In Appreciation of Book-Related Periodicals

Although I mainly write in this blog about books, and especially novels, I have also written here about some of my favorite periodicals, and about specific stories and articles in those magazines and newspapers. Today I want to emphasize how much I rely on those publications – such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Women’s Review of Books, The Atlantic, Ms., The Nation, Threepenny Review, New York, Vanity Fair, The Progressive, and more – for book reviews, for new short stories, and for articles about authors and other literary topics. Some very recent examples of such articles – the kind that I light up when I see the titles of – are as follows. First, The New York Times (3/22/13) had a very interesting story on the upcoming publication of “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather,” which will include 566 letters from various archives; this is a major event for Willa Cather scholars and readers. I have written here about my love for Cather’s novels, most especially “My Antonia,” which I have also taught several times. Second, the most recent The New York Review of Books (4/25/13) includes a review essay on two new books about Margaret Fuller. Of course I knew of Fuller’s life and work, but this essay reminded me of what a tremendous pioneer she was for women, especially literary women. She was a passionate advocate for women’s rights, including in her groundbreaking book, “Women in the Nineteenth Century”; “the leading female figure in…transcendentalism”; editor of the first avant-garde intellectual magazine in America, The Dial; and the first regular foreign correspondent, male or female, for an American newspaper. Third and fourth, This week’s New Yorker (4/15/13) includes a fascinating profile of the “writer’s writer” James Salter, speculating on why Salter is not more famous, and a detailed article about the life and important revolutionary feminist work of Shulamith Firestone, who died last year in heartbreaking circumstances (see my post of 8/30/12). Each one of these articles taught me something new and has provided me with a window into the work and lives of writers that are important to the world of literature and beyond, and to me personally.

Twenty Writers Tell Us Why They Write

The title of “Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do” (Plume, 2013) is self-explanatory. Edited by Meredith Maran, this small gem of a book gives us the inside scoop about some well known contemporary writers, including Isabel Allende, Jennifer Egan, Gish Jen, Sebastian Junger, Mary Karr, Armistead Maupin, Terry McMillan, Ann Patchett, Jane Smiley, and Meg Wolitzer, to highlight a few. What motivates them? What are their writing habits? How do they deal with writing blocks? What have their happiest moments been? Each writer’s chapter includes a brief introduction by the editor, a list of “vitals” (basic information about each author), a list of the author’s works, an essay of about 5-10 pages by the author, and a final boxed and bulleted list of the author’s “Wisdom for Writers.” There are some common threads, of course; the one I noticed most frequently was some variation of the theme “I write because I have to; I write because I can’t imagine not writing.” The chapters are written in an informal, almost conversational style, with plenty of juicy tidbits for those of us who want to know all about the writers we read. Almost anyone who loves to read and/or write will find much to enjoy and learn from, in a very accessible format, in this appealing book.

"The Obituary Writer," by Ann Hood

I still remember taking Ann Hood’s first novel, “Somewhere off the Coast of Maine” (1987) one year to my parents’ summer cottage in Michigan where I used to visit every summer over a period of many years. It is a lovely novel, and was perfect for my carefully selected stack of summer cottage books. Then I lost track of Hood's work for a while. When I read her 2007 novel, “The Knitting Circle,” I had mixed feelings. I knew that she had suffered the terrible personal tragedy of the death of her four year old daughter, Grace, in 2002, and that she couldn’t write or even read for some time afterward; I couldn't imagine how utterly devastating that must have been. She says that knitting saved her life. So this novel about knitting and friendship and support was very personally meaningful to her, and therapeutic as well. Unfortunately, the novel was not well written. Recently I picked up and read her new novel, “The Obituary Writer” (W. W. Norton, 2013). It has an intriguing plot, and utilizes that somewhat shopworn device of writing about the stories of two characters separated by several decades (from the early 20th century to the 1960s), who gradually turn out to have a connection. The problem is that the connection is not that interesting. The first story, that of Vivien, whose dearly beloved married lover, David, disappeared during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, is the more intriguing one; the second story, that of Claire in the 1960s, is less so. The most interesting thing about Claire’s story is the way it illuminates how many women at that time were trapped in traditional marriages in which the husband made all the decisions; further, women were treated by many as second class citizens. There is nothing new about these insights, but Hood portrays the situation vividly. For example, when Claire is in the hospital, the doctors keep talking with her husband about her health, rather than talking with her directly. But aside from this aspect, I was disappointed with Claire’s part of the story, and ultimately with the novel itself.

