Happy 40th, Ms. Magazine!

I have written about how important Ms. Magazine is to me (2/19/10). The current issue (Fall 2012) of Ms. celebrates 40 years of publication. The magazine has gone through various changes over the years, but from the beginning, it has been inspirational, informative, and most of all, feminist. This issue includes letters from readers who have been inspired and influenced by Ms. over the years; some feel Ms. changed their lives. I have been subscribing to and reading Ms. since the beginning, and it has meant a lot to me. I was surprisingly moved to see my name on a list of Ms. supporters published in the current issue. It made me feel part of a community of feminists who have supported not only Ms. but the causes it represents. I have been a feminist since the early days of the second wave women's liberation movement in the heady 1970s; I have woven my feminism into my life and my teaching all these years; feminism continues to be extremely important to me. I thank Ms., once again, for its influential and important part in the movement, and for being there for so many women over these 40 years.

Saving Newspapers While Away From Home

I have written more than once about how much I love reading the newspaper, the physical newspaper (online only in a pinch or for updates on urgent news). The main newspaper I read, as a San Francisco Bay Area resident, is the San Francisco Chronicle, which I have subscribed to for many, many years. My day doesn't feel complete unless I have read the Chronicle. (I also, supplementarily, intermittently read the New York Times on paper and online, and have subscribed for years to the New York Times book review.) When I travel, I always ask my husband to save the newspaper while I am gone. If we both go, I ask someone else to pick it up and save it for us, or ask the Chronicle to hold and then deliver all copies. Of course when I get back, it takes a while -- usually gradually over a period of a few days -- to work through the pile of back copies. For example, I got back from a five day conference trip to Seattle this past Monday, and only this morning finished plowing through the backlog of Chronicles. And I do skim through them faster than I would normally. I have had some friendly ribbing about this from various family members and friends, but I can't, and don't see any reason to, change this habit. (At least one of my brothers does the same...). Even if I have read local papers at the place I am visiting, or the New York Times, while I was gone, I want to catch up on state and local news, my favorite columnists, and more. I guess I am one of a diminishing tribe of addicted readers of the old-fashioned paper newspaper...and proud of it!

Baseball Fever!

San Francisco Giants fever has taken over in our house, as it has throughout the Bay Area, and we were all thrilled when the Giants won the National League championship last night. Actually, as some of you might know or guess, I am not a big sports fan. But when a team from my city, or from a college I or a family member has attended or worked at, I do support them. I support them more enthusiastically when they are doing well, which I admit puts me into the "fair weather friend" category. In any case, this was the perfect time to read (actually listen to) "The Art of Fielding" (Hachette Audio, 2011), by Chad Harbach; I completed it during the Giants playoffs. This book was a big bestseller that I resisted when it was first published (see my post of 5/10/12) because it was about baseball, but when I listened to it in my car, I found that although baseball was the focus, there was much about relationships, family, love, and others of my favorite topics. The plot centers on the baseball team of a small liberal arts college, and the main characters are three student players, the president of the university, and the daughter who has recently come back into his life. The college part was, of course, of interest to me, as a college professor. I actually found the baseball part much more interesting than I expected to, as well. This book was quite engaging, and I got caught up in it and enjoyed it.

Hilary Mantel Wins the Booker!

Hilary Mantel just won the UK's very prestigious Booker Prize for literature! She won for "Bring Up the Bodies," the sequel to the extremely well-received "Wolf Hall," and the second novel of a planned trilogy. "Wolf Hall" itself was the Booker winner in 2009. The San Francisco Chronicle describes "Bring Up the Bodies" as a "blood-soaked Tudor saga." On 10/13/12, I wrote about Hilary Mantel as portrayed in a New Yorker profile, so I post this news about the Booker as a follow-up to that post.

"The Age of Desire," by Jennie Fields

How could this devoted reader of Edith Wharton resist a well-reviewed novel based on Wharton's life? Although I have read biographies of the great author, I knew I had to read this novel. And for the most part, I am glad I did. The biographical events are not "new" to us, but Fields delves into Wharton's emotional life in a revealing way. She focuses on Wharton's sad, depressing, sexless marriage to a man who had no interest in her writing and who was probably bipolar, and on her tempestuous but ultimately also sad and disappointing relationship with her lover, the younger journalist Morton Fullerton. She also shows the steady importance of, and support provided by, her longtime assistant, Anna. We are able to see Edith's life at a different angle through Anna's eyes. But the most conflagatory aspect of the novel is the portrayal of Wharton's sexual awakening, in her forties, by Fullerton. Fields brilliantly details the infatuation, the discovery of exciting new feelings, the constant awareness of the loved one, the torture when he doesn't visit or write, and all the other accompaniments of a great passion. At times the descriptions of these feelings (not to mention the sexual scenes themselves) are overwrought and repetitive. Variations on the theme "she had never felt like this before" are too common. And this reader wishes there had been more about Wharton's books in the novel. We do see some glimpses of her writing process, but not enough. But overall, I very much enjoyed this novel.

