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[CCBC-Net] I am the cheese
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From: Jeffrey Canton <jeffrey_canton>
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 07:47:31 -0700 (PDT)
I just wanted to comment on Susan's post and this notion that all Cormier books are overwhelmingly bleak
-- what I want to ask is would you use the same criteria in dismissing works of adult literature? Because deciding not to read an author's work on the basis of reviews, word-of-mouth, etc., rather than on your own experience is tantamount to dismissal which I also want to point out in light of Susan's posting is exactly my issue with the comments that Rukhsana has made in her posts -- comments not based on her wide experience of reading Cormier but on reading one book and again this is my issue with Susan's on reading just these two books. Would you dismiss Booker prize winner Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee because it is, like many of his previous books, almost a harrowing literary experience or Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago's Blindless because it took you to such dark places that as to leave you breathless? Does all children's literature have to be hopeful? And if so why?
If Cormier had only explored the darkness of the human soul, I would probably be less inclined to leap to his defense but even in the darkest moments of The Chocolate War and I am the Cheese, the resilience of the human spirit shines out and asks questions and focuses the reader's attention on issues that all of us have to face in our lives. These are hard and difficult fictions, fictions that challenge us as readers and force us to think. Isn't that why I am the Cheese casts such a powerful spell on its readers? We come to doubt the narrator as an earlier poster noted because it becomes obvious on one level that he's woven people from the institution he's in into his story, a story which Cormier then begins to re-tell on the final page of the book -- this story mirrors the way that children sing the Farmer in the Dell -- as a round so that those words that end the boy's first telling of his story -- "I am the cheese" should chill us, haunt us and mesmerize us. But that there is something more than an unreliable narrator at work is that gruesome government memo. Cormier works on such different levels as an artist as to almost overwhelm me -- and with final books like the lyrical poem sequence, Frenchtown Summer and his final book, The Rag and Bone Shop, I'd urge listserv members who haven't read Cormier widely to read him and then make up their minds and not base their decision not to read Cormier on the comments in this discussion.
Jeffrey Canton Toronto
--- Susan Daugherty wrote:
====Jeffrey Canton 54 Fenwick Avenue Toronto, ON M4K 3H3 416F1717
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
Received on Sun 26 Aug 2001 09:47:31 AM CDT
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 07:47:31 -0700 (PDT)
I just wanted to comment on Susan's post and this notion that all Cormier books are overwhelmingly bleak
-- what I want to ask is would you use the same criteria in dismissing works of adult literature? Because deciding not to read an author's work on the basis of reviews, word-of-mouth, etc., rather than on your own experience is tantamount to dismissal which I also want to point out in light of Susan's posting is exactly my issue with the comments that Rukhsana has made in her posts -- comments not based on her wide experience of reading Cormier but on reading one book and again this is my issue with Susan's on reading just these two books. Would you dismiss Booker prize winner Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee because it is, like many of his previous books, almost a harrowing literary experience or Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago's Blindless because it took you to such dark places that as to leave you breathless? Does all children's literature have to be hopeful? And if so why?
If Cormier had only explored the darkness of the human soul, I would probably be less inclined to leap to his defense but even in the darkest moments of The Chocolate War and I am the Cheese, the resilience of the human spirit shines out and asks questions and focuses the reader's attention on issues that all of us have to face in our lives. These are hard and difficult fictions, fictions that challenge us as readers and force us to think. Isn't that why I am the Cheese casts such a powerful spell on its readers? We come to doubt the narrator as an earlier poster noted because it becomes obvious on one level that he's woven people from the institution he's in into his story, a story which Cormier then begins to re-tell on the final page of the book -- this story mirrors the way that children sing the Farmer in the Dell -- as a round so that those words that end the boy's first telling of his story -- "I am the cheese" should chill us, haunt us and mesmerize us. But that there is something more than an unreliable narrator at work is that gruesome government memo. Cormier works on such different levels as an artist as to almost overwhelm me -- and with final books like the lyrical poem sequence, Frenchtown Summer and his final book, The Rag and Bone Shop, I'd urge listserv members who haven't read Cormier widely to read him and then make up their minds and not base their decision not to read Cormier on the comments in this discussion.
Jeffrey Canton Toronto
--- Susan Daugherty wrote:
====Jeffrey Canton 54 Fenwick Avenue Toronto, ON M4K 3H3 416F1717
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
Received on Sun 26 Aug 2001 09:47:31 AM CDT
