Sarah Orne Jewett

Posting on 4/25/10 about Willa Cather reminded me of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909), a pioneer who influenced Cather by her example of writing about women's lives and concerns, and writing vividly and lovingly about rural and small town life and about nature. Jewett lived in various places in New England, especially Maine, and her novels and stories are set in New England as well. Unfortunately some have used this fact to label her as "merely" a sort of quaint "regional" writer; she was in fact much more than that. (Who labels William Faulkner, for example, whose work is mostly set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, as merely a regional writer?) Jewett's most well-known novel is "The Country of the Pointed Firs" (1896), more a collection of sketches than a traditional novel, but carefully constructed for all that (despite later insertions of related short stories by various editors). The main character and narrator is an unnamed woman writer who goes to the small village of Dunnet Landing to work on her writing, and soon gets involved with the lives and stories of the local people, especially the women. In some ways this book reminds me of the English writer Elizabeth Gaskell's "Cranford," which I wrote about here on 4/20/10; both take place in very small towns, and tell the stories of their various inhabitants, mostly women, especially older women, in a low-key way that soon draws readers in. Both novels could be labeled "gentle," but that adjective should not be allowed to minimize the way that both - in their understated ways - include some dramatic events and compelling characters, and should not allow us to dismiss the emotions and relationships of those characters. Jewett's writing is not for everyone, as some may find it old-fashioned. But I find "The Country of the Pointed Firs" a lovely book full of human interest as well as beautifully descriptive observations of New England landscapes.

Joyce Carol Oates and Raymond Smith

Yesterday I wrote about the special fiction issue of The Atlantic (May 2010) that is available now. One of the pieces in that issue, as I mentioned in my post, is an essay by Joyce Carol Oates about the painful time following the 2008 death of her husband of 48 years, Raymond Smith. I found this essay heartbreaking and fascinating. Oates describes how she mourned her husband with a kind of stunned grief, and found that the only thing that saved her was her teaching and her efforts to put out what she decided would be the last issue of the Ontario Review, the literary journal she and Smith had produced and edited together for 34 years as a shared labor of love. She did not feel she could continue the Ontario Review without Smith, but she knew he would want her to finish and send the last issue, which he had been working on even in the hospital in the days before his death. This Atlantic essay is a preview of a book on Oates' loss, titled "The Siege: A Widow's Story," to appear in February 2011. I can't help but be reminded of Joan Didion's compelling 2005 book, "The Year of Magical Thinking," written on the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne. Oates and Didion are both such great writers, each in her own way so emblematic of her time and so influential; it is of note that they both suffered their great losses within a few years of each other, and that both have written so openly and so wrenchingly about their bereavement. An interesting postscript is that Oates has very recently remarried, to a scientist also teaching at Princeton, and thus is starting a new phase in her life. One more note: For Oates' readers, I recommend a website written and administered by a librarian at the university where I teach, Randall Souther, called "Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Home Page" (http://jco.usfca.edu/).

The Atlantic Fiction 2010

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer of the major magazines publish fiction. The Atlantic, although no longer publishing fiction regularly in its monthly issues, now publishes an annual fiction supplement, which for subscribers is a separate publication, and for newsstand buyers is bound into the magazine. The current (May 2010) fiction issue is now available. It contains seven very different stories, including those by Jerome Charyn and T. C. Boyle, and seven poems, including one by Jane Hirshfield. Also included are an essay by Richard Bausch (about whose recent collection of short stories I posted on 4/10/10), speaking out against writer's manuals; an interview with Paul Theroux about e-books; and a heartrending essay by Joyce Carol Oates about the painful loss of her husband of 48 years, Raymond Smith. Kudos to The Atlantic for its continued commitment to publishing fiction, poetry, and literature-related essays!

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month (for more information, see www.poets.org/npm). Although I am far more a reader of fiction than of poetry, I do enjoy poetry as well, and find it a source of inspiration, solace, and beauty. I was reminded of this yesterday when I was teaching a short poetry unit to my writing students, and found myself thoroughly enjoying discussing such poems as Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" (always a favorite of young people), Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise," and Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" with my students. One student, S., had written a wonderful poem that she shared with me and the class, to great applause and appreciation; this was especially impressive because English is her third language. I've also been thinking about poetry lately because several of the poets/professors at my university have recently received major awards and other recognitions; I would like to congratulate D.A. Powell, Aaron Shurin, and Dean Rader, as well as my longtime colleague and friend, poet Darrell Schramm, for their publications and achievements. And just tonight, I attended a poetry reading at the university in which one of the poets who read was our program assistant, Andrea Wise; she read some lovely, evocative poems. For those who would like more poetry in their lives, I recommend NPR's The Writer's Almanac, which can be subscribed to at http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org; subscribing brings a poem as well as brief literary notes to your email inbox daily; it's a lovely way to start the day! Finally, I want to mention a poem that means a lot to me: "Otherwise," by Jane Kenyon. I am not sure what the copyright issues are, so I won't include it here, but it is easy to find by Googling it.

