What Is This Book, Anyway?
That is a question posed by many who have picked up Novel on Yellow Paper. It is not a novel in the traditional sense. But it is not a memoir or autobiography, either. The author tries to explain it, but as with everything else the author tries to explain over the course of the book, the explanation is cryptic and elusive, to say the least:
“…this book is the talking voice that runs on, and the thoughts come, the way I said, and the people come too, and come and go, to illustrate the thoughts, to point the moral, to adorn the tale.”
Sex
The narrative is freestyle and meandering, shifting from topics to topics and discussing them conversationally, yet at the same time like a monologue spoken in an empty room. The topic of sex arises frequently, but at one point a chapter—unnamed and numberless like all the others—riffs upon the topic in a distinctly metaphorical way:
“Some people take sex like it was a constitutional exercise, some people take it like it was a conflict…some people take it like was it was all hatred and cruelty.”
A Catty Chatty Cathy
The mode of being chatty in the delivery of her discourse allows the narrator to produce satirical commentary that can vary from the abstruse to the downright catty. On the subject of the increasing desperation of young women who have yet to get married, for instance, one senses in the criticism a combination of studios feminist concern mingled with the sharp, biting tones of a slumber party (albeit a slumber party attended by educated girls.) This desperation for marriage:
“is like the refrain in The Three Sisters. It is the leitmotiv of all their lives. It is their Moscow. Marriage is to them: Oh, if would only have go to Moscow.”
Death
The narrator frequently mentions death, but almost always within a metaphorical context. At one point the interest seems to tip over into full-out obsession and the result verges on the downright creepy in its parental advice:
“So teach your little ones to look on Death as Thanatos-Hades the great Lord of the Dead, that must, great prince though he be, come to their calling.”
Irony
The narrator makes an assertion that would prove to be a case of ironic reverb on the author’s part. Although, in fact, it would appear the consequence was somewhat expected and might even have been partially intended:
“My friendships, they are a very strong part of my life, they are light as gossamer, but also they are as strong as steel. And I cannot throw them off, nor altogether do with them or without them.”
Following publication, the gossamer proved more apt than the steel as several friends too exception to their thinly veiled characterization in the novel and relationships broke down and apart because of it.
