Odds & Ends Tuesday

The New Yorker Fiction Issue had a great line-up this year, featuring the likes of Denis Johnson, Jeffrey Euginedes, Gary Shteyngart, and Charles D'Ambrosio. If you want more or if you missed out, check out the writers' real-life summer memories.

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Here's a nice piece on Stephen Dixon, from the John Hopkins Magazine. This article, as the excerpt below shows, will either be a spirit boost or buster for writers everywhere:

Dixon has never had a bestseller, never earned a large royalty check. If he gets $3,000 as an advance for a new novel, that counts as a big payday. When Frog was shortlisted for the National Book Award, its hardcover edition had already gone out of print. There were copies on the shelves of stores, but the book's publisher had distributed its entire first press run and had no intention of printing more, award or no award. Dixon wouldn't say no to a prestigious prize or sudden commercial success. But at age 70 he still types every day for what seems the least complicated of reasons: He likes to tell stories, and there is always another one percolating through his mind. Besides 15 novels, he has published more than 500 short stories.

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Salon is in its third of a four-part series on Summer Reads. Parts 1 and 2, on thrillers and chick-lit respectively, didn't interest this kitten; however, Part 3 discusses travel memoirs. Anthony Doerr (whose collection of short stories, The Shell Collector, blew me away) is releasing one about his sojourns in Rome as a recent parent to twin boys. Here is a tidbit, from Publishers Weekly:

Acclaimed novelist and short story writer Doerr turns out a well-observed chronicle of his family's year in Rome, when he was a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Doerr is a precise, lyrical writer who, dividing his book into seasons, captures in equal measures the wonder of the Italian countryside, the mind-boggling history of the Eternal City and the measured joys and trials of parenting twin baby boys. Upon their autumn arrival, it is the boys who most connect Doerr and his wife to their new city: "Grown men in suits stop and crouch over the stroller and croon. Older men in particular. Che carini. Che belli. What cuties. What beauties." In Spring, Doerr captures well the color and emotionof the vigil for the dying Pope John Paul II, providing insight into the man and his death: "More than three miles of artwork hang in the Vatican Museum and the pope could have any of it brought in front of him...Instead, he wants only to hear something read from the Bible in Polish."

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I'm not quite ready to embark on The Dud Avocado . I need to plow through some more of Don Quixote. Plus, I foolishly (well, I'm just placating my pocketbook here) purchased 3 non-fiction books ("Buy 2, get 3rd free!") from the evil empire of Barnes & Noble, one of which -- the book on Lincoln's melancholy and depression -- I simply had to crack open.

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What is wrong with me? I woke up this morning with a great short story idea, about a woman driving her toddler to daycare when an intruder forces himself into the car and drives them away. I had it all worked out in my head. And I just let...the ball............drop. I have been doing that lately. To me, it is a form of self-denial. But I cannot figure out why, why, why? I know, I know: Just write, just write. This year, writing has been a monumental struggle, more than ever before in my life....

DeLillo on novel writing

Bloody hell this is a good quote. From Don DeLillo (via James Tata):

I was a semiconscious writer in the beginning," he writes. "Just sat and wrote something, or read the newspaper, or went to the movies. Over time I began to understand, one, that I was lucky to be doing this work, and, two, that the only way I'd get better at it was to be more serious, to understand the rigors of novel-writing and to make it central to my life, not a variation on some related career choice, like sportswriting or playwriting. The novel is different...We die indoors, and alone, and I don't mean to sound overdramatic but you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, all of this happened over time, until eventually discipline no longer seemed something outside me that urged the reluctant body into the room. At this point discipline is inseparable from what I do. It's not even definable as discipline. It has no name. I never think about it. But there's no trick of meditation or self-mastery that brought it about. I got older, that's all. I was not a born novelist (if anyone is). I had to grow into novelhood.

Friday Buzz - Woody and the Meaning of Life

Two new books recently have caught my eye. Oddly enough, both wrangle with philosophical issues --in entirely different ways.

Woody Allen's new book is, well, very Woody. Admittedly, I've cooled a bit toward Woody Allen ever since he married his 20-year-old daughter. (Who knew you could make a double entendre out of "robbing the cradle"?) There is no disputing his genius, however, when it comes to filmmaking and writing.

Take this excerpt from his new book, “Mere Anarchy," as reviewed in The New York Times:

“The land is arable and found primarily on the ground,” Mr. Allen writes, about a lonely burg located “just above the bluffs that form Planck’s constant.” ...just above the bluffs that form Planck’s constant.

“She loved fresh lightbulbs,” a former housekeeper says of a victim called Mrs. Washburn. “The linens we did once a year.”

As to the perpetrators of this heinous crime, the story concludes: “Whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent remains questionable, although studies show that the odds of criminals committing another crime drops by almost half after their execution.”

Pretty keen observations on the absurdities of our criminal justice system.

In addition to Mere Anarchy, this summer also sees the release of The Insanity Defense, a reprint combining Allen's three other humor collections (“Without Feathers,” “Side Effects” and “Getting Even” -- I've read the first two.)

I sort of envy those people who will come long after us and Mr. Allen have departed. They won't be subjected to the sordid details of his private life; they will just be able to bask in the lasting brilliance.

On another note, this book looks interesting: The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton. (Not to mention his book Literary Theory: An Introduction.)

For one thing, it's relatively short. (Heresy!) And for another, Eagleton is writing from the perspective of a literary theorist. Hence, his love and understanding of linguistics color his viewpoints, as demonstrated in this excerpt from the Salon review by Laura Miller:

For those who don't believe in God, or at least in a God with a plan for the human race, the question "What is the meaning of life?" seethes with puzzles. Can existence mean anything at all without someone (i.e., God) to mean it? Those famous 100 monkeys, pounding away on 100 typewriters for eternity, might eventually produce the exact text of "Hamlet," but they won't mean "Hamlet" the way that the man who intentionally wrote it did.

Eagleton brings contemporary linguistics-based theory to bear on the idea of "meaning," pointing out that it takes several forms. I might mean (that is, intend) to say the word "poisson" ("fish") to a French waiter, but I might actually say "poison," which in turn means (that is, signifies) something else entirely. ("Poison" has the same meaning in French, actually, as it has in English.) There's what I intend to signify or communicate when I speak, and then there's what my words mean in a larger system, such as a language. For linguists, the first kind of meaning is an "act" and the second is a "structure."

Whoa. I don't know about you, but I'm going to have to spend the rest of my Friday mulling over that tidbit.

Thoughts for Thursday: I am Schroeder

I am Schroeder!

"Creative and quiet describes you best. You're most often found off to the side, watching things happen and enjoying the show. Your love of the arts and beauty is a welcome retreat from your frequent bouts of neurosis."

Which Peanuts character are you? Take this quiz to find out.

2007: The halfway mark

I guess it's the pessimist in me, but the fact that 2007 is nearly half over makes me sad and queasy. I feel as if I'm neck-deep in water and running in place. A mad expenditure of energy to get nowhere.

Maybe that frame of mind is affecting my evaluation at how my literary endeavors have gone thus far.

A couple of noted accomplishments, however: My "Months of Reading" idea seems to be working so far for me. I feel focused without being reined in. I also feel good about the volume sizes I've managed to work my way through. Young Girls in Flower, Cat's Eye, My Uncle Napolean and Portrait of a Lady are all hefty novels. And, I'm quite pleased with the quality and variety of my reading; I'm especially proud that I've managed to fit in 3 classics.

Well, 3, once I finish Don Quixote, which may wind up topping the "best of" list for 2007.


What do I hope to accomplish by year's end?

1) More classic literature, hopefully by at least 1 author I have not yet read. Bob Dylan suggested Balzac's Cousin Bette, which I must say intrigues me. I also have Hunchback of Notre Dame waiting in the wings (think it's time for some French masters).
2) Jane Austen. Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey (plus Lady Susan) are languishing on the shelves. I'd like to make my way through at least 1 of them. Northanger Abbey is a likely candidate for the...
3) RIP Challenge. I've been working on my list of gothic and horror since last year. Dracula, anyone?
4) Horror Story Short Challenge. I plan to host this in October, to promote, read and examine the short horror story genre.

Oh, and Kate, please let me know if or when you'd like to take on Dud Avocado!

What are your literary plans for the remainder of 2007?

Slow Man by JM Coetzee

JM Coetzee's novel Disgrace was one of the best I've read in a decade. Unfortunately, the two novels I've read subsequent to Disgrace thudded in my sensibilities like drinking Kool-Aid after a glass of Reserve Napa Valley Cabernet.

