July 30, 2008

The Books: "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (Tom Wolfe)

tom_wolfe-the_bonfire_of_the_vanities.jpgUnbelievably, Bonfire of the Vanities is my last book on my adult fiction shelf. I have been working on "this shelf" since April 9, 2007 - when I started off with Hitchhiker's Guide. April 9, 2007! What - am I nuts? Where the hell did the time go?? And now I've gone through the alphabet and I am at the last book of this particular "genre". Which shelf will we go to next? Will it be memoir? Poetry? Biography? Literary analysis? Acting textbooks? Wouldn't you like to know.

For now: Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

It's a rare book that is an event. I remember when Bonfire of the Vanities came out - I remember reading it with my boyfriend, neck and neck - I remember everyone - EVERYONE - talking about it. It was an event. A zeitgeist moment. A truth-telling bolt from the heavens, truths that lots of people didn't want to hear. It appeared to tell us what was happening as it was happening ... Lots of books try to do that, and some books do do that but don't hit the public in the sweet spot that turns it into an event. Bonfire of the Vanities hit the sweet (tender, angry, overly sensitive, paranoid) spot. I can't think of another book in recent years that has done such a thing. At least not a fiction book. It was one of those events that, at the time, i just felt I had to participate in. Whether or not I liked the book was irrelevant. If everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - was talking about it, then I had to get in on the action. To be honest, Bonfire of the Vanities is not really my cup of tea, in terms of fiction. But at the time of its release, personal preference also became irrelevant. I had to read it. It was about "how we live now".

New York City has always been in my life. I have always known people who lived here, and as a kid would take trips down to visit my aunt. This was the late 70s. New York in the late 70s was not the mall-ed out Disneyfied New York that you see now, set up to make tourists feel comfortable and cozy. New York was the wild west. I saw my first penis on one of those trips, because a homeless man walked right up to me and whipped it out. Yeah, I'm 10 years old, douchebag, get the fuck away from me. The subways were covered in grafitti - which gave them a strangely violent and anarchic look - God, remember that? The lunatics had taken over the asylum. People jumped the turnstiles all around you. If you were in New York in the 70s, then you know this is true, and how widespread it was. You'd go up to the turnstiles with your token and all around you people were hurdling through the air over them. There was no police presence that you could feel. If you followed the rules and DIDN'T jump the turnstiles, it was only because you were determined to maintain your OWN sense of morality, in the midst of a crime-ridden atmosphere. I could totally have jumped the turnstiles myself (or crawled under them, as a 10 year old). 8th Avenue was lined with peep shows and hookers and live go-go dancers. When I moved to New York, in 1995, 42nd Street was still in the grip of that past ... The Lion King hadn't moved in yet (although it was about to), and that theatre, the building of that theatre by Disney, was going to change everything. In 1995, the buildings were baroque, cobbled together, many of them boarded up, because the peep shows were already being zoned out of the neighborhood. But nothing had come in to replace them yet. So 42nd Street. A major tourist attraction. Looked like a deserted movie set on some dusty backlot. Imagine that. I try to imagine the throngs of tourists on 42nd Street today, going into the Applebee's that is there (gross), or the Chevy's ... I try to imagine them dealing with that urban desolation that had no interest whatsoever in making THEM feel comfortable. That's the New York I grew up with. I still loved it. In fact, I loved it BECAUSE it felt dangerous. Yeah, whatever, I'll pay lip service to cleaning up the streets, but I didn't move here to live in Disneyland. I miss the hookers, frankly. I miss the smut. (Thank God I was able to capture the last gasp of it before it was torn down - one of my favorite buildings on 8th Avenue). As a kid, I didn't understand the smut - I just knew that "ladies" were on the street barely wearing any clothes. But of course I didn't hang out on 8th Avenue. My aunt took me to Broadway shows, we went to the Metropolitan Museum, she took me to Central Park. All of THOSE areas were fine for a child to be in, but on the fringes, was an obviously criminal element - which threatened to overrun the social order. You could feel it. Like I said: the subways were COVERED in grafitti, much of it spectacularly sophisticated art. Beautiful. But that wasn't art sponsored by some corporation. That wasn't art that came out of some city-wide initiative. That was done on someone's own time, with their own materials, in the dead of night. Even as a kid, you could just sense that.

The Bonfire of the Vanities is not so much about the New York of the 70s, but the New York of the flush materialistic 80s - HOWEVER: the fringes of the 70s still existed, which is what made New York during that decade so freaky. In the 70s, everyone was broke. But in the 80s came the "yuppies", and the new money - but 8th Avenue remained the same (and the folks on 8th Avenue probably made a nice buck too, because people had MORE money to spend on hookers and peep shows). So there was this huge weird gap - and if you were in New York in the 80s, you'll know how strange it was. All bubbles burst. And that was a huge bubble - unreal, with its own rules, not meant to last. The Central Park jogger incident happened in 1989 - 2 years after Wolfe's book came out -and that was an event, too, that told the lie about how "safe" New York had become - New York "seemed" safe (although it never ever seemed safe to me, still doesn't) - but it "seemed" safe to those who didn't know better - It "seemed" safe because Wall Street was doing great, and MBAs from around the country were now flocking there, fresh-faced and full of senses of entitlement. The Central Park jogger case was the end-moment of that Zeitgeist - 1989 was the beginning of that bubble bursting ... and Wolfe was writing about the mid-80s, the true insanity of a world living by its own rules, the enormous gap between the Sherman McCoys and the folks hanging around the courtroom in the Bronx ... It was a third world kind of gap. Insane. Like I said, you could FEEL it when you were there at the time. In many cities, the segregation (not racial, but economic) is so acute that sometimes you are unable to sense where the hell all the poor people are. In New York, you always knew.

Tom Wolfe deserves a more in-depth post but for now, I'll just leave it at that. I like knowing he's around. I like knowing what he's thinking about. I also like the fearless truth-telling in the book, whether it's in the racist epithets thrown around by, uhm, mostly everybody - the casual misogyny at the higher levels of society - the observations of the beginning of the tabloid frenzy that was taking over the national consciousness - and the fact that everybody hates everybody else. BUT: somehow, even with all that, the social order is maintained. Wops, spics, Kikes, we all manage to get along, even if we hate each other, because this is America, and whatever, we can't legislate being an ASSHOLE out of existence. It is only when Sherman McCoy, Master of the Universe, meets his destiny on a dark scary night on the Cross Bronx Expressway - that the hatreds are given an opportunity to express themselves, and become irreconcilable. The fans flamed higher and brighter by opportunists like the Al Sharpton-type character ... there are those who have a vested interest in all of us NOT getting along. Because if we all decided to 'get along' (even though we fucking hate each other deep down) - then that person would be out of a goddamn job.

It's a cynical book. There is no hope or redemption (which is why the movie, with its casting of Morgan Freeman as the judge - was so cautious and fearful. Nope. The second you cast HIM as the judge, just admit that you aren't doing Tom Wolfe's book. I don't know what the hell you're doing, but it's not THAT). Nobody is exempt. Tom Wolfe is an equal-opportunity hater, like Jonathan Swift. Any time you think he's about to make some point that lets someone off the hook - any time you think you can relax and go, "Oh, okay, he's saying MY side is LESS of an asshole" he'll pull a jujitsu move, leaving you high and dry. It's a coincidence that the following entry ends with a praise of Irish courage. With Tom Wolfe, you can never relax. Besides, he's ALSO saying that the Irish are animals. So seriously, if you think that's "praise", you're nuts.

I haven't read this book since it first came out. Many of the scenes are emblazoned in my brain forever. It's just that kind of book. The characters are archetypes - in their own weird way - and stand, immobile, as the forces of the late 20th century whirl around them, knocking them this way, that.

I wanted to pick a section of the book that highlighted Tom Wolfe's ear for dialogue, New York-ese in particular. So here it is.

EXCERPT FROM The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

Kramer and Andriutti were of the new generation, in which the terms triceps, deltoids, latissima dorsae, and pectoralis major were better known than the names of the major planets. Andriutti rubbed his triceps a hundred and twenty times a day, on the average.

Still rubbing them, Andriutti looked at Kramer as he walked in and said: "Jesus Christ, here comes the bag lady. What the hell is this fucking A&P bag, Larry? You been coming in here with this fucking bag every day this week." Then he turned to Jimmy Caughey and said, "Looks like a fucking bag lady."

Caughey was also a jock, but more the Triathlon type, with a narrow face and a long chin. He just smiled at Kramer, as much as to say, "Well, what do you say to that?"

Kramer said, "Your arm itch, Ray?" Then he looked at Caughey and said, "Ray's got this fucking allergy. It's called weight lifter's disease." Then he turned back to Andriutti. "Itches like a sonofabitch, don't it?"

Andriutti let his hand drop off his triceps. "And what are these jogging shoes?" he said to Kramer. "Looks like those girls walking to work at Merrill Lynch. All dressed up, and they got these fucking rubber gunboats on their feet."

"What the hell is in that bag?" said Caughey.

"My high heels," said Kramer. He took off his jacket and jammed it down, give-a-shit, on a coatrack hook in the accepted fashion and pulled down his necktie and unbuttoned his shirt and sat down in his swivel chair and opened up the shopping bag and fished out his Johnston & Murphy brown leather shoes and started taking off his Nikes.

"Jimmy," Andriutti said to Caughey, "did you know that Jewish guys - Larry, I don't want you to take this personally - did you know that Jewish guys, even if they're real stand-up guys, all have one faggot gene? That's a well-known fact. They can't stand going out in the rain without an umbrella or they have all this modern shit in their apartment or they don't like to go hunting or they're for the fucking nuclear freeze and affirmative action or they wear jogging shoes to work or some goddamn thing. You know?"

"Gee," said Kramer, "I don't know why you thought I'd take it personally."

"Come on, Larry," said Andriutti, "tell the truth. Deep down, don't you wish you were Italian or Irish?"

"Yeah," said Kramer, "that way I wouldn't know what the fuck was going on in this fucking place."

Caughey started laughing. "Well, don't let Ahab see those shoes, Larry. He'll have Jeanette issue a fucking memorandum."

"No, he'll call a fucking press conference," said Andriutti.

"That's always a safe fucking bet."

And so another fucking day in the fucking Homicide Bureau of the Bronx Fucking District Attorney's Office was off to a fucking start.

An assistant D.A. in Major Offenses had started calling Abe Weiss "Captain Ahab", and now they all did. Weiss was notorious in his obsession for publicity, even among a breed, the district attorney, that was publicity-mad by nature. Unlike the greaet D.A.s of yore, such as Frank Hogan, Burt Roberts, or Mario Merola, Weiss never went near a courtroom. He didn't have time. There were only so many hours in the day for him to stay in touch with Channels 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, and 11 and the New York Daily News, the Post, The City Lights, and the Times.

Jimmy Caughey said, "I was just in seeing the captain. You shoulda--"

"You were? What for?" asked Kramer with just a shade too much curiosity and incipient envy in his voice.

"Me and Bernie," said Caughey. "He wanted to know about the Moore case."

"Any good?"

"Piece a shit," said Caughey. "This fucking guy Moore, he has a big house in Riverdale, and his wife's mother lives there with 'em, and she's been giving him a hard time for about thirty-seven fucking years, right? So this guy, he loses his job. He's working for one a these reinsurance companies, and he's making $200,000 or $300,000 a year, and now he's out a work for eight or nine months, and nobody'll hire him, and he don't know what the hell to do, right? So one day he's puttering around out in the garden, and the mother-in-law comes out and says, 'Well, water seeks its own level.' That's a verbatim quote. 'Water seeks its own level. You oughta get a job as a gardener.' So this guy, he's out of his fucking mind, he's so mad. He goes in and tells his wife, 'I've had it with your mother. I'm gonna get my shotgun and scare her.' So he goes up to his bedroom, where he keeps this 12-gauge shotgun, and he comes downstairs and heads for the mother-in-law, and he's gonna scare the shit out of her, and he said, 'Okay, Gladys,' and he trips on the rug, and the gun goes off and kills her, and - ba-bing! - Murder Two."

"Why was Weiss interested?"

"Well, the guy's white, he's got some money, he lives in a big house in Riverdale. It looks at first like maybe he's gonna fake an accidental shooting."

"Is that possible?"

"Naw. Fucking guy's one a my boys. He's your basic Irish who made good, but he's still a Harp. He's drowning in remorse. You'd think he'd shot his own mother, he feels so fucking guilty. Right now he'd confess to anything. Bernie could sit him in front of the videocamera and clean up every homicide in the Bronx for the past five years. Naw, it's a piece of shit, but it looked good at first."

Kramer and Andriutti contemplated this piece a shit without needing any amplification. Every assistant D.A. in the Bronx, from the youngest Italian just out of St. John's Law School to the oldest Irish bureau chief, who would be somebody like Bernie Fitzgibbon, who was forty-two, shared Captain Ahab's mania for the Great White Defendant. For a start, it was not pleasant to go through life telling yourself, "What I do for a living is, I pack blacks and Latins off to jail." Kramer had been raised as a liberal. In Jewish families like his, liberalism came with the Similac and the Mott's apple juice and the Instamatic and Daddy's grins in the evening. And even the Italians, like Ray Andriutti, and the Irish, like Jimmy Caughey, who were not exactly burdened with liberalism by their parents, couldn't help but be affected by the mental atmosphere of the law schools, where, for one thing, there were so many Jewish faculty members. By the time you finished law school in the New York area, it was, well ... impolite! ... on the ordinary social level ... to go around making jokes about the yoms. It wasn't that it was morally wrong ... It was that it was in bad taste. So it made the boys uneasy, this eternal prosecution of the blacks and Latins.

Not that they weren't guilty. One thing Kramer had learned within two weeks as an assistant D.A. in the Bronx was that 95 percent of the defendants who got as far as the indictment stage, perhaps 98 percent, were truly guilty. The caseload was so overwhelming, you didn't waste time trying to bring the marginal cases forward, unless the press was on your back. They hauled in guilt by the ton, those blue-and-orange vans out there on Walton Avenue. But the poor bastards behind the wire mesh barely deserved the term criminal, if by criminal you had in mind the romantic notion of someone who has a goal and seeks to achieve it through some desperate way outside the law. No, they were simpleminded incompetents, most of them, and they did unbelievably stupid, vile things.

Kramer looked at Andriutti and Caughey, sitting there with their mighty thighs akimbo. He felt superior to them. He was a graduate of the Columbia Law School, and they were both graduates of St. John's, widely known as the law school for the also-rans of college academic competition. And he was Jewish. Very early in life he had picked up the knowledge that the Italians and the Irish were animals. The Italians were pigs, and the Irish were mules or goats. He couldn't remember if his parents had actually used any such terms or not, but they got the idea across very closely. To his parents, New York City - New York? hell, the whole U.S., the whole world! - was a drama called The Jews Confront the Goyim, and the goyim were animals. And so what was he doing here with these animals? A Jew in the Homicide Bureau was a rare thing. The Homicide Bureau was the elite corps of the District Attorney's Office, the D.A.'s Marines, because homicide was the most serious of all crimes. An assistant D.A. in Homicide had to be able to go out on the street to the crime scenes at all hours, night and day, and be a real commando and rub shoulders with the police and know how to confront defendants and witnesses and intimidate them when the time came, and these were likely to be the lowest, grimmest, scurviest defendants and witnesses in the history of criminal justice. For fifty years, at least, maybe longer, Homicide had been an Irish enclave, although recently the Italians had made their way into it. The Irish had given Homicide their stamp. The Irish were stone courageous. Even when it was insane not to, they never stepped back. Andriutti had been right, or half right. Kramer didn't want to be Italian, but he did want to be Irish, and so did Ray Andriutti, the dumb fuck. Yes, they were animals! The goyim were animals, and Kramer was proud to be among the animals in the Homicide Bureau.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

July 29, 2008

The Books: "Lighthousekeeping" (Jeanette Winterson)

lighthousekeeping.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Lighthousekeeping, by Jeanette Winterson.

After about a decade of reading books by Winterson that were a bit of a yawn, I tore through Lighthousekeeping like a crazy person. I read it WAY too fast ... much of it was lost to me ... But I couldn't contain myself. I was so excited. Here was a story that WASN'T the story of a love triangle (man, woman, redheaded woman) ... it was something different altogether. It did not (on the whole) get good reviews, and many of the criticisms are ones I have made myself. There is something repetitive about Winterson's work. She only has a couple of themes, and she keeps hashing them out. She is not, say, John Irving, or Annie Proulx - people who are interested in creating other human beings. Winterson doesn't do that. When she's at her best, she creates other memorable worlds and realities, set-pieces that stick in the brain and imagination. When she's at her worst, she drones on and on in overly poetic prose that can't ever be pinned down. Her books can feel like upended poems, fragments of verse - clipped together. It can be quite tiresome. Don't be mistaken: I don't look for Winterson to write a big novel like John Irving does, or Michael Chabon. That's not her thing. But sometimes I read her stuff and I wonder what it must have been like to have success come so early. To hit it as huge as Winterson did, so early on. Maybe she really does only have one story to tell. Who knows.

But I found Lighthousekeeping to be captivating. Here's the stunner of an opener, classic Winterson:

My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.

I have no father. There's nothing unusual about that - even children who do have fathers are often surprised to see them. My own father came out of the sea and went back that way. He was crew on a fishing boat that harboured with us one night when the waves were crashing like dark glass. His splintered hull shored him for long enough to drop anchor inside my mother.

Shoals of babies vied for life.

I won.


I lived in a house cut steep into the bank. The chairs had to be nailed to the floor, and we were never allowed to eat spaghetti. We ate food that stuck to the plate - shepherd's pie, goulash, risotto, scrambled egg. We tried peas once - what a disaster - and sometimes we still find them, dusty and green in the corners of the room.

Some people are raised on a hill, others in the valley. Most of us are brought up on the flat. I came at life at an angle, and that's how I've lived ever since.

I don't know, I think that's pretty damn marvelous.

The orphaned girl of Lighthousekeeping is named Silver (same name as the heroine in Tanglewreck - excerpt here ... See, that's what I mean about the same-ness of Winterson's work ... she even repeats lines from story to story ... and it doesn't seem just like a personal lexicon. It sometimes feels like she has run out of invention. To me, "what you risk reveals what you value" BELONGS in The Passion (excerpt here), where it first appeared. It probably appears in 5 out of 6 of her books after that. Like: no, Jeanette! Don't do that! You're weakening it!!) Sorry, tangent: Silver is orphaned. She goes to live with a blind man named Mr. Pew who keeps a lighthouse. Mr. Pew tells the little girl stories of a man named Babel Dark, an 19th century clergyman - and the story flows back and forth from the present-day at the lighthouse (which never feels like the present-day - it is a grim and bleak existence) back to the mid 1800s when Babel Dark lived. Babel Dark's journey becomes intertwined with Silver's, and - as usual - we aren't sure what is "real" and what is imagined.

I really liked the book. I liked the worlds she presented to me. I love the house built into the cliff, where groceries fall out of the cupboards, and Silver has to be strapped into her hammock so she won't fall out and go plummeting down the house. I just love stuff like that. It truly IS inventive.

But please, Jeanette: no more "what you risk reveals what you value", okay? You said it once and it really meant something. It still does. Just let it be!!

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Lighthousekeeping, by Jeanette Winterson.

The Pews have been lighthousekeepers at Cape Wrath since the day of the birth. The job was passed down generation to generation, though the present Mr. Pew has the look of being there forever. He is as old as a unicorn, and people are frightened of him because he isn't like them. Like and like go together. Likeness is liking, whatever they say about opposites.

But some people are different, that's all.

I look like my dog. I have a pointy nose and curly hair. My front legs - that is, my arms, are shorter than my back legs - that is, my legs, which makes a symmetry with my dog, who is just the same, but the other way round.

His name's DogJim.

I put up a photo of him next to mine on the notice board, and I hid behind a bush while they all came by and read our particulars. They were all sorry, but they all shook their heads and said, 'Well, what could we do with her?'

It seemed that nobody could think of a use for me, and when I went back to the notice board to add something encouraging, I found I couldn't think of a use for myself.

Feeling dejected, I took the dog and went walking, walking, walking along the cliff headland towards the lighthouse.

Miss Pinch was a great one for geography - even though she had never left Salts in her whole life. The way she described the world, you wouldn't want to visit it anyway. I recited to myself what she had taught us about the Atlantic Ocean ...



The Atlantic is a dangerous and unpredictable ocean. It is the second largest ocean in the world, extending in an S shape from the Arctic to the Antarctic regions, bounded by North and South America in the West, and Europe and Africa in the East.

The North Atlantic is divided from the South Atlantic by the equatorial counter-current. At the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, heavy fogs form where the warm Gulf Stream meets the cold Labrador Current. In the North Western Ocean, icebergs are a threat from May to December.

Dangerous. Unpredictable. Threat.

The world according to Miss Pinch.

But, on the coasts and outcrops of this treacherous ocean, a string of lights was built over 300 years.

Look at this one. Made of granite, as hard and unchanging as the sea is fluid and volatile. The sea moves constantly, the lighthouse, never. There is no sway, no rocking, none of the motion of ships and ocean.



Pew was staring out of the rain-battered glass; a silent taciturn clamp of a man.

Some days later, as we were eating breakfast in Railings Row - me, toast without butter, Miss Pinch, kippers and tea - Miss Pinch told me to wash and dress quickly and be ready with all my things.

'Am I going home?'

'Of course not - you have no home.'

'But I'm not staying here?'

'No. My house is not suitable for children.'

You had to respect Miss Pinch - she never lied.

'Then what is going to happen to me?'

'Mr Pew has put in a proposal. He will apprentice you to lighthousekeeping.'

'What will I have to do?'

'I have no idea.'

'If I don't like it, can I come back?'

'No.'

'Can I take DogJim?'

'Yes.'

She hated saying yes. She was of those people for whom yes is always an admission of guilt or failure. No was power.



A few hours later, I was standing on the windblown jetty, waiting for Pew to collect me in his patched and tarred mackerel boat. I had never been inside the lighthouse before, and I had only seen Pew when he stumped up the path to collect his supplies. The town didn't have much to do with the lighthouse anymore. Salts was no longer a seaman's port, with ships and sailors docking for fire and food and company. Salts had become a hollow town, its life scraped out. It had its rituals and its customs and its past, but nothing left in it was alive. Years ago, Charles Darwin had called it Fossil-Town, but for different reasons. Fossil it was, salted and preserved by the sea that had destroyed it too.

Pew came near in his boat. His shapeless hat was pulled over his face. His mouth was a slot of teeth. His hands were bare and purple. Nothing else could be seen. He was the rough shape of human.

DogJim growled. Pew grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into the boat, then he motioned for me to throw in my bag and follow.

The little outboard motor bounced us over the green waves. Behind me, smaller and smaller, was my tipped-up house that had flung us out, my mother and I, perhaps because we were never wanted there. I couldn't go back. There was only forward, northwards into the sea. To the lighthouse.



Pew and I climbed slowly up the spiral stairs to our quarters below the Light. Nothing about the lighthouse had been changed since the day it was built. There were candleholders in every room, and the Bibles put there by Josiah Dark. I was given a tiny room with a tiny window, and a bed the size of a drawer. As I was not much longer than my socks, this didn't matter. DogJim would have to sleep where he could.

Above me was the kitchen where Pew cooked sausages on an open cast-iron stove. Above the kitchen was the light itself, a great glass eye with a Cyclops stare.

Our business was light, but we lived in darkness. The light had to be kept going, but there was no need to illuminate the rest. Darkness came with everything. It was standard. My clothes were trimmed with dark. When I put on a sou'wester, the brim left a dark shadow over my face. When I stood to bathe in the little galvanised cubicle Pew had rigged for me, I soaped my body in darkness. Put your hand in a drawer, and it was darkness you felt first, as you fumbled for a spoon. Go to the cupboards to find the tea caddy of Full Strength Samson, and the hole was as black as the tea itself.

The darkness had to be brushed away or parted before we could sit down. Darkness squatted on the chairs and hung like a curtain across the stairway. Sometimes it too on the shapes of the things we wanted: a pan, a bed, a book. Sometimes I saw my mother, dark and silent, falling towards me.

Darkness was a presence. I learned to see in it, I learned to see through it, and I learned to see the darkness of my own.

Pew did not speak. I didn't know if he was kind or unkind, or what he intended to do with me. He had lived alone all his life.

That first night, Pew cooked sausages in darkness. No, Pew cooked the sausages with darkness. It was the kind of dark you can taste. That's what we ate: sausages and darkness.

I was cold and tired and my neck ached. I wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up. I had lost the few things I knew, and what was here belonged to somebody else. Perhaps that would have been all right if what was inside me was my own, but there was no place to anchor.



There were two Atlantics; one outside the lighthouse, and one inside me.

The one inside me had no string of guiding lights.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 28, 2008

The Books: "Tanglewreck" (Jeanette Winterson)

tanglewreck_200.jpgActually, this book is a book for kids - but in the interest of keeping an "author together" - I have shelved it with Winterson's adult books. So: Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Tanglewreck, by Jeanette Winterson.

This is Jeanette Winterson's first book for kids.There is much here to praise - a fast-paced story, with time travel, and little kids on the run, and evil villains ... A lot of it feels quite derivative, however. It's obviously Winterson's voice but unlike her other books - which I barely can compare to anything else - this is full of things that reminded me of other books. Wrinkle in Time, Harry Potter ... It doesn't quite work. A great children's book is also a great book for adults. I count something like Good Night Moon in that. There is such a thing as perfection - and it's the same for kids as it is for adults. Good Night Moon wouldn't hold up as an adult NOVEL, of course - but the standard of excellence is the same, as far as I'm concerned. Madeleine L'Engle said a great thing once: "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." LOVE that. That's why her books are so transportive. I never get sick of them. Tanglewreck is a wee bit too didactic ... but in this case it feels sneaky, like Winterson is trying to sneak in a message in such a subtle way that the kids won't be bored - but she's trying to get her point across. I rolled my eyes at some of these. Winterson is a big environmentalist. Nothing wrong with that. But she tried to put that into the book ... and again: nothing wrong with that, but it felt sneaky, like she was trying to get away with it, and I didn't like that. Kids don't like to be condescended to. If you have a message, then find an inventive way to weave it into the book so that it is inevitable, rather than snuck in. Compare that to Madeleine L'Engle's Ring of Endless Light (excerpt here here) - perhaps my favorite of all of her books (I fluctuate) ... and its vision of a summer working at a marine biology lab, and hanging out with dolphins - in captivity and also in the wild ... The things learned about dolphins that summer transcend marine biology concerns, and makes the book about (on some level) the necessity of ongoing scientific research - that science that has a practical GOAL is not the only kind of science ... There's way more ... but in general, it's about the importance of dolphins, and how they should be protected, studied, loved, whatever. But do you ever catch Madeleine L'Engle trying to preach ANY of that to us? Do you ever catch her trying to sneak in her message, hoping we won't notice? Or, no - it's not "hoping we won't notice" ... Winterson tries to sneak in her message hoping it will work on the kids in a subconscious way ... that the kids will be swayed to her point of view through osmosis. Something about that did not sit well with me, reading Tanglewreck. It is obvious L'Engle's love for dolphins, and her belief that preserving dolphins, and studying them, and protecting them, should be a priority. But she only does that through telling the story of Vicky and Adam working in the lab. L'Engle isn't trying to sneak anything past us! Winterson also assumes that her audience will all feel the same way about America, so her main villain is American, a representative of a huge multi-national corporation, and the most ambitious person in the galaxy. Winterson relies on a shorthand here (American = bad, not to be trusted) that feels very "right now" to me. Yeah, I know, the world has always hated us (but whatever, when you all want to escape the tyranny in your own lands, where do you go?? Yeah. I thought so.) Back to my point: I know "anti-Americanism" is nothing new. I mean, if you go back and read some of the things George III said about us, way back when, when the US was first starting out, you can see the contempt. Nothing has changed. It's been there since the beginning for us. (So to imagine we could "go back" to a time when we were universally admired ... Yeah, uhm, so when would that be? Learn your history, people.) But a children's book needs to be, on some level, universal. If you want kids to read it not just in this generation but others. I can feel the world of 2006 and 2007 in Tanglewreck, even though that's not what it's about at all. I can feel the global warming debate, I can feel the Iraq war, I can feel the anger at America's power, I can feel the "green" movement ... all in a book that has nothing to do with any of that. I guess what I'm saying is: Winterson is not at the top of her game here. Frankly, I don't think she would have tried to "get away" with any of this if it were a book for adults - and THAT is why the book sometimes feels condescending. Winterson has NEVER come across as didactic to me ... she's too much of a free spirit. But here she does.

