Philip Roth: The Greatest Living American Writer?

On Friday night I watched a PBS special about Philip Roth. OK, I will confess: I dozed off halfway into it. The show consisted mainly of a tight focus on Roth talking – the “talking head” mode. Maybe I am shallow, or maybe I was just tired, but it wasn’t enough to engage my attention fully. But I also suspect that my dozing was a kind of unconscious resistance to the premise of the show (presented as if it were a universally accepted truth), which was that Roth is the U.S.’s “greatest living writer.” I agree that he is a great writer, but is he the “greatest”? A few years ago, before the deaths of Bellow and Updike, Roth was often bracketed with them as the greatest living writers. And yes, the other two were great as well. But, again, the greatest? And – perhaps this is the crux of the matter with me – greatest for whom? And where are the lists that include some of our outstanding American women authors? Where are Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Smiley, or Anne Tyler, to mention just a few of the leading writers of our time? But the issue isn’t just the gender of the writers; it is also the “gender” of the fiction itself. By this I mean that Roth’s novels, for example, are heavily, intensely, and unapologetically from the male perspective, focusing on male characters, male topics and male obsessions. Although I admired and read his earlier novels, I long ago stopped reading him because I felt so little connection to them. (I did try again a couple of times over the years, but never could get engaged enough to continue reading.) I realize I am getting into controversial and dangerous waters here, and of course the discussion of gender in literature (about which I have posted several times here already) is contentious and complex. But circling back to the original point: is Philip Roth really the greatest living American writer? I am not at all convinced.

"A Thousand Pardons," by Jonathan Dee

Almost exactly three years ago (3/31/10), I wrote a rather irritated post on Jonathan Dee’s novel “The Privileges,” decrying the entitled, amoral characters (while acknowledging that the portrayal of such Wall Street characters is well observed and captures something about the spirit of the times; of course I understand that novels can and should sometimes portray highly unlikeable and even repugnant characters, as these are part of life). Dee’s new novel, “A Thousand Pardons” (Random House, 2013), is a milder version of “The Privileges,” in that the characters, while still less than admirable, are less entitled, more vulnerable, and a little more likeable. Manhattan and surroundings are still the locale. Prosperous lawyer Ben has a midlife crisis/breakdown and decides to leave the marriage, and his wife Helen has to figure out how to pick up the pieces. Suspiciously easily, she finds a new job in public relations and is unexpectedly successful at it. Despite talk of possible financial problems after the marriage breaks up, somehow neither character ever suffers too much financially. (This novel is an example of a common trope in fiction that makes a nod toward possible financial problems for its privileged characters, but readers can see that there is never any real threat, any real danger of financial hardship.) There are subplots involving their daughter Sara and other characters (e.g., a disintegrating male movie star whom Helen knew in elementary school, who now turns to her for help), but the main plot point is the couple’s separation and what comes after. The ending is unexpectedly, if inconclusively, sentimental and promises a sort of redemption.

"A Simple Revolution," by Judy Grahn

Poet, activist, theorist and educator Judy Grahn’s “A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet” (Aunt Lute Books, 2012) is her autobiography, but it is equally a history of the women and events involved in the feminist and lesbian movements in the U.S., especially during the 1960s and 1970s. Because Grahn has spent most of her adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area, and because that area has been one of the original and main centers of lesbian and feminist activism, most of the book is about the politics, demonstrations, art and literature, women’s communities and collectives, and other manifestations of the movement(s) to be found in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. A flood of memories and strong feelings accompanied my reading of this book, with its vivid history of the exciting tumult of the times when women stood up for their independence and their rights. I am a decade younger than Grahn, and straight, but I support the same causes, and have lived in the SF Bay Area most of my adult life, so I have witnessed and cheered on, and participated a little, in that history. Although my own feminism, and my support of lesbian and gay equality, have been important parts of my thinking and life since my college days, I cannot claim in any way to have been in the midst of the women (and some men) who really put their lives on the line, stood up to discrimination at protests, lived under new structures such as community houses, learned trades such as printing so they could publish women’s work, and so much more. I have done my little bit through my early membership in women’s groups, through my teaching and writing, and through some small financial and other support of women’s organizations, but am vastly grateful to the women who did so much more, and risked so much more. Grahn’s writing style in this book is straightforward and somewhat reportorial, but none the less effective for its unadorned quality. She has made a hugely important contribution by preserving this vital piece of history, and her up-close “I was there” writing makes this book a compelling read, whether the reader is of a similar age and remembers the times, or is much younger and wants to learn more about this crucial era and movement. (I thank my friend Sonja for recommending this book.)