And to think, elements of one bad novel made an appearance in the second bad novel. Well, that was bad luck for this reader.

Let's start with Slow Man. The novel started out well, if fairly typically, with a "life-changing crisis:" Sixty-year-old Paul Rayment is hit by a young driver while riding his bicycle and his leg is amputated. Bidda-bing, we are catapulted along with the protagonist into a new world, with limitations and new people and all sorts of reflective moments. Coetzee could pull this approach off because his prose is spare and his observations dead-on.

I had the same feeling starting Disgrace, actually. I thought, oh, God, another story about an aging professor banging a young student and embarking on a mid-life crisis. But Coetzee's prose was so stellar, I decided to hang with it -- and that novel took an amazing twist and then an amazing turn, and so forth, for a spectacularly satisfying read.

Slow Man never really took off (another bad pun). Although I had twinges of "this hits too close to home" (Rayment is childless and regretting it, along with his life lived generally for himself. Shades of moi, unfortunately...), the novel clanged into a rather predictable gong of the patient falling in love with his nurse and then unaccountably crashed (whoops) into disaster with the appearance of Elizabeth Costello.

Elizabeth Costello is the heroine of the eponymous novel released prior to Slow Man. This was the OTHER novel of Coetzee's I decided to read, after Disgrace. That book is essentially a series of lectures on writing by the writer Elizabeth Costello. Oh, hey, meta-fiction, my favorite. Yawn.

As if it wasn't bad enough to have a whole novel devoted to the ponderous ponderings of a fictional windbag, Coetzee has to bring her slap into another story. The character of Elizabeth Costello did not improve in the transition, either. She's unpleasant and unnecessary, and really, I have to work with a lot of people who are like that; if an author insists on being all cutesy with meta-fiction and recycling his character, then it better be for a very good reason.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth Costello doesn't have the grace to jump off the nearest cliff. She sticks around until the bitter end of the novel.

The whole point to this post is: I really, really want to love JM Coetzee. He obviously is a brilliant writer. Is Disgrace the only great book he wrote? Or did I simply have the misfortune to pick the two duds out of his entire oeuvre?

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

This weekend was a milestone: I finished two novels, Slow Man by JM Coetzee and Falling Man by Don DeLillo. Interesting in that each of the protagonists was an alienated modern man on the verge of losing everything. But, never mind the weird coincidences one runs into as a reader. This post focuses on Falling Man.

From what I've read so far, other readers have mixed feelings at best. Well, I'm going out on a limb here: I liked it, and I gotta cheer at DeLillo's guts in fictionalizing the most sacred cow of current events, 9/11.

I have the advantage here of not having read other of DeLillo's work. It seems that his fans find Falling Man falling short (sorry for the pun) of his previous novels, and I haven't been indoctrinated into this cult. So, I can take Falling Man on its own terms. I wouldn't say it is the definitive account of 9/11 or even brilliant, but, flawed as it might be, it succeeds at trying. Here is what I mean:

The book starts out as the protagonist lawyer Keith Neudecker, covered in ash and glass shards, escapes from one of the burning towers. He makes his way to the home of his estranged wife and son. (Many reviewers have qualified this move as "inexplicable," but it seems fairly logical to me that one would seek out those who are or have been closest to you, emotionally and in physical proximity....Who did you talk to on 9/11?) Thus, the plot unfolds as Keith, his wife Lianne and their son (referred to most often as simply "the kid") try to reconnect and make sense of their lives in a post-9/11 world.

To me, Keith is an archetype character, but it is a device that DeLillo successfully exploits. Keith is a stand-in for those of us who did not suffer the physical horror of the day; he is the emotional conduit for us, and as such, could not be too particularized. Lianne, being one step removed from the WTC collapse, is shaded in a more complex way.

Both she and Keith are involved in actitivities that work as clever and rich metaphors within the novel. Lianne runs a workshop for dementia patients to record their thoughts before they lose their memories -- an echo of how Americans have had to re-establish their own histories and worldview after 9/11. Keith is a poker player, whose obsession with the game of chance (just as his escape was a play on luck) is as fraught with ritual as the terrorist's jihadist preparations.

DeLillo was less successful with the novel's central metaphor, Falling Man. This describes a performance artist who appears around New York City, tethering himself to a safety line and jumping from unlikely places, dressed in a business suit -- a living reminder of the images of jumpers from the towers; the metaphor doesn't ever seem to really gel, to hold the portent of complexity of the events and emotions it calls to mind.

DeLillo attempts to bring in other worldviews. He does get inside the head of one of the terrorists, and one of the peripheral characters adds a perspective of other nations' reactions to 9/11. I think he really was trying to address many facets of 9/11, in as straightforward manner as possible. All in all, I applaud his effort.

Not too many other reviewers do, and personally, I think it's because there seems to be as little perspective, six years after the event, as there was on 9/12/2001.

The NYRB article by Andrew O'Hagan seems a fairly typical take on the novel. Decrying 9/11 as the event that "instantly blows DeLillo's lamps out," O'Hagan essentially dismisses this author's (or any, for that matter) ability to recapture a media-logged traumatic event as Biblical as 9/11:

In this book, the events aren't enough, or they are too much, which amounts to the same thing for a novelist. There appear to be few writers in America now who could bring us to know what might have been going through the minds of those people as they fell from the building—or going through the minds of the hijackers as they met their targets—but there is no shortage of those who would do what DeLillo does, which is to show us an anxious, educated woman watching a performance artist hanging upside down from a metal beam in Pershing Square. It is a form of intellectual escapism. The oddity of the art world can easily be made to stand in for the profundity of life and death, but none of us who lived through the morning of September 11, 2001, could easily believe that the antics of a performance artist, no matter how uncanny, would suffice to denote the scale and depth of our encounter with dread. The Falling Man, the artist, can do no better than constitute some figurative account of the author himself, suspended in freefall, frozen in time, subject to both the threat of gravity and the indwelling disbelief of the spectators below.

And this is from the UK Guardian:

The feeling of being decentred, peripheral to oneself, is clearly appropriate to a narrative of aftermath, but turns out to be an abiding, almost defining, characteristic of the book.

It's almost as if the reviewers want to punish DeLillo -- a slap on the wrist, maybe, but punitive nevertheless -- for daring to touch the untouchable, for adding fictional narrative to a story that is very real, with very real consequences. Or, even more subtle and insidious, is the implication that the novel is "passe," out of step with the technological times. I've seen this attitude curling around the edges of various articles and essays -- the proverbial death of the novel. What a lack of imagination! What a myopic love affair with gadgets and widgets and things that go beep in the night! One could really stretch and say that it was this very lack of imagination, this over-confidence in the superiority of technology that led to 9/11...but perhaps that would be going too far, even when grappling with understanding a situation in which you really can't go far enough.

Tomorrow: My thoughts on Slow Man.

Quelle dilemma!

What do I read next? Yes, I am knee-deep in Don Quixote, and yes, I am halfway through a bio on D.H. Lawrence (Note to self: Be grateful you never met D.H. Lawrence.) And yes, I am about halfway through Kerouac's The Subterraneans.

I guess the real question is: Why do I want to start another novel?

Before I do any soul-searching over that, I want to lay out some of the choices that I'm toying with. Perhaps you all should vote on one for me.

Slow Man by JM Coetzee
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwicke (I could read along with the Slaves of Golconda folk.)
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

Okay, I VOW to finish Kerouac before starting one of the above. That should keep me focused.

You know, I think I like the IDEA of having all these books to read better than actually STARTING one. I think I get a little freaked out by another commitment (Note to self: Sue therapist over not solving commitment-phobia issue). It takes me a while, too -- at least 60 pages -- to get really rolling on most novels. I have to force myself to stick with one 'til the hooks finally grab into my skin.

Not always. Sinking into Don Quixote, for example, has been like hopping on a trolley. Just get on and ride. I have a hunch the updated translation is a big help, though I know next to nothing about the science of translations, in the general sense or specifically about the history of this particular tome.

Enough rambling, dear readers. Time to visit Kerouac as I ride home on the BART...

The democracy of Don Quixote

Cross-posted at Tilting at Windmills

Here is an interesting article about Don Quixote and the state of the novel. Spoiler Alert: Don’t read the article until you’ve finished DQ. (But you can read my excerpts…)

The article by Jonathan Ree begins:

In or around 1605, European literature changed. No one realised it at the time, but when Don Quixote set off to save the world, a new kind of writing was born. The old forms of storytelling—the epic, the romance, the oral tale—would from now on be pitted against a boisterous young rival. Before long it would be universally acknowledged that a reader hoping to enjoy a good story must be in search of a novel.

