"The Artist of Disappearance," by Anita Desai

Anita Desai’s first novel was published in 1963, and I have been reading her books for about four decades. Desai, whose mother was German and whose father was Indian, grew up in India (much of the time in Mussoorie, in the Himalayan mountains, which is, parenthetically, home to Woodstock School, the friendly rival of the school I attended in India, Kodaikanal School). Her novels are beautifully written, carefully observed, insightful, a little bit “triste,” and a pleasure to read. I have just read her latest fiction, “Artist of Disappearance” (Houghton Mifflin, 2011), a collection of three novellas, all set in India. It did not disappoint. The first novella, “The Museum of Final Journeys,” tells of a surprising art collection found in the deteriorating estate of a formerly wealthy family in a small Indian town. The tone is elegiac, evoking the time of the Raj and its remnants. The second novella is titled “Translator, Translated,” and tells of a scholar and frustrated writer languishing in a minor woman’s college where she teaches Victorian British literature. But reading a collection of short stories by an Oriya woman writer inspires her, and she translates and publishes the novel in English. Oriya was the language of the translator’s mother, and she finds herself inspired and coming alive as she reads and translates this fiction. Unfortunately, this triumph is the high point of her life, as she overreaches and infuses too much of herself into translating the author’s next book. (As a side note: Oriya is the language of one of the places we lived in India, and my parents spoke it quite well at one point; we children spoke a little as well; it is one of four languages that we learned at least a little bit of.) The final novella, “The Artist of Disappearance,” is the sad story of a man whose parents neglected him as a child, and whose only consolation was the beauty of nature in Mussoorie, where they lived. After a few years at college and with extended family in Bombay, and after his parents die, he returns to Mussoorie and lives in the family home as a kind of recluse; he continues there even after most of the house burns down. His happiness is interrupted by the intrusion of a heedless group of young documentary makers, but in the end -- thanks to a faithful servant, and despite a big loss -- he is able to continue his life in private and in communion with nature. These three novellas are all stories of disappointment, of loss, of mourning, and yes, of disappearance. Yet there is tribute to, and honoring of, what was present and vital in the lives of the characters at least for a while: history, art, intellectual and artistic achievement, nature, and solitude. One wonders if Desai feels that India itself has lost some of these -- at least in their past forms -- forever…

"The Stranger's Child," by Alan Hollinghurst

I very much liked Alan Hollinghurst's 2005 Man Booker Prize-winning book, "The Line of Beauty," his breakthrough novel (he had written several earlier novels, most notably his first, "The Swimming-Pool Library"). So I looked forward to reading his new novel, "The Stranger's Child" (Knopf, 2011). It did not pull me in immediately, as "The Line of Beauty" did, and at times I put it aside for a few days at a time. I believe this is because it takes place over a century and several generations of families, friends, and biographers, making the forward movement of the novel less easy and accessible. At times I had to remind myself of the complicated interlocking relationships of the various characters over various time periods. But in the end, I definitely liked the book, and found it impressive and worth reading. The central character, although we only know him for a very short time, is Cecil Valance, the Rupert Brooke-like poet who lived large and then died in World War I. He was a vivid, charming character who was gay, or possibly bisexual, and more or less closeted, although everyone knew that many members of the Oxbridge literary set were gay. Before he went to war, he wrote a poem in his lover's young sister's autograph book, a poem and event that sent reverberations through the decades after. This young woman, Daphne, considered herself Cecil's fiance, and the poem became an iconic one, one that most English people learned in school and could quote, although critics deemed it second-rate. After his death, Daphne is defined for the rest of her life, despite three marriages, the first to Cecil's brother Dudley, who was also gay or bisexual, by her short but famous connection to Cecil. There are too many characters and too many events in the novel to list here, but much of the second half of the novel is seen through the eyes of Paul Bryant, a working-class aspiring literary man, also gay, who becomes entangled with Cecil's descendants and eventually writes a biography of the poet that causes some controversy. "The Stranger's Child" is suffused with literary history, gay history, English history, British (mostly) upper-class life, intriguing characters, a few secrets, and many closely observed conversations and scenes. Readers also are reminded of how each generation is inexorably influenced by its predecessors, and of how hard it is to escape one's past, whether one wants to or not. I finished the novel feeling I had had a privileged and rewarding inside look at a certain sort of life in several overlapping worlds.

"Death Comes to Pemberley," by P. D. James

Although I have had periods in my life of reading a lot of mysteries, I haven't been much interested in them for a few years now. (Which doesn't mean I won't be interested in them again in the future.) However, when I saw the new mystery novel "Death Comes to Pemberley" (Knopf, 2011), by the inestimable British writer P.D. James, a novel based on characters from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," I knew I couldn't resist it. I even bought it in hardcover and gave it to myself as a Christmas gift. What a great combination: P. D. James and Austen! And sure enough, it was, as my friend B. put it, "delicious"! Pemberley, you will probably remember, was Darcy's grand estate and home, where Elizabeth Bennett moved after marrying Darcy. This James novel takes place six years after the couple's marriage; all is going well, until the night before their planned traditional annual ball, when Elizabeth's flibbertigibbet youngest sister Lydia (who, you may remember, had married the charming but very irresponsible Wickham) unexpectedly arrives at Pemberley in a careening carriage, screaming hysterically that there has been a murder in the Pemberley woods. And so the mystery begins, with James' classic twists and turns. What is fascinating is not just "whodunit," but the way James portrays the various characters and their interactions. At times she makes us start to doubt the most upright and likable characters, while softening us to the less admirable ones, all in service of keeping us off balance in trying to solve the mystery. An enjoyable touch is that James briefly includes, offstage so to speak, some characters from Austen's novels "Persuasion" and "Emma," more "old friends" to those of us who have read and re-read Austen's novels many times. I often dislike "sequels" to Austen's novels, but this one, by the grand dame of British mysteries, and clearly a sort of tribute and love letter to Austen, is on another level than most of those sequels, and is most enjoyable and satisfying to read. In short, a real treat!

"Stir-Fry," by Emma Donoghue

I very much liked, and wrote about here (on 7/20/10 and 7/31/10), Emma Donoghue's 2006 short story collection "Touchy Subjects," her 2007 novel "Landing," and her 2008 novel, "The Sealed Letter"; reading her work felt like a major discovery. Earlier this year, I started to read her 2010 breakthrough bestseller novel, "Room," but found the topic too claustrophobic and disturbing to continue. However, this last issue is just my own, and I am quite willing to believe that the critics are entirely correct in their praise of that novel. Just recently, I picked up at a library sale Donoghue's first novel, "Stir-Fry" (Alyson Books, 1994). Understandably, it isn't as accomplished as the other books listed here, but it clearly shows the promise that is later fulfilled in those books. It is the story of 17-year-old Maria during her first year at university in Dublin. She moves into a flat with two slightly older women students, not realizing until a month later that they are a lesbian couple. Being from a small suburb and inexperienced, she is surprised and confused, but likes the two women very much, and they all get along well. Gradually a surprising situation develops. Maria is a likable character, and the novel is a coming-of-age story. As such, there are some well-worn elements, but there is also much in the novel that is original and keeps the reader intrigued with the story and characters.

Happy Holidays, Dear Readers!

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate Christmas, and Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all, dear readers. I appreciate so much being able to communicate with you through this blog about books and reading. I am glad we share a love of books, and I wish you all much good reading in the coming year!

Why I am not Drawn to Magic Realism

Although I have read, enjoyed, and learned from my share of novels often categorized by the term "Magic Realism," including some by Franz Kafka, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, and Mario Vargas Llosa, I am generally not drawn to fiction of this type. For example, I read and very much liked Isabel Allende's first novel, "The House of the Spirits," and later one or two other novels by her, but the magic realism aspect kept me from reading more. (Parenthetically, as I have posted here, I admire Allende herself, have heard her speak twice, and was very impressed.) Whenever I think about why I tend to avoid novels labeled "magic realism," I realize that what keeps me reading and loving novels is pretty old-fashioned: I want good plots, I want wonderfully observant and thoughtful writing, and most of all, I want to read about interesting and realistic characters. This is not to say that magic realism excludes good plots and characters, but I guess I just want the realism without the magic. I am not sure what this says about me. Do I lack imagination? Am I too narrow in my reading interests? (I have previously written about my lack of interest in, for example, science fiction/fantasy.) Whatever the reason, and despite my willingness to deviate from my main reading preferences occasionally, I know this about myself: magic realism does not speak to me in the same way that "real" realism does.

"When the Emperor Was Divine," by Julie Otsuka

I just finished a small but very powerful novel about the interning of Japanese Americans during World War II. "When the Emperor Was Divine" (Anchor, 2002) is a still, compressed, distilled telling of the story of one Berkeley family whose lives were turned upside down by the war and its accompanying terribly unjust treatment of those of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. The story is told from the points of view of each of the family members: the mother, the daughter, the son, and the father. The father is taken away from the family home in his bathrobe and slippers (the indelible image remembered by his children as so unfair to their dignified father); soon after, the mother and children are evacuated, first to the horse stables of Tanforan, near San Francisco, and then to an internment camp in the flat and dusty Utah desert. The author never raises her voice, but just lets readers hear her characters in their quiet detailing of what their new lives are like, and how they feel. The very quietness and compression of the telling is what gives this book such power, such descriptive and emotional force. Although we have all learned about and read about this terrible time in American history, this book makes it more real and thus even more intolerable than any other publication I have seen. Highly recommended.

