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Annie Proulx: The Shipping News
- Thread starter Darren
- Start date
Darren
Active Member
I'm up to Chapter 32 now. I'm finding it quite hard going. It just doesn't seem to be going anywhere with the story. I can see a few potential openings but nothing so far. Less than 100 pages to go so I hope something develops. Must do - they made a film out of this book!
Anyone else finished or near. Any other thoughts?
Darren.
Anyone else finished or near. Any other thoughts?
Darren.
I've read 26 chapters. In fact I'm looking forward to finish it so I can start another book, which is not a good sign! (and the fact that I haven't finished it is not a good sign either...)
I agree with you Darren, several threads that don't lead anywhere (so far). I was enthusiastic at the beginning but it's long gone. I can't say I hate it though, but I've read much better books.
Proulx has a way of telling stories and make them quite interesting but they don't seem to be connected: a series of anecdotes. Also, Quoyle is a very passive character, I don't care much for him...
Marie
I agree with you Darren, several threads that don't lead anywhere (so far). I was enthusiastic at the beginning but it's long gone. I can't say I hate it though, but I've read much better books.
Proulx has a way of telling stories and make them quite interesting but they don't seem to be connected: a series of anecdotes. Also, Quoyle is a very passive character, I don't care much for him...
Marie
I found the book hard too, though I read it a while ago, closer to the date it was released (Which was what, a few years back?!), so I don't remember it entirely.
One thing I remember thinking though was that I was so used to reading books that had a set formula - ie. the story begins, all important characters are introduced and it builds to a climax from there - that I didn't appreciate the Shipping News because it seemed to be written with an entirely different feel. I read it again after I realised this and I liked it a lot more.
But I agree, it is definitely hard going!
One thing I remember thinking though was that I was so used to reading books that had a set formula - ie. the story begins, all important characters are introduced and it builds to a climax from there - that I didn't appreciate the Shipping News because it seemed to be written with an entirely different feel. I read it again after I realised this and I liked it a lot more.
But I agree, it is definitely hard going!
Ell
Well-Known Member
I found it hard-going at first, too. 
It took awhile to get used to the quirky sentence fragments, but found it gradually took on a cadence all its own. Also, once I accepted the fact that it isn't a "plot-driven" story, relaxed and just let it unfold in whatever way it would, it was much more enjoyable.
Ell
It took awhile to get used to the quirky sentence fragments, but found it gradually took on a cadence all its own. Also, once I accepted the fact that it isn't a "plot-driven" story, relaxed and just let it unfold in whatever way it would, it was much more enjoyable.
Ell
Darren
Active Member
Finished
Definitley not on my list of favourite books! I could appreciate how Quoyle developed as a character from his initial beginnings, but other than that there didn't seem to be anything else to this book. Obviously very well researched but didn't seem to be going anywhere. Lots of potential to get a plot going.
Might rent the film to see how they've adapted it.
Definitley not on my list of favourite books! I could appreciate how Quoyle developed as a character from his initial beginnings, but other than that there didn't seem to be anything else to this book. Obviously very well researched but didn't seem to be going anywhere. Lots of potential to get a plot going.
I thought it might develop into a battle between Quoyle and his old cousin, or a murder hunt for the head in the case, but no.
Might rent the film to see how they've adapted it.
I've finished too
I wrote a review in the reviews library ...
A little more about Quoyle:
Will probably rent the movie too : I'm curious to see what they made of it...
Marie
I wrote a review in the reviews library ...
A little more about Quoyle:
I can understand, with his low self-esteem, that Quoyle stays with Petal even though she cheats on him, what puzzles me is that he continues loving her after she sells the kids! Also, when Quoyle suspects that Bunny has psychological troubles, he asks his aunt if he should go to a doctor: couldn't he at least take his own decisions concerning the girls? I really didn't like Quoyle's personality. He however improved near the end, after Buggit's "death", when he took charge of the newspaper. I also found he was pretty self-centered: OK he had enough troubles himself but not knowing about his aunt's business? and about his relative Nolan, you would have thought he would have called social services after finding him half-starved the first time. But no! Someone has to tell him what to do!
Will probably rent the movie too : I'm curious to see what they made of it...
