Citing “a ton of free time” since finishing her mid-terms, U1 English student Miriam Von Trapp continued to work on her novel.
Von Trapp began the novel last year during “a particularly sombre time during my stay in Molson.” Von Trapp also described to The Twice-A-Weekly how, in the middle of the night, she was “struck with a vision” to begin her novel.
“I just clearly saw what I wanted to write this book about. My body was roused. I couldn’t not write this book. These are issues that just have to be examined.”
Von Trapp, while trying not to give away any “spoilers” for what she hopes will be her “sparkling debut,” gave a brief overview of what she planned for her novel to be about.
“Well, it sort of centres on this young woman in Toronto, making her way through university life, her troubles with her emotionally distant boyfriend, who she just can’t seem to shake, and, you know, the whole gamut of human emotions as she goes through her life. It just felt like it had to be said, you know?”
Since the release of portions of her novel on the personal blogging site Tumblr, there has been intense critical debate in the literary field.
English critic Michiko Kakutani has blasted others in his field for “reviewing and dismissing an unfinished novel,” while Thomas Pynchon, a famous recluse, gave a surprise statement to the media addressing the controversy over Von Trapp’s work.
Like most of Pynchon’s work, it was incredibly verbose and tangentially addressed the fact that a secret syndicate called “McGill Date” was controlling society. He comments on The Twice-A-Weekly’s website under the name “Marc LaRue,” and revealed his vision that Von Trapp’s novel will usher in a new literary movement and kill postmodernism as a concept.
Some critics, though, have, seized upon the unfinished document (Von Trapp has stated that “work and writer’s block” had stopped her around page 62 of the document) and roundly criticized it as “self-indulgent, aimless, and seemingly without purpose.”
Intense research into Von Trapp’s Tumblr account, “Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old Girl,” by critic Janet Maslin, has revealed that Von Trapp originally grew up in Oakville, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto.
Maslin also found that Von Trapp had posted “approximately seventy prose pieces, poems, quotes from songs, movies, or literature that dealt with feelings of unrequited love,” many of which “seem to have been directly cut and pasted into the novel while she discusses her lover.”
The novel’s use of the first person singular has been another indicator that the novel is more of a memoir than Von Trapp would care to admit.
Von Trapp has claimed that her “stylistic choices were only meant to make the novel more intimate. It’s not about me, though…I swear. That would be so, like, horribly self-indulgent.”
While debate rages on, the literary world waits with bated breath to see how Von Trapp will finish her novel. Von Trapp has declined to give a timetable, but did mention that she has “a really big paper due for ENGL 364 [Introduction to South American Poetry] due next week,” and hopes to begin writing soon after that is finished.
Huckleberry Cleveland has been writing for The Twice-a-Weekly since the afternoon of the night before last week’s hockey game. Which didn’t happen because hockey is nonexistent.