No to Abridged Books

On 3/10/10, I wrote about fond memories of reading Readers Digest Condensed books when I was a child, despite my later negative feeling about abridged books. I said in that post that in general I "firmly believe that books should be read unabridged; abridging books seems unnatural, almost like mutilating them." I was thinking about this again recently, as a couple of times when I checked out an audiobook from the library, I realized after I took it home and looked at the very small print that the version of the book on CD was actually abridged. First, this annoyed me because I feel such an important fact should be clearly featured, to allow readers/listeners to make informed choices. Second, and this is more important, I don't understand the need for abridged versions of books. Maybe if the books are for young people with reading problems, or those just entering the world of reading, these books could provide a "bridge" (pun intended) to full versions of books. Or for not-very-literary bestsellers, something like Readers Digest Condensed could provide quick and fun reads for pure entertainment or for an introduction to the works of writers. But in general, I strongly dislike abridged works, and feel they cheat the reader of the full experience. I suspect most authors would also be very unhappy with having their works abridged.

More on "To the Lighthouse"

On 10/22/11 I wrote about listening to “To the Lighthouse” on CD, and how listening to it read made the meaning of the words, and the weight of their sounds, so tangible. I have now finished the novel, and just want to add here that the luminosity of the writing, the insights into the characters’ consciousnesses, and the awareness and capture of the hundreds of shifts of emotions people go through every day, are but a few of the awe-inspiring qualities of Woolf’s writing. For just one example, here is a description of Lily Briscoe’s thoughts as she paints at the Ramsay’s house on the Isle of Skye: “One wanted, she thought…to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that’s a chair, that’s a table, and yet at the same time, It’s a miracle, it’s an ecstasy.” How beautifully Woolf encapsulates the constant alternating of our consciousnesses between the quotidian and the sublime.

Books Featuring Alcohol and Alcoholism

Alcohol is found in so much literature, but there are some novels and plays that portray alcohol consumption and alcoholism particularly prominently. Some of them focus on alcoholism, while others show it more peripherally, but all show the ravages of alcoholism on characters’ – and their families’ – lives. Below is a sampling of those books. On 10/23/11, I wrote here about writers who were alcoholic; readers will note that some of the writers on that list were the authors of the books on the list below.

After This, by Alice McDermott
Bastard out of Carolina, by Dorothy Allison
The Beautiful and the Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by Rebecca Wells
Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons
The Gathering, by Anne Enright
The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy
Good Morning, Midnight, by Jean Rhys
The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy
Home, by Marilynne Robinson
John Barleycorn, by Jack London
Lie Down in Darkness, by William Styron
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, by Brian Moore
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, by Eugene O’Neill
The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy
Monkeys, by Susan Minot
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
Rosie, by Anne Lamott
The Subterraneans, by Jack Kerouac
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Tortilla Flat, by John Steinbeck
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry
We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, by Edward Albee
The Woman Who Walked into Doors, by Roddy Doyle

In Praise of Editors

A Vanity Fair article (November 2011) about Bob Loomis, who has just retired from 55 years as an editor at Random House, reminds me of the importance of editors. They do not often get the credit they should, except in the occasional brief acknowledgment at the front or back of a book. Loomis, for example, edited Maya Angelou’s 26 books, as well as books by Calvin Trillin, Edmund Morris, Shelby Foote, and more. He knew and respected the founders of Random House, the legendary Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. Of course the publishing business has changed dramatically during those 55 years, so it is particularly enjoyable to read Loomis’ recollections of the early years in his job. Not everyone realizes how much editors do; the great work of some of our most famous writers would be much less great if they hadn’t had gifted editors. So in this post I would like to praise, thank and honor all the editors who have edited the books I have treasured, enjoyed, and learned from over the years. In addition, I want to say a word of thanks to the two wonderful editors who edited the books I have authored, co-authored, or co-edited: Thanks, Naomi S. and Kelly S.! You're the best!

