Literature in the Current Issue of The New Yorker

The New Yorker is, among other things, a literary magazine, one of the reasons I like it so much (as I have posted to say before). The current issue (June 13 & 20, 2011) is particularly focused on literature, with three short stories (rather than the usual one), a literary memoir, and a special section, "Starting Out," comprised of short pieces by various authors about their early years. For me, the highlights are as follows: 1. Jhumpa Lahiri's memoiristic essay, "Trading Stories," about how she became a reader and then a writer, starting in childhood, and how she always felt torn between her Indian and American identities. 2. Jeffrey Eugenides' story, "Asleep in the Lord," about a young American man who goes to do volunteer work in Mother Teresa's home for dying poor people in Calcutta, and about what he learns about himself there. 3. Lauren Groff's wrenching story, "Above and Below," about a female graduate student who loses her connection to academe, becomes destitute and homeless, and suffers much hardship. 4. Salvatore Scibona's short piece about how he disliked school and assigned reading, but somehow heard about and was accepted at St. John's College, which utilized the Great Books approach, and was challenged, exhilarated, and educated through learning Greek and reading "The Iliad," Copernicus, Einstein, Hegel, Darwin, Baudelaire and much much more.

Memorable Villains in Literature

Here is another list in what is becoming an irregular "series" of lists of things memorable in literature. Today's list is of a few memorable villains.

-Iago in “Othello” (Shakespeare)
-Edmund in “King Lear” (Shakespeare)
-Pap Finn in “Huckleberry Finn” (Twain)
-Robert Lovelace in “Clarissa” (Richardson)
-Clare Quilty in “Lolita” (Nabokov)
-Bill Sikes in “Oliver Twist” (Dickens)
-Alec d’Urberville in “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” (Hardy)
-Mr. Hyde in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Stevenson)
-Mr. Kurtz in “Heart of Darkness” (Conrad)
-Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca” (Du Maurier)
-The White Witch in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” (Lewis)
-The Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (Baum)

"Equal Affections"

At the same time that I happened to pick up David Leavitt’s novel “The Body of Jonah Boyd,” which I posted about on 6/8/11, I picked up another of his novels, an earlier one titled “Equal Affections” (Perennial, 1989). This story is also -- like most of his work -- about a family: Louise and Nat, their daughter April, and their son Danny. Louise is sick throughout most of the book; she is a loving but difficult wife and mother. Her marriage to Nat is loving but fraught. April is a semi-famous lesbian folksinger. Danny is a gay lawyer whose partner, Walter, is also a lawyer; they have their ups and downs, but overall a great relationship. There are other family members, friends, and lovers featured, but the main focus is always on the relationships among the four original family members. Like most families, they love each other deeply, and take for granted that nothing can break their connection, yet they squabble, offend each other, are sometimes out of touch for a while, then reconcile. Sometimes they are baffled by each other, but there is a warmth among them as well. This story, although lacking the mystery aspect of “Jonah,” is a richer, denser story with a more genuine feel to it. The novel kept me reading, and I enjoyed it. If it turns up in your life, say at a library sale or at a summer cottage, do consider reading it, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone’s going out of her/his way to find it.

Teacher, Practice What You Preach!

Among other things, I teach writing. I teach my students about the writing process, including all the things writers sometimes do on the way to a finished product. These can include reading, thinking, discussing ideas with others, brainstorming, freewriting, jotting down notes, outlining, drafting, getting feedback on early drafts from others, redrafting, and more. I firmly believe in this process, yet when I am doing my own writing projects, I sometimes have to remind myself to “practice what I preach,” or in this case, “practice what I teach.” I have recently been stuck on getting started on a certain piece that I have committed to write, casting about for how to focus the piece. A few days ago I decided to try the exercise of freewriting, which involves simply writing freely about a topic, without thinking too much, without worrying about logic or felicity, and most of all, without stopping. As I say to my students, “Just keep that pen moving!” It is a kind of priming of the pump; the idea is that the very act of writing freely and without prior plan or structure will bring ideas to the surface that one can then mine for use in the writing project. Although I often have my students do this exercise, I almost never do it myself. Well, sure enough, as I was writing away, letting words flow onto the page in an unregulated stream, my ideas started to take shape, and I began to see a way out of my tangle and block. And then as my focus became clearer, I started to get excited about the potential of the piece. When I finally stopped and read over what I had written, I could focus and organize the ideas I found there. I am still a long, long way from a finished piece, but now I know where I am going with it, and more or less how I will get there, which makes all the difference. I am happy about this, of course, and also slightly sheepish about the fact that I had forgotten or neglected this useful strategy that I blithely teach my students but tend to ignore in my own writing; I should listen to myself more often!

