Guest Post: On Annie Dillard

When I heard how much my colleague Dennis Bacigalupi admired Annie Dillard, I asked if he would write a guest post about his feelings about her work, and I am pleased and honored that he agreed to do so. You can read his thoughts below.

"When I first read her 1975 Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction narrative “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” Annie Dillard became a cornerstone of my worldview. Lunging at every new publication since, though few and far between, whether poetry (“Tickets for a Prayer Wheel”), essays (“Holy The Firm”), novels (“The Living," “The Maytrees”), biography (“An American Childhood”), travelogue (“Teaching a Stone to Talk”), or writer’s/reader’s guide/memoirs (“Living by Fiction," “The Writing Life”), Dillard has the ability to transport me to the micro-dimensions of inner-life and to the macro-fantastical nether-reaches of all that is beyond. Dillard uses words to illuminate the invisible and transform the obvious. With her inquisitiveness toward the scientific, awareness of the psychological, experience of human nature, and mastery of the function of words, she guides and pulls readers into a sense of soaring I have come to yearn for. Her seminal “a-ha” moment, famously described as “the tree with the lights in it,” suggests an enlightenment experience reflected in all her literary works. She can describe sailing down Puget Sound in a way that puts one in mind of Twain’s dexterity on the Mississippi (“The Living”), detail unfolding intricacies in a life-long marriage (“The Maytrees”), grippingly compare cultural connections of ancient and modern east/west wordsmiths (“Encounters with Chinese Writers”), or delight in the melange of vegetables used as medium in the portrait hanging on her motel wall (“Teaching a Stone to Talk”). Dillard points to the universe in a drop of water and creates a psychic connection to the Crab Nebula. She can blithely reference the Emperor of Bavaria in 840 C.E. and then the platinum blonde in the lobby: always uplifting, recharging, and leading, encouraging us to wake up and SEE."

Franzen on Wharton

Following up on my 2/19/12 and 2/20/12 posts on recent New Yorker stories, this third blogpost focuses on another story in the Feb. 13 and 20, 2012 issue. When I looked at the table of contents, as I always do almost immediately when I receive a new issue of this magazine, I was very happy to note that there was a piece on Edith Wharton, a writer whose work I have read and re-read over the years, have taught, greatly admired, and truly enjoyed (see my post of 4/18/10). The next relevant piece of information was that the story was by Jonathan Franzen, a writer I have mixed feelings about. Readers of this blog may remember that I liked “The Corrections” very much, but never warmed up to his more recent novel, “Freedom.” (See my posts of 11/8/10, 11/11/10, and 11/13/10, detailing my struggles with and ambivalence about “Freedom”). So I was very interested to find out what Franzen would write about Wharton, and at the same time a bit wary. Sure enough, he first wrote about his reservations about her, starting with a very negative portrayal of her “privileged life” and her “indulging her passion for gardens and interior decorations, touring Europe endlessly in hired yachts or chauffeured cars, hobnobbing with the powerful and the famous,” and so on. One of my first responses was to wonder why Franzen was highlighting this aspect of her life, when many authors have had privileged lives. Was it because she was a woman? And was this really the most relevant information about her and her sublime fiction? He then went on to say that Wharton “did have one potentially redeeming disadvantage: she wasn’t pretty.” Once again, my reaction was to wonder why male critics so often discuss the appearances of female authors. In any case, Franzen’s initial main point is that we need to feel sympathy for an author, and for her/his characters, in order to admire the author and her/his work; since (in his view) neither Wharton nor most of her characters are sympathetic, it is hard to like and/or admire her work. Franzen then dissects three Wharton novels: “The House of Mirth,” “The Custom of the Country,” and “The Age of Innocence.” He speculates on why, despite the main characters being hard to sympathize with (again, in his view) because of various failings, including ambition, crudeness, and shallowness, he, and we, are still drawn to the novels. He decides that “sympathy in novels need not be simply a matter of the reader’s direct identification with a fictional character…One of the great perplexities of fiction…is that we experience sympathy so readily for characters we wouldn’t like in real life.” He gives as examples Becky Sharp and Tom Ripley. And so, after more discussion, Franzen comes around to the conclusion that despite creating unsympathetic characters, Wharton helps readers understand their contexts and why they are the people they are. His concluding sentence is that “What you get…at the novel’s end, is sympathy.” I follow Franzen’s argument, but somehow it all seems like a set-up, a construction and round-about interpretation of Wharton’s fiction that leads to a rather arid conclusion. I still can’t really tell if Franzen actually likes reading Wharton’s work. I know, I know… that is not the point of literary criticism. But I would like to be able to discern that simple fact somewhere in a critic’s writing. Further, although I was interested in Franzen’s take on Wharton, I don’t feel I learned much from it about her or her work, and I feel that the whole essay was a sort of house of cards. Further still -- and I fully realize that this part is probably a bit unfair on my part -- I got the feeling from this piece that Franzen admires Wharton only reluctantly, and that he feels he is doing her a favor by -- finally -- praising her. And that doesn’t sit well with me.

