"In Flight Entertainment," by Helen Simpson

Helen Simpson is an astute, brilliant writer of short stories. On 12/31/12, I wrote about her collection, “In the Driver’s Seat.” Today I write about her latest collection: “In Flight Entertainment” (Knopf, 2012). Simpson appears to be writing better than ever, but the tone of her writing has darkened. Several of the stories grapple with the acceleration of climate change and its devastating effects. Further, they deal despairingly with the ignorance and resistance with which many people face this global emergency. It seems that Simpson feels she has to do something about this, through her fiction, but perhaps does not have much faith than humankind will be willing to acknowledge the problem or, especially, to make the needed changes and even sacrifices to stave off further destruction. Not all of her stories focus on this issue; there are insightful views of love and marriage, age and youth, among other themes. And I don’t mean that her stories that do so are didactic, although they verge into that territory. But they feel urgent, very urgent. I fear even as I write this that readers will be discouraged from reading these stories, feeling they will be lectured at. But I urge reading this book, not just for the author’s message, but for the intensity, vividness, and flat-out good writing to be found in these stories.

"Pride and Prejudice" Again and Again

Once again, I savored every word of the novel. I laughed in recognition at favorite parts; I was eager for the story to continue; I appreciated bits that I have read and heard many times but just now suddenly focused on as if for the first time; I loved every minute of it and didn’t want it to end. Yes, readers, I have just listened yet again to the beloved novel I have read and listened to on tape or CD so many times that I have completely lost count: Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” I re-read all of Austen's novels many times, and never tire of any of them, but most especially I never tire of this one. I know this extreme fandom is completely unoriginal; the novel has had millions of readers and admirers over the years, from scholars to fans known as Janeites. And on the surface, it is hard to explain why this novel is so great, and why I love it so much. Yes, I am an Anglophile, and yes, I enjoy novels about women’s lives and relationships. Yes, Austen is incredibly psychologically and socially astute and aware of how people think and behave, with every little foible and self-delusion noted. And yes, her witty observations and dialogue are unmatched. But none of that explains Austen’s novels’ appeal adequately. I have tried to explain a bit on this blog – see my posts of 1/25/10, 10/31/10, 12/16/10, 2/15/11, and 2/27/12, for example – but I know my words have been most inadequate. In any case, I will keep re-reading and re-listening to "Pride and Prejudice" for the rest of my reading days, and it will always be an unfailing and thorough pleasure to do so.

Third Anniversary of StephanieVandrickReads

Today is the third anniversary of this blog. I have written 728 posts, on roughly 400 books and 100 authors, along with a couple of dozen lists and numerous posts on various reading experiences. I have written about old favorites and brand new books, mostly novels but also memoirs, other nonfiction, poetry, art books, newspapers and magazines. Several friends and family members have been kind enough to contribute guest posts. My topics have included libraries, bookstores, family book stories, reading to children, issues of gender and class in the book world, giving books, keeping books (or not), book covers, book blurbs, book reviews, book prizes, banned books, e-readers, literary cities (San Francisco, New York, London, Paris), vacation reading, reading groups, and many more. It has been a labor of love for me, a lifelong constant reader, to write these posts about books, authors, and reading experiences and issues. I am so appreciative of those who have let me know that they have read and enjoyed the blog, and have shared their thoughts on books and other topics. Please keep letting me know your thoughts on these posts and on your own book recommendations and reading experiences, either by commenting here, or by emailing me (vandricks@usfca.edu).

"Testament of Mary," by Colm Toibin

I am a great admirer of Colm Toibin’s fiction. I was absorbed by “The Master,” a novel about Henry James, and more recently, have written here about his novel “Brooklyn” (1/28/10) and about his short story collection “The Empty Family” (1/28/11), both wonderful. And I wrote on 12/4/12 about hearing this author interviewed on the radio show “Fresh Air” about his new book, “Testament of Mary” (Scribner, 2012), which I have now read. This, like “The Master,” is a novelized version of a real person’s life; in this case, the subject is Mary, mother of Jesus. This slim book challenges all the traditional portrayals of Mary as “docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful,” as the flap copy puts it, and shows her as an ordinary woman caught up in an extraordinary, confusing and frightening story. Toibin’s Mary, the aging Mary many years after Jesus’ death, does not accept the portrayal of her son that is being promulgated by his followers. She does not agree that he is the Son of God; she distrusts his followers who now try to shape his story and to get her to conform to their version of events; and she is regretful and ashamed that she did not stay at the Cross until the end, because she wanted to save herself. This is a dark, sad version of the New Testament stories, the ones that Christians and others raised in Christian-influenced societies base their historical and religious beliefs on still today. But it is a very human one, one that makes readers consider that events were perhaps not as straightforward as they are portrayed in the Bible. I imagine we will never know exactly how the events of Jesus’ life really happened, but Toibin’s book pushes us to imagine a wider range of possibilities.

