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Chris

Idle Book Club Episode 7: By Blood

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I bought this book a year ago, tried to read the first few pages, and then promptly abandoned it. If not for this podcast, I probably would have never picked it up again, but man, I am so glad I did. I have no idea what changed, but I ended up loving this book the second time around. Ullman creates this perfect main character who is odious and pitiful, but never to the point where it becomes difficult to read. The relationship between the patient, the doctor, and the main character felt like something out of a Kafka story. Based on opinions for previous book selections though, I'm not sure if everyone will look at By Blood favorably-- there were a few moments that even I have to admit were a little eye-roll inducing--but I think it's worth reading, at the very least for its depiction of San Francisco in the late 60s, early 70s.

Ellen Ullman herself is immensely fascinating: a computer programmer turned writer. There a few write ups on her that deal with how her science background influenced her writing, but this particular article was my favorite: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/23/meet_the_flannery_oconnor_of_the_internet_age/

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The voyeur/professor/narrator is the most interesting character by far which is unfortunate because the novel does a poor job of explaining where he's coming from and instead he's just a conduit for these tired cliches (the WASP mom, the lipstick lesbian, the hardcore feminist, the german with holocaust guilt, etc) that drone on endlessly with very little substance or development. The cause and purpose of the narrator's obsession with the lives of these people didn't make sense to me. The author offers small glimpses into his past but does nothing to flesh them out and make them a real part of the story. The only thing that really changes for him is he starts to think maybe his abandoning therapy was a bad idea otherwise there's hardly any development at all.

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I don't know--I had no problem buying the obsession because I became as obsessed with the patient's story as the narrator. He's a voyeur to this patient's personal (although admittedly ludicrous) life story, and through him, the reader becomes this second-hand voyeur to the story. I love the symbolism of the patient and the narrator being separated by this wall, and the fact that he becomes such a big influence on her life without ever even learning her name. The open-ended way the book ends has this whole Coen-bros-Burn-After-Reading-"what did we learn for this" feeling of utter futility, and I completely bought it.

If the story was just presented as a straight narrative being told completely from the patient's perspective, I probably would have hated it. But the voyeur/narrator addition elevates, for me at least.

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I felt really unsatisfied with the book's ending...

The author really didn't set up the discovery of the voyeur with anything approaching believability. By the end of the book I was totally done hearing the orphan's story, which I thought went on too long and with way too much detail to make sense in a therapy setting, but the voyeur apparently was looking forward to hear more about her relationship with her new found sister, for what reason exactly? I could buy that the voyeur was really smitten with the orphan because of her use of language and because he's an obsessive character and maybe his interest with the idea of unhappiness being an inherited trait but I was really hoping for some kind of resolution to his story to make his presence in, and connection to this orphan's story make sense. Whereas Burn After Reading's denouement was a comical highlight of the futility of the entire movie (which you had knowledge of the entire time), this felt more like a trick...as if to say "sorry there was never any point to any of this"

but I agree the addition of the voyeur made an otherwise boring story a great deal more entertaining

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That's fair assessment--the ending of By Blood is definitely not meant to be funny, although it did make me laugh in a very frustrated, "I can't believe this is how it's ending," kind of way. I think it's really brave for an author to just end a story without making anything explicit; it's a big gamble that either pays off or doesn't, and in this case, I think it paid off. If there had been more information given, it would have undermined the entire feel of the story.

The voyeur is this literal representation of the male gaze, most noticeably in the quite graphic sex scenes that the patient describes. The voyeur is sexually/psychologically obsessed with this woman, so any information she gives, especially about sex, is amplified by the voyeur, and this amplified/extreme reimaging of events is the only information the reader is provided with. I love the setup of the patient's story being filtered by the voyeur, which is then told to and filtered by the reader; it creates this really perverse game of telephone.

(In case it isn't super obvious already, I loved this book.)

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I disagree that the voyeur doesn't get development. It's small and maybe subtle but I feel he definitely changes over the course of the book. I absolutely think he is better off when the book ends than when it starts.

 

There's a suggestion that the therapy the patient is receiving is actually helping him get over his own issues as well.  There's that line the therapist says that seems to stick with him "Have the thoughts, and let them go" seems really powerful to him and later in the novel he says that those words have "robbed the demons of their power".  Then you have have the scene near the end where he returns home and realizes that he's boiled water without ever making tea, leaving scissors out to cut what he can't remember and it really seems like he's gaining control over the manias that have been haunting him.