"Range of Motion," by Elizabeth Berg

I have been reading Elizabeth Berg's novels on and off for years. Some may consider them second-rate, and/or "women's novels." And perhaps they are not at the highest literary level. But they are solid, they are craftswomanlike, they are readable, they are inspiring, they are moving, and they describe everyday women's lives, something that is still too rare. They have also won multiple awards. Recently, at my wonderful local library's monthly book sale (which I have posted about before), I picked up a copy of "Range of Motion" (Random House, 1995), one of Berg's earliest novels, which I thought I had read before but couldn't remember for sure. It is a short novel, a quick read, but very satisfying and moving. It tells the story of Lainey, whose beloved husband Jay is in a coma, and the way she visits him regularly and tries to remind him of their life together through talking to him, bringing their children to see him, playing music, bringing different scents for him to smell, and more. There are a couple of side stories, such as that of Lainey's neighbor and friend Alice who is so supportive of and helpful to her despite her own marital troubles, and that of Evie, the ghost of the former resident of Lainey's house, who visits to encourage Lainey. (Lainey knows she isn't "real" but still draws sustenance from her visits.) At times, Berg's writing is quite lovely in its particularity and honesty, and in its engagement with life as it is lived by many women.

"The Grief of Others," by Leah Hager Cohen

"The Grief of Others" (Riverhead, 2011), a novel by Leah Hager Cohen, is a vividly etched portrait of a family in trouble. John and Ricky Ryrie, their 13-year-old son Paul, and their 10-year-old daughter Biscuit are all mourning the loss of baby Simon, who was born with a fatal defect and died after just 57 hours of life. The central problem of the novel is not just this tragic loss, but the fact that none of the four family members can communicate their feelings with each other. Ricky is devastated but won't talk about it; John doesn't know how to reach her; Paul is suffering the baby's loss at the vulnerable time of early adolescence, and is being bullied at school; Biscuit lives in her own world, misses school, creates mourning rituals, and keeps having accidents. Into this scene comes pregnant 23-year-old Jess, John's seldom-seen daughter by a prior relationship, complicating matters further. Secrets abound. Semi-buried resentments regarding John's and Ricky's past disloyalties and compromises also rise to the surface, making communication and mutual support still more difficult. To me, the best limned and most appealing characters are Paul and Biscuit; they are each clear and believable unique individuals yet display universally understandable emotions; their pain is even more heartbreaking than that of their parents. Perhaps the greatest strength of the novel is the author's portrayal of the complexities often found within families and in their interactions, and the ways that even members of loving families can be sadly mystified by other family members. There is much pain in this novel, yet there is sweetness, connection, and even redemption as well.

Authors in Appreciation of Tea

I have written here (e.g., on 2/2/10) and elsewhere on the role of tea in literature. Today I would like to pass on some wonderful quotations on that topic from well-known authors. My source for these quotes? I have in my possession a small collection of coasters ("Quotesters," from Letterary Press) that I have reason to believe (in my family role as Santa's helper) will show up in my Christmas stocking next week. Of course to preserve all illusions, I should wait until after Christmas to pass on these quotes, but I am assuming my readers do not include anyone under six years old... Here are a few of those quotes, each of which I thoroughly relish:

-"There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
-"Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?" -- Noel Coward
-"I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea." -- T. S. Eliot
-"One sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight, beyond the bliss of dreams." -- John Milton
-"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." -- Henry James
-"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." -- C. S. Lewis

I dedicate this post to two dear friends: my late friend C. and my friend B., with each of whom I have shared dozens, perhaps hundreds, of cups of tea over the years.

"A Moveable Feast," by Ernest Hemingway

I have read several books and articles by and about Ernest Hemingway this past year or so, including re-reading "The Sun Also Rises" (see my post of 2/27/11) and reading Paula McLain's novel about Hemingway's first wife Hadley, titled "The Paris Wife" (see my post of 7/1/11). Now I have just re-read -- or actually listened to a books-on-CD reading of -- "A Moveable Feast," Hemingway's memoir about his time in Paris between 1921 and 1926, when he was a young writer just getting started on his fiction, and enjoying the pleasures of Paris, despite his poverty. He writes of the cafes and the bars where he ate, drank, wrote, and met friends, often other writers. He describes his interactions with such writers as Fitzgerald, Stein, Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and Pound. The first time I read this book, many years ago, I just enjoyed reading about Paris and famous writers; the book is evocative and enjoyable, and I must admit the literary gossip was fun to read. I experienced some of these feelings this time as well, but I couldn't help noticing that under his "modest" self-presentation, Hemingway was happy to condescend to certain others and even present them in an unflattering light, under the guise of just telling what happened. Often he presents himself as the kind, helpful, and loyal friend, while slightly disparaging the other writers. He starts by praising Stein but ends by subtly running her down. Ford Madox Ford is portrayed as unpleasant and deluded. Fitzgerald is presented as pitiful, ruined by his wife, insecure sexually, and a hypochondriac. The scene in which Fitzgerald supposedly comes to Hemingway for sexual advice seems both unfair to Fitzgerald and self-serving on Hemingway's part. I still definitely enjoyed this book, and there is much to like about the portraits of Paris, writers, and the writer's life. I was just a lot more aware, this time, of the way the book was constructed to put Hemingway himself in a good light and others less so.

"The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories," by Don DeLillo

I must start by saying that I have not read any of Don DeLillo's acclaimed novels. Somehow they didn't sound like "my kind of" novels, although I would likely admire them in an abstract way. I thought of them as being among the the rather arid, experimental fictions that I mostly avoid. But something about the reviews of "The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories" (Scribner, 2011) made me decide to read it. The stories are much more accessible than I expected. But what floored me was that they do what the best fiction does: they create a cracklingly electric world, one both startingly original and yet hair-raisingly recognizable. Not all the stories made me feel this way, but the best of them did. "Midnight in Dostoevsky" and "Hammer and Sickle" are both mesmerizing. But the most amazing experience was reading the title story, "The Angel Esmeralda." Bleak, searing, gripping, incantatory are all adjectives that come to mind. The story features two elderly nuns, Gracie and Edgar, who regularly visit the worst blasted-out landscapes and tenements of the Bronx, bringing food to the unfortunate, the alienated, the drug-addicted. We experience the events of the story through the consciousness of the older of the nuns, Edgar. The author's descriptions of the setting are other-worldly and intensely disturbing. Yet somehow in all of this there are notes of hope. The two nuns have caught glimpses of a young girl, Esmeralda, apparently living by her wits, perhaps in one of the stripped down carcasses of automobiles; they try to catch her to help her, but she is elusive. Something terrible happens, but out of the tragedy, an improbable sort of miracle happens as well. This story was one that gave me shivers. I think that I now need to go back and read some of DeLillo's novels....

The Kindle Dilemma

I have not been a friend or advocate of e-readers (Kindles, Nooks, and others), fearing that they signal the diminishment of, and perhaps eventually even the end of, my beloved "real" books, books with pages and covers. But I have been persuaded by many friends and family members that they are useful for travel, useful for getting books immediately on demand, etc. My daughter recently said, "Mom, I have to tell you something you won't like," causing me a flash of worry, until she mischievously continued, "I got a Kindle!" In her case, she uses it for commuting to her job downtown on public transportation, as well as for her frequent travel by air, and finds the Kindle easy to carry and use in those situations. I continue to resist getting one myself, but I am not protesting them as vehemently as I used to, as I foresee that eventually it will be one of those items that "everyone" has, and eventually I will probably succumb and get one. In matters of technology, I am usually a "late adopter," and will be so for this device as for others in the past. At that point I will have to "eat my words." So I am now, with sadness and apprehension, stopping (at least most of the time!) speaking out against them. Now I can only hope that the e-reader and the traditional book will continue to co-exist, each having its advantages and its uses at different times and in different situations. (But why do I feel somewhat sorrowful and defeated as I type this post...?)

A Backlog of "Nation" Magazines

I love the Nation magazine, as I wrote here on 2/7/11, but because the issues come every week, they tend to pile up. As I said in my post of 4/6/11 about my "magazine pile," New York and The New Yorker also come every week, but I usually read them more quickly. The Nation, although it is important to me, is a bit heavier, more demanding, more serious, more earnest, more political than the other two. I admire and value it very much, I learn much from it, and I get information and ideas from it that I don't get elsewhere. But in general it is not something I eagerly pick up for pure enjoyment the way I do the other two magazines, and several others I subscribe to that arrive (thankfully!) less frequently. Today I noticed that almost three months of back issues of The Nation had piled up, so despite my waiting piles of papers to grade, I set aside a couple of hours to plow through -- and I mean PLOW through -- these backlogged issues. I admit I skipped and skimmed a fair amount, especially as some of the articles were no longer timely. But I thoroughly enjoyed my immersion in the Nation, and felt I had achieved something by powering through the whole pile. Whew!

What They Were Reading in Muncie Over 100 Years Ago

There's a fascinating essay in the 11/27/11 New York Times Book Review about the recent discovery in Muncie, Indiana, of old handwritten Muncie Public Library records. A researcher "discovered crumbling ledgers and notebooks identifying every book checked out of the library, as well as the name of the patron who checked it out, from November 1891 to December 1902." What a treasure trove! The researchers cataloged and digitized the information, with the resulting database providing "one of the few authoritative records of American reading." Some of what they found: "Women read romances, kids read pulp and white-collar workers read mass-market titles. Horatio Alger was by far the most popular author....Louisa May Alcott is the only author who remains both popular and literary today....The remaining authors at the top of the list...have vanished from memory." Some read the "classics," but not many. This is all not so very different from today....

Buy Holiday Gifts at Independent Bookstores!

I would like to urge readers, as I did last year, to buy as many as possible of your holiday gifts in independent bookstores. Books make great gifts, and we need to support our wonderful independent bookstores.

On another note: I have been posting less the past couple of weeks, as it has been a very busy time at work; in addition, I was finishing two articles with deadlines. I will be back to more frequent posting soon. Thanks for checking and reading the blog!

