On "Perfectly Fine" Books

Since I read so much, you might wonder why I don't more often post recommendations of specific books I have just read. The answer is that I only want to recommend books that I am really excited about, and are especially well written, or perhaps intriguing for some other reason. The truth is that although I read reviews before I select books, I still read a lot of books that -- in my humble opinion -- are either not particularly good, or -- more often -- are fine but not exceptional. After all, by definition, outstanding books can only be so against the background of all the "OK" or "perfectly fine" books. Also, of course deciding which books are outstanding is at least partially subjective; some of the examples I list below have been well reviewed. I fully admit that my opinions are only my own, and are perhaps sometimes idiosyncratic. And I often enjoy and learn from these "less than outstanding" books; I am not sorry that I have read them. Today's post is a recognition of books that -- for me -- fall into the "absolutely fine, even quite good, but nothing to post a glowing blog entry about" category. Some such books that I have read in the past few weeks are Louise Erdrich's "Shadow Tag"; Ursula Hegi's "The Worst Thing I Have Done"; Jonathan Tropper's "This Is Where I Leave You"; Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's "One Amazing Thing"; and Marisha Chamberlain's "The Rose Variations." Now you know why I haven't posted about any of these.

The New Yorker and I

What would we do without the New Yorker? When my copy arrives every week, with its beautiful cover, I know I have a treat in store. The magazine is a source of truly good prose on so many topics: politics, art, current events, and much more. Often its compelling prose draws me into reading about a topic I didn't even know I was interested in until I began the article. One of the magazine's great contributions is that it has always published, and still publishes, fiction, at a time when many other mainstream magazines have stopped doing so. I know that some feel that the stories published by the New Yorker are too much alike, all in "the New Yorker style." I disagree, and am most grateful for the magazine.

I can't resist adding a New Yorker-related personal note here. A photograph of my daughter and me appeared in the May 17, 1999 issue. Why was that, you may well ask! It came about because my friend B, a professional, gifted, and well-exhibited photographer who specializes in photographing people in their homes, had in 1995 taken a posed picture of my young daughter doing a dance pose on our dining room table, with me sitting nearby, my face obscured by the newspaper I was reading. This photograph was in her portfolio and was chosen by the New Yorker to accompany a short story titled "How Was It, Really?" by the late great John Updike. I was happy for B. that her photograph was published in such a venue; I must say I was also tickled that my daughter and I had even this small connection with a writer whose work has given me much pleasure over the years.

Author Interviews and Readings "Live"

Yesterday I wrote about the serendipitous pleasure of turning on one's radio and hearing Fresh Air's Terry Gross interview an author. A related and even greater pleasure, albeit one that takes more planning, time, and - sometimes - money, is hearing a favorite author interviewed in person. Here in San Francisco, for example, we are fortunate to have the City Arts and Lectures series, which is held in the small, ornate Herbst Theater in the Civic Center. Authors (and others) are interviewed for abut 45 minutes by a sometimes equally well-known local luminary. They sit on a bare stage and talk, and usually read excerpts from their work; afterward, there is time for questions and comments from the audience. We in the audience sit quite close to the stage (there are no bad or faraway seats) listening; we can almost imagine we are participating in one of the fabled literary salons of yore. A couple of years ago, within the space of a few weeks, I had the privilege and pleasure of seeing and hearing Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, and Jhumpa Lahiri speak and read in this series. Soon after, I was able to hear the great poet Sharon Olds read her work at another San Francisco venue. For those who cannot attend "live," the City Arts and Lectures events are broadcast on a local public radio station (KQED-FM) a few weeks later. Besides attending such series as City Arts and Lectures, readers can find many author appearances at local bookstores.

Author Interviews on Fresh Air

What a lovely, serendipitous gift it is when one is driving, turns on the radio, and hears the voice of a favorite writer! When this happens, it is highly likely that she program in question is NPR's Fresh Air, with its interviews by the wonderful Terry Gross. Gross also interviews musicians, artists, filmmakers, actors, and other intriguing people. But the greatest pleasure for me is her conversations with authors. Although I do not listen to the program regularly, I have -- with great delight -- stumbled upon interviews with Jhumpa Lahiri, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Smiley, and several other writers. A year or two ago I ran across Gross' published collection of her interviews with 39 people in the arts, "All I Did Was Ask" (Hyperion, 2004). The interview subjects included Eric Clapton, Jodie Foster, Chris Rock, Sonny Rollins, Chuck Close, and Dustin Hoffman, among other artists, musicians, and actors; all were fascinating interviews. But best of all, of course, were the interviews with authors John Updike, James Baldwin, Mary Karr, Andre Dubus, Nick Hornby, Maurice Sendak, and Carol Shields. For those of you who don't already know Fresh Air and Terry Gross, I highly recommend both the radio show and the book.

