“A Thousand Acres” by Jane Smiley (post 5): To be or not to be, whether a work of great literature is confused or profound

Previously, I pointed to this novel’s inadvertent lesson that great things can be accomplished only by child-abusing patriarchs. However, the novel can also be interpreted to mean that what seemed to be a great accomplishment really wasn’t, because it was based on miscarriage-inducing poison in the water and broken lives. And, no doubt, it was the latter interpretation that won the literary prizes. But the problem with the nicer interpretation is that the nicer characters try and fail to do a better job.

Many of the most honored works in literature are confused, even silly, but are given the benefit of the doubt. When Hamlet says that people are afraid of having bad dreams after they are dead, why isn’t he laughed off the stage? And when the protagonist of this novel says that she hears voices (see the first post in this series), why don’t most readers insist that this be accounted for and explained?

Most readers don’t expect to understand everything, and if the narrator of this novel forgets about her voices, most readers will be happy to follow her lead. Indeed, if I, myself, hadn’t been reading for this blog, I probably would have ignored the voices and moved on. But here I am trying to understand such things.

The point is, although many novelists don’t seem to realize it, most people do not hear voices. And if they are rational voices, heard by a sane person, they are probably the voices of alternate personalities.