Mourning the Deaths of Great Writers

Author Thomas Berger died on July 13, just days before his 90th birthday. He is best known as the author of “Little Big Man,” which was later made into a movie starring Dustin Hoffman. Although Berger was a highly regarded writer, and although I mourn his loss as I mourn the loss of all excellent writers, he is not one I read much. But his death reminds me of something I have been noticing lately: the gradually increasing numbers of deaths of writers I “always” knew about and often read, and whom I thought – on some magical level – would be alive and writing forever. Being a reader of a “certain age” myself – let’s say late middle age – I obviously understand mortality. But it still comes as a blow and even a surprise every time I read about the death of one the great writers of our time. Even in the four and a half years I have been writing this blog, I have written “R.I.P.” posts about several of these great writers (who of course are only a small number of all the writers who have died even during that time). These writers about whom I posted because I had read and particularly admired their work include Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, Maya Angelou, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Vance Bourjaily, and Shulamith Firestone. Other important writers who died in 2014 include Peter Matthieson, the wonderful poet Maxine Kumin, and the great Canadian short story writer, Mavis Gallant. Notable deaths in 2013 include those of Seamus Heaney, Ellen Douglas, and Chinua Achebe. I am writing here, though, not simply to list these deaths, although I always value a chance to pay tribute to great writers. Here I am focusing on how our (e.g., readers’) place in life, in the sweep and flow of history, is marked partly by observing those who go ahead of us, whether family members and friends, or authors who sometimes seem like family members and friends because we feel (although this isn’t necessarily true) that we know them through their work. It is always a shock to be reminded of their mortality, and by extension, of our own.

Book Clubs

What’s almost as good as reading books? Why, talking about books! This came to mind when I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle (7/24/14, p. E1) about a book club of gay men in San Francisco. The club is composed of men from 29 to 75, of a range of professions; the common thread is that they all, in various ways, have worked for gay causes, whether as activists, health care professionals, educators, writers, artists, or fundraisers (among other roles). Some of them have been friends and colleagues for decades; the book group itself started 12 years ago. They read a variety of books: fiction, biographies, memoirs, books on historical or political topics, and more. They meet over dinners at members’ houses, thus combining the joys of reading, talking, dining, and enjoying compatible company. Reading about this group reminded me of the importance and pleasure of gatherings of groups, groups with histories, to talk about books and ideas, sharing experiences and ideas. I believe in the power of book groups in general, but such groups are even more powerful communities if they also represent common identities and interests. (Of course there is always, and should be, room for different opinions.) I have written here about the power and joys of book groups, and about the groups I have been part of. In fact, one of my very first posts on this blog (1/26/10) was about a reading group I have been part of for three and a half decades. Book clubs, reading groups, or variations of these exist in many forms, but in all cases, they provide wonderful opportunities to talk about books and ideas, and to form or reinforce communities and connections.

"Funny Once," by Antonya Nelson

I have written here about how, although the novel is my most-loved literary form, I also very much enjoy and appreciate short stories. But I seem not to have read many short story collections in recent months, until the past three weeks or so, when I (without planning or intending to in any conscious way) read, and posted about here, two such collections -- Hester Kaplan’s “Unravished” and Francesca Marciano’s “The Other Language” -- and now have read and am posting about Antonya Nelson’s “Funny Once” (Bloomsbury, 2014). I also re-read (actually listenied to on CD) Alice Munro’s collection, “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.” “Funny Once” is both funny and sad. This is something I would say about other books I have read by Nelson, including the two I have read since I started this blog: “Bound” (which I posted about on 10/28/10) and “Living to Tell” (posted about on 12/12/13). Many of her characters meander through life, either directionless or powerless or alienated or drinking too much or some combination of the above. This is especially true in the last and longest story in this collection, “Three Wishes,” which is also perhaps the most wrenching one. It starts with three loving but stumbling-through-life adult siblings taking their father to a “home” because of his dementia. (As an aside, I notice that several books I have read just lately happen to include a focus on characters with dementia.) Son Hugh, in his late thirties, still lives in the house where he grew up; daughter Hannah is very competent but feels something is missing, and splits up with her perfectly good husband; youngest daughter Holly lacks confidence about how to live an adult life and raise her young son, who is preternaturally mature and appears to mostly raise himself. They all still feel the long shadow of their oldest brother Hamish’s somewhat mysterious death some twenty years ago. Hugh and Hannah both depend far too much on alcohol to get them through life. Despite all the depressing aspects of this story, we see the characters draw love and strength from each other.

More on Alice Munro

Regular readers of this blog know that I – like so many others, including the Nobel Prize committee – love and admire Alice Munro’s fiction, especially her short stories. I recently listened to a collection I had already read more than ten years ago, “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage” (BBC Audiobooks America, 2002), and was just as entranced with and impressed by it this time as I was last time. What can I say that I haven’t already said about Munro’s insightfulness about human nature, carefully observed details, surprises around some corners, and fine, fine writing? Perhaps the strongest story is the last and longest, “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.” It is a love story, a story of the ways love and marriage change with time, especially in the various contexts of one’s surrounding society. And the love story becomes an even more complicated one when wife Fiona is affected by dementia and falls in love with another man, not her husband, at the institution where she has moved, and husband Grant finds himself facilitating that love because it makes Fiona happy. This Munro story was made into a terrific 2007 film, “Away From Her,” starring Julie Christie. To show that life, once again, is not so very different from fiction: Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor faced a similar situation at about the same time, when her husband, affected by Alzheimer’s, fell in love with another woman; O’Connor stood by him, and even felt happy that his newfound love pulled him out of the depression he had been suffering. Getting back to this story collection: I recommend it as one of Munro’s best, which is to say: the best of the best.

