R.I.P. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

This morning I felt a small shock when I read of writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's death at the age of 85. This author's work was among the very first to bring the world of India to Western readers. As someone who grew up in India myself, I still remember reading her best known (a winner of the Booker Prize) novel, "Heat and Dust," published in 1975, and several others of her novels and short story collections. This fiction is full of the sights, sounds, and smells of India, as well as of the United States and other settings. Even more, it often portrays the interweaving of, and sometimes clashes between, various cultures. Because of Jhabvala's own life experience as a person born and raised in Germany, who married an Indian man and lived in India for about 20 years, and then lived in New York, she moved between cultures and often wrote about other "refugees"(her word for herself)/immigrants/world citizens such as herself. She wrote prolifically, including many stories published in the New Yorker. But she became perhaps most well known for her screenplays for the famous Merchant Ivory films. She worked with the late producer Ismail Merchant and the director James Ivory on 22 films in four decades. I love these beautiful films, often based on classic novels by such authors as Henry James and E.M. Forster. They include "A Room with a View," "Howard's End," "The Golden Bowl," "Remains of the Day," and "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge." I want to pay tribute to this wonderful writer who introduced so many people to so many worlds during her long career. (Thanks to the New York Times obituary for some of the information here.)

"The Transit of Venus," by Shirley Hazzard

I have written here about sometimes going back to books I loved when I read them at a much younger age, and finding I just can’t read them again. Sometimes this is because I realize they aren’t as good as I thought they were, back then. Sometimes it is because the books are just too emotionally exhausting to re-read. In contrast, today I write about the experience of going back to read a book I read years ago, and finding I appreciate it even more than I did at the time. This was the case with Shirley Hazzard’s novel “The Transit of Venus” (Penguin, 1990, originally published 1980), which I recently picked up on a whim and read on a recent conference trip. I had read the book soon after it originally came out in 1980, and I vaguely remember liking it fine, but not as much as I thought I should, given the reviews and praise it garnered back then. Re-reading it now, I was struck by the compelling characters and story, and most of all, by the gorgeous writing. What a tour de force! The novel tells the story of two sisters who emigrate from Australia to England in the 1950s. Their lives become entangled with those of several men who love them; in some cases the love is reciprocated, in some cases not, and in some cases their relationships change over the years. Their lives are touched by war, by financial problems, by prejudice against women, and by the changing times. One sister, Caro, is the true, calm but often suffering, deeply and almost magically interesting center of the novel; she is a truly original character, and one that a reader can’t stop trying to figure out. This is one of those novels that one feels, as one is reading, has a deep connection to life itself, with all of its vicissitudes. And throughout, the reader knows she is in the hands of a literary master. I am so glad I rediscovered this novel, took a chance on it, and was overwhelmed by how good it is.

Philip Roth: The Greatest Living American Writer?

On Friday night I watched a PBS special about Philip Roth. OK, I will confess: I dozed off halfway into it. The show consisted mainly of a tight focus on Roth talking – the “talking head” mode. Maybe I am shallow, or maybe I was just tired, but it wasn’t enough to engage my attention fully. But I also suspect that my dozing was a kind of unconscious resistance to the premise of the show (presented as if it were a universally accepted truth), which was that Roth is the U.S.’s “greatest living writer.” I agree that he is a great writer, but is he the “greatest”? A few years ago, before the deaths of Bellow and Updike, Roth was often bracketed with them as the greatest living writers. And yes, the other two were great as well. But, again, the greatest? And – perhaps this is the crux of the matter with me – greatest for whom? And where are the lists that include some of our outstanding American women authors? Where are Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Smiley, or Anne Tyler, to mention just a few of the leading writers of our time? But the issue isn’t just the gender of the writers; it is also the “gender” of the fiction itself. By this I mean that Roth’s novels, for example, are heavily, intensely, and unapologetically from the male perspective, focusing on male characters, male topics and male obsessions. Although I admired and read his earlier novels, I long ago stopped reading him because I felt so little connection to them. (I did try again a couple of times over the years, but never could get engaged enough to continue reading.) I realize I am getting into controversial and dangerous waters here, and of course the discussion of gender in literature (about which I have posted several times here already) is contentious and complex. But circling back to the original point: is Philip Roth really the greatest living American writer? I am not at all convinced.

