Sunday, October 30, 2011

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

Saturday, October 29, 2011

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!

Friday, October 28, 2011

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

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

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.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

"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.’”

Sunday, October 23, 2011

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

Saturday, October 22, 2011

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.

Friday, October 21, 2011

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.!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

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?

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

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.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

"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.

Friday, October 14, 2011

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.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

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/

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

"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.

Monday, October 10, 2011

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.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

"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.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

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.

Friday, October 7, 2011

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.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

"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.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

"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.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

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.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

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.
 
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