R.I.P. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

This morning I felt a small shock when I read of writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's death at the age of 85. This author's work was among the very first to bring the world of India to Western readers. As someone who grew up in India myself, I still remember reading her best known (a winner of the Booker Prize) novel, "Heat and Dust," published in 1975, and several others of her novels and short story collections. This fiction is full of the sights, sounds, and smells of India, as well as of the United States and other settings. Even more, it often portrays the interweaving of, and sometimes clashes between, various cultures. Because of Jhabvala's own life experience as a person born and raised in Germany, who married an Indian man and lived in India for about 20 years, and then lived in New York, she moved between cultures and often wrote about other "refugees"(her word for herself)/immigrants/world citizens such as herself. She wrote prolifically, including many stories published in the New Yorker. But she became perhaps most well known for her screenplays for the famous Merchant Ivory films. She worked with the late producer Ismail Merchant and the director James Ivory on 22 films in four decades. I love these beautiful films, often based on classic novels by such authors as Henry James and E.M. Forster. They include "A Room with a View," "Howard's End," "The Golden Bowl," "Remains of the Day," and "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge." I want to pay tribute to this wonderful writer who introduced so many people to so many worlds during her long career. (Thanks to the New York Times obituary for some of the information here.)

"The Transit of Venus," by Shirley Hazzard

I have written here about sometimes going back to books I loved when I read them at a much younger age, and finding I just can’t read them again. Sometimes this is because I realize they aren’t as good as I thought they were, back then. Sometimes it is because the books are just too emotionally exhausting to re-read. In contrast, today I write about the experience of going back to read a book I read years ago, and finding I appreciate it even more than I did at the time. This was the case with Shirley Hazzard’s novel “The Transit of Venus” (Penguin, 1990, originally published 1980), which I recently picked up on a whim and read on a recent conference trip. I had read the book soon after it originally came out in 1980, and I vaguely remember liking it fine, but not as much as I thought I should, given the reviews and praise it garnered back then. Re-reading it now, I was struck by the compelling characters and story, and most of all, by the gorgeous writing. What a tour de force! The novel tells the story of two sisters who emigrate from Australia to England in the 1950s. Their lives become entangled with those of several men who love them; in some cases the love is reciprocated, in some cases not, and in some cases their relationships change over the years. Their lives are touched by war, by financial problems, by prejudice against women, and by the changing times. One sister, Caro, is the true, calm but often suffering, deeply and almost magically interesting center of the novel; she is a truly original character, and one that a reader can’t stop trying to figure out. This is one of those novels that one feels, as one is reading, has a deep connection to life itself, with all of its vicissitudes. And throughout, the reader knows she is in the hands of a literary master. I am so glad I rediscovered this novel, took a chance on it, and was overwhelmed by how good it is.

Philip Roth: The Greatest Living American Writer?

On Friday night I watched a PBS special about Philip Roth. OK, I will confess: I dozed off halfway into it. The show consisted mainly of a tight focus on Roth talking – the “talking head” mode. Maybe I am shallow, or maybe I was just tired, but it wasn’t enough to engage my attention fully. But I also suspect that my dozing was a kind of unconscious resistance to the premise of the show (presented as if it were a universally accepted truth), which was that Roth is the U.S.’s “greatest living writer.” I agree that he is a great writer, but is he the “greatest”? A few years ago, before the deaths of Bellow and Updike, Roth was often bracketed with them as the greatest living writers. And yes, the other two were great as well. But, again, the greatest? And – perhaps this is the crux of the matter with me – greatest for whom? And where are the lists that include some of our outstanding American women authors? Where are Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Jane Smiley, or Anne Tyler, to mention just a few of the leading writers of our time? But the issue isn’t just the gender of the writers; it is also the “gender” of the fiction itself. By this I mean that Roth’s novels, for example, are heavily, intensely, and unapologetically from the male perspective, focusing on male characters, male topics and male obsessions. Although I admired and read his earlier novels, I long ago stopped reading him because I felt so little connection to them. (I did try again a couple of times over the years, but never could get engaged enough to continue reading.) I realize I am getting into controversial and dangerous waters here, and of course the discussion of gender in literature (about which I have posted several times here already) is contentious and complex. But circling back to the original point: is Philip Roth really the greatest living American writer? I am not at all convinced.

"A Thousand Pardons," by Jonathan Dee

Almost exactly three years ago (3/31/10), I wrote a rather irritated post on Jonathan Dee’s novel “The Privileges,” decrying the entitled, amoral characters (while acknowledging that the portrayal of such Wall Street characters is well observed and captures something about the spirit of the times; of course I understand that novels can and should sometimes portray highly unlikeable and even repugnant characters, as these are part of life). Dee’s new novel, “A Thousand Pardons” (Random House, 2013), is a milder version of “The Privileges,” in that the characters, while still less than admirable, are less entitled, more vulnerable, and a little more likeable. Manhattan and surroundings are still the locale. Prosperous lawyer Ben has a midlife crisis/breakdown and decides to leave the marriage, and his wife Helen has to figure out how to pick up the pieces. Suspiciously easily, she finds a new job in public relations and is unexpectedly successful at it. Despite talk of possible financial problems after the marriage breaks up, somehow neither character ever suffers too much financially. (This novel is an example of a common trope in fiction that makes a nod toward possible financial problems for its privileged characters, but readers can see that there is never any real threat, any real danger of financial hardship.) There are subplots involving their daughter Sara and other characters (e.g., a disintegrating male movie star whom Helen knew in elementary school, who now turns to her for help), but the main plot point is the couple’s separation and what comes after. The ending is unexpectedly, if inconclusively, sentimental and promises a sort of redemption.