< previous page | page_101 | next page > | |||
Page 101 cultural capital, seems undermined at every turn by the deep indigenous substance present in Smiley’s own powerful writing and in non-Shakespearean sources like Le Sueur, the multiple perspectives are all crucial to the final vision she achieves. “I pondered my new image of Shakespeare,” Smiley told her audience in Los Angeles: and I thought of him doing just what I had done—wrestling with old material, given material, that is in some ways malleable and in other ways resistant. I thought about how all material, whether inherited or observed, has integrity. The author doesn’t just do something with it, he or she also learns from it. The author’s presuppositions and predispositions work on the material and are simultaneously transformed by it. I imagined Shakespeare wrestling with the “Leir’’ story and coming away a little dissatisfied, a little defeated, but hugely stimulated, just as I was. As I imagined that, then I felt that I received a gift, an image of literary history, two mirrors facing each other in the present moment, reflecting infinitely backward into the past and infinitely forward into the future. (1998:56) This image of two mirrors facing one another, with male and female faces reflecting infinitely upon one another, seems to me characteristic of A Thousand Acres, a novel that draws attention to the many voices it contains, some louder than others, most of them conflicting. In the end, Ginny’s movement from the silence of her past to her not-so-perfect future as a waitress at Denny’s restaurant contains hope for the future. Raising Rose’s children, providing guidance as an aunt instead of a mother or father, she is part of a new sort of family. Part of that future, however, lies in her ability to address the past, that “gleaming obsidian shard,” and to integrate it into a new sense of herself. Smiley’s novel involves both a clashing and a merging of perspectives, each challenging the other, and yet facing one another as a means toward an ultimate understanding and cohesion of past, present, and future. Notes
|
|||||
< previous page | page_101 | next page > |