Hilary Mantel in The New Yorker

The New Yorker comes through again! I have said this several times over the years, but I am so grateful for the great articles in The New Yorker, especially those about writers, books, and related literary topics. In this week's (10/15/12) issue, there is a terrific profile of the author Hilary Mantel, written by Larissa MacFarquhar. Titled "The Dead are Real: The Imagination of Hilary Mantel," this 11-page article details Mantel's difficult life, her discovery of her love of historical fiction (NOT, emphatically, "historical romance"), and the intriguing contrasts between her contemporary novels and her historical novels. The former are bleak; the latter are full of life and richly reflect her love of the eighteenth century, and then of the era of Henry VIII. Her most well-known and well-received book, and the one she herself says is her best, is "Wolf Hall," about Thomas Cromwell, an advisor to King Henry VIII. "I knew from the first paragraph that this was going to be the best thing I'd ever done," she says. Personally I greatly admire her work, yet have trouble getting into it. I read a couple of her contemporary works, but they are so pessimistic, so savage, that I can't read any more of them. I also am not generally drawn to historical novels, even ones that are as highly acclaimed as "Wolf Hall," so I have not read it. Yet. After reading this article, I am tempted to read the novel. This profile of Mantel is riveting, and I am appreciative once again of the New Yorker's giving readers such well-written, compelling articles on writers and literature.

"Triburbia," by Karl Taro Greenfeld

Karl Taro Greenfeld’s novel's title “Triburbia” (Harper, 2012) seems to gently mock the hip Tribeca area of Manhattan in the late 1990s and early 2000s as more suburban than its inhabitants would like to admit. As the author lives in Tribeca himself, he is able to draw the area in loving, knowing detail, despite his (or at least his characters’) ambivalence about the neighborhood and all it symbolizes. These characters, after all, are proud of themselves for living in Tribeca. As I read “Triburbia,” I kept thinking it should be subtitled something like “Bobos Behaving Badly.” Readers may remember David Brooks’ 2000 book, “Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There,” describing a particular blend of the bourgeois and the would-be bohemian found in certain U.S. cities, especially New York. Greenfeld’s characters fit this profile almost perfectly. The novel is structured around a rather long list of characters living in Tribeca whose children go to the same school. The focus is on the fathers, although there is plenty of bad behavior to go around. These are not bad people, but they are caught up in trying to have both artsy cred and money/privilege, and it is an uneasy mixture. Most of the men are rather angsty throughout the events of the novel; the women seem more likely to just do what needs to be done without constantly second-guessing their status and decisions. There are many affairs, lots of drugs (especially marijuana), crises about children, and more. Much of the focus is on social class status. Near the end of the novel, with the decline of the U.S. economy, some characters become very anxious and have to make some big changes. Yet somehow they are all (some more than others, of course) cushioned by enough safety nets and back-ups that they survive quite nicely. The two main problems I had with the book were, first, that it was sometimes hard to keep track of all the characters, and, second, that sometimes the author slipped into too much exposition/talkiness about the issues. The novel, although enjoyable, is a bit precious, seeming to describe a very limited world. However, we know that what happens in New York is often an indication of what happens elsewhere. And as a San Franciscan, I cannot deny that we have had as many or more “bobos” here as anywhere else.

"NW," by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” bowled me over. What a window into the multicultural lives of so many in London! What rich, detailed writing! When her second novel, “The Autograph Man,” came out, I had a hard time with it. It seemed dry and – OK, dull. I didn’t get very far into it before abandoning it. But her third novel, “On Beauty,” was riveting. And I savored and learned from her thoughtful essay collection, “Changing My Mind.” Her latest novel, which has just appeared to huge fanfare, is “NW” (Penguin, 2012). (The title refers to a less prosperous section of London.) I heard that the novel was somewhat experimental in form, which discouraged me a bit; I tend to prefer my fiction the old-fashioned way (with exceptions for such transcendent authors as Virginia Woolf). I wavered: should I read it or not? But I did, and I am very glad I did. First, it isn’t actually so very experimental. One character’s – Natalie’s – section is written in 185 mini-chapters, most less than a page long, some only a sentence long. But this is easy to navigate and flows well. Second, “NW” is in some senses an old-fashioned British novel, full of plot and, especially, well-developed characters. It deals with social issues, which I do like, as long as a novel is not too didactic; this one is not. The novel tells the stories of four young people from the “NW” part of London, and their quite different fates. It also tells of the psychological cost of moving among worlds. Natalie in particular, the one who travels farthest from her roots career-wise and money-wise, yet chooses to stay fairly close to those roots geographically, is torn among her various identities until she doesn’t know who she really is. Her situation, and to a lesser degree her friend Leah’s, show both the good and the difficult aspects of moving in and out of different socioeconomic and racial settings. Others of their friends and neighbors pay even steeper prices as they become adults. Smith has said in an interview that from now on, despite having written about the U.S. in “On Beauty,” she will focus her writing on London, the place she knows best. Comparisons have been made to Joyce’s portrayal of Dublin; these are heady comparisons, but I can understand them, as the sense of place in “NW” is so intense, so knowing, so detailed. Reading “NW” makes me curious and eager, already, to know what Smith will write about next, and to read that next novel, whenever we are fortunate enough to have it.