I Hate "The Wings of the Dove"

'tis true, dear readers. I, Colin O'Boyle, hate a novel (that isn't Twilight). And this brings me to an interesting point. (At least, I think it's interesting): It is possible to concede that a work of fiction (or movie, or sandwich, etc.) is well-crafted but still not like it. Conversely, it's possible to like a thing and agree that isn't well-made.

For example, McDonald's. I love McDonald's, don't get me wrong. I enjoy their hamburgers, and their chicken nuggets are delightful. However, I don't think there is anyone out there who, when thinking of their food, associates it with "fine dining." Along those same lines, anyone who would dispute the fact that the "Twilight" series has enjoyed wild success is simply wrong. Ms. Meyer's work has spawned a well-known movie series, and products featuring her characters extend as far as lunch boxes and action figures. However, "Twilight" and the other books in the series are not written well. The description is repetitive, the dialogue is tiresome, the plot is unbelievable (and I'm not talking about the vampires and werewolves). The main character doesn't grow as a person over the course of the story, and everyone inexplicable moves heaven and earth for the protagonist, even though she has a personality roughly equivalent to a damp paper towel. It is wish-fulfillment, plain and simple.

It is not a good book. (I realize that some might dispute me over the definition of "good" in this context, claiming that a "good" book is simply one that sells well, but I disagree. Again, I refer you to fast food. While Mickey D's hamburgers are wildly popular, they are not fine dining.) Also, I have nothing against popular books. The idea that just because something is popular necessarily means it cannot be good is about as irksome to me as the idea that something popular it must be by definition good.

But how does this apply to Henry James's novel, "The Wings of the Dove?" I'll tell you. In college, I was an English major, and one of my courses was on Victorian literature. The Victorians, along with the Puritans, a two groups of people whose written work irritates me greatly, so I was aware that I probably wouldn't like most of the books we read in the course, and I was proven right in that assumption. "The Scarlet Letter," "Jude the Obscure," "The Mill on the Pond," "Tess of the D'Ubervilles," all of these books I read, and all of them I disliked. But I finished them.

Then came "The Wings of the Dove." I won't go into plot summary here, as even thinking about the book too hard sets me to ranting, but I'll attach a link to the Wikipedia page for the curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wings_of_the_Dove

What irritates me most about the book is that nothing happens for sure. Rather than being told through an omniscient narrator, the story is told through a series of third-person limited narrators, allowing the reader to hover over the shoulder of a number of different characters as the narrative progresses. The problem is that each character interprets events differently, and since the reader only has that character's "word" for what happens, one never really knows what does. Is Milly sick, or isn't she? She thinks she is. What did the doctor say? Because we don't have his actual words, etc. Nothing happens for certain.

Linking to my earlier point, I did not like "The Wings of the Dove."  Not knowing what actually happened in the novel confused and irritated me, to the point where I simply stopped reading it, something I had never done in school up to that point, and never did again. It was that bad. But, I am not saying that the book was poorly-written. One theme the novel seems to exemplify is that reality is filtered through perception, so one can never truly "know" what "really" happens anywhere. Why, then, should that be different in one's fiction?

And I say, "That's true, but really annoying." James, I assume, set out to accomplish a specific goal with his book, and he succeeded in that goal. The novel was very carefully crafted. However, I loathe it with an unbridled passion.

In short: just because one likes something, that doesn't mean that it is well-crafted, and just because something is well-crafted, that doesn't mean that it's likable.