RIP Paul Auster

“And that's why books are never going to die. It's impossible. It's the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this. So the book doesn't only belong to the writer, it belongs to the reader as well, and then together you make it what it is.”. Paul Auster Author, Screenwriter and Film Director 1947- 2024

"Life Span," by Molly Giles

I am of course drawn to writing set in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. For a while I have vaguely known of the Bay Area writer and writing professor (at San Francisco State University and elsewhere), Molly Giles, but had read little of her work. Her newest book, titled "Life Span: Impressions of a Lifetime Spent Crossing and Recrossing the Golden Gate Bridge" (WTAW Press, 2024) caught my attention, partly because crossing the Golden Gate Bridge several times a week has for decades been part of my life too. I raced through this book with much interest. The book is a sort of memoir in episodes. There is one entry for every year, beginning in 1945 when Giles was three years old, and continuing until 2023. Entries range from one to four pages, and each is an evocative vignette. Giles always wanted to be a writer, and although she has published several books and many stories, it has been an uphill battle for her, often discouraging, yet clearly fulfilling. The other main strand or theme explored in this book is that of her relationships with family over the decades. She had a somewhat fraught relationship with her parents; she has also had a series of partners who all disappoint her in many ways (although her current partner seems better than the rest). It is somewhat painful to see how she continues to be attracted to one difficult and unreliable man after another. Her relationship with her daughters is also at times fraught, but within the usual mother-daughter range, and improving with time; these daughters are the sources of real joy in her life. Although I was not initially drawn to the idea of depicting a life through these mini-narratives, I found the structure and story quite compelling. And even though (or partly because?) Giles is open, sometimes painfully so, about her own shortcomings, insecurities, and mistakes, I found myself both admiring and liking her, as well as the book. I will look for more of her work.

RIP Edna O'Brien

The Irish writer Edna O'Brien died 7/27/24 at the age of 93. Her fiction focused on women's lives and feelings, about which she wrote with passion. Her writing was sometimes controversial, especially in Ireland, because of its frankness about women's sexuality and love affairs. Her first book, "Country Girls" (1960), for example, was initially banned in Ireland. As Hillel Italie wrote for the Associated Press after O'Brien's death, "Few so concretely and poetically challenged Ireland's religious, sexual and gender boundaries. Few wrote so fiercely, so sensually about loneliness, rebellion, desire and persecution." Nevertheless, O'Brien's writing was prolific, very popular, and prize-winning.