Ree provides a pithy overview of the cultural relevance of the novel — and essay — (vis a vis politics), quoting several recent books, among them, Milan Kundera’s The Curtain, which refers to Cervantes and Don Quixote:

By inventing a narrator through whose consciousness such dumb events could be worked up into an affecting “scene,” Cervantes created a form of literature that could do justice to “modest sentiments”; and so a new kind of beauty—Kundera calls it “prosaic beauty”—was born. Henry Fielding took the technique further when he created a narrator who could charm his readers with benign loquacity, and Laurence Sterne completed the development by blithely allowing the story of Tristram Shandy to be ruined by the character trying to recount it.

The article concludes:

The novel, (Mario Vargas Llosa) thinks, articulates a basic human desire—the desire to be “many people, as many as it would take to assuage the burning desires that possess us.” Alternatively, it stands for a basic human right—the right not to be the same as oneself, let alone the same as other people. And the defiant history of democracy began not in politics but in literature, when Cervantes first tackled “the problem of the narrator,” or the question of who gets to tell the story. No doubt about it: Don Quixote is “a 21st-century novel.”

Books I will NOT be reading this summer

I will not be reading:

1. Exploitative books by anyone with the surname of Bush. Except if it's a travel guide about club-hopping and buying blow in Paraguay. Something the author really KNOWS about. I smell Judith Regan in this book deal...

2. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. I won't be watching the DVD, either. 'Cos the real secret to everything is: Get Oprah to talk about it.

3. Anything containing the words "Harry Potter." I once dated a guy who too closely resembled Harry Potter. And I once wore polyester mini-dresses. No sense revisiting the ugly past.

4. The Reagan Diaries. I really never want to get into this guy's head, thank you very much.

5. Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes. One of the blurbs for this book reads: "What do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?" What's next? Understanding Classical Music through Britney Spears?

Don Quixote and other musings

A word on DQ: Is it me, or are Don Quixote and Sancho the Laurel and Hardy of literature. Talk about slapstick! Well, folks, that is my erudite reading of DQ. At least, for a Monday. And this observation: For being so famous, the windmill scene was surprisingly short.

Summer Solstice Reading: Another month gone by? Time: It's an outrage. Yes, indeed, the clock ran out on May 2007, and we are already 4 days into June. I slated June as the ubiquitous "Summer Solstice Reading" month, which means I can pretty much read what I want to, preferably anything of substantial length. Don Quixote certainly fills that quota, and I have other books I am longing to begin. (Apparently, I'm in good company; check out The New York Times' survey of reading recommendations by writers. Note that Michael Crichton apparently is doing research for a global-warming thriller.)

God, I long for the days of school vacation, when summers lived like years.

Friday Buzz - What's new in short stories

Happy Friday, everyone! Here are some random happenings going on in the short story world:

June 1 New Yorker: Works by two of the best short story writers are featured: William Trevor and George Saunders. Check it out!

Steven McDermott collection: Storyglossia editor Steven McDermott's new collection Winter of Different Directions is now available. Storyglossia was recently named Best Online Publication by Million Writers.

Charles Baxter on the craft of fiction: Short story master and novelist Charles Baxter has a new book coming out: The Art of Subtext.

Reading how you're read: This article examines how you can evaluate criticism of your fiction.

Thoughts for Thursday - A guzzle of dyspepsia

Dyspeptic. Isn't that a good word? Means both "indigestion" and "disgruntled." I like a word that is a multi-tasker. Barkeep! Another round of dyspepsia! And fresh horses for the men!

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There are none so blind...as those trying out new contact lenses. I've been on these new soft lenses that are like putting half a grapeskin into each eye in order to try to correct my failing nearsightedness while still addressing my woefully inadquate farsightedness. The half-a-grapeskin solution is in lieu of 1) adjusting to bi- or tri-focal glasses or b) permanently searing my corneas with laser surgery. I am holding out that the lenses will eventually work, but now everything is sort of hazy, like through a sheet of Saran Wrap. This isn't a good view for an editor...

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Oh, lists are fun. Especially when they are lists of the favorite movie adaptations by prominent intellectuals. Now I can have a TBV (to be viewed) list in addition to my old standby, the TBR list.

I am going to start another list, that of the "most adaptable author." And for me, gotta go with Henry James. "The Heiress," "The Innocents," and "Wings of a Dove" are all excellent films. E.M. Forster comes in second, with "Passage to India," "Room with a View," and "Maurice." Please feel free to join in with your favorite adaptable authors.

Top 10 satires

Here is a good list from the UK Guardian on the "Top 10 Satires."

The only one I've read is Catch-22 (long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away).

Coupla TBRs in here:
1) Um, didn't know Cervantes wrote stories.
2) Dickens, always.

What he missed (!!!):
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Animal Farm, George Orwell (which I have yet to read)

What are your favorite satires?Has anyone read some of the Guardian choices? Any recommendations?

Looks like I will have to select a Selected Satire Month for my 2008 reading!

Diddling with Edgar Allan Poe

From "Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences," (a mock scientific treatise) by Edgar Allan Poe:

A crow thieves; a fox cheats; a weasel outwits; a man diddles. To diddle is his destiny....Diddling, rightly considered, is a compound, of which the ingredients are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin.


Source: The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower

Now, go forth and diddle.

Thoughts for Thursday - Randomness

My secret thought, exposed on a public web site. This is what keeps me up at night (and far away from my keyboard):

The physical act of writing a book may not be difficult, but there's a big difference between smacking away at a keyboard and writing something that anyone who doesn't really love you wants to read. -- from The Shocking Truth About the Slush Pile

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Question: If a blog post is posted and nobody reads it, does it make a sound?

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Am I the last person to know about this site? Cool.

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Summer unofficially starts this weekend. The most "summery" book I remember reading was called Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly. Since it's a teenage love story written in the Fifties, I can't believe it's still in print (I can't believe people would find it relevant!). So I ordered myself a used copy, just for nostalgia's sake. If only I had an apple tree to read in, with a tall glass of lemonade ...

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Do people really read at the beach? I think it's a marketing myth. Sort of like hair conditioner that can actually make your hair look shiny and not greasy. I always found the beach far too glarey for reading, what with the sun reflecting off every surface: sand, sea, lavishly-oiled bodies. Then you get all hot and sweaty and the pages stick to your hands and then the wind ruffles the pages too much and then when you try to hold them down with your hot, sweaty hands you get sand in the bookspine. And then you lose your place after watching the young men play shirtless beach volleyball, and then you realize you have a blazing headache, the kind you get from too much sun and not enough water and squinting and laying on a hard surface too long and sucking in your stomach to make it look somewhat flattering in front of the shirtless volleyball players.


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But I digress.


Everyone enjoy a safe, happy Memorial Day weekend (even if you're not in the States). And, if you get a minute, let me know what your favorite summer reading involves.

What is wrong with the modern novel?

What is wrong with modern literary novel, asks Julian Gough in the May 2007 Prospect.

Even if you don't think anything is wrong, this article delivers some interesting food for thought for readers and writers alike.

His basic premise is that Western culture undervalues the comic novel -- and he makes some pretty sweeping statements in doing it. But, if you can get past the hyperbolic nature of certain statements, Gough pokes at some sacred cows, right in the rump, with a sharp little pencil point:

The literary novel, by accepting the embrace of the universities, has moved inside the establishment and lost contact with what made it vital. It has, as a result, also lost the mass audience enjoyed by Twain and Dickens. The literary novel—born in Cervantes's prison cell, continued in cellars, bars and rented rooms by Dostoevsky, Joyce and Beckett—is now being written from on high. Not the useful height of the gods, with its sharp, gods'-eye view of all human classes, all human folly, but the distancing, merely human height of the ruling elite, just too high up to see what's happening on the street below.

And another jab:

With its cartoon event-rate, a classic series of The Simpsons has more ideas over a broader cultural range than any novel written the same year. The speed, the density of information, the range of reference; the quantity, quality and rich humanity of the jokes—they make almost all contemporary novels seem slow, dour, monotonous and almost empty of ideas.

And he really is bracing when he ruminates about the nature of the novel:

The novel, when done right—when done to the best of the novelist's abilities, talent at full stretch—is always greater than the novelist. It is more intelligent. It is more vast. It can change your entire internal world. Of course, so can a scientific truth. So can a religious experience. So can some drugs. So can a sublime event in nature. But the novel operates on that high level. Sitting there, alone, quite still, you laugh, you murmur, you cry, and you can come out of it with a new worldview, in a new reality. It's a controlled breakdown, or breakthrough. It's dangerous.