"The Marriage Plot," by Jeffrey Eugenides

Why I Have Just Read “The Marriage Plot” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011), by Jeffrey Eugenides:

1. I was intrigued by the originality of, and liked reading, the author’s two earlier novels, “The Virgin Suicides” and “Middlesex.”
2. It had been nine years since the author’s last novel, “Middlesex,” was published, so there was much anticipation of this new novel.
3. As I said in my 11/13/11 post, there has been much speculation about whether “The Marriage Plot” is based on the author’s real-life famous writer friends; is it a roman a clef? And if so, which character is “really” which writer friend? I am certainly not immune to this kind of literary speculation (gossip?).
4. I am a pushover for novels about a group of friends in college (or elsewhere) and how their ensuing lives and relationships play out in the years after college. In the case of this novel, the characters meet at Brown University; the novel focuses on the college years and on the eventful year immediately after they graduate.
5. Most of all, the title is irresistible to me; it refers to the common plot of Regency and Victorian novels, especially those by women writers such as Austen and Eliot. One of the main characters, Madeleine, is a classic English major type, enchanted and absorbed by the joys, complexities, and insights provided by literature, and eager to pursue a career of scholarship in English literature. This is a very familiar “type” for me! Soon Madeleine is involved in her own “marriage plot,” but it is very different from those in her beloved novels. How does this plot play out in our current culture? In the old novels, marriage often (with the notable exception of Eliot’s “Middlemarch”) concluded the stories; nowadays we want to know what happens AFTER marriage as well.

I was not disappointed by the novel. (Sometimes a novel that is hyped this much is a disappointment.) I was immediately caught up in it, from the first page, which consisted of a cataloging of the books in Madeleine’s room, including those by Wharton, James, Dickens, Trollope, Austen, Eliot, the Brontes, H.D., Levertov, and Colette. (Madeleine’s bookshelf looks a lot like mine....) The three main characters, with their complicated relationships, as well as the supporting cast of fellow students, parents, professors, and employers, are recognizable and compelling; the plot turns are both believable and at times surprising; the writing is engaging.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Fifty Years On

It is hard to believe that it has been just under 50 years since Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was published in 1962. As an article by James Wolcott in the December 2011 issue of Vanity Fair points out, this novel "helped father the 60s counterculture." I, like a large portion of the Baby Boomer generation, well remember the huge impact of this novel, and of the film version that followed. Who could forget the way the mental hospital represented all the institutions in society that repressed and oppressed people, especially rebels and those who were a bit "different"? Who could forget the standoff between Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, and Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher? Wolcott goes on to note that in January, Viking will publish a 50th-anniversary edition of the novel, and speculates that it "may inspire a whole new generation of agitators." A few months ago, I would have dismissed this last clause as hyperbole, but given the recent "Occupy" movement's rapid growth, and the great breadth and depth of outrage it represents, those words sound prescient.

Martin Amis Pronounces...and Provokes

The ever-provocative novelist and critic Martin Amis, in a review of Don DeLillo's new book in the 11/28/11 issue of The New Yorker, makes the point that "When we say that we love a writer's work...what we really mean is that we love about half of it." He goes on to say that Joyce's reputation relies mostly on "Ulysses." More controversially, to me at least, he asserts that "George Eliot gave us one readable book, which turned out to be the central Anglophone novel." As readers of this blog know, I certainly agree with the second half of that sentence, but not the first. Just one readable book? What about "The Mill on the Floss"? "Daniel Deronda"? But in general, I must admit, there is something to Amis' thesis. He goes on to say that "every page of Dickens contains a paragraph to warm to and a paragraph to veer back from. Coleridge wrote a total of two major poems...Milton consists of 'Paradise Lost.' Even my favorite writer, William Shakespeare, succumbs to this law...who would voluntarily curl up with 'King John' or 'Henry VI, Part III'?" But then Amis goes on to say that "Janeites will never admit that three of the six novels are comparative weaklings." Those are fighting words! It is true that some of Austen's six are stronger than others, but it is all relative; compared to other novels by other novelists, they are all gems, shining stars, treasures of literature! The world would be poorer if any one of them did not exist. So while I more or less accept Amis' main argument, I certainly reject some of his examples. (I am sure he knew as he was writing that his examples would be controversial and provoke exactly the type of responses I am giving here!)

Gratitude for My Colleagues Who Read My Drafts

We often hear about how great writers write multiple drafts, and get feedback from their editors, colleagues, friends, spouses, and others. Here I want to point out that far humbler writers, such as myself, benefit greatly from the same process as well: writing many drafts, and getting constructive criticism from colleagues and friends. I want to thank the colleagues/friends in my field who read my drafts and give me such helpful suggestions. It happens that right now two of my colleagues, one local and one not, are reading a draft of a chapter I am writing, and I thank them very much for it. Their input will make a difference; they help me to be a better writer. I wish for every writer such helpful colleagues and friends!

Revisiting "The Waves," by Virginia Woolf

Continuing my recent re-reading of, as well as my longtime fascination with, Virginia Woolf’s amazing, groundbreaking novels (see also my posts of 2/26/10, 10/22/11, and 11/1/11, among other mentions of her and her work), I have just finished re-reading “The Waves.” I am, once again and more than ever, awestruck. I am enthralled by the breathtaking explorations of individuals’ consciousnesses in “Mrs. Dalloway” and “To the Lighthouse”; in “The Waves,” this exploration is taken still further, as Woolf creates a chorus of overlapping, blending voices of the inner thoughts and feelings of six friends whom she follows from small childhood to old age. The group meets several times over the years, and each time we get glimpses -- but only glimpses -- of the changes in their lives. The “story” (and it is far from a traditional narrative; Woolf herself once called it a “playpoem”) is revealed through alternating and interwoven interior monologues from the six characters (Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis). Although the characters’ soliloquies flow together, we gradually get a sense of each character’s individuality. However, there is still some uncertainty about the line between the individuals and the group as a whole (this uncertainty is clearly Woolf’s intention) and there is even, at the end, a question: “’Who am I?’ I have been talking of Bernard, Neville, Jinny, Susan, Rhoda and Louis. Am I all of them? Am I one and distinct? I do not know.” The effect of this purposeful blurring of boundaries is enhanced by the nine interludes between meetings --indicated by italics -- that indicate the slow rising and setting of the sun over the period of the characters’ lives, as if the dawns to the dusks of their lives represent one full metaphorical day. Each of these interludes portrays nature and the context of the characters’ lives, in sublime poetic language. And always, there are in these sections the sights and sounds of the waves. The waves are not literally part of the characters' meetings, but symbolize their advances and retreats toward and away from each other, and the eternal backdrop of their lives. Readers can connect to so much in the novel: the love and yet sometimes disconnection among the six lifelong friends, the stunning early loss of their dear friend and hero Percival, the ways they choose to live (single, married, with lovers, in business, in writing, in the country, in the city), their dependence on each other and yet sometimes wariness of each other, their insecurities, their epiphanies, their emotional fluctuations, the disjunctions between what they show the world of themselves and what they feel inside, and so much more. The overall impression given by the book is one of a symphony of sounds, words, feelings, events. There are many solos. Often instruments join in and then fade out. Most gloriously, sometimes the six stories and personalities blend in moments of divine transcendence.

All the Writer Pals of Yore

The 10/17/11 issue of New York Magazine includes an article titled "Just Kids," by Evan Hughes, about several of our most prominent American authors when they were young and just starting out as writers. (The title is apparently a reference to Patti Smith's book about Robert Mapplethorpe's and her early days as artists, also young and just starting out.) The immediate occasion of the article is the new Jeffrey Eugenides novel, "The Marriage Plot," and speculation about which of his writer friends are represented in this novel, which may or may not be a roman a clef. Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, Mary Karr, Rick Moody, and other now-successful writers were all friends or at least literary acquaintances in their twenties and onwards, mostly ending up in New York, well before any of them became famous. They both supported and competed with each other, often drank too much, and in the case of Wallace and Karr, had a romantic if somewhat unusual relationship. The others all admired Wallace's work, yet worried about him, and were all devastated but not truly surprised when the troubled author committed suicide. Underlying the intriguing and sometimes quite revealing discussion of these writers' personal careers and connections is a description of the way their work moved from, in their early years, a new approach to "formal innovation in an effort to honor their literary forebears [such as Pynchon and Barth] and 'make it new,'" to, in their middle years (the present) "the familiar pleasures of emotional storytelling - and creat[ing] a new audience for serious, stylish prose." This New York article is an odd but fascinating mix of literary gossip and a genuine if perhaps not very deep engagement with the question of how these leading contemporary writers evolved in their literary works.

"The Forgotten Waltz," by Anne Enright

I thought Irish writer Anne Enright’s novel “The Gathering” was brilliant. I then read a couple of others of her books and liked them. Now I have read her newest novel, “The Forgotten Waltz” (Norton, 2011), and I am not quite sure what to think about it. First, it is a love story: a story about a love affair that breaks up two marriages. The narrator and main character, Gina, describes her feelings as the affair goes through its difficult stages as intense, painful, tortured, yet she often speaks in a flat, down to earth, almost unemotional tone. Still, there is also a richness, density, and complexity in the relationships portrayed: between Gina and her husband Conor, between Gina and her lover Sean, between Gina and her mother and sister and niece, and between Gina and her lover’s daughter Evie. Evie is an important character in the story, a child who is a bit different, a bit fragile, and whom both Sean and Gina want to protect. Their caring for her complicates their own relationship. The relationships in this novel are what make it most interesting. And yet, there is still that seeming lack of affect from the narrator that is confusing for the reader. Is it meant to suggest weariness on the part of the narrator? Or a sort of hard won but muted happiness?