"I Knew You'd Be Lovely," by Alethea Black

As I mentioned 1/3/13, I recently read and was completely taken by a short story by Alethea Black, and resolved to seek out more of her work; I have now read her short story collection, “I Knew You’d Be Lovely” (Broadway Paperbacks, 2011) and am very impressed by her sure-handed control of the short story genre. She writes about love, loneliness, hope, imagination and more, all in very contemporary contexts. But far from being abstract, the situations she portrays are original, surprising, even startling. I have been thinking lately about how the best short stories seem very real but still manage to startle us, and Black’s stories are perfect examples of this combination. And they are, as my most treasured works always are, about relationships, in this case between parents and children, lovers, family members, an artist and his model, and in one intriguing case, a teacher and his student many years after she was in his class. The author provides readers with an additional gift at the end of the collection: she writes “Author’s Notes” on each story, telling us something about “the backstories to stories and snippets about [her] creative process.”

Yet More Re-reading of Joan Didion: “The White Album”

I have been re-reading some of Joan Didion’s work (see my post of 1/9/13 and earlier posts mentioned in that one) and, having now re-read “The White Album” (Simon and Schuster, 1979), continue to be astounded by the freshness, the immediacy of her writing. The settings of these essays range from California and New York and other mainland U.S. sites to Honolulu and to Colombia, South America. Topics include shopping-center theory, the Black Panthers, the Hoover Dam, migraine, Bishop James Pike, Doris Lessing, Georgia O’Keeffe, and the Women’s Movement. Didion’s wide-ranging interests and subjects are impressive, but more impressive is how she draws readers in, so that before we know it, we are actually fascinated by, for example, shopping-center theory. No matter how unpromising the topic seems, or how outside the reader's usual interests, Didion makes it come alive and makes us care about it. The more I read Didion’s recent work (her memoirs about her husband’s death and her daughter’s illness and death), and re-read her earlier work (especially her essays), the more I am convinced she is one of our greatest living writers.

"Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?" by Mindy Kaling

I knew very little about Mindy Kaling, except that she was a comedian on the American version of the television show “The Office,” which I had watched only two or three times, and now had her own show, which I have not seen. But I was given her new book, “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)” (Three Rivers Press, 2011), as a Christmas gift, and since it is a small paperback and looked like fun, I read it soon after. This young author writes with engaging humor about her childhood, her growing up, her first steps into the world of comedy, and her career so far as a writer, producer, actor, and director. She is modest, self-deprecating, and funny. She writes of her childhood chubbiness, of her identity as the child of Indian immigrants, her love life, her friends, her co-stars and co-writers on “The Office,” living in New York and in Los Angeles at various times, and other personal and career matters in a humorous and (seemingly, at least) candid way. I imagine she has smoothed over some of the hard times in her life in this retelling, but that's OK because her aim in this book is clearly not a “tell-all”; it is more like an enjoyable conversation with a very entertaining young woman who is pleased with her accomplishments but is endearingly low-key about them. Maybe I will check out her television show.

On Re-reading "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," by Joan Didion

I have read much of Joan Didion’s writing over the years, and since I started this blog, have read or re-read some of her work. (See my posts of 3/23/11 and 1/17/12.). As I wrote on 12/9/12, a recent blogpost by Caroline Leavitt reminded me to re-read more of Didion’s books. I have just finished “Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968, republished 1990) and was blown away by Didion’s powerful, incisive, original style. I had forgotten that Didion essentially invented a new way of writing, and although she has influenced many other writers since, her essays retain all of their thrilling vividness still. She writes mostly about California, where she has lived most of her life, as well as New York, where she lived for some years, with essays about Newport and Hawaii also included. But the California essays are the most compelling. She writes about her hometown, Sacramento, and about Los Angeles, where she lived for so long. She writes about the landscapes and the characters. A specialty is focusing on a particular person or incident, and letting that portrait illuminate much about California, especially during the 1960s. The most fascinating and devastating writing is perhaps that in the long title essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” which tells of Haight Street and surroundings in the San Francisco of 1965, during the famous and notorious “summer of love.” Didion stayed In San Francisco for some time, meeting many of the young people on Haight Street, in nearby Golden Gate Park, and around the city who had been drawn there by the music, clothing, drugs, “free love,” and vaunted freedom and (in some cases) idealism offered by the counterculture. Didion’s portrayal of the people and the times is up close and unnervingly, sometimes devastatingly, perceptive. As someone who was young during that time period, and although living far away in the Midwest at the time, who was cautiously somewhat caught up in some of the ethos of the time a few years later (I have occasionally -- and with full acknowledgement of how lame it sounds -- characterized myself during the late 60s and early 70s as a “weekend hippie”), I felt recognition, pleasure, and sadness at the memories of that time period churned up by reading this essay.

