"I Can't Complain," by Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman is known for her entertaining novels, her personal essays, and her humorous but pointed political commentary in the form of verse. “I Can’t Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays” (Houghton Mifflin, 2013) is a smallish (161 pages), varied, and very enjoyable collection of essays, all but one essay previously published in various magazines and newspapers. Thus they are short, catchy, light as a feather but not lightweight, and although sometimes about very serious topics, never too dour. They are grouped into four categories: “Meet the Family,” “On Writing,” “Coupling Columns” (about romance and marriage), and “Since Then” (about life after her husband’s recent death). She writes about her mother, her son, her husband, soap opera, food, cleaning, having one’s book made into a movie, New York, blurbing, author’s anxieties, and much more. One of the most touching and moving essays, “This Is for You,” was published in the New York Times’ Modern Love column (as “Sweetest at the End”), and is about her husband, before and during his cruel last illness, and her relationship with him over the years. (He is also featured in a few others of the essays.) Another, titled “I Still Think, Call Her,” is a lovely tribute to her late mother. This is an entertaining, heartwarming book; I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and was touched by it as well.

Anna Quindlen Interview

I don't have time to read The New York Times regularly (too many other periodicals and books to read) but for many years I have subscribed to the weekly The New York Times Book Review, which I find enormously informative and enjoyable to read. Of course the reviews are the main point, but I also enjoy features such as the essay at the end of each issue, and the "By the Book" interviews with authors. The interview in the April 21, 2013 issue is with Anna Quindlen. I have always admired Quindlen's pioneering role in journalism, and have enjoyed reading her work, from when she was a journalist and columnist through her several novels and essay collections. This brief interview in the NYTBR seems to capture the smart, committed, warm, down-to-earth, unpretentious presence conveyed in her writing as well. Her answer to the first question immediately reminded me of why I like her persona and writing. In answer to the question "What's your favorite book of all time?", she says she can't choose one, but lists "Middlemarch," "Bleak House," and "Pride and Prejudice." Great list! She also cites Jo March in "Little Women" as her favorite childhood literary character. Her mentions of George Eliot's, Jane Austen's, and Louisa May Alcott's works remind me of Virginia Woolf's point that every pioneering woman writer becomes a much needed role model for succeeding generations of women writers, empowering them with their examples. When asked about other books and authors she reads nowadays, Quindlen is generous in her praise of such authors as Katherine Boo, Kate Atkinson, and Hilary Mantel. Asked what kind of fiction she steers clear of, she says, " I think 'experimental fiction' is a synonym for 'Give me a break,' and I've never been able to warm up to sci-fi." Definitely a woman after my own heart on both counts. But when invited to name a "disappointing, overrated, just not good" book, she considerately declines to do so, saying that "No one needs to be humiliated...by reading in The Times that someone chucked her book after three chapters." Of course I immediately wondered if she had a specific book in mind, and what it was, but I guess I will never know, and I honor her kindness in not naming a book. Those who know what MY favorite book is will imagine how pleased I was to read the answer to the last question of the interview, "If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be?" Quindlen replies, "Elizabeth Bennet. We would be buds for sure, power-walking the grounds of Pemberley. And I would get to hang out with Darcy." Great choice!

"Life After Life," by Jill McCorkle

Oddly, two novels with the same title – “Life After Life” – have very recently been published, one by Jill McCorkle and one by Kate Atkinson, both wonderful writers whose prior fiction I have read and appreciated. Today I am writing about Jill McCorkle’s version of “Life After Life” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2013). (I can’t resist adding -- although it is not strictly relevant -- that I enjoy typing “Chapel Hill” because my daughter went to the university there for her undergraduate degree and loved it.) This novel is set mainly in the Pine Center Retirement Facility in the small town of Fulton, North Carolina. It describes the lives – past and present – of several residents at that home, along with some of their family members, friends, neighbors, and assistants. The main character, Joanna, who is both a character and an observer of the other characters, originally came from this town, but has been away for years, traveling, marrying three times, and trying to figure out her life. She recently came back to the area to take care of her father during his dying days, and to be a hospice worker. Her friend C.J. runs the beauty salon in Pine Haven. Both of these young-to-middle-aged women have many issues and secrets, but are gaining peace and hope for better futures. Their stories are interesting, but the residents of Pine Haven and their lives and memories are the most compelling. The story of the admirable, wise and kind former teacher, 85-year-old Sadie, and the way she helps the other residents through her art work recreating scenes in their lives, is particularly engaging and touching. Sadie also befriends the young girl Abby, who badly needs her affection, reassurance, and guidance, since the girl's mother is unbelievably selfish and cruel, and her father, while loving, is distracted and passive. McCorkle understands older people, and treats them first and foremost as people -- like any other characters -- rather than focusing on their ages as their main or even only defining identities (as too many writers and others do), while acknowledging the role and meaning of aging in their lives. As I have written here before, there are not enough novels about older people, and even fewer that are insightful and respectful, acknowledging that older people are the same people as when they were younger, and not some separate category of humankind. So I welcome this novel on that basis, as well as because it creates a small world (though always influenced by the larger world out there) that catches the reader up in its stories and makes us care about the characters. The world McCorkle creates here -- like the larger world -- is full of love, hate, violence, sadness, cruelty, caring, the unexpected, joy, appreciation of life, reconciliation, and redemption.

