I have never read a story told in a
collective voice and while I realize that Buddha in the Attic is an
exceptionally well crafted example of the writing style I have to say
I like it a lot more than the common switching characters
perspectives at chapter intervals. It allows you to get a cohesive
story with out feeling interrupted in in your reading or fragmented.
It was kind of a mind blowing experience that someone could even
write a perspective like this, capture all the elements of a story
and keep track of it. I have a feeling that if I even tried to write
a short story like this I would be constantly forgetting all the
details and it would unravel and get away from me. It really allowed
me to read in a context that brought things alive for me in the way
having a conversation with actual people brings things alive. I
remember vivid aspects of the book as I would remember having a
conversation with someone from a day gone past.
When it comes to the characters I
actually felt more connected to them but in a different way than my
typical reading. When a book focuses on one character or a small
group of characters you get to know in-depth about them as if they
were a personal friend, however you are only getting to know them in
the context of the story. When you read Buddha in the attic you get
to know characters like you get to know members of your community.
You know details about them but not necessarily their innermost
thoughts and over all personality. I think personality is the thing
people feel the disconnect on, while I do feel that the characters
very much do have individual and strong personalities you're not
getting to know them in the way you would get to know the personality
of a friend. However the story spans a much larger and encompasing
experience of their existence you so do in another context know them
even better than you know a real person you know now because many
people I know in the now have not experienced a lot of what they will
face in the future. You get to see a good chunk of how these
characters react to events in their life and that's a different way
of knowing someone then by knowing them for a defining part of their
life like a high school friend you don't talk to anymore, or Bilbo in
the Hobbit who the whole book is facing something very out of context
with his regular life experience. In Buddha in the Attic you get the
bigger picture of the characters but not necessarily they drawn out
detail.You get to know them in the perspective of a community sense.
Like the way everyone in my home town knew Mrs. Cuttie in Selkirk was
a strong woman because her husband died of cancer and she raised a
sickly daughter on her own, the Mrs. Goodman raises strong sons, has
a sense of faith and knows more about the local church than anyone
else in town, how Mrs. Nordal always knows all the town news before
the paper does and the name of the best Doctor you should visit based
on what's bothering your health. I know all of these people they are
residual parts of my life but we're not close friends. I know aspects
of their personality, some of what they have been through in life.
Seeing characters portrayed in the same collective manner that people
refer to members of their own community in, somehow made they whole
story come alive and every character seem intensely real in the sense
of reality as we actually perceive it, and remember it not how the
entertainment industry tells us we perceive reality in more readily
used story telling styles and perspective books and movies are made
available in. tTe collective manner in the book really strongly
impressed the characters upon me.
As for envisioning the characters I
actually did envision them quit readily, I think I would have had a
harder time doing so if I didn't have some background learning in the
culture. The name of a Japanese garment or religious object that they
kept tucked away didn't throw me off in picturing them. I had an easy
time with the country side characters more so than the city
characters because my family and community have told me stories of
generations of farmers past. I can't say I had the individual detail
where I can recall by name an individual character but I had an easy
time envisioning their experience in a “wide lens” sort of way. A
group of women in Kimonos standing around on the boat flustered and
flitting about talking to an American, farm workers in the field, a
mother working on the farm while her kids play in the country side, a
servant in a white household going about her work. Yes might not have
been the kind of detail that requires one page of writing to describe
that characters dress kind of visualization, or a full face movie
moment close up, but considering my immediate response to the
question was “Of course it effected my ability to visualize the
characters their wasn't that much individual detail...” however
when I think back to reading the book I can recall seeing the
characters very very vividly and I'm really at a bit of a loss on why
that was but I was fully captured by the book and the visual nature
was absolutely part of that.