The novel cannot submit to authority. It is written against official language, against officialdom, and against whatever fixed form the novel has begun to take—it is always dying, and always being born.

Now, that speaks to me.

Bye, Proust; hello, Cervantes!

Red-letter day: I finished the second volume of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. While In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower wasn't as satisfying overall as Swann's Way, it did provide the patented Proust moments of awe, as well as some genuine chuckles.

I also am almost finished with a New in the Stacks read: The Beautiful Cigar Girl by Daniel Stashower. Part biography, part murder mystery, this nonfiction read details the convergence of a scandalous murder with Edgar Allan Poe's life. The murder inspired a work called "The Mystery of Marie Roget." I had no idea that Poe was orphaned then raised in a wealthy family, whose patriarch cut him off when he was a young man. Interesting, quick read...and whets my appetite for Poe. May have to find a way to work him into the Horror Story Short Challenge in October!

Now, with a clear conscience, I move onto Cervantes and Don Quixote! This is going to be a doubly satisfying challenge, insofar that I get to read a great novel AND it sort of preps me for a trip to Spain I am taking in November. Two whole weeks of vacation, from Barcelona to Madrid, with a very likely stop in Morocco. Hola!

Thoughts for Thursday - Jack and Marcel

Okay, if you're a regular reader, you know I've been enmeshed -- er, enrossed -- in Proust. As many pages as I can stand, each evening.

In my previous Proust post, I pondered on how his prose struck me like a heavy drug trip: you know you've had a profound experience, but you are not sure you could describe it.

Litlove commented that she had to write about Proust as a critic. I was suitably impressed.

It got me to pondering more about what makes Proust Proust.

Somehow, that got me thinking about Kerouac, another writer I've been reading and whose work I admire. Then I got to pondering (I ponder quite a bit in my downtime): Why am I associating these two writers in my mind?

I think I may have hit upon a link--I'd like to hear your thoughts. The prose of Jack and Marcel cannot be discussed in terms of conventional literary devices (plot, character, dialogue) if you have a hope of conveying their writing. You can discuss theme, but I think with both writers you would have to broaden the discussion.

They are working on a different plane than many other fiction writers: Employing Language to convey Big Ideas. Kerouac also employs Style/Voice (which I cannot precisely account for in Proust).

Is this simplistic or just plain wrongheaded? Am I figuring something out that about a hundred critics have already figured out 20 years ago? What do you think about the Jack and Marcel connection -- and which other authors work on the same plane?

A note about your comments: I love comments. I feel as if I am having a discussion or actually connecting with a person. Maybe that's a technical glitch, a mechanical illusion. But I don't care. Bring on the comments! Please know that I cherish each and every one of them. Even when I don't quite understand them.

The mystery of publishing

Check out this interesting article from the NY Times, in which publishing bigwhigs debate about the industry and how little they know about the marketplace:

...other industries...have made a point of using new technology to gain a better understanding of their customers. Television stations have created online forums for viewers and may use the information there to make programming decisions. Game developers solicit input from users through virtual communities over the Internet. Airlines and hotels have developed increasingly sophisticated databases of customers.


Publishers, by contrast, put up Web sites where, in some cases, readers can sign up for announcements of new titles. But information rarely flows the other way — from readers back to the editors.

“We need much more of a direct relationship with our readers,” said Susan Rabiner, an agent and a former editorial director. Bloggers have a much more interactive relationship with their readers than publishers do, she said. “Before Amazon, we didn’t even know what people thought of the books,” she said.

Most in the industry seem to see consumer taste as a mystery that is inevitable and even appealing, akin to the uncontrollable highs and lows of falling in love or gambling. Publishing employees tend to be liberal arts graduates who enter the field with a starting salary around $30,000. Compensation is not tied to sales performance. “The people who go into it don’t do it for the money, which might explain why it’s such a bad business,” said WilliamStrachan, editor in chief at Carroll & Graf Publishers.

Apparently, little has changed in the industry since Guttenburg's press:

It’s the way this business has run since 1640,” he says. That is when 1,700 copies of the Bay Psalm Book were published in the colonies. “It was a gamble, and they guessed right because it sold out of the print run. And ever since then, it has been a crap shoot,” Professor Greco said.

There is a “business model” that supports this risk-taking. As Mr. Strachan puts it, “Lightning does strike.”

Turning on, tuning in to Proust

If reading is a drug, then Proust is the literary equivalent of an LSD trip.

You read Proust, and you see writing and the world in an entirely different way. You've glided through the doors of perception, tuned in, experienced the Divine Truth.

Then you wake up the next morning and try to explain the experience to someone.

And you cannot find the words. And you start thinking, what was it that I really experienced? Has my reading comprehension really degraded that much? Do I really understand English?

Although I'm about 2/3 of the way through In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, I couldn't tell you the plot. I think Marcel is going from adolescence to adulthood. He breaks up with Gilberte. He goes to a hotel. He meets a few snobs. He acts like a cry-baby.

But he's at his most hallucinogenic when he reflects on life.

Here, for example, is a striking passage about artists and friendships:

Friendship is a dispensation from this duty [to live for the artist's self], an abdication of self. Even conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression which gives us nothing worth acquiring. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute, whereas the march of thought in the solitary work of artistic creation proceeds in depth, in the only direction that is not closed to us, along which we are free to advance--though with more effort, it is true--towards a goal of truth. And friendship is not merely devoid of virtue, like conversation, it is fatal to us as well. For the sense of boredom which those of us whose law of development is purely internal cannot help but feel in a friend's company (when, that is to say, we must remain on the surface of ourselves, instead of pursuing our voyage of discovery into the depths)--that first impression of boredom our friendship impels us to correct when we are alone again, to recall with emotion the words which our friend said to us, to look upon them as a valuable addition to our substance, when the fact is that we are not like buildings to which stones can be added from without, but like trees which draw from their own sap the next knot that will appear on their trunks, the spreading roof of their foliage.

Now, I ask you: How can you explain this passage to someone, without destroying the experience of actually reading it? That, to me, is what makes Proust a writer like no other. His prose can only be experienced by the reading of it. Not by making it into a film, not by reading a book review or Cliff's Notes or a few chapters. No cheap bottle of Ripple or bong hit will do. You have to lay yourself open to the entire experience to get the buzz.

Thoughts for Thursday - Bury the plot at Wounded Knee

Apparently, there is some controversy over the upcoming HBO film production of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." (How fortunate for HBO's publicity department.)

According to a rather high-handed NY Times article, the film's producers took license by adding a new character: a man who was part Sioux, was educated at an Ivy League college and married a white woman.

The truly not-fortunate reasoning being, according to the writer who adapted the book for HBO Films, "everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project."

Ouch. And, I might add, WTF?

I might as well mention now that when I'm not being the Literate Kitten, I am busy channeling my Pop-Tart Culture alternate personality. To that end, I fork over inordinately large percentages of my salary to Comcast Cable so I can devour such uplifting media fare as Project Runway, Ghost Hunters and Wife, Mom, Bounty Hunter. (In my defense, I do watch PBS and The Learning Channel more often than I do the Food Porn network.)

Seeing as how I have made a huge investment in HBO and the fact that the Bury My Heart production features Aidan Quinn, I owe it to my Evil Remote-Hopping Twin to tune in.

In homage to my Literate Kittenish self, however, I intend to read the book first. (I think because this book was released when I was a freshman, it didn't make my High School Required Reading list. So, no, I have not yet read it.)

I cannot imagine how the film can remain true to the plot, when an extra character has been thrown willy-nilly into the mix. Oh, and when that extra character is described as a much-needed protagonist. (Why didn't they call it Dances with Prairie Dogs and be done with it?)

The movie premiers May 27. I will duly report on Book versus Film, Kitten versus Pop-Tart.

From Flannery

Wise words from Flannery O'Connor. (via Maud Newton).

May reading: New in the stacks

Life is so crazy right now, I completely overlooked the ringing in of a new month of reading. Technically, May is for books that are "new in the stacks." I am taking a loose interpretation, so that "new in the stacks" can mean one of two things: 1) new to me 2) newly published.

To that end, the "new to me" contribution will be Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark, which I finished. Whew, one down. The newly published (anywhere from 2005-present) selection is yet to be decided...contenders include the Maryse Conde novel and the Hermione Lee book on Edith Wharton.

May is also going to be an extension of classics month, as I am still reading Proust and just starting Cervantes.