However, on the flip side: The classic Winterson imagination is at work here, and I very much liked the weaving of truth with fantasy. Like, we're in this magical story where "Time Tornadoes" have sprouted up all over England, ripping people into the past, future, whatever ...but there are certain things that still ground us to reality. I liked that.

Silver lives in a big 500 year old house called Tanglewreck. Her parents and little sister disappeared one day. She now lives with an evil aunt, who stays with her at Tanglewreck, and doesn't take good care of Silver at all. Silver has to fend for herself. She loves her house, it feels alive to her. These Time Tornadoes start to swoop through London, and suddenly, things start to shift and change. A man named Abel Darkwater shows up at Tanglewreck, talking about a specific clock that was left in her parents hands - an essential clock called The Timekeeper ... Mr. Darkwater, a clock fanatic, and an ambitious man, knows that whoever has this Timekeeper will control Time. Something has happened to disturb Time. Huge forces begin to converge on Tanglewreck ... there is a Timekeeper hidden there ... it goes back centuries ... and Silver needs to hand it over. Silver has no memory of any Timekeeper. She is 11 years old. Just a kid. Abel Darkwater takes her to his house in London, but she escapes - and eventually joins up with a tribe of people who live in the tunnels beneath the city ... They call themselves "The Throwbacks". For whatever reason, they are immortal. Time has somehow "forgot" them ... most of them were inmates in Bedlam, the famous mental hospital of old in London, and are scarred forever by the experience. Turns out Abel Darkwater, too, is immortal ... and his connection with the Throwbacks is an unhappy one, and goes way back. But they save Silver - and they realize the urgency of keeping the Timekeeper out of Abel Darkwater's hands ... and so begins a chase - not just across England but across the galaxy ... to, first of all, find the Timekeeper, and to then hide it from people who would use it for ill.

It's a quick read. The slight annoyances didn't stop me from enjoying it. It just didn't have that "oomph" that great children's books need to have. I guess I felt a bit of distance from it. It feels like a lot of Winterson's other intellectual exercises ... ruminations on quantum physics and Schrodinger's cat and Einstein ... all fascinating stuff, and I ate it up here ... but I do wonder if a kid would be bored by it all.

Just to prove my point from yesterday about some of her more rabid fans: One of the reviews on Amazon (I think for the British version of the book) states that she feels she knows Winterson so well that "if we were to meet we would be on a first-name basis". Okay. First creepy clue. Then she goes on to list her problems with the book (and many of them were my problems as well) - but finally she is MOST disappointed in the fact that Silver, an 11 year old girl, appears to "fall in love" with Gabriel, a young Throwback BOY ... and that particular reader was SO disappointed that Winterson chose to have it be a heterosexual thing and missed an opportunity "to teach kids it's okay to be gay." Oh, great: let's add one MORE didactic message to the book! Why are you looking to Winterson, an artist, to "teach kids it's okay to be gay"?? In a book that has nothing to do with that? Winterson struggles with that kind of thing - people expect her to be a mouthpiece for them, rather than herself. Tanglewreck has no obligation to be anything other than itself. To look for it to show "kids it's okay to be gay" when ... it has nothing to do with that, you would never put such a pressure onto another writer - you only put the pressure on Winterson because she is gay - but that's the kind of narrow-minded thinking Winterson has always fought against. Do NOT label her as a gay writer. Or, whatever, go ahead and label her - but just know: that by labeling her, you limit her. It reminds me of Ted's story about directing Virginia in Chicago and being told on a radio interview that he wasn't qualified to direct a play about Virginia Woolf because he was a man. It also reminds me of the recent (and ongoing) kerfluffle between Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee about Eastwood's film about Charlie Parker and how Spike Lee thinks only a black man should have directed that film. Clint Eastwood was like, "But nobody else did it! I did! Get over yourself." I like Spike Lee a lot, but that kind of nonsense is ... well, nonsense. This is a level of art that I cannot stand. Where group identity politics trumps artistic considerations and imagination. Oh, so only a deaf actor can play someone who is deaf? Personal experience trumps imagination? Well, sorry, but that goes against everything I believe in. You don't need to be a prince to be able to imagine yourself into Hamlet - and to put that kind of literal consideration onto any artist is fucking stupid. Winterson is gay - therefore she can only write about gay things? How boring! Thank God Winterson appears to be easily bored, and continues to try new things, not listening to those who need her to be some posterchild for gay rights. Winterson obviously, with Tanglewreck, wanted to write a story about the things that interest her (and always have): quantum mechanics, space, transformation, alchemy ... To read her book and be disappointed that it doesn't have a gay person in it, is to be moronic. It makes me sad. It makes me hope that Winterson just keeps on keeping on ... writing what SHE wants to write. Every book may not be successful - and that's, actually, one of the most interesting things about Winterson. Even her failures are interesting. She does not play it safe. Or - no, that's not right. I feel she DID play it safe in books like Gut Symmetries (excerpt here) and The PowerBook (excerpt here) - same ol' same ol'. I suppose the fans who only want one thing out of her were tremendously pleased by those books. Those books validate THEM. I don't look for Winterson to validate me. I want her to follow her star, and I will always be right behind. Wherever she goes. When she plays it safe, she gets boring. So when she tries something new (Art & Lies (excerpt here), Tanglewreck) - sometimes it doesn't completely work - but I find that just as fascinating, and admirable. It takes guts to fail. It takes guts to put yourself out there, to know you might be out of your element ... but to understand that being out of your element is exactly where you need to be. To quote Winterson herself: "What you risk reveals what you value." And then, sometimes, she takes a risk (like with Weight - her story of Atlas and Heracles - excerpt here) - and she triumphs. That's what's exciting. Not to mention the fact that her first three books - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (excerpt here), Sexing the Cherry (excerpt here) and The Passion (excerpt here) - are all HUGE risks ... and she knocked them out of the park. So keep taking risks, Winterson. Keep trying to please yourself - not those who have something specific they need of you ... and I'll always be a reader.

Well, I'll always be a reader, regardless. I'm no fair-weather fan! And I suppose - like the woman on Amazon - I have certain "needs" of Winterson, too. I am always curious as to what the hell she is getting up to (she has a new book out - The Stone Gods - a sci-fi book, and I haven't read it yet ... I'm not a big sci-fi fan, but I can't wait to read it ... just to see what she's doing) ... and I hope that my expectations of her are not unfair, or limiting. I know when I'm bored, and I trust that response ... but I also know that Winterson is a wild card. She's made her name on being unpredictable. I'm a fan for life, that's just the way it goes.

So although Tanglewreck is not quite a success, I do admire it because of the risk she took in writing it. She had to know people would be displeased. She wrote it anyway. Awesome! It is only by doing what she wants to do ... that she will continue to grow and flourish as an artist. She has the money. Her books are huge successes. She can please herself. That's what I like about following her career. I never know where she will go next.

Here's a section where Silver sits in the tunnels beneath London with the tribe called The Throwbacks. She is on the run from Abel Darkwater.

EXCERPT FROM Tanglewreck, by Jeanette Winterson.

Gabriel began to teach Silver how to find her way through the labyrinths, and where to come Upground. They told each other stories about their lives, and Silver promised Gabriel that whatever happened, one day she would take him to Tanglewreck.

'I should be glad to see the place that you love,' said Gabriel. 'Nothing matters but those things that matter, Micah says.'

And Silver thought she understood.

In the timeless, ageless space of the Throwbacks, Silver felt happy again, happier than she had been for years. She remembered that with her parents and Buddleia at Tanglewreck, every day had stretched into every day, and she had been free, just like this. She started to sleep on her back, instead of curled up in a ball. She had no sense of how much time was passing - perhaps all of it. Perhaps none.



One day, finding Micah on his own in the Chamber, smoking his pipe, she asked him what he had meant by the 'Experiments'. His face grew dark.

'They be alchemists - him and Maria Prophetessa.'

'That's the beautiful woman called Regalia Mason?'

'Yes.'

'Is an alchemist a sort of magician?'

'Yea, in sort.'

And Micah explained how hundreds of years ago, science and magic were nearly the same thing. Nobody studied physics or chemistry, they studied mathematics or astronomy, and they studied alchemy. Astronomers were also astrologers, who predicted what would happen by measuring the movement of the stars. Even Isaac Newton, who studied mathematics, and discovered gravity, was an astrologer.

'And Isaac Newton, he be a member of a secret society called Tempus Fugit.'

'Time Flies!' said Silver. 'Abel Darkwater's shop!'

'Yea,' said Micah. 'Many of the alchemists spent all their lives labouring to turn metal into gold, but some, like Isaac Newton, and Abel Darkwater, and Maria Prophetessa, and a very powerful magician called John Deem they laboured to make Time.'

'You can't make TIme,' said Silver, thinking, even as she said it, how grown-ups were always saying they had to make time, usually for their children.

' 'Tis why he be alive and not dead in the earth,' said Micah.

'But you are all alive too,' said Silver.

'Yea,' said Micah. 'He experimented on us in the lunatic asylum in ways that would curdle your heart, but when we escaped we discovered that we be not dying as Updwellers do. Have you not noticed something about Abel Darkwater?'

Silver thought about his marble eyes, his round body, his shadowy face ...

'He be like us who don't want the light. If our kind do go in the light, as Updwellers do, we die. Abel Darkwater is cleverer than we; he don't die in the light, but he can't be in the light for long. The dark slows death down, like hibernation. Like animals who sleep all winter.'

'What else slows it down?' asked Silver.

'Cold,' said Micah. 'You put a piece of meat in your cold safes - fridges, you call them. Yea, in the cold safe it does not decay. In the sun it decays.'

'Dark and cold,' said Silver.

'Yea,' said Micah. 'Dark and cold. Come.'

Micah hoisted Silver up on to the warm shaggy back of a bog pony and led her through a short maze of tunnels.

Silver hung on to the pony's thick mane, and felt his warmth on her fingers. Now she understood why Abel Darkwater's house was so cold. It wasn't because it was an old house like Tanglewreck; it was to keep him alive. That was why he had no electric lights, and that was why Mrs Rokabye complained a lot, even for her. Silver didn't feel the cold much. They had hardly any heat or electricity at Tanglewreck because their parents couldn't afford it. Only Mrs Rokabye had electric fires and electric blankets, and even an electric headscarf that she wore in the winter.

'Behold!' said Micah.

They had come to a round corral where half a dozen cattle were contentedly munching hay. The temperature was freezing, and a haze of cold hung over the cows.

Silver shivered and wrapped her legs round the pony. She looked up and saw that the opaque natural light and the steaming cold were coming from a perfectly round sheet of what looked like frosted glass. But it was perhaps fifty metres in diameter.

'In thine own world that be an ice-skating pond,' said Micah. 'A great marvel, for it remains frozen the whole of the year, and through your four season.'

'It's an ice-rink,' said Silver.

'We depend on it for our cattle. These cattle be bred by Abel Darkwater in 1805. We keep them in calf for milk, and we eat the calves for meat.'

'When will they die?' asked Silver.

'I know not. None of us knows when we shall die. But that is true of thine own world too.'

Silver and Micah made their way back to the Chamber.

'Why are you still afraid of Abel Darkwater?' said Silver.

'For the chains and the beatings and the blood-lettings and the faintings, and the dissections and anatomies he performed, and the great cold he kept us in, and the darkness where we dwelled before we be made different by him and her, and that he was my Master. He could destroy us still. He does not destroy us for reasons of his own, but I know them not.'

'Why does he want the Timekeeper?'

Micah stopped as he was walking. 'Abel Darkwater never must find the Timekeeper. If truly you know where it be ...'

'I don't know where it be, I mean, where it is,' said Silver.

'He must not become Lord of the Universe, for that is his wish, and his many lifetimes' work,' said Micah, his face grave.

'How can we stop him?' asked Silver.

'He cannot do it without the clock.'

'But he says I will lead him to the clock.'

Micah was silent. 'It may be that you must dwell with us for the remainder of your days.'

Silver gasped at this. 'What, and never see Tanglewreck again?'

'It may be. If you be the Keeper of the Clock, it be your duty to keep it safe.'

'But I DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS!'

'That may be the means of keeping it safe,' said Micah.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 27, 2008

The Books: "Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles" (Jeanette Winterson)

weight2-705510.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles, by Jeanette Winterson.

Part of the ongoing Myths Series from Random House (which I adore) - Winterson takes on the myth of Atlas and Heracles. I mentioned in another post that I think Winterson could definitely be a kind of post-modern Edith Hamilton. I have always felt that her strength, as a writer, lay in the evocation of magic and myth and fairy tale in the middle of more straightforward narratives. It's what I most love about her. Because even with all her invention and unconventionality - she actually is one of the most traditional of writers. Meaning: she respects tradition. She ADORES it. It lives and breathes around her, and she finds new ways to put those traditions and old tales into her stories - because they mean that much to her. It's not an act or a gimmick (having read her book Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery - essays on art, from paintings to books to poems - I can say that she sees herself as PART of a tradition, not outside it. Many of her more radical fans don't like this about her because they "need" something from her. They want her to buck the system, they want her to be only one thing. Reject the tradition!! Jeanette Winterson is a lesbian. She's quite open about it. But she also is quite open about the fact that because of her sexuality - which has little to do with who she is as a writer - people project things onto her, and have expectations that are, frankly, retarded. I suppose any writer from a minority struggles with that. They need to be all things to all people.) Winterson tells a funny story about being berated by some random woman on the street because she shaved her legs and wore heels. It's that kind of nonsense I'm talking about. My friend Alex often deals with nonsense like that. Her lesbian fans want to OWN her and then get all insane and jealous when Alex expresses a thought that doesn't line up with the expected lesbian attitude. I've seen it happen on her blog - it's nuts!! Anyway, Winterson is elusive, in many ways. She resists classification. I understand why a certain group of people would latch on to her work. I really do. But she's an independent person, an ARTIST, not a person on a poster representing a cause.

Her imagining of the myth of Atlas and Heracles is marvelous - and is representative of what I am talking about her. I really get the sense, with this book, that Winterson was able to retreat to a private space (in her mind, I mean) - where she is most creative, most in touch with her dreams and her thoughts, and wrote from that place. Sometimes Winterson's work is self-conscious. Nothing wrong with that. Virginia Woolf was a self-conscious writer. James Joyce was a self-conscious writer. Being aware of you, the artist, in the act of creation is part of the 20th century literary tradition. Winterson can sometimes go off the deep end with it, and the references become lost - it becomes a truly private work, not accessible to me, the reader - but here, with the myth of Atlas and Heracles, she is in true storyteller mode. She is sitting around the fire with members of her tribe, telling a tale they all know well, but never get tired of hearing about. Because there are lessons in it for all ... Winterson has truly thought about this myth, and its larger metaphors ... and so she goes for it.

I had been vaguely disenchanted with Winterson's books for a couple of years. Burnt by Art & Lies (excerpt here), Gut Symmetries (excerpt here) and The PowerBook (excerpt here) , although all of them have some quite lovely writing. But within 2 or 3 pages of Weight, I felt that prickle at the back of my neck, that goosebump-y feeling ... of being in the presence of a writer at the top of her game. It is a spare book, not too much fat on it, but I found myself totally lost in the pages. I know the myth of Atlas and Heracles, but here is a new voice telling that old familiar tale. She turns it into a first-person narrative, which I love - because we can enter into their experience in a new way.

More than anything, I just got the sense that Winterson had a BALL writing this. Like she could have kept writing forever, it was that fun and satisfying to her. It's a really fun book - I highly recommend it. If you're into Greek and Roman mythology, then the "Myths Series" is something you should definitely check out. I haven't read all of them - just Winterson's and Atwood's - but what a great idea, I think.



EXCERPT FROM Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles, by Jeanette Winterson.

The war between the gods and the Titans was a war we had preferred to avoid. There are several versions of this war. One thing is certain; what began as just cause became just excuse. We fought for ten years.

Some say that my father was Uranus and that my brothers and I, especially Cronus, plotted to attack him and castrate him. It is certain that Cronus cut off the genitals of Uranus, and then took power himself. It is certain too, that Cronus bore a child, Zeus, who likewise dethroned his father and gained control of the heavens. Zeus had two brothers, Hades and Poseidon, and while Zeus became Lord of the Sky, Poseidon had his kingdom in the waves, and Hades was content with what lies beneath. The earth was left to mankind.

It was mankind who attacked quiet Atlantis, and Zeus who helped them to destroy my people. I escaped, and joined the revolt against the heavens. I was the war-leader, the one who had lost most and little to fear. What can a man fear with nothing to lose?

In the long fighting, most of us were killed, and my mother, out of her secret nature, promised victory to Zeus. What Titans were left were banished to Britain, where the cold inhospitable rocks are worse than death. I was spared for my great strength.

In a way I was allowed to be my own punishment.



Because I loved the earth. Because the seas of the earth held no fear for me. Because I had learned the positions of the planets and the track of the stars. Because I am strong, my punishment was to support the Kosmos on my shoulders. I took up the burden of the whole world, the heavens above it, and the depths below. All that there is, is mine, but none of it in my control. This is my monstrous burden. The boundary of what I am.

And my desire?

Infinite space.



It was the day of my punishment.

The gods assembled. The women were on the left and the men were on the right. There's Artemis, worked muscle and tied-back hair, fiddling with her bow so that she doesn't have to look at me. We were friends. We hunted together.

There's Hera, sardonic, aloof. She couldn't care less. As long as it's not her.

There's Hermes, fidgety and pale, he hates trouble. Next to him lounges Hephastus, ill-tempered and lame, Hera's crippled son, tolerated for his gold smithy. Opposite him is Aphrodite his wife, who loathes his body. We've all had her, though we treat her like a virgin. She smiled at me. She was the only one who dared ...

Zeus read out his decree. Atlas, Atlas, Atlas. It's in my name, I should have known. My name is Atlas - it means 'the long suffering one'.



I bent my back and braced my right leg, kneeling with my left. I bowed my head and held my hands, palms up, almost like surrender. I suppose it was surrender. Who is strong enough to escape their fate? Who can avoid what they must become?

The word given, teams of horses and oxen began to strain forward, dragging the Kosmos behind them, like a disc-plough. As the great ball ploughed infinity, pieces of time were dislodged. Some fell to earth, giving the gift of prophecy and second sight. Some were thrown out into the heavens, making black holes where past and future cannot be distinguished. Time spattered my calf muscles and the sinews in my thigh. I felt the world before it began and the future marked me. I would always be here.

As the Kosmos came nearer, the heat of it scorched my back. I felt the world settle against the sole of my foot.

Then, without any sound, the heavens and the earth were rolled up over my body and I supported them on my shoulders.

I could hardly breathe. I could not raise my head. I tried to shift slightly or to speak. I was dumb and still as a mountain. Mount Atlas they soon called me, not for my strength but for my silence.

There was a terrible pain in the seventh vertebra of my neck. The soft tissue of my body was already hardening. The hideous vision of my life was robbing me of life. Time was my medusa. Time was turning me to stone.



I do not know how long I crouched like this, petrified and motionless.

***

At last I began to hear something.

I found that where the world was close to my ears, I could hear everything. I could hear conversations, parrots squawking, donkeys braying. I heard the rushing of underground rivers and the crackle of fires lighted. Each sound became a meaning, and soon I began to de-code the world.

Listen, here is a village with a hundred people in it, and at dawn they take their cattle to the pastures and at evening they herd them home. A girl with a limp takes the pails over her shoulders. I know she limps by the irregular clank of the buckets. There's a boy shooting arrows - thwack! thwack! into the padded hide of the target. His father pulls the stopper out of a wine jar.

Listen, there's an elephant chased by a band of men. Over there, a nymph is becoming a tree. Her sighs turn into sap.

Someone is scrambling up a scree slope. His boots loosen the ground under him. His nails are torn. He falls exhausted on some goat-grass. He breathes heavily and goes to sleep.

I can hear the world beginning. Time plays itself back for me. I can hear the ferns uncurling from their tight rest. I can hear pools bubbling with life. I realise I am carrying not only this world, but all possible worlds. I am carrying the world in time as well as in space. I am carrying the world's mistakes and its glories. I am carrying its potential as well as what has so far been realised.

As the dinosaurs crawl through my hair and volcanic eruptions pock my face, I find I am become a part of what I must bear. There is no longer Atlas and the world, there is only the World Atlas. Travel me, and I am continents. I am the journey you must make.



Listen, there's a man telling a story about the man who holds the world on his shoulders. Everybody laughs. Only drunks and children will believe that.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 26, 2008

The Books: "The PowerBook' (Jeanette Winterson)

powerbook.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The PowerBook, by Jeanette Winterson.

Ali is the narrator of The PowerBook. She is a storyteller. She sells her services online to tell stories for others. Any story you want. It can star you ... or you can inhabit another story (the story of Lancelot, the story of Mallory on Everest, whatever you like) - you give Ali your qualifications, your desires, and she tells the story. She does warn you that you may come out the other end of the story - altered, changed. Stories are not benign or harmless - they have the power to change you. You may not be the same person. People are willing to pay, however. Fantasy is a powerful thing. And it takes someone who is a WRITER who can make a story come alive. There's a bit of ego in this book (obviously) - and it is not clear at all that "Ali" is separate in any way from Jeanette Winterson, the writer. The voice is, as always Winterson's voice. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and there is much that is lovely and fanciful in this book.

From what I remember, there is one particular woman, out there in cyberspace, who keeps coming back for Ali's stories. She re-invents herself time and time again. It is a shape-shifting universe, the universe of online romance and sex, you can be whoever you want to be. That is Ali's job; to make it become real and alive.

My favorite parts of this book are the stories. You, as the reader, enter the different stories, and there are times when it seems they will go on forever. There is no way out. That is part of Ali's warning to her customers. A story is a story. You can't ask what you will "get" out of a story because the story has its own rules and has to go where it has to go. Ali makes no promises of a specific result.

Here is an excerpt. You can certainly see Winterson's gift for romantic narrative here. She just goes for it. She is not cynical. She is not afraid of being hokey or overblown - because that is, indeed, how love feels like. At least in the beginning. I really admire that about her.


EXCERPT FROM The PowerBook, by Jeanette Winterson.

There is no greater grief than to find no happiness but happiness in what is past.


This is the story of Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo. You can find it in Boccaccio. You can find it in Dante. You can find it here.


My father's castle is built of stone. The stone is thick as darkness. Darkness is to the inside what stone is to the outside of this castle; impenetrable, unscalable, a stone-dark, heavy as thought.

The dark stone weighs on us. Our thoughts bear us down. We roll the dark in front of us down the icy corridors, and in the rooms the darkness accumulates, sits in our chairs, waits. We wait.

The castle is a pause between dark and dark. It fills the space between a man's thoughts and his deeds. My father made the design for the castle himself. It is as though we are living inside him.

Inside the castle, the furniture is black oak from Spain. In the one room where we keep a fire there is a long black table with candlesticks. At this table, for the first time, I saw Paolo.

Paolo il bello ...


***


My father Guido had long been at war with Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. A marriage was planned as a condition of peace, and Paolo rode in retinue to wild Ravenna to fetch me.


We lit the dark hall with candles, which forced the darkness off a little, made it crouch in strange shapes, like a thing whipped.

We dressed ourselves in black, my mother and I, for my father told us that every day is a day of mourning. I wore no adornment, but my hair is as loose and flowing as the cataract that roars under my window, and just as the cataract is tamed to the waterwheel, my hair is tamed to the braid, but both escape.

I bound myself as tightly as I could and went downstairs.


There was a curious light in the room. It was not the fire nor the candles nor the effect of the storm outside. I did not dare raise my eyes to discover the source, but walked mute and downcast towards the table, where my father presented me to Paolo.

I did not look up. I offered him my hand and he kissed it and placed a ring on my finger.

Through our meal my father talked only to the envoys and said nothing to Paolo or myself. I heard Paolo's voice talking to my mother, and the music of it was like a flute or a pipe. I wanted to see him, but I had not the power.

At the end of our meal my mother and father and all the envoys and servants left the room abruptly. None of the dishes had been cleared and the wine was left spilt on the table. I could sense Paolo looking at me.

There was a low rumbling noise, like a scaffold being wheeled out, and from the shadow on the floor, I understood that a great canopied bed had been pushed into the room.

I did not raise my eyes, but my skin was as cold as wax.

I heard Paolo get up and, coming round to my side of the table, he took my hand and bade me stand up.

'Francesca,' he said, 'let me see your breasts.'

I could not move, but his hands were sure as falcons and he soon had me pinned under him.

We lay on the bed and he kissed me - nothing more - one hand on my breast, the other gently stroking himself, until he felt my kisses meet his, and then he took my hand to where his own was active, and now freed, began to open my legs.

The pleasure was as shocking as the thought of pleasure.


The next morning, both dressed in white, we passed through the walls of my father's castle as easily as ghosts. In my whole life I had never been beyond the shadow of the castle. The shadow-tip of the flag marked the limit of my walks and my own shadow followed me wherever I went.

Today was not like that.

Today was sun and sky and birdsong and open faces, and I blessed my father's war, which had made this love.

As we rode, the light went with us. He was the light.

Paolo il bello.

My lover, my loved one, my love.


***


I need not tell how we passed our days as we rode in splendour along the coast. There was such lightness in me that I had to be tied to the pommel of the saddle to keep myself from bird height. I was bold as a starling. You fed me from your own plate. My eyes were always watching you. I thought you were one of the angels from the church window. We flew together, your wings in gold leaf from the sun. Time flew with us, and very soon we were in sight of your father's lands.

I noticed a change in you - a dampening and a quiet that I did not understand. I thought you were ashamed of me, but you shook your head, your beautiful head like an angel, and asked me to wait.

I did wait. I had waited before now. Waited all my life, it seemed. 'What is life,' my father had said, 'but a waiting for death?'

Then there were trumpets and running feet and crowds gathering and pennants and a team of white horses in silver harnesses and the white horses drew a carriage and in the carriage was a strange swarthy misshapen man, dressed all in leather, his fingers full of rings.

You turned to me and your voice was breaking as water breaks against a rock it cannot wear away.

