Learning More About the Chinese People

The university where I teach, along with most American universities, has seen a huge surge in Chinese students over the past four years or so. Much of this surge -- after many many years of having few if any Chinese students -- is due to the new affluent upper class in China. It has been very interesting to learn from and about these students, and to learn more about China. To learn even more, I have been "reading up" on China a bit, albeit in a rather informal way. One interesting article I read recently was titled "The Grand Tour," and appeared in the April 18, 2011 issue of The New Yorker. If you are interested, you can read it at the web address below (or just Google it).

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/18/110418fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=1

This article tells of the increasing number of Chinese tourists around the world (a relatively new phenomenon, with the aforementioned increase in affluence allowing more world travel), but particularly in Europe. The author of the article, Evan Osnos, joined a Chinese tour group (most Chinese tourists travel in groups) in Europe, and writes astutely and informatively about what he learned during the tour. The tour guide seemed to do a good job of orienting and advising his travelers, although he passed on a few questionable stereotypes about Europeans. The tour tended to pack a lot of cities and a lot of sightseeing into a short time period. The group members were genuinely interested in learning about differences between China and Europe regarding culture, thinking, and lifestyles. Among other things, they compared the benefits of China and of the West; some felt that China's one-party system allowed the government to get things done quickly, something that didn't always happen in the West. On the other hand, some travelers felt that the Western system allowed young people more freedom to choose their futures. The travelers were an interesting mixture of being frugal and being willing to pay for luxury goods that would be much more expensive in China. Osnos had some conversations about the United States with some of his fellow travelers, in which it was diplomatically but clearly intimated that China would soon overtake the U.S. as a world power. This eight page article just describes one author's experience over a short time period, but I found the article very interesting and revealing. I will continue to read about China, in academic journals, magazines, memoirs, and fiction.

Guest Post: What My Nephew is Reading

After I posted on “Books In My Family” on 4/24/11, my nephew Eric, who is in his late 20s, responded with an interesting email, portions of which -- with his consent –- I am posting below as a guest blog. I love that he feels the same way about our family heritage of reading, and I am so appreciative that he is kind enough to give me credit for having a part in his being a lifelong reader. (Readers of this blog won’t be surprised to learn that I was the auntie that always read to the kids, took the kids to bookstores, and gave them books for every birthday and holiday and sometimes just for the fun of it.) I also always like hearing what people are reading, so I appreciate Eric’s eclectic list of what he has read this year, and what he is planning to read. You can see his interests in the environment and in religion, among his many areas of interest, both alternative and mainstream. I remember, for example, that when he was in college he once called me to tell me he was taking a course in Russian literature, was reading "The Brothers Karamazov," and wanted to discuss it; as you can imagine, that made me happy! So, without further ado, here is Eric’s email.

“I particularly enjoyed your post about 'Books in the Family.' I felt the same way the last time I visited, and really enjoyed browsing through Granddad's books. In a way I felt like it brought him into the present, being surrounded by the books that informed and inspired his life. I thought it would be fun to share with you what I have read/been reading so far this year:

PrairyErth (A Deep Map): An Epic History of the Tallgrass Prairie Country - William Least-Heat Moon
Zeitoun - Dave Eggers
Prayer and Modern Man - Jacques Ellul
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology - Neil Postman
All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot
Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values - Yi-Fu Tuan
The Naked Anabaptist - Stuart Murray
Walden - H. D. Thoreau
Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene

My plans for Spring/Summer reading are Flannery O'Connor's Complete Short Stories, her Habit of Being (letters), a theology book about the role of Catholicism in her life and writing, and finally a book on Church history.

Thanks again, Aunt Stephanie, for encouraging me since childhood to be a life long reader; it certainly has enriched my life.”

Unsettling Coincidences

On two occasions during the one and a quarter years I have been writing this blog, I have read a review or blurb about a book that I have just written a blogpost about and found that it used the same adjective or phrase that I used. In both cases, this has unsettled me. I have not been sure whether to feel validated and “on target” or, on the other hand, unoriginal. Worse, I have been concerned that readers of my blog may have also seen the overlap, and may wonder if I am unduly reliant on reviews when I write my own “reviews.” This last question is a concern because I conceive of this blog as a way of expressing my own responses to what I read. Of course my posts are informed, directly or more often indirectly, by all the reading I have done over the years. I do read many reviews of many books in the course of my newspaper and magazine reading, and the reviews help me choose which books to read in the first place. I generally don’t read reviews of those books after I read the book and before I post about it, although I do so occasionally, as often a book is reviewed by different publications over a period of months and even sometimes years. Let me be specific. In my post on Ann Packer’s “Swim Back to Me,” posted just yesterday, I used the term “heartbreaking” but said that the stories offered redemption as well. This morning while reading the 4/24/11 issue of The New York Times Book Review (which had been on my “to read” pile) during breakfast, I saw an ad for the book that included a quote from an “O, The Oprah Magazine” review using the sentence “Ann Packer can break your heart – and she can mend it, too.” I do not read “O,” and I don’t believe I had seen this blurb elsewhere. Granted, neither “O” nor I was being particularly original with this word (heartbreaking) and this concept (breaking readers’ hearts and then mending them, or in my words, offering redemption). And I know that (as I posted about on 1/14/11), there is a limited universe of words and phrases to use in book reviews. Nevertheless, it was an unwelcome surprise for me to see the similarity of phrase and concept, and made me feel that I should be careful not to fall into using the most immediate phrases that occur to me when thinking about my response to a book.