Fight the Closing of Public Libraries

I have written before about the importance of libraries, but the topic is so crucial that I can’t resist writing about an article in the current (November 2011) issue of “The Progressive,” titled “Overdue Notice: Defend Our Libraries” and authored by Antonino D’Ambrosio. The author starts with a quote from Cicero: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” The thrust of the article is the tremendous importance of libraries in allowing everyone access to the knowledge and pleasure provided by books, as well as to such practical assistance as use of computers and answers from librarians. In other words, libraries are an essential item in democracies. The free public library “is a wholly American invention advocating self-determination,” says the author, who then quotes Molly Raphael, president of the American Library Association, as stating that public libraries are “the most democratic of the institutions government has created.” But the author raises the alarm that “local governments across the United States…are slashing library budgets and closing libraries.” For example, New York City “recently closed fourteen branches, and 300 people lost their jobs.” A critical point: “These cuts will disproportionately punish poor and working class people.” One educator calls libraries “intellectual and cultural lifelines” for working people. And in this digital age, Raphael says, “Sixty-five percent of public libraries report that they are the only place in the community where there is free access to the Internet.” Libraries are also essential to democracies as gathering places. Losing them is “the disappearance of a town square, a free space open to all, regardless of race, class, or any other social barrier.” We must fight against the closing of libraries; they are too important to all of us, and to democracy.

The Joys of a New Pad of Paper

Upon acquiring a new legal pad the other day, to use for one of my academic projects, I had a sudden flash of memory of my first grade classroom. The teacher would hand out pieces of lined paper as needed, but one could also buy from the school one’s own pad of paper. I remember asking my mother if I could do that, her agreeing, and my then receiving my very own full pad of paper. What infinite riches that pad represented! Perhaps a hundred pages of fresh, clean, lined paper, all mine! I could fill those pages any way I wanted to! What joy! I can still remember the visceral pleasure of that moment. Hundreds of legal pads and notebooks later, I still occasionally get a flash of that same pleasure when I get a new pad or a new blank notebook. Each one is a clean slate, a new start, a new opportunity, a glimpse into the unknown future in which I will write something -- maybe something wonderful! -- on those so far unsullied pages. Hurray for the simple pleasures of life!

"There But For The," by Ali Smith

British writer Ali Smith’s novel “There But For The” (Pantheon, 2011) is a bit of an “odd duck” of a book, starting with the unusual title. Of course the title brings to mind the saying “There but for the grace of God go I”; this is not specifically referenced in the novel, but the reader can make some connections. Each section of the book is introduced with one of the four words in the title. With a little work, one can tease out the connection between the word and the events in that section, but it is sometimes an obscure one. The story is told in a somewhat nonlinear manner, and sometimes one does not know the intersections among characters until well along in the book. There are also some sections that are told in a stream-of-consciousness style, especially from the minds of two main characters: a young girl and a very old woman. So, in short, Smith does not make reading her novel easy. On top of that, her main plot point -- in which Miles, a man who goes to a dinner party at the house of someone he does not know, goes upstairs and locks himself into a guest room and stays there for some weeks -- risks being gimmicky. However, Smith tells a compelling story, portrays quirky and mostly very sympathetic characters, and writes with wit, authority and absolute control. I felt that the novel was deeply grounded in a great appreciation for the basic humanity of most people. Somehow all these diverse aspects of the novel hang together and make one want to keep reading.

Books Featuring Various Illegal Drugs

As a companion piece to my recent (10/30/11) list of books featuring alcohol and alcoholism, I list here books (mostly novels) that prominently feature (mostly) illegal drugs as part of their stories. Some would criticize the authors for romanticizing drugs or making them seem glamorous, and this does happen to some extent. But just as often, the books show the negative sides of drugs and, especially, drug addiction.

Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
Confessions of an English Opium Eater, by Thomas de Quincy
The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
Junkie, by William Burroughs
Less Than Zero, by Brett Easton Ellis
The Man with the Golden Arm, by Nelson Algren
Naked Lunch, by William Burroughs
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
Requiem for a Dream, by Hubert Selby, Jr.
Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh

…and much of the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud.

I note, as a point of interest, that all of the books on this list are by male authors. We know that both men and women take drugs, but perhaps only men can take them as part of a macho, "guy" persona, and/or a bohemian, artistic, "living on the wild side" persona? Do women who take a lot of drugs simply seem pitiful? Is "living on the wild side" good for men's images but bad for women's?

No to Abridged Books

On 3/10/10, I wrote about fond memories of reading Readers Digest Condensed books when I was a child, despite my later negative feeling about abridged books. I said in that post that in general I "firmly believe that books should be read unabridged; abridging books seems unnatural, almost like mutilating them." I was thinking about this again recently, as a couple of times when I checked out an audiobook from the library, I realized after I took it home and looked at the very small print that the version of the book on CD was actually abridged. First, this annoyed me because I feel such an important fact should be clearly featured, to allow readers/listeners to make informed choices. Second, and this is more important, I don't understand the need for abridged versions of books. Maybe if the books are for young people with reading problems, or those just entering the world of reading, these books could provide a "bridge" (pun intended) to full versions of books. Or for not-very-literary bestsellers, something like Readers Digest Condensed could provide quick and fun reads for pure entertainment or for an introduction to the works of writers. But in general, I strongly dislike abridged works, and feel they cheat the reader of the full experience. I suspect most authors would also be very unhappy with having their works abridged.

More on "To the Lighthouse"

On 10/22/11 I wrote about listening to “To the Lighthouse” on CD, and how listening to it read made the meaning of the words, and the weight of their sounds, so tangible. I have now finished the novel, and just want to add here that the luminosity of the writing, the insights into the characters’ consciousnesses, and the awareness and capture of the hundreds of shifts of emotions people go through every day, are but a few of the awe-inspiring qualities of Woolf’s writing. For just one example, here is a description of Lily Briscoe’s thoughts as she paints at the Ramsay’s house on the Isle of Skye: “One wanted, she thought…to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, It’s a miracle, it’s an ecstasy.” How beautifully Woolf encapsulates the constant alternating of our consciousnesses between the quotidian and the sublime.

Books Featuring Alcohol and Alcoholism

Alcohol is found in so much literature, but there are some novels and plays that portray alcohol consumption and alcoholism particularly prominently. Some of them focus on alcoholism, while others show it more peripherally, but all show the ravages of alcoholism on characters’ – and their families’ – lives. Below is a sampling of those books. On 10/23/11, I wrote here about writers who were alcoholic; readers will note that some of the writers on that list were the authors of the books on the list below.

After This, by Alice McDermott
Bastard out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison
The Beautiful and the Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells
Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons
The Gathering, by Anne Enright
The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy
Good Morning, Midnight, by Jean Rhys
The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy
Home, by Marilynne Robinson
John Barleycorn, by Jack London
Lie Down in Darkness, by William Styron
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, by Brian Moore
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, by Eugene O’Neill
The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy
Monkeys, by Susan Minot
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
Rosie, by Anne Lamott
The Subterraneans, by Jack Kerouac
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Tortilla Flat, by John Steinbeck
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry
We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, by Edward Albee
The Woman Who Walked into Doors, by Roddy Doyle

In Praise of Editors

A Vanity Fair article (November 2011) about Bob Loomis, who has just retired from 55 years as an editor at Random House, reminds me of the importance of editors. They do not often get the credit they should, except in the occasional brief acknowledgment at the front or back of a book. Loomis, for example, edited Maya Angelou’s 26 books, as well as books by Calvin Trillin, Edmund Morris, Shelby Foote, and more. He knew and respected the founders of Random House, the legendary Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. Of course the publishing business has changed dramatically during those 55 years, so it is particularly enjoyable to read Loomis’ recollections of the early years in his job. Not everyone realizes how much editors do; the great work of some of our most famous writers would be much less great if they hadn’t had gifted editors. So in this post I would like to praise, thank and honor all the editors who have edited the books I have treasured, enjoyed, and learned from over the years. In addition, I want to say a word of thanks to the two wonderful editors who edited the books I have authored, co-authored, or co-edited: Thanks, Naomi S. and Kelly S.! You're the best!

Famous Writers Who Committed Suicide

Unfortunately many great and well known writers have committed suicide. In many cases, they had long struggled with depression and/or alcoholism and/or other psychological problems and addictions. (Regular readers may notice that some of the names on this list also appeared on my 10/23/11 list of famous writers who were alcoholic.) Below is a list of some such writers. I post this to mourn the sadness of their not being able to endure life any longer, and to mourn the loss of the work they might have done if they had lived longer.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa
John Berryman
Richard Brautigan
Hart Crane
Michael Dorris
Romain Gary
Ernest Hemingway
William Inge
Randall Jarrell
Arthur Koestler
Vachel Lindsay
Malcolm Lowry
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Yukio Mishima
Cesare Pavese
Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton
Sara Teasdale
David Foster Wallace
Virginia Woolf
Stefan Zweig

Joan Didion on Loss

I have written about Joan Didion, whose work I have been reading for decades, and whom I twice heard speak, on this blog (3/23/11). Her most painful book to date, and her most successful, was "The Year of Magical Thinking," a searingly sad memoir about her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, his sudden death, and Didion's struggle to come to terms with his death. Now she has written a new and equally sad book, "Blue Nights," about her daughter, Quintana Roo, her troubled life, and her far too early death at age 39, only a few months after her father died. The current (10/24/11) issue of New York Magazine has a fascinating but very painful article about Didion, her new book, and her daughter's life and death. Quintana Roo suffered from depression and alcohol abuse, and although she had started a career in photography and photo editing, she was fragile and vulnerable. Didion worried about her, of course, and also worried that she, Didion, had not been a good enough mother to her daughter. Didion says in an interview for the magazine that as much as she loved her daughter, she didn't truly know or understand her. So "Blue Nights" is as much about Didion herself as it is about her daughter. Quintana Roo remains an enigma. Didion is clearly ambivalent about her reason for writing the book; she states in the New York interview that she wanted to get her preoccupation with understanding her daughter "off her mind," but then contradicts herself and says she wrote the book to "bring [her] back." The New York photos of the aging, fragile looking Didion show a person who has suffered greatly, who is overwhelmed with loss, yet still able to use her gift of writing in order to try to understand these two terrible blows, these shocking deaths, she has endured.

