Struggling to Read about Life at Its Worst

Until this year, David Vann has been for a few years on the faculty of the MFA Program at the university where I teach, the University of San Francisco. Although he openly states that he has had a difficult family history, and a hard time at certain points in his life, his writing has finally gotten recognition in the past few years, including critical acclaim, several prestigious prizes in the U.S. and in Europe, and excellent sales. I don't know Vann at all well, but have conversed with him a couple of times at writing retreats and on campus, and he is -- as other faculty colleagues agree -- a charming, friendly, cheerful person. Yet he has obviously used his books to grapple with pain, violence, and disturbance in his past. Normally readers should not assume connections between an author's work and his life, but in this case Vann has been open about these connections, although fictionalized and transformed by his imagination and talent. His books are all about difficult, depressing topics, including suicide; there have been five suicides in his own extended family. I have read many reviews of the work of this prolific writer, and tried and failed -- because of the difficult subject matter -- to read “Caribou Island” and “Legend of a Suicide.” With the publication of his latest book, I determined to try again, and have now just finished reading his novel “Dirt” (Harper, 2012). According to an interview with the USF Magazine (Summer 2012), the story is “drawn from Vann’s mother’s side of the family…Vann doesn’t just air family secrets; he exaggerates them, creating something that looks like his own history, only more shameful and scandalous. Galen [the main character], Vann said, is…the worst possible version of himself.” The other main characters are Galen’s mother, grandmother, aunt, and cousin. It becomes clear that although there is love among at least some of them, there is also hatred, deep simmering resentment, secrets, and violence, both in their family history and in the present. Sartre’s famous line about hell’s being other people kept going through my mind. Galen, 22 years old, bulimic, and obviously disturbed, is living with his mother near Sacramento, California, attempting to practice his own version of New Age beliefs. The triteness but believability of Galen’s taking his direction from “Siddhartha” and “The Prophet” mixes with the rising awareness of the reader that this character is going off the rails. The events of the book are at first low key although ominous, and then build slowly and in torturous detail to a horrific conclusion. The last 120 pages of this 258-page book are excruciating to read. Once I could see what was happening, I was tempted to stop reading, but forced myself to continue. Vann is a master of showing how curdled family history can rot away the emotions and even sanity of its members. His writing and his control of his story are most admirable, but reading this book is beyond painful. I wish David Vann the best, and predict he will become even more well known than he already is, but at this point I doubt I will be reading more of his work. I fully admit this is because of my own limitations rather than any shortcomings of his brilliant writing.

Embarrassing Book Covers

Have you ever been embarrassed by the cover of a book you were reading? I am not a prude, but I am sometimes too self-conscious about what others think, and I have occasionally felt like hiding or obscuring the cover of a book I have been reading in public. When I took “Marriage: A Duet: Two Novellas,” by Anne Taylor Fleming, off the little pile of books I had brought along on a recent trip, ready to read it in an airport and on a plane, I was reminded that the cover consists of two painted Renaissance-style naked figures with only carefully placed fig leaves adorning them. Very artistic, not at all prurient. And the novel itself is very literary. I had to laugh at myself, but I noticed that I was keeping the book flat (rather than holding it in the air) when I was reading it, and turning it over when I closed and put it down, all in order to avoid displaying the cover. I knew this was silly of me, especially in this world full of far more revealing images; besides, no one else was even looking at me and what I was reading, or would care. It is the curse of self-consciousness, something that I can't seem to completely shake. The book, by the way, is about infidelity. One of the novellas tells the story of male infidelity and the aftermath and longterm consequences on the characters’ marriage. The other novella, about a different couple, tells of female infidelity and its effects on the husband in the story. Both novellas are well written and realistic and very readable, and the characters and their behavior are very believable.

