Sometimes it is hard to pin down what a book tells you. There are very straightforward books. Such are the ones where the writer tells you what his or her characters think, feel, want, and then also what happens to them, what they perceive, and maybe also tells you the author's/narrator's personal opinion.
But even with such pieces of writing it might happen that the structure also communicates something. You have to pay attention to what is said, in what order it is said.
Now, the most difficult thing is to understand that what is untold. Why certain things are left out. Or don't make sense. Or seem absurd.
An easy read is Joseph Heller's Catch 22. The narrator is also a character. We get an outer point of view of his actions, but can also, as it were, peak behind the curtains and see into his thoughts, etc. Also, we are given pointers to what unifies the narrative. The absurdity of the situation in which the soldiers live from they to day is often stressed. The lack of good planning and care for them as human beings is made fun of in the form of characters (Scheisskopf, the generals), and said explicitly.
But what about novels where much is left unsaid and leaving it unsaid if meaningful? I often asked this question since reading many post-1950 books. John Barth, in his Lost in the Funhouse, makes fun of making the narrative painstakingly explicit and self-reflexive. The story is not bad either, the fun made of the writing style is great too, and there is also a third, extra layer, delicious to lovers of literature, where the story (the little boy gets lost in the funhouse) interacts with the readers' being lost in the text which makes use of all the tools available to a writer of a prosaic short story.
Then again there are minimalists on the other end. In Brat Easton Ellis's books we often get a first person view of the world surrounding the protagonist. The descriptions of the world by these characters are usually very quick, very superficial, oriented toward looks, status symbols, media labels - the anchors of their fleeting attention, the lighthouses of their shallow but dangerous worlds. By making his characters so hostile to any deeper penetration into their inner Ellis creates a convincing illusion of both of having to do with such a person, and makes us feel a bit sorry for them. The people in his stories do not think or feel certain things, because they are not even able to. They don't have the conceptual skills, the mental sophistication, the psychological health and stability, the support from friends and family. What Ellis never writes about tells us a lot about the sadness of the lives of his characters.
It is noteworthy how certain important layers of life are absent from his characters's views (for example in The Informers, Less than Zero, Luna Park). The only novel where the political and the international aspects of the world manage to get a hold on the protagonist is Glamorama. Even in this case, due to the characters lack of any experience in the above mentioned domains, he is wholly unable to handle his life as it is suddenly flooded by life and death questions in the realms of politics. One might almost think that Ellis points out how easy it is to manipulate people in questions of international politics, how easy it is to make them back up terrible ideas.
György Dragomán's book The White King is also an interesting specimen. The book tells the story of a little boy growing up in the 1950's-1960's of Russian occupied Communist Hungary. The stories are first touching, interesting, but certain scenes become more and more absurd. By the end of the book it is clear that the narrator couldn't have grasped things in the way and on the level he did - there is too much knowledge about politics, everyday reality pervading the story. At the same time it also becomes evident that the child's accounts of violence that he encounters (getting beaten by the football trainer, being attacked by knife-yielding neighbor kids, etc.) cannot be true. One might at this point get frustrated and after finishing the book discard it as a bad one. But if one gives it a second thought it becomes obvious that the title does not just refer to the narrator's absent father. It also refer's to Lewis Carroll's White Queen. The whole story is a dream, made up of the memories of the now grown up writer from his childhood, made more radical and terrible by his childhood fears, and mixed with his present knowledge about the tyrannical system. Dragomán never tells us this explicitly. The way we can understand is by considering the narrative, the events and their likelihood.
In the above mentioned cases this kind of 'read-it-out-somehow-without-being-told' method works well. But a really popular and recently read book puzzles me. The piece is Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds. The book is a nice one. Not very powerful, not as grasping as some others telling of terrible things. The reason why it isn't? Because we never really understand why Bartle and Sterling dropped Murph's body into the river. We never get told what moved Bartle to write the letter to the dead soldiers mother. We never get told what he got the prison sentence for.
First these instances didn't bother me. The book has enough content to carry you on without getting stuck. Some parts are so sad and expressive that they almost hurt. But then, at the end one asks some questions inevitably. Like 'How does this all add up?'
I read a review where the author thought that they do not. And that is a weakness of the novel. I admit, that was my first thought too. But then again, might it not be that Powers does not want to be one of the all-knowing narrators filling out the gaps in the consciousness and memory of his own characters to enlighten us of their inner working. It very well might. After all I can imagine Bartle as being shocked, tired, frightened. As being not that sophisticated. As not being in an environment that fosters reflexivity.
The question is, how sophisticated a writer is Powers? Can it be that the seeming incoherence and lack of explanation present at key points of the story is actually meant to make us aware that war and its effects do not fit our usual narratives neatly? That we will have to learn to accept that justification and explanation might be absent in strange ways from the actions and emotions of others?
I think such a lesson would be very valuable. Of course it does not matter much whether Powers intended to have this message or not. As anyone with a bit of skill in enjoying artworks knows the author's intentions only matter to a very restricted degree. We have to evaluate the work as it is. For me, this book achieved this feat. But I can imagine books better written, achieving this in an even more enjoyable and easy-to-grasp way.
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