I just finished this book THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD by Zora Neale Hurston (I love that name). It's probably the best book I've been forced to read here at UMSL. When I first saw the book, I was like "Ugh, this is boring chick lit." The giant fucking "Oprah" sticker on the front didn't help. I have a lot of mixed feelings about the Oprah book club. On one hand, I think what she does to encourage people to read (especially as a TV personality) is fantastic. And from working in a bookstore, let me tell you--that woman can move books. So it's also good that she helps get certain authors works mentioned to a public that is really no longer interested in literature. That said, maybe I'm an elitist...but I usually go out of my way to avoid the books she recommends. I guess I'm a hypocrite. There's just something very tacky about getting your reading recommendations for Oprah Winfrey.
Anyway, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is a wonderful book. My teacher acted like we'd all been forced to read it before, but I'd never even heard of it. The book is about a woman named Jaine Crawford. The novel follows her through three different marriages. As a piece of feminist literature, it's great...but as a story of perseverance and love--it's dynamite. Hurston fell out of the literary cannon until the 70's when Alice "the color purple" Walker dragged her back out into the light. Her biggest "crime" was not being political enough. Guys like Richard Wright had a problem with Hurston for not writing more about black/white race relations. Maybe there is something to that. At that same time, though, I disagree that an artist has any responsibilities to anyone or any cause. Hurston wrote about people, plain and simple. True, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is colored by race (dear god that was a bad pun) but it's mainly a "human" story, rather than a "black" story. I recommend this book to anyone, but especially to young women living today. Girls growing up today really do have more opportunities at happiness than women living 20 or 30 years ago (let alone two generations after the Civil War, when Hurston's book is set).
Despite being so good, I would never had read it if my teacher hadn't required I read it. I guess Oprah fills the role my teacher has for me for a lot of other people. So I guess people like me should get off our high horses...because in the end, all that really matters is that good books (like THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD) find their way into the hands of readers.
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2 comments:
Jason--I had a similar reaction to Their Eyes Were Watching God. I read it because a STUDENT recommended it to me and I was dumbfounded by the way it spoke to me as a HUMAN being. You see this is what Lewis Hyde means when he writes about an artist sharing a gift. In the BEST art, it's really just one spirit speaking to another's spirit. It seems to me that what artists, especially writers, do is try to articulate things most humans recognize, but rarely speak about. It impresses me that the books "speaks" to you, because I guess privately I had categorized it as a woman's book!
Yeah, I loved that book...but never would have picked it up on my own. It's strange the way we label books sometimes.
We don't consider a book written by a man (about men) to be "Man-lit" yet in most cases when a woman writes about women we call it "chick-lit."
I agree with Hyde (and you) about the connection between an artist and his/her audience. Nothing gives me more pleasure than feeling that connection. I only hope that one day I create a work that will make that psychic bridge (or meeting of minds) between author and reader.
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