 

The abruptness of the ending initially kind of bugged me but once I thought about it I think it actually works fairly well. If you keep in mind that the voyeur still has the patient's address if he really wanted to he could continue keeping tabs on her or make even more direct contact with her.  But since the novel ends right as his contact with her is cut off I take that to mean that this is the end of his connection to her and he then moves on.  It feels abrupt but when I look back on it I'm not sure how much more there is to say.

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I'm only a bit into the novel, but did the narrator remind anyone else of present-day Tony from The Sense of an Ending—the solipsism, the mystery, the obsession?

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Finished the book a few days ago. really enjoyed it. I had no problem with the narrator being an underdeveloped character. He wasn't really as much of a character to me as much as he was just a filter for all of the events in the novel. It made the connection to him and his point of view - more intimate? By being dropped into a persons train of thought with no context I avoided my natural inclination to try to separate myself from the character, more so than I would for a typical first-person narrative. It wasn't the narrator and the facts of his existence that interested me, the only interesting thing about the narrator (for me, at least) was his eccentric view of the world around him.

 

I definitely related to the narrators detached connection with the patient. It's certainly not the point of the book but it made me think of the strong relationship everyday people feel with celebrities, or maybe their favorite musical artists. Not quite to the level of obsession that the narrator had, but I've had the sense before with a person that there is some bond that doesn't really exist at all. That being said, I didn't take much out of the book when I finished it.



It's the first book I've read in a while, so no deeper thoughts. I definitely look forward to the podcast though. I regret having spent the last two or three years without reading or really stimulating my mind at all for that matter.

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The structure of this book reminds me of how I love the way literature can tell nested stories in a way that other storytelling mediums can't do quite as well. I'm about a quarter of the way through the book and it has mostly been the main character recounting a conversation that he overheard of someone recounting a conversation in which someone else recounts a story. But it reads eloquently, with narrators at each meta level adding their own flourishes and commentary (the lack of quotation marks work in service of this) and it doesn't come across jarring or confusing. Cloud Atlas was another great example of this.

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I'm only a bit into the novel, but did the narrator remind anyone else of present-day Tony from The Sense of an Ending—the solipsism, the mystery, the obsession?

I remembered liking Tony much more as a person than the narrator of By Blood. Sure, Tony had a lot of flaws and did a lot terrible things, but he was still fairly likable. On the other hand I went through this oscillation of pitying and outright hating the narrator of By Blood, mstly because his particular obsession came from a much stranger place. I still was able to identify with him, but I very rarely ever liked him in the same way that I liked Tony.

 

I think most people are able to admit that they've acted in the same obsessed way that Tony did at some point in their life; his brand of solipsism is so normal that you can forgive him for acting that way. The narrator of By Blood however, his obsession comes from this much less-defined, weirder place, that I think people can still relate to, but maybe don't want to think about too much, because it forces you to recognize that you have the same capacity to act in this creepy, pathetic manner.

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It was easier for me to relate to the narrator of By Blood because I didn't know where his obsession comes from. You're just thrust in the middle of his disturbing perspective without much context at all. If it was defined, I'd probably end up thinking "Oh, well my obsessive qualities come from a totally different place, so I'm not really like this character at all."

 

So I was fully able to inject my own reasons for behaving obsessively, feeling lonely, etc. 

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So something that I've seen a lot of review of this book, is how the narrator's one-sided relationship with the patient is a representation of the Internet. Ullman has said in interviews that the book isn't meant as any kind of criticism of how the Internet affects relationships, but I think it's a fair reading of the book to see parallels between the narrator's actions and they way people interact online. For me, it added this inescapable second layer to reading the book. Here I am reading a story about two people who have this lopsided relationship where neither person really 'knows' the other, and knowing that eventually I would be listening to a podcast of people talking about this same book on the Internet, who've I've never met and have never met me, and it just made me feel kind of odd (not that I'm saying online communities or relationships or whatever are inherently bad or weird, I just couldn't help but make these connections while I was reading).

 

Maybe it's not that big of revelation to have about Internet communications, but it's still something that I was thinking about while reading the book. I'm curious to know if anyone else had similar reactions. 

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If the story was just presented as a straight narrative being told completely from the patient's perspective, I probably would have hated it. But the voyeur/narrator addition elevates, for me at least.