"A Passionate Man," by Joanna Trollope

When I found out a couple of days before that I would be spending most of the day yesterday in a hospital waiting room while my husband was prepared for, had, and recovered from a medical procedure, I knew I would need the distraction of a book that was enjoyable but not too demanding. Otherwise I would just sit and stew with worry, and/or watch too much random bad television. I had recently picked up at a library sale Joanna Trollope’s “A Passionate Man” (Berkley, 1990), and on looking through my book pile, I decided this novel would be a suitable companion for my day at the hospital. (It turned out that I could wait in the hospital room rather than the waiting room.) Trollope, a descendant of Anthony Trollope, is one of the writers I mentioned in my 2/8/10 post about “middlebrow” literature. Over the years I have read several of her novels, and they have been reliably entertaining and quite well written. They are usually about middle-to-upper-middle-class characters in contemporary England, but somehow -- and I am sure this is purposeful -- they retain an aura of an earlier period in British life. The novels are clearly aimed at female readers, and contain just a tiny whiff of upscale romance novels. They are primarily about relationships, love, and families, and the main characters are generally women who are not-young-but-youngish-to-early-middle-aged. This novel, “A Passionate Man,” tells of Liza and Archie, a seemingly very happy couple in their late thirties, very much in love, living in a charming village, with three children, whose relationship is suddenly torn by emotional crises they undergo separately and together. Their marriage suddenly seems at risk. The problem with the book is that the crisis is too abrupt, with little build-up given, so it is not very believable. Other complications are thrown in: Archie’s relationship with his widowed father is so close that Liza feels left out; Archie can’t accept his father’s new marriage after all these years alone; one of the young couple’s children is very unhappy at boarding school; there is a local dust-up regarding a developer’s building houses on the field next to Archie’s and Liza’s house. There is a somewhat shocking development, which I won’t reveal here, but it seems too sudden and artificial a development as well. Somehow there just isn’t enough “there” there in this novel. But I am grateful to the book for helping to distract me from my worry yesterday, so I won’t complain too much about its shortcomings. Most important, my husband’s medical procedure went well, and he came home from the hospital today. That puts everything else in perspective.

"Have I Read This Book Before?": Discovering the Answer

After I wrote yesterday’s post on not remembering if I had already read Sue Miller’s 1993 novel, “For Love,” the question nagged at me, and I couldn’t resist taking the time to flip back through my “books read” notebook. Sure enough, I found that I had in fact read “For Love” in 1994. I have resigned myself to this kind of forgetting, and rationalize that it is because of the many years I have been reading and the many books I have read. Also reassuring is to hear that my friends have the same experience, so I am not alone in this. While I was looking through my list notebook, I ran across titles of some other books I had forgotten reading, as well as many that I well remembered. I was reminded too of some of my reading habits, such as going on “binges” of certain authors, or countries’ authors, and such as re-reading old favorites many times over the years. I am glad I have kept this list all these years; it helps me remember, and it gives me pleasure to revisit past reading.

"For Love," by Sue Miller

I have mentioned, and I know others have also had the experience of, forgetting if I have read a certain book. Even though I have kept a list of what I have read since I was 10 years old (see my post of 1/24/10), that list is in three notebooks (so far!) rather than computerized (OK, it was a while ago that I started the list!) and I don’t have the time now (maybe I will someday...) to go back and enter all the 5200-plus titles and authors into an online database. So it isn’t easy to check if I have already read a specific book, especially for books I may have read 20 or 30 or more years ago. I have read most if not all of Sue Miller’s novels, so when I recently picked up her book “For Love” (HarperPerennial, 1993) (as in “what I did for love”), I thought I had probably already read it, but it didn’t look familiar at all. And even when I read it, at which time a formerly-read book usually starts to sound familiar, it still didn’t ring a bell. It is possible that I had never read it before; it is also quite possible that I did read it 19 or so years ago and forgot it. Disconcerting but true. As for the novel itself: This is the story of Lottie, her brother Cam, and her childhood friend Elizabeth, who is also Cam’s lifelong object of love and desire. Middle-aged now, they reunite by happenstance in Cambridge, Massachusetts one summer, in and between their respective parents’ houses on their childhood street. Much drama ensues, including a tragic event. This novel focuses on the psychological, and on the way our childhoods continue to influence us into middle age and beyond. It also illustrates the longterm effects of social class; Lottie continues to resent the way Elizabeth, who lived in a much nicer house and whose parents were much wealthier, acted superior to Lottie during their teenage years. Although Lottie is a fairly successful writer now, and although Elizabeth is much friendlier now, Lottie is still wary of her and her heedless sense of entitlement. Although the novel is quite intense psychologically, it drags a bit at times. Still, overall this is a novel worth reading. Some critics have said that because Miller’s work is quite accessible (and I would add: because she writes about “women’s subjects”), she has been underestimated as a serious literary author; I think this assessment is correct.

