The Museum of Happiness by Jesse Lee Kercheval
Terrace Books, U of Wisconsin Press
278 pages, 2003, $17.95
This rather involved book of romance, lost and found, ends with the invention of television. At first this seems to come out of nowhere, but in fact TV is metaphoric of the book’s organization, slipping from location to location, present to past (not just in the telling of the story, but in the characters’ own minds). I remember reading Marshall McLuhan in college. He categorized television as a “cool medium” because it took more participation by viewers to match the intensity of novels, movies and even the theater. We may be less personally involved with any one character but can see a wider range – like happens with this book, seeing the young boy Roland as well as the adolescent and adult. Read the rest of this entry ?
