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.

Two Memoirs of "Missionary Kids" in India

I recently read two memoirs by authors who had been the children of missionaries in India, as I was: “Ramblings with Ruth” (Quiet Waters, 2004), by Sam Schmitthenner, and “Sepia Prints” (Kindred, 1990), by Viola Bergthold Wiebe.” These memoirists' childhoods in India were both much earlier than mine; Schmitthenner’s children were contemporaries of mine at school, and Wiebe’s son became principal there some time after I left. But they write of the same areas in South India that my family lived and went to school, and they write of many similar experiences; thus their books are very evocative for me, as I am sure they are for others who share these experiences. In particular, the parts of both books about Kodaikanal School (“Kodai” for short), the boarding school where my brothers and I went, evoked much nostalgia in me. Although that time in my life was decades ago, it is still -- for me, as for most Kodai alumni -- a critically important part in our lives, and one we will never forget. One of the joys of modern technology is that Facebook and Kodai listservs have brought many of us back in touch. I know that many people feel nostalgic for their school years and experiences, but in our case, there were two extra elements intensifying those school experiences: first, that of living in boarding school, making school an even more all-encompassing experience than in day schools; and second, that of being members of mostly American background living in a (to us) foreign country, being both “of” and “not of” the country where our school was located. This was the beloved country of our childhoods, yet it was not our own country, and almost all of us returned to the United States or Canada. Nowadays Kodai is an international school, the majority of students are Indian, and students come there from around the world as well; despite these changes (and they are good ones), the spirit of the school and its experiences for its students appear to continue in many ways the traditions we remember. A recent reconnection with Kodai, for me, is that one of my nieces studied there about nine years ago, and another is studying there right now for her junior year of high school. What an experience this is for her! And for my brothers and me, it is so interesting to read about and see pictures of her experience there, bringing back many memories for us. I have also reconnected to that time through my research and writing on “missionary kids” and “Third Culture Kids.”

Highlights of the Current New Yorker

The current (9/19/11) issue of The New Yorker includes several fascinating stories. First is a compelling childhood memoir, “Dear Life,” by one of my very favorite writers, Alice Munro. Munro grew up in a fairly rural area, and her stories are a mixture of happy memories despite family troubles, and little hints of the madness and pain that can be found in rural Canada as well as anywhere else. Her memoirs sound so much like her wonderful stories: detailed, intimate, yet always with a little bit of the cool remove that accompanies her astute observations. Also in this issue is an Ann Beattie short story, “Starlight,” about Pat Nixon; Beattie’s new book, “Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life,” will be published this November. Beattie captures how very odd and difficult the Nixons’ last day in the White House, and then the years in California, must have been; she also captures President Nixon’s odd, stiff demeanor and conversation. The third article of particular interest to me is one on T. S. Eliot, written by the critic Louis Menand, and titled “Practical Cat.” Of course, like every English major, I read and admired Eliot’s poetry in college and grad school, especially “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste Land,” but I must admit I haven’t read it much if at all since those days. The article here is in response to the recent publication of a two-volume collection of almost two thousand pages of Eliot’s correspondence. Apparently these letters shed new light on the period of 1898 to 1925, and most particularly on the brief years when he produced most of his work in London, 1917 to 1925. It seems that no one knew Eliot very well, as he was a bit of a chameleon, making connections and friendships with members various factions in literary life in England at the time, yet keeping himself a bit apart; throughout, he subtly let it be known that he had a “cool and disinterested contempt” (Menand’s words) for all the English writers. He did admire Joyce, but that seems to be about it. The article also discusses Eliot's very unhappy first marriage, his increasingly conservative, right wing views, and his enormous literary influence. In sum, says Menand, “He made a revolution. He changed the way poetry in English is written....He is the most important figure in twentieth-century English-language literary culture.” I don’t think I agree with this last sentence. What about Joyce? What about Woolf? But Menand makes a good case for his claims. I ended the article not liking Eliot much, but with a renewed appreciation for the magnitude of his achievements in his poetry and literary criticism. Maybe I will go back to re-read his poetry. Thank you, The New Yorker, for these three stimulating and informative pieces!

Readers are Happier

“People who read often are happier than those who watch more TV, according to researchers at the University of Maryland – even if the plot of their paperback is depressing.” (Parade Magazine, 7/31/11). You won't be surprised to hear that I completely agree with this research finding! A reader, a citizen of the wide world of books, has so much to explore, to learn, to laugh at, to empathize with, to be challenged by, to be comforted by, to be stretched by, to be provoked by, and to think about. Television, while it has its place and its enjoyments (and I, like most of us, do enjoy it sometimes), can never compete with the breadth and depth of the world of books.