"Whiter Shades of Pale," by Christian Lander

Being very interested in the critical and complex topic of race in America, I often read serious material on the issue. But despite all the very serious problems inherent in this difficult subject, there is a humorous side of the topic as well. I know this is a delicate area, but I think most topics can both be serious and, sometimes, have a lighter side. For examples, see the work of many great comics and “serious but comic” commentators on race, gender, class, religion, and more. (Think the late Richard Pryor, or Chris Rock, for example; these are quite different in some ways, but both were/are fearless in using comedy to illuminate and confront racial issues.) This is a preamble to saying that I just read the book “Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, From Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews” (Random House, 2010), and found it quite funny, in a good-humored “poking-fun-at-ourselves” way. The author of this book, Christian Lander, already well known for his blog, StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, and for his 2008 book, “Stuff White People Like,” is no Richard Pryor, but writes on this topic in a light vein. This current book, “Whiter Shades of Pale” (note the reference to the iconic Procol Harum song) consists of 92 short chapters on topics such as “Ivy League,” “Single-Malt Scotch,” “Unpaid Internships,” “Nannies,” “Messenger Bags,” “Bumper Stickers,” “Flea Markets,” “Anthropologie,” “Frisbee Sports,” “Trader Joe’s,” “Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore,” “The Huffington Post,” “Heirloom Tomatoes,” “Expensive Jeans,” and “Ikea.” These chapters are interspersed with wonderful line drawings of individuals deemed representative of major North American cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, Asheville, Chicago, Madison, Boulder, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and of course my city San Francisco. For each full-page drawing, there is hilarious annotation of the person’s clothing and other accessories. Of course all of this is very tongue-in-cheek. It isn’t really about all white people, but about what others have called “bobos” – bourgeois bohemians –, in other words, self-styled liberal, hip, usually urban, and generally privileged white people; Lander includes himself in this category. He also notes that sometimes this group of “white people” actually includes members of all races. The book and its chapters and drawings are all part of a gentle send-up of an all-too-easily-parodied "type." In conclusion, I am tempted to include lots of quotations here, but will limit myself to one representative example: “White people have plunged headfirst into world music. If they play it loud enough…, people are almost guaranteed to say, ‘Who is this?’ To which the white person can say, ‘You know, when I was in Bolivia, I really got into this flute music. I got this CD from a group of musicians on the streets of La Paz.’”

Famous Writers Who Were Alcoholics

Sadly, many, many famous writers were alcoholics. A few were also addicted to various drugs. Many of them died early of cirrhosis and other alcohol-related diseases. This reminds us that alcohol not only caused much misery for the authors themselves and their families and friends, but also deprived us all of the literature they would likely have written if they had not been battling alcoholism, and if they had not died earlier than they likely would have otherwise. There have been various studies done, and much speculation, about why such a large proportion of writers have been alcoholic; there do not seem to be any clear answers to the question. The theory that alcohol and/or drugs sometimes actually fueled the writing has been pretty much discredited, Coleridge aside. Below is a partial list of famous writers who were known to be alcoholic. It is an astonishing roll call of some of the greatest writers of the past century or so.

James Agee
Kingsley Amis
Sherwood Anderson
James Baldwin
John Berryman
Richard Brautigan
Charles Bukowski
Truman Capote
Raymond Carver
Raymond Chandler
John Cheever
Stephen Crane
William Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dashiell Hammett
Ernest Hemingway
O. Henry
James Joyce
Jack Kerouac
Arthur Koestler
Ring Lardner
Sinclair Lewis
Jack London
Robert Lowell
Malcolm Lowry
Norman Mailer
Eugene O’Neill
Dorothy Parker
Edgar Allen Poe
Theodore Roethke
Francois Sagan
Delmore Schwartz
Anne Sexton
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Jean Stafford
William Styron
Dylan Thomas
Paul Verlaine
Tennessee Williams
Edmund Wilson
Elinor Wylie

On Listening to "To the Lighthouse" on CD

Back on 2/6/10, I wrote about how I love listening to audio books while in my car, and how I especially like to listen to the “classic” novels that I have read before. I enjoy audio versions of new novels as well, but it is a particular pleasure to listen to well-loved books that I not only have read before – often several times – but feel I know well. Hearing those novels read to me shows me new aspects of their language, themes, and characters. This is partly because it forces me to slow down and listen to every word, whereas when I read, I am sometimes rushing forward and not feeling the import of every word or phrase. When I listen, I feel the weight and gravity and beauty of every word, phrase, and sentence. I can savor the language and the insights in a different way, a way that is mentally, emotionally, and aesthetically powerful. These past few days I have been listening to the wonderful English actor Phyllida Law (who is Emma Thompson’s mother) read Virginia Woolf’s great novel “To the Lighthouse” on CD. I have read this novel a few times before, and have been awed by it, but have always preferred Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” This time, having the novel read to me by this gifted actor, I am savoring, more than ever before, the access to the consciousnesses and experiences of the two main female characters, Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe. These two women, quite different, one married with eight children, and the other a single painter, both wonder about the ways they have chosen to live their lives. They are also both -- especially Mrs. Ramsay -- highly conscious of and tuned into the feelings and needs of those around them. I also admire the novel’s insights into the complex world that each marriage grows into, gender roles, and the importance of the small daily events in life. I may write again about this rich tapestry of a novel when I finish it, but here I wanted to focus on the unique and lovely experience of listening to its being read aloud.

Tea and Celebration with My Dear Friend B.

My dear friend and loyal reader of this blog, B., noticed even before I mentioned it here that I was approaching my 500th blog post. She invited me to tea to celebrate that occasion, and we enjoyed our celebratory tea this afternoon. What a good time we had! I appreciated so much her honoring me and the blog with her recognition of this milepost (a small one in the scheme of things, I know, but meaningful to me, as I have so much enjoyed writing this blog). I thoroughly enjoyed her company, our conversation about books (among other things), and our tea and delicacies, served in pretty teapots and teacups for the tea and multilayered trays for the sweet treats. It happens that B. and I both love tea -- the drink and the meal -- and have shared many delightful afternoon teas together over the years. As B and her husband often say, and as I heartily agree, what could be better than breaking bread -- OK, scones and crumpets in this case -- with good friends? And if you and your friend share a great love of books, lend and give each other books, exchange recommendations, and in general celebrate books, that is even better! Thanks, B.!

Why Don't I Read More Plays?

An intriguing item in today's (10/20/11) San Francisco Chronicle tells of one of Eugene O'Neill's seemingly lost plays, "Exorcism," turning up in a researcher's archives. It had apparently been given to the writer Philip Yordan as a Christmas gift by Agnes Boulton, O'Neill's second wife. Besides being interested in this news, and, as always, being happy when a lost book or any work of art is re-found, I started musing about why I almost never read plays any more. When I was in college and grad school, and even for a little while afterward, I read plenty of plays by many playwrights, from Euripides and Shakespeare to Chekhov, Shaw, Wilde, Miller, Albee, Pinter, Beckett, Williams, Hellman, Mamet, Hansberry, and many more. (Note that only two of these are female, and that to this day there are far too few women playwrights.) I do go to the theater occasionally (well, to be honest, these days very occasionally), but I never wake up and think "I should read a play today!" or "Why don't I re-read O'Neill, or Williams, or Albee?" in the way that I often DO think, "I want to re-read Eliot, Dickens, Cather, Wharton, Woolf (and many more)." (In fact, I actually and frequently DO re-read these authors.) In a time period in which I have read hundreds of books -- novels, short story collections, memoirs, essay collections, professional books, etc. --, why haven't I read more than a very small handful of plays? Is it because a play on the page seems like a poor substitute for a performance? Does the play seem rather inert on the page? Is it the chopped-up visual look of the play in print? I am not sure. I am curious: Do any of you read plays? Why or why not?

Julian Barnes Finally Wins the Man Booker Prize

It was announced yesterday that Julian Barnes won this year's Man Booker Prize for fiction, for his novel "The Sense of an Ending." The Booker is Britain's most prestigious literary prize. I haven't read the novel yet, because it has only very recently been released in the U.S., but I plan to. Readers of this blog may remember that I have written about several of Barnes' books, and highly appreciate his work, perhaps his short stories even more than his novels. Barnes, a very well-respected writer, had been nominated three times before, so it was not a surprise that he won this time. There was, parenthetically, a bit of a kerfuffle about the judges' stating that they were looking for "readable" books, which was interpreted as not putting literary value first. This criticism was not aimed at Barnes, but at the Booker judges, and at the fact that writers such as Alan Hollinghurst and Ali Smith were not shortlisted this year. There is talk that a group of British writers and publishers plan to set up a new Literature Prize "where the single criterion is excellence rather than other factors," as Andrew Kidd, spokesman for the proposed new prize, puts it. One difference from the Booker will be that any English-language writer whose work has been published in Britain will be eligible, unlike the Booker, which does not give the prize to Americans. We shall see if the Literary Prize will actually be set up, and if it becomes as prestigious as the Booker Prize is now. (Thanks to the AP and to the Guardian UK for some of this information.) In any case, back to Julian Barnes: I congratulate him on his well deserved (if this new book is anything like his earlier books) win.