I felt the complete opposite, and as a result was very, very frustrated with the book as a whole. It felt like a good 150-page novella wrapped in a boring therapist plot wrapped in a bad narrator plot, all working to drag the book out as long as she could. The numerous chapter-breaks didn't help things at all, making it very easy to walk away from the book, and padding out the page-length further.

A large part of the frustration is that it felt like Ullman decided how the plot had to be punched up at certain points, and use the most transparent devices to get there. For example, at one point she decided that the book needed some time-pressure, so the manager re-appears with his request. The narrator needed to feel a certain aggressive engagement with the patient's story, so we get the therapist's background. We need to get across certain facets of the narrator, so he wanders into various parts of San Francisco, with flimsy justifications for why he's doing so.

We can certainly backfit explanations onto his behavior, as Ullman clearly did, but they feel like deviations from the flow of the novel thrown in to achieve a specific end. The novel never really cohered for me, and it felt like while the characters' all dealt with identity as a core question, those threads never really informed each other outside of the patient's immediate families.

All-in-all, this felt like what could have been a good book was buried under countless concessions to punch it up into popular fiction. Information was doled out sparingly to draw the reader along, in what must have been 5-15 minute therapy sessions judging from how much is actually discussed before the inevitable interludes. And even though I liked that central narrative that the patient actually experienced, as a whole, It's the book I've easily liked the least out of our selections so far.

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(I was afraid of this.)

 

Everything that you disliked about the book is something that I either enjoyed or didn't mind. Specifically the narrative tricks that Ullman uses to delay the story: the appearance of the manager towards the end or the constant interruption of the patient's story when her sessions conveniently ended. Here you have this unbelievably outrageous story that involves orphans and Holocaust survivors--just as cliche and over the top as you can imagine--and in addition, there are all artificial narrative twists that are clearly there to prevent the narrator, and by extension the reader, from reaching any satisfying conclusion with the patient's story. That worked for me and I had no problem going down the same obsessive path as the narrator. But, I can understand why those elements might not work for everyone else, because they are so ridiculous and frustrating, and ultimately lead up to this non-pay off climax. Despite all that, though, I have a hard time faulting a book that I got such visceral entertainment from.

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There were points that really bugged me, but what worked for me really worked.

 

I also found the framing story a lot more interesting than the core story.  It was strangely powerful to experience the patient's life through the professor's ears. As readers, we're used to feeling curiosity and concern over very private matters, and that's fine; the characters exist purely for our entertainment. But here it feels voyeuristic and wrong in a way sure to resonate with anyone who's ever cast a stray or glance or thought where it didn't belong.

 

The problem with a story-within-a-story structure is that it usually pushes things to the edge of believability, especially when we get into Russian nesting doll territory with written recollections of spoken anecdotes of other spoken anecdotes of journal entries and so on. Readers are often happy to forgive it in classics (Heart of Darkness, Wuthering Heights) while calling it out in modern popular fiction. 

 

While the patient's therapy sessions had their high points, I have to admit it really put me off how much her spoken words came across as written prose. She'd describe tiny details and time-wasting conversations I just couldn't buy as oral storytelling, let alone under the constraints of a one hour therapy session. Sure, it's playfully acknowledged ("oh, why did I waste time on the details?") but it pushed me completely out of a novel that had previously so effectively drawn me in.

 

As for the World War 2 segments:

 


No doubt there are far rawer, more authentic first-hand accounts out there; perhaps a better-read person would find nothing new at all.  For me, though, these little moments offered a small but important amount of texture, filling previously empty gaps in my knowledge with detail and understanding.  Accurate or not, some of history's most difficult-to-comprehend horrors are now feel just that little bit more real.  I'm very grateful for that.

 

Also important are the patient's musings on what it means to be adopted.  For all the pros and cons of that plot line, it left me with a really strong appreciation how lucky I am to belong to a loving family; to belong anywhere.  The mindset of an adopted child is now slightly less alien.  Again, a distant but vital bit of appreciation I might never have otherwise gotten.

 

This is why I'm willing to forgive some pretty major issues.  Parts of this book are now a part of me.

 

Well, that and my weakness for abrupt but thematically conclusive endings.

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My appreciation of the book sounds a bit similar to Greg's: I thought it was too neatly constructed, with too many pieces fitting exactly in the puzzle as they come in - even the narrator waiting impatiently during the holidays seemed like a necessary step the author force him through to reach the psychological state that will make him appreciate the content of the next session so that the theme can move along.

