On Forgetting What We Read

On 2/24/10, I posted on the problem of forgetting the contents of many of the books we read. Several friends have told me they have this problem, and I often do as well. My newest rationalization of this phenomenon is that those of us who read a lot have too much to keep track of and therefore are more likely to forget what we read than people who only read a couple of books a year. Self-serving reasoning, no? I was pleased to see in last Sunday's (9/19/10) New York Times Book Review an essay by James Collins (author of the charming novel "Beginner's Greek," which I recommend) titled "The Plot Escapes Me." He ruefully reflects on the fact that he forgets much of what he reads, and then wryly asks the question, "Why read books if we can't remember what's in them?" He seeks professional expertise from Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development and author of "Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain." She reassures Collins -- and by extension, us -- that "I totally believe that you are a different person for having read [his latest book read]," and continues by saying that reading creates pathways in the brain, strengthening different mental processes. She says that "we can't retrieve the specifics" of books we read, "but to adapt a phrase of William James's, there is a wraith of memory." I very much like the phrase "a wraith of memory" and find it resonates with my own experience. Wolf concludes by saying, again reassuringly, that "It's there [in our brains]. You are the sum of it all." Thank you, James Collins, for raising this question, and thank you, Maryanne Wolf, for your answers.

"A Gate at the Stairs"

Seeing that "A Gate at the Stairs," by Lorrie Moore, originally published in 2009,is now in paperback (from Vintage Contemporaries) gives me an opportunity to recommend this wonderful novel. Moore, best known as a short story writer, has written a thoroughly engaging coming-of-age story about a Midwestern college student, Tassie Keltjin, who is hired as a nanny for a mixed-race child even before the child is adopted. Tassie is naive, finding her way in life, being exposed to many new ideas and people at her liberal arts college; her experiences both at college and with the family she nannies for, as well as her expanding awareness of the larger world during the events of 9/11, contribute to her rapid maturing during this period. Tassie is often lonely, as is her employer Sarah, and there are some sad parts of the novel, as well as times of pleasure and enlightenment. Tassie is a very believable and likeable character, and the novel is both serious and often humorous, and very readable. Moore is -- as I am far from the first to note -- a terrific writer, and this novel is a gift to readers.

The Alices

As I was typing my post on 9/23/10, I started to type Alice McDermott's name but accidentally typed "Alice Hoffman" instead. I immediately realized my mistake and corrected it, but it reminded me of how many contemporary authors there are with the first name Alice. There's one of my very favorite writers, Canadian writer Alice Munro (whom I posted about on 7/22/10); Munro is considered by many to be the greatest short story writer alive, and a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. There is the above-mentioned novelist Alice McDermott, who writes about Irish-American Catholic families in Long Island and Brooklyn. There's Alice Hoffman, also mentioned above, whose novels often include a touch of magic. There is the womanist/feminist, activist, African-American writer Alice Walker (whom I wrote about here on 5/26/10). There's Alice Sebold, author of the haunting novel "The Lovely Bones." And although she died a few years ago, I want to pay tribute to novelist and short story writer Alice Adams, who lived in and wrote about San Francisco; I felt I "knew" the neighborhoods and the women she wrote about. Consider this post an ode of gratitude to these fine writers, these Alices, whose fiction has given me such pleasure.

Distracted by Voices...Then Not

On 2/6/10 I wrote about enjoying audio books while driving. I mentioned one of my favorite readers, Flo Gibson, who has read dozens of books on tape. At first I didn't like her gravelly voice, but I got used to it and then fond of it. I was reminded of this a few days ago when I started listening to Alice McDermott's novel "After This," read by Martha Plimpton, whom I like and respect as an actor. But her voice as a reader -- at least on this recording -- is rather sibilant, and the "sssssss" and "shhhhhhhhh" sounds were distracting for the first half hour or so. Then, somehow, magically, I started not to notice them any more; they either went away, or I got used to them, as I got absorbed in the novel. Now I am enjoying her reading, and happily looking forward to my commute each day.

"Bitter in the Mouth"

I was mesmerized by Monique Truong's "The Book of Salt" when it came out in 2003. That novel about the Vietnamese cook for writer Gertrude Stein and her lesbian companion Alice B. Toklas was beautifully written. So I was excited when I saw that Truong had published a new novel, "Bitter in the Mouth" (Random House, 2010). This novel is also narrated by, and focuses on, a Vietnamese character, but in this case it is a young woman, Linda, who is adopted at age seven by a couple in Boiling Springs, North Carolina. She grows up in this small Southern town family with the usual -- and some not so usual -- dysfunctions. One of the themes of the book is the importance of family, even unusual families. Her closest family members are her adoptive father, who dies early, and her gay transvestite great uncle, Baby Harper, who is everything to her. By the end of the novel, we find out more about the complicated tangled relationships of her family and of her birth parents. The other main plot strand is Linda's synesthesia; the variety of the syndrome that she has causes words to have tastes. She only tells a very few trusted people about this, and only toward the end of the novel does she realize that she is not the only one with this unusual situation, and that it has a name. The author represents these associations as follows: "What'sgrahamcracker so funnycucumber, Leoparsnip?" Although the author is thereby making us experience Linda's world, I must admit that this got tiresome after awhile. "Bitter in the Mouth" is a rich, original, intriguing novel, and I am glad I read it, but it doesn't quite measure up to "The Book of Salt."

Manhattan: America's Literary Living Room?

So many American novels are set in New York, and especially Manhattan, that it seems that it is America's -- at least America's literary -- living room. Of course one reason is that many writers live there, or have lived there, or have studied there. And it is, after all, the U. S. center for literature as it is for most arts. (Although many writers live here in San Francisco and surroundings, and there is an active literary scene here, as well as world-class opera, ballet, museums, theater, etc., I have to concede that New York is still the center.) But beyond that, it is a place that most novel readers know; whether or not they live in or regularly visit New York, they have read so many novels set there that they feel they know it. Readers feel we know that long thin borough, with Central Park a long vertical inside a vertical, through the top and middle, and with all the other familiar areas: the Upper West Side, the Upper East Side, Midtown, the Village, Chelsea, Harlem, Morningside Heights, etc., etc. We know Fifth Avenue, the Theater District, Columbus Circle, Times Square, Wall Street, Bryant Park, Rockefeller Center, and many more familiar landmarks. We know about yellow cabs, and doormen buildings, and all the cultural events at the Lincoln Center. We know about the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and the Museum of Natural History. We are very familiar with the campuses of Columbia University and NYU. We know about Zabar's, Dean & Deluca, and Fairway, and we know you can get food delivered to your door from hundreds of restaurants. And we know about the amazing restaurants! So of course we feel comfortable when we pick up a novel set in Manhattan; for readers, it belongs to all of us!

A Smart, Witty, British Site on Books

I recently discovered the Guardian's book section website, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books. What a smart, witty, informative, provocative, and -- oh yes -- British site it is! I like it because it has that British viewpoint, that angle from across the Atlantic. I like it because its authors are witty and sharp. And I like it because it informs me about books from the UK and around the world that I may not have known about otherwise. As with the Booker Prize lists, which I posted about on 9/12/10, the Guardian site opens up my book world.