RIP Paula Fox

I am sad to write another “RIP” post, but it is important to me to stop and take note of writer’s lives and deaths, and to pay tribute to the work they did and the art that they have left to the world. Paula Fox was the author of several novels, two memoirs, and more than 20 books for children and young people. Her most famous book for adults was “Desperate Characters” (1970), a devastating novel about the end of a marriage. Her children’s books won many recognitions, including the very prestigious Newbery Medal. In 2013, she received the Paris Review’s Hadada Award for lifetime achievement. Fox had a difficult life, starting with being born unwanted and shuttled around to various relatives and friends during her childhood, and continuing with a couple of unsuccessful marriages and a mugging that left her with brain damage that it took years to overcome, among other misfortunes. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that her work, as the New York Times obituary (3/3/17) put it, “illuminated lives filled with loss, dislocation, and abandonment.” I remember being fascinated, in a sad and depressed way, by “Desperate Characters,” which I read at an impressionable age, but also being struck by her sharp observations, her depictions of the minute details of her characters’ lives and surroundings. Even her children’s books did not shy away from difficult and painful topics, as Fox believed that “we do them [children] no service by trying to sugarcoat dark truths.” Fox died on March 1, 2017, in Brooklyn, at the age of 93.

On Jane Austen's "Sanditon"

Regular readers of this blog will likely remember that I am a dedicated, devoted reader and admirer of Jane Austen’s fiction (along with millions of other readers, I know!). I have read and re-read (and listened and re-listened to, on tape and CD) her novels multiple times over the years; I have read some of her juvenilia (most notably “Love and Freindship” (sic); I have read other authors’ sequels and prequels of her novels; I have read many books about her, both biographies and literary criticism; I have taught her work several times in college Women’s Literature classes; and I made a pilgrimage to her beloved Chawton (where she lived and wrote for the last eight years of her life) and to Winchester Cathedral (where she was buried) about ten years ago. The novels I have read the fewest times are the unfinished ones: “Lady Susan (more or less unfinished); “The Watsons,” and “Sanditon.” These three have in general been rated as definitely worth reading but not at the same level as the six full-length novels. The current issue of The New Yorker (March 13, 2017) contains a fascinating essay by Anthony Lane in which he examines “Sanditon” in the context of its being written as Austen knew she was dying. Lane describes the novel as follows: “Although -- or precisely because – ‘Sanditon’ was composed by a dying woman, the result is robust, unsparing, and alert to all the latest fashions in human foolishness” (p. 77). He writes of her trademark puncturing of human pretensions, in this case largely about hypochondriacs; she writes, for just one example of her sharp and wonderfully worded appraisals, of “competing invalids.” But besides her depicting human frailties in her usual humorous but pointed way, in this book there is a different context: her own failing health as she was writing it. Lane calls “Sanditon” “a mortality tale,” and goes on to say that “Austen knew as well as anybody that, in the long run, hypochondriacs aren’t wrong. They’re just early. We will all die…. That certainty haunts the book, sharpens the pitch of its comedy, and sets it apart from her earlier works.” Lane’s reflections on “Sanditon” give me a new way to look at this unfinished novel, and I now feel the need to read it again. Parenthetically: Lane also reminds us that this summer will be the bicentenary of Austen’s death, on July 18th, 1817, at the age of 41. I look forward to the writings and events that will ensue.

"All the News I Need," by Joan Frank

Joan Frank, a Northern California author whose work I like very much (see, for example, my posts of 7/11/10, 4/9/12, and 1/5/13) has published a new novel that focuses on aging and death, but especially aging. “All the News I Need” (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction, is as thoughtful and understanding of human nature as I have found all of Frank’s work to be. Her two main characters are a rather prickly and snarky Fran, a fairly recent widow, and a shy gay man, Oliver, who has also suffered a major loss a few years before the story starts. Both are lonely, and almost by chance (Oliver was friends with Fran’s late husband), are each other’s best and almost only friends. But there are still issues between them, and although they care about each other, they don’t always understand or communicate very well with each other. Neither of them works, and they are both casting about for how to fill their time. Both feel old and left behind. On a whim, followed by detailed, almost obsessive preparation, they decide to take a trip to Europe together, a trip that is less than successful, although it has its moments. One thing I like about the novel is its setting (except for the Europe trip) in the San Francisco Bay area, and all the familiar details about the area. The main thing I don’t like – or rather that has me puzzled – is that these characters are cast as old, over the hill, yet it turns out that Oliver is only 62 and Fran 58. I understand very well that there are difficulties and issues with getting older, even in one’s 50s and 60s. But since neither of them has major health or financial problems, it seems strange to focus on their not-so-old ages as a period of decline and loss that leaves them feeling so bereft, so at sea. I don’t mean to question that the characters feel old and lonely, and as I said, they have both suffered losses, but the strong sense of, and focus on, aging seems a little exaggerated in their cases. Having said all this, I will say that the two characters, their histories, and their relationship are all beautifully and insightfully depicted. Although the story is a bit on the bleak side, it did draw me in.

"Books for Living," by William Schwalbe

I have posted recently on two books about books and reading, one of which I liked very much (posted on1/5/17) and the other which I found disappointing (posted on 2/15/17). I have now read a third such book. (Just as I sometimes read several books in a row by one author, I sometimes read several books in a row or in close proximity on a certain theme). This third book, “Books for Living” (Knopf, 2017), by Will Schwalbe, is a collection of 28 short essays on a variety of subjects, mostly on specific books but sometimes on other book-related topics. The essays on specific books are not reviews, let alone academic “literary criticism,” but meditations on the books and on how Schwalbe connects to and/or learns from them. The title of each chapter lists the book in question and then a brief subtitle; examples include “Stuart Little: Searching,” “Giovanni’s Room: Connecting,” “David Copperfield: Remembering,” and “1984: Disconnecting.” The range of books on which Schwalbe focuses is eclectic: old and new, famous and not famous, literary and less so, excellent and not-so-excellent-but-met-a-need-at-one-point, novels and memoirs, books he read as a child and books he has read more recently (he is now “fifty-something”). In addition to those already mentioned, the books include, to give just a flavor of his choices: “The Importance of Living,” “Bartleby the Scrivener,” “The Little Prince,” “Song of Solomon,” “Rebecca,” and “Death Be Not Proud.” The author’s voice is modest, conversational, questioning, musing. To provide a better idea of his focus and tone, let me quote a few sentences from the introduction. “What follows are stories of books I’ve discovered that have helped me and others in ways big and small with some of the specific challenges of living in our modern world, with all its noise and distractions.” And: “’What are you reading?’ isn’t a simple question when asked with genuine curiosity; it’s really a way of asking, ‘Who are you now and who are you becoming?’” I found the low-key but sincere tone of these short meditations on books to be engaging, thought-provoking, and enjoyable.

"The Most Dangerous Place on Earth," by Lindsey Lee Johnston

Readers of this blog know that I live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area, and am attracted to fiction about the area. It is great to read about faraway places, and I wouldn’t give that up, but there is something addictive about reading about one’s own territory. Lindsey Lee Johnston’s first novel, “The Most Dangerous Place On Earth” (Random House, 2017), takes place in the small town north of the Golden Gate where I live, Mill Valley. Cue comments about Marin County’s wealthy, liberal, mostly white, self-involved, slightly ridiculous inhabitants. And perhaps some of these stereotypes are partially true, but definitely not all, and not to the extent that Marin County has been satirized for. OK, I won’t be defensive. The author, according to the back flap, was “born and raised” in Marin, and I assume she writes of it with the authority of knowing it inside out. The story is about a group of high school students in Mill Valley, and I am guessing Johnston went to high school there. She definitely traffics in some of the stereotypes, but I am willing to believe there is a lot of truth in her portrayal of the lives of these young people in this particular setting. I have seen and heard enough that the stories, the events, are believable. And much of which she writes about could and does happen in other similarly prosperous suburbs and towns in other areas of California and of the U.S. These young people in the novel have all the pressures that so many teenagers, even or in some cases especially those who are privileged, have: school, families, friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, sex, drinking and drugs, dangerous mistakes, uncertainty about themselves and their directions in life, and more. We meet, among others, the dancer, the drug dealer, the hippie, the misfit, and the popular kids. We also learn about the lives of two teachers at the high school with their own issues. The story is full of plot, fast-paced, sad, sometimes funny. This reader often shuddered and wanted to reach into the story and warn the characters not to do the self-destructive things they are doing. Now to the more mundane but enjoyable pleasures of the book for a fellow resident of Mill Valley (albeit only for a dozen years in my case; I lived in Northern Marin for a dozen years before that, after moving across the bridge from San Francisco): recognizing the streets (including the winding ones on the hillsides like the one I live on), the schools, the stores, the restaurants, the redwoods, Mount Tamalpais, and countless other specific details was an enjoyable plus for a local reader.

"Deceit and Other Possibilities," by Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua recently started writing a column for the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper I have read very regularly for the many many years I have lived in San Francisco; she lives in San Francisco. Soon after she started writing for the Chronicle, I read a good review of her debut collection of short stories, “Deceit and Other Possibilities” (Willow Books, 2016), so I picked up a copy. This slim collection is packed with jolts and surprises, and often had me wincing, as some of the events in the stories are shocking, at first unimaginable, yet somehow in the realm of the imaginable. Many of the characters are Chinese American or of other immigrant backgrounds. The sites of the stories are worldwide. Of course I was especially drawn to those that take place in San Francisco or more generally in California. Many stories raise issues of cultural differences, but not necessarily the differences one would predict, and they don’t necessarily play out the way one might think they would. A story about a disastrous camping trip at Big Sur, in which a Chinese American family’s campsite is next to that of a mixed group whose members drink and party all night, raises issues of race and gender, yes, but also of ambivalence, mixed identities, mixed motivations, deception, and much more. In another story, an Asian American teenager who has been raised to succeed academically is devastated when she isn’t admitted to Stanford, so she goes and attends classes there and talks her way into staying in the dorm room of other young women. She manages the deception well for quite a while, but of course it eventually all blows up around her. In a disturbing but very believable story, macho posturing, frustration, race, anger and other factors bring a simple golf game to a violent end. Frightening this reader, a recent widow goes on an unwise solo camping trip and gets snowed in for several days, for which she is completely unprepared; miraculously she survives and even helps another camper survive. Also: a Korean American pastor at the end of his rope financially and otherwise bets everything on a trip to a village in East Africa that he hopes will help the locals and solve his own problems too, but nothing goes as planned. From story to story I learned to brace myself for yet another seemingly unlikely yet ultimately, if painfully, believable situation, and for characters who are bumbling their way through life, making spectacular or mundane mistakes. Somehow the reader is drawn in and even implicated in the characters’ bad behavior, and can almost imagine being desperate enough to make these same mistakes, out of frustration and hope against hope. These are compelling stories.

"Browsings," by Michael Dirda

I usually savor books about books and reading. For example, I recently read and posted (1/5/17) very enthusiastically about editor/writer Robert Gottlieb’s book memoir “Avid Reader.” My enjoyment of that book reminded me anew to keep an eye out for related books. I then picked up Michael Dirda’s “Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books” (Pegasus, 2015), a collection of short essays that he had originally written for The American Scholar. Dirda, a “longtime book columnist” for the Washington Post, as well as a writer for various periodicals and author of several books, here writes on a miscellany of books and book-related personal stories. It is the type of thing I would normally enjoy, but I did so only intermittently in this case. Why? First, Dirda mostly (in this collection, at least) writes about science fiction, thrillers, obscure popular fiction, and other genres that are not of much interest to me. Second, he focuses on his collecting of books, with many stories of all the bookstores, auctions, sales, conventions, etc., that he attends, and how he keeps buying more and more books despite not having room for them in his house. He describes himself as an addict, but clearly finds no problem with his obsessive collecting. Which is of course absolutely fine, but to be honest, rather dull and even off-putting to read about in such detail. Third, his style and voice are a bit too “hail fellow well met,” jokey, and faux-modest for my taste. Of course I have favorable feelings about any one who loves books as much as Dirda does, and who reads as extensively as he does. But these other factors got in the way of my enjoyment of the book, and I was happy to reach the end of it (with a little judicious skipping along the way).