The TBR pile is leaning crazily like the Tower of Pisa. Four recent additions! Last Friday, I found Kerouac's The Subterraneans in a free pile. And a few weekends ago, I scored three at a going-out-of-business sale:

A Victorian Romance: Letters of Beatrix Potter and Sydney Webb. (I can't even find this one on Amazon.com. Will post excerpts for sure.)
The Web and the Rock, Thomas Wolfe (first edition).
First Fiction: An Anthology of First Published Stories by Famous Writers.

Reading list - oh my!

Well, I am still having some sort of internal upheaval. Blood tests on the way.

In the meantime, since I had so many requests about my book bingeing, here is a small taste of what's on the dockets (ones I haven't yet mentioned in the blog. These are in addition to Proust and Cervantes):

Fiction:
Voyage in the Dark, Jean Rhys. Couldn't help starting this one (it's relatively short). If you can stand the patented Jean Rhys downer, this is GREAT.
Margherita Dolce Vita, Stefano Benni. Just started this one, too. (See what I mean?) I MUST quote passages from this next week in blog. I actually burst out in giggles while reading. Brilliant voice. Stay tuned to hear more!
The Stories of Stephen Dixon. I've read two of these so far. He's very original; I haven't decided on how much (or little) I really like his stuff, though.

The Story of the Cannibal Woman, Marsye Conde
Why Did I Ever, Mary Robison
Everyman, Philip Roth
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Kafka on the Shore, Huruki Murakami
All Aunt Hagar’s Children (Stories), Edward P. Jones
The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

Nonfiction:
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir
Muhammad, Karen Armstrong
The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, Juliet Nicolson
Edith Wharton, Hermione Lee
The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood, Marsye Conde

Criticism/Theory:
The Lonely Voice: Study of the Short Story, Frank O’Connor
Expanse of Vision: Essays on the Craft of Henry James, Laurence Holland
Lectures on Don Quixote, Vladimir Nabokov


Just to leave you hanging, I'm going to save the three "finds" I pounced on at a local bookseller that, alas, is being forced out of business. (To make room for some Gigantor Sports Equipment Store. As if we need another one of those!--)anyway, one of them in particular I think is a real score. I couldn't even find it on Amazon.

Houston, we have a problem!

Impulse control: zero, and falling...

1. I just said, "What do they expect me to do, pull it out of my butt?" to my boss about some statistics Sales asked me for.

2. Two nights ago I injected fried calamari and two shrimp tacos into my piehole and washed it down with 3 glasses of Sangiovese. All within two hours. (I didn't have to drive. I just nattered some poor innocent BART rider's head off for 25 minutes.)

3. I just toggled this screen up in front of my boss, who eagerly read the title and will certainly run a web report on it.

4. I can't seem to stop buying books. I suppose that will end once I lose my income.

GOOD GOD. I am OUT OF CONTROL. Thank god, I do not seem to have enough street smarts to connect with pushers on the street, and nurse a distinct aversion to needles and smoking. Else, I would be writing a chick-lit version of Trainspotting morphed with Naked Lunch. "The Devil Snorts Smack."

Penny for somebody's thoughts, not mine

Work: bad.
Me: irritable beyond human endurance and outside the scope of being attributable to PMS.

Speak, Eudora, speak!

From The Eye of the Story, Selected Essays & Reviews, Eudora Welty:

A narrative line is in its deeper sense, of course, the tracing out of a meaning, and the real continuity of a story lies in this probing forward. The real dramatic force of a story depends on the strength of the emotion that has set it going. The emotional value is the measure of the reach of the story.

Thoughts for Thursday - General mayhem

First of all: I'm so very excited about the great and varied response to the Short Story Short Challenge and my post on 10 favorite short stories! Will definitely be exploring this topic periodically. I hope everyone is inspired to read at least one or two new authors or, if you're not a short story aficionado, to try one. (I dare you to read one on my list and not be blown away.)

Second: Can't let David Halberstam's death go by without comment. In my undergrad years, as a journalism student, I read his "The Best and the Brightest" (the Kennedy Administration and VietNam War) and "The Powers that Be" (on the American media). He was of the old school: exhaustive research, in-depth analysis, and above all, accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.

He died by being broad-sided.

Third: About 100 pages in to Proust vol. 2. God, I just love Proust! You really have to give yourself up to him. I don't try to "understand everything;" a reader simply can't. There is too much. You just read and enjoy the process of reading and then, suddenly, when you are not quite aware, the prose clicks. I imagine it's how a child learns how to speak. I feel I am such a better reader for having read Proust, and I'm sure I will feel that way about my writing.

Four: Joined up with the Tilting at Windmills group! Going to start Don Quixote in the midst of reading Proust. What a masochist. But, this is a group and an objective too stellar to miss out on. I imagine I will cower on the sidelines, shocked and awed by everyone else's insights and progress. Sort of like the bunny-slope skier straggling behind a group of Olympians. But, that's how one learns. Thanks, Dorothy W., for organizing. Good call!

Short Story Short Challenge - Reading List

Great response on the Short Story Short Challenge! As promised, I compiled a list of all the recommended short stories. Lots of new names and titles to explore.

Thanks to the participants: NOVAREN, CLIFF BURNS, SNACKY WOMBAT, TAI, SUSAN (at A LITERARY RESPITE), WISHY THE WRITER, THE TRAVELLER, JADE PARK, COURTNEY, DARK ORPHEUS, BHADD, EDDIE, LITLOVE , ISABELLA, SFP, D CHEDWICK, KATE S., HENK, BLOGLILY, AMANDA A., VERBIFORE, and ANDI.

Please e-mail me your reactions to the short story you committed to reading: writerlylife at yahoo dot com. And stay tuned for an upcoming Horror Story Short Challenge in October.

Short Story Short Challenge List
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Call My Name, Aimee Bender
Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders
Dirty Wedding, Denis Johnson
Disentangling, Peter Rock
Floating Bridge, Alice Munro
The Hotel Capital, Olga Tokarczuk
Planetisimal, Keri Hulme
The Toughest Indian in the World, Sherman Alexie
White Angel, Michael Cunningham
Hunger, Lan Samantha Chang
Rock Springs, Richard Ford

Miss Gentibelle, Charles Beaumont
It's a GOOD Life, Jerome Bixby
Roses, Rhododendron, Alice Adams
A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote
Sonny's Blues, James Baldwin
Love, William Maxwell
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, Delmore Schwartz
Love Day, William Styron
The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick
Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
On Seeing England for the First Time, Jamaica Kincaid
Death of a Pig, E.B. White
The Long Loneliness, Loren Eisley
Chatwin Revisited, Paul Theroux
Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor
White Angel, Michael Cunningham
Fiesta 1980, Junot Diaz
In the Gloaming, Alice Elliott Dark
Hunger, Lan Samantha Chang
The Bear Went Over the Mountain, Alice Munro
Floating Bridge, Alice Munro
Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff
He’s At the Office, Allan Gurganus
Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx
Penance, Matthew Crain
A Temporary Matter, Jhumpa Lahiri

Dance in America, Lorrie Moore

Pie Dance, Molly Giles

Home Sweet Home, Hannah Tinti
Mirrors, Carol Shield

My Grandmother’s Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head, Robert Antoni

Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle, Ellen Gilchrist

Leaf Season, John Updike

The Birds for Christmas, Mark Richard

The Man to Send Rain Clouds, Leslie Marmon Silko
The Horse Dealer's Daughter, D.H. Lawrence
Blue Tigers, Jorge Luis Borges
The Way We Live Now, Susan Sontag
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates
Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Winter Dreams, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Love is Not a Pie, Amy Bloom
Silver Water, Amy Bloom

Meiosis, Italo Calvino

The Johnson Girls, Toni Cade Bambara
The Marquise von O., Heinrich von Kleist
For Esme with Love and Squalor, JD Salinger
Making Love While the Kettle Boils, Kate Sutherland
La plage (The beach), Alain Robbe-Grillet
Cousin Lewis, Jean Stubbs
The Book Club, Ali Smith

The Schartz-Metterklume Method, Saki
The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol

Also, please support your fellow blogger and writer, Kate Sutherland, by preordering her new collection of short stories, All in Together Girls. Personally, I can't wait to read them!

As for me, I commit to reading the Italo Calvino story (sure it will be way over my head, but I've never read this author's works) and the Jean Stubbs piece (had to get the collection, don't you know). And that's just for starters...

Short Story Short Challenge!

I just had a scathingly brilliant idea.

The Short Story Short Challenge!

Here's how it works: See my post below on Ten Favorite Short Stories.

1. Pick one story from the list you haven't read, that you vow to read.

2. List in the comment to this post which story you selected, PLUS a favorite story of yours that you want others to read.