Memorable American Pioneer Novels

Novels about American pioneers may not be high on my list to look for and read, but I have read and and been fascinated by a few such stories over the years. One that particularly gripped me and stays in my mind still, although I read it well over 30 years ago, is "Giants in the Earth," by Rolvaag. What I most remember is how vividly it portrayed the bleakness and extreme flatness of the prairies, and how one of the main characters, a woman, became extremely depressed by that bleakness. As I remember the story, she ended by hiding in a trunk that had carried her treasures from back East. For some reason, I can still see that striking image: the flat, flat prairie land and the despairing woman taking refuge in the trunk that was a reminder of home. I was also particularly impressed by Willa Cather's pioneer novels; as I have written here before, I admire Cather's work very much. I list these and other memorable pioneer novels below:

Cimarron, by Edna Ferber
Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather
Giants in the Earth, by Ole Edwart Rolvaag
The Leatherstocking Tales (series), by James Fennimore Cooper
Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger
Little House on the Prairie (series), by Laura Ingalls Wilder
My Antonia, by Willa Cather
O Pioneers, by Willa Cather
The Tie That Binds, by Kent Haruf
The Virginian, by Owen Wister

"Birds of Paradise," by Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber’s new novel, “Birds of Paradise” (W. W. Norton, 2011), shares with her other novels the starring role of food, especially baked goods, in her characters’ lives. One of the main characters in this novel is the baker of delicate, intricate, artistic pastries that taste ethereal as well as delicious; another runs a grocery store specializing in local, seasonal, organic food. But the main theme of the novel is the mysterious estrangement between parents Avis and Brian, on the one hand, and their daughter Felice, on the other hand. Felice had been close to her parents and to her brother Stanley until about age 13, when she started periodically and then finally disappearing from her home. As the novel begins, Avis doesn’t know where her daughter lives, and only sees her every few months when Felice calls and arranges to meet in a café, where she sometimes is very late and sometimes doesn’t show up after all. There are alternating chapters from the points of view of the four family members. In Felice’s chapters, we are soon given hints that something bad happened at school or with a school friend, something that Felice cannot forget or forgive herself for, and this is connected with her leaving home. This story reminds me a bit of several novels with runaway daughters, including the wonderful late Carol Shields’ moving last book, “Unless.” There is the same sense of bafflement and grief felt by the parents, the wondering what they did wrong, what they could have done differently, and the aching pain of missing and worrying about their estranged daughters. I have to mention too that this novel is set in Miami, and to a greater degree than with most novels, the city is almost a character in the novel. We watch the four main characters and a few others move through the city; the city and its neighborhoods come alive in Abu-Jaber’s descriptions. We see the physical beauty of the beaches, water, and vegetation; we see the glamor and glitz of the city, along with the tawdriness and greed. We see the mixture of people from many backgrounds, and the large amounts of money being spent everywhere, especially on real estate, in this just-before-the-bubble-burst era. I happen to have visited Miami for the first time this past June, so I was particularly interested in the vivid descriptions of the city. Hurricane Katrina is also a character in the novel, and its aftermath plays an important part in the resolution of the story.

Memorable Novels about Americans in Europe

Americans have long gone to Europe to experience older cultures than their own, to see the sights, and to feel sophisticated. Writers have always been among the most vulnerable to the call of Europe, and often their writing reflects this fascination. Below are some of the more memorable novels by American writers about Americans in Europe.

The Ambassador, by Henry James
The American, by Henry James
The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton
Daisy Miller, by Henry James
Dodsworth, by Sinclair Lewis
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
French Lessons, by Ellen Sussman
Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin
The Golden Bowl, by Henry James
The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
Le Divorce, by Diane Johnson
The Marble Faun, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Le Mariage, by Diane Johnson
Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes
The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain
Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
Prague, by Arthur Phillips
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Remembering September 11, 2001

On this September day, exactly ten years after the attacks on New York and Washington, and after the deaths of so many that day and afterward there, in Pennsylvania, and later in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, I, like you, remember and grieve. I was just now listening to a video of John Lennon singing "Imagine," and I mourn that his vision of a peaceful world seems farther away than ever. But watching the memorial coverage on television, I am reminded that most people are still basically good. I am reminded too that music and art and literature are expressions of our individual and shared human experiences and connections, expressions that can be cathartic, comforting, and transcendent. The arts remind us of our higher selves, and they give us courage to go on, and to keep trying, despite all odds, to make the world a better place.

