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Wag Emeritus Robert Browning: Thankfully, his reach exceeded his grasp!
Dear Wags,
I am not perfect.
But you knew that. Like you, I’m a mess. Here are a smattering of my lesser imperfections: I eat too fast. It takes me ages to drop a letter in the mail. I’ve forgotten so many birthdays I don’t deserve to have anyone remember mine. Back when I mostly read used paperbacks, I dogeared a lot of pages. The shame.
Books are endearingly imperfect human creations. When we laud the perfect novel, we’re not praising flawlessness but aspiration. In Amish quilts, Persian carpets, and Japanese paintings, artists deliberately incorporate a flaw to remind us that divine symmetry is beyond mortals. Still, we keep trying.
“Man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a heaven for?” Robert Browning wrote in his 1855 poem Andrea del Sarto. That work is sometimes called The Faultless Painter, since the subject is a Renaissance artist mulling whether he met his promise.
In January, we’re all Andrea del Sarto, ruing missteps and vowing to do better in the coming year. I do hope you exceed your expectations, but my 2024 resolution is to accept myself as I am, and allow for contentment and joy.
Along the way, I’m embracing imperfect literature. Gloriously flawed books with muddled plots, botched endings, and infuriating characters are life enhancing. I’ll never forget Frankie, the 12-year-old hero of Carson McCullers’ A Member of the Wedding, even if the plot’s pretty thin. I’d love to take a can of Roundup to the tangled sentences in Moby Dick, but, forever and always, it’s a towering American novel.
Let’s hear it for imperfect but illuminating works of genius. What are your favorite flawed books, in any genre? I’d love to hear from you: bookwag@culturewag.com
Yours Ever,
Beautyland by Marie-Hélène Bertino
Here’s a novel that shouldn’t work, but does with brio. Born to a single mother in 1977 Philadelphia, Adina realizes she’s really a being from another planet, sent here to study the human race. When her mother finds a battered fax machine, the girl uses it to transmit reports to outer space. This isn’t a lame metaphor for alienation, but a gorgeous fable about how we craft our own mythology. When Adina heads to college, she finds community and shares her stories with the earthlings. It all makes for a hopeful tale about finding home.
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
Muaddi Darraj’s novel-in-stories is set among Baltimore Palestinians, but it’s far more than a tale of one community. Her characters are Americans torn between an ancient homeland and new lives. The journey of Marcus Salameh, a U.S. Marine whose understanding of his father is shaken when he escorts the man’s body to the Middle East for burial, bookends tales of other newcomers navigating cultural divides. The author treats these characters with tenderness, reminding us that we’re still a country renewed by the immigrant dreams.
