Tribute to a Great Columnist: Jon Carroll

I will say this flat out: In my opinion, Jon Carroll is the best columnist writing today. He has been a San Francisco Chronicle columnist for 35 years, and I have been faithfully, enthusiastically, and joyfully reading his column all those years. The hard part is describing his column, because it is so various, and yet one always, always feels the presence of a thoughtful person behind the columns, no matter what the topic. He writes about politics, current events, literature, San Francisco, Oakland (where he lives), childhood, his family, music, theater, his cats, the small pleasures of life, and so much more. In all those years I can’t remember more than a handful of times that I haven’t found the column of interest. I am not a cat person, and used to skip the cat columns, but then I read some and enjoyed them, so after that I never skipped any of his columns, ever! There have been hundreds -- probably thousands -- of times when I have thoroughly enjoyed his column and learned from it. And among those hundreds of times, there have been dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of times that I felt the column was pure genius. Because of Carroll’s wide and deep knowledge of so many topics, his many years in journalism (he used to write for and edit several magazines, such as Rolling Stone and the Village Voice), his left-leaning but never polemical politics, his own experiences, his open-mindedness, his appreciation of life, his wisdom, his humor, his thoughtfulness, and of course his wonderful way with words, every column feels informed by all of who he is and what he knows and thinks and feels, and reading him is pure pleasure. Today, for example, he wrote about the great San Francisco Beat poet and founder of the famed City Lights bookstore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, still going strong at age 95. Then Carroll wrote about his own love of poetry, and about poetry in general, with a few side trips along the way, ending by coming back to his tribute to Ferlinghetti; it was a rich, lovely tribute both to Ferlinghetti and to the appeal and joy of poetry. How he can consistently write so well, always with fresh and engaging and thought-provoking ideas and expressions, day after day (now four days a week, down from when he used to write five days a week) is amazing to me. In 2008, Carroll was given the prestigious Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award, an award given annually by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Thank you, Jon Carroll, for your wonderful columns over all these years, and may there be many, many more.

On Reading Book Reviews

I have written before about the many periodicals I read, and especially the book reviews I devour. I want to focus again here on how I relish magazines whose purpose is to write about books, and other magazines that include book reviews. In the former category, I subscribe to and read The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, the San Francisco Chronicle Books Section, The Women’s Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. I also read the book reviews in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Progressive, Ms. Magazine, Vanity Fair, and occasionally other magazines. I thoroughly enjoy reading these. First and foremost, I learn about the newest books and get ideas about what to read next. Second, I learn about books that I don’t necessarily want to read myself, but I want to know something about. Third, I learn interesting things from the non-book-review sections of book review publications, such as the columns by authors, the debates, the bestseller lists, and other accompanying material; examples include The New York Times Book Review’s “Open Book,” “TBR: Inside the List,” “By the Book,” and “Bookends” columns. Fourth, and this is something more amorphous but important to me: Reading these publications and reviews makes me feel connected to the world of literature.

"The Unspeakable," by Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum’s personal essays are certainly attention-grabbing, compelling, original, and hard to put down. In her second collection of essays, “The Unspeakable: and Other Subjects of Discussion” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), she writes about her fraught relationship with her mother, her mother’s deathbed, her waiting until her late thirties to marry, her decision not to have children, her great love of dogs and especially her late dog Rex, her love of lesbians, a sudden and potentially catastrophic illness that she miraculously recovered from, her love of Los Angeles after years living elsewhere and finally settling in L.A., and why she is not a foodie, among other topics. She writes with a directness and candidness that is at times breathtaking, yet does not seem to be writing to shock. She is also matter of fact and does not seem to be attempting to manipulate her readers emotionally. Being an essayist of this talent is no easy thing; I think that people like me who value fiction above all sometimes forget how hard it is to write good essays, and how rewarding it is to read such essays. I should know this (the part about its being hard) as my academic writing has increasingly taken on essayistic qualities. I do not mean -- at all! -- to compare myself to gifted and well known essayists such as Daum, but simply to say that this is a topic I have thought a lot about, and has been part of forming my own practice of writing. But back to Daum’s book: If you want a bracing read, one that is almost exhilarating for the surprises and for the tone, I think you will very much like “The Unspeakable.”