Memorable Muckraking Books

The term “muckraker,” originally a negative one, in the early twentieth century came to mean writing to expose scandals and problems that hurt the public, and advocating reform. Muckraking writers often had to be courageous, risking a lot to uncover dangerous truths and publish them. Many of their books made a difference, sometimes leading to new protective laws addressing the issues raised by the muckrakers. The term is used less frequently these days, but fortunately there are still writers in the muckraking tradition. Below are just a few of the most memorable examples of “muckraking” books published over the past century or so; in each case the book shed light on an issue in which there was misuse of power, generally for the profit of the few. Most of the books listed are nonfiction; a few are novels. These and other such books illustrate the power of the written word. We should all be grateful to the brave and intrepid writers who have made the world a bit better through their work.

All the President’s Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser
The History of the Standard Oil Company, by Ida Tarbell
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, by Stephen Crane
McTeague, by Frank Norris
Nickle and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Octupus, by Frank Norris
The Shame of the Cities, by Lincoln Steffens
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
Ten Days in a Mad-House, by Nelly Bly
Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader

"Poe House Museum May Be Nevermore"

The headline of an 8/10/11 San Francisco Chronicle story, "Poe House Museum May Be Nevermore," saddened me. Apparently Baltimore government officials have stopped funding as a museum the house where the famed resident of Baltimore and writer Edgar Allan Poe lived for several years with his young wife Virginia and other family members. It was there that he wrote his first short stories and had his first literary success, winning $50 in a contest for one of his stories. The Poe House is designated a landmark, so it will not be torn down, but the museum housed there is in danger of closing for lack of funding. I understand that in these bad economic times, there are other priorities for funding, but it is always sad when our connections to the literary past are severed or limited.

What Happened to Novels about Workers?

An E. J. Dionne opinion piece in the 9/5/11 San Francisco Chronicle says, “We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers…and their honest toil.” He goes on to say that workers, and the working class, are now mostly ignored even in literature and the arts. He quotes a 2006 essay by critic William Deresiewicz observing that “we no longer have novelists such as John Steinbeck or John Dos Passos who take the lives of working people seriously.” This comment made me try to think of current authors who write about working life, and I came up with very few. In the past there were Hardy, Dickens, Balzac, Zola, Gaskell, and London, among others; in the more recent past there were Lawrence, Dreiser, Howells, Farrell, Algren, Le Sueur, Richler, Sillitoe and Carver. And nowadays? The list is thinner; those that spring to my mind include Carolyn Chute, Dorothy Allison, Jayne Anne Phillips, Marge Piercy, and Jeannette Winterson. OK, I really didn’t notice until I typed these authors’ names that they were all female. Readers, can you think of authors – male or female – that have recently written more than glancingly or superficially about workers’ lives, particularly working class lives?

"Yesterday's Weather," by Anne Enright

Dublin writer Anne Enright’s 2007 novel, “The Gathering,” is sad but beautifully written; I was not surprised when it was awarded the Mann Booker Prize. I have just read her following book, a collection of short stories titled “Yesterday’s Weather” (Grove Press, 2008); it is a compilation of stories published between 1990 and 2008. Enright has the gift of surprising readers with unique situations and characters, yet providing us with that shock of recognition that connects us somehow to the variations of the human condition displayed by these characters. Almost every story has a twist, not in a gimmicky O. Henry way, but in a way that defies prediction. Enright seems to be speaking of herself and her writing when she has one of her characters (Cathy, in the story “(She Owns) Every Thing”) say, “She loved corners, surprises, changes of light.” Enright gives us eccentric, disaffected, unhappy, resigned, unfaithful characters, along with just a few contented characters. She is an astute observer of human nature, and seems especially interested in characters who are a little different, offbeat in some way, yet she makes us understand these people rather than be put off by them. Her writing is precise, witty, sometimes spare, sometimes generous with details and explanations. There are 31 stories, so it is hard to make generalizations about them, but I can say that most of them are about relationships, especially between spouses and between lovers. There is much about marriage, adultery, and sex. The sex is talked about but not generally described. She also seems to be interested in social class, although without making a point of it; she often portrays people in the middle and lower-middle classes. These stories are both stimulating and thought-provoking, each one with its surprising and satisfying tale unfolding in a very few pages, each one eliciting from the reader a little outtake of breath of surprise yet recognition. It is collections such as this one that have recently made me a renewed reader of, and admirer of, short stories.