I will compile a new list from all of the comments, and I will make my own selection of new short stories to read.

Ten favorite short stories

I've been wanting to make this list for a while. It is tough to put together. How do you not include Chekhov, Munro or Fitzgerald? Which story do you include from the works of Hemingway or O'Connor?

I have so many more short stories to read from the hundreds of truly excellent stories out there. And lots of great stories and authors didn't make this cut!

Why did these chosen few make the list? First of all, these were ones that I recalled even without a reference guide -- I remembered them because they literally stuck with me. Each one hit me in the gut, not only on the first reading but on multiple readings. They made me think, feel, ponder, wonder.


1. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor

2. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

3. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy

4. The Dead, James Joyce

5. Cathedral, Raymond Carver

6. Barn Burning, William Faulkner

7. Greenleaf, Flannery O'Connor

8. The Babysitter, Robert Coover

9. Sea Oak, George Saunders

10. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway

Want to learn about more short story titles? The Danforth Review asked various authors and teachers for a list of stories the would teach in an introductory course. Please list your favorite short stories in the comments, or I "tag" you to post your own top 10 on your personal blog.

Friday Buzz - Who's afraid of Virginia Tech?

The recent shooting at Virginia Tech has sparked some debate about creative writing professors and the position they are in to judge a student's mental state.

Writers tackle disturbing subject matter all the time. NPR asks how to you tell troubled subject matter and a troubled individual?

Richard Blair in the Louisville Courier Journal furthers that line of thinking, asking "if Edgar Allan Poe would have been sent for counseling by a university for some of the works he published, had he submitted them in a college creative writing class. What is the difference that makes a man like Poe a literary genius and Cho Seung-Hui a mass murderer?"

In Cho's case, it seems obvious that his creative writing professors, poet Nikki Giovanni and novelist Lucinda Roy, were able to separate fact (in this case, troubled behavior) from fiction.

(Petty aside: Speaking as one of the many who suffered through an MFA program and all of its competitive fallout, how the hell did this clearly crappy writer get the opportunity to study with such stellars as Giovanni and Roy???)

From the few snippets I've seen of Cho's writing, I would say the prose differs immensely from Poe's in that the latter is lucid and empathic. And, from my admittedly safe and comfortably far vantage point, I venture to say that it seems those professors recognized Cho's instability and rang as many alarms as they dared, short of robbing Cho of his basic civil liberties.

(Not-so-petty aside #2: Where are the parents and families in these cases? I am thinking also of the Columbine shooting. Clearly, all three of the young men involved in these shootings displayed bizarre and anti-social behavior. Yet, the parents just let their sons loose in the world, with apparently little oversight and guidance.)

Could Virginia Tech's isolated case of literal psycho-babble lead to a kind of witch hunt with creative writing students? Gordon, in his impassioned After the MFA blog post on the subject, says: "...imagine what damage can happen to socially marginalized students — who pose no danger to themselves or others — when they feel like they will no longer be able to express themselves in the so-called safe environment of the writing workshop."

Sadly (and cynically, I suppose), I think this all will blow over with the next Anna Nicole Smith paternity hearing or some other headline-grabbing story, with little lasting effect on creative writing programs. But, two issues interest me that I haven't seen addressed as of yet:

1. Cho clearly could barely articulate verbally and had a severe identity problem. Yet, he was studying creative writing. Was he attempting, through writing, to work out his identity issues, or was he merely using writing as a stage for (or mirror of) his own grandiose ideals? Was he always interested in writing as child? Did he write in other genres other than screenwriting? (Screenwriting suggests to me that he may have been projecting himself into Hollywood fame, more indication of histrionic/grandiose thinking, or maybe he wasn't effective in prose because he was so inarticulate.)
2. What is the role of creative writing and self-expression in a larger sense? If channeled effectively, can it prevent an individual from expressing hostility through violence? If so, maybe the question about Edgar Allan Poe isn't so far-fetched. But, what happens if one isn't talented in writing -- do you have to be "talented" or "recognized" for writing to be therapeutic?

No clear answers, but many intriguing questions. Any thoughts, readers?

On a lighter note, Dickens as theme park? Sounds like fun, I must say. Just think of the literary possibilities for future amusements: Bronteland, where you can run across the misty moors looking for Heathcliff or Rochester, or Dorothy PARKer, for the utmost fun in insults?

Thoughts for Thursday

Okay, this doesn't have to do with anything literary, but I just had to get this off my chest:

Americans and the American media are rightly in mourning over 33 deaths in Virginia, yet 127+ deaths and woundings in Iraq (the day after the VT incident) are barely noticed. The President said of the Virginia Tech shooting: "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone -- and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation." Couldn't the same be said of innocent Iraqi citizens? Where is the compassion for them?

I don't understand how we can express outrage over the killings of Americans, yet keep an administration in office that wrongly attacked another country and insists on perpetuating a pointless war. I don't understand how we can express shock over a shooting rampage when our culture -- from the president to the NRA to the defense and entertainment industries -- glorifies violence. I don't understand how we can put a premium on our own lives and so little on the lives of others.

It makes me ashamed.


Sort of related News
Great tribute to the late Kurt Vonnegut in the New York Observer: "The idea of Vonnegut Day is simple: Wearing Kurt Vonnegut mustaches and wigs, we will try, for one day, to live by the principles he espoused in his beautiful books: honesty, outrage, righteous grumpiness, kindness, and the incantation, in plain speech, of certain truths normally considered too naïve to even speak aloud, much less to live by."

About writing

1. You must have something to say.

2. You must be desperate to say it.

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

Of course, finishing this book now, as opposed to my undergrad days when I should have read this, is rather embarrassing, but all I can say is: Wow! This novel ranks as one of my all-time favorites!

About one-third of the way into the novel, I was sucked into it and literally could not put it down. I imagine I will reread and the subsequent readings will only deepen and broaden my understanding of the novel.

I have much to say and research about Portrait, but one completely uninformed observation I wanted to comment on is the character development of Isabel Archer.

In the beginning third of the novel or so, the reader learns about Isabel through comments by the omnisicent narrator or through the other characters (usually dialogue. James, I noticed, likes to reveal characters by having other characters talk about them. A neat trick.). I was a little put off by this, because I was being told about Isabel rather than seeing her in action.

As I read on, I realized that James was allowing me to develop my own ideas about Isabel through these revelations. When it came time for Isabel to act on her own, the impact was powerful: All of the insights I took on as a reader came to fore and added depth and poignancy to the action.

At least, that was my impression.

I'd like to hear about this from others who have read this novel or James.

Thoughts for Thursday

I had an insight about why I am buying and hoarding books like a squirrel with its acorns before a lean winter: I think I am searching for inspiration on my own novel.

On a very subliminal level, I know what I want to do. And, every once in a while, the fog clears, the clouds part, and I can see into that subliminal level (sort of looks like the bargain basement at Filene's), and my rational mind can pick out the gem of insight from amongst the clutter. And everything comes together, purposes seem clear, the tunnel-end opens into illumination.

But, in general, my unconscious works in its own mysterious, murky and fascinating way. Which means my greedy, ever-grasping, impetuous mind has to wait and let the intuitive part work in its own fashion, in its own good time. Which makes for a schizoid-feeling LK.

This waiting and percolating part really bugs the Conscious Me. There is always that niggling fear of "I'll never write again." But, as the years have taught me, there is nothing to do but be patient.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

This is very sad news: Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

Certainly, he was one of the great lights of contemporary American literature.

Some quotes from Vonnegut:

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

New Edith Wharton biography

Everyone get in line to order the latest bio on one of America's major female authoresses. Check out what John Updike has to say in The New Yorker:

Lee is at her best with Wharton’s books. Her close and ingenious explications reveal formal patterns of design and persuasive, sometimes subtle connections with Wharton’s experiences; as with most authors, her life was her ultimate subject, whether she was projecting her imprisoning marriage and thwarted romance into the rural misery of “Ethan Frome” or using her own broad experience of authorship in the wide-ranging satire of “Hudson River Bracketed.” Lee gives the later, critically shunned novels respectful readings, and is keen enough on the short stories to rouse guilt in a susceptible breast over their less than canonical status.

Other reviews: UK Guardian, London Times

Hermione Lee on Edith Wharton short stories

Edith Wharton In the News

What I'm reading

As I am in the midst of reading several interesting books (and far away from finishing them), thought I'd share what is in the NBR (now-being-read) pile.

