Sunday, September 18, 2011

My new crush: Norman Rush

I read Norman Rush's Mating recently. I am late to the party: this novel won the National Book Award in 1992. I think this would be fabulous with Heart of Darkness for a number of reasons that I don't wish to articulate, lest I spoil the story. There is, however, a journey to search for a man; this man is heading up an alternative society, a matriarchal utopia that is shrouded in secrecy. The protagonist of the novel, who goes searching for said man, is an academic (semi-failed) and smart, funny, self-conscious and well-read. I don't know of another voice like this: consistent all the way through the novel, she is undeniably clever in ways I can hardly begin to list.
One triumph of the novel is Rush's ability to elucidate the uneven nature of the male-female relationship: why a woman can leave behind her dissertation and professional life and hitch her wagon to a successful man without anyone thinking less of her. His ambition will become hers. She, of course, will think less of herself, always and forever; it will be the thing that shapes a relationship, destroys or cements it whether or not he or she or anyone wants to acknowledge the existence of such a dynamic. Rush gets it.
The insertion of politics in the novel is brilliant, and essential to the relationship. The narrator's crossing of the Kalahari and the approach to her destination must be read to be believed--again, nods to Conrad here. This is a novel about politics, about adventure, about love. I am in awe.