'That man is to be your husband,' you said. 'That man, my brother.'

Oh, Paolo, il bello, why did you lie to me?

Say you are lying to me now.


The wedding took place that afternoon.

My husband was scarcely four feet tall and as twisted in body as Paolo was straight. These things need not have been laid to his fault, but his heart was his own making and his heart was as unformed by kindness as his body had been neglected by beauty. He cared for nothing but hunting and women, and he lashed his dogs and his whores with the same strap.

The horrors of my nights with him might have been bearable if I had not been taught a different way. The grave of my childhood life and the grave of my married life might have crumbled into one another without distinction, if Paolo had not kissed me and raised me from the dead for those few wide-open days.

Then, months later, when my husband was away, Paolo came into my room. He suggested we might read together to while away the time, and this was approved with a short nod from my waiting woman who was paid to be my gaoler.

Every morning Paolo came to me, and we read together the story of Lancelot du Lac, and his love for Queen Guinevere.

We read out loud, and there were many pauses, many broken sighs and swift glances, and as we bent our heads lower and lower over the page, to scribe a perfect world, our cheeks met, and then our lips, and he was honey in my mouth as I kissed him.

There was no more time for reading that day.


You contrived it - oh, I don't know how - to be together, along with our book, though we never turned another page.


Paolo, your love for me was a clear single happiness, and I would not give it up to save my soul.


He caught us. You know he did. Perhaps he trapped us. He might have done.

We were in bed together, naked, hot, Paolo inside me, when Gianciotto burst through the door with his men. I saw his face, triumphant, malign, and I saw him raise his terrible hand. He had a hand made of iron that he had fashioned into a spike. It was his hand that he ran through Paolo's smooth back, and through into my belly and my spine, and into the flock of the mattress. The force was so great that it lifted him up and pinned him above us like a weathercock.

I put my hands to Paolo's bleeding body, and he said to me, so that only I could hear -

'There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet.'

He was dead then, and I dead under him, and hand in hand our souls flew down the corridors and out of his brother's palace as easily as our bodies had done when we left my father's house.

I have never let go of his hand.

We are as light now as our happiness was, lighter than birds. The wind carries us where it will, but our love is secure.

No one can separate us now. Not even God.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

July 25, 2008

The Books: "The World and Other Places" - 'Turn of the World' (Jeanette Winterson)

0375702369.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson - a short story collection. Excerpt from the story 'Turn of the World'.


The kind of writing and imagination on display in this story is my main attraction to Jeanette Winterson. It's the kind of bravery that allowed her to tell the story of a woman whose heart was actually taken (in The Passion - excerpt here), and the story of princesses who flew out of their window at night (in Sexing the Cherry - excerpt here). It's not that she's re-inventing the wheel. It's that she allows magic to be a part of her books in a way that is not hokey, or strictly sci-fi. She's more into myth. The element of myth playing a part in our lives. And fairy tales: the eternal truth of them. What can Hansel and Gretl or Rapunzel tell us about how we live? Winterson is truly inventive in this regard. She's not like anybody else.

"Turn of the World" describes four islands that lie "at the turn of the world". The names of the islands are Fyr, Hydor, Aeros and Erde. She describes each island - how they work, what their defining characteristics are. The story reminds me very much of Gulliver's Travels (excerpt here). Each island obviously represents one of our four elements. The worlds she creates you will not forget (the drowned island, the volcanic fiery island, etc.)

My favorite is the island of Erde. Obviously "earth" - because the entire island is based on mines, and jewels. But on this particular island the values are opposite from our own.

I don't know what it all means - that is sometimes the case with Winterson. She states her case, describes the world, and you are left with: So ... what does it all mean? What should I think about this? Sometimes that means that Winterson's writing is purposefully opaque, which can get boring - but in this case, it just means she's writing on a mythical magical level ... where meaning is never certain. It's just something to think about. You can charge in and say, "Oh - this is what this MEANS ..." but you may be missing the point. Winterson wants engagement. She wants us to meet her halfway. Otherwise, she is not interested.

Here's an excerpt.


EXCERPT FROM The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson - a short story collection. Excerpt from the story 'Turn of the World'.

The island of Erde.

Here are mines and jewels. The climate of Erde is blustery and damp with frequent snow fall in the long winter. To keep warm, the inhabitants have perfected a cast-iron stove that burns diamonds. Diamonds are the cheapest fuel source on Erde. The coal seams are so ancient and undug that their carbon is no longer carbonaceous rock but crystallised carbon. Anyone who foots a spade into the earth will find a shovelful of uncut diamonds, which will burn unattended for two weeks.

It is true that certain mines on the island are still young, and these are highly prized. The richest women wear coal earrings and coal necklaces and the coal merchants of Erde are the wealthiest men in the world. Tourists are taken round the filthy, black coal-cutting studios near the mines, and marvel at the treasures on display. The King of Erde has a crown made entirely of coal, including the largest lump of coal ever brought up from the coveted mine. The cut lump is two feet by three feet and weighs as much as a Tamworth Sow. On state occasions, when the precious crown is carefully blacked and sooted, four men must walk beside the king to support thie fabulous glory. To be covered in coal-dust is thought a great honour.

For the most part though, the people are modst and content, sitting quietly by their winter fires, poking the diamonds.

Visitors to the island come for the caving and the hunting. The underground passages of Erde are hung with stalactites and furnished with stalagmites. Carving is a national hobby, and the growths of minerals, deep in the caves, have been fashioned into beds and chairs, elephants and whales, making a world within a world. Cavers drink their coffee out of fossil cups.

Beasts of every kind still roam Erde and hunting parties are organised throughout the season. The guides and beaters are strict; no one must stray from the route. If the prey reaches the interior, it is given up for lost.

There have been stories of foolhardy hunters who have rushed ahead into unmarked places of Erde, and they have never returned. The guides are silent. No search party is sent out. The guides themselves would not return.

What is the mystery of Erde? It is said that when a man or a woman of that place has done all they wish to do in the world, they set off, without warning, drawn as if by a magnet, towards the interior.

If the people of Hydor are known for clairvoyance, the people of Erde are known for prophesy. It is said that the Norns live in the interior, weaving their fateful rope.

Perhaps they do. The traveller has seen three sisters beckoning to him, as he nears the magnetic pole of the island. There is a tree there, whose top stretches up to heaven and whose roots push down to hell. The tree is eloquent. In its branches seem to be the tracings of the whole world. The traveller rubs his hands against the thick bark and his hands are sapped with time. He puts his head against the tree, glad to rest, and hears the rumble of history coursing through the trunk.

Perhaps it is the World Ash Tree. Perhaps it is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Perhaps it is the alchemists' tree, under whose shade the self will grow again. The traveller does not know but he starts to climb.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1)

July 24, 2008

The Books: "The World and Other Places" - 'Orion' (Jeanette Winterson)

0375702369.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson - a short story collection.

Excerpt from the story 'Orion'.

Judging from this story and her book about Atlas, I think Jeanette Winterson should publish a whole book of Greek myths. She could be the next Edith Hamilton! She imagines herself into those old myths, puts her own spin on things, teases out metaphors and thoughts ... and it's all very Winterson-esque. What are the themes of the story of Orion? What is the theme of someone like Artemis? What can we learn from her? Depending who you are, the answers will probably be different. Winterson comes at it from her perspective, her interest in time and how it moves and curves (something that comes up in many of her books), her interest in sex and love, and also a sort of fanciful imagination that helps her flesh things out. Winterson, I think, is a very positive writer, despite some of the dark elements in her work. I don't get a misanthropic feeling from her at all. She's also not a humanist - she's far too self-centered ... she doesn't write books with a million different characters in them ... Only one or two or three show up. The same ones every time, only with different names. But there's something about writing the myth stories out that sets her free. It's like it's a starting point, something to riff off of - and she is free to go ... Perhaps because the narrative is already written and well-known, it's a myth after all ... so she can improvise. Winterson is great at improvising (when there's a POINT to her improvisation, I mean).

Here's an excerpt from her story about Orion (and, later, Artemis):



EXCERPT FROM The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson - excerpt from the story 'Orion'.

Every 200,000 years or so, the individual stars within each constellation shift position. That is, they are shifting all the time, but more subtly than any tracker dog of ours can follow. One day, if the earth has not voluntarily opted out of the solar system we will wake up to a new heaven whose dome will again confound us. It will still be home but not a place to take for granted. I wouldn't be able to tell you the story of Orion and say, 'Look, there he is, and there's his dog Sirius whose loyalty has left him bright.'

The dot-to-dot log book of who we were is not a fixed text.

For Orion, who was the result of three of the gods in a good mood pissing on an ox-hide, the only tense he recognised was the future continuous. He was a mighty hunter. His arrow was always in flight, his prey, endlessly just ahead of him. The carcasses he left behind became part of his past faster than they could decay. When he went to Crete he did no sunbathing. He rid the island of all its wild beasts. He could really swing a cudgel.

Stories abound: Orion was so tall he could walk along the sea bed without wetting his hair. So strong he could part a mountain. He wasn't the kind of man who settles down. And then he met Artemis, who wasn't the kind of woman who settles down either. They were both hunters and both gods. Their meeting is recorded in the heavens, but you can't see it every night, only on certain nights of the year. The rest of the time Orion does his best to dominate the skyline as he always did.

Our story is the old clash between history and home. Or to put it another way, the immeasurable impossible space that seems to divide the hearth from the quest.

Listen to this.

***

On a wild night, driven more by weariness than good sense, King Zeus agreed to let his daughter do it differently. She didn't want to get married and sit out some war, while her man, god or not, underwent the ritual metamorphosis from palace prince to craggy hero. She didn't want children. She wanted to hunt. Hunting did her good.

By morning she had packed and set off for her new life in the woods. Soon her fame spread and other women joined her but Artemis didn't care for company. She wanted to be alone. In her solitude she discovered something very odd. She had envied men their long-legged freedom to roam the world and return full of glory to wives who only waited. She knew about history-makers and the home-makers, the great division that made life possible. Without rejecting it, she had simply hoped to take on the freedoms that belonged to the other side. What if she travelled the world and the seven seas like a hero? Would she find something different or the old things in different disguises?

She found that the whole world could be contained in one place because that place was herself. Nothing had prepared her for this.

The alchemists have a saying: 'Tertium non datur'. The third is not given. That is, the transformation from one element into another, from waste matter into best gold is a mystery, not a formula. No one can predict what will form out of the tensions of opposites and effect a healing change between them. And so it is with the mind that moves from its prison to a free and vast plain without any movement at all. Something new has entered the process. We can only guess.


Posted by sheila Permalink

July 23, 2008

The Books: "The World and Other Places" - 'The 24-Hour Dog' (Jeanette Winterson)

0375702369.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The World and Other Places: Stories, by Jeanette Winterson

A collection of short (sometimes very short) stories by Jeanette Winterson. I loved seeing her in the shorter form, because much of the boring-ness of her last couple of books was not there (for the most part) - and she seemed to have taken the reins off. These stories are not just about infidelity, and love triangles involving redheaded women. There are fairy tales here, fantastical worlds ... and it's not JUST about love. It's about all kinds of things. Come to think of it - the title of the collection (which is the title of one of the stories) is perfect. It is about the world and other places. Some of the stories don't work for me ... some of the writing has a blunt showoff-ish tone that makes me roll my eyes ... but other times, Winterson dives right in to her made-up worlds, and transports me. She really can be dazzling. I love her imagination. These aren't typical short stories. The narratives often are not recognizable, in terms of that particular form. There is no kitchen-sink reality here. Most of her characters do not have names. Most of the stories are first-person narration - and the "voice" is not distinct. It's Jeanette Winterson's voice. Every voice she writes in is her own (which, I think, is why some of her lesser stuff can be so boring.) BUT: her own voice is exciting enough, and interesting enough ... When she puts it in service of a story that works, it's perfect.

I won't excerpt from all of the stories ... just a sampling.

The first story in the collection is called 'The 24-Hour Dog'. The plotline is simple (almost too simple - there's not much to it. It's really about the THOUGHTS she has ... not the events that take place): a woman who lives on a farm decides to get a dog. She goes and picks him up. He is a puppy. The puppy fills her with a joy - she loves him - But there is something else going on. His love for her, unconditional, unnerves her. She feels "found out". She cannot hide from this dog. It is almost too confronting to have him around. What does it mean to be loved unconditionally? How on earth can she bear it?

I am particularly moved by this story right now ... because of my new furry companion who stares up at me, trying to figure me out, loving me even though she doesn't know me yet.

Here's an excerpt. I love how she guesses at the dog's perspective.



EXCERPT FROM The World and Other Places: Stories - 'The 24-Hour Dog', by Jeanette Winterson

I had collected him that morning from his brothers and sisters, his mother, his friends on the farm. He was to be my dog, shot out of a spring litter, a coil of happiness. Bit by bit he would unfold.

He liked my sports car until it moved. Movement to him was four legs or maybe two. He had not yet invented the wheel. He lay behind my neck in stone-age despair, not rigid, but heavy, as his bladder emptied his enterprise, and the blue leather seats were puddled under puppy rain.

We were home in less than five minutes and he staggered from the car as though it were the hold of a slave ship and him left aboard for six months or more. His oversize paws were hesitant on the gravel because he half believed the ground would drive off with him.

I motioned him to the threshold; a little door in a pair of great gates. He looked at me: What should he do? I had to show him that two paws first, two paws after, would jump him across the wooden sill. He fell over but wagged his tail.

I had spent the early morning pretending to be a dog. I had crawled around my kitchen and scullery on all fours at dog height looking for toxic substances (bleach), noxious hazards (boot polish), forbidden delights (rubber boots), death traps (electric wires), swallowables, crunchables, munchables and saw-the-dog-in-half shears and tools.

I had spent the day before putting up new shelving and rearranging the cupboards. A friend from London asked me if I was doing Feng Shui. I had to explain that this was not about energy alignments but somewhere to put the dog biscuits.

I rerouted the washing machine hoses. I had read in my manual that Lurchers like to chew washing machine hoses but only when the machine is on; thus, if they fail to electrocute themselves, they at least succeed in flooding the kitchen.

The week before I had forced my partner to go into Mothercare to purchase a baby gate. The experience nearly killed her. It was not the pastel colours, piped music and cartoon screen, or the assistants, specially graded into mental ages two to four and four to six, or the special offer, one hundred bibs for the price of fifty, it was that she was run down by a fork lift truck moving a consignment of potties.

I fitted the gate. I tried to patch up my relationship. I spent a sleepless night on our new bean bag. I was pretending to be a dog.

The farmer telephoned me the following day.

'Will you come and get him now?'

Now. This now. Not later. Not sooner. Here now. Quick now.



Yes I will come for you. Roll my strength into a ball for you. Throw myself across chance for you. I will be the bridge or the pulley because you are the dream.



He's only a dog. Yes but he will find me out.



Dog and I did the gardening that virgin morning of budding summer. That is, I trimmed the escallonia and he fetched the entire contents of the garage, apart from the car. It began with a pruning gauntlet which he could see I needed. There followed a hanging basket, a Diana Ross cassette, a small fire extinguisher, a hand brush that made him look like Hitler, and one by one a hoarded collection of Victorian tiles. Being a circular kind of dog he ran in one door to seek the booty and sped out of another to bring it to me. He had not learned the art of braking. When he wanted to stop he just fell over.

I looked at the hoard spread before me. Perhaps this was an exercise in Feng Shui after all. Why did I need a Diana Ross tape? Why was I storing six feet of carpet underlay? I don't have any carpets.

The questions we ask of the universe begin and end with questions like these. He was a cosmic dog.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 22, 2008

The Books: "Gut Symmetries" (Jeanette Winterson)

0679454756.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Gut Symmetries, by Jeanette Winterson

Yeah, so, right around here I stopped caring. It all started feeling the same. It's all about infidelity, love triangles, and bisexuality. Not that there's anything wrong with those topics - it's just that Winterson seemed to be treading water, going over the same territory. Perhaps there was crap in her personal life she needed to work out, I have no idea ... and again, that's fine - much great art comes from a writer wrestling with personal demons. But for whatever reason, Gut Symmetries feels strangely passionless, almost like an exercise. Which is so bizarre when you compare it to her vibrant pulsating earlier works like The Passion (excerpt here) or Sexing the Cherry (excerpt here). In those books, Winterson had larger contexts in which to place her stories: Bonaparte, the reign of Charles II, plague, war ... As she moved along in her writing career, larger contexts disappeared almost completely - and she went completely into the personal and subjective. Winterson sees herself as part of the Modernism tradition, as well she might - and Virginia Woolf is one of her inspirations (for this work in particular, with its Waves-esque ruminations). But I don't think it works as well. It's not that books NEED to have a larger context, or the outer world somehow captured in them. There are plenty of books that do not have that, and they are fine. The description of subjective experience is very very challenging - and only the great writers can manage it. Winterson had been brilliant in that regard early on, but with Gut Symmetries it feels re-hashed. At least with Art & Lies (excerpt here), unsuccessful though it was, she was trying something new. In Gut Symmetries - even with its newer elements of physics (Grand Unified Theory - ie: "Gut") and the Tarot cards ... feels like same ol' same ol'. Almost like Winterson is trying to imagine herself back into a narrative but can't quite get there.

Gut Symmetries tells the story of a love triangle. Alice is our narrator. She begins an affair with Jove - a man already married to a woman named Stella. When the affair with Jove goes south, Alice and Stella begin an affair.

All the voices sound the same in this book. It ends up feeling quite monotone. A voice droning on and on. Droning?? The sparkling brilliant Winterson? Well, yes! I was truly disappointed in Gut Symmetries and its lack of imagination ... I almost felt apprehensive, like: "Could it be that Winterson, despite the early promise, is really just a one-trick pony??" I was sad about that. I am invested in her, as is probably obvious. I know I was not alone in seeing the similarities in Gut Symmetries to her earlier books - yet without the passion and interest. In The Passion there is a love triangle - between Villanelle (obviously bisexual herself) and a married woman ... but there it feels treacherous, shattering, urgent. Here, in Gut Symmetries, I think: "Okay. This feels the same as The Passion, only now I don't care. What is missing??"

As I have mentioned before, Winterson recently came out with two books - one is a re-telling of the Atlas myth, and the other is about a keeper of a magical lighthouse - and I am so so happy to say she is back to form. And by "back to form" I mean: unpredictable, imaginative, unexpected, thrilling.

But for a good 10 years there, I struggled with my affection for her. I wondered if I would have to eventually let her go. How long can a fan hang on? (It is identical to my journey with Tori Amos ... and what a thrill, what a total thrill, to hear her latest album. Yay!!)

I can say, without a doubt, that I am, hands down, the best fan I know. Without tipping over into stalker behavior ... If I love you once? I love you always. I give you multiple chances. I am in it for the long haul. I can't say this about everybody. But with some people? It's a relationship. I will have a "relationship" with Jeanette Winterson forever. It will ebb and flow, and I've had to adjust ... I've had to let HER be in charge, because - after all - it is HER that is doing all the writing. And I will still count the days to her next book. I always will!

I chose an excerpt from Gut Symmetries that I actually like - not one of the long boring sections about love and regret and desire (which sound like all her other writings on the topics). I chose a story that gives a glimmer of who Winterson is as a writer, and why I love her so much.

EXCERPT FROM Gut Symmetries, by Jeanette Winterson

My mother, big with child, had strange longings; she wanted to eat diamonds. This gastronomic extravagance could hardly have been more than a fantasy for all but the very rich and Papa could not afford a Guggenheim bagel. We were not rich, nor were Papa's many friends but some of them were diamond dealers, trading silently, secretively in a huddle of patched-up buildings around Canal Street and the Bowery.

One evening, when I was six months old, pre-born, bouncing my hands and feet off Mama's womb wall, I heard the voices of Papa's business friends, talking quietly in our warm low kitchen. Mama shouldn't have been present at all, but she cared very little for the strict protocol of his Orthodox friends and banged about the kitchen, sometimes openly hostile, sometimes serving towers of blinis tall as the Empire State. She did as she pleased and no one dared to challenge her because she had saved Papa's life and risked her own. They called her Rahab.

Somewhere from deep inside their coats, their jackets, their shirts, their vests, their skin, their bones, the men unfolded felt pouches and spread the contents, glittering. It was not their value that they were discussing with Papa, it was their capacity to stimulate the soul's deeper life. To a Jew, stones have meaning beyond value. The twelve jewels of the High Priest's breastplate were energy not hoard. The stones live.

Mama turned round from her usual awning of aluminium saucepans and saw the diamonds. I saw their light and pressed myself as close as I could to the membrane of my genial prison. The light struck through Mamas belly and fed me.

She stepped forward, picked up a diamond between thumb and finger, and swallowed it.

Then she swallowed another, and another, a voluntary force-feeding into a priceless pate: Mama's oesophagus larded with light.


Papa's people are a patient people who have known adversity. They have wept by the waters of Babylon. They have crossed the Red Sea. They have sat in the desert with their camels and their concubines. They have wandered in the wilderness for forty years. They have bargained with their God. Yet not even Job in all his affliction had his inheritance eaten by a woman with child. There was some debate about what to do next.

Papa's people are a patient people. They agreed that Papa would lock the door to our only lavatory on the landing and persuade Mama to use a commode.

A twenty-four-hour watch was rota'd in the kitchen and one of the off-duty men went out to buy surgical gloves.

Mama had no objection. She wanted only to eat the diamonds not to digest them. No one thought about me.


And I did not think, turning in the weightless water, charmed by cut faces of light.


At last it was over, hats off, sleeves rolled up, sweat on their beards, and the much travelled diamonds shining again on their sterilised cloths.

'a'dank! mazel tov! bo'ruch ha'bo! Schnapps!'

'What? One missing? Oy oy oy oy oy! Oy va-avoy! Vai!'


Castor oil. Enema. Glycerine suppositories. Salt water colon irrigation. Cabbage soup. Schnell, kroit zup!


No use. No use at all. I had captured it or it had captured me. After a night of prayer this was revealed to the Elders in a dream. 'We will attend the birth,' they said, at belly level, directly to me, usurper of jewels, infant smuggler of precious stones.


At night, when Mama slept and the lights were out and the night was dark, Papa stood over her in his shawl and guiltily lifted her nightdress. He had never seen her naked, not seen the gentle demands of her, the map that she was where he might have travelled.

He put out his hand but he was afraid. Her belly shone.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 21, 2008

The Books: "Art & Lies" (Jeanette Winterson)

0679762701.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Art & Lies, by Jeanette Winterson

Okay, so this is where Winterson started losing me. It was only in the last couple of years that I felt her return to form. I do not mind experimentation but Art & Lies feels less like experimentation and more like masturbation, or some sort of overly long burlesque show featuring a not-very-good dancer. I am only guessing here but Winterson burst onto the literary world like a meteor - she was greeted with accolades the likes of which one can only dream of ... Her reviews, her press, for those first couple of books, were amazing - and well-deserved. She became a star. It feels to me, especially in Art & lies that Winterson lost her way a little bit with the whole fame thing. I think she felt she could do whatever she wanted - she could "riff" on something, and it would be applauded because isn't that what already happened? Art & Lies is an extended boring riff - and at some point, very early on, I lost interest completely and I only finished it because it was Winterson who wrote it, and I'm weird that way. If you hook me in once, I'm more likely to give you a couple of chances. If Art & Lies had been the first thing I'd read by Jeanette Winterson, I would never have gone on to read another one of her books. It's that tiresome. The thing is: there is some good writing in there; of course there is, it's by Winterson. It just becomes irrelevant in terms of the actual book. You don't know what the hell she is doing in Art & lies, but it felt like showing off, to me. It felt like a big blowhard taking up an entire conversation at a dinner party, dominating, and not letting anyone else speak. And it's just not good enough. I have no problem with sometimes baffling books written by egomaniacs. Obviously I don't. But you had better have a point - you better not JUST want to hear the sound of your own voice ... because otherwise it's just a bore. Art & Lies ends up feeling like a huge wash, a blurred-out painting, nothing distinct stands out. Perhaps Winterson felt that she was riffing - like a jazz musician - or like Jack Kerouac at a poetry reading ... sounds following sounds, meanings inverted, an extended riff ... But riffs must be somehow grounded in the original theme. You need something to riff off OF, in other words. There is the theme, the melody, whatever - and the musician veers off into a riff ... but that's my point. I felt that Winterson had nothing to veer off FROM here. It was just a riff, a writing exercise. It flat out doesn't work.

Not to mention the fact that it's confusing - and not in a good way. There are three main characters. Their names are Handel, Sappho and Picasso. Handel is a surgeon. Picasso is a painter - only it's a woman. And Sappho appears to be Sappho. There's a long train ride. They are three separate narrators - but to be honest, it's all the same voice. It ends up having a deadening effect on me, the reader. I don't know why Handel is named Handel, I don't know why Picasso is a woman, I don't know what the hell is going on!!

Art & Lies got terrible reviews. I think a lot of the anger I sense in the reviews had to do with feeling disappointment because her first books had been so promising. Now ... any writer who has had success will have to deal with that. You cannot please everybody. You need to write to please YOU and hope that it will find readers. However: Art & Lies didn't please ANYone. I know that Winterson stands by her book. Of course she does. She wrote it. But it was a huge bore to me, almost an affront to have to keep reading it ... I was mad. I got over it, of course. But I was like: where's the STORY. What are you DOING.

Oh, and here's another thing. Maybe she was going for something Joycean here - because he is KING of the "riff".

But Art & Lies is actually not hard enough to be considered Joycean. The things revealed, the thoughts, the ruminations - are all pretty run of the mill. It is nothing new. And they are expressed in a banal way. Winterson? Banal?? How on earth did that happen? If you want to write a big difficult book - in a Joycean manner - you had better have your shit together. And you had better be so OCD that you yourself can tolerate all the graphing and codes and stuff that you have to make sense of in order to write your own book. Ulysses is hard. That's as it should be. It is appropriate for what Joyce was going for. He didn't have to write things that were so hard - look at the stories in Dubliners which are all straight-forward narrative, impossible to misunderstand. So the content dictated the form. And Joyce's thoughts on language got more complex as he got older and that needed to be reflected in his writing. Winterson is riffing on NOTHING here ... and her "riffs" on language feel amateurish when compared to other "riffers". It is not successful. She really went off the rails here.

It would be years before she wrote another book that thrilled me the way her early books did. Years. Art & LIes was the start of something, a downturn - the reviews she got were so bad, that it is my sense that she did retreat a bit. To regroup, whatever. Her next couple of books were not the big mess that Art & Lies is - but they go over completely familiar territory: gender-bending narrator falls in love with married woman. It began to feel less like creation and more like biography - or, as I said earlier, masturbation. I think getting the kind of press she got for Oranges (excerpt here) and The Passion (excerpt here) can definitely turn your head. Many writers have fallen into that trap, and come out with some gasbag horror in the wake of their earlier successes. I am not interested in Winterson for her extended riffs (and I know I am in the minority on that) - I like Winterson for her Swiftian evocation of other weird worlds, worlds that work logically, and do not come across too much as metaphors. I like the fairy tales. I like her freedom with form. But in Art & Lies all of the things that are GOOD about her writing are taken to excess, expanded, stretched out - so that it loses all substance altogether.

Obviously Art & LIes was published because it was Winterson writing it. It would never have been published if she was untried or unknown. I would love to know the conversations at the publisher's house, as they tried to make sense of her manuscript. I wonder what fights went down. I'd be very curious to know.