Marriage in "Middlemarch"

Yesterday I wrote about how George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” contains all the world in one town, in one novel. Today I write about marriage as portrayed in “Middlemarch.” Eliot shows deep insight into marriage. She herself had a long (about 25 years) marriage-like relationship with George Henry Lewes; they could not marry because he was already married, although separated from his wife. After Lewes' death, Eliot entered a marriage that lasted only a few months before her own death. Whether her knowledge of marriage comes from her own relationships or from her perceptive close observations of those around her, or -- probably -- both, she seems to understand it deeply. There are three main couples in “Middlemarch.” The two main protagonists, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, are each gifted and idealistic and want to use their lives to do something meaningful, something that will make a contribution. Because it was hard in those days (the early 19th century) for even educated women to have careers on their own, she marries an older man, Casaubon, who has been working on a comprehensive philosophical book for many years; she thinks she can make her contribution through helping him with the book. She soon finds that his book is already outdated and will never be finished, and despite her innate goodness and her best efforts, their marriage becomes difficult and fraught with tension and jealousy. Lydgate, a doctor and researcher newly arrived in Middlemarch, has great hopes for his progressive ideas about medicine, and for his making lifesaving scientific discoveries. He allows himself to be drawn into a flirtation with a very pretty young woman, Rosamond, and before he knows it, he appears to be committed to marrying her. (An old, old story, isn't it?) He soon finds that she is both shallow and stubborn, doesn’t understand or care about his work, and will destroy his dreams with her ignorance and too-lavish spending. Worse, he ends by compromising his own ideals in order to pay his debts. In other words, both of these highly intelligent, well-educated, idealistic young people -- Dorothea and Lydgate -- with the best of intentions somehow find themselves in terrible marriages, marriages that thwart their best selves and their dreams. The third couple is even younger: Fred Vincy and Mary Garth. Fred has a good heart but is irresponsible, can’t stick with his education or decide on a career, and gets in debt that he can't repay, to the detriment of those he has borrowed from. Yet he has always loved his childhood playmate, Mary, who is plain looking and has little money but is good, clever, funny, and kind. She is his muse, his guiding light. She loves him too but won’t marry him until -- for his own sake -- he gets his life in order and proves himself worthy. This young couple, the one that seems to have the least chance of success, is actually the real success story of the novel, as Fred (with a little help from friends) finally gets his life in order, and things finally work out for the couple. What is most interesting about all this, to me, is Eliot’s portrayals of the emotional connections and disconnections in marriage, and the ways that couples interact with each other in everyday life. Casaubon’s stiffness and sensitivity about his work, and his jealousy of his dashing young relative Will Ladislaw, weigh Dorothea down and make her feel caught in a sticky web; she can’t find a way for them to be comfortable and happy together. Lydgate too finds that despite his efforts, his marriage seems to be inexorably worsening. Both Dorothea and Lydgate have to choose their words carefully and tiptoe through conversations with their spouses. Both of them find that they are helpless against losing their dreams of making contributions to bettering the world. I don’t mean to imply that Eliot’s portrayals represent all marriages, but that she knows how blind and almost willfully ignorant people can be in choosing their spouses, and she understands how difficult and messy marriage can be, even in ideal circumstances. She knows how easy it is for things to go wrong in marriages, despite good intentions. She does show us several at least reasonably happy marriages, though, including that of Mary Garth’s parents, who are exceptionally kind, good, and reasonable people, and obviously dearly love each other. I remain impressed by Eliot’s skill in writing about this wide variety of marriages, successful and unsuccessful, and about the threads that connect them all, as almost no marriage is all good or all bad.

"Middlemarch" Contains the World

I recently re-read George Eliot’s masterpiece, the 1874 novel “Middlemarch.” I have read it several times over the years; it is for me a great source of wisdom, insight, and pleasure. It holds the whole world in it, as embodied in an English provincial town called Middlemarch. This town contains all the characters you can imagine, all the people you meet in your everyday life. There are the idealists, the realists, the dreamers, the moralists, the hypocrites, the confused, the pragmatic, the yearners, the creators, the disappointed, the disillusioned, the good, the evil, the scared, the complacent, the satisfied, the perpetually unsatisfied, and more. They are at every stage in life: children, young people, students, workers, married, parents, middle-aged, old, dying. In other words, the novel leads us to look deeply into the human condition. Despite my list above, very few of the characters are one-dimensional; Eliot’s characters are richly complex. She sets them into motion, watches them grow and learn or stagnate, find or not find their ways in life, succeed or fail, and interact or avoid interaction with each other. You might say any novel does all this, but I reply that the town, and by extension the world, that Eliot creates is both universal and unique. We ache for the wrenching choices some characters make, and for the sad consequences of some of their choices. We identify with the lovers, and we identify with those who have lost love. We are in suspense about how certain matters will turn out: matters of the heart, matters of business, and matters of the soul. Some have called Eliot’s work dry, but they are so wrong. Yes, the prose is precise and intellectual, and the tone is sometimes philosophical, but the novel represents all the life forces; it is full of passion, love, fear, hatred, grief, and redemption. Every time I read this novel, I learn more from it, and appreciate it in new ways. (I have often said that to read a great novel at different stages of one’s life is to understand it in a new way each time, because we bring our own experiences to each reading.) If I were limited to a small armload of books for the rest of my life, “Middlemarch” would be in that armload.