"Blueprints for Building Better Girls," by Elissa Schappell

What brave, sad, confused, confusing, risk-taking, drug-taking, drinking, anorexic, tough, confidence-lacking, sister-supporting, self-destructive, surprising, vulnerable, and ultimately good girls are portrayed in Elissa Schappell's "Blueprints for Building Better Girls" (Simon & Schuster, 2011)! Like the author's earlier book, "Use Me," which I reviewed here on 10/4/11, this is a novel but really a collection of interlocking short stories. There are many different girl characters, along with some grown women characters, and some are the same characters portrayed at different times in their lives. At times one has to struggle, and turn back the pages, to remember the characters from earlier stories and how they are connected. But this is not a drawback. The portraits are deeply etched, sharp, poignant, and heartbreaking. In a fictional way they reflect much of what we know, see, read, and witness about teenaged and older girls/women today, in this confusing time when girls and women are told they can do anything, but then find that all choices are fraught, and most decisions come with conditions and codas and unforeseen consequences. I imagine this description makes the book sound depressing, and in a sense it is, but it is also gripping, real, sharply and precisely written, and sometimes very funny. Schappell has a gift for capturing the quirky, the different, and yet the very recognizable.

Let's Not Forget Alice Childress

The 10/10/11 issue of The New Yorker includes a review article, "Black and Blue," that reminds us about the African-American playwright and novelist Alice Childress. Her plays include "Florence" (1949), "Wedding Band" (1966), and "Wine in the Wilderness" (1969). The occasion for this New Yorker article is the current Washington, D.C. revival of Childress' 1955 play, "Trouble in Mind," about black actors who are trapped playing limited stereotypical roles such as the "mammy" role. As the author of this article, Hilton Als, states, "Anyone who has spent time around black performers knows that little has changed, except that now they're less likely to play maids than misunderstood prostitutes or thugs." Yet the main character in "Trouble," Wiletta, wants to be an actress, keeps going, and never backs down despite all the obstacles she encounters. Childress herself started as an actress, and in 1925 was nominated for a Tony for Best Supporting Actress. But "she found little dramatic material that represented the lives of black women she knew, so she began writing it herself" (Als). Some readers may also remember Childress' successful 1973 young-adult novel, "A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich," which is set in Harlem and is "a merciless yet compassionate examination of how the world has failed a thirteen-year-old heroin addict named Benjie" (Als). This strong woman, this gifted writer, Alice Childress, who died in 1994, should not be forgotten. Let's hope that the current revival of "Trouble in Mind," along with this Hilton Als article, will help to keep her memory and reputation alive.

The Top 100 Feminist Nonfiction Books

The Ms. Magazine blog has just published a list of the top 100 feminist nonfiction books, in order, as determined by a poll of readers. What a wonderful, varied, rich list it is, drawing on books mostly written over the past 50 years or so. Reading the titles and seeing the covers of the books brings back so many memories to a seasoned (mature? child of the 60s and 70s?) feminist such as I am. I have read so many of these books over the many years, and have read reviews of and commentaries on others as well. The author with the most books on the list is bell hooks, with seven books. Some of the other authors included, and I list them here in no particular order, are Virginia Woolf, Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Faludi, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, Kate Millett, Gloria Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, Betty Friedan, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Angela Y. Davis, Adrienne Rich, Katha Pollitt, Shulamith Firestone, Susan Brownmiller, Merlin Stone, Carol Gilligan, The Guerilla Girls, Lillian Faderman, Eve Ensler, Gerda Lerner, Merlin Stone, and Judith Butler. But do check out the Ms. list for yourself at the following web address:

http://www.msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/10/10/ms-readers-100-best-non-fiction-books-of-all-time-the-top-10-and-the-complete-list/

"Girls in White Dresses," by Jennifer Close

“Girls in White Dresses” (Knopf, 2011), by first time novelist Jennifer Close, has many of the earmarks of a common genre: the “girlfriends” book. The novel follows a group of women friends from college days about ten years into their futures, as they move to their own apartments, get jobs, have serious or stalled careers, meet appropriate and inappropriate men, have various romances, and survive breakups; some of them get married and have children and some of them think they will never meet the right man. Throughout, they get their greatest support from each other. Although this situation is not original at all, in fiction or in life, Close gives us a smart, funny, touching but not sentimental look at these young women’s lives. Mary, Isabella, Lauren and their friends went to colleges such as Boston College, and they now mostly live in New York. They all go to a lot of wedding showers and weddings, which soon become a dreaded chore. The women are funny and snarky about these, and about men and relationships, yet they do their duty by their friends and follow the conventions of showers -- dressing up, taking the train to wherever the event is, buying and wrapping gifts, oohing and ahing at the gifts, writing down who gave what, playing silly games, eating little sandwiches and sipping mimosas -- and of weddings, even if they are rolling their eyes when no one else is looking. The author is very good at the telling details about these women’s lives, and she shows how the friends sustain and entertain each other; this strikes me as quite authentic. Some of the minor characters are perhaps too much “types” rather than realistic, but the main characters are well depicted, and although at times they can be annoying to each other and to the reader, we can’t help feeling affectionate toward them and cheering them on. The stories are told in chapters that could stand alone, but all fit together. Some fit together less than others, feeling a little shoehorned into the narrative, but overall the structure works, and this novel is enjoyable to read.

Thank You, Kate Chopin, for your Courage

The textbook/reader I am using this semester, and have often used before, contains two stories by Kate Chopin. As I was teaching the stories this semester, I was reminded once again of what a wonderful, brave, groundbreaking, and inspiring writer Chopin (1850-1904) was. She published two novels and about 100 short stories, mostly about women’s lives. Her 1899 novel, “The Awakening,” portrayed (very discreetly) a woman’s sexuality, and was widely condemned as “morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable” (katechopin.org). We forget how hard it was to speak out honestly about women's lives, and how devastatingly negative the response could be. The reception of this novel was a real blow to Chopin, and she almost stopped writing. After she died, her work was largely forgotten for some years, but was gradually rediscovered, especially after it received attention from feminist critics in the 1960s and 1970s and onward. Her 1969 biographer, Per Seyersted, stated that Chopin “broke new ground in American literature…She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life" (katechopin.org). One of her most famous stories, “The Story of an Hour,” always provokes lively discussion in my classes. Within three pages, taking place inside a house, and describing the events of just an hour, in its compact way it says everything about the lives of married women in the United States during the late 19th century. It is beautifully written, powerful, and has a surprise ending. It was writers such as Chopin who made a difference in how readers thought about women’s lives, marriage, sexuality, and need for independence; I applaud and thank her for her insight, strength, and courage.

"This Beautiful Life," by Helen Schulman

Helen Schulman’s “This Beautiful Life” (Harper, 2011) is a novel about family, a longstanding theme in novels, but in this case one with a very contemporary twist: It illustrates the unpredictability and the power of the Internet, the power to change people’s lives. Jake, the 15-year-old son of Richard and Liz Bergamot, is a nice young man who gets caught up with a privileged, partying private school crowd in New York City. A younger girl, Daisy, who wants Jake’s attention, sends him a sexually explicit video of herself, which in his shock and confusion, he forwards to a friend. Of course that friend forwards it on as well, and within hours, the video has gone viral and been seen by millions all over the world. The consequences for Jake – suspension from school, shame, and a blot on his future – and for the whole family – lawyers, shame, defensiveness, anger on their son’s behalf, fear, the father’s job and reputation impacted, and more – shake the foundations of the Bergamots’ marriage and of the lives of the family, including that of little Coco, Jake’s much younger sister. As many of the adults in this story reflect, Daisy’s and then Jake’s adolescent missteps could not have occurred in the same way, and are multiplied to a whole different level and quality, than they would have been before the current ubiquity of the Internet; it is frightening to see how one young person’s decision (to make and send the video) and another’s (to forward it) can change all their lives instantaneously and forever. Although there are some clichéd presentations of New York and of its most privileged young people, the main characters in this novel are well drawn and believable. This is truly a cautionary tale for the 21st century, one that will send a chill through parents who read it.

Mona Simpson and Steve Jobs: Brilliant Siblings

I find it fascinating that the well-known novelist Mona Simpson (whose most recent novel, “My Hollywood,” I wrote about here on 1/10/11), is the biological sister of the late Steve Jobs. Their unmarried parents -- graduate student Joanne Schieble (later Simpson) and fellow graduate student and Syrian immigrant Abdulfattah “John” Jandali -- were not married at the time Jobs was born, and he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. A short time later, Schieble and Jandali married, and Simpson was born to them. The marriage didn’t last, and some of Simpson’s fiction deals with her search for and feelings about her “lost father.” Jobs and Simpson did not meet until they were young adults (Jobs was 27) and they became quite close. Simpson’s first novel, “Anywhere but Here,” is dedicated to her mother and to “my brother Steve,” and some say her novel “A Regular Guy” is partially based on Jobs’ life and career. Jobs refused to meet his biological father, who was first a professor of politics and is now an executive of a casino in Reno. I have read conflicting reports about whether Simpson has ever been in touch with him. What impresses me is that two such brilliant people, each in her or his own field, who grew up separately and didn’t know each other until adulthood, were siblings.

And the Nobel Prize for Literature Goes To...

I always get a little excited in the days before the Nobel Prize for Literature is announced. I am not quite sure what I wish for each year: that one of my favorite authors will win? that a woman author will win? that I will learn about a new author? (I definitely do wish that more women had won the prize over the years.) Every year when the news comes, there is a range of reactions among journalists, critics, and readers, from "Finally! Hurray!" to "Oh no, not him!" to "Who???" I, like many readers, often have not heard of, or have only barely heard of, some of the winners. In a way, this is good, as it stretches my knowledge. But it is also humbling; as much as I read, there are so many great authors around the world that I still don't know. This year's winner, Tomas Transtromer, is a Swedish poet I have heard of but have never read. Because there have been so many European winners, and because the prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize committee is a bit sensitive about having chosen a Swede. But there seems to be a general agreement that the prize is well deserved, and that at 80 years old, Transtromer's turn had come. His poetry is described as accessible and international. According to The New York Times, John Freeman, editor of Granta, said that Transtromer "is to Sweden what Robert Frost was to America." Much of his work has been translated into English by his friend and fellow poet, Robert Bly; his work has also been edited and translated by American poet Robert Hass. I think it is time to find and read some of Transtromer's poetry.

