Geek Love

My Overall Impression:

The characters were fascinating, yet frustrating throughout the text. This is perhaps more a testament to Dunn's style of writing than a criticism; often, characters that are frustrating and at times despisable are more valuable in the end for representing the author's ideas, thoughts, and symbolism. While I strongly disliked characters such as Arty, the Bag Man, Miss Lick, and Oly through the first reading of the text, each character revealed something deeper about the ideas of self/identity, what is considered "normal," gender, and personal being. They also invoked a need or longing in the reader for justice or liberation, whether that be a loss of power for Arty, enlightenment of her skewed perspective for Miss Lick, or just one moment for Oly to have self-worth apart from the doctrine or opinion of others (and her own fears of her identity). The ability to invoke feeling such as this reaches beyond the words and scenes of the text and is far more powerful than simply stating or portraying a message. As I expected, the more we analyze, break down and build ideas back together from the text, the more I appreciate Katherine Dunn's writing.

That being said, I am not convinced that the language nor the series of events chosen by Dunn to articulate the themes of normalcy, humanity, gender, and identity were necessarily the best way to go about her purpose. For example, while the level of detail was engaging, I felt that several parts of the text tried too hard to be shocking. This left a sense of bitter "fakeness" to these scenes. I've found that novels are much more powerful when the author does not try to compensate for their ideas by using more words or more provocative language when it does not suit the scenario. To avoid misunderstanding, I greatly appreciate detail, shocking/unsettling language, or even excessive detail when the excess is justified by the section of text or idea/event to be represented. Albeit drawing a comparison between Geek Love and two other novels that come to mind is likely unfair, one can consider A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner as an illustration for this point.