My Current Favorite Contemporary Authors

I have in the past posted a couple of “favorite authors” lists on this blog; I now post my current favorite contemporary authors of fiction (either living, or having died recently). By favorite I mean not only that I very much like reading their novels and stories, but also that I consider them among the best writers writing. This list is not inclusive, and I will probably think of others soon after I post this list. And I do recognize that perhaps there “should” be more writers from outside the U.S. and Great Britain, more ethnic and racial minority writers, and more male writers; if the list were to include all writers I have ever read from the past as well as current writers, the totals would be more “balanced”; for example, overall I may have read almost as many male as female writers, and I have at times read many novels from India, Africa, South America, Europe, and elsewhere, as well as much fiction by Asian American, Hispanic American, and African American authors. So, without further ado, here are my favorite contemporary authors as of right now, in alphabetical order: Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Carolyn Cooke, Anita Desai, Emma Donoghue, Margaret Drabble, Anne Enright, Jane Gardam, Barbara Gowdy, Tessa Hadley, Alan Hollinghurst, Helen Humphreys, Tania James, Gish Jen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Penelope Lively, Ian McEwan, Lorrie Moore, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Antonya Nelson, Stewart O’Nan, Lori Ostlund, Julie Otsuka, Ann Patchett, Edith Pearlman, Tom Rachman, Anne Raeff, Richard Russo, Carol Shields, Mona Simpson, Zadie Smith, Jean Thompson, Colm Toibin, William Trevor, Valerie Trueblood, and Anne Tyler.

"Reckless Driver," by Lisa Vice

I read “Reckless Driver” (Plume, 1995), by Lisa Vice, because the author is the wife of a friend. I had a little bit of that feeling one has when reading something by a friend, or a relative or friend of a friend: “What if it I don’t like it? What will I say to my friend?” Fortunately, in this case I didn’t have to worry, because the book is wonderful. It is beautifully written and the characters are perfectly drawn. Most of the story is told in the voice of a young girl, Lana. She tells of her family -- her father, her mother, and her older (teenaged) sister Abbie -- and of her neighbors in their small town in Indiana in the 1960s. The family is rather poor, although hanging on, so one focus of the novel is social class. The larger focus is how helpless children are in their homes and lives, how vulnerable they are. In this case, the father -- called “The Old Man” by the girls -- loves his daughters but is (it soon becomes clear) mentally disturbed -- probably at least partly because of his war service and experiences -- and abusive. The girls even fantasize about his death, although Lana feels -- despite everything -- a sort of residual love and loyalty to him. Their mother is unhappy in her marriage, cheerfully unfaithful to her husband, and -- although she seems to love them -- does very little to protect the girls from their father. The story is profoundly sad. Yet there are moments of happiness, of love and of fun. Despite everything, the voices of the girls are surprisingly strong and even resilient. Lana especially seems to have an unquenchable spirit; some of this may be due to a caring neighbor, Marvella, who unobtrusively but consistently watches out for Lana. I must say that this book was depressing to read, yet it was compelling, with surprising notes of hope.