 

It's so efficient and so focused that, in a way, it almost felt like a reverse-engineered book: [spoilers]Ullman wanted to talk about how we let uncontrollable and partially known facts of our origin define us and so she used religion because it is one of the most arbitrary one. And which religion is more exclusive and full of stigma more than judaism? And oh, wait, that links back to WWII and the nazis, who, ahHA!, were making eugenics experiment! And psychology is a German science, so let's make the father of the therapist a Nazi himself! Etc, etc...[/spoilers]

The book opened me to the fascinating topic of the struggle of self definition which I never quite considered before, and it has one of the most compelling, heart-wrenching and unique explanation for child abandonment (Chapter 108 from page 328 to 330) - so I'm glad I read it.

But it just too well oiled.

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Here's the

, for those yet to hear.  The one-line declaration at the end is just gut-wrenching.

 

 

Vimes, I definitely agree about the tidiness of it all.  Coming so soon off Foucault's Pendulum, which is built around the very concept of reverse-engineering connections, and Lot 49, where the connections are a delightfully hazy fever dream, it was slightly jarring to find everything lining up so neatly.  Especially as the Professor's research was, by his own admission, very flawed.  I was expecting him to find more dead ends, perhaps misleading the patient instead with outright lies.

 

Speaking of straying expectations, this line at the end of part threw threw me off entirely.  Did anyone else mistake this for a massive and disturbing tonal shift?

 

My new hope was to find her dead.

 

That moment gave me shivers, so I was a little disappointed to find matters progress as before.  But again, there is a lot I'm willing to forgive for a satisfying ending, and I have nothing but love for the final page.

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I felt the complete opposite, and as a result was very, very frustrated with the book as a whole. It felt like a good 150-page novella wrapped in a boring therapist plot wrapped in a bad narrator plot, all working to drag the book out as long as she could. The numerous chapter-breaks didn't help things at all, making it very easy to walk away from the book, and padding out the page-length further.

 

 

FYI I hadn't read this forums before the podcast recording this weekend and this is exactly what I said. Greg Brown hive-mind syndrome continues.

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While listening to this podcast, I was absolutely dumbfounded by the fact that this book is almost 400 pages long. I read it on a Kindle, so I had no idea how many actual pages I was reading. If I had to guess, I'd have said the book was no more than 250 pages, which probably feeds into the criticism that it should have been written as a novella. (Sorry that page length is my major takeaway from this great discussion; the book casts just keep getting better and I'm struggling to come up with something to add to everyone's really great points about the book.)

 

My only complaint is that I wish you had talked a little bit more about the book's many explicit references to sex; I think Ullman was very deliberate in including those scenes, and in choosing to make the object of the main character's obsession a (presumably) beautiful lesbian. I never bought that the narrator was giving us a word for word recounting of the therapist sessions (which is why I never had a problem with his ability to recall everything in stunning detail); I always assumed he was retelling them to fit his own fantasies, which was most apparent when he describes this very gratuitous sex scene between two women. That was my reading of that scene at least.

 

But again, really great stuff. I am so pumped for Wolf Hall.

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While listening to this podcast, I was absolutely dumbfounded by the fact that this book is almost 400 pages long. I read it on a Kindle, so I had no idea how many actual pages I was reading. If I had to guess, I'd have said the book was no more than 250 pages, which probably feeds into the criticism that it should have been written as a novella. (Sorry that page length is my major takeaway from this great discussion; the book casts just keep getting better and I'm struggling to come up with something to add to everyone's really great points about the book.)

 

My only complaint is that I wish you had talked a little bit more about the book's many explicit references to sex; I think Ullman was very deliberate in including those scenes, and in choosing to make the object of the main character's obsession a (presumably) beautiful lesbian. I never bought that the narrator was giving us a word for word recounting of the therapist sessions (which is why I never had a problem with his ability to recall everything in stunning detail); I always assumed he was retelling them to fit his own fantasies, which was most apparent when he describes this very gratuitous sex scene between two women. That was my reading of that scene at least.

 

But again, really great stuff. I am so pumped for Wolf Hall.

I think that's a reasonable interpretation, but I don't entirely buy it because much more mundane recollections had exactly the same level of incredible recall of detail.

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My only complaint is that I wish you had talked a little bit more about the book's many explicit references to sex.

