I thought Jim Crace's Being Dead was a phenomenally weird read read, chock o' block with passages of eerie beauty and shivery meditations on mortality. I don't think I "liked it" per se, but I could not get it out of my head. I had never read anything quite like it at the time, and still haven't. So I was super excited when his next novel, The Pesthouse came out, dealing as it does with material I'm particularly fond of: post-apocalyptic wasteland America (maybe it's because of growing up watching "Rollerball" and "Logan's Run" and "Mad Max" and "Escape from New York" and "Night of the Comet" and wait it for it, wait for it all you seventies babies--THE DAY AFTER).The Pesthouse came out around the same time as The Road, unfortunately for Mr. Crace, as the two books are somewhat similar, if not in tone, at least in subject. Both concern themselves with post-apocalyptic America, and both are road novels that center on two characters journeying across the charred remnants of our once great nation. Neither novel cares much for the conventions of speculative fiction, and neither indulges much, if at all, in the details of their brave new worlds. And both Crace and McCarthy are odd, highly cerebral stylists. That's where the similarities end. The Road is a much darker novel, preoccupied with notions of survival and filial love, written in a language that, while often vertiginously bizarre, is overall fairly spare. The Pesthouse takes place in a somewhat gentler, agrarian America, several generations (at least) removed from the initial, unidentified disaster. The two main characters navigate a romantic-love relationship, and their journey isn't so much a matter of survival as it is a sort of reverse frontiering, an eastward migration to a whispered promised land. And Crace pulls out all the punches with his language, which true to Being Dead, is highly lyrical and often loopy and embellished.But where Crace's strange distance and cold intellectualism really worked in Being Dead--you needed a certain emotional separation from the characters and story at hand in order to spend 300 pages thinking in minutest detail about their decomposition--here it did not serve the material at all. The Pesthouse's narrative requires empathy from its readers to animate its pages, but the tone of the book is so neutral, so detached that it is difficult to muster much concern for the fates of its unfortunately dull protagonists. I never really felt in my bones that there was anything real to lose for these people, that there was anything at stake, or that the losses they had already suffered were in fact, losses. Finally, possibly most sadly, I never believed in their love or its necessity. The only moments that shimmered for a blink with a sense of urgency or power centered on the relationship between the lead and her adopted baby--a la The Road.
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)Longtime followers of my creative projects know that in general I don't like publishing bad reviews; that for the most part I see it as a waste of both my time and yours, in that I could be spending that time instead pointing out great artists you may have never heard of. However, since one of the things this website is dedicated to is honest artistic criticism, I also feel it's important to acknowledge books that I found just too bad to bother finishing, as well as give you an idea of why I found them that bad to begin with. Hence, this new series of short essays.The Accused: The Pesthouse, by Jim CraceHow far I got: 80 pages (first third), plus the endingCrimes:1) Nakedly and shamelessly stealing concepts and plot points from Tatyana Tolstaya's far superior The Slynx, only in an American setting this time and without any of the humor or witty wordplay of the original.2) Positing a world where a nuclear holocaust for some reason causes the survivors to revert to a hokey "Little House on the Prairie" style vernacular and lifestyle. ("And then Ma, she done told us about the Magic Steel Silos in the East, where they done say that the Wise Short-Haired Ones once used to live, my Ma done told me..." Sheesh, Crace, enough.)3) Creating the ultimate post-apocalyptic wet dream for snotty east-coast liberal intellectuals; a United States where everything west of the Mississippi has become a series of heathen backwards rural villages, where the only "civilization" left is found on the Atlantic Seaboard (of course), where the mouth-breathing ultra-religious Heartland swarm are causing their own destruction through superstition and a lack of education, and where ultimate salvation can only come by getting on a boat and sailing permanently to Europe (of course!).4) Being liked by John Updike.Verdict: Guilty!Sentence: Six months detention in the Midwest, to perhaps give the author an inkling of how not to horribly insult us. And no, not at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
What do You think about The Pesthouse (2007)?
Meh. Not so great. Not really worth the read, in my opinion. It's the story of a man and a woman during some unexplained post-apocolyptic future America who are journeying to the ocean in hopes of getting on a boat to Europe, which has now become the destination of choice for all hopeless Americans. Take away the artifice of the post-apocalyptic setting and the story is really a rather shallow and uninspired story that has been done time and again by better authors. I felt like the author never fully embraced his story or characters, and skirted around or glossed over potentially meaningful threads like survival ethics, the human spirit, and the idea of love being both fragile and a source of great strength. There's no real plot or depth the set this particular story apart from all the other similar stories. (It's unavoidable to compare Pesthouse to The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. And The Road wins hands down.)Ultimately, I was disappointed and unimpressed.
—Emma
The Pesthouse is a post-apocalyptic novel set in an unspecified future America. Technology has regressed to a medieval level and brave pilgrims make the journey east to seek ships for passage to a safer, more prosperous Europe. The novel opens with a landslide releasing noxious gases which kill the sleeping inhabitants of Ferrytown, a small river settlement which is a popular waystation for eastbound travellers. The only survivors are Franklin, a young man headed for the coast whose brother left him behind on a hillside for the evening because he hurt his ankle, and Margaret, a townswoman suffering from disease who has been shorn of hair and sent for quarantine in the “pesthouse,” a wooden shack out in the hills. Following the destruction of the town, Margaret and Franklin decide to travel to the coast together.Crace is a poet first and a writer of prose second. Like Harvest, the only other book of his that I’ve read, The Pesthouse seems curiously detached from the world it inhabits. Much time is spent inside Margaret and Franklin’s heads, on the details of their movements and actions, on the stark reality of their landscapes. It’s all very well-written, but it leaves the plot of the book undernourished. There are various misfortunes, acts of violence, and run-ins with bandits gangs, none of which – for all their gory description – feel particularly menacing. It lacks the gut-wrenching savagery of a book like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, or even something like The Walking Dead. Perhaps this is because Crace isn’t really interested in the mechanics of domination and predation in a post-apocalyptic world, and only inserted them because it seemed necessary; or perhaps I was just never invested enough in the characters or Crace’s writing style to care much.I liked Harvest well enough, but found it ultimately unmemorable. I liked The Pesthouse less, although I can understand why some readers might appreciate it. Jim Crace is a talented writer, but I don’t think he’s my type.
—Mitchell
if you have read the road, you don't really need to read this. this was to be jim crace's third strike from me. and i don't dislike jim crace, it's just i wasn't moved by either quarantine or being dead. his style is not embracing - it has the same detached, clinical style as hustvedt, which does not cuddle me, as a reader. i need literary slankets that cover all my parts and transport me (but leaving my arms free to wave about)(did i go on about slankets in another review... i feel like i have. they fascinate me) he isn't a bad writer, by any stretch, this is just another example of Books That Aren't For Me. it takes place in a blighted america, many generations removed from an unexplained event that destroyed everything. what is left struggles to survive and find love and meaning and all the things people usually struggle to find in post-apocalyptic fiction. the best part is the quasi-religious anti-metal community that evolved around the "helpless gentlemen," who are old men who do not use their hands because of their beliefs and live in an ark that supports pilgrims waiting for boats to take them to a better place, they expect. these weak-armed, metal-shunning people were the most interesting characters in the book, but it was only an interlude in the story, unfortunately. for some reason, they reminded me of a joke from electric company magazine when i was a tot: where does admiral ackbar keep his armies?? huh?? wanna guess?? IN HIS SLEEEEEVIES!!! oh, the tears of laughter...so that's my review. i think me and jim crace are over now. like a junior high school boyfriend, i barely remember him.
—karen