"Infinite City" at the University of San Francisco

“Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas,” by Rebecca Solnit, was chosen by my university to be the book that this year’s incoming freshmen all read and then discussed upon arrival on campus. This book, which I wrote about here on 3/18/11, was the subject of a wonderful campus event I attended yesterday, where Solnit herself, along with contributor and University of San Francisco Professor Aaron Shurin, spoke about the book and its implications. In addition, Solnit and her colleagues had created a brand new map, in the style of the maps in the book, of the USF campus and its surroundings. We who attended were each given a large, beautifully colored and produced copy of this map; I will display mine in my office. It notes the various cultural sites, both past and present, in the area. (USF is located in the geographical center of the city, near Golden Gate Park, and at the crossroads of several neighborhoods: the Haight, the Western Addition, the Richmond, and Presidio Heights.) For one example of historical/cultural sites, our university is located where there were many cemeteries, but many years ago the city banned cemeteries within city limits and moved all the graves out of the city; these cemeteries are marked on the map. Such nearby cultural sites as the Grateful Dead house, the house where Janis Joplin lived, and the house where Patty Hearst was held hostage are all marked. There is a list of all the African American churches in the area, with their long traditions, especially in the nearby Western Addition neighborhood. Solnit gave a mesmerizing talk about the importance of maps, and about how almost anything can be expressed through maps. She spoke of how we all are a collection of maps, in that we carry in our heads maps of all the places we have been. She pointed out that maps we use online or on smart phones are so partial, so drained of meaning except for the strictly functional, and said that one of her goals was to “make paper maps sexy and desirable.” She told us that after living 30 years in the Haight area near USF, she has recently moved to the Potrero area, and feels she is discovering a whole new aspect of San Francisco (“infinite San Francisco"). She reminded the audience that maps can be beautiful and surprising, and can capture the past and the present. She urged us to add our own stories to her maps and our own maps. Professor Aaron Shurin then gave a beautiful, poetic talk (he is a well published and well regarded poet) about the experience of writing his contribution to “Infinite City.” This event was a thought-provoking one, combining cartography, culture, literature, history, the environment, and more. I was happy to see many freshman students in the audience, and I hope and believe that they were inspired by these thoughtful, beautifully crafted talks as well as by the maps and the book itself.

"Use Me," by Elissa Schappell

It's all about the fathers in Elissa Schappell's book, "Use Me" (William Morrow, 2000). The two main characters are two teenaged (at the beginning of the book) girls, but almost all their actions and decisions seem to be in reaction to their fathers. Evie is in rebellion against her father, who she thinks is dorky and fake, but when she gets older and he gets ill, her whole world is threatened. Mary Beth is a sophisticated young lady who lives in Manhattan and seems to have few limits on her behavior; for example, she has several slightly kinky affairs with older men. Her father left the family and she rarely sees him, acts as if she doesn't really care, but often thinks about him and yearns for his love and approval. Although this is a novel, the two girls' stories are told in different chapters, each chapter almost a mini-story of its own. It seems that Evie gets more space in the book, and is more clearly drawn; the reader suspects that Evie is the author's alter ego. Mary Beth's life and character are a bit more mysterious throughout the book. The two girls' stories converge when they become college roommates and best friends. They stay in touch as they get older, meet their mates, and live their lives. Their fathers continue to be huge influences on their lives, in their presence as well as in their absence, and especially during Evie's father's illness. Their relationships with their fathers are so fraught that they even influence Evie's and Mary Beth's relationship with each other. I don't want to say more for fear of giving away plot points. I will say that these two young women are bright, daring, transgressive, sometimes unafraid of anything and other times vulnerable and dependent; mainly they are just as confused as we all are when faced with the complications of "real life." The novel is fresh, immediate, a bit edgy, but mostly acutely observant of and understanding of the lives of young women.

The Thrill of Monsters in Children's Books

In a fortuitous confluence of events, I recently saw an art exhibit about illustrations of “monsters” in children’s books, and then read a New York Times Book Review about the great subversive children’s book authors Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, and Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss). The art exhibit, titled “Monsters in the Bookshelf” is at the Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco, where I teach. A few days ago, I attended a talk about the show in the gallery, by the director of the gallery, Tom Lucas, SJ. As he pointed out some of the highlights of the exhibit, he told the audience about some of the great illustrators of children’s books, whose works include a wide variety of monsters, something that children both get deliciously scared of and at the same time relate to. Some parents and teachers fear that children will have trouble handling monsters in literature, but other experts on children, most notably the late Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, felt that scary literature helps children cope with frightening aspects of their real lives. In any case, the illustrations in this exhibit are vivid, fanciful, diverse, intriguing, entertaining, and beautifully executed. The New York Times Book Review essay (9/18/11) points out that the purpose of children’s literature for a long time was “to model good behavior…to edify and encourage young readers to be what parents wanted them to be…Children’s literature was not supposed to shine a light on the way children actually were, or delight in the slovenly, self-interested and disobedient side of their natures.” Seuss, Sendak and Silverstein “ignored these rules. They brought a shock of subversion to the genre -- defying the notion that children’s books shouldn’t be scary, silly or sophisticated.” And – surprise! -- children loved, and love, their books! Books such as Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are,” Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat,” and Silverstein’s collection of verse for children, “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” became and continue to be huge bestsellers, and after initial resistance by many teachers, librarians, and parents, are now on any list of children’s classics that you can find. I remember reading all of these to my daughter. So hurray for the “real” and the slightly transgressive in children’s literature, and hurray for authors and editors (such as Silverstein’s and Sendak’s longtime editor, Ursula Nordstrom of Harper & Row) whose imaginations produced and facilitated such delightfully, thrillingly scary books.

More from the Current Issue of Vanity Fair

The current (October 2011) issue of Vanity Fair is a treasury of information and good writing about authors and books. In addition to the article on Hemingway’s long-lost letters that I wrote about yesterday, the issue contains three other fascinating articles of literary interest:
1. One article tells the story of how Chad Harbach’s current bestselling and critically well-received baseball novel, “The Art of Fielding,” was written and published. The article describes the long, slow evolution of the book, and in the process illuminates many aspects of today’s struggling publishing industry.
2. A brief article focuses on Joan Didion’s new book (due next month), “Blue Nights,” about the tragic death of her daughter, and about her memories of her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, at a much too young age. This death came almost immediately after the death of Didion’s husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne; Didion described that sudden death, and the year after it, in her bestselling 2005 book, “The Year of Magical Thinking.” That book was a heartrending portrayal of loss and pain, and of the ways that humans cope with great grief. I am an admirer of Didion’s writing, and although this new book is sure to be painful to read, I will definitely read it.
3. Finally, the magazine offers us a short excerpt from Cambridge University Press’ upcoming second volume of Samuel Beckett’s letters. The excerpt here is from a 1954 letter in which Beckett remembers his relationship with James Joyce. He speaks highly of that great writer, saying that although in some ways they were very different, Joyce “showed me the greatest kindness and generosity,” and “gave me…an insight into what the words ‘to be an artist’ mean.” Beckett concludes, “I think of him with unqualified admiration, affection, and gratitude.” I love reading about the relationships among writers, and this portrait of such a relatioship was inspiring and touching.

The Discovery of Long-Lost Hemingway Letters

For a variety of reasons (re-reading “The Sun Also Rises,” reading “The Paris Wife,” seeing the film "Midnight in Paris,” etc.) I have written several times this year about Hemingway. The current (October 2011) issue of Vanity Fair includes a fascinating article about the finding of a treasure trove of long-hidden letters and documents in Hemingway’s house in Cuba, the Finca. The documents are finally -- after much detective work and diplomacy -- being released, and are being digitized by the John F. Kennedy Library; some of them are now being published, and more will be published in the future. The letters published in Vanity Fair are to Hemingway’s parents, his wives, his friends, and Ezra Pound. Some are very down to earth and even naïve, the letters of a young man. They include worries about his work, about finances, and about love. There are charming glimpses of his life with his wife Hadley and of his friends in Paris. One, for example, describes Gertrude Stein as “very large and nice…and very keen about my poetry.” These letters are a real “find”; it is not often that a cache of documents by and about a major writer is found, rescued, and published. Kudos to all involved in making this happen.

It's Banned Books Week!