 

The NYRB Blog ran a really fascinating piece by Elaine Blair about a year ago on this subject. Her thesis is that Updike and others of the older generation of novelists treated sex in their books in such a misogynistic way that it sort of poisoned the well for younger authors. Most contemporary novelists either hold the subject at arm's length, or treat it like a pathology of the character's. In either case, it's designed to shield the author and make it clear that they don't personally believe in or endorse the character's way of thinking.

 

Ullman, on the other hand, has a refreshingly uncomplicated treatment of sex—layered in relationship stuff, sure, but the character isn't treated as weird or different for just wanting a satisfying sex life, and reaching out to grab it. I agree with y'all that it was one of the novel's finer points.

 

Like Sarah said, great cast. Each time I listen, I feel embarrassed for not articulating my thoughts in as careful and meticulous fashion as you two. Can't wait for Cosmicomics and Wolf Hall!

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I was surprised with how "mixed" the feelings are with this book. I read it start to finish without any impressions or knowledge and I found myself really intrigued and compelled by the narrative.

One thing you mention in the podcast – and I agreed with – is the insane suspension of disbelief required to accept the narrator's detail in the recounting of events. Early on in the book, as the narrator is becoming enamored with his patient, he comments on her beautiful manner of speaking and how her description of a setting was "poetic," as if to inform the reader that yes, this really is how the book will play out. At this point it registered in me that I'd just have to accept, for one reason or another, that the re-telling of events would be embellished and detailed, even on mundane or unremarkable events (as Chris pointed out above). Similarly to when I saw Looper, and the characters on a few occasions basically admit that time travel, being implausible and extremely complex, would be too messy and incoherent to explain. This, to me, was the director asking the audience not to dwell on loopholes since the concept is predicated on fantasy and debating the consistencies wouldn't serve the plot or message. In both cases, I thought "sure, this is how the writer wants on tell the story, I get it," and from then on it never bothered me. Still, looking at it analytically, it was one of the book's weaker points.

What I absolutely loved, however, was the way the book touched on our ability to discern so much detail and create instant in-depth impressions about people when robbed of sight, our most celebrated of the five senses. He uses smell (the phosphorous smell of Viceroys), the sound of nylon stockings ("this is 1974, and young girls don't wear nylon anymore"), the uneasy shifting of bodies in leather seats, and of course the profoundly communicative quality of their voices to automatically conjure up these detailed, fantastic images of his invisible characters. In fact, he mentions on several occasions how he must swat away temptation to see his patient, because he knows that his interpretation, through what he's heard, seen and smelled, will be in all likelihood shattered and leaving him disappointed if he were to finally see his patient.

I guess the length of the novel never really grated on me, and the ending, I thought was really great. If one were to believe he or she was "self-created," but their lives had in fact all along been tinkered with by some outside influence, what kind of reaction would they give? The idea of fear of violent reaction comes to mind, in particular, when the narrator realizes his small therapist is actually an imposing, tall figure, adds to it.

All in all, I thought the intriguing elements of the book, and it's relevance to human interaction through code (like a programming language), really outweighed the book's frustrating elements, such as the length and required suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, first post here. Glad to be a part of the community.

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Great post, Brian. Even if I came away with a different overall impression, your points are well taken.

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I spent the first third of the book mildly anxious that the Zodiac twist you joked about might actually happen.  It was a tremendous relief when the narrator himself entertained the idea, effectively ruling it out, in one of his feverish moments. 

 

That said, it did inspire me to read about the actual history there, and this artist's rendition immediately started informing my mental image of the narrator.

 

Regarding ridiculous number of layers: I wasn't particularly bugged by the broader concept (plenty of amazing books have asked for that suspension of disbelief, and as The Argobot said, parts of this could certainly be amplified by the narrator) so much as the structure it took.  

 

Case in point: the adopted mother recounting the day she rummaged through the father's files.  Tiny details and time-wasting missteps, in slavishly chronological order, building up to a big truth.  Neither memory nor oral storytelling work like that (we want to start with the truth, then backtrack with details), so to have that indulgence compounded twofold, relayed via the patient when time is clearly of the essence, was just too much.  It was tough to push past that point, though I'm very glad I did.

 

Anyway, thanks for another great 'cast.  A very respectful reading of a book that did a lot of things very, very right, even if it didn't quite exceed the sum of its parts.

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