Resurgence of Independent Bookstores!

Despite fears about the disappearance of independent bookstores, the number of such bookstores is actually growing! Hurray! Although the numbers are still way down from a quarter century ago, they have recently been making a comeback. A 5/27/15 San Francisco Chronicle article notes that there were 5,000 members of the American Booksellers Association 25 years ago, the numbers went down to 1,401 in 2009, but are now up to 1,752. The head of the association speculates that reasons for the “revival” of independents include the closing of Borders; the leveling out of book e-sales (“print books have remained the primary medium”); the “buy local” movement; and the passing of ownership of many stores to younger ones with “a whole new sense of energy – they’re more tech savvy and sophisticated. Their energy is contagious.” (I’m not sure about how I feel about this last reason listed;it seems to imply a slight denigration of older owners, but I won’t cavil too much in view of the overall good news.) Let's all remind ourselves of the pleasures of wonderful independent bookstores, get to our local ones more frequently, and buy more books there!

"God Help the Child," by Toni Morrison

I hesitate to even try to “review” a book by the justly revered Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison. I have read most of her novels, some more than once, and have taught her work as well. So here I will just jot down a few notes about her new novel “God Help the Child” (Knopf, 2015), rather than evaluating it. This is a powerful novel about race, color, parenting, and relationships, among other topics. One central focus is the prejudice, even among some African Americans, against those whose skin is very dark (which is why I listed race and color separately in the last sentence). The main character, Bride (who chose this name for herself as an adult, jettisoning her birth name of Lula Ann) is born very dark black. Her mother, Sweetness, and her father, Louis, are both light-skinned blacks, and can’t accept the child’s color. Louis is suspicious that Sweetness must have had an affair, and leaves the family; there is no further mention of him in the novel. Sweetness can never bring herself to love her child, treats her very strictly, and almost never touches her. Lula Ann, soon to be Bride, feels unloved, leaves home as soon as possible, and makes her own way in life, becoming a successful businesswoman and communicating with her mother only rarely, although she does send her money. But the emotional scars and insecurities persist. So the second focus of the novel is on the longterm effects of the way parents treat their children. There are other topics: sexual abuse, lies, the fragility of connections in Bride’s relationships, and more. The writing, as always with Morrison, is beautiful, original and moving. In Bride, Morrison has created a vivid and compelling character, although one with mysterious aspects and a certain unknowability. One matter of note is that this novel does not feature the supernatural, mythical, magical aspects that are so prominent in many of Morrison’s earlier novels; this is neither a good or bad thing, just different. Although this novel is short (178 smallish pages), there is a lot of “story” and emotion, and much to think about and react to, packed into those pages. I am glad I read it.

Books and Transgender

There is increasing attention in the media to the transgender community and to transgender individuals; examples include such television shows as “Orange is the New Black” and “Transparent,” and most recently the publicity about -- and Vanity Fair cover and article about -- Caitlyn Jenner, formerly the famous Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner. This is a welcome development, but much more education and support is needed on this topic. I was pleased to see (in a New York Times article published in the San Francisco Chronicle on 6/7/15) that there are now a few children’s books on this topic. Until very recently, this was extremely rare, “the last taboo” according to the article, but now there have been several memoirs, self-help books, and novels. This year, according to the article, “children’s publishers are releasing around half a dozen novels…that star transgender children and teenagers.” As an example of how important such books can be, the article tells the story of Sam Martin, who 23 years ago was browsing in a bookstore and ran across portraits and interviews of transgender men. Martin started crying; “I thought, my God, I’m not the only one...When I was growing up, I never saw people like me in movies or books.” Soon after, Martin started transitioning from female to male, and now has written a story about a transgender teenage boy. To me, this is yet another powerful example of the power and necessity of books that portray the full range of the variety of human lives and experiences.