Marie
Ell
Well-Known Member
, sorry you guys didn't like it.It was one of my favourite reads in the last year. I was planning to re-read it and pay more attention to the knots (and explanation of them) at the beginning of each chapter.
I really felt sorry for Quoyle, but can understand how he's hard to like. But, I believe his self-esteem was so bad, that he thought he deserved bad things happening to him. People who feel like losers, tend to be passive. They let people - and life in general - push them around. I think his aunt identified this about him quite quickly and realized, not only that she could take charge, but really had to take charge.
However, what I really liked was the slow evolution of Quoyle. He didn't change quickly. Nor did he change a lot. But it seemed significant that he was able to change and you could see a glimmer of hope for him as a real human being.
The other thing I liked about the book was the "Newfie-speak" (the Newfoundlander slang) and the cadence of the language. They really do have a peculiar and blunt way of speaking which I thought Proulx captured particularly well.
Ell
Hoping someone else like this.
It's what makes a discussion interesting, that we don't all like the same books
I have 2 questions about the novel, I have my own opinion on both, but I'd like to know what other people think:
SPOILERS AHEAD
1) Quoyle is always Quoyle, I don't think his first name is ever mentioned (or is it?) why is that? I personally think that at the beginning it is to underline his anonymity, the fact that he is average but later, it takes a different meaning: he is Quoyle, associated with Quoyle's point, and his "savage" ancestors (remember Buggit's reaction: he has to call Partridge to make sure he is a nice guy)... Other thoughts?
2)I kept thinking throughout the book that Bunny and Sunshine were not Quoyle's children, but the issue is not once raised (or did I miss it? it is quite possible...). Why? I thought it's because it is irrelevant, ties of love being stronger than ties of blood (after all blood ties tend to be corrupted in the Shipping News...)
Other opinions?
I have 2 questions about the novel, I have my own opinion on both, but I'd like to know what other people think:
SPOILERS AHEAD
1) Quoyle is always Quoyle, I don't think his first name is ever mentioned (or is it?) why is that? I personally think that at the beginning it is to underline his anonymity, the fact that he is average but later, it takes a different meaning: he is Quoyle, associated with Quoyle's point, and his "savage" ancestors (remember Buggit's reaction: he has to call Partridge to make sure he is a nice guy)... Other thoughts?
2)I kept thinking throughout the book that Bunny and Sunshine were not Quoyle's children, but the issue is not once raised (or did I miss it? it is quite possible...). Why? I thought it's because it is irrelevant, ties of love being stronger than ties of blood (after all blood ties tend to be corrupted in the Shipping News...)
Other opinions?
Nobody inspired by The Shipping News?
Or maybe I shouldn't have talked specific points before everybody has finished? Since it's my first book of the month discussion here, I'm not very aware of the procedure I'm afraid...
Do we wait till everybody indicates they finished or just go ahead and throw discussion subjects like I did before?
By the way, I've rented the DVD and I'm in the middle of watching it. I like it much better than the book so far... More straightforward but faithful to the general atmosphere...
Or maybe I shouldn't have talked specific points before everybody has finished? Since it's my first book of the month discussion here, I'm not very aware of the procedure I'm afraid...
Do we wait till everybody indicates they finished or just go ahead and throw discussion subjects like I did before?
By the way, I've rented the DVD and I'm in the middle of watching it. I like it much better than the book so far... More straightforward but faithful to the general atmosphere...
Darren
Active Member
Hi Marie,
There aren't any specific rules to discussing the books. This is only our second book, the first one didn't seem to be that appealing to everyone.
Hopefully more people will join in as they finish the book.
The writing style is very different to what I normally read. There was a strange lilt to it as Ell mentioned above. Also the fact that Quoyle is often referred to as "nephew" by his aunt in conversation rather than his name (maybe that's a local thing, I don't know) all added to the impression that he was a nobody. Mayve this lack of personal touch had made him what he was. The family seemed to have lots of problems
. I don't recall his first name ever being used and again I felt this reinforced the fact that his character didn't have much to it.
As regards his kids, I'm not sure.
Again, many threads were started in the book, but never led anywhere There seemed to be so much material that had been researched but not developed.
There aren't any specific rules to discussing the books. This is only our second book, the first one didn't seem to be that appealing to everyone.
