"Three Stages of Amazement"

Carol Edgarian’s “Three Stages of Amazement” (Scribner, 2011), intrigued me because it focuses on the financial crash of the past three years and its effects even on many prosperous people, and because it is set in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. Silicon Valley figures prominently, as do the wealthier neighborhoods in and around San Francisco. The upper middle class but spread-too-thin-financially main characters, Charlie and Lena, are very believable, as are some of the other vividly portrayed characters, particularly Lena’s extremely wealthy uncle Cal and his wife Ivy. We understand and sympathize with the sort of trap Charlie and Lena have fallen into: their ambition has led them to a place where they risk failing on a spectacular level. They are not simply ambitious, however; Charlie’s goal of inventing a robot that can perform surgery in poor countries, directed by a doctor elsewhere, is altruistic as well. We also sympathize with the couple’s deep sadness about the death of one twin girl at birth and the ongoing illness of the other infant twin girl, with the toll Charley’s long work hours and frequent travels take on the marriage, and with Lena’s emotional deprivation and frustration at being left to handle taking care of her two children (they also have a five year old son), including the pain and complications of having a chronically ill child, practically alone. One of the main themes of this novel is, in fact, marriage and its difficulties as well as joys. Charley’s and Lena’s marriage is a beautiful, loving, yet fragile and threatened relationship, realistically delineated. Something that bothered me as I was reading this novel, though, is that there is something unsettling, almost jittery, about it. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that; good literature is often unsettling. I imagine the author intended this impression. But I am not sure the rewards of the novel justify this sort of jumpiness. On the other hand, I read the novel quite quickly, indicating that I enjoyed it, so I won’t be too critical of it.

Questioning Steinbeck’s "Charley"

How disillusioning! An editorial in today’s (4/10/11) New York Times reports on Bill Steigerwald’s research showing that much of John Steinbeck’s ostensibly nonfiction travel memoir, “Travels with Charley in Search of America” (1962) (a book that I very much enjoyed many years ago), was more fiction than nonfiction. Steigerwald researched Steinbeck’s letters, itineraries, and other documents, and found that, according to the Times, the book was “shot through with dubious anecdotes and impossible encounters.” He also found that Steinbeck was NOT alone with his dog Charley most of the time on his trip across America, that his wife was with him much of the time, and that they often stayed in nice hotels and seldom actually camped. This discovery reminds us that the controversies of more recent years regarding James Frey’s "memoir" that turned out to be fiction, and regarding the nonexistent teenaged JT Leroy’s purported “memoir” that turned out to be fiction by a middle-aged woman named Laura Albert, were not new in the annals of literature. The big question, of course, is how much this matters. At least one Steinbeck scholar, according to the Times, felt it didn’t matter. And everyone understands that memoir cannot be perfectly factual and “true” because memory is fallible, and because the episodes and details the author selects to write about shape the “truth” of the piece. But despite this understanding, readers expect that nonfiction/memoir will be basically factually “true,” and feel that their trust has been violated if it turns out not to be so. The Times editorial agrees with this stance, stating that if a book is put forth as nonfiction, it should in fact be nonfiction.

"Marry or Burn"

The eye-catching title of Valerie Trueblood’s collection of short stories, “Marry or Burn” (Counterpoint, 2010), is of course reminiscent of the apostle Paul’s statement in the New Testament that it is better to remain celibate if possible, but if not, “It is better to marry than burn.” The final, longest story in this collection, “Beloved, You Looked Into Space,” sets up this very opposition, and ends with a happy marriage despite threats and complications of various types, including a possible forest fire that fortunately does not materialize. These stories are full of wonderful, complex portrayals of relationships among spouses, family members, lovers, and others. There are several insightful stories about marriage. Another strength of these stories is the portrayal of relationships among sisters and woman friends. The tone of the stories is both matter of fact and dreamy, as if the characters -- and by extension we readers –- move through life in a sort of dazed haze, accepting and absorbing the inevitable bitter along with the gift of the sweet. There are complicated love affairs, a fair amount of adultery, and complicated families with lots of step-relatives. There are estrangements and reconciliations. Trueblood’s stories manage to be both very realistic and beautifully imaginative. Somehow, throughout, my main impression was one of grace, not necessarily earned or predictable, and not necessarily in traditional forms, but pervasive. It took me a story or two to get caught up in this collection, but once I did, I was enchanted and impressed.