Here's an excerpt.



EXCERPT FROM Art & Lies, by Jeanette Winterson

This is the nature of our sex: She takes a word, straps it on, penetrates me hard. The word inside me, I become it. The word slots my belly, my belly swells the word. New meanings expand from my thighs. Together we have sacked the dictionary for a lexigraphic fuck. We prefer to ignore those smooth, romantic words, and dig instead for a roue's pleasure. The mature word, ripe, through centuries of change, the word deep-layered with associative delights. The more the word has been handled, the better we like it. For me, the perverted challenge of re-virgining the whore. Aren't we a couple? Two successive lines of verse that rhyme with each other? Press your eye to the keyhole and you can see us, one on one, swiving at the perfect match of dactyl and spondee. The coupling-box where we must make ends meet. My well-coupled filly, me, her rider in mid-air.



See me. See me now. I'm not a r(R)omantic, I'm a true C(c)lassical. I don't believe in love at first sight. I'm not falling for you, but one step forward, and you might fall for me.

What things fall?



Once, an angel, leaping out of heaven to find new worlds, his hands snagged on a zigzag of stars. Lucifer, whose cuts bled light ...

*

The thunderbolt, Zeus-hurled, through the timid clouds, the comet's head, nuclear discus gold-thrown.



The Dead, down to Tartarus, black poplars by a black stream. The black shaft smooth-sided and the jag-toothed dog.



Icarus, the flying boy, his body sun-glazed. His sun-glazed body that shattered the glassy sea.



Autumn. Long leaves of bright undress.



Hermes. Star-spurred.



Fall for me, as an apple falls, as rain falls, because you must. Use gravity to anchor your desire.

She fell like a choirboy on a stave of lust. Head back, throat bare, breaking body, breaking voice in an ecstasy of praise. Praise out of the mouth and out of her thighs, aesthetic and ecstatic in a garment of flame.

Pull the shirt over your head, drop it, drop it into my arms, lovers have no need of time. Aphrodite murders Cronos. Drop through the long cylinder of our hours. Ours this time not Time's. Here, there, nowhere, carrying white roses never red.



There was no colour in the sky when she walked along the beach.

The white shells sea-glazed shone. She put one to her ear and heard the strange moaning of the sea. She looked out to where the light skimmed the water. The light that balanced on the narrow crests of the waves. The light that tumbled in the water's concaves.

The light whipped up the dull foam and threw it in petals over her feet, her feet glassed in by the shallow water.

The water, dashing the past at her feet, the water dragging her future behind, the hiss and pull of the waves.

Driftwood on the sands. She picked up a wedge, too light for its size, its substance beaten away. It was only the past, a hollow thing in her hand, only the past, but a shape and a smell that she recognised. The comfortable old form its uses dead.

Clouds in the sky. She wanted a view but the clouds were pretty. Vague, pink, well known. Weren't driftwood and clouds enough? Memories, and what she still had, enough? Why risk what was certain for what was hid? The future could be just as yesterday, she could tame the future by ignoring it, by letting it become the past.

She began to run. She ran out of the day that coiled round her with temperate good sense. She ran to where the sun was just beginning the sky. A thin rung of sun within reach. She leapt and grabbed the ladder bar with both hands and swung herself up into the warm yellow light.



The train was crowded. Is that Sappho, both hands hanging off a neon bar?

Posted by sheila Permalink

July 20, 2008

The Books: "Written On the Body" (Jeanette Winterson)

written_body.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson

In Written On the Body (perhaps Winterson's one of best-loved books - it's not at all my favorite, as a matter of fact I started losing interest right around reading this one - but I know I am in the minority!) we have an unnamed narrator - and we do not know the gender. It could be a man, could be a woman. Can't tell. The narrator is a womanizer - a ladies' man/woman ... But, surprisingly, the narrator falls in love with a married woman named Louise (naturally a redhead - all of Winterson's objects of desire are redheads). Louise is married to a cancer researcher, but it is through the eyes of the narrator that we fall head over heels for her. The narrator ends up breaking off the affair with Louise when it is found out she has cancer. This becomes Winterson's extended metaphor: the body, and its systems ... and how each system/part reflects an aspect of love, or loss. Winterson, in this book, seems interested in excavating loss - and how the memories of a loved one remain, for better or for worse ... one of the recurring questions in the book is something along the lines of "Why is the measure of love loss?" I've got to say: Winterson, in this book, in her writing on love, and what it feels like to lose someone and be haunted by that person - puts other writesr to shame. She seems paramount to me. She is a grandiose and romantic writer - but never sappy. There are lines where you actually have to put down the book and take a moment. Or at least I did. And if I know anything I know that the measure of love is LOSS. She is able to write about that particular brand of sadness in a way I find captivating, and completely real. She speaks directly TO her audience ... and in breaking down the body (we get to know Louise's body intimately), and focusing on this or that ... she keeps the whole thing from being too literal. Anyone who's read her books will know what I mean. Nicholas Sparks, for example, may THINK he's writing about love - but he's only re-stirring some lukewarm pot of sappy sentimentality and rehashing "ideas" about soulmates for an adoring stupid public who wouldn't know real romantic writing if it knocked them on the ucipital mapilary. And yet his reputation is that of a guy who writes sweeping romances. Baffling. To me, Winterson - by avoiding telling a straight-out story - by holding back on certain expected things (even the name or gender of her narrator) - she puts us into the realm of poetry and experience, rather than "and then this happened, and this happened." She's a poet. The title of Written On the Body is perfect because that is exactly what Winterson does here. The body is a canvas. When you love someone you write yourself ON them. And love, at that intense level, is not separate from desire, or lust, or whatever. It's all the same. I've had that kind of love. You know. Where fucking is the same as a deep philosophical conversation or laughing hysterically about Young Frankenstein - there is no separation, it is not "here we are naked, and here we are clothed" - because you're that connected, it's all one. That is love.

Here, in Winterson's world, love is a visceral palpable thing. But it is only in the context of LOSS that we can even really perceive love - and that's something that sucks big-time.

Like I mentioned before - my favorites of Winterson's books are the fairy-tales ... This is more of a contemplation, and to me it takes on a same-ness, after a while - whereas something like Sexing the Cherry (excerpt here) never feels "the same". But again, that's just me. In the lexicon of Jeanette Winterson - Written On the Body is probably her most beloved book, and got her her most devoted audience. I may not be in that group, but that is neither here nor there. Based only on The Passion, I'll read whatever this woman writes. And there are sections of Written On the Body that rank with the best romantic writing of the last 20 years, certainly. No contest.

Here's an excerpt.



EXCERPT FROM Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson

Into the heart of my childish vanities, Louise's face, Louise's words, 'I will never let you go.' This is what I have been afraid of, what I've avoided through so many shaky liaisons. I'm addicted to the first six months. It's the midnight calls, the bursts of energy, the beloved as battery for all those fading cells. I told myself after the last whipping with Bathsheba that I wouldn't do any of it again. I did suspect that I might like being whipped, if so, I had at least to learn to wear an extra overcoat. Jacqueline was an overcoat. She muffled my senses. With her I forgot about feeling and wallowed in contentment. Contentment is a feeling you say? Are you sure it's not an absence of feeling? I liken it to that particular numbness one gets after a visit to the dentist. Not in pain nor out of it, slightly drugged. Contentment is the positive side of resignation. It has its appeal but it's no good wearing an overcoat and furry slippers and heavy gloves when what the body really wants is to be naked.

I never used to think about my previous girlfriends until I took up with Jacqueline. I never had the time. With Jacqueline I settled into a parody of the sporting colonel, the tweedy cove with a line-up of trophies and a dozen reminiscences about each. I have caught myself fancying a glass of sherry and a little mental dalliance with Inge, Catherine, Bathsheba, Judith, Estelle ... Estelle, I haven't thought about Estelle for years. She had a scrap metal business. No, no, no! I don't want to go backwards in time like a sci-fi thriller. What is it to me that Estelle had a clapped-out Rolls-Royce with a pneumatic back seat? I can still smell the leather.

Louise's face. Under her fierce gaze my past is burned away. The beloved as nitric acid. Am I hoping for a saviour in Louise? An almighty scouring of deed and misdeed, leaving the slab clean and white. In Japan they do a nice virgin substitute with the white of an egg. For twenty-four hours at least, you can have a new hymen. In Europe we have always preferred a half lemon. Not only does it act as a crude pessary, it also makes it very difficult for the most persistent of men to drop anchor in what may seem the most pliant of women. Tightness passes for newness; the man believes his little bride has satisfyingly sealed depths. He can look forward to plunging her inch by inch.

Cheating is easy. There's no swank to infidelity. To borrow against the trust someone has placed in you costs nothing at first. You get away with it, you take a little more and a little more until there is no more to draw on. Oddly, your hands should be full with all that taking but when you open them there's nothing there.

When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation. There are those who say that temptation can be barricaded beyond the door. The ones who think that stray desires can be driven out of the heart like the moneychangers from the temple. Maybe they can, if you patrol your weak points day and night, don't look don't smell, don't dream. The most reliable Securicor, church sanctioned and state approved, is marriage. Swear you'll cleave only unto him or her and magically that's what will happen. Adultery is as much about disillusionment as it is about sex. The charm didn't work. You paid all that money, ate the cake and it didn't work. It's not your fault is it?

Marriage is the flimsiest weapon against desire. You may as well take a pop-gun to a python. A friend of mine, a banker and a very rich man who had travelled the world, told me he was getting married. I was surprised because I knew that for years he had been obsessed with a dancer who for wild and proper reasons of her own wouldn't commit. Finally he had lost patience and chosen a pleasant steady girl who ran a riding school. I saw him at his flat the weekend before his wedding. He told me how serious he was about marriage, how he had read the wedding service and found it beautiful. Within its confines he sensed happiness. Just then the doorbell rang and he took receipt of a van-load of white lilies. He was arranging them enthusiastically and telling me his theories on love, when the doorbell rang again and he took receipt of a crate of Veuve Clicquot and a huge tin of caviare. He had the table set and I noticed how often he looked at his watch.

'After we're married,' he said, 'I can't imagine wanting another woman.' The doorbell rang a third time. It was the dancer. She had come for the weekend. 'I'm not married yet,' he said.

When I say 'I will be true to you' I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities. If I commit adultery in my heart then I have lost you a little. The bright vision of your face will blur. I may not notice this once or twice, I may pride myself on having enjoyed those fleshy excursions in the most cerebral way. Yet I will have blunted that sharp flint that sparks between us, our desire for one another above all else.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 18, 2008

The Books: "The Passion" (Jeanette Winterson)

0802135226.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson

The Passion is one of my favorite books of all time. It's one of those books, too, that I can read, and read again, and again, and never get sick of. It always weaves its spell. Fantastic. To me, it is Winterson at the height of her powers. When she started getting introspective (in my opinion), when her imagination started turning inward - I lost interest a bit. Not forever, mind you - but I kept waiting for, you know, a story - in her next couple of books - something that was on the extraordinary level of Sexing the Cherry and The Passion ... and it wasn't there. Now, Winterson has no obligation to me, specifically. It is just my taste speaking. She obviously had other things to say, and wanted to try other things in her writing - and kudos to her for feeling free enough to do that. Winterson is nothing if not ambitious and fearless. I guess it's tough when you count a book as your all-time favorite, one of your beloved books. I don't THINK I sat around waiting for her to write another Passion - that's not really my thing either ... Oh well. Who knows. All I can say is: The Passion is a terrific novel and a book I hold very dear to my heart. There are characters in those pages - Villanelle, Domino, Napoleon - who will stay with me forever. Winterson creates scenes that will forever be emblazoned on my memory: the frigid Russian winter, the casino in Venice, the eerie prison/mental hospital on the island at the end ... These are WORLDS she creates. A writer really is like a god in that way - she creates worlds. Winterson's world has logic and magic, walking hand in hand ... and you may not believe something happens logically - but you believe in the magic. It's just great stuff - and I can't recommend The Passion highly enough. I love love love this book.

There are two narrators: Henri, a young kid who ends up being Napoleon's personal cook - and Villanelle - a cross-dressing web-footed red-headed woman from Venice. Napoleon Bonaparte has begun his World Takeover Campaign and Henri, a farm boy with no life experience, finds himself swept up in it. He believes in Napoleon. Napoleon is his hero (although you can kind of tell, from the prose of his narration, that his idol has fallen off the pedestal ... and he is writing about this in some kind of terrible retrospect). Henri believes in what Napoleon says. It is after the winter campaign - going in to Russia - when Henri realizes that Napoleon is mad, that any ends justify the means ... and that his idol is actually a maniac. You get the sense that Henri is actually quite fragile. He has not recovered, emotionally, from losing his idol. There is something terrible in a world that crashes your idols. But anyway, that's part of Henri's side of the story.

Villanelle is one of the great literary creations. I find her, frankly, impossible to resist. So I guess I'm like all the men (and women) who fall down like ninepins at her feet, dying for love of her. She lives in Venice with her mother and stepfather - who is a simple kindly baker. The sections on Venice - and what Venice is like, and what it means to Villanelle (whose family have been Venetians for centuries) - and how the city is a shape-shifter, the watery alleys and roads never in the same place, a city to get lost in ... anyway, the Venice sections are among the most spectacular in the book. Winterson (Villanelle) seems to be writing about a fantastical place where magical things can happen ... not an actual city on the globe ... but that is how Villanelle sees it. She was born under strange circumstances - and she knows that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio (etc.) ... She, too, is a shape-shifter. At night, she dresses up as a boy and goes and works in a huge casino. She puts a beauty mark on her face, to kind of mess with gender expectations ... and she pickpockets people to get extra cash. Men fall in love with her/him. Perhaps they look at the boy working the roulette wheel, or the blackjack table ... and find something appealingly feminine about him ... who knows what ... and they find themselves rubbing up against her. Women openly fall for this small red-headed boy ... and Villanelle enjoys a rich (if insane and complicated) sexual and romantic life. But it is not until she meets one particular elegant woman at the casino that all hell starts to break loose. Villanelle has never been in love. She has plenty of experience - but no experience of the heart. She meets a woman in the casino and is immediately smitten. This woman is married - to a distracted man, a shipbuilder (if I remember correctly) - and Villanelle and she begin a passionate affair.

Okay, so there's that.

Meanwhile. Napoleon is still on his rampage. He has taken over Venice. This, to Villanelle, is sacrilege. Disgusting to her. Things begin to break down with the woman of her heart - perhaps she is not willing to risk all, who knows ... but their liaison begins to end, and Villanelle realizes that her heart has been stolen. Literally. She puts her hand on her chest and feels no heart beat anymore. She becomes convinced that it is SOMEWHERE in her ex-lover's house, and she must get in there to get it back.

Villanelle never knew her father. Her father was one of the mysterious class of people known as the "Venetian boatmen" - those who propel the gondolas through the streets and alleys, and have been doing so for centuries. The boatmen have their own rites, as secret as the dead, and stories - terrible and beautiful - are passed down through generations. The legend is that all boatmen have webbed feet. But if anyone outside the charmed boatman circle ever SEES the webbed feet - they will go mad. There are stories of such encounters. Villanelle's mother found herself pregnant - and before the baby was born - the father disappeared. When the baby was born, alas - it was a girl (women are not allowed to carry on the boatman tradition) - with red hair ... and ohmygod - webbed feet. In the entire history of the Venetian boatmen, there has never been a woman with webbed feet. So it is apparent from Day One that things will be different and difficult with this small red-headed girl. Villanelle's mother marries again - this time a baker - and they seem to accept that every night their daughter puts on men's clothes and stays out all night in casinos.

Villanelle's love affair eventually crashes and burns, and she finds herself without a heart. Nothing matters anymore, so she joins up with Napoleon's army - or, should I say, becomes one of the throngs of prostitutes who follow the men around, from country to country. Love doesn't matter anymore. And her country has been taken over by an insane Frenchman. Nothing matters. Villanelle is a gambler at heart. Her whole thing is: "You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play." That's it. THAT is the game of life.

It is in her time as a prostitute that she meets Henri.

Henri, like many men before and probably after, falls head over heels in love with her - although his true love is, of course, Bonaparte.

You just get the sense that whoever ends up being with Villanelle will have to be worldly, in some way. Henri, with his sweet farmboy innocence, has no idea what he is getting himself into. But isn't that how "passion" often is? Passion is not safe. Passion does not hedge its bets. Passion doesn't look before it leaps.

I hesitate to say anymore about this book - the way it all unfolds has a terrible inevitability ... and Winterson really has things to say about love. Her voice (like I mentioned) is distinctive. No one can write about love and come up with anything new. Impossible. But to find a way to write about passion (sexual, romantic) that feels new - well, that is quite an accomplishment.

There are scenes of Villanelle - at midnight, 1, 2 a.m., in her gondola, parked outside of her ex-lover's house - where the ex-lover is ensconced with her husband - Villanelle knows that her heart is in there somewhere and life cannot continue for her until she gets it back ...

You know. That feels new. It is logical, too. Winterson writes the fantastical as though it is the most normal thing in the world.

It is my favorite of all of her books. I'll probably do one or two excerpts.

But here is the opening of the book. It is Henri's first section. I read this even now - even after reading the book multiple times - and I want to keep reading. It's hypnotic. What on EARTH is going to happen?


EXCERPT FROM The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson

It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress; some still cold and slung over hooks, some turning slowly on the spit, but most in wasted piles because the Emperor was busy.

Odd to be so governed by an appetite.

It was my first commission. I started as a neck wringer and before long I was the one who carried the platter through inches of mud to his tent. He liked me because I am short. I flatter myself. He did not dislike me. He liked no one except Josephine and he liked her the way he liked chicken.

No one over five foot two ever waited on the Emperor. He kept small servants and large horses. The horse he loved was seventeen hands high with a tail that could wrap round a man three times and still make a wig for his mistress. That horse had the evil eye and there's been almost as many dead groom sin the stable as chickens on the table. The ones the beast didn't kill itself with an easy kick, its master had disposed of because its coat didn't shine or the bit was green.

'A new government must dazzle and amaze,' he said. Bread and circuses I think he said. Not surprising then that when we did find a groom, he came from a circus himself and stood as high as the horse's flank. When he brushed the beast he used a ladder with a stout bottom and a triangle top, but when he rode him for exercise he took a great leap and landed square on the glossy back while the horse reared and snorted and couldn't throw him, not even with its nose in the dirt and its back legs towards God. Then they'd vanish in a curtain of dust and travel for miles, the midget clinging to the mane and whooping in his funny language that none of us could understand.

But he understood everything.

He made the Emperor laugh and the horse couldn't better him, so he stayed. And I stayed. And we became friends.

We were in the kitchen tent one night when the bell starts ringing like the Devil himself is on the other end. We all jumped up and one rushed to the spit while another spat on the silver and I had to get my boots back on ready for that tramp across the frozen ruts. The midget laughed and said he'd rather take a chance with the horse than the master, but we don't laugh.

Here it comes surrounded by parsley the cook cherishes in a dead man's helmet. Outside the flakes are so dense that I feel like the little figure in a child's snowstorm. I have to screw up my eyes to follow the yellow stain that lights up Napoleon's tent. No one else can have a light at this time of night.

Fuel's scarce. Not all of this army have tents.

When I go in, he's sitting alone with a globe in front of him. He doesn't notice me, he goes on turning the globe round and round, holding it tenderly with both hands as if it were a breast. I give a short cough and he looks up suddenly with fear in his face.

'Put it here and go.'

'Don't you want me to carve it, Sir?'

'I can manage. Goodnight.'

I know what he means. He hardly ever asks me to carve now. As soon as I'm gone he'll lift the lid and pick it up and push it into his mouth. He wishes his whole face were mouth to cram a whole bird.

In the morning I'll be lucky to find the wishbone.




There is no heat, only degrees of cold. I don't remember the feeling of a fire against my knees. Even in the kitchen, the warmest place on any camp, the heat is too thin to spread and the copper pans cloud over. I take off my socks once a week to cut my toe-nails and the others call me a dandy. We're white with red noses and blue fingers.

The tricolour.

He does it to keep his chickens fresh.

He uses winter like a larder.

But that was a long time ago. In Russia.




Nowadays people talk about the things he did as though they made sense. As though even his most disastrous mistakes were only the result of bad luck or hubris.

It was a mess.

Words like devastation, rape, slaughter, carnage, starvation are lock and key words to keep the pain at bay. Words about war that are easy on the eye.

I'm telling you stories. Trust me.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

July 17, 2008

The Books: "Sexing the Cherry" (Jeanette Winterson)

71E1270Z0HL.gifNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson

A strange and wonderful book. I haven't read it in years, and just flipping thru it this morning made me want to pick it up again. It's truly bizarre ... with elements of history (it's set during the reign of Charles II in a pestilential London) mixed with straight-up fairy tale (princesses flying out of their bedroom windows at night). There are dual narrators. One is a semi-horrible yet benign woman named The Dog-Woman - a fat filthy character who has a throng of dogs living with her ... and the other is her foundling son, Jordan. Jordan (if I am remembering correctly) has wanderlust - and has a small boat, he rides around on the Thames watching the sun rise. He befriends a man who is somehow in service to the King - and this man was responsible for bringing the first pineapple to England. This sort of thing makes Jordan dream of other places, other worlds. Could he get there without actually traveling? Much of his travels appear to take place in his own mind - but again, with Winterson, you can never be sure.

Jordan has fallen in love with someone from afar - a dancer - and he has set his heart on finding her again. His search takes him far and wide, and it seems that he must be just day-dreaming, he can't actually believe that princesses fly out of their windows at night, can he? But in this world of pestilence and fire, of brand new fruits like pineapples, of time seeming like something that is fluid as opposed to fixed - anything is possible.

Like I said, much of the detail is lost to me, although I remember the structure quite well. It was mesmerizing to me the first time I read it. I know just where I was. I bought it in a beautiful bookshop across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco. We were in a cute little town and there was an outdoor cafe. I had been living in a van for 2 months. (No, I was not trying to be like "Ooh, I was homeless once" Jewel.) I was, myself, outside of time and space. At least it felt that way. For 2 months, I had no address but that Westfalia, all my stuff was in boxes in my parents attic - and it's quite an interesting (and at times disorienting) position to be in. You are unmoored. No way back because where would you go?? We were near the end of our unmoored journey and things had gotten very bad for me. I was reaching what I call the "wordless time" - when everything slowed to a standstill, and pretty much stopped - until the damn Westfalia broke and I found myself shouting at cops in Woodland Hills, California, and showing them my empty wallet and how I couldn't pay for the tow. And within a month, I had moved to Chicago. Sight unseen. Broken up with my boyfriend of 4 years, leaving him behind in San Francisco ... wondering what the hell had happened to his girlfriend. I'm not saying that Sexing the Cherry had anything to do with my descent into wordless paralysis. I just know that I read it right before I went under. It's a vivid memory. The book is a small book, not even 200 pages, but it sucked me in. I read it in a day, probably. There are no rules in the book. I found that refreshing. I was sick of rules. Rules were killing me, strangling me. I couldn't play by the world's rules. They didn't "fit" for me. I was losing it. Sexing the Cherry swoops into 17th century England - and there are times you feel you are reading historical fiction - with the civil wars and trials and all that ... and then there are times when reality unhinges itself, and anything at all can happen. You are in a Swiftian world, like Gulliver visiting the floating island in the sky land ... these alternate realities have their own rules they must obey. Things are logical - yet they are also fantastical.

I found that such a refreshing point of view, after being so trapped in logic nothing but logic. To me, ONLY logic makes no sense at all. I need the fantastical in order to breathe. Seems that Winterson understands that. I love her sensibility.

Here's an excerpt. You'll see what I mean about not being sure what is real and what is not. It is clear, from a couple of words, that Jordan is daydreaming about visiting this place - but the description of this town is so detailed, and goes on so long, that it takes on the trappings of something that is real, and actual. If there is anything I truly love about Winterson's writing - it is THAT ability of hers.

I know many people find her to be one of the best writers about love that is out there. That is true. But for me, that's not the hook (although I recognize her skill in that area). For me, the hook is the magical-reality thing that she does, weaving in illusion with down-and-dirty fact - seamlessly ... making you question things, and also making you succumb, like a good reader should, to the logic of the fairy tale. Because, in the end, there is NOTHING more logical than a good fairy tale. It's Winterson's fairy-tale esthetic that gets me every time. Love it.

EXCERPT FROM Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson

The shining water and the size of the world.

I have seen both again and again since I left my mother on the banks of the black Thames, but in my mind it is always the same place I return to, and that one place not the most beautiful nor the most surprising.

To escape from the weight of the world, I leave my body where it is, in conversation or at dinner, and walk through a series of winding streets to a house standing back from the road.

The streets are badly lit and the distance from one side to the other no more than the span of my arms. The stone crumbles, the cobbles are uneven. The people who throng the streets shout at each other, their voices rising from the mass of heads and floating upwards towards the church spires and the great copper bells that clang the end of the day. Their words, rising up, form a thick cloud over the city, which every so often must be thoroughly cleansed of too much language. Men and women in balloons fly up from the main square and, armed with mops and scrubbing brushes, do battle with the canopy of words trapped under the sun.

The words resist erasure. The oldest and most stubborn form a thick crust of shattering rage. Cleaners have been bitten by words still quarrelling, and in one famous lawsuit a woman whose mop had been eaten and whose hand was badly mauled by a vicious row sought to bring the original antagonists to court. The men responsible made their defence on the grounds that the words no longer belonged to them. Years had passed. Was it their fault if the city had failed to deal with its overheads? The judge ruled against the plaintiff but ordered the city to buy her a new mop. She was not satisfied, and was later found lining the chimneys of her accused with vitriol.

I once accompanied a cleaner in a balloon and was amazed to hear, as the sights of the city dropped away, a faint murmuring like bees. The murmuring grew louder and louder till it sounded like the clamouring of birds, then like the deafening noise of schoolchildren let out for the holidays. She pointed with her mop and I saw a vibrating mass of many colours appear before us. We could no longer speak to each other and be heard.

She aimed her mop at a particularly noisy bright red band of words who, from what I could make out, had escaped from a group of young men on their way home from a brothel. I could see from the set of my companion's mouth that she found this particular job distasteful, but she persevered, and in a few moments all that remained was the fading pink of a few ghostly swear-words.

Next we were attacked by a black cloud of wrath spewed from a parson caught fornicating his mother. The cloud wrapped around the balloon and I feared for our lives. I could not see my guide but I could hear her coughing against the noxious smell. Suddenly I was drenched in a sweet fluid and all returned to lightness.

'I have conquered them with Holy Water,' she said, showing me a stone jar marked with the Bishop's seal.

After that our task was much easier. Indeed I was sorry to see the love-sighs of young girls swept away. My companion, though she told me it was strictly forbidden, caught a sonnet in a wooden box and gave it to me as a memento. If I open the box by the tiniest amount I may hear it, repeating itself endlessly as it is destined to do until someone sets it free.

Towards the end of the day we joined with the other balloons brushing away the last few stray and vagabond words. The sky under the setting sun was the colour of veined marble, and a great peace surrounded us. As we descended through the clean air we saw, passing us by from time to time, new flocks of words coming from the people in the streets who, not content with the weight of their lives, continually turned the heaviest of things into the lightest of properties.