Hopefully more people will join in as they finish the book.
The writing style is very different to what I normally read. There was a strange lilt to it as Ell mentioned above. Also the fact that Quoyle is often referred to as "nephew" by his aunt in conversation rather than his name (maybe that's a local thing, I don't know) all added to the impression that he was a nobody. Mayve this lack of personal touch had made him what he was. The family seemed to have lots of problems
eg the aunt's abusive brother
As regards his kids, I'm not sure.
There certainly seemed to be plenty of opportunities for the children to be have been fathered by Petal's lovers.
There seemed to be so much material that had been researched but not developed.
Ell
Well-Known Member
True, but I thought this was intentional.
Everyone in town seemed to have little secrets and idiosyncracies, but they (the townfolk) didn't dwell on them - they just accepted them. So just as the there wasn't a desire by the townfolk to elaborate on, obviously deeper issues, the author doesn't elaborate to the reader. I think this attitude played a large part in how easily Quoyle fit in - without seeming odd or out of place. It's like, "yes we know he's odd and has demons, but so does everyone else - so let's all agree to leave it alone."
Also, I think the author essentially wanted the story to be about Quoyle. Therefore, despite all this turmoil and craziness going on around him, the focus remained on Quoyle's slow, plodding journey through it all.
Yes, it was odd how they called each other. Just as Agniss called him "nephew", he called her "the aunt", not Aunt Agniss. Maybe it was because they didn't really know each other and were only thrown together by acciident of their blood relationship.
Just my 2 cents worth
Ell
Sitaram
kickbox
I have been spending a lot of time lately reading and thinking about The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.
http://www.annieproulx.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=241
Here are some excerpts of my thoughts:
I am so impressed with Brokeback Mountain that I have purchased The Shipping News and am just now beginning to read it.
I am particularly struck by one paragraph early in the work:
It was spring is certainly passive compared with spring has sprung and reminiscent not of Chaucer's nascent "Whan that April" but of Eliot's evanescent April as "the cruelest month."
The wind is active, but violent, striking. Twigs are not budding branches but dead, fallen branches.
Slanted rain is merciless, wind-driven, bent on pursuing us even under whatever frail shelter we might seek.
struck flint is a prelude to fire, but in the past tense, and passive, suggesting failure; a spark, some smoke, but no fire. Damp, dark and cold are motives for fire.
Yet, the final pellucid thought at the end of day is the recognition and admission of our weariness and desire for sleep.
http://www.vitacost.com/science/hn/Herb/Coltsfoot.htm
We notice that the leaf is heart-shaped. A colt is an immature horse. But horses are said to have a hoof and not a foot. Foot suggests human. A horse's leg in a ditch suggests a broken leg, and a horse with a broken leg must be "put down."
Of course, everything that I am saying here is quite possibly the artifact of over-eager analysis. Yet, still, these phenomena are present in the reader's field of vision, even if they are only optical illusions, never intended by the author. And the potential energy of such phenomena are ever-present, waiting to be harnessed by the author's artistic will.
The riffling of cards in a single hand (not two hands) suggests a clever conjurer and his slight-of-hand. The hand is chalk white because it is death's hand. I am reminded of Wallace Stevens' line from Sea-Surface Full of Clouds
furious dabs of tulips stuttering in gardens.
Furious sets the tone of anger.
The artists' dab, like a cook's dash, denotes a minute quantity and insufficiency of intentionality; a vague afterthought.
What is it that those tulips desire to tell us with such difficulty?
There are worlds within the words of Annie Proulx and there are other worlds within me, a particular reader, or in any reader. When she writes and I read, then, there is a collision of worlds and sparks and smoke result. At times there may be fire and light.
Scales of degree may be recognized in many qualities such as the volume and pitch of sound, which is sometimes called music, hardness in rocks, intelligence, temperature, pressure, and so on.
We characterize things as tragic or comic. We place like phenomena side by side and construct our own scales of measure.
It is not surprising if we seek an MCP (microcosmic cameo passage) in works of literature. After all, we are doing the same thing when we turn our attention to the nature of space-time and mattergy and seek a GUT (Grand Universal Theory), a simple formula of relativity or string theory.