"The Plagiarist's Tale"

After I posted on 2/19/12 about a 2/6/12 New Yorker story about Chinese workplace novels, I read two additional fascinating book-related articles in The New Yorker, this time in the February 13 & 20, 2012 issue; I will write about one today and one next time. The first article, “The Plagiarist’s Tale,” by Lizzie Widdicombe, details the case of Quentin Rowan, who wrote under the pen name Q. R. Markham, and whose works over a period of 15 years were patchworks of hundreds of excerpts from the work of other authors, some quite famous. Widdicombe points out that “originality is a relative concept in literature,” as “ideas are doomed to be rehashed….Rowan’s method, though – constructing his work almost entirely from other people’s sentences and paragraphs – makes his book a singular literary artifact,” or, according to Thomas Mallon, “an ‘off-the-charts case’ both in the extent of the plagiarism and in the variety of Rowan’s sources.” The article delves into Rowan’s background, and the way in which he gradually plagiarized more and more, while constantly fearing and believing he would get caught, as he eventually -- but only when his novel “Assassin of Secrets” was published and sold well -- did. Rowan characterizes his plagiarism as an addiction, one as powerful as alcoholism -- an interesting take on plagiarism!

Chinese "Workplace" Novels

Who would have guessed that one of the most popular genres of novels in China is the workplace novel? According to Leslie T. Chang's article, "Working Titles," in the 2/6/12 issue of The New Yorker, "'Zhichang xiaoshuo,' or workplace novels, have topped best-seller lists in recent years." For example, "'Du Lala's Promotion Diary,' by a corporate executive writing under the pen name Li Ke, is the story of a young woman who rises from secretary to human-resources manager at a Fortune 500 company. It has inspired three sequels, a hit movie, and a thirty-two-part television series. The books have sold five million copies." There are subgenres of the workplace novel, such as the "commercial warfare novel," the "financial novel," and the "novel of officialdom." Although they are fiction, many of these books offer extensive advice and "rules" for success in the workplace. Americans might expect that such novels would include romance and/or sex, but publishers tell authors that their novels will sell better with more about finance and less about love. Chang speculates that one reason for the popularity of these workplace novels is that for decades, people in China were assigned jobs by the government, and didn't have to worry too much about competing in the workplace; now that the old system has changed and become more competitive ("Darwinian," Chang calls it), readers are looking for guidance in how to succeed. This article discusses several examples of popular books and their authors, and this discussion provides fascinating insights into what the work world is like in China today.

"Making a Literary Life," by Carolyn See

Upon my recently experiencing a disappointment regarding a piece I had written, my wonderful friend S. sent me a copy of a chapter titled "Make Rejection a Process," from the book "Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers" (Random House, 2002), by Carolyn See. The chapter was smart, funny, and "bracing," a word See likes, and it made me feel better. (Of course rejection is part of the life of any writer, whether of fiction or scholarship or any other type of writing; it comes with the territory.) After reading this chapter, I decided to check out the whole book, and enjoyed reading it. Although it is intended mainly for aspiring fiction writers, rather than academic writers, and although I have been writing and publishing (in modest quantities) for many years, I still found it useful, entertaining, and even inspiring. See, who has published numerous books (mostly fiction), and whose novel "Golden Days" I remember reading some years ago, has a distinctive voice and is generous in sharing her experiences as well as advice. The book is a mixture of practical advice and cheerleading; it is down to earth but also encouraging. As a side note, Carolyn See is the mother of the bestselling author Lisa See, whom she mentions with pride.

So That's Where That Good Book Scent Comes From...

My friend and colleague Andrea sent me a "wall post" with a quote from "Perfumes: The Guide," that she thought -- rightly! -- that I would enjoy. I think I have mentioned here that I -- like many of you, I am sure -- love the smell of books. This quotation says that there is a substance in trees called lignin, which "is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us." So there is a scientific reason that old books smell so good! I don't think I had identified that smell as being related to vanilla, but it makes sense, as vanilla is such a soothing, feel-good scent.

"The World We Found," by Thrity Umrigar

It is a common theme: the inseparable group of friends who have grown up together, or met at camp or in high school or in college. I always fall for this type of story. In Thrity Umrigar's novel, "The World We Found," the four friends met at their university in Bombay (before it was Mumbai) in the 1970s, 30 years before the main action in the novel. At college they were idealistic, fought political fights, loved, lost, and were always there for each other. OK, this is all familiar stuff, even a little formulaic, although in this case it is set in India, which provides some variety through the setting and cultural aspects. Since the four are mostly of the upper class, their lives are in some ways not so very different from those of the upper class around the world. But Umrigar (mostly) makes us care about these four women, and now 30 years later when one of them, now in America, is very ill and wants the other three to come visit, and to do so as soon as possible, various complications set in. There are secrets from the past and present that jeopardize this plan. The four friends, with some help from husbands and others, have to pull together to overcome obstacles. There are issues of social class, of religion, of gender restrictions, and of sexual identity threaded throughout the novel. I wouldn't recommend going way out of your way to read this novel, but, overall, I liked it; it was an enjoyable read.