"A Thousand Pardons," by Jonathan Dee

Almost exactly three years ago (3/31/10), I wrote a rather irritated post on Jonathan Dee’s novel “The Privileges,” decrying the entitled, amoral characters (while acknowledging that the portrayal of such Wall Street characters is well observed and captures something about the spirit of the times; of course I understand that novels can and should sometimes portray highly unlikeable and even repugnant characters, as these are part of life). Dee’s new novel, “A Thousand Pardons” (Random House, 2013), is a milder version of “The Privileges,” in that the characters, while still less than admirable, are less entitled, more vulnerable, and a little more likeable. Manhattan and surroundings are still the locale. Prosperous lawyer Ben has a midlife crisis/breakdown and decides to leave the marriage, and his wife Helen has to figure out how to pick up the pieces. Suspiciously easily, she finds a new job in public relations and is unexpectedly successful at it. Despite talk of possible financial problems after the marriage breaks up, somehow neither character ever suffers too much financially. (This novel is an example of a common trope in fiction that makes a nod toward possible financial problems for its privileged characters, but readers can see that there is never any real threat, any real danger of financial hardship.) There are subplots involving their daughter Sara and other characters (e.g., a disintegrating male movie star whom Helen knew in elementary school, who now turns to her for help), but the main plot point is the couple’s separation and what comes after. The ending is unexpectedly, if inconclusively, sentimental and promises a sort of redemption.

"A Simple Revolution," by Judy Grahn

Poet, activist, theorist and educator Judy Grahn’s “A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet” (Aunt Lute Books, 2012) is her autobiography, but it is equally a history of the women and events involved in the feminist and lesbian movements in the U.S., especially during the 1960s and 1970s. Because Grahn has spent most of her adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area, and because that area has been one of the original and main centers of lesbian and feminist activism, most of the book is about the politics, demonstrations, art and literature, women’s communities and collectives, and other manifestations of the movement(s) to be found in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. A flood of memories and strong feelings accompanied my reading of this book, with its vivid history of the exciting tumult of the times when women stood up for their independence and their rights. I am a decade younger than Grahn, and straight, but I support the same causes, and have lived in the SF Bay Area most of my adult life, so I have witnessed and cheered on, and participated a little, in that history. Although my own feminism, and my support of lesbian and gay equality, have been important parts of my thinking and life since my college days, I cannot claim in any way to have been in the midst of the women (and some men) who really put their lives on the line, stood up to discrimination at protests, lived under new structures such as community houses, learned trades such as printing so they could publish women’s work, and so much more. I have done my little bit through my early membership in women’s groups, through my teaching and writing, and through some small financial and other support of women’s organizations, but am vastly grateful to the women who did so much more, and risked so much more. Grahn’s writing style in this book is straightforward and somewhat reportorial, but none the less effective for its unadorned quality. She has made a hugely important contribution by preserving this vital piece of history, and her up-close “I was there” writing makes this book a compelling read, whether the reader is of a similar age and remembers the times, or is much younger and wants to learn more about this crucial era and movement. (I thank my friend Sonja for recommending this book.)

The "world of poetry"

"To me the world of poetry is a house with thousands of glittering windows. Our words and images, land to land, era to era, shed light on one another. Our words dissolve the shadows we imagine fall between." ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Will I Ever Read Faulkner Again?

I was overwhelmed (in a good way!) by William Faulkner’s novels when I was in college and grad school. I read most of them – some for classes and some on my own: “The Sound and the Fury,” “As I Lay Dying,” “Sartoris,” “Sanctuary,” “Go Down Moses,” “Absalom, Absalom!” and more. I found them mesmerizing, maddening, inspiring, mysterious, enlightening. They made me feel I understood the American South in a new and intense way. Some years after college, I re-read a couple of the novels. But over the many years since then, whenever I have considered re-reading, or actually tried to re-read, one of his novels, I have been unable to do so. (I have posted here before about having the same problem with other books I valued and even loved when I was young.) It is not that I don’t still think the novels are monumental, classic, and groundbreaking. Of course I do. So the failing must be mine. I did enjoy reading, in the Spring 2013 issue of Threepenny Review, a symposium of seven writers’ thought-provoking and engaging short essays on their experiences with and responses to “Absalom, Absalom!” One quotation I was struck with was from an interview with Faulkner: “Interviewer: ‘Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them?’ Faulkner: ‘Read it four times.’” So maybe I will try again.