"The Interestings," by Meg Wolitzer

Naturally I HAD to read Meg Wolitzer’s new novel, “The Interestings” (Riverhead, 2013). I have read most of her fiction over the years, always with pleasure, and the reviews of this new book have been very positive. In addition, I realize that recently I have been wanting to read a “big” literary novel that would catch me up and absorb me. This novel is that big one, at 468 pages, with so many of the elements I enjoy: a group of friends whose intertwined lives are portrayed over a period of many years; compelling characters; intriguing intersecting plot lines; explorations of current topics and events from the 1970s through the 2000s; questions about careers and life choices; sex, love, marriage, children; feelings of insecurity, connection, guilt, envy, loss, and celebration; and a New York City setting (with side trips to the formative summer camp where the characters first met, to Europe, and elsewhere). Besides being very well written and tremendously enjoyable to read, the novel is a commentary on our times, especially in terms of social class and economic success, or lack thereof. One of the main characters, Jules, cannot help being envious of her friends Ethan and Ash and their enormous success, affluence, and fame. The focus on who has not-quite-enough money, who has more money, and who has the most money might seem inappropriate when so many have so much less than any of these characters, but it is a topic of great concern in the U.S. today, and preoccupies many, so it seems to me a legitimate subject for fiction about today’s world, or at least this slice of today’s world. Wolitzer seems to be aiming in this novel at a larger stage, a bigger voice, more social commentary even than in her earlier novels, and she largely succeeds. The blend of a good, absorbing story and social commentary is, I believe, what often makes the best fiction. (Side note: I have also been enjoying for years the fiction of Wolitzer’s mother, Hilma Wolitzer, and I love the idea of the mother and daughter both being wonderful and successful novelists.)

In Appreciation of Book-Related Periodicals

Although I mainly write in this blog about books, and especially novels, I have also written here about some of my favorite periodicals, and about specific stories and articles in those magazines and newspapers. Today I want to emphasize how much I rely on those publications – such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Women’s Review of Books, The Atlantic, Ms., The Nation, Threepenny Review, New York, Vanity Fair, The Progressive, and more – for book reviews, for new short stories, and for articles about authors and other literary topics. Some very recent examples of such articles – the kind that I light up when I see the titles of – are as follows. First, The New York Times (3/22/13) had a very interesting story on the upcoming publication of “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather,” which will include 566 letters from various archives; this is a major event for Willa Cather scholars and readers. I have written here about my love for Cather’s novels, most especially “My Antonia,” which I have also taught several times. Second, the most recent The New York Review of Books (4/25/13) includes a review essay on two new books about Margaret Fuller. Of course I knew of Fuller’s life and work, but this essay reminded me of what a tremendous pioneer she was for women, especially literary women. She was a passionate advocate for women’s rights, including in her groundbreaking book, “Women in the Nineteenth Century”; “the leading female figure in…transcendentalism”; editor of the first avant-garde intellectual magazine in America, The Dial; and the first regular foreign correspondent, male or female, for an American newspaper. Third and fourth, This week’s New Yorker (4/15/13) includes a fascinating profile of the “writer’s writer” James Salter, speculating on why Salter is not more famous, and a detailed article about the life and important revolutionary feminist work of Shulamith Firestone, who died last year in heartbreaking circumstances (see my post of 8/30/12). Each one of these articles taught me something new and has provided me with a window into the work and lives of writers that are important to the world of literature and beyond, and to me personally.

Twenty Writers Tell Us Why They Write

The title of “Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do” (Plume, 2013) is self-explanatory. Edited by Meredith Maran, this small gem of a book gives us the inside scoop about some well known contemporary writers, including Isabel Allende, Jennifer Egan, Gish Jen, Sebastian Junger, Mary Karr, Armistead Maupin, Terry McMillan, Ann Patchett, Jane Smiley, and Meg Wolitzer, to highlight a few. What motivates them? What are their writing habits? How do they deal with writing blocks? What have their happiest moments been? Each writer’s chapter includes a brief introduction by the editor, a list of “vitals” (basic information about each author), a list of the author’s works, an essay of about 5-10 pages by the author, and a final boxed and bulleted list of the author’s “Wisdom for Writers.” There are some common threads, of course; the one I noticed most frequently was some variation of the theme “I write because I have to; I write because I can’t imagine not writing.” The chapters are written in an informal, almost conversational style, with plenty of juicy tidbits for those of us who want to know all about the writers we read. Almost anyone who loves to read and/or write will find much to enjoy and learn from, in a very accessible format, in this appealing book.