We landed outside the , where the dons, whose arguments had so thickly populated the ether that they had seen neither sun nor rain for the past five years, welcomed us like heroes and took us in to feast.

That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the words tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 16, 2008

The Books: "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" (Jeanette Winterson)

0802135161.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

Oh, Jeanette Winterson, you crazy egomaniacal sometimes-brilliant sometimes-infuriating lesbian ... how I love you and how you drive me crazy! My relationship with you is akin to my relationship to Tori Amos. I was so into Tori's early albums and then she went off the deep end for a good decade - and now - hoorah - she's back - I LOVE her latest album ... but I loved her earlier albums so much that I stuck with her, through her experimental years, as boring as I found all of that. There aren't too many artists I do that for. Margaret Atwood is another one. I'll read all your books, lady, even when you bore me to tears - just based on, oh, Bodily Harm alone (excerpt here)!!

Jeanette Winterson burst onto the literary scene like a comet shooting towards earth from another galaxy. At least that's how I remember it. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is her first book and it won the Whitbread prize for "first fiction" - and her novels that followed (which I'll get to when I get to) were mind-blowing. She became a star. A huge star. She writes with absolute certainty of her own gifts. She's a writer, sure, but more than that: she's a showman. She glories in her own powers of creation. She can be like Joyce in that way. She was asked once who her favorite writer was - and she said, "Jeanette Winterson." Reminiscent of Joyce's response to the question: "Who is your favorite writer in the English language?": "Well, aside from myself I don't know." It is not popular to be so openly arrogant. It rubs people the wrong way. But that's okay. It's not the artist's job to be a nice polite person who plays by society's rules. And so sometimes (in her later books) that showmanship turns into an obnoxious quality - especially when the book in question doesn't hold up ... but those first couple of books? Holy shit. You read them and just follow her on her magical path - you can't help it. Just surrender. You really have no choice. She'll strong-arm you into loving her, either way. The New York Review of Books said about Oranges:

The overwhelming impression of her work is one of remarkable self-confidence, and she evidently thrives on risk…. As good as Poe: it dares you to laugh and stares you down.

It does have a very aggressive quality to it, her writing. Self-confidence as aggression. And yes, she seems to follow her own star - which involves risk. She doesn't care about how books are supposed to go ... she does her own thing. Oranges is, for all intents and purposes, a memoir - about her childhood growing up with evangelical missionaries - knowing that she was "called" to spread the word of God ... but then discovering that she liked girls, instead of boys. Perhaps that means that she is even more called to greatness, since it goes against the grain - but her fanatic parents do not see it that way, and her discovery of her sexuality and her preferences destroys the family. She ends up running away.

Now with Jeanette Winterson, you can never be sure what is true and what is not true. And it ends up not really mattering. (Perhaps because she's a way better writer than, oh, Mr. James Frey.) The narrator of Oranges is named Jeanette. And her early author biographies in her first books are very funny snarky paragraphs - like: "Jeanette Winterson thought she would be an evangelical Christian her whole life, but then ran away and joined the circus." I'm exaggerating - but not all that much. She seems to thrive on self-creation, meaning: her persona, as a writer, is bold, funny, irreverent - and untruthful. You cannot trust her. But you do not care. (This becomes a main theme of my favorite of her books: The Passion. In that, the web-footed cross-dressing redhead keeps assuring us, the reader, "I'm telling you the truth. Trust me.")

The press that she got in the beginning, the reviews, were the things authors dream of. She was compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The greats. She did not seem to limit herself. She was not bound by the so-called laws of fiction. She would intersperse her narratives with haunting fairy tales, quite terrifying, or stories that sound like Biblical parables. She had no fear.

I LOVE her early stuff. I have friends who really dig her "middle" stuff - which I find interminable and self-indulgent ... but that just goes to show you that it is very difficult to be neutral about Jeanette Winterson. She is polarizing. And judging from some of the stories about her real life, and her dramas (posing nude for one of her author photos) - she's a trip. The first book of hers that I read was The Passion and it remains, to this day, one of my favorite books of all time. It was enough to make me a Jeanette Winterson fan forever. Through thick and thin, girl. I'll read you.

I am so so glad to read her last two books - which seem to be a reversion to what she does best (in my opinion): create magical realities, mixing fairy tale and present-day settings ... but I'll get to those.

Jeanette Winterson weathered the storms of her bad reviews - which began with her book Art and Lies - it was like people were disappointed by her, and took her experimentations personally. I wasn't sure she would be forgiven. But she just kept writing what she wanted to write. On the strength of her earlier books, her reputation remained, despite the fact that she seemed to have gone a bit nuts (there was a huge Vanity Fair piece about her, I recall, which made her sound like a walking-talking psychodrama) - and, what can I say, I'll read whatever that lady writes. And sometimes I'm bored, sometimes I'm pissed ... but anyone who can write a book like The Passion will have my attention forever. Seriously.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-of-age story. Jeanette's mother is completely wacko. Jeanette grows up in a hothouse Jesus Camp atmosphere in the Midlands of England ... homeschooled, and sent out every weekend to stand on street corners passing out tracts. Eventually, she is forced to go to school ... and it is then that she begins to realize her attraction to her own sex. All hell begins to break loose. But it's not the story that is the stand-out here. It's the writing. It's not poetic writing, or flowery, or nostalgic ... it's not beautiful. It's one of those rare rare moments in life when you read a writer and you think: Wow. This is truly a distinctive voice.

Jeanette Winterson has her own voice, and I feel like I would recognize it anywhere. She lulls you into a sense of complacency, making you feel like, "Oh, okay, I know where I am, I know what kind of book this is ..." and then, with a quick jujitsu move, she rips out the carpet, and tells you a fairy tale. That ends horribly. Or she suddenly adds a magical element - and you are not sure what is real anymore.

I can't believe I haven't written more about Jeanette Winterson - and I'd be VERY interested to hear thoughts from other people like myself who have been reading her for years. She has PASSIONATE fans (of which I am one, despite my reservations about those damn middle books) ... and people really give a shit about her, and what she's working on. She's one of the few writers where I hear she has a new book coming out, and I pre-Order it, to make sure I get it on the damn day it comes out. There can be no waiting for Jeanette Winterson. I cannot WAIT around for the right time to buy her book. I must have it first. And I will drop everything else to read it.

She's not like anybody else.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

It was in this way that I began my education: she taught me to read from the Book of Deuteronomy, and she told me all about the lives of the saints, how they were really wicked, and given to nameless desires. Not fit for worship; this was yet another heresy of the Catholic Church and I was not to be misled by the smooth tongues of priests.

'But I never see any priests.'

'A girl's motto is BE PREPARED.'

I learnt that it rains when clouds collide with a high building, like a steeple, or a cathedral; the impact punctures them, and everybody underneath gets wet. This was why, in the old days, when the only tall buildings were holy, people used to say cleanliness is next to godliness. The more godly your town, the more high buildings you'd have, and the more rain you'd get.

'That's why all these Heathen places are so dry,' explained my mother, then she looked into space, and her pencil quivered. 'Poor Pastor Spratt.'

I discovered that everything in the natural world was a symbol of the Great Struggle between good and evil. 'Consider the mamba,' said my mother. 'Over short distances the mamba can outrun a horse.' And she drew the race on a sheet of paper. She meant that in the short term, evil can triumph, but never for very long. We were very glad, and we sang our favourite hymn, Yield Not To Temptation.

I asked my mother to teach my French, but her face clouded over, and she said she couldn't.

'Why not?'

'It was nearly my downfall.'

'What do you mean?' I persisted, whenever I could. But she only shook her head and muttered something about me being too young, that I'd find out all too soon, that it was nasty.

'One day,' she said finally, 'I'll tell you about Pierre,' then she switched on the radio and ignored me for so long that I went back to bed.

Quite often, she'd start to tell me a story and then go on to something else in the middle, so I never found out what happened to the Earthly Paradise when it stopped being off the coast of India, and I was stuck at 'six sevens are forty-two' for almost a week.

'Why don't I go to school?' I asked her. I was curious about school because my mother always called it a Breeding Ground. I didn't know what she meant, but I knew it was a bad thing, like Unnatural Passions. 'They'll lead you astray,' was the only answer I got.

I thought about all this in the toilet. It was outside, and I hated having to go at night because of the spiders that came over from the coal-shed. My dad and me always seemed to be in the toilet, me sitting on my hands and humming, and him standing up, I supposed. My mother got very angry.

'You come on in, it doesn't take that long.'

But it was the only place to go. We all shared the same bedroom, because my mother was building us a bathroom in the back, and eventually, if she got the partition fitted, a little half-room for me. She worked very slowly though, because she said she had a lot on her mind. Sometimes Mrs White came round to help mix the grout, but then they'd both end up listening to Johnny Cash, or writing a new hand-out on Baptism by Total Immersion. She did finish eventually, but not for three years.

Meanwhile, my lessons continued. I learnt about Horticulture and Garden Pests via the slugs and my mother's seed catalogues, and I developed an understanding of Historical Process through the prophecies in the Book of Revelation, and a magazine called The Plain Truth, which my mother received each week.

'It's Elijah in our midst again,' she declared.

And so I learned to interpret the signs and wonders that the unbeliever might never understand.

'You'll need to when you're out there on the mission field,' she reminded me.

Then, one morning, when we had got up early to listen to Ivan Popov from behind the Iron Curtain, a fat brown envelope plopped through the letter box. My mother thought it was letters of thanks from those who had attended our Healing of the Sick crusade in the town hall. She ripped it open, then her face fell.

'What is it?' I asked her.

'It's about you.'

'What about me?'

'I have to send you to school.'

I whizzed into the toilet and sat on my hands; the Breeding Ground at last.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 15, 2008

The Books: "Breaking and Entering" (Joy Williams)

41AC6QSXT8L._SS500_.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Breaking and Entering, by Joy Williams

Wonderful book! It's amazing to me how many voices Joy Williams can assume. In this book, people talk and talk and talk. It's a book about drifters, and the people they encounter along the way. These people have stories to tell, and sometimes they talk for 2 or 3 pages. The voices are all completely distinct - you would never mistake one for another. Joy Williams is channeling, basically. The chorus of different voices is one of the best things about this book.

Liberty and Willie are a couple. They have been together since high school, and they are now married. They live in the Florida Keys. For "fun" (although it doesn't seem really fun - it seems more like a compulsion), they break into people's houses when those people are assumed to be away (mail piled up, cars gone, etc.) - and live there for a week or so. They never stay in one house for long. Willie is in charge of the timing. He's the one who looks around and decides, time to be moving on now. Liberty seems rather passive. Somewhat sad. We don't know why yet. She is connected to Willie - not just because of a marriage license but because of their shared history - much of which is quite dark (it unfolds slowly throughout the book). At times, it is not clear why Liberty stays with Willie. But Willie is not a loser. He has a glitter about him. He's handsome. People are attracted to him. When they break into people's houses - he likes to take even more risks: living in a house that is not theirs, picking up an invite out of the piled-up mail to some dinner party - and he and Liberty will go, saying they know so-and-so, cousins from out of town, whatever ... They do not worry about covering their tracks. Willie wants the people to KNOW that "they" were there when they return. He makes sure to leave their head dents in the pillow. He takes photographs of Liberty with their camera, and leaves the film inside, undeveloped. It's a risk-filled life. It seems to fill some abyss of emptiness. Liberty is a follower. She doesn't try to put the brakes on Willie, because what would be the point of that. Liberty has a dog - a big huge white dog with creepy eyes the color of ice cubes. The dog's name is Clem. Clem is a conversation-starter. People see him and stop in their tracks. Nobody wants to pet him. People are almost afraid of him. What he represents is dependent upon the person looking at him. It's like he's a blank screen onto which people project their longings, fears.

Willie and Liberty do this breaking and entering thing almost as a vacation. It's not that they are homeless. They have a home. It's a small home, nothing fancy - but a home nonetheless. It's that there's something between them - an abyss - something - that makes it difficult to just sit on the couch at night and be together. There is no ease between them. Over the course of the book you realize what it is that has gone down ... Liberty is a depressive, that much is obvious ... and Willie appears to look upon his role as caretaker. He leads her around. Perhaps because he feels he owes her that much, who knows.

I love this book. I love every word. I love all the crazy people they meet - the nightguards, the neighbors ... I love the mystery in the prose, how it doesn't reveal all ... I love the deep sadness that is apparent in the book, only Williams never comes out and states it openly. It's just a mood. A sense. There's a lot of talk in the book - like I said, most of the book is long conversation ... There's something about Liberty and Willie that makes people open up, and want to divulge all. Especially Willie. People look at Willie and somehow feel that he might save them. But from what? Willie senses this trend as well and figures he should go with it, and inhabit whatever it is that people want to see ... If people look at him and see a savior (not in a religious sense - but a moral sense, perhaps even a physical sense) ... then who is he to deny them that? Liberty stands back, watching how people are drawn to Willie, and she loves him, too ... but from her perspective, perhaps she sees more of a con artist at work. Who knows. The irony is that Willie, even though he knows her best, cannot save her. He failed her. This is his greatest tragedy, and I'm not sure he can forgive himself.

This is a wonderful book - hauntingly written, at times quite funny - and also nervewracking. They hang out in these houses, taking baths, having sex, walking around, trying on the people's clothes ... and you want to tell them to knock this shit OFF - you could get caught!!

I suppose that is the point, for them.

Highly recommended book, my favorite (so far) of all of Williams' stuff.


EXCERPT FROM Breaking and Entering, by Joy Williams

The Umbertons had many possessions. The house was heavily furnished. They had glass torcheres, leather couches, massive sideboards, thick carpets. And then the house was cluttered with small objects. The objects were of a different quality, as though the Umbertons had bought them for somebody else and then took them back after a quarrel. The kind of objects intended for a recipient who died before the occasion of giving.

On the leather-topped desk in the living room was a framed photograph of the Umbertons on their wedding day. They were standing on marble steps, he one step above her. He had a crew cut, her dress a long train. On the desk too was a picture of a large orange cat in front of a Christmas tree. It was obvious that a superior choice had been made that year in the selection of the tree, for in an album photos of many previous Christmas trees were mounted. The kitchen cupboards were filled with an assortment of nourishing and sensible canned goods. Large clothes hung in the closets in predominant colors of blue and beige. There was a cabinet off the bath that was filled with nothing but toilet paper.

"This is how some people prepare for nuclear attack," Willie said, staring in at the treasure of white two-ply.

The Umbertons could be imagined as tall. The sinks and counters were set several inches higher than usual. Perhaps they had even become giants since their wedding day. The beds were oversized, the coffee mugs. Everything was heavy duty.

The Umbertons could be imagined as loving games. In one of the roofs was a pool table and a pinball machine. On the walls of this room hung a series of coconut shell heads, loonily embellished. An entire community of coconuts, masculine and feminine, mean and happy, hanging on the wall, contemplating the Umbertons' life of leisure. In the kitchen it was clear that the Umbertons loved their Cuisinart, for which they had many attachments, and their orange cat, who had a box full of toys. Clem looked the box over. He selected a rubber pig, which squealed, and went off with it.

The sofas had pads under the legs to protect the rugs. The toilets had deodorant sticks to protect the integrity of the bowls. There was plastic on the lamp shades to protect them from dust and on the mattresses to shield them from nocturnal emissions. The Umbertons were waging a sprightly war against decline. They protected their possessions as though they had given birth to them.

"How about cutting my hair?" Willie asked Liberty. "Just a trim."

She knew his intention and shook her head. He would gather the hair up and put it in the middle of the rug when they left, or on the table, in the center of something. Nothing would be missing, nothing out of place, but addressing the Umbertons when they returned, would be a mass of hair.

"You can't read my mind," Willie said. "I just wanted my hair cut."

"It doesn't need it," Liberty said. "It's fine the way it is, it looks good, I like it."

"I could write your diary," Willie said.

"That's a terrible thing to say," Liberty said. Then she said, "That's not true." Finally she said, "I wouldn't keep a diary."

Beyond the windows the bay winked greenly. It was sick, filling up with silt. Each day there was less oxygen in the water than the day before. It labored against the cement wall the Umbertons had erected between them and it.

Liberty went into a sewing room off the kitchen. There were patterns and folds of fabric, a sewing machine and a dressmaker's dummy. The room was snug and painted a placid peace. A calendar on the wall showed tittering bunnies and kittens playing musical chairs in a wholesome meadow. The room was obviously Mrs. Umberton's tender retreat from the large life she shared with Mr. Umberton. Liberty sat on a hassock covered with a cheerful chintz and felt the top slip slightly. Removing the lid, she found inside a well-thumbed paperback with a torn cover. He plunged his head between her spread thighs, Liberty read. Lunging and licking, he thrust his tongue in her sea-smelling channels and velvet whorls tasting the wine which is fermented by desire. He drew back and she whined in pleasure as she saw his glistening shaft ...

Liberty threw the book back into the hassock and went into the living room. Willie was holding his hands above a spray of plastic flowers in a bud vase as though he were warming them there.

"What are we looking for here," Liberty asked, "just in general?"

"You know, when anesthesia was first invented, many doctors didn't want to use it," Willie said. "They felt it would rob God of the earnest cries for help that arose from those in time of trouble."

"Anesthesia," Liberty said. "You can't rob God."

"I keep having this dream," Willie said. "It's a typical prison dream. I'm wandering around, doing what I please, choosing this, ignoring that. And then I realize I'm locked up."

Liberty looked at Willie, who was turning and folding his hands. Her own hands were trembling, and her mind darted, this way and that. Once, on a sunny day, much like this day, she had been driving down the road in their truck and she had seen a male cardinal that had just been struck by a car. It lay rumpled, on the road's shoulder, and the female rose and dipped in confusion and fright about it, urging it to continue, to go on with her. Liberty's mind moved like that, like that wretched, bewildered bird.

***

During the night, it rained. The rain came down in warm, rattling sheets. It pounded the beach sand smooth, it dimpled the bay, it clattered the brown fronds of palms where rats lived. It entered the lagoons and aquifers and passed through the Umbertons' screens. Willie was playing pinball. Liberty could hear the flap of the paddles and the merry bells. She lay on her stomach on a rug in another room, glancing through the only other reading material in the house, a newspaper, several weeks old.

The local paper was highly emotional and untrustworthy. Trust was not a guarantee made to the paper's readers, but certain things could be counted upon. One could expect, on any given day, a picture of a lone, soaring gull, a naked child holding a garden hose, or a recipe for a casserole containing okra. The editors took paragraphs from the wires for international affairs and concentrated on local color and horror - the migrant worker who killed his five children by sprinkling malathion on their grits; the seven-car pile-ups; the starving pet ponies with untrimmed hooves the size of watermelons. In this particular edition, there was one article of considerable interest, Liberty thought. It was an article about babies, babies in some large, northern city.

A nurse had made the first mistake. She had mixed up two newborn babies and given them to the wrong mothers for nursing. A second nurse on a different shift switched them back again. The first nurse, realizing her initial error, switched them a third time, switched the little bracelets on their wrists, switched the coded, scribbled inserts on their rolling baskets. At this point, the situation had become hopelessly scrambled. Three days passed. The mothers went home with the wrong babies. This was not a Prince and Pauper-type story. Both mothers had nice homes and fathers and siblings for the baby. Four months later the hospital called and told the mothers they had the wrong babies. They had proof. Toe prints and blood types. Chemical proof. They had done the things professionals do to prove that a person was the person he was supposed to be. The mothers were hysterical. They had fallen in love with the wrong babies and now they didn't want to give their wrong babies up. But apparently it had to be done. It seemed to be the law.

Liberty put the paper aside, closed her eyes and listened to the rain. It rang against the glass like voices, like the voices of children screaming in a playground. Children's voices sounded the same everywhere, a murmurous growth, a sweet hovering, untranslatable, like wind or water, moving.

Liberty and Willie were wanderers, they were young but they had wandered for years, as though through a wilderness, staying for days or weeks or months in towns with names like Coy or Peachburg or Diamondhead or Hurley. Then larger towns, cities, still as though through a wilderness, for there was no path for them or way - West Palm, Jacksonville, Sarasota. There was always a little work, a little place to stay, and then there was this other thing, this thing that was like an enchantment, this energy that kept them somehow going, this adopted, perverse skill of inhabiting the space others had made for themselves. For they themselves were not preparing for anything, they were not building anything, they were just moving along, and Liberty was aware that this house thing, this breaking and entering thing - time for the thing, they'd say, let's do the thing - became more frequent, accelerated, just before they left a town.

The rain increased, it fell in shapes, its voice children's voices.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 14, 2008

The Books: "State of Grace" (Joy Williams)

41FCFRJ5GXL._SL500_AA240_.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

State of Grace, by Joy Williams

A fantastic writer - very hard to pin down (especially when you look at the style and content of Breaking and Entering - my favorite of her books). Williams seems (to me) to channel completely different energies and voices, depending on the structure of what she is writing, and I'm mesmerized by it. She hasn't written all that much, and there were YEARS in between books. She just came out with another book - maybe 2 or 3 years ago, but for many years I only had State of Grace and Breaking and Entering on my shelves. State of Grace was published in 1973, but when the whole Vintage Contemporary "movement" started happening in the late 80s, early 90s, it was re-released in a snappy new paperback, and that's how I came across it. I'm not sure why it appealed to me. I write the date of purchase on the title page of every book I buy and State of Grace was bought in January of 91. That tells me quite a bit. A bleak time for me. Awful. Living in Philadelphia, feeling completely lost - and worse than that: voiceless. I had lost my power of self-expression. I was frozen. There are no journals for about a year of that time in my life, I had nothing to say - even to myself. Something in State of Grace - with its poetic description of a paralyzed (emotionally) young woman, on the run from her past, trying to re-invent herself desperately: sorority girl, wife ... but the past is stronger than any present-day affiliations and it comes to claim her. She has not the stamina to resist.

Kate grew up in a rigid Bible-thumping family - whose mother hated her and her father ... I can't remember if her father is a preacher, or just a fanatic - but he has a hold on his daughter's mind, his standards for her behavior are impossible ... and there's something too-much about the whole relationship. It is like Kate is expected to be her father's sweetheart. They are connected. Two peas in a pod. Kate goes off to the South, to Florida - for college ... and it's unclear (you'll see what I mean in the excerpt below - Williams doesn't give anything away too literally, it's a true "mood" book) whether or not her father is aware of where she is. What is she running from? Kate tries to slip into the hot Southern world of college and sororities - she has sex (as Kate writes about her sorority: "all the sisters fuck like bunnies") - she doesn't follow the teachings of her childhood, but goes off the deep end. None of this is spelled out in a chronological way in the book - we start smack-dab in the middle - with Kate pregnant, sitting in a trailer with her husband Grady - and we have to back-track to figure out how she got there.

State of Grace is almost like a stream - or a river - with many different estuaries - branching off, coming back, surging together, branching off again. Kate, our narrator, is NOT a reliable narrator. She sits in the trailer, she wonders where she is, she is haunted by her father, she loves her husband, but she seems to have no center. Nothing grounds her. And her writing reflects that. Eventually, Kate - the first-person narrator of the first half of the book - goes away - and we get a cold quiet third-person narrator later on in the book, who looks down on Kate, and her father, and their meanderings. It is as though whatever Kate is wanting to describe, whatever Kate is really thinking and feeling - is too awful and too intense for her to even attempt to tell it herself. She needs an omniscent narrator.

It's been years since I've read this haunting book - but the poetry and dreamlike quality of Williams' prose here has stayed with me. I remember some of the lines by heart; they have become quite important to me. ("Don't become impatient. Here is the time.") Kate looks around at the landscape and sees that it is alive. She speaks to us, in a voice which is at times strangely disconnected, hallucinatory - but then she'll switch, with no warning, and take on an almost commanding voice - telling us what to do, what to think, what to look at. It's like a montage, the first half of the book. We don't know where Kate wants us to go, we have to piece together her story ... and somehow Williams manages to suggest that Kate is aware of her father, at all times - whatever she does, is somehow in reaction to her father. And so even her marriage to sweet Southern boy Grady lacks substance, lacks reality ... because all along it is her FATHER who will win the battle. She will never be able to escape him.

I need to read this book again. Breaking and Entering, her next book, is a book I love - and have read a couple of times - but there's something so raw about State of Grace, and it reminds me of that raw wordless time in my life ... I have stayed away from re-reading the book again. Ghosts, you know?

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter.

Williams is something else.



EXCERPT FROM State of Grace, by Joy Williams

I wake early, as a rule. I try to remember what I've told him. There's no way of being sure how much he knows. Sometimes, when we are walking through the woods together, I am quite at peace and even believe that any terror I previously felt is merely an aspect of my parturient condition. I know that he is thinking. I know that he is trying to decide what to do. I wait for his decision as nothing can proceed without it. It is the choice between life or death, between renewal or resumption. I have no fear of him. We are in love. Of course I could only hope that he would kill us, that is, Daddy and me, because I have a feeling, though I know it's mad, that we are going to go on forever. But it's too late for that now. I must be realistic. Even if he traveled there, he would not find Daddy. Even if he did, even if Daddy made himself available, he would not be able to deal with him. God and the Devil are the whole religion and Daddy has both on his side.

I have not offered to leave but he does not think of this. Several times he has suggested traveling together far away. I would agree to anything but he dismisses his suggestions instantly, almost before they are uttered, as though he was not the one who made them. No possibilities are open to me. As I say, I wait. What is going to happen waits with me. We have always been reluctant companions.

And in the meanwhile, time, as always, passes or fails to. To the eye, we have proceeded with it. We have our little willfulnesses and quirks. For example, I have terrible eating habits. He eats almost nothing now. He used to saw away at a huge side of pork that he brought down himself and prepare that in a variety of ways. But the hog is gone now, as is the reason for his killing it. Or at least we have always liked to believe that the hog was the same that butchered our hound, though the woods are full of hogs, shaking the land with their mean rooting and rutting. But the hog is gone now and the dog and our hopes for living simply, on the land and on our love. Once he liked grits with syrup and pecans that we'd shake down from the trees but now he cannot even be comforted by memories. I, on the other hand, have a terrible hunger. I love awful foods. Children's cereals, cupcakes and store pies, that wonderful gluey bread Dixie Darling, yes, two long loaves for only 21 cents. Once, before I moved out here, I ate nothing for three weeks but Froot Loops. It became hallucinogenic after a few days. Anything will. If you breathe in too much basil, a scorpion will be born inside your head. If you eat too much roe, you'll probably die. Why not? I had to stop the Froot Loops. Everything was so enormous and I was becoming so small. My gums bled. The girls became lecherous and outraged even though I was curious about them as well. Everything smelled rancid in that big house even though the girls washed themselves constantly and all the food was kept in jars. They were so boring about their hygiene, their hair and fingernails. They were healthy enough I suppose. The lint-free pussy plombs employed! The cases of disposable M'Lady Tru-Touch HandSavers ...

Once, for an infraction of the rules, I was forced to clean the shower drains. I also had to change all the beds ...

I do little here in the woods. I assimilate the soundlessness. We pursue the meager life with a few garish exceptions. I have my Dixie Darling products, which, I might add, have never disappointed me, and he has his Jaguar. An old faithless and irrational roadster, black, and in perfect running condition. It is so fast and inside it is a warm cave and smells delicious. It is parked beside the trailer and often, in the afternoon, I go out and sit in it and have a drink there. It calms me. The leather is a soft dusky yellow from all the saddle soap he works into it. It smells like lemons and good tack.

