"We Had It So Good"

I find myself drawn to novels about my generation, those of us who were adolescents and young adults in the l960s and 1970s (OK, yes, the Baby Boomers…). For all the good and bad of those years, and there was plenty of both, I think most of us still feel that they were a sort of Golden Age. Linda Grant captures this feeling in her novel “We Had It So Good” (Scribner, 2011). Her protagonist, Stephen, an American who moved to England, often romanticizes this period in his life. His wife, Andrea, is more pragmatic and is glad that they have since then achieved a comfortable, upper middle class life. His hedonist friend, Ivan, happily enjoys the “best” of both lives: his habits from the sixties and his comforts from his later adult life. The fourth main character, Grace, is a bit of a lost soul; she is, on the one hand, an independent woman who travels everywhere and acts on her ideals, but on the other hand, always needs a man in her life, and doesn’t really get along well with anyone except her old friend Andrea. These four met when they were all at Oxford, Stephen as a Rhodes Scholar (who met Bill Clinton, another Rhodes Scholar, on the ship from the U.S. to England) and the others as English students. We also learn about Stephen and Andrea’s two children, Marianne and Max, each with her/his own complicated life, and Stephen’s father, Si, who is deeply loving but has his own secrets. But the main focus is on the Boomer generation, and how they come to terms with growing older and, eventually, encounter illness and mortality. They – especially Stephen – have led (mostly) charmed lives (thus the title) and can hardly believe that they too are subject to these calamities. One other point that becomes clear is that those who have had loving parents and happy childhoods are positively influenced by these their whole lives; the only problem is that they, as in Stephen’s example, are not really prepared for anything to go wrong in their lives. This situation really resonates with me. An intriguingly dissonant aspect of this novel, for me, was that I didn’t really connect much with any individual character -- well, maybe a bit with Stephen -- and I found the characters a bit complacent, but on the other hand, I connected a lot with the generational aspect and dilemmas. At the end of the book, Stephen thinks, “I don’t understand. How does it come to this? We were supposed to be so special, we were going to change everything and it turns out we’re just the same….” This novel is an absorbing read, especially for those of the Boomer generation.

Memorable Animals in Fiction

Another in my series of lists of "memorables" in literature: memorable animals.

Dogs:
-Pilot in “Jane Eyre” (Bronte)
-White Fang in “White Fang” (London)
-Buck in “Call of the Wild” (London)
-Grizzle in “Mrs. Dalloway” (Woolf)
-Old Yeller in “Old Yeller” (Gipson)
-Lassie in “Lassie Come Home” (Knight)
-Shadow in “Shadow the Sheep Dog” (Blyton)
-Nana in “Peter Pan” (Barrie)
-Yellow Dog Dingo in “Just So Stories” (Kipling)
-Jack in the “Little House” series (Wilder)
-Ribsy in Beverly Cleary’s books for children

Cats:
-Kitty in the “Little House” series (Wilder)
-Ginger in the Narnia books (Lewis)

Other:
-the horse Black Beauty in “Black Beauty” (Sewell)
-the Cowardly Lion in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (Baum)
-Peter Rabbit in the Beatrix Potter children’s books
-the White Rabbit and the March Hare in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (Carroll)
-the spider Charlotte and the pig Wilbur in “Charlotte’s Web” (White)
-the monkey Bandar-log in “The Jungle Book” (Kipling)
-the monkey Curious George in the series (Reys)
-the pigs Napoleon, Snowball, and Squealer in “Animal Farm” (Orwell)
-the robin in “The Secret Garden (Burnett)

The Story of a Great Chef: Grant Achatz

As regular readers of this blog know, I like to read about restaurants, chefs, and the “foodie” (although I don’t particularly like this term, it is a kind of convenient shorthand) world. (See, for example, my 2/4/10 list of books on these topics, and my 6/10/11 list of “memorable meals in fiction.”) I have just finished reading a fascinating contribution to this genre: “Life, On the Line” (Gotham, 2011), by Chef Grant Achatz and his business partner, Nick Kokonas. Achatz is only in his thirties but has become one of the very best-known chefs in the United States and the world, because of the intensely creative food he produces in his award-winning Chicago restaurant, Alinea. The story of his becoming a chef and of his restaurant is intertwined with the story of his life. A very difficult and frightening occurrence in his life a few years ago was his diagnosis of, and treatment for, Stage IV tongue cancer. This is a terrible illness for anyone, but even more so for a chef, who needs his sense of taste for his livelihood and passion. He underwent an extremely painful and ravaging experimental treatment that, miraculously, cured his cancer and eventually allowed his taste to come back. Throughout, he continued to run the restaurant, create new dishes, and supervise his dedicated group of chefs. Now he and Kokonas have opened a new restaurant in Chicago as well, called Next, a sign of hope for a new beginning. This book catches the reader up in the compelling story it offers, and is informative, enjoyable, sad, and inspiring. I had the privilege and good fortune to dine at Alinea earlier this year, thanks to my friends E., J., and G.; it was an amazing, even thrilling experience. This book is a must-read for anyone at all interested in the world of restaurants.