"Swim Back to Me"

“Swim Back to Me” (Knopf, 2011) is a collection of short stories by Ann Packer, author of the well-received 2002 novel, “The Dive from Clausen’s Pier.” That novel was riveting, and these stories are as well. These stories display even more complex, mature writing than the novel did. Every single story is not only compelling but also very real and very wise. The fact that the stories are set in Northern California, especially Palo Alto and Berkeley, is of course of interest to me, and the stories certainly draw on certain aspects of those locales. But really they transcend any certain setting. The longest story (actually a novella) is the first one, “Walk for Mankind,” narrated by a young, insecure boy, Richard, whose mother has just left his professor father and who has become enmeshed in an increasingly complicated and ambiguous friendship with Sasha, a girl who recently moved to his Palo Alto neighborhood, and with her friendly and welcoming but somewhat odd family. The story is beautifully observant and acutely painful in the way the world of early adolescence often is. The last story, “Things Said or Done,” unexpectedly returns some forty years later to the character Sasha and her family, showing us the reverberations of the personalities from, and the events set in motion in, the earlier story. The characters in all six stories are sharply drawn. Marriages and families are the focus in most of the stories. These stories are all heartbreaking, even tragic, in various ways, yet portray redemption, or at least the possibility of redemption, as well. As an aside: I recently heard the author interviewed on the radio, and was quite impressed by her, as I was by these emotionally engaging, insightful, beautifully written stories.

Tribute to a Dear Friend

Today I attended the memorial service for my dear friend of 40 years, C. Her death is a huge loss for me and for so many of her family and friends, as was evidenced by the beautiful and heartfelt tributes and stories at the memorial service. I write about her here today because she was one of my best "reading friends" (among the many wonderful aspects of our friendship); I wrote here about her, and the love for books that we shared, on 2/16/10. She was also kind enough to contribute, at my invitation, two illuminating guest blogs, one on re-reading favorite books (on 10/17/10) and one on her love of Japan and haiku (on 10/18/10). In addition, she was very supportive of this blog, not only reading it regularly and sending encouraging comments, but also recommending it to her many friends. Over the 40 years of our friendship, we mostly lived on different coasts, but were always in close contact, with visits, letters, emails, and phone calls flowing back and forth across the country. We often talked about books, recommended books to each other, and gave each other books. Just a few days ago, I thought about a certain book: "Oh, C. would like this book...I have to tell her about it," and then sadly remembered that I can no longer do so. She was a very special person -- brilliant, high-achieving, kind, caring, talented, artistic, well-traveled, and more -- and a great friend. I miss her -- and will continue to miss her -- more than I can say.

"Abide With Me"

I very much liked Elizabeth Strout’s 2008 collection of interconnected stories, “Olive Kittredge.” I have now just listened to her 2006 novel, “Abide With Me” (Random House, 2006) on CD. It is the story of a young minister, Tyler Caskey, who works in a small town in New England in the 1950s. His wife has died, and one of his small daughters is having a very hard time adjusting to losing her mother. Although Tyler is popular with his congregation, a confluence of events causes him to feel beset, worn down, and less confident of his place with this group of people in this small town. The author expertly demonstrates how a good situation can become shaky and threatened, almost before anyone realizes what is happening, and how generally good people can make very human mistakes and not realize the consequences of those mistakes. Tyler is both an admirable and likable character who struggles with his humanity and that of others. He is deeply connected to God and committed to his ministry, yet has his weaknesses, doubts, and fears. The story is about God, the spirit, human nature, family, communities, the toll of grief, the difficulties of adjusting to change, the vulnerability of children, the dangers of gossip, and more. Strout’s characters are very well drawn, believable, sad, and all too human.

Another Memoir from the Restaurant World

I have written several times – e.g., 2/4/10, 6/29/10, and 8/31/10 – on food and restaurant literature, including memoirs. “Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef” (Random House, 2011) is Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir about her life and her work as the owner/chef of Prune, a well-regarded New York City restaurant. But long before she gets to the part about Prune, she writes of her life in food, beginning with the feasts her parents would put on for dozens of people, and proceeding to her first restaurant job at the age of thirteen, her travels, and her years of work in restaurants and in the catering business. She also writes of her life and relationships, although these portrayals are odd in some ways: she rarely sees or writes about her parents after they divorced when she was a teenager, she only stayed close to one of her four siblings, and she writes almost too candidly about the serious problems in her relationship with her husband. (She doesn’t mention being divorced from him, but at the end of the book she intimates that divorce may be approaching.) She writes of her life as a mother of two young children and the owner of a hugely time-consuming restaurant, and of the difficult issue for women chefs of whether they can commit to this grueling business and still have personal lives, including children. One has to admire Hamilton’s toughness and can-do attitude, and her belief that just working harder and being willing to do without sleep are what it takes to succeed as a working mother; still, I wish she had acknowledged that the problems should not just be for each individual woman to solve, but are partly societal, and that there is a systemic lack of support for working women and families. Hamilton is a good writer who has an MFA degree from the University of Michigan; she has always written, and derived comfort and satisfaction from writing. The book could have been edited a bit more carefully, however; for example, the author overuses – almost like a tic – the phrase “kind of,” enough to make the reader (this reader, anyway) repeatedly cringe. Overall, though, this is an interesting and readable memoir about a strong, motivated woman who learned early on that her passion was food, and feeding people well.