Memorable Meals in Fiction

Writers of fiction often write vividly and sensuously about meals. I have posted about memorable characters (3/6/11), memorable settings (3/11/11), and memorable children (5/2/11) in fiction; today I list a few memorable meals.

-Proust’s madeleine with tea in “Swann’s Way”
-The Morkan sisters’ dinner party for the Feast of the Epiphany in “The Dead” (Joyce)
-Mrs. Ramsey’s dinner for family and friends in “To the Lighthouse” (Woolf)
-The reunion meals of the six characters in “The Waves” (Woolf)
-The famous sensual, seductive meal in “Tom Jones” (Fielding)
-Hemingway eating oysters in “A Moveable Feast”
-The March girls taking their Christmas meal to the poor family in “Little Women” (Alcott)
-Jo’s botched meal in “Little Women” (Alcott)
-The dinner party in “Larry’s Party” (Shields)
-All the meals in Laurie Colwin’s novels

Glorious Literary Paris in the Twenties

Woody Allen’s new movie, “Midnight in Paris,” is great fun for those who love literature and especially for those who read about and dream about the golden days of American writers in Paris in the 1920s. The protagonist of the film, a screenwriter and would-be novelist (and clearly a stand-in for Allen himself) named Gil, is visiting Paris and completely enchanted with the city and with his visions of staying there and writing, just like his 1920s-era literary heroes. Magically, at midnight one night, and then for many nights after, he is picked up by a vintage car and transported into the 1920s, talking, drinking, and dancing with writers such as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Djuna Barnes, and with artists such as Picasso and Dali. Gil is dazed and then can’t believe his good fortune, as he moves through a golden haze of 1920s Parisian pleasures, just the way we all imagine it was. The portrayal of Hemingway is a hilarious parody; the film Hemingway speaks in an exaggerated version of the way the real Hemingway wrote: in short, forceful sentences about how to be a real man and a real writer. The movie is clearly Allen’s love letter to Paris and to what we all imagine was a magical time in literary history. Gil eventually has an epiphany that we all think the past was a golden age and our present is always dull in comparison; this epiphany seems tacked on, and in no way detracts from the gorgeous and beautifully filmed portrayal of 1920s literary Paris. I wouldn’t say this is the greatest film Allen has made, but it is very enjoyable, and fulfills a fantasy many lovers of literature have had about living the literary life in Paris.

"The Body of Jonah Boyd"

I stumbled across and read one of David Leavitt’s less famous books, the novel “The Body of Jonah Boyd” (Bloomsbury, 2004). It is, as most of his books are, about a family, and the setting is -- as is common in his novels -- California, in a college town. The center of the story is the wife and mother of the family, Nancy Wright. The story is narrated by Professor Ernest Wright’s secretary, Denny. Because Denny is the secretary (and mistress) to Ernest and a sort of companion to Nancy, she is with the family a lot, but is often relegated to the sidelines of the action. She both cherishes and resents her ambiguous position. There is a complicated story about friends of the family and one of the sons, Ben, who becomes a writer. The main part of the story happens in 1969; the sequel happens thirty years later. There was, I assume, supposed to be a bit of mystery as to what happened during this interval, but the mystery wasn't mysterious enough to cause any real suspense. The revelations it offered were not surprising, and in fact reminded me of the plot turns of at least two other novels I've read. I found this novel a quick, fairly enjoyable read, and that is about all I can say for it. Don't bother reading it.