After that singular Fourth of July, Daddy never had a car, although there once were two. Daddy and I walked everywhere. On Sundays, we would skate across the pond to church - two sweethearts, my hand in his, in the other glove, ten pennies for the offering plate. Slivers of ice flew up beneath my skirt, my eyes wept. We skated quickly, seriously, lightly on Sunday mornings, barely leaving a mark behind us ...

He loves the Jaguar - the skill and appreciation it takes to enjoy it. He is Grady. I shall make myself clear. Grady, my husband, a country boy with brown face and hands and blond matted hair low on his brow. The rest of him is long, white and skinny. He knows a great deal about hunting, fishing and engines. He loves the Jaguar and he also takes an abashed pleasure in this dank trailer which is his. It cost $10. He bought it from Sweet Tit Sue who now lives farther upriver. She wrote out a bill of sale which we keep in Rimbaud's Illuminations. At the moment, it happens to mark the spot you know, Andthenwhenyouarehungryandthirstythereissomeonewhodrivesyouaway. It is not always there. We move it about for amusement, to tell our fortune. He used to enjoy that. All those words with their imminence and no significance. He always saw luck in these woods.

He gets angry at me often now. I'm afraid it's the way I keep house. I don't keep house. His face becomes rigid and he speaks so softly I can barely hear him. The place is so soiled that nothing can be found. It smells. It doesn't bother me. What is the purpose of order?

Each morning I am ravenous. I eat with a lamp on and my feet in a pair of his socks. The mice have left their turds all over everything, in the sink and in our shoes and in the dog's dish. It doesn't bother me.

I am chewing on this bread ... I must admit I eat this garbage because I want to insult myself. We think as we eat. Our brains take on flavor and scope. What I want is to slow down my head and eventually stop it. I strive for a brain friendly and homogenized as sweet potato pie.


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

July 13, 2008

The Books: "The Writing Class" (Jincy Willett)

writing-class.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett

Second novel by the absolutely delicious Jincy Willett (she has a collection of short stories out too) ... I can't get enough of this writer!! I love her sense of humor, her intelligence, and the sense that she really is writing exactly the way she wants to write. It's a voice. There's a confidence there, a surety - an unselfconsciousness ... I don't get the sense that any of it is a "put on", or an act. I sensed it in Winner of the National Book Award (excerpt here) - and it's in full form here. Her prose is an absolute joy to read. Laugh out loud funny at times, but then with lines of piercing insight and pain and recognition where you (or, I should say, I) feel recognized and named. She's an intense writer. All heart. In all its mess and humor and pain. I'm with Carrie - who wrote in June - that Writing Class "finally, finally out and available". It's that repetition of "finally" that really captures my own excitement about Jincy Willett - that her new book is "finally, finally out". Yes!!

The Writing Class tells the story of Amy, a one-time author - now a teacher of writing classes in extension courses at a college. Many of her students are serious writers - others not so much ... The book gets into each of her students, their writing styles (Jincy Willett's evocation of all of their different styles is nothing short of brilliant!) - their insecurities (one of her students continuously complains about the portrayal of women in whatever story they read each week), their pomposity, and their humanness. Amy is a sad loner, but she has come to terms with her sad loner status. She's prickly and anti-social, but she's also obviously a wonderful teacher. It is through that engagement with her students that she stays connected - to creativity, to herself. She was married twice - once to her gay best friend, who died of AIDS, and then to another guy, who was basically a rebound from her friend/husband dying - and she can't really remember anything about her second husband, except that it was because of him that she moved from Maine to San Diego. She thought a change of scenery would be good for her. Now, though, she is fat, lives alone with her dog, drinks by herself - and yet she's not a bleak character, somehow. Willett manages to suggest a truly eccentric character in Amy ... that her life, in a weird way, suits her - as long as nobody gives her a hard time about it. She has trouble sleeping. She is very lonely, but she is more comfortable being lonely than being artificially attached to another person. Hmmm. Guess I relate to her. I love how Willett portrays Amy. You love her. You love her in the role of teacher - and you love her as the loner woman, haunted by her past. She had a novel published when she was 23 and it hit huge - she had a couple of follow-up books ... but then everything slid to a standstill. All of her books are out of print now. So here she is, teaching adult students what she knows about writing ... trying to run away from her own potential. Oh! And, at the suggestion of a friend, Amy sets up a blog. To at least get out some of her ideas. The description of blogging is so spot ON - the random douchebags who show up to critique you, out of nowhere ... the random folks who fall in love with you without knowing you ... the weirdos, the awesome people, the Google searches .... it's all a new world to Amy, and it baffles her ... she tries not to take it seriously, after all it's not REAL writing ... but it does somehow fascinate her. Who ARE these people?? She loves it.

The book is structured around the classes themselves - First Class, Second Class - and what Amy focuses on in each class. And very quickly, by the Third Class, Amy realizes that there is a malevolent force in her class, someone who is trying to sabotage the rest of the group. Evil-sounding parodies of people's pieces are sent to them (really mean stuff) - and Amy begins to feel she is losing control of her class. Someone is wreaking havoc. The book becomes a sort of murder mystery as Amy (and a sympathetic - or so we hope - regular student) try to figure out which one of the students is pulling these pranks (which get more and more dangerous). Eventually, the class is canceled - due to the shenanigans of the prankster - and the students decided - Screw THIS, we want to continue - so they convince Amy to continue holding classes, this time rotating locations. Things get distinctly bizarre. Amy tries to rein in the class - one of whom is STILL being a douchebag - only we don't know who!! Amy tries to keep the class focused on the WRITING ... Meanwhile, she goes home at night and obsesses on who would do such a thing ... She tries to piece together the identity of the "prankster" from the person's writing style ... she comes up with some conclusions, all of which end up being false.

People end up getting killed. What the hell is going on?? Which would-be writer wants the others dead? What issues of envy and rage are at work here? Will Amy ever discover the identity of the malevolent student? Or will she be caught in a trap of her own making??

A wonderful book about creativity, loneliness, and the writing impulse. Great stuff. I loved every word.

All of the "types" in the writing class are just awesome: the overly sensitive obese woman who only writes when taking a class, the guy taking the class to pick up women, the feminist, the really talented no-nonsense older woman who really understands literature, the sci-fi fan (who can't write a word worth reading if he tried), the mysterious macho guy whose name is actually Charlton Heston (ha!!) - who is kind of a wild card and who ends up being tremendously good at writing - without any fanfare or pretentiousness - there's the Book Club afficianado who ONLY has good things to say about EVERYTHING - she balks at criticism of any kind, and seems to look at every moment in life as a potential Oprah moment ... makes it difficult to have a class discussion of what DOESN'T work ... all of these people just come to life. I love it. Also, Amy - despite the fact that she is a "failure" as a writer - does not come off as bitter towards other writers. You really get that. She ends up LOVING this class - they're a "good group", she keeps saying - because they really want to dig in and critique and get to the bottom of things. This is not the story of a bitter has-been who has lost the joy of her craft. No. That's one of the reasons I was so moved by The Writing Class: the flame of love can be kept alive, even without any validation from the outer world. It really can.

Oh - and another great thing about the book: You think you have some of these people pegged. The annoying PC-obsessed reader, the pompous doctor, whatever ... but by the end, you realize that you have been wrong wrong wrong. It's the best kind of character development and makes me realize how much we judge others - and "pigeonhole" someone as "that type" - when there is no such thing, not really. That's part of Willett's point - in this book of writing about writing. Be very very careful when you judge. First of all, you cut yourself off from being surprised - either pleasantly or unpleasantly - and when you are incapable of surprise you truly embody the term "Douchebag". And second of all, you really may just be coming from your OWN bias and be totally misreading something because you are predisposed to see it a certain way ... That happens in the book as well. It's all great fun!

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett

Dot Hieronymus led off discussion of Code Black with breathless compliments. Spurred by the doctor's muscular prose ("Black struggled to maintain an impassive countenance, but not even he could quieten the vein that throbbed visibly in his left temple."), she had already torn through half the novel and couldn't wait for the rest of class to catch up. Dot belonged to three book clubs and had read "every medical thriller that ever came down the pike," and Code Black ranked with the best of them. For all Amy knew this was true.

"Before we begin," Amy said, "I want us to notice that this piece of fiction, as opposed to Marvy's, is part of a larger whole. So it's a fragment, and therefore more difficult to talk about than a short story. We can't complain about loose ends, for instance. We can't demand to understand everything that's going on. At this stage, it would be disastrous if we did get the whole picture, wouldn't it? It's the writer's job, in his opening chapters, to draw his readers in. If, by the end of an opening chapter or two, we don't understand why a character is behaving the way he is, or what somebody meant when he said what he did, that's probably good. We'll keep reading to find out."

"So what can we complain about?" asked Frank. His copy of Surtee's manuscript had taken a beating and was covered with pen scribbles. Frank looked eager to complain about lots of things.

"Oh," said Amy, "you can always complain about cliches. And not just language, either. A character can be trite, or a setting."

"Well, here's this black-belt babe-magnet neurosurgeon --"

"Hey," said Ricky Buzza, "that's not a cliche. I mean, I never read about a black-belt neurosurgeon --"

"Come on, he's a type, a superhero type, and you just know there's going to be a vast conspiracy --"

"Don't spoil it!" said Dot.

"And a big shoot-out, or lobotomy tournament --"

"Don't forget the Illuminati," added Chuck.

Edna Wentworth and Ginger Nicklow smiled and stayed out of it. Tiffany jumped in with Frank and Chuck. Harold Blasbalg, who Amy recalled was supposed to be working on a horror novel, weighed in on Dot's side, as did Syl Reyes, and the rest sat still and watched the show.

Because he was a big shot and because his storytelling, however absurd, was essentially competent and had a surface gloss, Amy had expected Surtees to get a free ride. So she was pleasantly surprised by the raucous upbraiding, but after fifteen minutes, during which the doctor took a real pummeling, she figured it was time to even the field. Extension instructors were paid, execrably, to avoid alienating their customers. "As I was saying," she said, "before I was so rudely interrupted --"

"It's not supposed to be Shakespeare," Dot said. Her color was high, and she had managed to smudge printer ink on her ivory jacket. Sometimes people couldn't take debate, rough-and-tumble or no; they either weren't used to being disagreed with or never stuck their necks out in the first place. But Dot seemed invested in Surtees himself. While she lauded and then hotly defended his silly book, she glanced reflexively at the back of his head (Surtees remained composed throughout) as though hoping for a glance back. Sometimes people, usually women, took extension courses to meet singles. "You're not being fair," she said.

"As I was saying," said Amy. The class reluctantly attended to her. "You can reasonably complain about cliche characters, settings, even cliche scenes. Tying somebody to the railroad tracks and all. But you can't fairly complain about cliche plots."

"Why not?" asked Ricky Buzza. Ricky was Amy's enabler this quarter.

"Because all plots are cliche. There are no new plots."

Ginger Nicklow spoke up. "I read somewhere, I'm sure it was in college, that there are two basic plots: Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk."

"Sex and death," said Chuck Heston.

Syl Reyes wondered what the heck that was supposed to mean.

"Search me," said Amy. "I've heard of this one myself, and I've always wondered. I guess it means you have the quest story and the erotic unveiling story. Most adventure stories, including this one, are quest stories. Although you could obviously have an interior quest, a search for spiritual enlightenment, or a search for the identity of your father's killer, or whatever."

"So Jaws is what?" asked Pete Purvis.

"An aquatic unveiling," said Frank, and even Tiffany P.C. Zuniga laughed.

"Getting back to my point," said Amy, "I love it that you guys have gotten so passionate about this piece, but I need to make it clear that it is, as Dot says, not fair to slam Code Black for having a trite plot. Whether or not it's unfair to compare it to Shakespeare I leave for another time."

"Okay," said Frank, "but can't we call Black Jack a cliche character?"

"Not yet," Amy said. "For all we know he may have quirks and depths we just haven't learned about in the first two chapters." Sure he does.

"What about an erotic quest?" asked Chuck.

"There you go," said Frank.

"For this reason," Amy continued, "critiques of fragments - novel chapters, unfinished stories - often center more on language than on structure. Language is the one thing we can safely criticize. A bad sentence can't be redeemed in the last chapter."

Amy led the class through Surtee's manuscript page by page. She landed pretty hard on the dialogue, though without calling it "wooden," and spent a great deal of time trying to convince them that fictional characters should almost always say or ask their lines, rather than hiss, shout, breathe, huff, or spit them. "There's way too much snarling going on here," she said, and when Pete and Dot defended the snarling as vivid she slapped them down smartly. "Even if you were right about this it wouldn't help you," she told them. "The dogs at the gates of publishing houses, called 'readers', have all been trained to toss unsolicited manuscripts at the earliest opportunity, and they all use the same checklist, fair or not fair. One of the surest ways to turn them off is to have your character purr 'Good morning,' snarl 'Get lost', or opine anything whatsoever."

Surtees's cheerleaders reacted sullenly to this speech, but Surtees did not. He was taking notes.

Amy disliked being generous to students like Surtees, who had so little need of her generosity. She had hoped, even expected, that the class would go easy on him, so she could be the one to jump up and down on Code Black, but instead she was forced to be the good cop, and actually heard herself praising, however faintly, his attention to physical detail, and the way his characters traveled sure-footed through time and space, and the fact that every scene ended pretty much when it should, and was bound to the scenes before and after it by a neat causal chain. Code Black had what creative writing teachers called narrative pull. That the tale itself wasn't worth putting down on paper wasn't something Amy was allowed to mention.

In the end all she could do was allow Tiffany Zuniga five full minutes to excoriate the doctor's obligatory sex scene, in chapter two. Tiffany hated that the untamed woman had "voluptuous curves", yowled like a jaguar "at her moment of ultimate release", and "slipped smilingly out the door" when it was all over. "I mean," said Tiffany, "how convenient is that."

Dr. Surtees, seated in the front row directly ahead of Tiffany, actually smirked.

"Worst of all," said Tiffany, "he uses bed as a verb. I hate hate hate hate that."

"Good for you," said Amy, and meant it.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 6, 2008

The Books: "Winner Of The National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather" (Jincy Willett)

winner-of-the-national0.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather, by Jincy Willett

I am so glad I discovered this book. And Jincy Willett has just come out with another book - and I'm so excited to read it. I was hooked by her prose within page One of Winner of the National Book Award - it is distinctive, it really is: funny, assured, specific - kind of hilarious, there's a madcap feel to it ... but it's also rather dark. I love it. Winner of the National Book Award takes place mainly during a hurricane in Rhode Island - it's a big Rhode Island book - and I am not sure of Willett's assocations with Rhode Island or what her deal is, but she gets my home state so right. It's difficult to explain Rhode Island sometimes - AND much of what you say is a surprise to someone who doesn't know the state well ... so you're dealing with people's preconceived notions, rather than an open mind. If you're a Rhode Islander, you'll know what I mean. What IS Rhode Island? How can we be defined? I love my home state, I am really proud of it, and love coming from there.

Winne of the National Book Award tells the story of two sisters: a slut (Abigail) and a spinster (Dorcas). I mean, look at those names. They come from upstanding Yankee stock - and there is an absolutely hilarious anecdote about their troublemaking ancestor - the only person who came over on the Mayflower, took one look around, and said, "Take me back home!" One is a librarian (guess which one), and the other is a ravaging whore who ruins lives. She eventually is imprisoned for murder - and a feminist writer interviews her and turns her story into a book - some kind of feminist manifesto - which eventually wins the National Book Award. The librarian, who grew up with her sister, knew her amorality and selfishness, is highly skeptical of the book - Her sister? A feminist? Are you kidding me??

While Abigail is a total nightmare, she is also absolutely entertaining. The whole book is entertaining. I LOVE Willett's writing style.

There's a slight tang of bitterness to the book - after all, it is narrated byDorcas, the one who never ever could get any attention for herself as long as her sister was in a 3 mile radius ... but Dorcas also doesn't really WANT a relationship. She has seen what relationships can do - and what wreckers they can be - in the life of her awful sister, and she doesn't want any of THAT, thankyouverymuch.

Brilliant character descriptions. Conrad Lowe: one of Abigail's many lovers - a creepy psychopath of a man, outwardly charming, smiling, and many women find him disarming - but Dorcas sees right through him, and he can't stand that. He MUST conquer Dorcas. Willett's breakdown of his character traits is brilliant. I've known a couple smiling psychopaths like Conrad Lowe, and she gets it perfectly right.

Dorcas sits down one hurricane-y day, and breaks open the book about her sister - meaning to read it, finally. But she knows it's going to make her angry, since it will all be self-serving lies. She waits out the hurricane, drinking scotch, reading the book (we get to read some excerpts from it - and it's hilarious: florid obvious made-for-Oprah prose - spinning this horrible story of a woman with no conscience into some kind of uplifting morality tale) - and living out the memories of her life in the shadow of her sister.

This all may sound very prosaic - BUT: it's the WRITING that is the standout in this book. It's got a voice, a distinctive voice - and Willett is a joy to listen to. I love the voice of this book. Here's another book that made me laugh out loud. Kudos.

Not to mention the whole takes-place-in-Rhode-Island thing. She just gets it sooo right.

EXCERPT FROM Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather, by Jincy Willett


Mark Twain was right: New England weather is a literary specialty, not a science. He gave a more reliable forecast in 1876 than those boobs on channel ten.

Probable nor'-east to sou'-west winds, varying to the southard and westard and eastard and points betewen; high and low barometer, sweeping round from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes and thunder and lightning.

I woke up this morning with a hurricane headache and turned on the stupid TV and there they were, one of each sex, babbling in front of a huge weather map. "We're going to get it," the man said, and the woman added that "the only question is how it's going to hit. Pandora is on the way." Last night these same people were promising she'd miss us by a hundred miles

A hurricane headache is no guarantee. The big one is out there somewhere, that's all, eyeing your neighborhood. You're on her list, and the atmospheric pressure plummets, skyrockets, some damn thing, and the air is humid, smelly, ominous, and your head feels caught in a padded vise. You want to crawl right out of your skin.

We had a bad one here, in Rhode Island, in 1938, the year of our birth, and another bad one in '54, which I remember, and that's it. Rhode Island is not Key West.

Many have noticed this.

Hurricane headaches make you feel antsy and doomed, but they can be gotten around, like the premenstrual whim-whams. You just remind yourself that your emotions are physical in origin, and ignore them. I'm good at that.

"How bad it's going to be is anybody's guess." The man in the red blazer, Ernie, was unable to act convincingly as though this were bad news. "We're going to get it for sure."

"The main thing right now," his partner added, "is not to panic."

"And remain calm. I repeat. Hurricane Pandora is on the way. I repeat. Pandora is coming."

"And not just her tail."

"Nope. Head to toe!"

"Full body slam!"

"She's got us in her sights!"

"We're staring right up her gun barrel!"

"She's made a shambles out of Cape Hatteras!"

"Heading straight for us at thirty-seven per!"

"But don't panic!"

From my bay window in the living room I could see at least two people dutifully panicking already. Old Mrs. McArch had just about covered all her windows with masking tape, and John and Marie Bucci were squeezing children and beagles into the station wagon.


The Buccis always headed out. They headed out in '68, when we were supposed to get the race riots. I asked John then where he was going, and John stopped and thought and said, "Burlington?" I pointed out (I was only thirty, I had more energy then) that (a) we weren't going to get any riots, and (b) if we did they'd be in Providence, where Negroes actually live, and not way out here in Frome. John shrugged. "Yeah, I know," he said, reddening, staring down at two bulging suitcases, "but hey." John's a nice guy. I always wish him luck. John is my bellwether, and John was heading out.

Today was supposed to be my day off. I had scheduled my Saturday crew, T.R. and Gloria, to man the library without me, and particularly to catalogue that three-foot pile of new books standing on the floor beside my desk. Usually I do these myself, the new books. Usually I want to. Of all my duties, opening brand-new books is the most pleasurable. When it comes to books, I am a sensuous woman. Usually. But not today, and so, naturally, today is Panic Day, and the Saturday people have flown away home, and I have had to come in myself and face it. The new book pile.

I knocked on Anna's door and told her about the forecast, and asked, did she want to come with me. She was already awake, listening to her clock radio, and said she'd stay here by herself. "I've always wanted," she said, "to batten down the hatches." How a twenty-year-old could have "always wanted" to do anything was a puzzler, but her decision was just as well. Today I didn't need the company. I poured some scotch in our father's old silver flask, put on jeans and a white shirt, filled three grocery bags with towels, and drove out to the Star for cold cuts and bread.

I'm not a drunk, by the way. It's going to be a long day, that's all.

I waved to John and Marie as I backed out the driveway. John shouted that they were heading up to Portland. "But the storm is moving north," I said. "I know," Marie said, and John said, "We know. But hey." We all had a nice laugh, and I wished them luck.

It was six thirty a.m. and twenty people stood outside the locked glass doors of the Star, watching the manager and a couple of checkers shuffle around inside. When I joined them they greeted me like a family member. I had forgotten about this. Rhode Island gets so few near misses, so little natural drama, that I forget from one time to the next about this phenomenon: what Conrad Lowe called "the disaster factor".

Rhode Island natives, including those born overseas, are under ordinary circumstances so shy and mistrustful around people they don't know as to seem almost deranged. They never look a stranger in the eye, or if they do, they unfocus their own eyes. I don't mean a stranger you pass in the street, I mean a stranger who's lived next door to you for twenty-five years, or a stranger you ask directions from or hand his dropped wallet to or knock down with your car.

This probably has something to do with the tradition of overcrowding, of living cheek by jowl for two hundred years. Whatever the cause, we have no stage presence at all, no Southern theatrics, Midwestern irony, Western hyperbole, New York cynicism. We don't even have the famous and overrated Maine understatement. We have instead an Unfortunate Manner.

We literally don't know how to act. We have no roles to play. We are the nakedest of Americans, and when native strangers, themselves naked and ashamed, make even innocuous demands of us - How much is this? Would you please get off my foot? - we panic and writhe, we shamble and fumble with our buttons, we mutter even as we back away. We make inappropriate noises. I've seen man-on-Weybosset-Street interviews on TV, and they're really too painful to watch. A stout woman with anxious haunted eyes, asked for her New Year's predictions, blurts, "I think we're going to have World War III!" and giggles like a toddler. She stands for all of us, an awkward cipher, silly or rude, or silly and rude, and inside, clearly glimpsed in the frightened eyes, some poor trapped soul screaming for help.

Our body language, of course, is wonderfully complex. We know a thousand different shrugs.

We are so lonely here, with only our loved ones for company. We kill, maim, insult our loved ones, or dream of doing so, to keep from going mad. And then disaster strikes. God, how we love disaster.

Let the storm come and flatten us, please, let the poor riot, let our houses burn (we have a terrific arson rate), let our president fall, our spaceships explode. What we wouldn't give for an LNG holocaust or a freeway sniper. Anything. I used to think we were just a big bunch of cowards, but that isn't it. We panic early, and we panic hard and long; but we love every minute of it. Rhode Island: The Panic State.

Panic frees us, to look around openly at one another. Disaster makes us friendly, in a demented opportunistic fashion all our own. We stumble toward one another, hilarious with terror, crazy with all the possibilities, like hibernating grizzlies injected with speed and shoved out into the light. We go berserk with candor. We lose it, big time, and oh, what a sweet relief that is.

***

Except for us Yankees, true and false (us Yankees do have stage presence), everybody waiting outside the Star was burdening the stranger on his right with the intimate details of his private life. The running theme of the conversation was "We're really going to get it now," and around us the wind picked up, and green maple leaves, plucked before their time, eddied in the parking lot, batted around in the smelly air as though by a bored child who, though already strong enough to rip down tree branches, had only leaves to play with for the moment.

The stranger to my right, a squat wide-rumped blonde in turquoise bermudas, asked me if I had filled my tub this morning, and I said yes, to take a bath. "You're not saving water?" I shook my head. "You tape your windows?" No. "You here for candles? Batteries?" "I'm here for my lunch."

Her face fell, and I felt bad about ruining her good time. She looked back up at me in a bold, speculative way. "I seen you someplace," she said. This is what passes for polite inquiry around here.

"I'm the head librarian at Squanto," I said.

"Nah," she said, shaking her head. "That's not it."

She was distracted then when the manager opened the glass doors. We wished each other luck, my new friend and I, and then we all squeezed through the single door in discrete lumps of ten. It took great effort not to panic along with everyone else. Men and women grabbed carts and began cruising down the aisles, like contestants on that old game show where you had five minutes to load up and the one with the biggest total won.

I concentrated so hard on strolling that I got to the deli counter second, behind a ruddy, big-chested yachting type, probably from Little Compton and somehow stuck inland, who had obviously decided that cold cuts were the way to go in the coming apocalypse. Soon there was a small crowd around him, and he gave them a big show, ordering corned beef, proscuittini, smoked turkey, even olive loaf, in thinly sliced two-pound units. No one but me resented the way he was hogging the counter and showing off his money. I ended up buying a jar each of dried beef and mayonnaise, a package of stale burger buns, and an old head of iceberg lettuce.

By the time I got to the checkout the two lines were twenty deep and festivity was at its height. Shoppers sighting bare acquaintances across the way abandoned their lines to embrace one another; and when they returned, their places remained open to receive them. Most people were giddy and riotous but here and there stood someone badly frightened by all the excitement. A tiny old woman cried and was comforted by a family of Portugese; a pregnant teenager with a Cro-Magnon forehead and hair bleached to the color of driftwood bellowed like a steer every time someone bumped into her cart, "Quit hittin' me, you retard!" Joe Hiltebrand, retired Frome Junior High School principal, turned around in line in front of me and addressed us. "This lady," he said, pointing to an old woman whose elbow he held, "just has two boxes of candles. Surely we can let her in ahead of us." We all nodded except for the cave-preggo, who said, "Fuck huh." The line turned toward her as one. "Fuck all a youse."

The woman in back of me, who had been talking in my ear, an academic type Not From Around Here, probably a Brown University wife, spoke soothingly to the girl, as though she were a zoo animal. "We're all scared, dear," she said, and so forth, carefully using monosyllables, but she didn't get far. "Fuck you," said the girl, and the woman Not From Around Here turned away without losing poise and whispered in my ear. "Two eloquent arguments for abortion rights, right there." Academics always spot me for an educated woman. What is it? How can I avoid it? "I'm a nun," I told her. She laughed unconvincingly, and turned to the woman in back of her. "Isn't it fascinating," she said, "to see what other peopel buy in times of crisis? I see you're loading up on packaged mixes. An interesting choice." "Yeah, I guess so," said the humiliated housewife From Around Here, who obviously wanted to shield the contents of her cart with her body. Even during Panic Time it is inexcusable to comment on someone's groceries. We all stared rudely into the academic woman's cart, which brimmed with wheels of cheese and bags of whole wheat flour. Miraculously, the woman sensed hostility. "Brie is the perfect hurricane food!" she said, in her too loud Midwestern voice. "It can't spoil! It can only get runny and smelly and yummy!" "Fuck huh," said the preggo. Indiania, Illinois, Ohio. Somewhere out there. Well, we all have to come from someplace.