"Family Life," by Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma’s novel, “Family Life” (Norton, 2014), is both heartbreaking and life-affirming. I know that sounds corny and trite, but it does in fact encapsulate the feelings the novel engenders. It is a short novel that seems to be several different novels in one: an illness narrative, a family story, an immigrant experience, and – perhaps most of all – a classic-but-very-individual bildungsroman. The narrator and main character, Ajay, and his family are Indians who move to the United States in 1978, when Ajay is eight years old. The dramatic center of the story is the diving accident and ensuing brain damage that befalls Ajay’s older brother, Birju, a brilliant student who had just been accepted into a prestigious high school in New York City. Birju is ever after bedbound, blind, and does not speak or understand others' speaking; he needs round-the-clock care in every aspect of his life. After that, the family’s life revolves around taking care of Birju, first in the hospital and nursing home, and then -- for the rest of the years covered in the novel and into the future -- at home. This accident is, obviously, devastating, and changes the family’s life forever. Ajay and his father and mother all take part in Birju's care, with help from nursing assistants. Ajay’s father starts drinking far too much, and his mother becomes angry much of the time. The family is alternately supported by the Indian community and shunned; they are supported when the accident happens, shunned when the alcoholism is discovered. They are also visited at various times as a cautionary story for families' children, as a model of family love, and -- since Ajay is an excellent student -- as inspiration or motivation to other children. Much of the story revolves around which parts of the family’s lives are public and which are private, even secret, and on what happens when secrets are exposed. Meanwhile, the novel is, as I mentioned, a coming-of-age story; throughout everything that happens to the family, Ajay is going to school, doing well academically, being bullied at times, experiencing racism, sitting at the “Indian table” in the cafeteria at lunch time, having a sweet relationship with his girlfriend Minakshi, and, eventually, going to an Ivy League college and having a successful career. Throughout, he is both loyal to his brother and family and sometimes resentful of how Birju’s need for constant care, and his total unresponsiveness, take over the family's time and attention. Then he feels guilty about his feelings. But Ajay is a good son, almost always. The question is whether he will allow himself to be happy despite the central event of his and his family’s life, the event that shadows and shapes everything else. The ending of the novel is ambiguous on this point. I hope this description of the novel is not too depressing and does not discourage readers. As I said earlier, the book is also life-affirming, in that it shows the strength of the family despite everything, and it shows how a child can grow and thrive despite everything (albeit with a shadow that will always be present to some extent). There is even some gentle humor regarding Ajay’s adolescent years, and regarding the Indian community. Now I am going to add something that I usually don't write about here: the fact that this novel is an autobiographical one. Sharma has spoken openly about this in published interviews, and dedicates his book to his wife, his parents and "my poor brother Anup Sharma." He says in the acknowledgements and elsewhere that it took him 12 years to write this novel; one can only imagine how hard it must have been to turn this tragic yet not-only-tragic story into fiction. His brother died three years ago, 30 years after his accident.

On grammar, punctuation, style, and versions of English

Readers may remember my occasionally writing about issues of grammar, punctuation, and style (see, for example, my posts of 10/16/10, 3/11/12, and 3/19/13). These are interests of mine, not only because I love to read, and read widely, but also because much of my professional/academic work is in language and linguistics. Two recent articles on related topics caught my eye. Mary Norris’s New Yorker article in the February 23 and March 2, 2015 issue, “Holy Writ,” is “personal history” about her years as copy editor for that magazine. Her first sentence, “I didn’t set out to be a comma queen,” caught my attention, and I was thoroughly drawn in by her story of her intertwined loves for New York City, The New Yorker, and grammar and style. She goes into particular detail about the role of commas, which to me is always a fascinating topic. (I am also way too fascinated by semi-colons. Am I a punctuation nerd?) The second article, a briefer one, is “Mind the Gap,” by Sophie Gilbert, in the March 2015 issue of The Atlantic. This piece explores the decisions that magazines and newspapers with international editions and readerships are having to make regarding which brand of English to use: American or British. (I won't go into this now, but this dual choice begs the question of other versions of English around the world, known in my field as World Englishes.) The author starts by reminding us of various vocabulary terms that differ in these two versions of English, including some that can be embarrassing if used in contexts where others don’t understand them. One newspaper struggling with these differences is the Guardian, a (terrific, in my opinion, based on occasional reading it online, especially their literature pages) British newspaper that started an online version called Guardian US. Should editors enforce an “all British English” policy, or an “all American English” policy? Or neither? After much discussion, they chose to let American writers use American English, and British writers use British English, with exceptions for spellings of proper nouns, which must reflect the locale being written about (so, “no more Lincoln Centre or Labour Day”). The British magazine The Economist made a different decision. Although 52 percent of its circulation is American (a fact that surprised me), the magazine preserves all British spelling and usage, noting that American readers seem to enjoy that British quality in the magazine. I enjoyed hearing this latter detail, because it speaks to the existence of many American Anglophiles such as myself. (I come to my love of most things English – although I also have conflicted feelings about it because of colonial history – by way of my being born Canadian, growing up in barely postcolonial India, and reading scores of British novels over the years.) This issue of “which English” to use in international media is a perhaps small but certainly telling issue in the increasingly global world of many publications.

