Book vs. Book: Battle of the kids battling racist humiliation and not quite winning

Inaugurating our latest regular series: BOOK vs. BOOK. It’s a death match between somehow-related examples of young people’s fiction… because Lord knows, no one would ever read more than one book.

The books: Sherman Alexie, THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN; Mildred D. Taylor, ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY

SPOILER ALERTS for some key scenes in both books.

These are not books, at first glance, that one might think to compare. And yet if you happen to read them side-by-side (as I did a year and a half ago, when doing the research for this article), the similarities are surprising.

ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY is a classic, published in 1976 and winning the following year’s Newbery, set amid a Black community in Great Depression Mississippi. Nine-year-old Cassie’s family struggles to keep their land — their only hope of being able to determine their own future against every twist of unjust fate.

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, on the other hand, is a contemporary novel, told in text and comics, about the repercussions of Junior (a.k.a. Arnold Spirit Jr.)’s decision to leave his crappy school on “the rez” in favor of the well-funded white school nearby.

The similarities:

Both books open on the first day of school, with our respective protagonists’ excitement turning to disillusionment and anger when they realize, via the pathetic state of their textbooks, just how little their education is actually valued by anyone with any power. Both Cassie and Junior rebel by rejecting their books, and in neither case does it go exactly as planned.

We get the picture: the world is stacked against them, but these kids are fighters. But they may pay a price for that that they can’t quite imagine — yet.

More strikingly, these books also share some fundamental similarities in the scene I found most powerful in each. With a lot of buildup so we understand just what is being risked with this choice, Taylor and Alexie have their protagonists each choose to stand up to more powerful white kids, whose outward friendliness is heavily spiked with racism and condescension.

And then Taylor and Alexie give us the same painful twist: after all that courage in standing up for their own dignity and self-respect, Cassie and Junior are met with bafflement. It’s not that the white kids are angry; it’s not that they fight back and punish our heroes; rather, they just don’t get it at all. Junior and Cassie’s defiant stands deflate into irrelevance in the face of their would-be antagonists’ genuine inability to understand why they are so angry.

Both scenes are so well done, it’s hurting me just writing about it. I think these books’d be worth reading for this alone, but as it happens, they’ve each got a lot more to offer.

The comparison:

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY has an irreverence I love, with hilarious observations and exactly the kind of obsession with, and half-angst-half-pride about, masturbation that we expect from a teenage boy.

I like that Alexie doesn’t shy away from showing the really destructive elements of reservation culture — its alcoholism; crushing and unromanticized poverty; a misplaced toughness borne of oppression and the absence of any imaginable future — without ever disrespecting his characters and their humanity. Also, as I recently mentioned, I was quite struck by some small references to how homophobia distorts Junior’s friendship with his also-straight best friend. There’s a lot here that moved me, and made me think.

Unfortunately, there’s a point in the book, about two-thirds of the way through, when I started to find it really tough going. Alexie kind of piles on the tragedy, with (I said SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!) the deaths of two emotionally central characters in a row. The book is described as “semi-autobiographical,” and I suspect that this is one of those autobiographical parts, because it’s the kind of thing that actually happens in life but doesn’t really work in fiction.

Which, actually, is interesting; I’ve long remembered a Joss Whedon interview where he described his philosophy of writing as “put the characters in the worst situation you can imagine, and then make it worse.” Which I think is just brilliant (and exactly why BUFFY’s season two plot arc is so phenomenal, but I’ll save those discussions), so here you would think Alexie is just following that advice and I would love it, but I don’t.

This suggests to me that the real plotting secret is something more specific, like maybe that the escalation of badness has to be of a qualitatively different kind; at a certain point, DIARY begins to feel, unfortunately, like an undifferentiated mass of depression. And this might also be personal taste, because I’ve found some other books with really depressed narrators, like Laurie Halse Anderson’s also-wonderful TWISTED, to be hard to wade through as well.

But anyway, that’s my one caveat about Alexie’s really amazing book, his first for young adults, and I truly hope not his last.

ROLL OF THUNDER, meanwhile, manages something I’ve seen in only the best political books (Katherine Paterson’s LYDDIE is one of the few I’d put up on this same pedestal): a real exploration, in plausible and human terms, of the tradeoffs involved in some strategy for facing oppression — with absolutely no abstraction, just the logical development of choices made by characters I care about.

What Taylor does (and maybe this is closer to what Whedon meant?) is put her characters in what seem like truly impossible circumstances, and then really examine the consequences of their reactions. She does this, somehow, without descending into either nihilism or easy answers.

How this plays out is that everyone in and around Cassie Logan’s family has their own plan, more or less explicitly, for trying to make it; it goes the worst for the one who goes the farthest to ingratiate himself to the white power structure, but no one gets by without scars. The Logan family, and especially Cassie, have to learn to make compromises they hate in order to survive. But they also have to learn that sometimes you have to stand up for yourself, your dignity, your family and your life, or none of that was worth protecting.

It’s the way Taylor believably navigates that particular set of contradictions that makes the book incredible; I can’t think of any other that really manages this as well.