I come from Rhode Island.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 4, 2008

The Books: "Scoop" (Evelyn Waugh)

51CQT25SBDL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh

I read this book because of Christopher Hitchens' review of it, I think in The Atlantic. Hitchens' review made me laugh out loud, so I immediately went out and bought a copy and read the book last year. To say this is a funny book is to completely under-state the situation. It is so funny that I found myself on the bus one night, reading it, and my face was literally frozen in a comedy mask of laughter for the entire ride, tears streaming down my face. It was unbearably funny. It's hard to describe why something is funny - and humor, of course, is a subjective thing. What's funny to me may be just "silly" to someone else. To me, Scoop is in the top 5 funniest books I have ever read in my life. Some books are amusing, they have a light and hilarious tone, that puts you into an easygoing comedic mood. But Scoop is beyond that. I GUFFAWED reading this book. I had to put it down occasionally, because I just needed a break from the laughter. I couldn't breathe. I probably scared my neighbors. "Why is she whooping and guffawing all by herself over there?" It's not always comfortable to have your face literally FROZEN into a Greek comedy mask!! It makes you look like a lunatic!

Scoop is the best lampoon of journalism (especially foreign correspondents) I have ever read. It is 100% absurd, from beginning to end, but at the same time (and this is Waugh's genius), all you can do is see how right ON his observations are ... how true the whole thing is, and that he seems to be only exaggerating a little bit. It is not a book for idealists. It is a book for those of us who look around, see craziness, and wonder if we are all alone. Does anyone else see how INSANE this all is?? There's a sort of Wag the Dog thing going on here - Scoop reminded me quite a bit of that film, only it took as its target journalism. But you get into the realm in Scoop where "truth" is the LAST thing anyone cares about. If it's in print, it's true. And so the foreign correspondents race around trying to beat each other to the punch - but it's all bogus anyway, and what on earth is the point?

The best part about this book is its protagonist. Scoop flat out would not work if the lead character was fully ensconced in that kind of journalism, and knew the rules, and accepted them. No. We need the outsider. We need the baffled "nature writer" who has never been outside of England to suddenly find himself in a foreign country in the middle of a civil war, surrounded by INSANE foreign correspondents ... in order for the book to work. He's sort of like Paul Pennyfeather, in Waugh's Decline and Fall, a guy who doesn't have a lot of ego, he's not running around trying to prove himself, or defend himself ... He just quietly negotiates the insane world he is in, and tries to behave like everyone else does. But because he doesn't understand the WHYS of all of the rules, he just mindlessly imitates what he sees ... and so the misunderstandings that come about because of that are hilarious.

William Boot lives with his family on a rambling old estate called Boot Magna. He rarely leaves. He is not married. He writes occasional pieces about otters and flowers and such for London papers. And through a grave misunderstanding - there's another Boot afoot in London journalism, a young glittering up-and-coming star ... William Boot is assigned to go cover the civil war in Ishmaelia, a fictional country in Africa. So just imagine the mix-up (which is never ever discovered): William Boot sits at his moldy desk in the country, painstakingly writing about how the flowers are coming out in the country, and how the birds are flying south. And suddenly, with no explanation, it is demanded of him by his newspaper that he drop everything and go to get the "scoop" on what is happening in Ishmaelia, a place he has never even heard of. It would be like someone who writes about fashion suddenly having to go to Chechnya and figure out what's happening. William Boot never questions the assignment. He doesn't say, 'Are you sure it's me you want? Could there be another Boot running around that you are thinking of??" He just starts to prepare for his trip.

Hijinx ensue at every stage of the way. He packs enough stuff that he needs to have servants trailing behind him. He doesn't know how to file a dispatch. You have to pay by the word - but he doesn't know that, and sends NOVELS of words back to the main office ... none of which have anythign to do with NEWS. Scoop is a deeply cynical book.

William Boot has NO IDEA what he is doing. He is tossed into the thick of the world of foreign journalists, hanging around aimlessly in this godforsaken African country, waiting for something to happen. Boot meets a couple of people who realize very quickly, wow, this guy has no idea what he is doing - and show him the ropes. But of course it's a very competitive atmosphere - everyone waiting for THE scoop that will put THEIR paper on top, make their paper be the first to report such and such. William Boot has no ambition. He doesn't care about any of that. He misses his home. He misses the creek in his yard and his flower garden. And yet, through various coincidences and misunderstandings, William Boot ends up getting the scoop to end all scoops. But he doesn't even realize it.

Scenes upon scenes of correspondents racing about Ishmaelia, in a long lunatic caravan, trying to beat each other to the story. But the best thing is: the entire thing, you can tell, is pretty much being invented by the journalists. It's wag the dog. What is really happening in Ishmaelia? Well, by the end of reading Scoop, you know that that is the most irrelevant question of all.

The characters are awesome. There's one renegade journalist, a star, who doesn't run with the pack. He gets amazing scoops and no one quite knows how he does it. William Boot does not understand the rules - and he NEVER understands the rules. He continues to send back novel-length dispatches - which all basically say, "Nothing happening here!" which, of course, is not what his paper wants to hear. If nothing is happening in Ishmaelia, then why are we paying for you to be there? Something BETTER happen in Ishmaelia. But William Boot is a true innocent. Full of guile. He has no scheming or wheeling or dealing in him. He just follows events. He reports on things he does not understand. He interviews people and writes what they say - but you can tell - by both his questions and the answers - that William Boot has no idea what is going on. He has ZERO context.

To imagine his hardened Fleet Street editors reading those ridiculous reports back in London ... to picture all of them looking at each other like, "Huh?" is one of the funniest images in the book. ESPECIALLY because they all still think that William Boot is the OTHER Boot, the genius journalist Boot - so they are predisposed to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to think to themselves, "Well, maybe this is just how he works ... maybe we need to just hang back and let him do his thing ... everyone says he is the best in the business ..." So everyone is basically in a torment of confusion and misunderstanding.

Even just writing about the book makes it sound less funny. All I can say is; for one of the most insightful cynical relevant angry hilarious books about journalism ever. I laughed from beginning to end.

There's one chapter which describes a Communist Revolution that occurs in Ishmaelia - but it only lasts for one night. That chapter was like a Benny Hill episode.

Here's an excerpt from the first part of the book - William Boot finds himself in a whirlwind. He is a simple country farmer, and suddenly he has to go report on a war. He has to go request Visas from two separate embassies (one of the recognized government of Ishmaelia, and one of the revolutionary government). William Boot has never even heard of Ishmaelia. He doesn't even care, frankly. He's not openly bitter or skeptical - but he honestly has no curiousity about African wars or any other wars. He doesnt' understand why he has been chosen, a man who writes about his own flower garden, to sail off to Africa and report on a war, but he moves ahead with the plans. This is smart smart humor. Waugh has a slam-dunk ending to each of these chapters. It's the "ba-dum-ching" of all great comedy. There is no escape from his absurdist worldview. So don't even try.

Please notice the blunt incomprehension of all of William Boot's replies.

EXCERPT FROM Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh

2.

At the Passport Office next morning they told William that he would want a visa for Ishmaelia. "In fact you may want two. Someone's just opened a rival legation. We haven't recognized it officially of course but you may find it convenient to visit them. Which part are you going to?"

"The patriotic part."

"Ah, then you'd better get two visas," said the official.

William drove to the address they gave him. It was in Maida Vale. He rang the bell and presently a tousled woman opened the door.

"Is this the Ishmaelite Legation?" he said.

"No, it's Doctor Cohen's and he's out."

"Oh ... I wanted an Ishmaelite visa."

"Well, you'd better call again. I daresay Doctor Cohen will have one only he doesn't come here not often except sometimes to sleep."

The lower half of another woman appeared on the landing overhead. William could see her bedroom slippers and a length of flannel dressing-gown.

"What is it, Effie?"

"Man at the door."

"Tell him whatever it is we don't want it."

"He says will the Doctor give him something or other."

"Not without an appointment."

The legs disappeared and a door slammed.

"That's Mrs. Cohen," said Effie. "You see how it is. They're Yids."

"Oh dear," said William, "I was told to come here by the Passport Office."

"Sure it isn't the nigger downstairs you want?"

"Perhaps it is."

"Well, why didn't you say so? He's downstairs."

William then noticed, for the first time, that a little flag was flying from the area railings. It bore a red hammer and sickle on a black ground. He descended to the basement where, over a door between two dustbins, a notice proclaimed: --

REPUBLIC OF ISHMAELIA
LEGATION AND CONSULATE-GENERAL
If away leave letters with tobacconist at No. 162b

William knocked and the door was opened by the Negro whom he had seen the evening before in Hyde Park. The features, to William's undiscriminating eye, were not much different from those of any other Negro, but the clothes were unfrogettable.

'Can I see the Ishmaelite Consul-General, please?"

"Are you from the Press?"

"Yes, I suppose in a way I am."

"Come in. I'm him. As you see, we are a little understaffed at the moment."

The Consul_general led him into what had once been the servants' hall. Photographs of Negroes in uniform and ceremonial European dress hung on the walls. Samples of tropical produce were disposed on the table and along the bookshelves. There was a map of Ishmaelia, an eight-piece office suite and a radio. William sat down. The Consul-General turned off the music and began to talk.

"The patriotic cause of Ishmaelia," he said, "is the cause of the coloured man and of the proletariat throughout the world. The Ishmaelite worker is threatened by corrupt and foreign coalition of capitalistic exploiters, priests and imperialists. As the great negro Karl Marx has so nobly written ..." He talked for about twenty minutes. The black-backed, pink-palmed, finlike hands beneath the violet cuffs flapped and slapped. "Who built the Pyramids?" he asked. "Who invented the circulation of the blood? ... Africa for the African worker, Europe for the African worker, Asia, Oceania, America, Arctic and Antarctic for the African worker."

At length he paused and wiped the line of froth from his lips.

"I came about a visa," said William diffidently.

"Oh," said the Consul-General, turning on the radio once more. "There's fifty pounds deposit and a form to fill in."

William declared that he had not been imprisoned, that he was not suffering from any contagious or outrageous disease, that he was not seeking employment in Ishmaelia or the overthrow of its political institutions, paid his deposit and was rewarded with a rubber stamp on the first page of his new passport.

"I hope you have a pleasant trip," said the Consul-General. "I'm told it's a very interesting country."

"But aren't you an Ishmaelite?"

"Me? Certainly not. I'm a graduate of the Baptist College of Antigua. But the cause of the Ishmaelite worker is the cause of the Negro worker of the world."

"Yes," said William. "Yes. I suppose it is. Thank you very much."

"Who discovered America?" demanded the Consul-General to his retreating back, in tones that rang high above the sound of the wireless concert. "Who won the Great War?"

3.

The rival legation had more spacious quarters, in a hotel in South Kensington. A gold swastika on a white ground hung proudly from the window. The door of the suite was opened by a Negro clad in a white silk shirt, buckskin breeches and hunting boots, who clicked his spurs and gave William a Roman salute.

"I've come for a visa."

The pseudo-consul led him to the office. "I shall have to delay you for a few minutes. You see the Legation is only just open and we have not yet got our full equipment. We are expecting the rubber stamp any minute now. In the meantime let me explain the Ishmaelite situation to you. There are many misconceptions. For instance, the Jews of Geneva, subsidized by Russian gold, have spread the story that we are a black race. Such is the ignorance, credulity and prejudice of the tainted European states that the absurd story has been repeated in the press. I must ask you to deny it. As you will see for yourself, we are pure Aryans. In fact we were the first white colonizers of Central Africa. What Stanley and Livingstone did in the last century, our Ishmaelite ancestors did in the stone age. In the course of the years the tropical sun has given to some of us a healthy, in some cases almost a swarthy, tan. But all responsible anthropologists ..."

William fingered his passport and became anxious about luncheon. It was already past one.

" ... The present so-called Government bent on the destruction of our great heritage ..." There was an interruption. The pseudo-consul went to the door. "From the stationer's," said a cockney voice. "Four and eight to pay."

"Thank you, that is all."

"Four and eight to pay or else I takes it away again."

There was a pause. The pseudo-consul returned.

"There is a fee of five shillings for the visa," he said.

William paid. The pseudo-consul returned with the rubber stamp, jingling four pennies in his breeches pocket.

"You will see the monuments of our glorious past in Ishmaelia," he said, taking the passport. "I envy you very much."

"But are you not an Ishmaelite?"

"Of course; by descent. My parents migrated some generations ago. I was brought up in Sierra Leone."

Then he opened the passport.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 3, 2008

The Books: "Decline and Fall" (Evelyn Waugh)

declineandfall230.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

I just read this book a month or so ago (thoughts about it here). It made me laugh out loud. From page one. It was Evelyn Waugh's first novel and it's unbelievable to think that - because it's so assured, so unbelievably ridiculous - openly absurd ... He has such confidence in his own tone. It just GOES. Everything in the book depends on a terrible misunderstanding that happens in the first chapter - and it is NEVER "righted". Paul Pennyfeather is expelled from Oxford for running across the quad wearing no pants. The incident occurs during a notorious night where everyone plays pranks - but Waugh makes it clear that Paul Pennyfeather sits alone in his room, he's serious, he's studying to be a minister, and he's not one of the rampaging idiots wreaking havoc on the campus. But somehow, one of the pranksters steals Paul Pennyfeather's pants (from off his body) and, mortified, he runs across the quad, under the eyes of the Dons. So it seems as though HE is the instigator of the madness - and he is expelled. Paul Pennyfeather doesn't even explain himself or try to defend himself. He is quite passive. Perhaps he senses that the series of coincidences that led to him running pants-less in a public place would be too bizarre or difficult to explain, so all righty then, no hard feelings, I'll pack my bags and go!

The ministry is now out of the question for someone expelled for indecent exposure. So Paul Pennyfeather gets a job at a ridiculous boarding school for boys in the Welsh countryside. Every teacher who works there is legitimately insane. The headmaster is a lunatic. The boys are terrors. Paul Pennyfeather was hired to teach German and music - even though he doesn't speak German and he can't play an instrument. But the school assures him that that doesn't matter. And the amazing thing is: IT DOESN'T.

Waugh skewers education in this book. Academia is his target. Paul Pennyfeather is really the only sane one in the book - but nobody congratualtes him for it because, after all, if everyone is insane then the only sane one is going to seem the MOST insane.

Paul Pennyfeather ends up getting fired - due to another series of coincidences - and then he ends up having a romance with this woman who basically convinces him to become a slave trafficker - but he doesn't even know that that is what he is doing. She runs a theatre in Buenos Aires or something like that and all of her showgirls are stranded throughout Europe with Visa problems so she begs Paul to go get all the girls. Paul does. He flies through Europe, talking to embassies, getting girls out of hock, all the while having no idea that he is behaving like a criminal mastermind. He eventually is arrested for slave trafficking. How on earth do you traffic in slaves and not know it? Perhaps Paul understands that the world is a tremendously complex place and there is no way he could understand his part in it ... so he accepts all of these disasters with passive aplomb. He is thrown in jail, and he finds that he really enjoys jail. And what do you know ... many of his old teacher friends are also in jail by now, for this or that crime ... so he knows a lot of people. It's like he keeps running into the same band of lunatics.

The entire book is hilarious. It never stops. The comedy is relentless. But at the end, there's a monologue by one of the characters that cuts through the bullshit, the lunacy, and makes the points Evelyn Waugh has been making all along. Only now he goes from covert to overt. It's brilliant. Evelyn Waugh had SUCH a good eye for ridiculous-ness, pomposity, pretentiousness ... Paul Pennyfeather is not congratulated by the world for having integrity. He is the one who takes the fall. His entire life is ruined. Yet he seems to not mind all that much. Isn't that how life sometimes is? You start out wanting to be a minister and before you know it you are trafficking slaves across Europe, and you aren't sure how you got from A to B.

The excerpt below is during the games day at the boarding school. The parents of the boys (lunatics, all of them) show up to watch their kids run relay races, etc. But the whole thing is mayhem, because nobody really cares about sports - none of the teachers do - they don't even understand why anyone would WANT to leap over hurdles and run around a track ... Paul Pennyfeather is in charge of much of this, and again, he has no qualifications. But that doesn't seem to matter.

Very funny book. Amazing (again) that it's only a first novel.


EXCERPT FROM Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh

"So you're the Doctor's hired assassin, eh? Well, I hope you keep a firm hand on my toad of a son. How's he doin'?"

"Quite well," said Paul.

"Nonsense!" said Lady Circumference. "The boy's a dunderhead. If he wasn't he wouldnt' be here. He wants beatin' and hittin' and knockin' about generally, and then he'll be no good. That grass is shockin' bad on the terrace, Doctor; you ought to sand it down and resow it, but you'll have to take that cedar down if you ever want it to grow properly at the side. I hate cuttin' down a tree - like losin' a tooth - but you have to choose, tree or grass; you can't keep 'em both. What d'you pay your head man?"

As she was talking Lord Circumference emerged from the shadows and shook Paul's hand. He had a long fair moustache and large watery eyes which reminded Paul a little of Mr. Prendergast.

"How do you do?" he said.

"How do you do?" said Paul.

"Fond of sport, eh?" he said. "I mean these sort of sports?"

"Oh, yes," said Paul. "I think they're so good for the boys."

"Do you? Do you think that?" said Lord Circumference very earnestly; "do you think they're good for the boys?"

"Yes," said Paul; "don't you?"

"Me? Yes, oh, yes. I think so, too. Very good for the boys."

"So useful in case of a war or anything," said Paul.

"D'you think so? D'you really and truly think so? That there is going to be another war, I mean?"

"Yes, I'm sure of it; aren't you?"

"Yes, of course, I'm sure of it too. And that awful bread, and people coming on to one's own land and telling one what one's to do with one's own butter and milk, and commandeering one's horses! Oh, yes, all over again! My wife shot her hunters rather than let them go to the army. And girl's in breeches on all the farms! All over again! Who do you think it will be this time?"

"The Americans," said Paul stoutly.

"No, indeed, I hope not. We had German prisoners on two of the farms. That wasn't so bad, but if they start putting Americans on my land, I'll just refuse to stand it. My daughter brought an American down to luncheon the other day, and, do you know ...?"

"Dig it and dung it," said Lady Circumference. "Only it's got to be dug deep, mind. Now how did your calceolarias do last year?"

"I really have no idea," said the Doctor. "Flossie, how did our calceolarias do?"

"Lovely," said Flossie.

"I don't believe a word of it," said Lady Circumference. "Nobody's calceolarias did well last year."

"Shall we adjourn to the playing fields?" said the Doctor. "I expect they are all waiting for us."

Talking cheerfully, the party crossed the hall and went down the steps.

"Your drive's awful wet," said Lady Circumference. "I expect there's a blocked pipe somewhere. Sure it ain't sewage?"

"I was never any use at short distances," Lord Circumference was saying. "I was always a slow starter, but I was once eighteenth in the Crick at Rugby. We didn't take sports so seriously at the 'Varsity when I was up; everybody rode. What college were you at?"

"Scone."

"Scone, were you? Ever come across a young nephew of my wife's called Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington?"

"I just met him," said Paul.

"That's very interesting. Greta, Mr. Pennyfeather knows Alastair."

"Does he? Well, that boy's doing no good for himself. Got fined twenty pounds the other day, his mother told me. Seemed proud of it. If my brother had been alive he'd have licked all that out of the young cub. It takes a man to bring up a man."

"Yes," said Lord Circumference meekly.

"Who else do you know at Oxford? Do you know Freddy French-Wise?"

"No."

"Or Tom Obblethwaite or that youngest Castleton boy?"

"No, I'm afraid not. I had a great friend called Potts."

"Potts!" said Lady Circumference, and left it at that.

All the school and several local visitors were assembled in the field. Grimes stood by himself, looking depressed. Mr. Prendergast, flushed and unusually vivacious, was talking to the Vicar. As the headmaster's party came into sight the Llanabba Silver Band struck up Men of Harlech.

"Shockin' noise," commented Lady Circumference graciously.

The head prefect came forward and presented her with a programme, beribboned and embossed in gold. Another prefect set a chair for her. She sat down with the Doctor next to her and Lord Circumference on the other side of him.

"Pennyfeather," cried the Doctor above the band, "start them racing."

Philbrick gave Paul a megaphone. "I found this in the pavilion," he said. "I thought it might be useful."

"Who's that extraordinary man?" asked Lady Circumference.

"He is the boxing coach and swimming professional," said the Doctor. "A finely developed figure, don't you think?"

"First race," said Paul through the megaphone, "under sixteen. Quarter mile!" He read out Grimes's list of starters.

"What's Tangent doin' in this race?" said Lady Circumference. "The boy can't run an inch."

The silver band stopped playing.

"The course," said Paul, "starts from the pavilion, goes round that clump of elms ..."

"Beeches," corrected Lady Circumference loudly.

" ... and ends in front of the band stand. Starter, Mr. Prendergast; timekeeper, Captain Grimes."

"I shall say, 'Are you ready? one, two three!' and then fire," said Mr. Prendergast. "Are you ready? One" -- there was a terrific report. "Oh, dear! I'm sorry" -- but the race had begun. Clearly Tangent was not going to win; he was sitting on the grass crying because he had been wounded in the foot by Mr. Prendergast's bullet. Philbrick carried him, wailing dismally, into the refreshment tent, where Dingy helped him off with his shoe. His heel was slightly grazed. Dingy gave him a large slice of cake, and he hobbled out surrounded by a sympathetic crowd.

"That won't hurt him," said Lady Circumference, "but I think some one ought to remove the pistol from that old man before he does anything serious."

"I knew that was going to happen," said Lord Circumference.

"A most unfortunate beginning," said the Doctor.

"Am I going to die?" said Tangent, his mouth full of cake.

"For God's sake, look after Prendy," said Grimes in Paul's ear. "The man's as tight as a lord, and one one whisky, too."

"First blood to me!" said Mr. Prendergast gleefully.

"The last race will be run again," said Paul down the megaphone. 'Starter, Mr. Philbrick; timekeeper, Mr. Prendergast."

"On your marks! Get set." Bang went the pistol, this time without disaster. The six little boys scampered off through the mud, disappeared behind the beeches and returned rather more slowly. Captain Grimes and Mr. Prendergast held up a piece of tape.

"Well, run, sir!" shouted Colonel Sidebotham. "Jolly good race."

"Capital," said Mr. Prendergast, and dropping his end of the tape, he sauntered over to the Colonel. "I can see you are a fine judge of a race, sir. So was I once. So's Grimes. A capital fellow, Grimes; a bounder, you know, but a capital fellow. Bounders can be capital fellows; don't you agree, Colonel Slidebottom? In fact, I'd go farther and say that capital fellows are bounders. What d'you say to that? I wish you'd stop pulling at my arm, Pennyfeather. Colonel Slybotham and I are just having a most interesting conversation about bounders."

The silver band struck up again, and Mr. Prendergast began a little jig, saying: "Capital fellow! capital fellow!" and snapping his fingers. Paul led him to the refreshment tent.

"Dingy wants you to help her in there," he said firmly, "and, for God's sake, don't come out until you feel better."

"I never felt better in my life," said Mr. Prendergast indignantly. "Capital, fellow! capital fellow!"

"It is not my affair, of course," said Colonel Sidebotham, "but if you ask me I should say that man had been drinking."

"He was talking very excitedly to me," said the Vicar, "about some apparatus for warming a church in Worthing and about the Apostolic Claims of the Church of Abyssinia. I confess I could not follow him clearly. He seems deeply interested in Church matters. Are you quite sure he is right in the head? I have noticed again and again since I have been in the Church that lay interest in ecclesiastical matters is often a prelude to insanity."

"Drink, pure and simple," said the Colonel. "I wonder where he got it? I could do with a spot of whisky."

"Quarter Mile Open!" said Paul through his megaphone.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

July 2, 2008

The Books: "Possessing the Secret of Joy" (Alice Walker)

Possessing%20the%20secret%20of%20joy.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Possessing the Secret of Joy, by Alice Walker

I read this wrenching book in a couple of days in a cold winter when I was living in Chicago. I remember particularly sitting on the Clark Street bus, travelling uptown, reading the excerpt below and feeling a burning sensation in my heart and chest, like I thought I might have to get up and get off the bus. I will never read this book again. I don't have to. And sometimes I feel like I want to throw it out, or give it away ... why keep it around? But, like a couple of books on my shelves, it is completely representative to me of a certain time in my life, a difficult time, and sometimes I like to have those books around, just as a reminder. Not just of a bad time in my life, but of how far I have come. I was in agony when I read the book. I cannot remember how it came to me, or who recommended it. I'm not a big Alice Walker fan. I had read The Color Purple in high school, and yes, I remember it moving me - but it didn't propel me on to read all of her stuff. She wasn't that good. She wasn't, say, Max Shulman (excerpt here)!! No, just kidding. A friend of mine in high school was a huge Alice Walker fan. I remember sitting in the library with her, during our first period, and the announcements and Pledge of Allegiance were coming over the loudspeaker from the principal, and my friend sat at our table, with tears streaming down her face because she had been reading The Color Purple. It just didn't hit me, in the way it did her. But somehow Possessing the Secret of Joy came into my life during that grim winter, and I'll never forget my experience reading it. I felt named by the book. That has not happened often. It's not that I "related" to the book. It is, after all, about an immigrant woman from Algeria. It has nothing to do with my life. But its message named me. It called out to me. Specifically. That's why I almost had to get up and get off the bus. It was unbearable.

It tells the story of Tashi, an African woman who has emigrated to the United States. Many of the details are lost to me. She has married an American man - Adam. She had fled the oppression and war in Algeria, and is now living a comfortable American life. But she is on the run from her memories. The book is told in different voices - her voice, Adam's voice, her friend Olivia - there are a couple of more characters who chime in as well. Alice Walker's strength is not in realistic writing, obviously - she's more of a political writer, more interested in the points she wants to make, rather than creating a realistic framework. That's one of the main reasons why I can't get into her work. I like more realistic stuff. But in Possessing the Secret of Joy it works, because all of the different voices (and they actually AREN'T different voices - they may be different characters but they all have the same voice) pour every side of the argument into a big pot in the middle - nothing is left out ... So it's a deeply complex book, in a way (and I don't think complexity is Walker's strong suit) - and I think is essential reading for anyone interested in learning about female circumcision (the topic of the book). Of course there's plenty of non-fiction stuff available too, but Walker's book - with its solemn Greek chorus of differing views and opinions - is a huge part of the literature. Tashi's sister bled to death during her circumcision "ceremony". Tashi herself somehow did not have the procedure done - but instead of feeling relief that she had escaped such a fate - it starts to bother her. It becomes a political and cultural symbol to her, especially living in the West. Africa is in upheaval and so Tashi, in an act of solidarity that is insane (if you look at it rationally), goes back to her village and has the procedure done. Things go downhill pretty quickly and Tashi goes mad. The thing about the book that can be grating but is also its greatest strength is the multitude of voices weighing in on Tashi's choice - her husband, her friend, her husband's lover - all of these people are invested in what has happened and, of course, have different views - not just about Tashi's choice but about the tradition, in general. My memories of the book are vague, in terms of specifics - I mainly just remember that burning sensation on the bus, with the fogged-up windows and the snowy sidewalks going by outside ... but I do know that Tashi returns, again, to Africa and murders M'Lissa - the village woman in charge of clitoridectomies. She's an illiterate ancient woman, but puffed up with her position of upholding the tradition. She is the one who allowed Tashi's sister to bleed to death. The book goes back and forth between the trial of Tashi for murder - and all the events leading up to the murder.