"Lila," by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson’s 1980 novel, “Housekeeping,” was amazing and wonderful. Years later, Robinson published first “Gilead” and then “Home,” two related novels about two ministers and their families in a small town in the Midwest. I somehow – probably revealing shallowness on my part – didn’t feel like reading all the theological discussion that the reviews mentioned. And when the third novel in this trilogy of related novels came out, I still resisted. But something about the descriptions in reviews, and perhaps the fact that this novel focused on a woman character, drew me to read it. After all, I knew what a terrific writer Robinson was. So I did read “Lila” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014), and found it one of the most original novels I have read lately, with the main character, Lila, having a distinct and very individual voice. This novel is unique, and I almost don’t know how to write about it to convey its power. As a young child, Lila is rescued from a chaotic childhood by a homeless woman, Doll, who raises her in a precarious life, but with fierce love and care. Due to various events that happen to Doll, when Lila becomes an adult, she is on her own. She finds herself working in a brothel, then leaves and wanders some more, as she and Doll did during her childhood. By chance, she stumbles into the town of Gilead, Iowa, and is drawn to a church there, initially just for shelter and peace. In what seems like an extremely unlikely relationship, but one that somehow works, she and the aging minister, John Ames, grow close, eventually marry, and have a child. The minister was a widower; years before, he had lost both his wife and new child at childbirth. These seemingly completely mismatched characters, both good at heart, but Lila wary, find themselves discussing existence, God, meaning, and more. Lila is not educated, but she clearly has a fine mind and highly developed perception. She loves to read the Bible, as the stories speak to her. She is not sure what she believes, but wants to talk and think about existential and moral questions. Ames is loving, gentle, and patient with her, and is grateful that she is in his life. This unlikely relationship, and the questions about God and the meaning of life that the two characters explore, separately and together, somehow create – very unexpectedly – a compelling and satisfying narrative. Don’t let the summary of the odd plot and characters discourage you; this is masterful writing and provides a unique reading experience.

"Almost Famous Women," by Megan Mayhew Bergman

Women who were a little bit famous. Women who were related to, or close to, someone actually famous. The organizing principle of Megan Mayhew Bergman’s collection of short stories, “Almost Famous Women” (Scribner, 2015), about real although mostly forgotten women, may sound like a gimmick, but the stories are effective not only because of their intriguing topics, but also because they stand strong as stories, regardless of the “fame” angle. The stories are fictional, but very believable. Each character is explored, even cherished, for her individuality, her vividness, her desire to "be someone,” to experience life fully. The protagonists include the poet Lord Byron’s young daughter Allegra, the actress Butterfly McQueen, the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister Norma, the writer Oscar Wilde’s niece Dolly, and Violent and Daisy Hilton, two sisters joined at the hip. A small quibble I have is that one story is about the adventurer, aviatrix, and writer Beryl Markham, who is in fact quite famous, definitely more so than the women in the other stories. Some of the stories are quite sad; the one about Allegra comes to mind, as she was left in a convent orphanage as a small child, lived there for years, kept expecting to see her parents, but did not. Another pathetic case is that of the writer and painter Romaine Brooks, well known in her glory days in Paris, but now in declining health, querulous, bedroom-bound, and manipulated by those who take care of her. But all the stories burst with the oversized personalities of these very different but all strong and compelling women. Gender is certainly an issue, and we see how many of the characters were oppressed, repressed, and restricted, at various times in various ways, and yet they could not be completely kept down. I especially like the literary aspects of several of the stories, the ones about writers, or relatives of writers.