"One for the Books," by Joe Queenan

When I read Joe Queenan’s book “Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile’s Pilgrimage to the Mother Country” a couple of years ago, I enjoyed it thoroughly despite -- or maybe partly because of -- its flipness and snarkiness. I have just finished his most recent book, “One for the Books” (Viking, 2012) which I again thoroughly enjoyed despite -- or maybe partly because of -- its flipness and snarkiness. Queenan’s mode of writing seems to be exploring topics that are serious and very important to him, but through a lens of humor. I laughed out loud and was not surprised to find, long after I had used the word myself about his writing, that Queenan used the word “snarky” about himself late in this book. But the thing is, and an endearing thing it is, that Queenan loves, loves, loves books. He loves their variety and their content, and he loves their physicality. He collects books; his house is overrun with books. He makes resolutions about reading them, and tells us why he keeps the books he will never read. Among other topics, he writes of bookstores, of libraries, of favorite authors and genres, of reading several books at once, of book reviewers, of friends who recommend books to him and/or give him books, of ill-fated visits to long-dead authors’ homes, of reading when he should be doing other things, and of his blissful time in Paris, where he bought and read book after book. His overwhelming passion for books shines through. In fact, he tells us that he believes books saved his life: “Decades after my bitter housing project days were over, I continued to read feverishly, almost desperately, at all hours of the day and night, because reality – even my new, vastly improved reality – was never as sublime as the reality to be found in books” (p. 236). He concludes with a statement that I strongly echo, as will many of you: “The presence of books in my hands, my home, my pockets, my life will never cease to be essential to my happiness” (p. 240).

"Because You Have To: A Writing Life," by Joan Frank

In her new book, “Because You Have To: A Writing Life” (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), Joan Frank gives readers a sense of what it is really like to be a serious writer. This is not a “how-to” book, but rather one that speaks candidly, even painfully, about trying to wrest enough time free to write, dealing with rejection, reading and learning from the work of other writers (she quotes the great writer William Maxwell as saying “All I ask of life is the privilege of being able to read”), dealing with envy, being a reviewer, going on writer’s retreats at writing colonies, trying to balance writing with family as well as with the work that pays the bills, and more. Frank is generous in sharing her own experiences, feelings, fears, and ups and downs over the course of her long writing life. She is particularly eloquent on how important it is for writers to have stretches of uninterrupted time, and on how hard it is for many – perhaps most – writers to find this time. She also writes about the joy of writing when things are going well. And, as the title says, she advises that if you feel you have to write, then you must find a way. Because I have read, liked, and posted on all five of Frank’s books of fiction (see my posts of 7/6/10, 7/11/10, 12/31/10, and 4/9/12); because she lives in, and sets much of her fiction in, Northern California, settings very close and familiar to me; and because she sometimes reviews books for my local paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I feel quite connected to her work. This new nonfiction book gives me more insight into her writing and the writing life. It is a slim book (just 200 pages), and an absorbing one. Anyone who is a writer or who wants to be one, as well as anyone who loves reading, will enjoy and learn from this book.

Story Delivery to Your Door!

Imagine having a wonderful short story delivered by mail (not email, regular mail) to your home every three weeks! This is what the organization One Story does (www.one-story.com). I found out about this when a friend from school days, who reads this blog, generously gave me a subscription. I received the first issue -- a slim pamphlet-sized publication -- a few days ago: the story is “You, On a Good Day,” by Alethea Black. In this beautifully written and evocative story, a female narrator starts every sentence with “You do not…,” telling of all the ways she restrains herself from saying and doing what she feels like saying and doing about the negative things in her life. And yet, at the end of the story, there is the lovely gift of some hope, some positivity. The structure of the story is effective, even hypnotic, and the experiences narrated are deeply felt. I had heard of Alethea Black before, but hadn’t read her work; now I will seek it out.