Here's an idea for an English major thesis: "Scatological Motifs in First/Breakout Novels by Male Authors."
I came up with this idea while reading The Floating Opera, John Barth's first novel. There is a whole subplot about a crazy old man who stored his own waste in pickle jars. Which reminded me of a similar storyline in John Franzen's novel The Corrections (not his first, but definitely his breakout novel). Booker Prize winners Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre also have excrement-related scenes, as does, I seem to recall, The River Why by David James Duncan.
What gives? Why do writers -- and it seems to be male writers -- feel a need to write about this subject? Does the freedom to write anything they want prompt some need to be naughty, like a teenager left home alone with the liquor cabinet? Or is there some deeper, Freudian connection between first novels and toilet training?
It is not that I didn't enjoy the books mentioned (well, I could have skipped Vernon God Little), but I would be happy to never read another passage discussing bodily waste. Please let me know of other books that should be included on my list, so I will know what to avoid. And you never know -- there could be a lit major out there looking for a thesis idea who would appreciate the extra titles.
THE S**T LIST
The Floating Opera y John Barth
The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
The River Why by David James Duncan
Key scenes in Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses qualify those novels - although they are neither first nor breakout, which disqualifies them.
ReplyDeleteJoyce's scene with Leopold Bloom on the toilet is the beginning of this sort of thing (in English).
Amateur Reader beat me to it. I was going to say Ulysses, and that was exactly the scene I was thinking of.
ReplyDeleteLezlie
You can also add Yann Martel's first novel, Self, to your list. It begins with the narrator recounting a childhood crap.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if this was a breakout novel or not, but I remember a diarrhea scene in Wicked by Gregory Maguire, among many other perverse and disturbing things. Not one of my favorites...
ReplyDeleteWith the possible exception of the eye-gouging scene from Tree of Smoke, the s**t scene from Gravity's Rainbow sticks with me as much as any other from my National Book Award readings.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember coming across anything having to do with you-know-what in a book before but I can say I cringe every time I see Everybody Poops in the kid's section. I never read it to either of my kids. As a say to my youngest when we come across something gross...that's yuckus!
ReplyDeleteThough not what I had in mind, it lends new meaning to my motto: Changing the literary landscape one jar of pickles at a time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the warnings!
ReplyDeleteI confess that I do not remember the scene in Ulysses -- but maybe I just didn't get it. Like much of the book.
CS -- Why why why did you make me remember the spoon scene in Tree of Smoke?????
"Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me," by Richard Farina, Joan Baez's brother-in-law, who went to meet his maker shortly after the lauded release of his first novel.(Motorcycle acccident, if I remember right.) I believe it was his very first scene in which the lead character, who seemed lot like Mr. Farina himself, marveled ovr the passing from his bowels of wht he believed must be the largest and most magnificent toilet-plopping of all time. Even as a shaggy-haired late teen in 1966 or 67 or whenever it was, I found this, shall we say, less than literarily impressive. By comparison, Terry Southern's "Candy" was Dosteovsky.
ReplyDelete-- Bob, writing on Laura's computer, so it's gonna give her name.
Bob -- That one is going on the list. I will be sure to avoid it!
ReplyDeleteHow's about Love in the Time of Cholera? Not a first or breakout novel, but certainly one of Garcia Marquez's most famous.
ReplyDeleteOthers that come to mind include Trainspotting and half of Chuck Palahniuk's oeuvre.
I was really trying to think of women, but seriously, the only instances I came up with involve babies.