Blue Angel by Francine Prose

After reading some good things about writing by Francine Prose (specifically her book Reading Like a Writer and an interview with her in The Writer magazine) I decided to see how she puts her great analysis to work by seeking out one of her novels to read. My local library had Blue Angel on the shelf, so Blue Angel it would be.

Blue Angel is the story of Ted Swenson, a novelist teaching writing at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. He demonstrates early on that he is a bit of a fish out of water, clearly uncomfortable in a tired and tiresome academic setting. The school’s newly-adopted hypersensitivity to political incorrectness and sexual harassment simply adds to Swenson’s irritation. And then (Spoiler Alert!) when one reads, “No, what really bothers him…is that he was too stupid or timid or scared to sleep with those students,” one suspects it will all go downhill from there, and it does.

This novel is almost a self-contained clinic on novel writing. If I hadn’t read Reading Like a Writer I may not have been able to see this and probably would not have cared to follow Swenson on his downward-spiraling journey. The narrative is brilliantly crafted with stereotypical characters that fill somewhat symbolic roles, yet manage to maintain their believability. Prose’s use of language is wonderfully descriptive, ironic, metaphorical and funny, sometimes all at once like in this description of the smoking section of a restaurant:

At the far end of the restaurant is a sort of greenhouse, its windows fogged with the cigar smoke produced by the happy crowd inside, each patron a polluter, a factory unto himself, while the nonsmokers outside can watch the brave cigar puffers slowly -proudly- snuffing themselves, their gradual public suicides like some gladiatorial entertainment.

I found myself enjoying this book even though I wasn’t enjoying Swenson’s self-destructive story. I was frustrated and irritated that Swenson was “that bored, that weird, that pathetic.” I didn’t want to see what stupid thing he was going to do next. I did, however, want to read what Francine Prose had written next, what language she was going to use to describe something I didn’t want to know. That aspect of this novel was its greatest reward and made it worth my time to read.


Coming soon: The Stars Like Dust by Isaac Asimov (A rather different experience than Blue Angel!)