March.

One of you tweeps sent along this Financial Times article on board games, which gives a nice overview of the current state of the industry for those of you wondering why I make such a fuss over these games.

I’ll be on ESPN Radio tonight at 5:40 pm EDT and again on the Herd at some point on Thursday, followed by a Klawchat around 1 pm EDT.

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Geraldine Brooks won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with March, a work of derivative historical fiction that tells the story of the father (Mr. March) from Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Little Women, although he’s absent for the first half of that book and more of a background character in the second half. Brooks chose to follow March during his tour as a chaplain for the Union Army in the south, with flashbacks to his life in Concord before the period covered by Alcott’s work.

I am generally not a fan of parallel novels or continuations because of the difficulties in maintaining consistency with a character of someone else’s creation and the change in prose styles, although the latter wasn’t likely to bother me in this case since my only experience with Little Women was in one of those abridged Moby Books versions, which I read close to thirty years ago (along with most of the titles in that series). But the lack of continuity in March’s character was apparent because of the way Brooks infused him with some distinctly modern ideas and sensibilities, and I found Brooks’ depictions of other characters to be thin, such as the southern plantation owner whose racist views and animalistic treatment of his slaves, while probably well rooted in history, came straight out of central casting, and made March’s reactions to him trite as well.

Perhaps more infuriating is Brooks’ fabrication of a weird, pseudo-love triangle subplot where March has romantic feelings for a slave he met – in an extremely unlikely coincidence – twice across a period of nearly two decades on two separate journeys to the American south. The improbable nature of the romance is bad enough, making it seem as artificial as it is. But when March ends up in a Union hospital in Washington and his wife travels from Concord to see him – all of which occurs in Little Women – Brooks uses a miscommunication device better suited to a Wodehouse novel, and not for comedy, but to create a lasting crack in the foundation of the Marches’ marriage – one that doesn’t (to the best of my recollection, or my wife’s, since she read the unabridged original work) exist in Alcott’s novel.

So … why did it win the Pulitzer? I’ve read about 40% of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, including the ten winners prior to the most recent one (Tinkers, on my shelf now), and there seems to be a recent trend favoring books that dwell heavily on race or ethnic identity. You might argue that that subject is central to the American experience, so an award given to an American novel each year should rate those books highly. My personal view is that a book on race or racism can indeed be a compelling read, but not if the author crams the Big Obvious Idea (“Slavery … is bad!”) down the readers’ throats or wraps it up in stock characters who sit firmly on one side or the other of the question. Brooks’ characters lacked complexity in their moral worldviews, making the book seem inconsequential as a whole; the most believable character, in a strange way, was John Brown, one of a few historical figures to appear in the book (Thoreau and Emerson also have cameos), as Brown’s monomaniacal view on slavery and liberation was built on a nuanced rationalization of killing to save others from being killed. Brown only appears briefly – Brooks postulates that the Marches’ financial run came from supporting Brown’s endeavor – but his was, for me, the most interesting passage of the book.

Next up: Ann Patchett’s The Patron Saint of Liars. And yes, I’m several books – not to mention a game and a few songs – behind in my blogging.