Bibliotherapy

The concept of "bibliotherapy" may ring true for the many of us who would agree that reading -- among its many benefits -- can be therapeutic. It makes us feel connected, recognized, understood, inspired, supported, and even healed. Bibliotherapy has a more specific use in the field of education, and more particularly in the field of literacy, where it has been found to be a powerful tool for teaching and supporting children. I recently found that the International Reading Association (IRA) has a Special Interest Section (SIG) on "Bibliotherapy and Reading," currently chaired by my colleague (across the country!) and friend Dr. Rachel Grant, of George Mason University. This group produces a newsletter and a journal, and holds sessions at IRA conferences. For example, according to a newsletter article by Dr. Grant, "As a result of growing concern for the psycho-social and emotional health and wellbeing of children and youth during times of conflict and war, in 2008 and 2009 the Bibliotherapy and Reading SIG academic sessions addressed the impact of conflict and violence on our youngest and most venerable populations," sharing titles of books that "build resiliency and promote a culture of peace in classrooms and beyond." This is yet another testimony to the power of books and reading. I thank Rachel and her IRA SIG colleagues for the good work they are doing as educators, and in particular through promoting bibliotherapy.

My Magazine Pile

For various reasons, the past couple of months have been particularly busy. My pile of incoming magazines has gotten unusually high, as I haven't been able to keep up with the relentless (although welcome) flow to my mailbox. Right now on that pile are the following: 6 issues of The Nation, 4 of Vanity Fair, 2 of San Francisco Magazine, 1 of The Progressive, 1 of New York, 1 of The Atlantic, 1 of Threepenny Review, 1 of The Women's Review of Books, 1 of The New York Times Book Review, and a few miscellaneous magazines from various organizations. On a separate pile are 19 issues of various professional journals. I don't usually let these piles get so tall; I try to keep up. Note that there are no issues of The New Yorker, and only one of New York, despite the fact that these magazines arrive weekly; this is because I tend to read these magazines first because they are so engaging. I know that I will eventually read, or at least skim, all the magazines and journals on my pile, but at this point I don't know when!

"True to Form"

On 2/8/10, I wrote about "middlebrow" authors I enjoy. Their works are a pleasure to read, and are of good quality but perhaps not in the top tier of "serious literature." They have given millions of readers much enjoyment. One of these writers is Elizabeth Berg. I have read several of her novels over the years, and just picked up "True to Form" (Washington Square Press, 2002) for a recent plane trip. (Some of my colleagues work on planes...I see time in the air as time to read!) Berg constructs wonderful, relationship-oriented (I refer to relationships among family members, friends, spouses, and more) stories with very believable characters. In this novel, she writes of thirteen-year-old Katie Nash, a character she previously wrote about in "Durable Goods" and "Joy School." Katie is wise in some ways and innocent in others. She encounters various obstacles in life, but has a kind of centered quality that allows her to deal with them. She is very self-aware and thoughtful, but sometimes makes mistakes in her relationships with others. She is always sincere, and always tries to do the right thing. She is an extremely likable character, with a direct and compelling voice. I admire Berg's ability to portray a young teenager in such a natural, insightful way. "True to Form" is a "quick read," but the story -- and Katie's voice -- do not fade so quickly.

"First Light"

I wrote about Charles Baxter's novel "Feast of Love" on 3/22/10; one of several reasons I liked the book was its setting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, because I once lived in the AA area. I recently picked up, and read on the plane to and from a conference in Chicago, one of Baxter's older novels, "First Light" (Penguin, 1987), which also takes place (mostly) in Michigan, but this time in the Saginaw/Bay City area, where my parents and other family members once lived. There are two unusual characteristics of this novel. First, it starts in the present and moves backward in time, throughout the lives of the main characters all the way to early childhood, gradually revealing the roots of their relationships and choices in life. Second, the two main characters are brother and sister, a relationship seldom focused on in literature. Hugh was frequently told by his parents to take care of Dorsey, his younger sister. He always felt responsible for doing so, especially after their parents died young. The lives of the two siblings are very different; Hugh is a car salesman who dropped out of college, stayed in his parents' town and house, is in an unsatisfying marriage, and is the father of two young girls. He is reliable and caring, but there are moments when he is envious of Dorsey, who is an accomplished astrophysicist married to a loving but unfaithful actor, mother to a deaf son who is very well-adjusted, and moves around the country. There are various subplots, but the heart of the story is the sort of sibling dance between Hugh and Dorsey, and Baxter keeps us interested in their relationship and their stories.