Book Review: Snow White

Title: Snow White
Author: Donald Barthelme
Format: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Scribner Paperback Fiction | Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: 1965; this edition: 1996
Read: Jan 2011
Purchased: acquired via swaptree
Why: I like fairy tales and I’m particularly interested in re-tellings of the originals/classic ones; there was also probably some vague promise of sex in the synopsis.
Fulfills Challenge? No.
Notes: N/A

Review/Thoughts:
I really wanted to like this book. I mean, a retelling of Snow White, how awesome is that?! Unfortunately, Barthelme’s style was not to my liking. His writing style is experimental, twisty, and playful. I had difficulties concentrating, and far too often I realized I was reading the words but not truly absorbing their meaning. I would go back and re-read, understand what I’d read a bit better on a very superficial level, and then move on. Eventually I found myself pushing forward to just finish the damn thing. It’s quite slim, not even 190 pages. The margins are large, the print is entirely readable, and in many cases, the whole page isn’t even filled. My point is that there isn’t all that much there and I felt I should have been able to handle this but it just felt so unfamiliar and obtuse.

Is this really a retelling of Snow White? It is, but if I weren’t told this, I probably would not have noticed the parallels. After part I, there is a short quiz asking, among other questions, if the reader likes the story so far, if the reader recognizes a particular person to be the Queen figure, if the reader recognizes another person to be the Prince figure, etc. I did happen to recognize the Queen but I didn’t realize who the Prince was (in fact it didn’t even occur to me he would have made an appearance by this point). While the quiz was somewhat humorous in its recognition that things might be confusing so far, it also felt a bit like a cop out – a kind of, well they probably don’t realize who these people are so I’d better tell them. You shouldn’t have to tell us. It should be clear.

We see things from the “dwarfs” perspective, often collectively, in the form of we, but sometimes individually. That said, I actually wish Barthelme had given us more scenes of Snow White’s reflections. I found some of her thoughts quite interesting.

There’s a lot of repetition. That is, he repeats himself often. I don’t know why he repeats himself but there is no doubt that there is a lot of repetition in this novel. Did I mention he repeats himself? There was an unnaturalness to the way these characters spoke, particularly because of the repetition. It seemed abnormal to me and made the text more difficult to slog through…difficult because of the sheer tediousness of having to read similar sentences over and over.

And you know what? I’m sure there’s a point to all these linguistic tricks. But I tired quickly of trying to figure out what was really meant by this or that. I related better to the thoughts that were straightforward and which seemed less allegorical. Sometimes it felt he was being difficult just for the sake of being difficult. The non-linear, fragmented style also made it hard for me to connect with any of the characters (basically because I had no idea what was going on). I can tell you what happens at the end and I can give you the direct reason why but I can’t explain what really happened before that or the larger reason why. Plot, what plot?

The following quote from the novel basically sums it up:

We like books that have a lot of dreck in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant (or indeed, at all relevant) but which, carefully attended to, can supply a kind of “sense” of what is going on. This “sense” is not to be obtained by reading between the lines (for there is nothing there, in those white spaces) but by reading the lines themselves – looking at them and so arriving at a feeling not of satisfaction exactly, that is too much to expect, but of having read them, of having “completed” them.

In short, this book wasn’t for me. Strange too because I love Nabokov and his novels are written in a rather difficult style as well, yet I am able to understand most of what’s going on (I’ll admit that although Ada, or Ardor is one of my favorite novels, I still don’t get everything and I hope one day they release an annotated edition). But if you like novels whose style relies heavily on puns, tricky language, allegory, metaphors, etc. you might like this!

Final verdict: