Remembering Favorite Authors Who Have Died

The recent death of Philip Roth (see my post of 5/26/18) reminded me of how many great writers we have lost in the eight years (and a few months) since I have been writing this blog. I have posted about the deaths of several of these authors, writers whom I have read and admired and to whom I have felt somehow connected. Some of these are more well-known than others, but each one of them is missed by me and by many others. As a reminder of, and in honor of, the writers that have died, and about whom I have written “RIP” posts, I list them here (in alphabetical order): Edward Albee, Maya Angelou, Vance Bourjaily, Judy Brady, Anita Brookner, Dorothy Bryant, Alan Cheuse, E.L. Doctorow, Shulamith Firestone, Paula Fox, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer, Sue Grafton, Kent Haruf, Shirley Hazzard, P.D. James, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Bel Kaufman, Carolyn Kizer, Ursula Le Guin, Doris Lessing, Philip Levine, Kate Millett, Bharati Mukherjee, Robert Pirsig, Philip Roth, James Salter, Anita Shreve, and William Trevor. (As a reminder, you can search for any of these posts in the small search box on the top lefthand side of this blog.) It makes me sad all over again to construct this list. But I remind myself that each of these writers has left a legacy of her or his written work. And we can always find and read or re-read their work. My great hope is that more readers, now and in the future, will continue to discover these great writers.

RIP Philip Roth

The prolific and much admired American writer Philip Roth died May 22, 2018, at the age of 85. He was often spoken of as a possible recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. (I wonder if he might have done so this year, if it were not for the scandal that prevented any writer’s being chosen for this year, and now it is too late, as Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.) Although he did not win the Nobel, he received two National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, a Mann Booker Prize, several PEN awards, and many other prestigious recognitions of his work. He received a National Humanities Medal in 2010, presented by President Obama in the White House. He wrote 27 novels and four books of nonfiction. I, like so many, read, admired, and enjoyed his early books. At a certain point, though, I became more disinclined to read his novels because they were so heavily representative of a very male, very masculine viewpoint. On the one hand, I admire any thoughtful and truthful representation of human experience and thought, and I did and do admire Roth for portraying areas of male experiences and especially sexual behavior that were not much written about before by mainstream literary authors. I am not a prude, and am not offended at all by this. But as an individual female reader, I felt discouraged from continuing to read every novel he published. Still, I want to honor him as one of the great American writers of the mid-to-late twentieth century, often grouped with Saul Bellow and John Updike as the preeminent American writers of their time. I also acknowledge that he wrote about many themes besides male (heterosexual) sexuality, including some political and historical ones, as well as, in particular, about Jewish American life. Roth will be long remembered for his fearlessness as well as for his great gifts as a writer.

On Avoiding Certain Novels, Until I Don't: "The Immortalists," by Chloe Benjamin

Regular readers of this blog may remember that I occasionally start a post with something like “I didn’t want to read this book because…” or “I resisted reading this book because…” but then say that because of a recommendation, or because a book fell across my path, or some other reason, I ended by reading the book and being very glad I did. As this has happened many times over the years, I am wondering what I can learn from that pattern. Should I chide myself for being too “fussy” about what I read, or too narrow, or too dismissive of certain genres or types of books or of certain topics? Or should I congratulate myself for, in at least some cases, having overcome my initial resistance, somehow knowing on some level that the decision to read the book after all would be a good one? I am still not sure of the answer to these questions. But I do have yet another example to share with you. I read several glowing reviews of Chloe Benjamin’s novel “The Immortalists” (Putnam’s, 2018), and couldn’t get past the woo-woo element of four young siblings’ (just children at the time) being told by a sort of fortune teller the dates of their deaths. The whole thing sounded creepy and left me deeply uncomfortable. But for whatever reason, I decided to read the novel after all, and it is a fascinating one. I won’t tell you whether the fortune teller’s predictions come true, but they do force each of the siblings to face and struggle with the possibility that they might, and each of them is affected by the predictions in different ways. The novel is about more than this, though; it is above all, in my opinion, about families and their lasting deep connections, even when family members don’t see each other for a long time, and even after the death(s) of some family member(s). There are also the larger questions of what is important in life, and how one should live one’s life. Varya, Daniel, Klara and Simon live their lives vividly and very differently from each other. Their mother Gertie looms large in the story as well, along with the memory of their father Saul, who dies early on in the novel. An added point of interest for me: The siblings grow up in New York, but two of them move to San Francisco. The author’s San Francisco childhood is evident in her detailed knowledge of the city, which this San Franciscan appreciated. But back to the beginning of this post: perhaps I am encouraging myself and others to push a little past our initial resistance to and dismissal of certain novels and other books, reminding ourselves that there might be a reason for all those good reviews and enthusiastic recommendations, and maybe at least giving those books a chance.

"An American Marriage," by Tayari Jones

Last year my friend (and longtime supporter of this blog) SB recommended to me the 2011 novel “Silver Sparrow,” by Tayari Jones. I read and was very impressed by it (see my post of 10/26/17). Now I have just read Jones’ most recent novel, “An American Marriage” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2018), and found it equally well written and compelling. By the way, I am happy for this young rising star writer that this book was chosen for the Oprah’s Book Club 2018 selection. (I know some writers and readers scoff at the Oprah selections; you may remember the notorious case of Jonathan Franzen’s novel “The Corrections” being chosen for Oprah’s book club back in 2001, and his disparaging her taste in general and stating that it did not fit “the high-art literary tradition," upon which there was quite a backlash against Franzen, who was called arrogant and ungrateful.) (P.S. As readers of this blog may remember, I agree with those negative comments on Franzen.) The main characters in “An American Marriage” are Celestial and Roy, a young up-and-coming African American couple who seemed destined for a successful and happy life. But something terrible happens: Roy is arrested for, and convicted of, a crime he did not commit, and is sentenced to 12 years in prison. Celestial tries to stay loyal to Roy, but is drawn into a relationship with her childhood best friend, Andre. When Roy’s conviction is overturned and he is released from prison after five years, Celestial is agonizingly torn between the two men and two possible futures. The characters and plot are riveting enough, but in addition readers are drawn in, even if perhaps unwillingly (because of the painfulness of witnessing the blatant unfairness of Roy’s imprisonment, and the obvious racism involved in his being convicted of raping a white woman, solely because he is black and the rapist was black, so he "must have" been the rapist) to the horrors, dangers, and humiliations of incarceration in America’s prisons, especially for black men. Without being didactic, the author makes sure that we readers have to face up to the way black men are criminalized and treated in the U.S. penal system. The novel is psychologically astute about all three of the main characters, along with some peripheral characters such as parents, relatives, friends, and co-workers. And none of the possible answers are easy, even when there is a semi-resolution at the end of the novel. I highly recommend this novel, and will be watching for Tayari Jones’ future fiction.

"Straying," by Molly McCloskey

The last few years I seem to have read more fiction by Irish writers than usual; something has drawn me to it. Part of this is my affinity for Colm Toibin’s and Anne Enright’s fiction (not to mention my longtime admiration for the late William Trevor’s work), but there have been other works I have enjoyed as well. The novel I just read, “Straying” (Scribner, 2017), by Molly McCloskey (who is Irish but now lives in Washington, DC), is beautifully blurbed by the above-mentioned Anne Enright: “As gripping as a memoir and as intimate as a poem…a novel that is both urgent and reflective, a tender and unsentimental exploration of love’s dark corners.” Yes. Indeed. “Exploration” is a good word for what happens in this novel. “Straying,” set almost entirely in Ireland, mostly in a small town outside of Dublin, with trips into Dublin, features as the main character a young American woman named Alice who moves to Ireland almost on a whim, and soon finds herself embedded in life there. She travels, works, learns, and meets the man she will marry: Eddie. They are happy, but – as the title of the novel indicates – Alice “strays,” as in falling into an affair with another Irish man, Cauley. Her own feelings are complicated, as are those of both men involved. In some senses, of course, this story of a love triangle is a classic story, a well worn one. Yet McCloskey brings a freshness to it. Alice is a complex yet very relatable character. She does a lot of pondering about her situation and about love, connection, family, and more. At some point in the novel, the story jumps about 30 years into the future, where we find that Alice has long been an aid worker, working all over the world in countries in various types of crisis, and she is well respected for her work. She is now back in Ireland. She sometimes muses about her youthful time in Ireland, and about her mother, and about all she has seen and learned since then. The plot sounds low key, and on some level it is; even what seem like the “dramatic” aspects of the story are not overly dramatized. This is a thoughtful novel about thoughtful characters, albeit ones who make some mistakes (but who doesn’t?).

"Spoiled: Stories," by Caitlin Macy

Regular readers of this blog might remember that I am very interested in the topic of social class and how it affects everyone and everything. I often read nonfiction and fiction on the topic, and have written and published about it as well (as it connects to educational settings). I also like fiction by and about women. And I like fiction set in New York City. So, what was not to like about a book of short stories by Caitlin Macy titled “Spoiled” (Random House, 2009)? It was a bonus that the book’s epigraph is a quotation from Edith Wharton (whose works I have read often and with great pleasure and appreciation). “Spoiled” does, as the title suggests, feature young women who live in New York City and who have, in general, had material and other advantages. However, as we know, those advantages do not guarantee happiness or fulfillment. And sure enough, these characters often struggle and often misstep. Sometimes the author is quite sharp-penned in her revelations of the kinds of petty competitiveness that sometimes exist in the world of prosperous but often insecure (financially and otherwise) young women in their Manhattan setting, as illustrated in the story “Christy.” Sometimes they are out of their depth and almost arrogantly oblivious when they travel abroad, as in the ill-fated trip one young couple took to Morocco, portrayed in the story “Taroudant.” Class differences and the uneasiness caused by them come out in stories about the relationships of one woman with her nanny, and of another woman with her cleaning woman. Although many of the main characters are definitely “spoiled,” the author makes sure we see their complexities as well, and they are never defined only by their class statuses. The stories are well-written, with many telling details.

On Beginning to Read "The Female Persuasion," by Meg Wolitzer

I don’t think I have posted here before on a book before I actually read it, but a book I just began reading reminded me of how enjoyable the anticipation of reading a long-expected new book, along with the pleasures of the first few pages of that book, can be. I was happy when I got an email from my wonderful local library telling me that my turn in the library queue had come up. The book is the novel “The Female Persuasion” (Riverhead, 2018), by one of my favorite contemporary writers, Meg Wolitzer. I have been reading her novels with pleasure for years, most recently “The Interestings” (see my post of 4/18/13). I had read positive reviews of this new novel, learning that it was about a leading feminist writer, Faith Frank, and the young college student, Greer Kadetsky, who is inspired and influenced by her for years after their first meeting. The front flap copy says that the novel is about “power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition.” It sounds like a good list to me! What attracts me as I start reading this novel is the prospect of a story that puts feminism at the center, and at the same time has compelling characters and an equally compelling plot. I love that the book is dedicated to several women writers, including Nora Ephron, Mary Gordon, and the author’s mother, Hilma Wolitzer. I love the prospect of two feminists (and more) being at the core of the novel. And, as a related side note, I love that Greer is a devoted reader, one who has read voraciously since childhood, when she early on discovered “the strange and beautiful formality of the nineteenth century” (p. 7). I can’t wait to keep reading this novel, and will just have to guard against it taking over all the time that should be devoted to more pressing (but less interesting) matters!