The Shipping News

by E. Annie Proulx (Scribner Paperback 1993)

Another book that’s been sitting in our Karpenisi house. I started it once, years ago, but didn’t like it and put it aside. This time, I was able to finish it. It is certainly a weird book. Proulx uses a lot of phrases in place of sentences, as if she were simply using some notes she made, not bothering to expand them. Names of people and places are quirky (reminding me of Dickens): the protagonist’s name is Quoyle (I don’t think she ever tells us his first name); other characters include Petal Bear, Partridge, Ed Punch, Billy Pretty, Jack Buggit, Diddy Shovel, Tert Card, Alvin Yark, Wavey Prowse, Quoyle’s daughters Bunny and Sunshine, Beety, Nutbeem–there are too many to list them all. Places include Killick-Claw, No Name, Capsize Cove, and more I can’t remember, all in Newfoundland where the majority of the action takes place. Very weird.

Quoyle is a large man with “a great damp loaf of a body” and a “monstrous chin”. I think he could be describes as being on the autism spectrum. He is completely naive, doesn’t get jokes or sarcasm, and always seems to do or say the wrong thing. He falls in love with, and marries, a horrible woman (Petal Bear), who despises him and cheats on him and sells their daughters before dying in a car accident. Quoyle, however, adores her and almost passes up a second chance at happiness because he remains obsessed with her. After he rescues his daughters from impending abuse, Quoyle and his aunt Agnis (always referred to as “the aunt”) decide to leave the States and head back to Newfoundland, where they were originally from (though Quoyle never lived there). It turns out that the Quoyles have a very bad reputation among the population there, but they fix up the ancestral home, which has been standing empty, the aunt starts up a business upholstering yacht furniture, Quoyle lands a job writing for an extremely weird newspaper, Bunny and Sunshine start day care with a local couple, and Bunny starts school. Eventually, everyone kind of fits in, and Quoyle even meets a woman he likes (and who seems to like him!).

I don’t really think that The Shipping News is as “exciting”, “vigorous”, “beautifully written”, “wildly comic”, “funny-tragic” as the critics quoted in the flyleaf. I don’t see it as “a sweet and tender romance” or “a stunning book, full of magic and portent.” I don’t understand why it got the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1994. But yes, it certainly is “quirky”.

At least I finished it this time! Now to leave it in my local Little Free Library for somebody else to experience.

The Complete Plays of Sophocles

translated by Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb; edited and with an introduction by Moses Hadas. (Bantam Classic Edition, 1982)

This little book has been in our little house in Karpenisi (Evrytania, Greece) for years, but I never attempted to read it until this year. Slowly, I read through all seven of Sophocles’ surviving plays:

1. Ajax (Aias): Ajax’s rage at Odysseus causes him to do awful things. He attempts to murder Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus, but Athena blinds him, and instead of slaughtering soldiers, he slaughters a flock of sheep. When he realizes what he has done, he commits suicide, leaving his wife, Tecmessa, without any support.
2. Electra: Orestes murders his mother, Clytemnestra, and her husband and co-conspirator Aegisthus, to avenge the murder of his father, Agamemnon (who in turn was murdered to avenge his sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, but that’s another story). Electra’s role is to grieve and give sad speeches.
3. Oedipus the King: Oedipus, the king of Thebes (Thiva), finds out that he has inadvertently killed his father, married his mother and fathered two sons and two daughters with her. Distraught, he blinds himself and goes into exile to punish himself for these unnatural deeds.
4. Antigone: Antigone, one of Oedipus’s daughters, sacrifices love and life on principle in order to properly bury her brother Polyneices (Polineikis), whom her uncle Creon has condemned to be left dishonored and unburied. Her sister Ismene supports her, albeit somewhat hesitantly.
5. Trachinian Women/Women of Trachis/Trachiniai: Heracles returns from his labors with a new love interest, Iole; His wife Deaneira tries to secure his love and fidelity with a magical salve given to her by the Centaur Nessus, but the Centaur has tricked her, and the salve kills Heracles instead, an agonizingly slow and painful death. In dismay, Deaneira kills herself; her son, Hyllus, attempts to do likewise; Heracles, in his death throes, implores Hyllus to marry Iole in his stead. Bodies litter the stage.
6. Philoctetes: The warrior Philoctetes has been betrayed by Odysseus after being bitten by a venomous snake, abandoned on the uninhabited island of Lemnos. Odysseus persuades a reluctant Neoptolemus to use guile to get Philoctetes to yield them his magical bow, without which they will be unable to prevail against Troy. Neoptolemus struggles to remain true to his ideals while obeying his king, an impossible task. In the end, they get the bow and they convince Philoctetes to join them against Troy.
7. Oedipus at Colonus: Oedipus, self-exiled from Thebes after his disgrace, has reached the town of Colonus, outside Athens, with Antigone. The play describes his relationship with Theseus, King of Athens, Antigone’s and Ismene’s faithful support, Creon’s deviousness, and Oedipus’s death while under the protection of Theseus.

As you can see, the plays intertwine stories about the same characters. Each play is preceded by a short introduction which kind of sums up the action, which is helpful; what would have been even more helpful is annotations to help an uninformed reader to figure out who everyone is. There are characters that appear without explanation (Greek audiences would have known who they were, but I needed to be told) and characters are referred to in several ways (by their name; as the son or daughter of X; by another name or nickname), which is confusing to the uninitiated. I would have preferred an annotated edition. This edition would be fine for students reading the plays under the guidance of a professor who can explain who people are and how they relate to one another.

Anyhow, reading the plays has inspired me to watch some of the many films that have been made based on them, most of which are probably available on YouTube or Kanopy (I hope!).