Mainstream fiction is anything that falls outside any of the other categories. Kinda like "Miscellaneous." Among my favorite authors are: Tim O'Brien, Thomas King, and a bunch of others.
Growing up stories
Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt, Scribner, 1996 (first publication), 365pp, Hardcover.
How Green Was My Valley, Richard Llewellyn, Aeonian Press, First published 1940, 447pp, Hardcover.
One of my favorite Monty Python skits is the one in which a bunch of middle-aged fogies sit around a table mumbling about how hard life was when they were children. When talk turns to walking uphill "both ways" to school, one cannot help but laugh at how the older generation always has to talk about how tough things were in the old days. It makes me wonder if we’ll be complaining about how we only had 10 MIPS workstations to our grandchildren.
Well, here we have a couple of books about growing up deprived. McCourt’s autobiographical account of growing up poor in Ireland in the thirties and forties, and Llewellyn’s fictional depiction of growing up in Wales as a coal miner’s son in what could have been the same period (there was no mention of world war two, though there was mention of Churchill, so it could have been in the twenties, or might be set before the first world war). Llewellyn himself had a career in hotel management in London and Venice, and spent a few months as a miner as part of his research in writing his novel.
Despite the superficial subject and narrative (both were told from a child’s point of view: Frank McCourt in the case of his memoir, and Huw Morgan, in the case of Llewellyn’s story ) similarities, these are very different books, and very different stories.. The differences show up early. Here’s McCourt, telling us about the Irish birthright:
"People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fir;...;the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years... Above all—we were wet."
(McCourt, Chapter 1)
Huw Morgan, on the other hand, looks back at his childhood with much more nostalgia:
"There was a smell with that soup... It comes to me now, round and gracious and vital with herbs fresh from the untroubled ground, a peaceful smell of home and happy people. Indeed, if happiness has a smell, I know it well, for our kitchen always had it faintly, but in those days it was all over the house."
(Llewellyn, Chapter 1)
Both books are written well--—Llewellyn’s voice by itself will bring you to Morgan’s beautiful green valleys of times past, and his careful use of foreshadowing jerks you back to Morgan’s ugly present. McCourt’s voice is not as distinctive at first, probably because he is American, but as you read along you realize that he is pulling you back to his consciousness of childhood, and he is almost embarrassingly honest, but so straightforward that you cannot help but laugh at the situations he describes, and then afterwards wonder how you could have laughed at such a horrible situation.
Yet if both books are written so well that I would be hard put to rank one above another purely on style (I’d rank Llewellyn as a better writer, but just by a hair), the moods the authors try to achieve are miles apart. Perhaps it is because one knows that McCourt makes it to America and does well (He taught writing at Stuyvesant High School in New York), so one can look forward to hearing about how things do get better for him, even as suffers "pompous priests" and "bullying schoolmasters". McCourt literally looks forward from his childhood out, and gets you to laugh at the contradictions and insanity of a Catholic upbringing all the while. When he finally "succeeds" in his plan to emigrate, you cheer for him.
Llewellyn, on the other hand, has Huw Morgan look back to an idyllic state while hinting at the sadness to come, establishing a melancholy mood for the entire novel. In the hands of a lesser writer, this mood might have overpowered the rest of the story, but Llewellyn succeeds in aligning your interest with that of the characters, which compels the reader to turn page after page, wondering "what happens next?" You cringe, when Huw says he’s going to be a coal miner "just like Dada" when his own father knows that there’s a limit to how much coal there is left. As Llewellyn sneaks in the growing intrusion of the mine into the valley and the lives of its people, you slowly identify with Huw Morgan’s horror at the desecration of his childhood home.
Even the depiction of religion differs between the two stories. For Morgan’s family, religion binds the family and village together, and the village preacher is very much "one of them." For McCourt, the priesthood made a mockery of charity, and religion was an irrationality used by the priesthood for their benefit. For Llewellyn’s characters, it is the mine owners and the invading English who are the villains. For McCourt, it is the character failures of his parents, as well as the harshness of society around them, that led his family into poverty.
As an immigrant (though under much less dire circumstances), I identify much more with McCourt and his story. The irrationality he faced as a child mirror my own experiences going to a Methodist missionary school. McCourt’s cheerful optimism about better things to come despite the circumstances makes his memoir a more authentic experience compared to Llewellyn’s novel about losing the idyllic life of times past. But Llewellyn’s use of language is so beautiful that I’m going to have to buy a copy of this book (and there I was thinking that using the library would save me on book costs!). Just be sure to clear out hours from your schedule if you plan to read either of these books, because both are compelling and it would be a shame to have to rush through either of them.
Links
How Green Was My Valley
It is surprising how hard it is to find information about Richard Llewellyn on the web. Here’s my source for Llewellyn’s background. According to this source, none of Llewellyn's other books are worth reading, and indeed none of them (not even the sequel to his first novel, "How Green Was My Valley") have done well enough to remain in print.
Angela’s Ashes
Lots of reviews of McCourt’s book can be found on Amazon.com (which is why I always give Amazon’s links rather than B&N’s):
New York Times book reviews:
Angela's Ashes 1 Angela's Ashes 2