Indian Writers Who Write in English

Because I grew up in India, and because I am interested in fiction about various cultures in contact with each other, I have sought out and read many novels by Indian writers writing in English. Starting in about the early 1980s, there was an increasing number of such novels being published. Some of these writers live in and write about India itself; more of them, the ones being published in the West, have either grown up in or moved to the United States, Canada, or the UK; many of their novels are about the experience of being immigrants, of being pulled between two cultures. By the end of the 20th century, fiction by Indian authors seemed ubiquitous, and was very well received and reviewed. Salman Rushdie and others have decried the fact that literature in other, indigenous (i.e., non-English) languages of India is rarely translated and still more rarely published outside of India. Similar concerns have been expressed by African writers. I understand this concern, and hope that more such fiction will be translated and published. In the meanwhile, though, I celebrate the wealth of Indian fiction that we readers have access to. Below I list some of the Indian authors whose work I have particularly enjoyed, and whom I particularly respect. Some of these authors have published numerous novels and short story collections; here I include one or two titles for each authors as samples.

Samina Ali - Madras on Rainy Days
Anita Desai - Fire on the Mountain
Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - the Mistress of Spices; Queen of Dreams
Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns
Ginu Kamani - Junglee Girl
Jhumpa Lahiri - The Namesake
Kamala Markandaya - Nectar in a Sieve
Gita Mehta - A River Sutra
Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters; A Fine Balance
Bharati Mukherjee - Jasmine; Desirable Daughters
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
Nayantara Sahgal - Rich Like Us
Manil Suri - The Death of Vishnu

Books on Women's Liberation

The second wave feminist movement, then called "women's liberation," took place mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. I can still remember the excitement of the movement, and of the startling and thought-provoking political/social/ideological/theoretical books coming out of, and contributing to, the movement. Their topics included politics, the law, health, literature, religion, and more. Women's lives and opportunities have substantially improved since that time, largely because of this movement and these books. Yes, there is still a long way to go, absolutely, and yes, these opportunities are far from fairly distributed; race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and other factors still limit the opportunities of so many women. We need to keep fighting the good fight for equity and for better lives for all women. But today I would like to pause for a moment to honor the groundbreaking books of the movement, and to thank their authors for their important insights and for their courage in writing about this topic for which so many people (and laws and practices) had such hostility and disdain at the time. The following books, some of the ones I read/studied/learned from during the 1970s, are representative of all the books by all the brave women writing at that time.

Against Our Will, by Susan Brownmiller (1975)
Beyond God the Father, by Mary Daly (1973)
The Dialectic of Sex, by Shulamith Firestone (1970)
The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer (1970)
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan (1963)
Literary Women, by Ellen Moers (1976)
A Literature of Their Own, by Elaine Showalter (1977)
The Madwoman in the Attic, by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979)
Of Women Born, by Adrienne Rich (1976)
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, by Adrienne Rich (1979)
Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by Andrea Dworkin (1979)
Reinventing Womanhood, by Carolyn Heilbrun (1979)
The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
Sexual Politics, by Kate Millett (1970)
Sisterhood is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan (1970)
When God Was a Woman, by Merlin Stone (1976)
Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin (1979)
Women's Estate, by Juliet Mitchell (1971)

"Where the God of Love Hangs Out"

Unlike much tediously predictable contemporary fiction, Amy Bloom's new short story collection, "Where the God of Love Hangs Out" (Random House, 2010) never stopped surprising me from beginning to end. Such originality is bracingly refreshing, and I savored every minute of reading this collection. Bloom, a psychotherapist, presents us with unique, intriguing characters and situations. Her stories explore family, love, divorce, illness, race, and much more, but never in a familiar way; there are always twists. There are twelve stories in the book, every one of them compelling, but the most riveting are two linked sets of four stories each. The first set, "William and Clare," focuses on two longtime friends who in middle age become lovers and eventually divorce their spouses to marry. One of the things I value about this set of stories is the way Bloom shows that the love of older people can be just as deeply passionate as that of the young. The other set of stories, "Lionel and Julia," revolves around the kind of ad hoc, complicated family that is becoming so common these days: a cobbled-together unit composed of ex-spouses, stepchildren, and half-siblings, no less close for being unconventional (very unconventional, in one case in particular). In many of the stories, there is unorthodox, even reprehensible behavior, but one of Bloom's strengths is her power to make readers suspend our usual moral judgments because of our connections to the specific, very human characters involved. We can't help becoming entangled with, empathizing with, and even falling in love with some of the characters, despite their messy lives.