Family History: My Daughter Interviews Judith Viorst

When my daughter M. was ten years old (she is now in her 20s), she was asked by the local children’s newspaper to interview the author Judith Viorst. Viorst is the author of many children’s books, the most famous of which is “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” as well as of nonfiction, poetry, and journalism for adults. I took M. to the hotel in downtown San Francisco where Viorst was staying, and sat in a corner of the room during the interview. I noted that Viorst was crisp and matter-of-fact with adults (the newspaper staff), but was warm, gracious, and encouraging with my daughter. She even gave M. her phone number to call in case she had further questions; M. never took her up on the offer, but it was a kind gesture. The interview went well, with Viorst giving thoughtful, generous answers to M.’s questions. It was published the following month. Naturally, as a doting mom, I kept a copy of the interview, and have just now dug it out from my files and enjoyed re-reading it. Meeting and interviewing Viorst, and then seeing her interview in print, was an exciting experience for M. It was also good for her, as it is for all children, to see that an actual, real person wrote the books she had been reading and had had read to her. Thank you, Judith Viorst, for providing this experience for my daughter! And I am glad to see, on checking online, that Viorst is still writing and publishing; her most recent book, one on turning eighty years old, was published this year.

"World and Town"

Gish Jen’s fiction is a perfect example of the increasing multiculturalization of American literature; her novels and short stories are (mostly) about immigrant families, and families of mixed ethnic and religious backgrounds. Her fiction closely observes the everyday lives, issues, problems, and tensions of such families and their members. It also explores the benefits and pleasures of discovering the differences and the similarities in those of other cultures than one’s own. Jen writes seriously about serious situations, but there is always a wryness, a sense of humor underlying and informing her fiction. In her latest novel, “World and Town” (Knopf, 2010), her wonderful and completely nonstereotyped, unpredictable main character is a sixtyish woman named Hattie, whose parents were a white missionary mother and a Chinese father; Hattie grew up both in China and in the U.S., and lived her adult life in the U.S. Both her husband and her best friend have recently died, and she has moved to the outskirts of a small town, where her neighbors are a Cambodian family of recent refugees. She becomes involved with their family problems as well as their successes. She also tries to figure out how she feels about the reappearance in her life of a lover from her youth. Jen’s multiple and various characters are entirely original, unlike those in any other novel I have read recently, yet very understandable and (mostly!) sympathetic. The issues explored in the novel are current, yet the novel never feels like an “issue” novel. The book also has much to show us about small towns and about community. “World and Town” manages to be heartwarming without at all veering into sentimentality. Highly recommended.

Short Hiatus for the Holidays

StephanieVandrickReads will go on a short hiatus (perhaps 4 days) for Christmas. I wish my readers very happy holidays! And I thank you for reading this blog and allowing me to share my book-related thoughts and experiences with you this past year.

William Trevor's "Selected Stories"

The New York Times critic Charles McGrath states that William Trevor and Alice Munro are the two greatest living short story writers, and I heartily agree with this assessment (I have written more than once here of my admiration – even love – for Alice Munro’s fiction), with only the proviso that V.S. Pritchett be included as the third in the trio. A second volume (the first was in 1992) of Trevor’s collected short stories has recently been issued: “Selected Stories” (Viking, 2009). This hefty volume is made up of 48 stories from four of his books: “After Rain,” “The Hill Bachelors,” “A Bit on the Side,” and “Cheating at Canasta.” Trevor is Irish, and has lived both in Ireland and England; his stories are set in both countries. One of the many pleasures of the stories is some of the Irish-sounding titles, such as “The Potato Dealer,” “Justina’s Priest,” and “Graillis’s Legacy.” Reading, and in many cases re-reading (as I had read some of the original volumes from which these stories are collected), these stories reminds me of the way they capture aspects of human nature in quiet, unassuming but beautiful prose. McGrath’s 11/28/10 New York Times review of the new collection emphasizes the way the essential aspects of human life as portrayed by Trevor stay the same: the stories are “not modernist, but neither are they antique. They are almost literally timeless”; I think this assessment gets at the essence of Trevor’s fiction. His settings are often small towns, and often the “events” of the story are everyday, quotidian, focusing on revealing character more than on dramatic plots. However, occasionally a sudden change comes into a character’s life, and we learn about the character, as well as about the others around her or him, from the way she or he responds to that change. The language is descriptive but in a low-key, straightforward way. Every word seems just right, but not in a fussy, precious way. The author is both very present through his voice, yet self-effacing. When I read his perfect stories, I think of him as a sort of brilliant but quiet uncle who tells the best, wisest, and most compelling stories one can imagine.