The "world of poetry"

"To me the world of poetry is a house with thousands of glittering windows. Our words and images, land to land, era to era, shed light on one another. Our words dissolve the shadows we imagine fall between." ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Will I Ever Read Faulkner Again?

I was overwhelmed (in a good way!) by William Faulkner’s novels when I was in college and grad school. I read most of them – some for classes and some on my own: “The Sound and the Fury,” “As I Lay Dying,” “Sartoris,” “Sanctuary,” “Go Down Moses,” “Absalom, Absalom!” and more. I found them mesmerizing, maddening, inspiring, mysterious, enlightening. They made me feel I understood the American South in a new and intense way. Some years after college, I re-read a couple of the novels. But over the many years since then, whenever I have considered re-reading, or actually tried to re-read, one of his novels, I have been unable to do so. (I have posted here before about having the same problem with other books I valued and even loved when I was young.) It is not that I don’t still think the novels are monumental, classic, and groundbreaking. Of course I do. So the failing must be mine. I did enjoy reading, in the Spring 2013 issue of Threepenny Review, a symposium of seven writers’ thought-provoking and engaging short essays on their experiences with and responses to “Absalom, Absalom!” One quotation I was struck with was from an interview with Faulkner: “Interviewer: ‘Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?’ Faulkner: ‘Read it four times.’” So maybe I will try again.

I Love Commas!

I love commas! (See my earlier posts about punctuation on 10/16/10 and 3/11/12.) A review of Cynthia Zarin’s new book, “An Enlarged Heart” (reviewed 3/10/13 by Dawn Raffel – a writer I admire – in the San Francisco Chronicle) says about this former New Yorker writer that “The magazine’s influence is evident in the old-school beauty and precision of Zarin’s sentence making. She appears never to have encountered a comma she didn’t like, which has the effect of inviting the reader to pause, to breathe, to have another look around, even in a sentence as simple as, ‘The girls had had a wonderful time, swimming.’” Well, yes, exactly. I like the part about the “old-school beauty and precision” -- let’s not throw out this old-school style – and I like the part about commas. One of my coauthors and I, when working on our academic publications, used to have a half-joking, half-serious running conversation about commas; when we were reading and editing each other’s drafts, I would put commas in, and she would take them out. We always managed to find a compromise, but I was reminded of those days when I read this statement about Zarin’s book.

"Songs for the Missing," by Stewart O'Nan

I have so much enjoyed and admired Stewart O’Nan’s novels, once I discovered them these past two years (see my posts of 5/7/11 and 1/26/12), that I was pleased to come across one of his earlier books, “Songs for the Missing” (Penguin, 2008/2009), at my local library sale. I have to say I hesitated when I saw it was about the disappearance of a teenaged girl; I normally do not want to read about such a topic, even in fiction. (Strangely, I can read murder mysteries with enjoyment, but not literary fiction about similar topics; perhaps the mysteries are so stylized, so formulaic, that they seem more like puzzles than stories of real lives and deaths.) But because of the sensitivity and insights displayed in his other novels, I trusted O’Nan, and read this one. The focus is on the parents and sister of the missing girl, and although I don’t know if the portrayals are realistic, they certainly feel that way. Such a mixture of grief, desperation, pain, numbness and the need to do something, to keep going, to be strong. O’Nan, it seems to me, shows a deep understanding of human beings and their reactions to tragedy, as well as their reluctant resilience. Although the journey through the novel was painful, it was also compelling, and I stayed up late reading it when I should have been working on projects with deadlines.