Rimbaud: Poet and Adolescent Hero

Many writers and aspiring writers, as well as avid readers, have fancied themselves bohemian, avant garde, scornful of convention, and a bit outrageous. One of the most prominent models for such a stance was the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who has attained an almost mythic status in literature. Born in 1854, Rimbaud wrote his intense, dramatic poetry -- including his best known work, “A Season in Hell” -- between the ages of 15 and 20, and then, shockingly, stopped writing. An article by Daniel Mendelsohn in the 8/29/11 New Yorker describes Rimbaud’s drab, conventional background, and how he rebelled against and escaped it and went to Paris several times before he finally was able to stay there. He “let his hair grow long, sat around mocking the passing bourgeoisie, and smoked his clay pipe a lot.” (It sounds like the sixties in the United States!) He wrote shocking poems, sometimes about scatological topics. But, as the article says, he also carefully studied the history of poetry, and wrote dazzling, iconoclastic poetry. This precocious poet became the lover of the poet Paul Verlaine. They had a stormy, even destructive relationship, but meanwhile Rimbaud’s poetry matured. He became famous, but at the age of 20, stopped writing poetry, moved home to his mother’s farm, and then moved to Aden and East Africa, becoming a trader, far from the literary scene. His renunciation of poetry at such a young age has always been a great mystery. One theory is that he simply outgrew adolescence and all its intensity. In any case, his poetry, his outrageous behavior, and the whole mythology about him still have a powerful influence. The poet and singer Patti Smith says that when she was sixteen, “my salvation and respite from my dismal surroundings was a battered copy of Arthur Rimbuad’s ‘Illuminations,’ which I kept in my back pocket…[It] became the bible of my life.” Mendelsohn concludes that not only was Rimbaud himself an adolescent when he wrote his poetry, but he also appeals most of all, in a very visceral way, to adolescents, as it is “the urgency, the orneriness, the rebellion” of adolescence that they find reflected in his work. I will only add that adolescents always seem to admire and imitate, and/or fall in love with, the “bad boys,” whether they ride motorcycles or write defiant (but perfectly formed) poetry. So here’s to the beautiful, original, rebellious, obnoxious, brilliant, destructive, charismatic genius, Rimbaud!

Famous Writer Couples

Sometimes, for better or for worse, writers find each other and have affairs with, or marry, or live with each other. Some relationships are happy, some not. Some are longlasting, some not. Below are a few famous writer couples.

Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning
Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren
Zelda Fitzgerald and F. Scott Fitzgerald
W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett
Mary McCarthy and Edmund Wilson
Jean Stafford and Robert Lowell
Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell
Lady Caroline Blackwood and Robert Lowell
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Tess Gallagher and Raymond Carver
Jane Kenyon and Donald Hall
Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris
Bharati Mukherjee and Clark Blaise
Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon

Dickens Fandom

An 8/29/11 New Yorker article, “Dickens in Eden,” reminds us that although Dickens wrote with great scorn about America after his visit here almost 170 years ago, at least some Americans nowadays adore his work, and feel they can learn everything about human nature from his novels. Illustrating this passionate love for Dickens, the article’s author, Jill Lepore, describes her visit to the annual Dickens camp (officially called Dickens Universe) at the beautiful University of California, Santa Cruz campus. This camp provides a week full of lectures, reading seminars, films, rehearsals for and the performance of an original farce, workshops, a Victorian tea, and a Victorian dance. The lecturers are professors from many universities who contribute their lectures unpaid, out of love for the topic and the camp. One of the great things about this camp is that attendance is not just for Dickens scholars and professors, but for anyone who is interested; Lepore met Dickens fans who came to the camp from far and wide. One regular attendee is the English actress Miriam Margolyes, who has acted in Dickens film adaptations, and who states that she first read “Oliver Twist” when she was eleven, and “Since then, there hasn’t been a day in my life when I haven’t read Dickens.” What a testimonial! Lepore’s article discusses Dickens' life, his family, his quirks, the history of his work, the value of his novels, and more; it is long, detailed, informative, and fascinating. I highly recommend it to readers who have any interest at all in Dickens. I have read most of Dickens’ novels, but I must admit it has been a long while since I read them; this article makes me want to go back and rediscover them.