"The Obituary Writer," by Ann Hood

I still remember taking Ann Hood’s first novel, “Somewhere off the Coast of Maine” (1987) one year to my parents’ summer cottage in Michigan where I used to visit every summer over a period of many years. It is a lovely novel, and was perfect for my carefully selected stack of summer cottage books. Then I lost track of Hood's work for a while. When I read her 2007 novel, “The Knitting Circle,” I had mixed feelings. I knew that she had suffered the terrible personal tragedy of the death of her four year old daughter, Grace, in 2002, and that she couldn’t write or even read for some time afterward; I couldn't imagine how utterly devastating that must have been. She says that knitting saved her life. So this novel about knitting and friendship and support was very personally meaningful to her, and therapeutic as well. Unfortunately, the novel was not well written. Recently I picked up and read her new novel, “The Obituary Writer” (W. W. Norton, 2013). It has an intriguing plot, and utilizes that somewhat shopworn device of writing about the stories of two characters separated by several decades (from the early 20th century to the 1960s), who gradually turn out to have a connection. The problem is that the connection is not that interesting. The first story, that of Vivien, whose dearly beloved married lover, David, disappeared during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, is the more intriguing one; the second story, that of Claire in the 1960s, is less so. The most interesting thing about Claire’s story is the way it illuminates how many women at that time were trapped in traditional marriages in which the husband made all the decisions; further, women were treated by many as second class citizens. There is nothing new about these insights, but Hood portrays the situation vividly. For example, when Claire is in the hospital, the doctors keep talking with her husband about her health, rather than talking with her directly. But aside from this aspect, I was disappointed with Claire’s part of the story, and ultimately with the novel itself.

R.I.P. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

This morning I felt a small shock when I read of writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's death at the age of 85. This author's work was among the very first to bring the world of India to Western readers. As someone who grew up in India myself, I still remember reading her best known (a winner of the Booker Prize) novel, "Heat and Dust," published in 1975, and several others of her novels and short story collections. This fiction is full of the sights, sounds, and smells of India, as well as of the United States and other settings. Even more, it often portrays the interweaving of, and sometimes clashes between, various cultures. Because of Jhabvala's own life experience as a person born and raised in Germany, who married an Indian man and lived in India for about 20 years, and then lived in New York, she moved between cultures and often wrote about other "refugees"(her word for herself)/immigrants/world citizens such as herself. She wrote prolifically, including many stories published in the New Yorker. But she became perhaps most well known for her screenplays for the famous Merchant Ivory films. She worked with the late producer Ismail Merchant and the director James Ivory on 22 films in four decades. I love these beautiful films, often based on classic novels by such authors as Henry James and E.M. Forster. They include "A Room with a View," "Howard's End," "The Golden Bowl," "Remains of the Day," and "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge." I want to pay tribute to this wonderful writer who introduced so many people to so many worlds during her long career. (Thanks to the New York Times obituary for some of the information here.)

"The Transit of Venus," by Shirley Hazzard

I have written here about sometimes going back to books I loved when I read them at a much younger age, and finding I just can’t read them again. Sometimes this is because I realize they aren’t as good as I thought they were, back then. Sometimes it is because the books are just too emotionally exhausting to re-read. In contrast, today I write about the experience of going back to read a book I read years ago, and finding I appreciate it even more than I did at the time. This was the case with Shirley Hazzard’s novel “The Transit of Venus” (Penguin, 1990, originally published 1980), which I recently picked up on a whim and read on a recent conference trip. I had read the book soon after it originally came out in 1980, and I vaguely remember liking it fine, but not as much as I thought I should, given the reviews and praise it garnered back then. Re-reading it now, I was struck by the compelling characters and story, and most of all, by the gorgeous writing. What a tour de force! The novel tells the story of two sisters who emigrate from Australia to England in the 1950s. Their lives become entangled with those of several men who love them; in some cases the love is reciprocated, in some cases not, and in some cases their relationships change over the years. Their lives are touched by war, by financial problems, by prejudice against women, and by the changing times. One sister, Caro, is the true, calm but often suffering, deeply and almost magically interesting center of the novel; she is a truly original character, and one that a reader can’t stop trying to figure out. This is one of those novels that one feels, as one is reading, has a deep connection to life itself, with all of its vicissitudes. And throughout, the reader knows she is in the hands of a literary master. I am so glad I rediscovered this novel, took a chance on it, and was overwhelmed by how good it is.