"Fallout," by Sadie Jones

The English author Sadie Jones’ new novel “Fallout” (Harper, 2014), like her earlier novel “The Uninvited Guests” (about which I posted on 6/26/12), has an air of strangeness, of slight removal from real life. In the case of the earlier novel, this was partly because of an obvious unreality, a sort of magical realism. But in the case of “Fallout,” there are no ghosts, no unbelievable events; there is simply a sense that the events happened far in the past, or in a different land. In fact, the novel is set in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in London. The main characters – Luke, Paul, Leigh, and Nina – are young people starting off in the theater world: Luke is a writer; Paul is a producer; Nina is an actress; Leigh is both an actress and a theater administrator. The four of them are very close, and have romantic, sexual, friendship, and business connections in various combinations at various times. Some of these relationships are extremely intense, but they sometimes end suddenly, sometimes for explicable and sometimes for rather inexplicable reasons. There are also, beneath-the-surface fluctuations of relationships, subterranean connections, longings, tensions. These four characters are intensely compelling, especially Luke, the son of a vivid but mentally ill mother who has spent most of her life in an asylum. Luke is brilliant, charismatic, attractive, and a strange combination of focused and mercurial. The novel reminds me of an extended balletic sequence featuring four dancers in various scenes and in various combinations. The novel is powerful yet somehow keeps the reader at arms length; it is not clear to me if this is intentional on the part of the author or not. In any case, the novel stitches together what could be clichéd theater elements with original and compelling portrayals and plot turns. The reader is kept a little off-center throughout; this is not a novel to sink into with a sigh of comfort (and that’s okay). It is a novel that I believe will stay in my mind for some time, as has Jones’ earlier novel, “The Uninvited Guests.”

"The Arsonist," by Sue Miller

I have read most of Sue Miller’s novels over the years, and I can’t remember ever reading one that didn’t catch me up and keep me reading. “The Arsonist” (Knopf, 2014) is no exception. I gave over most of a recent Sunday to reading this engrossing novel; my long to-do list went by the wayside that day. I never start off – with Miller’s or any other novels – thinking I will read all day, but somehow “just one more chapter,” and “just a little longer” somehow becomes “how did several hours just slip away?” “The Arsonist” is about many topics – arson, fear, mystery, family, new love, Alzheimer’s, Africa, aid work, small towns, summer homes, the tensions between townspeople and summer people, and more – but a unifying theme is finding hope in the midst of loss. The main character, Frankie, has decided after 15 years of aid work in Africa to come home, perhaps for good. She is staying at her family’s summer home in New Hampshire, where she is trying to figure out her next steps; there she starts to tentatively become involved with a local man. The novel's title refers to the fact that over a dozen families in the area lose their homes to suspicious fires. Meanwhile, Frankie's father, Alfie, is losing his memory and appears to have Alzheimer’s. Her mother, Sylvia, is dealing with acknowledging that she stopped loving her husband years ago, long before the dementia began. The young man Tink has had a desolate childhood and lives alone in a mobile home on a beautiful but isolated plateau. Others have their own stories of loss. But there are also so many human connections, so much community, and so much kindness, and these at least sometimes ameliorate the losses.

"The Other Language," by Francesca Marciano

Is Francesca Marciano’s new collection of stories, “The Other Language” (Pantheon, 2014), “an astonishing collection,” as a Jhumpa Lahiri quote says on the front cover, and “sublimely crafted,” as Julia Glass claims on the back cover? In a word, yes. I chose to read this book because of its excellent, almost rapturous reviews, reinforced by these and other blurbs on the book itself. And in fact I found it to be a beautifully written and fascinating collection. The characters are diverse and very real;the settings all over the world (Italy, East Africa, India, New York, and more) add to the diversity and interest;the author explores very human situations, relationships, issues, problems, and feelings; the writing itself is masterful. I found the stories deeply engrossing, each creating a small, focused, intense world in which I became thoroughly caught up. Marciano, who is Italian but has obviously lived in and traveled to many other places, captures particularly well the tension between being connected to one place and feeling drawn by other places one has lived or has cultural connections with. Her characters tend to have lived in several places, and desire to put down roots, yet feel restless. In other words, they are like a huge portion of the world’s population in this regard, although, granted, her characters only represent the more prosperous segment of this unsettled population. In any case, I, like the reviewers and blurbers, highly recommend this book. But this book and its reviews also got me thinking about how much I (or any reader) am or am not influenced by reviews. Yes, reviews help me decide what to read in the first place. And once I have chosen and read the book and then begin to write about it here, I don’t go back to the reviews, as I don’t want to be unduly influenced by them; I want to give my own take on the book, and on connections I have or feel with the book. But here I am getting at the fact that once I have read very positive reviews, I can’t forget the basic positive feeling, and I probably have a predisposition to think the book is good; I wonder if I picked the same book up without having read anything about it ahead of time, I would have a different take on it. I hope I am not too influenced by these reviews, yet I admit I probably am at least somewhat influenced. My main counter-argument to this is remembering books that have been vastly praised that I have then not thought good at all. A recent example is Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”; I wrote here (11/10/13 and 2/7/14)about my not understanding at all what all the fuss was/is about this, to me, seriously disappointing and flawed book. In any case, it is good for me to be aware that I/we rarely read books in a vacuum, and that on some level I/we may be influenced by what is in the ongoing public conversation about any given book. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it gives us context, and something to agree with or push against, but it is important to be conscious of those influences.