Literary Finds While Traveling

A dedicated reader will often find literature-related materials and experiences when she travels, whether they be unique and charming bookstores, libraries, museum exhibits, or public monuments. All of these are enjoyable to find (sometimes intentionally and sometimes serendipitously), and also give the traveler a sense of how a city or country values and honors literature in general and its own writers in particular. I wrote about this (6/28/14) after my Scandinavian trip last June, citing tributes to Henrik Ibsen and Hans Christian Andersen. On a trip to the Netherlands and Scotland last month, I explored several bookstores, the best of which I stumbled across in the beautiful and historic university town of St. Andrews, Scotland; there I spent a happy interval in the wonderful Topping and Company Booksellers. When I was in Edinburgh, Scotland, I noted the frequent mentions of Scotland's native son authors Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The most prominent example of this was the imposing statue of Sir Walter Scott, surrounded by a huge, tall, elegant monument, in a very central location of the city. It makes me happy to see evidence of a city’s pride in its literary figures, and especially to see such an author’s being given such a place of pride in its most visited landscape.

"A God in Ruins," by Kate Atkinson

I wrote here (6/1/15) about the “undemanding” novels I read on my very recent trip to Europe. They were perfect for my travels. But what a contrast, shock, and pleasure it was, one I experienced almost viscerally, to read, on my return, a truly masterful novel by a masterful writer, Kate Atkinson. (As an aside, I do wish the term “masterful” were not so male, but it seems appropriate here.) The novel, “A God in Ruins” (Little, Brown, 2015), is a companion novel to the wonderful “Life After Life” (see my post of 8/6/13). The focus of each is the lives of the members of the Todd family before, during (especially), and after World War II in England. In the earlier novel, Ursula Todd was the main character; in this one, her younger brother Teddy is the focus. As the author states in her afterword, she chose to write in the first novel about the London Blitz, and in the second one about the “strategic bombing campaign against Germany.” As Teddy is a military pilot during the war, there is in fact quite a bit about the latter, including some very up-close, detailed, harrowing descriptions, in “A God in Ruins.” Readers are not spared the horrors of war; we also see the bravery of many soldiers. The author captures the intensity of wartime for all involved, but also the dailyness, and the sense that people have only the present to be sure of. But the book is about much more as well, as it portrays the larger context of the “before” and the “after” of the war. As in the earlier novel, the chapters go back and forth in time, with the years listed at the beginning of each chapter. We follow Teddy’s, and his family members’, lives over about a hundred years. Teddy comes from a large, basically loving but sometimes contentious and overwhelming family; his future wife is the “girl next door.” We learn about his parents, his siblings, his wife, his child, his grandchildren, and his crew members on the fighter planes, along with many other characters. Family relationships are described with clear eyes; for example, some of the characters love their families but don’t want to spend much time with them. The author is a sharp observer, and some of the characters are portrayed in all their weaknesses; for example, some of the mothers are not very maternal, although loving in their own ways. Yet there is almost always understanding of, even kindness toward, all but the worst of the characters. The complex character of Teddy is especially beautifully delineated. The novel is, among other things, an exploration of the nature of love, loyalty, family, hopes, dreams, reality, and of what is truly worthwhile in life. The writing is crisp, and the author is in complete control of her material. And although Teddy doesn’t keep dying and coming back to life, as Ursula did in the earlier novel, the author has some surprises and twists, including a very significant one, for us in this novel as well. “A God in Ruins” absorbed me so much that for a couple of days I was caught up in this 450-page novel, neglecting other things I should have been doing (with the faint excuse of a mild cold I am trying to get over). When I finished, I felt dazed, as if re-entering my own real world with difficulty and reluctance. I am in awe of the writing in "A God in Ruins" and of the Atkinson’s creation of a world so alive, so compelling.