The Ashley Book of Knots motif
Speaking of string theory, most chapters in The Shipping News are headed by illustrations and quotations from The Ashley Book of Knots.
I feel the urge to give some witty, apocryphal etymology for the word knot such as "knowing not" how to untie it.
Here is what Clifford W. Ashley says about knots:
Well! What can we, the readers, make of all this? What should we make of all this?
The character Quoyle is certainly described as a large lump of flesh resembling the Latin etymology of nodus.
A sign or symbol may start out as a euphemism. I am thinking of the phrase "stem the rose" in Brokeback mountain. "Rose" is most likely a euphemism for anus. This same euphemism is used by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, where it speaks of the "rose bud".
I just now did a string search through the text of BBM on "rose" and "old", to see if there is any mention of drinking "Old Rose Whiskey", but there is not. Ang Lee perhaps added that to the movie adaptation of BBM as a form of humor. By the way, there really is (or was) and Old Rose Distilling company.
Everything becomes old, eventually, even a rose, even forbidden sexual intimacy. When hats become old, they are "old hat".
Joyce's Finnegans Wake comes to mind as the most extreme example of pure esoteric, implicit symbolism, devoid of simple narrative plot as we understand it. So we might set Finnegans Wake at one extreme of our esoteric scale. At the opposite extreme is the plain story, which is all narrative and no symbolism. If I narrate to you some true event from my life, which has actually happened, in simple, straight forward language, then we may assume that there are no symbols or hidden meanings or innuendo. If however, I narrate to you a dream which I had, then that narrative may contain symbols and hidden meanings placed their by the subconscious.
I am thinking of the two shirts in Jack's closet in BBM.
Proulx certainly seems encyclopedic in her motif from the book of knots.
Let us, for convenience sake, refer to our now famous MCP (microcosmic cameo passage) from chapter 3 of The Shipping News as the Coltsfoot Passage
The Coltsfoot passage is practically the third paragraph in Chapter 3, which is an account of an elderly couple planning their suicide.
BBM centers around homophobia and same-sex romance. TSN (The Shipping News) has an entirely different focus or center. Let us see if we put that focus of TSN into words.
How much analysis can any given work or author bear?
How much fiction can any reality endure?
Can one abide reality in the absence of all fiction?
I want to search on bricolage. My limited understanding of the word makes me think of a bird gathering scraps for a nest. I can see Annie Proulx as such a being, purchasing The Ashly Book of Knots for twenty five cents at a yard sale and then weaving it into a Pulitzer prize winning novel.
Quoyle's life certainly sounds like a rich dump-heap ripe with raw materials for the bricoleur.
The definition of quoyle is a line the ties a boat to a dock. The leftover line is laid out in a spiral of one layer so it can be walked on if necessary.
From what little I have learned of Annie Proulx through reading, she strikes me as an independent person of high principles, bent on going her own way of artistic independence, not to be lured by either fame or money.
She describes the highly paid speaker invitations as those of trophy hunters who do not care about her message, or what she stands for, but only about her fame, making her feel like some piece of meat on a rack.
She seems to choose not to ride out the fame of BBM, but to distance herself from it so she may get on with other work.
I suppose I would feel that my life has not been lived in vain if Proulx, Pynchon, and Kundera were to E-mail me and say "Not bad! Not bad!"
Imagine dying and going to heaven, and hearing God say "Not bad! Not bad!"
"Not bad" can be quite a tribute, coming from the right source.
Here is something very important from sparknotes.com
How interesting that Proulx should treat sexual orientation in such a fashion in TSN, but it becomes such a bombshell of controversy for the public in BBM.
Here is another great observation from sparknotes.com
I always thought about a story being placed in a certain geographic setting. I never thought of a geographic setting as the source and inspiration for a story.
Shortly after I awoke, this morning, the thought hit me: Suppose Quoyle is Newfoundland itself (I mean, symbolically).
I was thinking about how Annie Proulx made all those trips to Newfoundland, gathering material. The fishing commerce on the verge of being irrevocably destroyed. The encroachment of modern technology. Perhaps the modern world sees Newfoundland as homely, ungainly, not fitting in.
http://www.annieproulx.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=241
Here are some excerpts of my thoughts:
I am so impressed with Brokeback Mountain that I have purchased The Shipping News and am just now beginning to read it.