Literature in the Current Issue of The New Yorker

The New Yorker is, among other things, a literary magazine, one of the reasons I like it so much (as I have posted to say before). The current issue (June 13 & 20, 2011) is particularly focused on literature, with three short stories (rather than the usual one), a literary memoir, and a special section, "Starting Out," comprised of short pieces by various authors about their early years. For me, the highlights are as follows: 1. Jhumpa Lahiri's memoiristic essay, "Trading Stories," about how she became a reader and then a writer, starting in childhood, and how she always felt torn between her Indian and American identities. 2. Jeffrey Eugenides' story, "Asleep in the Lord," about a young American man who goes to do volunteer work in Mother Teresa's home for dying poor people in Calcutta, and about what he learns about himself there. 3. Lauren Groff's wrenching story, "Above and Below," about a female graduate student who loses her connection to academe, becomes destitute and homeless, and suffers much hardship. 4. Salvatore Scibona's short piece about how he disliked school and assigned reading, but somehow heard about and was accepted at St. John's College, which utilized the Great Books approach, and was challenged, exhilarated, and educated through learning Greek and reading "The Iliad," Copernicus, Einstein, Hegel, Darwin, Baudelaire and much much more.

Memorable Villains in Literature

Here is another list in what is becoming an irregular "series" of lists of things memorable in literature. Today's list is of a few memorable villains.

-Iago in “Othello” (Shakespeare)
-Edmund in “King Lear” (Shakespeare)
-Pap Finn in “Huckleberry Finn” (Twain)
-Robert Lovelace in “Clarissa” (Richardson)
-Clare Quilty in “Lolita” (Nabokov)
-Bill Sikes in “Oliver Twist” (Dickens)
-Alec d’Urberville in “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” (Hardy)
-Mr. Hyde in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Stevenson)
-Mr. Kurtz in “Heart of Darkness” (Conrad)
-Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca” (Du Maurier)
-The White Witch in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” (Lewis)
-The Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” (Baum)

"Equal Affections"

At the same time that I happened to pick up David Leavitt’s novel “The Body of Jonah Boyd,” which I posted about on 6/8/11, I picked up another of his novels, an earlier one titled “Equal Affections” (Perennial, 1989). This story is also -- like most of his work -- about a family: Louise and Nat, their daughter April, and their son Danny. Louise is sick throughout most of the book; she is a loving but difficult wife and mother. Her marriage to Nat is loving but fraught. April is a semi-famous lesbian folksinger. Danny is a gay lawyer whose partner, Walter, is also a lawyer; they have their ups and downs, but overall a great relationship. There are other family members, friends, and lovers featured, but the main focus is always on the relationships among the four original family members. Like most families, they love each other deeply, and take for granted that nothing can break their connection, yet they squabble, offend each other, are sometimes out of touch for a while, then reconcile. Sometimes they are baffled by each other, but there is a warmth among them as well. This story, although lacking the mystery aspect of “Jonah,” is a richer, denser story with a more genuine feel to it. The novel kept me reading, and I enjoyed it. If it turns up in your life, say at a library sale or at a summer cottage, do consider reading it, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone’s going out of her/his way to find it.

Teacher, Practice What You Preach!

Among other things, I teach writing. I teach my students about the writing process, including all the things writers sometimes do on the way to a finished product. These can include reading, thinking, discussing ideas with others, brainstorming, freewriting, jotting down notes, outlining, drafting, getting feedback on early drafts from others, redrafting, and more. I firmly believe in this process, yet when I am doing my own writing projects, I sometimes have to remind myself to “practice what I preach,” or in this case, “practice what I teach.” I have recently been stuck on getting started on a certain piece that I have committed to write, casting about for how to focus the piece. A few days ago I decided to try the exercise of freewriting, which involves simply writing freely about a topic, without thinking too much, without worrying about logic or felicity, and most of all, without stopping. As I say to my students, “Just keep that pen moving!” It is a kind of priming of the pump; the idea is that the very act of writing freely and without prior plan or structure will bring ideas to the surface that one can then mine for use in the writing project. Although I often have my students do this exercise, I almost never do it myself. Well, sure enough, as I was writing away, letting words flow onto the page in an unregulated stream, my ideas started to take shape, and I began to see a way out of my tangle and block. And then as my focus became clearer, I started to get excited about the potential of the piece. When I finally stopped and read over what I had written, I could focus and organize the ideas I found there. I am still a long, long way from a finished piece, but now I know where I am going with it, and more or less how I will get there, which makes all the difference. I am happy about this, of course, and also slightly sheepish about the fact that I had forgotten or neglected this useful strategy that I blithely teach my students but tend to ignore in my own writing; I should listen to myself more often!