The Flannery O'Connor Stamp

Today the United States Postal Service is issuing a stamp portraying and honoring the great Southern writer Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). This 93-cent stamp is part of the Literary Arts series. The picture on the stamp is a painted version of a photograph from O’Connor’s college days, surrounded by peacock feathers signifying her life on her Georgia family farm. The picture has been criticized by some as leaving off her “trademark” eyeglasses and of not conveying her persona as the author of strong, dark, “Southern Gothic” fiction. In any case, glasses or not, I am happy to see this unique writer honored. She was the author of several striking and memorable books, including the novels “Wise Blood” and “The Violent Bear It Away” and the short story collections “Everything That Rises Must Converge” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Unfortunately she died at the age of 39 of lupus; one can’t help imagining how much more of her powerful, thought-provoking, and disturbing fiction she would have produced if she had lived longer. A devout Catholic who studied both in Georgia and at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, who lived in New York for a while before she became ill, and who knew many of the prominent American writers of her day, she explored moral issues in ways that were blunt, often violent, and shocking to readers. Biographer Brad Gooch wrote that “O’Connor said that modern writers must often tell ‘perverse’ stories to ‘shock’ a morally blind world.” During my college years and after, I read all of her major work, and I still remember how unusual, how vivid, and how unexpected her harsh portrayals of evil and of struggles with evil were. They seemed so incompatible with the persona of the author, as she looked and was written about, and yet that seeming mismatch was a lesson in itself. When I re-read her work a bit later, I always hoped (in a cowardly way) that somehow the endings would not be as brutal as they were the first time, but there was no mercy on O’Connor’s part. I hope that readers still read her work, and I hope that this stamp will in a small way remind the world of her pathbreaking, heartbreaking writing that doesn’t let readers -- or the human race -- off the hook, ever.

On Perfectly Undemanding Novels for my Travels

I just returned from a two-week trip to the Netherlands and Scotland; I had a wonderful time there. Of course an important question for me was what to read on the trip, especially on those very long flights back and forth. I packed some unread magazines from my pile at home, along with a couple of novels I had picked up recently (“The Submission,” by Amy Waldman, and “The Archivist,” by Martha Cooley, both of which were quite good). But I didn’t want my reading material to take too much space in my bag (I know, I know, I should have an e-reader, but I just haven’t gotten to that step yet…I am obviously still resisting on some level). So I needed to buy some books along the way, in airports and bookstores. (When I finish a book while traveling, I just leave it on the airplane or at the hotel, and replenish my supply, always making sure to have enough reading material in reserve at any given time….) I realized that for my travels I wanted books that were interesting, enjoyable, well written, but not too demanding. Travel is wonderful but tiring, and for me it is usually not the time to read a “heavy” or very literary book. These are the books – all novels, all fitting the above requirements – that I bought and read: “The One and Only,” by Emily Giffin; “The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year,” by Sue Townsend; “As Good as it Gets,” by Fiona Gibson; “Saving Grace,” by Jane Green; and “The Husband’s Secret,” by Liane Moriarty. All the authors are women (some American, some British), all the books are in paperback, and all of them fall under the general category of domestic drama. Most are told from the point of view of a middle- or upper-class woman -- either in the USA or in England, or sometimes going back and forth -- who is struggling in some way, generally either with her marriage or job or children or elderly parents or general ennui, or some combination of the above. Marriage is the most common focus; most of the characters felt that something had gone wrong with their once strong and happy marriages, but weren’t quite sure if they were correct, or what exactly was wrong, or what to do about it. Each novel had its own twists, of course, and in some ways they were quite different, but I was surprised by the way I ended up -- without planning to -- choosing five novels so similar in genre and type. As readers of this blog know, my usual reading is much more varied, and in general more “literary,” with occasional exceptions for “beach books” and such. I have written here about “middlebrow” novels (2/8/10) and I think the novels I read on my trip more or less, or almost, belong in that category. I enjoyed all of these novels thoroughly, and they were perfect for my trip. I give much credit to the very skilled writers who gave me the pleasure provided by these enjoyable and even sometimes thought-provoking but not overly demanding novels.