I am particularly struck by one paragraph early in the work:
It was spring is certainly passive compared with spring has sprung and reminiscent not of Chaucer's nascent "Whan that April" but of Eliot's evanescent April as "the cruelest month."
The wind is active, but violent, striking. Twigs are not budding branches but dead, fallen branches.
Slanted rain is merciless, wind-driven, bent on pursuing us even under whatever frail shelter we might seek.
struck flint is a prelude to fire, but in the past tense, and passive, suggesting failure; a spark, some smoke, but no fire. Damp, dark and cold are motives for fire.
Yet, the final pellucid thought at the end of day is the recognition and admission of our weariness and desire for sleep.
http://www.vitacost.com/science/hn/Herb/Coltsfoot.htm
We notice that the leaf is heart-shaped. A colt is an immature horse. But horses are said to have a hoof and not a foot. Foot suggests human. A horse's leg in a ditch suggests a broken leg, and a horse with a broken leg must be "put down."
Of course, everything that I am saying here is quite possibly the artifact of over-eager analysis. Yet, still, these phenomena are present in the reader's field of vision, even if they are only optical illusions, never intended by the author. And the potential energy of such phenomena are ever-present, waiting to be harnessed by the author's artistic will.
The riffling of cards in a single hand (not two hands) suggests a clever conjurer and his slight-of-hand. The hand is chalk white because it is death's hand. I am reminded of Wallace Stevens' line from Sea-Surface Full of Clouds
furious dabs of tulips stuttering in gardens.
Furious sets the tone of anger.
The artists' dab, like a cook's dash, denotes a minute quantity and insufficiency of intentionality; a vague afterthought.
What is it that those tulips desire to tell us with such difficulty?
There are worlds within the words of Annie Proulx and there are other worlds within me, a particular reader, or in any reader. When she writes and I read, then, there is a collision of worlds and sparks and smoke result. At times there may be fire and light.
Scales of degree may be recognized in many qualities such as the volume and pitch of sound, which is sometimes called music, hardness in rocks, intelligence, temperature, pressure, and so on.
We characterize things as tragic or comic. We place like phenomena side by side and construct our own scales of measure.
It is not surprising if we seek an MCP (microcosmic cameo passage) in works of literature. After all, we are doing the same thing when we turn our attention to the nature of space-time and mattergy and seek a GUT (Grand Universal Theory), a simple formula of relativity or string theory.
The Ashley Book of Knots motif
Speaking of string theory, most chapters in The Shipping News are headed by illustrations and quotations from The Ashley Book of Knots.
I feel the urge to give some witty, apocryphal etymology for the word knot such as "knowing not" how to untie it.
Here is what Clifford W. Ashley says about knots:
Well! What can we, the readers, make of all this? What should we make of all this?
The character Quoyle is certainly described as a large lump of flesh resembling the Latin etymology of nodus.
A sign or symbol may start out as a euphemism. I am thinking of the phrase "stem the rose" in Brokeback mountain. "Rose" is most likely a euphemism for anus. This same euphemism is used by Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, where it speaks of the "rose bud".
I just now did a string search through the text of BBM on "rose" and "old", to see if there is any mention of drinking "Old Rose Whiskey", but there is not. Ang Lee perhaps added that to the movie adaptation of BBM as a form of humor. By the way, there really is (or was) and Old Rose Distilling company.
Everything becomes old, eventually, even a rose, even forbidden sexual intimacy. When hats become old, they are "old hat".
Joyce's Finnegans Wake comes to mind as the most extreme example of pure esoteric, implicit symbolism, devoid of simple narrative plot as we understand it. So we might set Finnegans Wake at one extreme of our esoteric scale. At the opposite extreme is the plain story, which is all narrative and no symbolism. If I narrate to you some true event from my life, which has actually happened, in simple, straight forward language, then we may assume that there are no symbols or hidden meanings or innuendo. If however, I narrate to you a dream which I had, then that narrative may contain symbols and hidden meanings placed their by the subconscious.
I am thinking of the two shirts in Jack's closet in BBM.
Proulx certainly seems encyclopedic in her motif from the book of knots.