"Writing Ann Arbor: A Literary Anthology"

One of my birthday gifts from my generous friend M. was "Writing Ann Arbor: A Literary Anthology" (University of Michigan Press, 2005), edited by Laurence Goldstein. M. has lived in Ann Arbor most of her adult life, and she of course knows that I lived in the Ann Arbor area for my last two years of high school, and have visited it often since then; also, my own 2009 book ("Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator") was published by the University of Michigan Press; so, for many reasons, this book was a welcome gift. Ann Arbor is known as a beautiful and progressive college town and a great place to live. This anthology contains essays, histories, memoirs, stories, and poems from the mid-nineteenth century through the present. Some of the contributors are or were famous University of Michigan alumni or faculty (e.g., philosopher/education theorist John Dewey, playwright Arthur Miller, political activist and later politician Tom Hayden, poet Frank O'Hara, feminist poet and novelist Marge Piercy, food editor and critic Ruth Reichl, novelist Charles Baxter, and poets Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, who were married to each other), and some are less known. One of my favorite pieces is author/editor Sven Birkerts' story of working for a couple of years at an offshoot of the original Ann Arbor Borders Bookstore (long before Borders became a sprawling empire); in particular, he tells the story of his meeting and trying to impress the Nobel Prize winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, who was then a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and who came into the shop. "Writing Ann Arbor" is a special pleasure to dip into for anyone who has a connection with or interest in Ann Arbor, or with the writers represented in the book, but any reader will find much to enjoy in the book.

Remembering Saul Bellow

There is a fascinating selection of Saul Bellow's letters to other writers and literary figures - including Philip Roth, William Faulkner, Bernard Malamud, John Berryman, John Cheever, Martin Amis, and Cynthia Ozick - in the April 26, 2010 issue of The New Yorker. The letters span over 50 years, from 1942 to 2004, shortly before Bellow's death in 2005. As I read them, I was reminded of how much I had admired and liked some of Bellow's novels during my college years, especially "The Adventures of Augie March", and - best of all - "Herzog." The latter was perfectly suited to my early-20s philosophizing years, when I was - in the way of many people of that age - trying to figure out "the meaning of life." I didn't read much Bellow after that, perhaps because I was busy discovering all the wonderful women writers who were not taught in my college classes. Some years later - perhaps in the 1980s - Bellow came to speak at the university where I teach, and afterward, was honored at a luncheon. I remember being in awe of having a meal in the same room with the great Saul Bellow, although not at the same table (I was too junior a faculty member then for that honor!). The only words we exchanged were a phrase or two, but it was an exciting and memorable occasion for me nevertheless.

"The Curse of the Appropriate Man"

At a recent library sale, I spotted a short story collection titled "The Curse of the Appropriate Man" (Harcourt, 2004), by Lynn Freed. I couldn't resist buying it, partly because I had read and liked other books by Freed, a South African author who lives here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and partly because the title was so intriguing. Some of the stories take place in South Africa and some in the United States, some are about poor black servants and some about sophisticated but often restless and unhappy whites in both South Africa and the U.S. Issues of race, class, and gender underlie many of the stories. The women characters in particular seem to have trouble settling into their lives; they are dissatisfied seekers and yet seem resigned to their inability to find or create better lives. The title story explores a topic that many women are very familiar with: the attraction women often feel to the "bad boys," the outlaws, the men who may not treat them well or offer stable lives, but who provide excitement and a feeling of being fully alive. Women know these men aren't good for them, but can't resist them either, and they may find more "appropriate" men dull. Freed is an excellent writer, the author of several novels, perhaps most notably "Home Ground" (Mariner, 1987), which I read and was impressed by many years ago. More recently, I very much liked her book of autobiographical/literary essays (a genre I am quite partial to, as readers of this blog have probably noticed), "Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home: Life on the Page" (Harcourt, 2005), which I posted about on 2/10/10.