Famous Writers Who Committed Suicide

Unfortunately many great and well known writers have committed suicide. In many cases, they had long struggled with depression and/or alcoholism and/or other psychological problems and addictions. (Regular readers may notice that some of the names on this list also appeared on my 10/23/11 list of famous writers who were alcoholic.) Below is a list of some such writers. I post this to mourn the sadness of their not being able to endure life any longer, and to mourn the loss of the work they might have done if they had lived longer.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa
John Berryman
Richard Brautigan
Hart Crane
Michael Dorris
Romain Gary
Ernest Hemingway
William Inge
Randall Jarrell
Arthur Koestler
Vachel Lindsay
Malcolm Lowry
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Yukio Mishima
Cesare Pavese
Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton
Sara Teasdale
David Foster Wallace
Virginia Woolf
Stefan Zweig

Joan Didion on Loss

I have written about Joan Didion, whose work I have been reading for decades, and whom I twice heard speak, on this blog (3/23/11). Her most painful book to date, and her most successful, was "The Year of Magical Thinking," a searingly sad memoir about her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, his sudden death, and Didion's struggle to come to terms with his death. Now she has written a new and equally sad book, "Blue Nights," about her daughter, Quintana Roo, her troubled life, and her far too early death at age 39, only a few months after her father died. The current (10/24/11) issue of New York Magazine has a fascinating but very painful article about Didion, her new book, and her daughter's life and death. Quintana Roo suffered from depression and alcohol abuse, and although she had started a career in photography and photo editing, she was fragile and vulnerable. Didion worried about her, of course, and also worried that she, Didion, had not been a good enough mother to her daughter. Didion says in an interview for the magazine that as much as she loved her daughter, she didn't truly know or understand her. So "Blue Nights" is as much about Didion herself as it is about her daughter. Quintana Roo remains an enigma. Didion is clearly ambivalent about her reason for writing the book; she states in the New York interview that she wanted to get her preoccupation with understanding her daughter "off her mind," but then contradicts herself and says she wrote the book to "bring [her] back." The New York photos of the aging, fragile looking Didion show a person who has suffered greatly, who is overwhelmed with loss, yet still able to use her gift of writing in order to try to understand these two terrible blows, these shocking deaths, she has endured.

"Whiter Shades of Pale," by Christian Lander

Being very interested in the critical and complex topic of race in America, I often read serious material on the issue. But despite all the very serious problems inherent in this difficult subject, there is a humorous side of the topic as well. I know this is a delicate area, but I think most topics can both be serious and, sometimes, have a lighter side. For examples, see the work of many great comics and “serious but comic” commentators on race, gender, class, religion, and more. (Think the late Richard Pryor, or Chris Rock, for example; these are quite different in some ways, but both were/are fearless in using comedy to illuminate and confront racial issues.) This is a preamble to saying that I just read the book “Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like, Coast to Coast, From Seattle’s Sweaters to Maine’s Microbrews” (Random House, 2010), and found it quite funny, in a good-humored “poking-fun-at-ourselves” way. The author of this book, Christian Lander, already well known for his blog, StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, and for his 2008 book, “Stuff White People Like,” is no Richard Pryor, but writes on this topic in a light vein. This current book, “Whiter Shades of Pale” (note the reference to the iconic Procol Harum song) consists of 92 short chapters on topics such as “Ivy League,” “Single-Malt Scotch,” “Unpaid Internships,” “Nannies,” “Messenger Bags,” “Bumper Stickers,” “Flea Markets,” “Anthropologie,” “Frisbee Sports,” “Trader Joe’s,” “Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore,” “The Huffington Post,” “Heirloom Tomatoes,” “Expensive Jeans,” and “Ikea.” These chapters are interspersed with wonderful line drawings of individuals deemed representative of major North American cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, Asheville, Chicago, Madison, Boulder, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and of course my city San Francisco. For each full-page drawing, there is hilarious annotation of the person’s clothing and other accessories. Of course all of this is very tongue-in-cheek. It isn’t really about all white people, but about what others have called “bobos” – bourgeois bohemians –, in other words, self-styled liberal, hip, usually urban, and generally privileged white people; Lander includes himself in this category. He also notes that sometimes this group of “white people” actually includes members of all races. The book and its chapters and drawings are all part of a gentle send-up of an all-too-easily-parodied "type." In conclusion, I am tempted to include lots of quotations here, but will limit myself to one representative example: “White people have plunged headfirst into world music. If they play it loud enough…, people are almost guaranteed to say, ‘Who is this?’ To which the white person can say, ‘You know, when I was in Bolivia, I really got into this flute music. I got this CD from a group of musicians on the streets of La Paz.’”