Let us, for convenience sake, refer to our now famous MCP (microcosmic cameo passage) from chapter 3 of The Shipping News as the Coltsfoot Passage
The Coltsfoot passage is practically the third paragraph in Chapter 3, which is an account of an elderly couple planning their suicide.
BBM centers around homophobia and same-sex romance. TSN (The Shipping News) has an entirely different focus or center. Let us see if we put that focus of TSN into words.
How much analysis can any given work or author bear?
How much fiction can any reality endure?
Can one abide reality in the absence of all fiction?
I want to search on bricolage. My limited understanding of the word makes me think of a bird gathering scraps for a nest. I can see Annie Proulx as such a being, purchasing The Ashly Book of Knots for twenty five cents at a yard sale and then weaving it into a Pulitzer prize winning novel.
Quoyle's life certainly sounds like a rich dump-heap ripe with raw materials for the bricoleur.
The definition of quoyle is a line the ties a boat to a dock. The leftover line is laid out in a spiral of one layer so it can be walked on if necessary.
From what little I have learned of Annie Proulx through reading, she strikes me as an independent person of high principles, bent on going her own way of artistic independence, not to be lured by either fame or money.
She describes the highly paid speaker invitations as those of trophy hunters who do not care about her message, or what she stands for, but only about her fame, making her feel like some piece of meat on a rack.
She seems to choose not to ride out the fame of BBM, but to distance herself from it so she may get on with other work.
I suppose I would feel that my life has not been lived in vain if Proulx, Pynchon, and Kundera were to E-mail me and say "Not bad! Not bad!"
Imagine dying and going to heaven, and hearing God say "Not bad! Not bad!"
"Not bad" can be quite a tribute, coming from the right source.
Here is something very important from sparknotes.com
How interesting that Proulx should treat sexual orientation in such a fashion in TSN, but it becomes such a bombshell of controversy for the public in BBM.
Here is another great observation from sparknotes.com
I always thought about a story being placed in a certain geographic setting. I never thought of a geographic setting as the source and inspiration for a story.
Shortly after I awoke, this morning, the thought hit me: Suppose Quoyle is Newfoundland itself (I mean, symbolically).
I was thinking about how Annie Proulx made all those trips to Newfoundland, gathering material. The fishing commerce on the verge of being irrevocably destroyed. The encroachment of modern technology. Perhaps the modern world sees Newfoundland as homely, ungainly, not fitting in.
StillILearn
New Member
Fascinating stuff here, Sitaram. I am up to my eyebrows in sixteenth century Scotland, or I'd certainly grab me some Proulx.
Maybe later, if she's still around ...
(That's a joke, son.)
Maybe later, if she's still around ...
(That's a joke, son.)
Sitaram
kickbox
I am often haunting the links at the official Annie Proulx site http://www.annieproulx.com
They claim that their forum is "down" for a few months, for purposes of renovation, improvement. I do hope it will return.
With the forum down, I was inspired to dig more deeply into the articles at the site.
The following link is a fascinating interview with Proulx which succinctly demonstrates both what a brilliant mind she has and also her political, sociological and economic insight into American society.
http://www.missourireview.com/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=Interview+with+Annie+Proulx
I find it breathtaking.
The interview speaks of many things, but speaks sufficiently of Newfoundland and The Shipping News to make this post germane to this thread.
I do try not to start new threads when there is an existing thread where it I may reasonably post.
They claim that their forum is "down" for a few months, for purposes of renovation, improvement. I do hope it will return.
With the forum down, I was inspired to dig more deeply into the articles at the site.
The following link is a fascinating interview with Proulx which succinctly demonstrates both what a brilliant mind she has and also her political, sociological and economic insight into American society.
http://www.missourireview.com/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=Interview+with+Annie+Proulx
I find it breathtaking.
The interview speaks of many things, but speaks sufficiently of Newfoundland and The Shipping News to make this post germane to this thread.
I do try not to start new threads when there is an existing thread where it I may reasonably post.
Ronny
Well-Known Member
So I'm glad looking at this that I'm not the only one having a hard time reading this book. I had heard some good things and wanted to like this book but I'm going to have to shelf it for now. I've been pushing it aside all month for other books that come my way. I will try to read it later I find sometimes with books like this I like them better at a different time.