Advantage: THUNDER. But since it actually is possible to read more than one book, do yourself a favor and read them both, and savor it. In fact, I may just read them again.

An abundance of Katherines; a dearth of Colin

I really, really wanted to love AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES.

My John Green kick started when a blogger whose writing advice I really respect raved about LOOKING FOR ALASKA. The next time I was having a really bad day, I bought myself a copy as compensation. Then promptly dropped it in a slush puddle, which actually did not improve my mood one bit.

But I liked that book quite a lot, so I started Green’s second book, AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES, not long after. And kept reading it, very slowly, for a couple of weeks. I’d wanted to love it, and yet I did not.*

The problem is with Colin, our protagonist.

His deal is that he’s an uber super genius worried about not living up to his potential who keeps getting dumped by girls named Katherine. He whines about this a lot. He whines about not living up to his potential with a mournfulness that can only be achieved by those who, despite all protestations, really do believe deep down that even though they may never live up to anything, their status as a genius is impervious to all such evidence, even though on the surface that’s precisely what they’re denying. And he whines about getting dumped by Katherines with a persistence that is true to life, but not necessarily to conventions of good fiction.

When Colin has his “Eureka” — the epiphany that one’s probability of getting dumped in any particular relationship can be derived mathematically, a “theorem” around which the rest of the book will be built — I was so disengaged that I somehow missed the point, and was quite confused when he kept talking about this “Eureka” over the next several chapters.

Also, because I am in fact an even bigger geek than Colin, I will tell you that what this book is really about is the dangers of statistical overfitting.

Some "functions" should not be fit

Anyway, at first I thought the problem was compounded by Green’s use of third person narration, an unusual choice in young adult fiction. But I think that’s actually symptomatic of Green’s own failure to fully get inside Colin’s head.

Over on his own website, Green says that each one of his books starts with a strong mental picture of a character. For AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES, that character was Colin’s best friend, Hassan. Interestingly, for LOOKING FOR ALASKA, it was also not the protagonist; Alaska, the character Green organized the book around, is a girl the protagonist, Pudge, is kind of obsessed with. But whereas ALASKA worked, KATHERINES, in my view, doesn’t quite — maybe because the reader is drawn into Pudge’s interest Alaska, whereas part of Colin’s problem is that, for much of the book, he actually is too self-involved to think about Hassan that much at all.

The thing, though? Hassan really is a fabulous character.

He’s a religious Muslim (so rare, except in books where that’s the whole point, like Randa Abdel-Fattah’s DOES MY HEAD LOOK BIG IN THIS?). He’s also totally crude, a damn good friend, and deeply hilarious. The times I like Colin are when he and Hassan are riffing off each other, and when Colin seems like he actually cares about his friend.

John Green really does know how to write friendships between boys; in particular, I like that he lets you see their genuine affection for one another without having them descend into sentimentality — or, if one ever does, he’s sure to get shit for it from the other.

Like, check out this scene, a turning point for Hassan’s character:

[Hassan's speaking:]

“…I’m a total non-doer. I’m just sucking food and water and money out of the world, and all I’m giving back is, ‘Hey, I’m really good at not-doing. Look at all the bad things I’m not doing! Now I’m going to tell you some jokes!’ “

Colin glanced over and saw Hassan sipping Mountain Dew. Feeling that he should say something, Colin said, “That’s a good spiritual revelation.”

“I’m not done yet, fugger. I was just drinking. So anyway…”

… and the scene goes on, but isn’t that a really well-done way to break up a heavy moment between teenage boys?

Sherman Alexie wrote in the ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN about how straight boys’ friendships are distorted by homophobia; John Green makes me feel the really heartfelt, intense emotions that teenage boys can nevertheless feel for one another. It’s a hopeful thing.

All this meant that I started really getting into the book in the middle, as I started to really believe in Colin and Hassan’s friendship. But — and I must now attach a spoiler alert, although I don’t think what I’m about to say will actually ruin much of the experience –

Sadly, the ending is really lame.

John Green seems like a big nerd who would be really awesome to hang out with.

– Not only wrapping things up too patly for my taste, but doing so via every character taking life-changing inspiration from the Kindest Factory Owner in the World. You can’t see me, but I’m still rolling my eyes.

In a way, I liked the book itself less than it convinced me I would really, really like John Green.

I keep reading his books less because I like them, than because I think he could grow into an author I really, really love.

* It’s a bit like this one particular cafeteria at my school. It’s a beautiful space, with tons of sunlight — no mean feat in “high of -12″ Wisconsin — and I always want it to be good, and it just… isn’t. What’s somewhat remarkable is that it has such a wide variety of food, all of which is bad. I vacillate between being impressed at the thoroughness and consistency with which it snatches mediocrity from the jaws of pleasantness, and just being regretful.

Also: there is something wrong with my higher-order inductive faculties; every time I’ve eaten there, I’ve made a mental note to order something different next time, but I’ve never internalized the conclusion that I should just eat someplace else.