No Writing Without Reading

I am a firm believer that one cannot be a good, let alone great, writer without being a constant reader. It astonishes me to hear of people who want to be writers but don’t actually enjoy reading much, and sometimes proudly admit as much. Imagine the equivalent situations of someone who learns to play a musical instrument without listening to music, or someone who paints without looking at works of art in museums, galleries, walls of murals, or books. Yes, the basic content of art is life itself, but one needs to see and hear what others have made of this content throughout the history of music, art, and literature: the great themes, myths, and metaphors. And regarding form: one has to read a lot -- and I mean a LOT -- to absorb the rhythms of the language, the grammatical patterns, the riches of vocabulary, and the glorious combinations of words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that form the best that language has to offer.

"The Paris Wife"

Hemingway, Hemingway, Hemingway! I haven’t thought much about Ernest Hemingway for years, but in the past few months he has re-entered my consciousness several times, through his novel “The Sun Also Rises,” which I re-read and then posted about on 2/27/11; the film “Paris at Midnight,” which I posted about on 6/9/11; an article about him in an airline magazine, of all places, which I posted about on 6/29/11; and now the bestselling novelized version of his first wife’s life, “The Paris Wife” (Ballantine, 2011), by Paula McLain. This novel recaps some of the information we all know by now about the Hemingway years in Paris in the 20s, but it adds (in a fictionalized version) much information and many insights both about Hemingway and about his wife Hadley. They had a lot going for them, including a child, and it was in some ways a golden time for them as well as for their group of friends, but Hemingway’s writing always came first, and Hadley was often lonely. And after a few years, he was somehow able to justify in his own mind that it was acceptable for him to have an affair with a dazzling woman, a free spirit, whom both Ernest and Hadley had been close to. The affair broke up the marriage. Although the novel gives Hemingway his due, and presents a rounded portrait of his strengths and weaknesses, finally we see that he was essentially selfish in feeling he should be able to have everything he wanted, no matter the cost to those around him. This novel is well written and fast-paced, a literary page turner.

"Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object"

On 1/21/11, I wrote about the wonderful author Laurie Colwin, who died too young, but not before writing several novels and short story collections. I recently picked up her novel “Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object” (Penguin, 1975), which I had read years ago but decided to re-read. This slim volume tells the story of Olly, whose husband Sam –- a charming and daring man -- has died in a boat accident. She mourns him desperately, and is both supported by and frustrated by her relatives and his. As she reflects on her marriage to Sam, she realizes that though she loved him very much, he had serious problems too. Olly, still young, gradually regains some of her zest for life, and there is actually a happy ending that the reader can see coming before Olly does. Much of the novel is about family relationships, always an interesting topic for me. It is also about young, educated, upper middle class people at a certain time period -- the early 70s -- for whom, despite all problems and tragedies, there was a sense that all would eventually work out well. This was not so much a sense of entitlement (although this played into it) as a kind of optimism and confidence they inhaled (no, not that kind of inhaling, although there is a bit of that too) from their privileged and wide-open environment. This sense gave Olly her resilience. "Shine On..." was enjoyable to read, although a little less impressive than I remembered it. Still, it is well written and has much to offer.

An Airline Magazine Surprise

Many of us dismiss airline magazines as sources only of information about such airline matters as maps of terminals and lists of snacks for sale, along with a few fluffy travel articles; the magazines are generally good only for leafing through for five or ten minutes before settling in with one's book or perhaps a movie or a nap. However, on a very recent trip, I was pleasantly surprised by the June 2011 issue of American Airline’s “American Way” magazine. It included an interesting, fairly thoughtful article about Hemingway, tied to this year’s being the 50th anniversary of his death, as well as an editorial about Beryl Markham. Granted, the Markham piece was mostly about her aviation history rather than about her literary work, but still, I was pleased that the issue devoted this amount of space to literary figures.

Memorable Deaths in Literature

Another "memorables" list, this time "Memorable Deaths in Literature":

-Romeo and Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” (Shakespeare)
-Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes in “Hamlet” (Shakespeare)
-Nell in “The Old Curiosity Shop” (Dickens)
-Beth in “Little Women” (Alcott)
-Anna Karenina in “Anna Karenina” (Tolstoy)
-Lily Bart in “The House of Mirth” (Wharton)
-Emma Bovary in “Madame Bovary” (Flaubert)
-the children in “Jude the Obscure” (Hardy)
-Lennie in “Of Mice and Men” (Steinbeck)
-Quentin Compson in “The Sound and the Fury” (Faulkner)
-Roberta in “An American Tragedy” (Dreiser)
-Dimmesdale in “The Scarlet Letter” (Hawthorne)
-Ralph Touchett in “The Portrait of a Lady” (James)
-Catherine in “A Farewell to Arms” (Hemingway)
-Myrtle Wilson in “The Great Gatsby” (Fitzgerald)
-Phineas in “A Separate Peace” (Knowles)
-Tom Robinson and Bob Ewell in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Lee)
-Simon and Piggy in “Lord of the Flies” (Golding)
-Owen Meany in “A Prayer for Owen Meany” (Irving)
-The sisters in “The Virgin Suicides” (Eugenides)
-Old Yeller in “Old Yeller” (Gipson)
-Charlotte in “Charlotte’s Web” (White)

"A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman"

The English writer Margaret Drabble is best known for her many novels written over a long career, several of which I have read and enjoyed. She is also a biographer of writers and a scholar of English literature. She has written far less short fiction, but readers are fortunate that the short stories she has written have been collected in a new book, “A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011). Most of Drabble’s fiction, long and short, focuses on women characters, usually professional women in England. The stories are feminist in a non-explicit, non-didactic, moderate, English way. In this collection, most of the main characters are working through some issue or conflict, often related to being a woman in today’s world, and trying to understand their own feelings about the issue at hand. For example: How does it feel when your verbally cruel husband dies, and is it OK that your main feeling is relief and freedom? How does it feel when you think you might be dying, and you are so afraid for your young children to experience their mother’s death and absence? How does it feel to be so in love with a house and a way of life that you don’t care which man you have to marry to get it? How does it feel to allow your imagination to get too involved in the affairs of a man you met briefly on a train, and what does it mean that you allowed this to happen? How does it feel to be involved in a long term affair but know that you will never be able to be together more than the occasional meeting or brief vacation? How does it feel to break someone’s heart without even realizing you are doing it? The reader cannot help getting involved in these situations and dilemmas. And, as it perhaps goes without saying for a writer of Drabble’s stature, the writing is quietly assured and quite beautiful. I have the feeling that Drabble isn’t as well known in the U.S. as she should be; readers who have not read her work, please consider doing so; this collection of stories would be a good place to start.

"Family Dancing"

I recently read and posted (6/8/11 and 6/12/11) on two of David Leavitt’s novels; my comments were lukewarm. I have now (belatedly!) read his collection of short stories, “Family Dancing” (Knopf, 1984), perhaps his most well-known book, and now I “get” why his work has been praised by both critics and the reading public. His stories, as the title indicates, are all about families, and the many ways their members are entangled, are happy, are miserable, misunderstand each other, and drive each other crazy, yet provide a glue and a center for its members, drawing them back to each other again and again. There are certain common themes throughout many of the stories: divorce, cancer, mental illness, the connections of siblings, the gay brother, and the family home or summer cottage that keeps its hold on family members long after the children have dispersed to their adult lives. These stories are very readable and compelling.