Author Drawn to Words as a Child

Although I don’t know the relevant science (and the nature vs. nurture debate continues robustly), it does seem that some future writers (and readers!) very early on reveal an irresistible attraction to the written word. In “On Saramago” (Threepenny Review, Spring 2013), Margaret Jull Costa quotes the Nobel Prize winning Portuguese writer Jose Saramago on his childhood love of reading. Although he came from an extremely poor family, his father did bring home a newspaper, Diario de Noticias, every day. Saramago writes (in his memoir “Small Memories”) that “I was reading even before I could spell properly, even though I couldn’t necessarily understand what I was reading. Being able to identify a word I knew was like finding a signpost on the road telling me I was on the right path, heading in the right direction. And so it was, in this rather unusual way, Diario by Diario, month by month, pretending not to hear the jokey comments made by the adults in the house, who were amused by the way I would stare at the newspaper as if at a wall, that my moment to astonish them finally came, when, one day, nervous but triumphant, I read out loud, in one go, without hesitation, several consecutive lines of print.” I can imagine the little boy, earnestly and passionately focused on extracting meaning out of the little black symbols, intuitively knowing they were the key to something important and magical that would be his life’s blood, his destiny.

My Night at the San Francisco Ballet

Although this topic is not directly related to books and reading, and although I fully realize the feelings I express in this post are far from original, I can’t resist writing about the magnificent San Francisco Ballet (SFB) performance I attended a few nights ago, and the feelings it evoked in me about the larger world of art. My wonderful daughter took me to this performance as a gift, and we both felt it was one of the best ballet performances we had ever attended (and we both have gone often over the years to see various dance companies perform). Program Four at the SFB consisted of three pieces (both my daughter and I prefer these shorter pieces to the full-length “story” ballets, although of course those are often wonderful as well.) The first was “Scotch Symphony,” choreographed by George Balanchine; the third was “From Foreign Lands,” by Alexei Ratmansky (a world premier); both were excellent, beautiful, and beautifully danced. But the most riveting, the most sublime piece was the middle one: “Within the Golden Hour,” by Christopher Wheeldon. It was gorgeous, inventive, cohesive, fantastic; the movement was amazingly creative and intensely compelling; every minute of watching every interwoven permutation of dancers and dance was pure joy. So here are my unoriginal but heartfelt feelings and thoughts evoked by the performance: I left the Opera House feeling almost “high,” thinking about the transcendence that art -- whether it is literature, dance, music, theater, painting, or something else -- provides in our lives. It allows us to see and feel the best that the human mind and heart can offer; it allows us to transcend the everyday, the quotidian. Even when the art addresses and embodies the difficult parts of life, it takes us to another place, another perspective, and we feel how sharing the experience allows a note of hope, no matter what. And when it focuses on the pure joy of movement, music, and more, there is nothing better. I think of all the art I have been fortunate enough to experience over the years -- in books, in museums, in performance spaces, and elsewhere -- and I am deeply grateful to the writers, choreographers, dancers, composers, musicians, visual artists, actors, and all those who contribute to the art that opens up and gives us access to larger spaces, thoughts and feelings in us all.

Magical Thinking about Self-Help Books

I have a habit of occasionally buying advice or self-help books, usually about personal finance, health, or getting organized. The problem is that once I buy them, I tend not to actually read them. Why don’t I read them? Well, my intentions are good, but the books are generally not very scintillating reading. And the areas I think I need to work on are the exact areas I don’t necessarily really want to think about, as they are associated with anxiety and with forcing myself to do things I don’t feel like doing. So I procrastinate actually reading the books, and they often just sit on my bookshelves for weeks, months, or years. Strangely, though, I somehow manage to feel that just by having bought them, and having them sitting on my shelves, I have made concrete steps toward moving forward in the areas I mentioned. Magical thinking!