Portrait of a Lady. I'm about a third of the way through. The story and characterizations are fully engrossing. Based on this and Turn of the Screw, I note that one device James employs is the repetition of words or phrases. I don't know if that is conscious or not, but I suspect on some level it is. For example, in this book, I am underlining the words "lady" or "young lady," and they appear every other chapter at least. In Turn of the Screw, the catch-phrase was "innocent." I believe James is examining (or, at least, presenting) the various meanings such words or phrases can hold, and then letting the layers build. Another observation: James is not the most mellifluous of prose writers, is he? His sentences often are murky, convoluted and awkward. Despite this, his characters deepen and his plots thicken.

Ghost Hunters. Oh, yes, something light! And still in the Victorian age -- and related to the James family! This is about the movement, led by Henry James's brother William, to study psychic phenomena at a time when religion and science were polarized into two camps. These folk were trying to bridge the gap and at least open the dialogue between what is known and what is taken on faith.

Making of Victorian Values. Not too deep yet into this book, but it all relates quite nicely with Portrait and Ghost Hunters. Something happened during the Victorian Age that I believe is parallel to a sea-change that is happening now: A questioning in how we look at morality and ethics, and how religion and science fit into that.

Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant. A slim book, and a bit difficult to find. I'm about two-thirds of the way through. It is an odd little book, because Oliphant took her whole life to write it. She wrote a bit, then put the book away for many years, then picked it up again, put it away for years, etc. But it's very touching. In the first part of the book, she deals with absolutely devastating personal events (namely, the death of her only daughter and namesake and of her son. All except one of her six children, I believe, predeceased her.) honestly and nakedly; reading the account is as painful as looking at a raw wound. In the last third of the book, she writes in an objectified, distant way -- "then this happened," "then that happened." Both styles are legitimate and effective; it's just sort of unusual to have them jammed together in the same book. (The explanation is that the book was published posthumously; the author obviously didn't shape the narrative.)

I did manage to finish one novel: And Then We Came to an End. This is a smart and funny examination of the corporate culture in America. I really enjoyed how the author used the corporate "we" as a narrator for most of the book. Highly recommended!

Friday Buzz - Becoming Jane

I hate the thought of Anne Hathaway starring as Jane Austen in a movie about Jane Austen. Hathaway was too insipid even for the intrinsic insipidness of The Devil Wears Prada. I can't even imagine that she'll do justice to the Empire-waist fashion, much less the great authoress herself.

And now I suppose we'll see Hathaway's doe eyes and pouty lips on all future editions of Jane Austen novels. Publishers apparently are already touching up images of Austen, tarting poor old Jane up like the media whore they want her to be.

Verlyn Klinkenborg (with a name like that, she had to be a writer! Go, Veryln!) poses the sensible question in a New York Times op-ed piece: Why should we care what Jane Austen looked like? As Verlyn says, "No amount of biography — no grasp of the details of the life as it was lived — ever accounts for the transfiguration that takes place in the work itself. You can search all you want in the life, but you will never find the ghostly separateness, the act of imagination, in which the work emerges." Maybe it's a good thing few letters and no diaries of Austen's survive; her work truly must stand on its own, independent of a possible dumpy physique or bad temper or unfortunate habit like nail-biting.

I liked what Verlyn had to say about reading, too:

One of the great pleasures of a reading life is picking up an old, familiar novel thinking that rereading it will mean a kind of reminding, when, in fact, the novel makes itself new all over again. It is as if the novel holds itself apart, waiting for real life to erase enough in us to make us suitable readers once more.

I think that's exactly why I have a hard time letting go of my books.

Thoughts for Thursday - Kerouac haunts

Here are some places in North Beach, San Francisco, where Jack and the Beats hung out (and where I hung out on my anti-birthday)...

City Lights Bookstore on Columbus (and Jack Kerouac Alley)

Inside Vesuvio's, where the Beats got drunk.

The new Beat Museum, across the street from Vesuvio's and City Lights. (Cool stuff: A check to a liquor store signed by Jack Kerouac and the original shirt worn by Neal Cassady when he drove Ken Kesey's bus Furthur.)

April - Read a Classic Month

Hi, everybody, I'm baaaack. Anti-birthday birthday was great: Good food, good company, good hiking and just enough drinks to keep me merry.

Many, many thanks for your good wishes!

Now, we're into April (already???!!!) Time for me to report on my essay reading for March and prepare for a month of classics.

I finished only the Woolf essay book in its entirety, but managed to read essays by a range of authors, including Berlin, Emerson (Self-Reliance) and Didion. I wish I could expound on Emerson as eloquently as Dorothy W. or Stefanie, but, alas, I simply feel to harried to think that deeply. (Even as I type this, I must hurry off to my third meeting of the day.)

Heading into the classics month, I narrowed my choices to two:

1. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust

2. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Holy cow, that's a lot of reading! I am looking forward to them both.

In other reading notes: Just started The Making of Victorian Values by Ben Wilson. I am going to try to fit this in with my classics reading for the month. Cross your fingers that my eyes hold out!

Thoughts for Thursday - Ti(red)

Tomorrow is my birthday -- well, anti-birthday. I refuse to have a birthday this year. Theoretically.

As birthdays do, this one got me to reflecting upon the year past. It seems to me that the American culture in general has gone into hyperspeed. I don't think I'm the only person who feels that way, either.

How it affects me is that I do not have time (or energy) to reflect and think, and that in turn affects my quality of life. (I can even see a degradation in my blog posts over the past dozen months, from lengthy and rather complex to quick and dirty.) What to do to change the dynamic...? Answer is not clear yet.

First things first: I'm taking a few days off. I'll be doing some fun things to celebrate my anti-birthday (yes, you can still celebrate, even if it's an anti-birthday) and generally slacking.

So, see you soon. Until my next post, here is a link you might enjoy perusing.

I am not a big fantasy/sci-fi buff, never have been. I figure this world has enough interesting people and plots to deal with; why add distant planets or goofy names to the mix? But, I'm trying.



I think I'll check out the Best American Fantasy 2006 for starters. (Here's a sneak peak, via Edward Champion.)


Then there's Carl V.'s Once Upon a Time Challenge (god, I love Carl's challenges!). He has listed some damned fine choices (I also think Kailana chooses some good examples of the genre.) While I cannot devote so much time to the entire challenge, I thought I'd try one or two. (I hope Kate Mosse's Labyrinth counts, since I already have that one.) I'll sleuth around and see if something, anything strikes my fancy.

It's perfectly okay to have strong reading preferences, and I certainly don't want to waste my time on crap when there are so many classics I need to read but...doesn't hurt to keep an open mind. Who knows? I might develop a taste for intergalactic romance or Hobbity type creatures. Anything's possible.

10 (+2) Books I Couldn't Live Without

I should subtitle this: "10 books that make me want to write." Because I cannot separate "books I cannot live without" from books that influence me as a writer: The two activities, for me, are irrevocably intertwined.

These are books that use language, plot and/or character in delightful and astonishing ways, that engross me even upon multiple readings, that make me gloriously happy and terribly humbled over the human capacity for language. The +2 are books that I loved as a young reader. In some way, these books touched my core and spoke some truth. I hope, too, that I have many books left to add to my list.

This is for Kailana, who asked the provocative question in the first place. (No particular order).

1. Jane Eyre

2. Pride and Prejudice

3. Swann’s Way

4. Shakespearean Sonnets (or, to really cheat, Collected Works of Shakespeare)

5. On the Road

6. Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

7. Bleak House

8. To the Lighthouse

9. Anna Karenina

10. Crime & Punishment


+2:
Little Women
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Friday Buzz - Didion on Broadway

This is either going to be really, really bad or really, really good. Plus: Vanessa Redgrave. Minus: The theatre may have to close the balcony so people don't jump off of it.

Now, if YoMT is ever made into a TV movie starring Mary Tyler Moore -- then it will be official that Didion has sold out.

Thoughts for Thursday - Book covers

As if you really could tell a book by its cover, publishers spend a lot of thought on cover design. There is even a web site dedicated to the subject! And, of course, when a publisher can nab a movie tie-in to the cover -- In Cold Blood and Pride & Prejudice come to mind -- the sales can be phenomenal. (My God, if you can add Johnny Depp to the mix, you might just trump Donald Trump in annual earnings.)

But does a cover really sell a book?

I would like to think I am above all the crass commercialism and shameless huckstering. Buying a book strictly because of a pretty cover is like buying a McRib Sandwich because of the blinking menu sign at the drive-through. Or shopping at Wal-Mart.

Logically, I tell myself as I enter a bookstore and inhale a whiff of fresh ink and crisp paper, I seek books of compelling content, written by elite authors. As I peruse the shelves, a quirky and interesting title might inspire me to read the dustjacket and critical blurbs. Otherwise, I'm discerning. I'm in charge. I'm an informed consumer.

