, 31 2022 . 01:58
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24. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
This is another example of skillful usage of the unreliable narrator technique. The classical prerequisites of a good unreliable narrator story are: (i) The narration must be convincing; that the protagonist is unreliable should only become clear well into the story, and particularly to what extent he is unreliable, and, (ii) It should not be reduced to the trivial fact that different people view the same events differently (Rashomon effect), but should analyze the reasons for the unreliability and show the character of the narrator through those distortions of reality that he commits. Barnes succeeds in this endeavor. It is difficult to discuss this book in any details without disclosing spoilers, so I will just say that the protagonist, the retiree, is trying to recall from the depths of his memory events that he had subconsciously banished there, and supplanted by a picture that suits himself, and both his today and his past are way more complicated and unflattering than what he was able to convince himself in. For the rest, read the book.
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64. Warriors Do Not Cry by Melba Patillo Beals
Sometimes the most moving accounts of historical (or, shall we say, historic?) events are rendered not by ornate prose of celebrated authors, but by plain diaries of ordinary people, often children. Think of Anne Frank, or of Tanya Savicheva, who died of hunger during the siege of Leningrad. Melba Patilla was one of the Little Rock Nine, and this book is just the slightly polished diary that she kept during their trying year at the Central High. Despite being a professional journalist, she is not a very good writer, which actually only creates a feeling of authenticity. The reader cannot avoid imagining himself in this abominable situation, and the more quotidian her account sounds, the more excruciating it feels. One of a particularly touching episodes is when after a year of attending school under paratrooper protection, she is being send to Chicago to spend summer with a volunteer host family. It comes as a shock to her that blacks and whites there are riding the same buses, drinking from the same fountains, patronizing the same restaurants and nobody even notices that!
Interestingly, most of the Little Rock Nine entered interracial marriages at some point of life, including Melba. While one can discard that as an insignificant factoid, I think its symbolic of the difference in the civil rights movement in the time of Dr. King and in the time of the Black Panthers. Unifiers vs. dividers. Hopefully we will see it in the future led by people like Barack Obama and not like Jeremiah Wright.
https://chto-chitat.livejournal.com/14662823.html
