Darkmans has a pretty informal tone throughout the book. The point of view switches back and forth between characters, and even during the narrative focuses on both the narrative, and internal thoughts of the characters as they are reacting to what is taking place on the narrative. But something that struck me was points in the novel where Barker just flat out uses her characters to dictate political opinions and it very much pulled me out of the novel.
The first section that really bugged me was the section where Beede is talking to the cart collector at Tesco about his importance to the store and the chain of workers it takes to get a consumer their goods (particularly through home delivery). Of all the characters Beede is the most teacher-y, but his little diatribe in this section borders on uncharacteristic and really sounds like Barker just hashing out her economic opinions. And it goes on for pages: " 'But what if they're disabled?' Beede challenged him. 'Then they can get their shoppin' delivered on the internet. (delivered on the internet? what?)' 'And how many people are needed to facilitate that?' Brian shrugged. 'Well, let's count them off shall we? There's the person at the computer --for starters-- who receives the order, the person who goes out into the shop and collects the order, the person who stores it until delivery, the person whose job it is to coordinate the transport...' (352). Beede's little diatribe about the evil Tesco reads like a Plato discourse. I dunno, it's just something that really seemed a bit forced in the writing for me.
I was fine to let it go as just a one time kind of annoying thing, until it cropped up again, later in the book. The section with Kane and Peta felt very similar. Here's a couple of characters who were talking about forgery, and suddenly we're reading about branding and exploited workers. It seemed like Barker just took the novel and steered it in a completely different direction to air some personal grievances, then swerved back into the story. That section is even longer--a full ten pages of "lesson." (391-401).
It almost feels like most of the things we've been discussing in class can be summed up in those passages, but it's the way that they're written, and how it seems so shoehorned into the narrative that really bothers me. I guess it's the didactic nature of it, but also the way that it uses a character, then postulates and answers its own questions with a "lesser," learning character. I found it fussy, and there could have been a better way to include these ideas in the narrative, or leave them out entirely, if they're only going to be used as "teaching moments." There are several other places where the novel does this, but these passages were the worst for me.
Beede does come across as pedantic and, I agree, it is tiresome. And, if he is so smart, what is he doing working in a hospital laundry? Clearly underemployed for someone of his implied intellect. Would this be a metaphor for the under-utilized resources of the world, a taking advantage of a population able to do more but regulated to a subservient position by the dominant culture? The most truly intelligent person in the novel, I believe, is Gaffar--truly a symbol of the west's interest in the Middle East only for oil. And what about his name? Gaff, chiefly British, a cheap place of entertainment; or gaffe, a social faux pas?
ReplyDeleteThere are actually a number of places where it seems like Barker inserts a kind of diatribe, or a lecture of sorts. There's Beede's attempt to organize the supermarket worker, and Peta's a Winnie's "postmodern" explanations of the novel's events and settings, as just a few examples. It would seem, then, that the novel is inserting all of these political and "explanatory" discourses into its own collage. What does that do?
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