That's what I tell myself.

I had one experience, however, in which a cover impelled me to buy the book. It was Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. As I moved through the portal of a reputable independent bookseller, a book with an acid-green cover and pink lettering caught my eye. In fact, a literal phalanx of these books barricaded one entire wall of the reputable independent bookstore in a dazzling burst of neon: blues and oranges and yellows. The same book, different color combinations. Could this bold marketing strategy be heralding the launch of a new literary voice? Perhaps the publisher was communicating to me: This is something "New" and EXCITING and innovative, the Next Generation's shouted mantra, an Enlightened Messenger arriving in a hallucinogenic spectrum of spilled ink. This was the prose you've been searching for since A Confederacy of Dunces. The cover told the story!

I behaved exactly like a sucker. I got into line, barely glancing at the contents, and handed over my hard-earned dollars. When I got home, I immediately opened it up and began reading.

Jesus. Another bull$hit self-conscious meta-fiction piece of crap.

Now my face was neon pink with bile-green tinges.

Would I be hustled again? Oh, yes. By titles (The Devil Wears Prada) and blurbs (The Ruins of California) and most definitely by that biggest Sucker Magnet of all, The Pre-eminent Award List. But, by George (Eliot), not by a pretty face.

Which leads me to my pointless reader poll: Do you judge a book by its cover? Have you ever bought a book for inglorious reasons? Did you ever get hooked just by a title or blurb? Tell your story and win...well, nothing. But you will feel that guilt lift from the depths of your literary soul, I promise.

Michael Chabon has a new book coming out (May). Yay.

Other cool books on the way:

Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick (June)
Flight: A Novel, Sherman Alexie (this month)
The Sea Lady, Margaret Drabble (May)
Alentejo Blue, Monica Ali (June)
The Gravedigger's Daughter, Joyce Carol Oates (May)
Up in Honey's Room, Elmore Leonard (May)
Stalin's Ghost, Martin Cruz Smith (April)
The Ministry of Special Cases, Nathan Englander (April)
Falling Man, Don DeLillo (June)

Investigating Nancy Drew

Maybe it's just because I have the TBR Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Woman Who Created Her, but take a look at what are purported to be Nancy Drew dolls from Madame Alexander (circa 1967):

Tell me: Don't they look more like a funked-up version of a Ladybird Johnson collection than our Titian-haired detective? These gals look like they couldn't find their way to a nail salon, much less solve the secret of the old clock.

Now, this is more like it:

Geez, if I only knew this existed, I would have asked Santa for one of these instead of dumb old Parcheesi.

Thoughts for Thursday - Favorite film adaptations

It's Thursday, I've the bilious type of hangover, and surely this fluorescent overhead light is bad for my reproductive system. So, it's time for a list. Nothing like a list to restore order to chaos.

Today's list: Favorite film adaptations of books. Pretty easy. I'll do my Top 5. What makes all of these films work for me is that they don't detract from my enjoyment of the novels. I can watch the movies and enjoy the film genre, and I can go back to the book without the film version interfering. Pretty nifty. Now, I "tag" you to do your own list.

1. Jane Eyre (1944). Tagline: A Love Story Every Woman Would Die a Thousand Deaths to Live! Most memorable scene: When the young Jane wakes up to find Helen Burns dead.

Come on: Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O'Brien, Agnes Moorehead. You can't beat the casting. And the cinematography evokes a grim stark Bronte-ness. Add a Bernard Hermann score--magic.

2. Gone with the Wind (1939). Tagline: The most magnificent picture ever! Most memorable scene: Scarlett entering the hospital ward in Atlanta, as the camera pans to show the hundreds of wounded men.

This is a no-brainer. Okay, after nearly 70 years, the film is starting to become dated, and, yes, with all of our newfound racial sensitivity, the treatment of blacks in this film makes one cringe. And, as for Clark Gable...frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. But Scarlett is still a compelling, flawed heroine, and Vivien Leigh does the mythic role justice.

(By the way, you notice I did not include another great film from 1939, Wizard of Oz. That's because I never read the book!)

3. A Christmas Carol (1938). Tagline: Greater than "David Copperfield" ! Most memorable scene: The skeletal finger of The Ghost of Christmas Past pointing to Scrooge's tombstone as Scrooge cringes on his knees.

You know, Dickens would have made a great screenwriter. There are myriad versions of this novella -- which just begs to be filmed -- but this one is my favorite. You can't beat its evocation of Victorian London. Sure, I would rather have seen Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge (he was originally cast, then I believe broke a foot). But Reginald Own fills the bill nicely. Look for a young June Lockhart among Bob Cratchett's brood.

4. Persuasion (1995). No tagline. Most memorable scene: The girl falling and clonking her head on the waterfront.

I actually saw the film before I read the novel -- which I normally avoid. But, the film did not detract from my discovery of the novel, yet it was also a very credible interpretation. No frills, no mainstream actors. Just a good, sensible, brooding rendering. Sort of like the book in the Austen canon.

5. A Room with a View (1986). No tagline. Most memorable scene: Lucy fainting in George Emerson's arms.

It's tough to live up to the book, but this film version does. Helena Bonham Carter perfectly captures Lucy Honeychurch's blend of snobbish affectedness and rebellious honesty, and Maggie Smith as Charlotte Bartlett is priceless. Daniel Day-Lewis (what the hell ever happened to him?) steals the show as Cecil. And the soundtrack is to die for. One of those movie experiences that leaves me sighing and reaching for a Baedeker.

...............

And, just to jerk your train of thought around like a carnival ride, I like this, from James Hynes. (Weird, 'cos just yesterday I ordered his book on a whim from Amazon.com.:::Play Twilight Zone theme here.)

I had an epiphany one soporific mid-morning when I stood up in my cubicle to stretch myself awake. Turning slowly in place, I scanned a complete 360 of the cube horizon. The scene was slightly underlit, and while I could hear all sorts of human activity—talking, phones ringing, keyboards clattering—I couldn’t see another living person. I felt as if I was working in a room full of ghosts. The alienation of cube life was suddenly revealed to me as something gothic, a variation on the creeping dread of a Poe character. I could be walled up alive inside my cubicle and no one would even notice—the Cube of Amontillado. Immediately I dropped to my seat and jotted down a paragraph that appears almost without revision in my new book, Kings of Infinite Space.

I hate everything I write

I hate everything I write.
I hate everything I wrote
that I'm currently rereading.

That's a sign of one of two things:

Either I am going to make a breakthrough, a leap forward in development, progress.

................Or...............

I am going to quit.

The moment every writer half-dreads,
half-anticipates and half-prays will happen
at some point.

Obviously, I've always gone down Route 1.

Is it time now for the road-less-travelled?

The only thing now to do is wait. To find out.

Thinking blogger -- who, me?

How cool is this? I was nominated for a "Thinking Blogger Award" by Stefanie and Courtney! (Thanks, guys!) My head is swelling so to such outlandish proportions, I had to stretch out my thinking cap (which is, by the way, a shocking shade of pink, encrusted with rhinestones.)

Now I'm supposed to nominate 5 other bloggers for the honor. But, I simply cannot choose! (This might be a good time to share that, although I may be The Literate Kitten, I have much more in common with The Cowardly Lion.) I will say that I regularly read all of those bloggers on my Blogroll -- a group I tend to keep selective to make sure I can enjoy all of the collective wit and wisdom. I nominate all of them.

And, here's some news you all might enjoy: Annie Dillard has a new novel coming out in a few months, called The Maytrees. Here's the description from HarperCollins:

Set in the wild sand dunes of post-war Provincetown, Massachusetts, The Maytrees is the story of Toby Maytree, a free-thinking poet, and Lou, a quiet summer resident who reminds people of Ingrid Bergman. After his service in the war, Toby Maytree returns to Provincetown where a community of artists and writers has settled at land's end. It's the town he grew up in, and where he and Lou have now started a family. They share a simple life and a circle of close friends, and when their son Peter is born, it is their friend Deary who helps to care for him. But years later it is Deary who suddenly comes between them, creating a fault line in their marriage and forever changing the course of their lives.

Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac

"The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different. I don't think AmericanHaikus (short three-line poems intended to becompletely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again...bursting to pop. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella."

Jack Kerouac

(partial Haiku, Jack Kerouac)

Early morning yellow flowers,

thinking about

the drunkards of Mexico.

No telegram today

only more leaves fell.

Nightfall,boy smashing dandelions

with a stick.

Holding up my

purring cat to the moon

I sighed.