A Touching Christmas Story

I have been thinking about Christmas stories in literature, and the one that keeps coming to mind is the first two chapters in Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." As I posted on 5/9/10, I have always loved this novel, although upon re-reading it in adulthood I was surprised by how didactic it was. Still, its classic portrayal of a family of girls -- especially the intrepid Jo -- has a certain magic attraction. The novel begins with an introduction of the four girls as they prepare for Christmas. Their family is educated but genteelly poor. Their father is away at war (the Civil War) as a chaplain and their mother does good works for charities. The girls would love Christmas treats for themselves, but choose to use their small amounts of money to buy their mother gifts. Then when their mother suggests giving their special, much anticipated Christmas breakfast to a very poor, very hungry family with six children, they hesitate a moment and then agree, cheerfully taking the breakfast over and feeding it to the little children. The girls feel happy about their sacrifice, and their mother is proud of them. They are rewarded that evening by the unexpected gift of a feast sent over by their rich neighbor, Mr. Lawrence. This story, like the whole novel, is moralistic and schematic, but readers -- at least this reader -- can't help being touched and even inspired by its old-fashioned sweetness and emphasis on doing the right thing. Christmas in this story truly is a time of giving.

Balvenie Thinks the Best Writers are Male

I have written a few times (e.g., 8/26/10, 8/27/10, 9/4/10, 9/15/10, 11/15/10) on the issue of gender in the publishing and judging of literature. We all know that women throughout history had a far harder time writing, being published, and being well reviewed, at least up until the past 30-40 years. The question is how much matters have or haven't improved during those years. An October 2010 Harper's ad (p. 5) for "The Balvenie," a maker of scotch whiskey, states that "For 160 years, Harper's Magazine has published fiction and nonfiction by some of the world's most renowned authors. The Balvenie is pleased to bring to you [on its website] a selection of these pieces from writers who have helped define world literature since 1850, including Horatio Alger, Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Winston Churchill, Joseph Conrad, Stephen A. Douglas, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Theodore Roosevelt, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain." The claim about "world literature" seems questionable when all the authors are American or British, except for one lone Dane. And the authors are all male and white! Not only male, but mostly of the tough, "manly man" variety -- e.g., Churchill, Conrad, Kipling, London, Roosevelt. Granted, most of these authors wrote during the days before there were a large number of women or minority writers being published in the U.S., where Harper's is based, but "The Balvenie" could definitely have found a few such authors in Harper's' archives if they had wanted to. Perhaps they were going for a masculine, men-sitting-in-deep-armchairs-in-a-men's-club-library-sipping-scotch vibe? And perhaps a woman author on their list -- or in that imagined library -- would disturb that cozy-but-macho picture? It's "just" an ad, and perhaps I shouldn't read too much into it, or take it personally, but each such experience is a reminder, a pinprick of annoyance, even sadness, and those pinpricks accumulate....

"The Bigness of the World"

“The Bigness of the World” (University of Georgia Press, 2009; paperback 2010), by Lori Ostlund, is a wonderful collection of short stories. Each story is a precise, pointed, original, small gem. I love being surprised, and these stories are surprising, not in a strange, avant garde or experimental way, but in the sense of being unpredictable, yet very believable. The characters are intriguing; the reader feels she knows them, and yet doesn’t quite know them after all. And the characters care for each other -- family members, lovers, friends, even strangers -- but often find out they don’t know each other very well either. This feeling is captured in the last line of the story “And Down He Went”: “[A]t each turn, the people we hold close elude us, living their other lives, the lives that we can never know.” Ostlund grew up in Minnesota and has lived in Spain, Malaysia, and New Mexico, and traveled to many other places; many of her characters are also originally from Minnesota, and her stories take place in some of the same places she has traveled. This makes for a combination of a sort of Midwestern, calm politeness with a traveler’s stolid adaptability to the vicissitudes of world travel. But the characters also have a tendency to be unhappy, and the (mostly lesbian, mostly fortyish) couples have a tendency to be on their way to breaking up. Many of the characters are teachers, and as an English instructor myself, I enjoyed the humorous yet deadpan depictions of the importance of correct grammar to some of these teacher characters. I find myself wanting to write in detail about each of these eleven compelling stories, to illustrate how terrific they are, but I also don’t want to give away all the twists and turns and surprises, because I really hope you will find this book and read these stories for yourself. But I will list some of the titles, which will give you a sense of the unpredictability of the stories: “Talking Fowl with My Father,” “Nobody Walks to the Mennonites,” “Upon Completion of Baldness,” and “The Children Beneath the Seats” are a few of them. This collection, Ostlund’s first book, won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and has received several other recognitions. On a more personal note, I am pleased to note that Ostlund is now a resident of San Francisco.