The Wonders of the Invisible World

Invisible beings haunt both Mr. Banville's The Infinities and Dr. Verghese's Cutting for Stone. They are more apparent--to the reader, at least--in The Infinities: the ancient Greek gods, Hermes especially, flit around the lives of the mortals who occupy or visit Arden House, making mischief, causing creative trouble. A character may sense them, or see them, out of the corner of her "watchfulness," if she's lucky. "[W]e are not here sufficiently," Hermes observes, "to be ever quite gone."

The invisible world in Cutting for Stone becomes apparent when the action moves from Ethiopia to the U.S. "In my years away from my birth land, living in America," says our narrator, Marion Stone, "I will see how Ethiopians are invisible to others, yet so visible to me." Marion notices his compatriots doing those "first foothold in America" jobs: they are our parking lot attendants, our convenience store clerks; they are the people we breeze by in our daily lives, rarely making imaginative space to consider what rich stories they constitute, both personally and as inheritors of as ancient as culture as Ethiopia's.

I'm looking forward to learning more about Ethiopia, and Ethiopians, at Monday night's reading.

Posted on Fri, February 26, 2010 by Robert Cremins

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2 comments (Add your own)

1. ward jones wrote:: Unfamiliar with your blog, I sent this to the wrong place, I think:

At the risk of being superficial, I'd say you did a very nice job, Mr. Cremins, in tying the two authors together thematically. Not an easy thing to do with do very different writers. That said, Mr. Banville, to my ear anyway, seemed more at ease, more free to speak his mind on the radio. His "Front Row" interrogator did not have the challenge you had. I wonder, when Inprint has the chance to host a John Banville's stature, if it might not be best to give him the entire stage. A final footnote: even the best writers need editors, and last night, during his long narration of what started as a richly evocative piece, this award winning world traveling writer could have used a stop sign, one posted before he took the stage.
Tue, March 2, 2010 @ 4:35 PM
2. ward jones wrote:: After rereading my comment I could use my own editor.
Tue, March 2, 2010 @ 4:37 PM

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