the other thing I wonder is, how does it work for people who don't remember the 80s, people who didn't live through ACT-UP and the outing of Rock Hudson and numerous Catholic bishops, the arguments about whether gay marriage would make gay sex boring. Again, these are details that are in the background, but Makkai doesn't foreground them, and I do wonder how much of the picture she paints is legible to people who weren't there.