This week (Sept. 24-Oct. 1, 2011) is Banned Books Week, an annual event “celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment,” and stressing “the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them” (American Library Association/ALA website). The ALA and others use this week to remind people of how many books are “challenged” every year by people who are trying to rid classrooms, school libraries, public libraries, and even college libraries of the books in question. The challenges are based on the books’ being, according to the challengers, too sexually explicit, or containing offensive language, or addressing homosexuality, or not being family-friendly, or expressing religious viewpoints the challengers (often parents) do not like. We need to thank the brave teachers and librarians who stand up against these types of attempted, and sometimes successful, censorship. These teachers and librarians sometimes risk their own jobs, reputations, and peace of mind. Just a few of the books that have been challenged in the past ten years, according to the ALA website, are the following:
-I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
-Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
-Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
-The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
-Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
-To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
-Beloved, by Toni Morrison
-Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling
-Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
-Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
-The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

The Power of Books: "Tolstoy and the Purple Chair," by Nina Sankovitch

Among the many things books can do is to heal their readers. Nina Sankovitch’s book, “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading” (Harper, 2011) tells of the author’s decision to try to heal her pain and grief over her sister Anne-Marie’s death by reading a book a day for a year. (Note the echo of Joan Didion's book title, "The Year of Magical Thinking," about her own grief when her husband died suddenly.) Books had always been important to the author, her sister, and her family, and so this decision made sense to her and to those who knew her. I imagine it would not make sense to everyone, but it does to me. This book describes the author’s relationship with her sister, the time she spent with her sister during her last months and days, and the sustenance she received from reading. Although I understand the motivation, and share the belief Sankovitch has in the power of books, reading a book a day is a challenge. I read an average of two books a week myself, and although I read quickly, this is a substantial commitment of time, especially for one who works full time, so it is hard for me to imagine being able to read a book a day. A former practicing attorney, Sankovitch did not work outside the home during the time period covered by the book, but did -- along with her husband -- take care of a family of four boys. Her family seems to have been remarkably supportive and accommodating of her "year of books." The important point here is that the author’s prescription for herself actually worked. She learned, she thought, she was reminded of memories, she was stimulated, she was entertained, she was awed, she was encouraged, she was comforted and supported by, and yes, healed by, the books. Of course she did not “get over” her sadness, but she felt connected to her sister and to the wider world through times and places near and far, and felt the universality of human experiences: birth, love, family, work, nature, the arts, war, illness, and death, among others. Although the book is only competently written, I loved it because of its obvious passion and because of the author’s absolute belief in the power of books. As I read, I marked many pages, and found many quotations that resonated with me. I offer just a small sampling below.
1. “Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.” (Thomas A Kempis)
2. “Words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.” (Cyril Connolly)
3. “The lives in the books are breathing life into me, new life. And helping me learn how to keep her [the author’s sister] alive. In me.” (Sankovitch)
4. The last sentences in this book: “My hiatus is over, my soul and my body are healed, but I will never leave the purple chair [where she often read] for long. So many books waiting to be read, so much happiness to be found, so much wonder to be revealed.” (Sankovitch)

NOTE: On another topic: this is my 500th post on this blog! It is a great pleasure for me to share my thoughts and feelings on books and on reading-related experiences in this way. Thank you, Mary, for suggesting I start this blog, and thank you to the readers of the blog.

The Little Library That Could

I have written more than once here in praise of various types of libraries -- public, school, university, lending, mobile, etc. -- but it can never be said too often how important libraries are for communities, for children, for an educated public, to perpetuate knowledge and stimulate thinking, for enrichment, for enjoyment, and more. A story in today’s Parade magazine (9/25/11) struck a nerve, not only because I love and visit libraries often, but also because it reminded me of how important libraries are to equity and democracy as well. The middle class and well-off can always buy books, and have their own computers and other sources of knowledge and entertainment, but the less well-off are particularly dependent on libraries. The Parade story, titled “The Little Library That Could,” describes a library in the very small town of Parker, Arizona that is “struggling to stay alive” because of budget cuts. Already hours have been cut and staff laid off. In this area where “more than 25 percent of the people live below the poverty line,” residents depend on the library’s books, computers, reading groups, story times, lectures, movies, and free health screenings. “The library binds our town together,” says one resident, who adds that “It opens up a whole new world” for the town’s kids. It is also a place for teens to go after school. Local people have stepped up to the best of their ability, donating, fundraising, and even cleaning the library themselves. It is an uphill fight to preserve and maintain such small town libraries; I wish this library -- and every other public library, especially those that serve economically deprived areas -- success in keeping this essential institution alive. (I made a small donation to the Friends of the Parker Library; if you are interested in doing so as well, go to Parade.com/library.)

"Women Artists in Interwar France," by Paula J. Birnbaum

My University of San Francisco colleague Paula J. Birnbaum, of the Art Department, has just published a wonderful book on women artists, titled "Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities" (Ashgate, 2011). Birnbaum became curious about the women artists who belonged to a group called Societe des Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM), and wondered why so few of them are known today. During the course of her research, she met some of the descendants of these women artists, found archives and artworks that had long been out of sight, and did a great amount of detective work in order to bring the artists' work back to light through her book. The stories of these women artists are fascinating, sad, and inspiring, and Birnbaum tells the stories well, in the context of art history as well as the context of gender studies. The book contains 58 gorgeous color plates of paintings, as well as a generous number of black and white photos of art works and of artists. Artists whose work Birnbaum focuses on include Suzanne Valadon, Maria Blanchard, Alice Halicka, and Marie Laurencin. Birnbaum writes about why these artists often chose subjects such as maternity; what their relationships were with their husbands, lovers, art dealers, and others; and how being part of FAM influenced them, among many topics. She truly celebrates these women artists, mourns their "near-total erasure," and reminds us of "the need for feminist art historians to continue our scholarly research and our work to ensure women their proper place in art publications, acquisitions, collections, and exhibitions." I was fortunate to watch some of the evolution of this book, as Paula and I were often at the same writing retreats and sessions over the past few years, and then just this week I was able to hear her speak about her book at our college Writing Salon. Paula is obviously passionate about her topic, and she has done a great thing by bringing the work of these interwar women artists to our attention in this informative, thoughtful, and beautiful book.

Ambrose Bierce: Brilliant Cynic

An article in the October 2011 issue of the Atlantic notes that the Library of America is finally issuing a collection of Ambrose Bierce's best-known writings. Unfortunately, this brilliant 19th-century writer and thinker is not much remembered nowadays. The author of the Atlantic article, Benjamin Schwarz, speculates that this is because "although Bierce wrote exemplary American prose, his unrelieved pessimism rubs deeply against the American grain." Bierce was part of an abolitionist family, fought bravely in the Civil War, was nearly killed, and emerged from the war believing that war was "nothing more than a meaningless and murderous slaughter" (Schwarz). But (Schwarz again) "his ordeal gave birth to a lonely, stoic, and bitter rectitude, a sensibility that was the impetus of his career as a writer and of his compressed, astringent prose style." Bierce is best known for his "Devil's Dictionary," which Schwarz labels "a Swiftian tour de force" and "among the most eccentric books in American literature." His work is so fierce, so smart, and so uncompromising that it both makes one laugh (he is very cutting and very funny, although in a bitter way) and makes one feel that the state of America and the world is intolerable. Still, I think we need writers like Bierce, and wish we had a Bierce alive now to comment on what is going on in the United States and the world today.

Memorable Sports Novels

I am not a big sports fan, but I can understand the pleasures of getting involved with sports, whether playing them or watching and following them. When I was in high school (I went to two), I enthusiastically cheered my schools’ teams, and whether they won or not seemed life-or-death important. When I was in my mid-to-late teens living in Michigan, my family followed the Detroit Tigers baseball team avidly, attending games, watching games on TV, and listening to games on the radio when we were traveling. I even remember when I pulled back from that enthusiastic support for the team, because it was too devastating when they lost. It is hard for me now to remember such strong feelings about sports! I do, in a general sort of way, support our local (San Francisco) teams: the 49ers and the Giants in particular. My husband is a big sports fan; he plays tennis himself, and watches tennis, baseball, football, basketball, soccer, and occasionally other sports as well, occasionally live but mostly on TV. I sometimes sit down for a few minutes to watch too. But I prefer -- big surprise! -- to read fiction about sports, when it is well written and about something larger than the sports themselves. Below is a list of some of the best sports novels, many by some of our best American writers. I can’t claim to have read them all, but I know at least a bit about each of them, and they are all highly regarded critically. Note that the most predominant sport represented is baseball, which apparently truly is “the great American pastime.”

Bang the Drum Slowly, by Mark Harris (baseball)
The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth (baseball)
The Harder They Fall, by Budd Schulberg (boxing)
The Legend of Bagger Vance, by Steven Pressfield (golf)
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud (baseball)
North Dallas Forty, by Peter Gent (football)
A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean (fishing)
Shoeless Joe, by W. P. Kinsella (baseball)
The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford
The Sweetheart Season, by Karen Ann Fowler (women’s baseball)
You Know Me Al, by Ring Lardner (baseball)

"State of Wonder," by Ann Patchett

I just finished listening on CD as the actress Hope Davis read “State of Wonder” (Harper, 2011; HarperAudio, 2011), the new novel by Ann Patchett, the author of the wonderful earlier novel “Bel Canto.” This book is eventful, suspenseful, psychologically fascinating, and sometimes painful. Dr. Marina Singh, who works for a big pharmaceutical company, is sent from Minnesota to the Amazon to find out what happened to her colleague Anders Eckman. He, in turn, had been sent there earlier to find out what was happening with the top-secret research Dr. Annick Swenson was doing there on behalf of the company. To complicate matters, Dr. Swenson had been Marina’s professor in medical school many years before, and was witness to a traumatic episode during Marina’s residency that made Marina change careers from medicine to pharmaceutical research. In any case, the trip to the research site is filled with obstacles, and once she reaches it, she learns amazing facts, endures difficulties, yet finds a certain satisfaction in her time there. As in her past, she has mixed feelings about Dr. Swenson, yet she gains a new relationship with her. She gets to know the Lakashi people among whom Dr. Swenson and a small, secretive group of scientists are doing the research. She becomes attached to a deaf child, Easter (what a symbolic name!), who is an integral part of the story, including in the climactic surprise ending. There are important ethical questions to be wrestled with, about the drugs Dr. Swenson has discovered, about whose life is worth how much, and about what tradeoffs may need to be made. The descriptions of the Amazon and the jungle are vivid, and somehow both oppressive and liberating. Both Marina and Dr. Swenson are well-drawn, compelling and complicated characters, and Marina’s journey toward Dr. Swenson creates “Heart of Darkness”-like reverberations. Although this is not the type of novel I am normally drawn to (with its overwhelming and dangerous jungle setting), I am glad I read (listened to) it. It is perhaps not quite as magically entrancing as “Bel Canto” was, but it comes close.