"Birds of Paradise," by Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber’s new novel, “Birds of Paradise” (W. W. Norton, 2011), shares with her other novels the starring role of food, especially baked goods, in her characters’ lives. One of the main characters in this novel is the baker of delicate, intricate, artistic pastries that taste ethereal as well as delicious; another runs a grocery store specializing in local, seasonal, organic food. But the main theme of the novel is the mysterious estrangement between parents Avis and Brian, on the one hand, and their daughter Felice, on the other hand. Felice had been close to her parents and to her brother Stanley until about age 13, when she started periodically and then finally disappearing from her home. As the novel begins, Avis doesn’t know where her daughter lives, and only sees her every few months when Felice calls and arranges to meet in a café, where she sometimes is very late and sometimes doesn’t show up after all. There are alternating chapters from the points of view of the four family members. In Felice’s chapters, we are soon given hints that something bad happened at school or with a school friend, something that Felice cannot forget or forgive herself for, and this is connected with her leaving home. This story reminds me a bit of several novels with runaway daughters, including the wonderful late Carol Shields’ moving last book, “Unless.” There is the same sense of bafflement and grief felt by the parents, the wondering what they did wrong, what they could have done differently, and the aching pain of missing and worrying about their estranged daughters. I have to mention too that this novel is set in Miami, and to a greater degree than with most novels, the city is almost a character in the novel. We watch the four main characters and a few others move through the city; the city and its neighborhoods come alive in Abu-Jaber’s descriptions. We see the physical beauty of the beaches, water, and vegetation; we see the glamor and glitz of the city, along with the tawdriness and greed. We see the mixture of people from many backgrounds, and the large amounts of money being spent everywhere, especially on real estate, in this just-before-the-bubble-burst era. I happen to have visited Miami for the first time this past June, so I was particularly interested in the vivid descriptions of the city. Hurricane Katrina is also a character in the novel, and its aftermath plays an important part in the resolution of the story.

Memorable Novels about Americans in Europe

Americans have long gone to Europe to experience older cultures than their own, to see the sights, and to feel sophisticated. Writers have always been among the most vulnerable to the call of Europe, and often their writing reflects this fascination. Below are some of the more memorable novels by American writers about Americans in Europe.

The Ambassador, by Henry James
The American, by Henry James
The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton
Daisy Miller, by Henry James
Dodsworth, by Sinclair Lewis
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
French Lessons, by Ellen Sussman
Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin
The Golden Bowl, by Henry James
The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
Le Divorce, by Diane Johnson
The Marble Faun, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Le Mariage, by Diane Johnson
Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes
The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain
Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
Prague, by Arthur Phillips
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Remembering September 11, 2001

On this September day, exactly ten years after the attacks on New York and Washington, and after the deaths of so many that day and afterward there, in Pennsylvania, and later in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, I, like you, remember and grieve. I was just now listening to a video of John Lennon singing "Imagine," and I mourn that his vision of a peaceful world seems farther away than ever. But watching the memorial coverage on television, I am reminded that most people are still basically good. I am reminded too that music and art and literature are expressions of our individual and shared human experiences and connections, expressions that can be cathartic, comforting, and transcendent. The arts remind us of our higher selves, and they give us courage to go on, and to keep trying, despite all odds, to make the world a better place.

Memorable Muckraking Books

The term “muckraker,” originally a negative one, in the early twentieth century came to mean writing to expose scandals and problems that hurt the public, and advocating reform. Muckraking writers often had to be courageous, risking a lot to uncover dangerous truths and publish them. Many of their books made a difference, sometimes leading to new protective laws addressing the issues raised by the muckrakers. The term is used less frequently these days, but fortunately there are still writers in the muckraking tradition. Below are just a few of the most memorable examples of “muckraking” books published over the past century or so; in each case the book shed light on an issue in which there was misuse of power, generally for the profit of the few. Most of the books listed are nonfiction; a few are novels. These and other such books illustrate the power of the written word. We should all be grateful to the brave and intrepid writers who have made the world a bit better through their work.

All the President’s Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser
The History of the Standard Oil Company, by Ida Tarbell
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, by Stephen Crane
McTeague, by Frank Norris
Nickle and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Octupus, by Frank Norris
The Shame of the Cities, by Lincoln Steffens
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
Ten Days in a Mad-House, by Nelly Bly
Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader

"Poe House Museum May Be Nevermore"

The headline of an 8/10/11 San Francisco Chronicle story, "Poe House Museum May Be Nevermore," saddened me. Apparently Baltimore government officials have stopped funding as a museum the house where the famed resident of Baltimore and writer Edgar Allan Poe lived for several years with his young wife Virginia and other family members. It was there that he wrote his first short stories and had his first literary success, winning $50 in a contest for one of his stories. The Poe House is designated a landmark, so it will not be torn down, but the museum housed there is in danger of closing for lack of funding. I understand that in these bad economic times, there are other priorities for funding, but it is always sad when our connections to the literary past are severed or limited.

What Happened to Novels about Workers?

An E. J. Dionne opinion piece in the 9/5/11 San Francisco Chronicle says, “We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers…and their honest toil.” He goes on to say that workers, and the working class, are now mostly ignored even in literature and the arts. He quotes a 2006 essay by critic William Deresiewicz observing that “we no longer have novelists such as John Steinbeck or John Dos Passos who take the lives of working people seriously.” This comment made me try to think of current authors who write about working life, and I came up with very few. In the past there were Hardy, Dickens, Balzac, Zola, Gaskell, and London, among others; in the more recent past there were Lawrence, Dreiser, Howells, Farrell, Algren, Le Sueur, Richler, Sillitoe and Carver. And nowadays? The list is thinner; those that spring to my mind include Carolyn Chute, Dorothy Allison, Jayne Anne Phillips, Marge Piercy, and Jeannette Winterson. OK, I really didn’t notice until I typed these authors’ names that they were all female. Readers, can you think of authors – male or female – that have recently written more than glancingly or superficially about workers’ lives, particularly working class lives?

"Yesterday's Weather," by Anne Enright

Dublin writer Anne Enright’s 2007 novel, “The Gathering,” is sad but beautifully written; I was not surprised when it was awarded the Mann Booker Prize. I have just read her following book, a collection of short stories titled “Yesterday’s Weather” (Grove Press, 2008); it is a compilation of stories published between 1990 and 2008. Enright has the gift of surprising readers with unique situations and characters, yet providing us with that shock of recognition that connects us somehow to the variations of the human condition displayed by these characters. Almost every story has a twist, not in a gimmicky O. Henry way, but in a way that defies prediction. Enright seems to be speaking of herself and her writing when she has one of her characters (Cathy, in the story “(She Owns) Every Thing”) say, “She loved corners, surprises, changes of light.” Enright gives us eccentric, disaffected, unhappy, resigned, unfaithful characters, along with just a few contented characters. She is an astute observer of human nature, and seems especially interested in characters who are a little different, offbeat in some way, yet she makes us understand these people rather than be put off by them. Her writing is precise, witty, sometimes spare, sometimes generous with details and explanations. There are 31 stories, so it is hard to make generalizations about them, but I can say that most of them are about relationships, especially between spouses and between lovers. There is much about marriage, adultery, and sex. The sex is talked about but not generally described. She also seems to be interested in social class, although without making a point of it; she often portrays people in the middle and lower-middle classes. These stories are both stimulating and thought-provoking, each one with its surprising and satisfying tale unfolding in a very few pages, each one eliciting from the reader a little outtake of breath of surprise yet recognition. It is collections such as this one that have recently made me a renewed reader of, and admirer of, short stories.