Much of the book has to do with the inherent danger in even talking about any of this. Now, with people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many others, writing openly about their experiences - it doesn't seem to be as taboo. Or, of course it still is taboo - it is a hot hot topic - but it can be talked about. Alice Walker was writing about a character who felt guilty about "revealing" the fucked-up nature of her native culture. Who was she to live in America and JUDGE Africa? No. This is her tradition. It has always been done. There are reasons. It is part of her culture. Having not had it done, she feels somehow outside of her own traditions. This is craziness talking, of course - but that's the whole thing ... The book makes you ponder your genitals. I mean, that sounds ridiculous - but it's true. Not in a sexual way - just in the FACT of them ... and in doing so, we come to the heart of who we are. I'm not talking about being defined by them - but they are hugely important and the book is so relentless it made me openly BAFFLED at the hostility towards the genitals and what they represent ... The book certainly makes you cherish them, and thank God you have them (in the same way that Ayaan Hirsi Ali's books do - you just read some of that crap and think, 'Thank you, Lord. Thank you for making me live HERE and not in Somalia or the Sudan") And to contemplate being robbed of them ... for what? for why? why is female sexuality so feared? so LOATHED? Whether or not clits are cut off, that feeling is "out there" ... I had internalized it. It was mine as well. The pleasure one can get during sex - the way everything works ... seems to me to be a gift from God. It is to be cherished. But I was tormented back then, and that was one of the reasons I felt named by the book. It went down into the very core of identity. Who we are, who I am. ... But I won't go into that further. Tashi knows that by even opening up the conversation - by talking about what a bogus "tradition" this really is - perpetrated mainly by old ignorant women - she will be seen as betraying her culture. Telling the secrets to a world that will not understand. She takes that risk. The book becomes about "taboo" - and what it means to break taboos. You are rarely congratulated for it. And Tashi loses her mind after breaking that cultural taboo. She is not sorry she murdered M'Lissa. It was long overdue, as far as Tashi is concerned. But that, in its way, is madness as well.

It's one of those books I can't ever stand back from and evaluate, saying, "This worked" or "That didn't work". It's a tough book to take, and I suppose the Greek chorus aspect of it would be tremendously boring to some - but for me, it just pierced through the pain I was in, speaking directly to it - in a profound way that truly changed me. So I can't really evaluate a book like that. I put it down, when I finished it, feeling like I had been crying for a week straight, even though my eyes were dry. I was drained, depleted. "Good" book? Seems like an irrelevant question when my experience had been the kind that it was. There aren't too many books I can say that about.

Here's an excerpt. This is what almost made me get up and exit the bus. I was dreading coming to this book on the shelf. I had no idea what to say. So I will press Post now without over-thinking it or reading it again.



EXCERPT FROM Possessing the Secret of Joy, by Alice Walker


Tashi-Evelyn

At night The Old Man played music for us. Music from Africa, India, Bali. He had an amazing record collection that occupied one wall of his house. He showed us grainy black-and-white films, made on his trips. It was during the showing of one of these films that something peculiar happened to me. He was explaining a scene in which there were several small children lying in a row on the ground. He thought, first of all, that they were boys, which I could see straight off they were not, though their heads were shaved and they each wore a scanty loincloth. He assumed, he said, he had inadvertently interrupted a kind of ritual ceremony having to do with the preparation of these children for adulthood. Everything, in any case, had stopped, the moment he and his entourage entered the ritual space. And what was also odd, he said, was how no one spoke a word, or even moved, as long as he and his people were there. They literally froze as the camera panned the area. The children on the ground in a little row, lying close together on their backs, the adults simply stopped in midactivity, unmoving, even, it appeared, unseeing. Only - he laughed, relighting his pipe, which had gone out, as it frequently did, while he talked - there was a large fighting cock (which we now saw as it stepped majestically into the frame) and it walked about quite freely, crowing mightily (it was a silent film but we could certainly perceive its exertions), and that was the only sound or movement while we were there.

The film ran on, but suddenly I felt such an overwhelming fear that I fainted. Quietly. Slid off my chair and onto the bright rug that covered the stone floor. It was exactly as if I had been hit over the head. Except there was no pain.

When I came to, I was in the guest bedroom upstairs in the turret. Adam and the old man were bending over me. There was nothing I could tell them; I could not say, The picture of a fighting cock, taken twenty-five years ago, completely terrorized me. And so I laughed off my condition and said it was caused by too much happiness, sailing in the high altitude.

The Old Man looked skeptical and did not seem surprised when, the next afternoon, I began to paint what became a rather extended series of ever larger and more fearsome fighting cocks.

And then one day, into the corner of my painting, there appeared, I drew, a foot. Sweating and shivering as I did so. Because I suddenly realized there was something, some small thing the foot was holding between its toes. It was for this small thing that the giant cock waited, crowing impatiently, extending its neck, ruffling its feathers, and strutting about.

There are no words to describe how sick I felt as I painted. How nauseous; as the cock continued to grow in size, and the bare foot with its little insignificant morsel approached steadily toward what I felt would be the crisis, the unbearable moment, for me. For, as I painted, perspiring, shivering, and moaning faintly, I felt that every system in my body, every connecting circuit in my brain, was making an effort to shut down. It was as if the greater half of my being were trying to murder the lesser half, and as I painted - by now directly onto the wall of the bedroom, because only there could I paint the cock as huge as it now appeared to be: it dwarfed me - I dragged the brush to paint each towering iridescent green feather, each baleful gold fleck in its colossal red and menacing eye.

The foot grew large too. But not nearly as large as the cock.

When The Old Man looked at it he said: Well, Evelyn, is it a man's foot or a woman's foot?

The question puzzled me so profoundly I could not answer, but only held my head between my hands in the classic pose of the deeply insane.

A man's foot? A woman's foot?

How could one know?

But then later, in the middle of the night, I found myself painting a design called "crazy road", a pattern of crisscrosses and dots that the women made with mud on the cotton cloth they wove in the village when I was a child. And I suddenly knew that foot above which I painted this pattern was a woman's, and that I was painting the lower folds of one of M'Lissa's tattered wraps.

As I painted I remembered, as if a lid lifted off my brain, the day I had crept, hidden in the elephant grass, to the isolated hut from which came howls of pain and terror. Underneath a tree, on the bare ground outside the hut, lay a dazed row of little girls, though to me they seemed not so little. They were all a few years older than me. Dura's age. Dura, however, was not among them; and I knew instinctively that it was Dura being held down and tortured inside the hut. Dura who made those inhuman shrieks that rent the air and chilled my heart.

Abruptly, inside, there was silence. And then I saw M'Lissa shuffle out, dragging her lame leg, and at first I didn't realize she was carrying anything, for it was so insignificant and unclean that she carried it not in her fingers but between her toes. A chicken - a hen, not a cock - was scratching futilely in the dirt between the hut and the tree where the other girls, their own ordeal over, lay. M'Lissa lifted her foot and flung this small object in the direction of the hen, and she, as if waiting for this moment, rushed toward M'Lissa's upturned foot, located the flung object in the air and then on the ground, and in one quick movement of beak and neck, gobbled it down.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

July 1, 2008

The Books: "The Accidental Tourist" (Anne Tyler)

51MKCAAJN5L.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler

I have so many personal associations with this book that I'm not even sure how to write about it - as a book, I mean. It's really what brought my first boyfriend and me together ... 5 million years ago. I still have the copy he gave to me in that long-ago summer with a note from him in the front. He was older than I was - not by much - 6 or 7 years - but I was 20 years old, so that's a HUGE age difference. Now it wouldn't be anything. Hell, 20 years is no longer a big age difference - but back then it was. I was in college, he was in law school, totally different times in our lives. We had known each other for years - I had met him when I was 16. See? I have to talk about all of this before I talk about the book itself. To me, he was a glamorous older guy - my good friend - but not someone I would have thought of romantically. Mainly I felt he was out of my league. You know, I was 20 years old. A late bloomer. A virgin. I had had a boyfriend in college, sort of - but nothing serious or lasting. The guy who would be my first serious boyfriend seemed way more grown-up than me, and always was dating some hot intimidating WOMAN, so I never "crushed" on him because - what would the point of THAT be? But we were good friends, and one summer we started hanging out a lot. Having a blast. (He was such a fun person.) He happened to be reading The Accidental Tourist at the time. I was working 2 or 3 jobs, and he would show up at my place of work, just to say Hi. He would bring me ice coffee. We spent entire days at the beach. We had adventures in a small outboard motor, tooling around Newport, pulling up to docks alongside gigantic YACHTS - and going into whatever bar was there and having a Bloody Mary. I had a cocktail dress in my bag, so we would stroll up the dock, in our flip-flops and shorts, towards some glamorous restaurant, slip into the bathrooms, change into our dress-up duds, and meet at the bar. Then we would go back to the restrooms, change back into our flip-flops and shorts and go back into our outboard motor, and put-put over to the NEXT bar to do it again. Bar-hopping via outboard motor. I was so naive that I had no idea I was being courted. Antonio (that was his name) told me later that it was reading The Accidental Tourist, with its two misfit lead characters, that made him take another look at me, and start to fall in love with me. Much later, I would see that as an insult. Oh, so, I'm a MISFIT, THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE SAYING?? But at the time, it was that book that brought us together. He begged me to read it. He gave me a copy with a blunt note in the front ... something that made me think (FINALLY): "Huh...... is something going on here???" Well, there was, and I read the book, and loved it, and Antonio eventually made his move, and whatever, we were together for four years. Ancient freakin' history. The interesting thing is: Antonio was very much like an Anne Tyler character. He had his "way" of doing things and anything that deviated was a deviation - not just a different way of doing things. He considered his way the default. I am, to put it mildly, not that way at ALL. Who cares if you cut the bell pepper longwise or crosswise? I honestly would need a bone marrow transplant in order to give a shit about stuff like that. I think Antonio saw himself in that book - and saw that maybe it would be okay if he let himself fall in love with the freckled crazy girl in glasses who had messy handwriting and was kind of clumsy. I mean, I think that's how he saw me! He loved me, don't get me wrong - and we actually still love each other - he's one of my favorite people ever, always will be ... but he had to convince himself that a "deviation" from his norm would be okay, that I would be safe, he would be okay with me. He had never dated anyone like me. His girlfriends were either breezy sophisticated types wearing colored heels and sundresses or hard-bodied tomboy types who liked to ski and windsurf and bungee jump. Uhm, yeah, so, I was neither. I liked to read Anne of Green Gables and I liked to write in my diary, and I enjoyed going skinny dipping in the ocean after my shift at the pizza joint. I was loyal to my family on an almost tribal level. Still am. I was an actress. I had a depressive streak. I had great friends. This whole thing was a "deviation" for Antonio and it stressed him out. I am still convinced that we were not meant to be together - and I'm shocked it lasted as long as it did - my not giving a crap about which way to cut the peppers became a metaphor for our differences. NOW I would have no problem handling the situation and telling someone to chill out, don't tell me how to cut a pepper, I'm a grown woman, there's not only one way to do things. But then I couldn't defend myself. It was a mess. BUT. In that first summer, it was all tremendously exciting!! Still one of the best summers I've ever had.

Anne Tyler is the storyteller of people with Asperger's, basically. All of her characters are fussy, a bit antisocial, and have OCD-level organizational skills. I've read some of her other books, but never really got into them because The Accidental Tourist was such an important book to me - my experience with Anne Tyler kind of began and ended there. I know she's a big deal, one of the most successful American writers writing today ... and she's marvelous, she really is - The Accidental Tourist is a terrific book. Heartbreaking. The film made of the book was not too bad, either! I feel like the film really got what it was about those two people that made them fit so perfectly together, eventually. It's an odd pairing and on the face of it makes NO sense.

Macon Leary is a lonely man, who has split from his wife in the wake of their son's murder. All of the underlying problems in their marriage (he is a systematic OCD kind of guy - she is impulsive) come screaming to the forefront once their son is gone (he was murdered in a Burger Bonanaza during a field trip at summer camp). Macon Leary lives alone, and we get scenes of him washing dishes - in his own particular way (he has a "way" for everything) - and he keeps imagining that his ex-wife is watching him at all times, kind of smirking at his fussiness, and shaking her head in contempt. Macon kind of fell into travel writing - the details are lost to me - but he got some assignment to write a travel piece, and the way he wrote it was so funny that the editor asked him to do a series. Basically, he writes about travel for reluctant fearful travelers. Macon Leary does not enjoy travel. He finds it unbearable. For such a rigid guy, all of that change - and having to figure things out in a foreign land - are unbearably stressful - and he writes his travel pieces in that tone. It's all about comfort. Where is the McDonalds in Amsterdam? You can get Sweet 'n Low in Beijing, you just have to ask. Make sure you stay here at this hotel, because it looks most like a Holiday Inn in Iowa. You know: looking for signs of home even in another country. His travel pieces hit a nerve, and so he has written a series of books for "The Accidental Tourist". He writes for people who want to pretend they have never left home.

Macon can't stand the travel, but he loves the writing part of it. Not a happy man. Full of regrets and fear. He comes from a family of fussbudgets - his sister alphabetizes her spice rack, it is desperately important - and marriage doesn't seem to really be "for" these people. Macon's marriage was an anomaly. So now that he is back to single status, he goes over to his siblings' house and they play cards, and it's like they're back in childhood now - only they are all middle-aged.

It's kind of disturbing.

In the middle of all of this, Macon brings his dog to an obedience school - where he meets Muriel, a dog expert. She's got frizzy hair. She's rather kooky. And she doesn't have many boundaries. Like, she calls Macon at home. Macon is so rigid that anything deviating from his small path of normal feels like a threat, or unbearably painful. After all, he couldn't protect his son from going on a simple outing to a burger joint. The world is a tremendously dangerous and unpredictable place. Better to just hunker down, walk in a straight line, and don't disturb anyone. Muriel doesn't play by those rules. She wants to talk about his dog.

And you know, the details are lost to me ... but slowly, inevitably, Macon starts to fall in love with Muriel. But because he's Macon - because he's an Anne Tyler character - love actually feels like stress, rather than love. That was not something I personally related to as a 20 year old girl ... but boy is it something I relate to now. Love feels like stress ... I know it's not ... but this is not a rational thing we're talking about here. We're talking about matters of the heart. If you're a rigid person, stuck in your ways (and I am) - then anything that comes along and pushes you, or messes up your schedule ... feels wrong. It takes Macon forever to realize that Muriel is not wrong, and that stress is actually love.

Tyler is a wonderful writer (as you'll see in the excerpt below) - and quite funny. She has great compassion for her Asperger's-syndrome characters - she's probably got a lot of those qualities herself, she writes about it so well.

I've only read the book once, way back then, during that sunny endless summer when I fell in love for the first time. It seems caught in that moment in time, for me. I have no desire to re-read it - and actually considered skipping it for my Daily Book Excerpt - because it's so potent and such a carrier of memories. But I've got my own OCD going on, and what I call adult-onset Asperger's, and I felt I couldn't skip the book, even with all the associations, so here it is.

Here's an excerpt. Macon is having dinner with his siblings.


EXCERPT FROM The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler

When his brothers came home from work, the house took on a relaxed, relieved atmosphere. Rose drew the living room curtains and lit a few soft lamps. Charles and Porter changed into sweaters. Macon started mixing his special salad dressing. He believed that if you pulverized the spices first with a marble mortar and pestle, it made all the difference. The others agreed that no one else's dressing tasted as good as Macon's. "Since you've been gone," Charles told him, "we've had to buy that bottled stuff from the grocery store." He made it sound as if Macon had been gone a few weeks or so - as if his entire marriage had been just a brief trip elsewhere.

For supper they had Rose's pot roast, a salad with Macon's dressing, and baked potatoes. Baked potatoes had always been their favorite food. They had learned to fix them as children, and even after they were big enough to cook a balanced meal they used to exist solely on baked potatoes whenever Alicia left them to their own devices. There was something about the smell of a roasting Idaho that was so cozy, and also, well, conservative, was the way Macon put it to himself. He thought back on years and years of winter evenings, the kitchen windows black outside, the corners furry with gathering darkness, the four of them seated at the chipped enamel table meticulously filling scooped-out potato skins with butter. You let the butter melt in the skins while you mashed and seasoned the floury insides; the skins were saved till last. It was almost a ritual. He recalled that once, during one of their mother's longer absences, her friend Eliza had served them what she called potato boats - restuffed, not a bit like the genuine article. The children, with pinched, fastidious expressions, had emptied the stuffing and proceeded as usual with the skins, pretending to overlook her mistake. The skins should be crisp. They should not be salted. The pepper should be freshly ground. Paprika was acceptable, but only if it was American. Hungarian paprika had too distinctive a taste. Personally, Macon could do without paprika altogether.

While they ate, Porter discussed what to do with his children. Tomorrow was his weekly visitation night, when he would drive over to Washington, where his children lived with their mother. "The thing of it is," he said, "eating out in restaurants is so artificial. It doesn't seem like real food. And anyway, they all three have different tastes. They always argue over where to go. Someone's on a diet, someone's turned vegetarian, someone can't stand food that crunches. And I end up shouting, 'Oh, for God's sake, we're going to Such-and-Such and that's that!' So we go and everybody sulks throughout the meal."

"Maybe you should just not visit," Charles said reasonably. (He had never had children of his own.)

"Well, of course I want to visit, Charles. I just wish we had some different program. You know what would be ideal? If we could all do something with tools together. I mean like the old days before the divorce, when Danny helped me drain the hot water heater or Susan sat on a board I was sawing. If I could just drop by their house, say, and June and her husband could go to a movie or something, then the kids and I would clean the gutters, weatherstrip the windows, wrap the hot water pipes ... Well, that husband of hers is no use at all, you can bet he lets his hot water pipes sit around naked. I'd bring my own tools, even. We'd have a fine time! Susan could fix us cocoa. Then at the end of the evening I'd pack up my tools and off I'd go, leaving the house in perfect repair. Why, June ought to jump at the chance."

"Then why not suggest it," Macon said.

"Nah. She'd never go for it. She's so impractical. I said to her last week, I said, 'You know that front porch step is loose? Springing up from its nails every time you walk on it wrong.' She said, 'Oh, Lord, yes, it's been that way,' as if Providence had decreed it. As if nothing could be done about it. They've got leaves in the gutter from way last winter but leaves are natural after all; why go against nature. She's so impractical."

Porter himself was the most practical man Macon had ever known. He was the only Leary who understood money. His talent with money was what kept the family firm solvent - if just barely. It wasn't a very wealthy business. Grandfather Leary had founded it in the early part of the century as a tinware factory, and turned to bottle caps in 1915. The Bottle Cap King, he called himself, and was called in his obituary, but in fact most bottle caps were manufactured by Crown Cork and always had been; Grandfather Leary ran a distant second or third. His only son, the Bottle Cap Prince, had barely assumed his place in the firm before quitting to volunteer for World War II - a far more damaging enthusiasm, it turned out, than any of Alicia's. After he was killed the business limped along, never quite succeeding and never quite failing, till Porter bounced in straight from college and took over the money end. Money to Porter was something almost chemical - a volatile substance that reacted in various interesting ways when combined with other substances. He wasn't what you'd call mercenary; he didn't want the money for its own sake but for its intriguing possibilities, and in fact when his wife divorced him he handed over most of his property without a word of complaint.

It was Porter who ran the company, pumping in money and ideas. Charles, more mechanical, dealt with the production end. Macon had done a little of everything when he worked there, and had wasted away with boredom doing it, for there wasn't really enough to keep a third man busy. It was only for symmetry's sake that Porter kept urging him to return. "Tell you what, Macon," he said now, "why not hitch a ride down with us tomorrow and look over your old stomping ground?"

"No, thanks," Macon told him.

"Plenty of room for your crutches in back."

"Maybe some other time."

They followed Rose around while she washed the dishes. She didn't like them to help because she had her own method, she said. She moved soundlessly through the old-fashioned kitchen, replacing dishes in the high wooden cabinets. Charles took the dog out; Macon couldn't manage his crutches in the spongy backyard. And Porter pulled the kitchen shades, meanwhile lecturing Rose on how the white surfaces reflected the warmth back into the room now that the nights were cooler. Rose said, "Yes, Porter, I know all that," and lifted the salad bowl to the light and examined it a moment before she put it away.

They watched the news, dutifully, and then they went out to the sun porch and sat at their grandparents' card table. They played something called Vaccination - a card game they'd invented as children, which had grown so convoluted over the years that no one else had the patience to learn it. In fact, more than one outsider had accused them of altering the rules to suit the circumstances. "Now, just a minute," Sarah had said, back when she'd still had hopes of figuring it out. "I thought you said aces were high."

"They are."

"So that means --"

"But not when they're drawn from the deck."

"Aha! Then why was the one that Rose drew counted high?"

"Well, she did draw it after a deuce, Sarah."

"Aces drawn after a deuce are high?"

"No, aces drawn after a number that's been drawn two times in a row just before that."

Sarah had folded her fan of cards and laid them face down - the last of the wives to give up.

Macon was in quarantine and had to donate all his cards to Rose. Rose moved her chair over next to his and played off his points while he sat back, scratching the cat behind her ears. Opposite him, in the tiny dark windowpane, he saw their reflections - hollow-eyed and severely cheek-boned, more interesting versions of themselves.

The telephone in the living room gave a nipped squeak and then a full ring. Nobody seemed to notice. Rose laid a king on Porter's queen and Porter said, "Stinker." The telephone rang again and then again. In the middle of the fourth ring, it fell silent. "Hypodermic," Rose told Porter, and she topped the king with an ace.

"You're a real stinker, Rose."

In the portrait on the end wall, the Leary children gazed out with their veiled eyes. It occurred to Macon that they were sitting in much the same positions here this evening: Charles and Porter on either side of him, Rose perched in the foreground. Was there any real change? He felt a jolt of something very close to panic. Here he still was! The same as ever! What have I gone and done? he wondered, and he swallowed thickly and looked at his own empty hands.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

June 30, 2008

The Books: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain)

250px-HuckFinnCover.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Published in 1884, Huckleberry Finn takes place (as the author states beneath the title of the book:) in the "early nineteenth century". More so than Tom Sawyer (excerpt here), Twain addresses the larger cultural and social issues of that time - the free states, slave states, trying to get to the free states, the Mississippi slicing up through the nation like some kind of divining rod, the issues of Jim's wife and kids and how he wanted to get some abolitionists to kidnap them out of slavery ... all of those everyday things that a slave would experience at that time - and Twain does so in a way that is not didactic, or preachy - which is one of the reasons the book is controversial. You can't point to it and say, "HERE is what Mark Twain was SAYING" definitively because you can always find that the opposite sentiment is also true in the book. It's not a pamphlet or a sermon, much to the dismay of the literalists in our midst. It's a BOOK, with flawed human beings as the lead characters - as opposed to neat symbols they can line up behind and approve of. (Damn these people and their fucking "approval".). The book is controversial now because, obviously, it's not politically correct enough (even though if it were as politically correct as the times dictate now - it wouldn't be historically accurate - it also would be a big fat bore). But it was controversial from the moment it appeared. Huck Finn has always been a troublemaker of a book, and I love him dearly for that. I love books that piss people off. I love books that certain types of people think that none of us should be allowed to read. I love them on principle. I love books that make people tremble about "the children" and what will happen if "the children (tm)" read it? You want to make me read a book? Have some self-righteous nitwad pontificate about why I "shouldn't" read it. Book sold. "This book is not for children(tm)!!" (Or, not to mention the morons who disapprove of Madeleine L'Engle because her books aren't Christian enough. Or ... they can tell it's Christian ... but they don't underestand all of it and people like that HATE not understanding something!!! Therefore, Madeleine L'Engle must be up to no good!) Now I know we should pity these people, it must be pretty awful to BE them, but I don't pity them because they have a vested interest in controlling what is available to be read, and no, I don't take that lightly. I remember I went off on "challenged books" once and some self-proclaimed member of the "religious right" said, "I am troubled by your intemperate response." Now. This guy had been reading me for a couple of years. Okay? And he's just figuring out NOW that I'm intemperate? Looks like you need to work on your reading comprehension, bub. Don't look for "temperance" here when we're talking about literature and unimaginative fearful morons who want to decide what the rest of us get to read. Damn straight I'm "intemperate". Strangely enough, he doesn't comment anymore. Huh. Wonder why.

Well, I was a kid, and I read Huckleberry Finn on my own (I later had to read it in high school, and believe me - I felt like the biggest expert in the world because I had already read it so many times) - and I loved it. I was not corrupted. I didn't suddenly start running around thinking it was okay to say "nigger" and dreaming of a return of the antebellum south, or whatever the hell it is that people are so worried about. I loved Jim. I wanted him to be free. It was obvious to me even as a child (tm) that everyone in the book - EVERYONE - speaks in their own dialect. It's kind of like Dickens' books - where you really can hear the conversation, because Dickens almost spells it out phonetically. This is just how those people talked back then. I don't know, I was a kid and I knew it was a story! Will wonders never cease! I was caught up completely in its plot (although, as Twain says in a note before the book begins that anyone attempting to find a plot in the book "will be shot" - ha!) - I was on that raft with Jim and Huck, I lived their adventures with them, I wanted Jim to be free, I knew he couldn't go back - he just couldn't! - and I loved all of the adventures they had along the way. It's a great book! You can read it as an adult and see a lot more in it - but it's great fun for a kid as well. It's a fantasy: Huck and Jim on their raft, free man and slave ... sailing on the Mississippi - and while they are on their raft, all is possible. They WILL make it. They are equals. To even say that is condescending. It is what it is. They are friends. It is when they are forced to pull the raft over to one side of the river or the other, and step out onto the land, that they get into trouble. That is when the larger forces at work in the society start to catch up with them. As long as they are in motion, out on the water, they have a chance. And to those who say, in an apologetic tone, that Huckleberry Finn reflects some of the racist attitudes of his day, I reply: OF COURSE HE DOES. Because he lived THEN and not NOW, you morons. Bah.

I read it because I had read Tom Sawyer as a kid and was totally intrigued by the glimpses I got of Huckleberry's character and so I needed to read on. From the first sentence of Huckleberry Finn I was hooked:

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter.

Looking back, I would say that what hooked me in was the voice. The "voice" of Huckleberry Finn represents (in my view) a huge leap forward in American literature. It still feels contemporary now. Holden Caulfield sounds like Huckleberry Finn. The first-person narration means there is no distance between us, the reader, and Huckleberry, our guide. Where he goes, we go. Where he makes a mistake, we stroll right into the thick of it with him. We don't have anyone else to take us on the way - it's him. And I don't know: I just loved hanging out with him. I love him still. I love that character. One of the greatest characters in our pantheon.

I know I've mentioned before my fantasy as a kid of being an orphan, thrown upon the world with no support, and I would have to make my way on my own. Huckleberry Finn (although he does have a father - loser loser loser) is one of the best examples of how my fantasies operated as a kid. Adrift with no "adults"? Having to deal with conmen, dangerous barking dogs, being chased? Sleeping under the stars? Sign me up!

Huck Finn's famous statement at the end of the book ("All right then, I'll go to hell") speaks to his essential decency, his innate inability to NOT see his fellow man as ... human beings. It was that that captivated me, and really made me kind of swoon for Huck a little bit.

And that's what made his ridiculously funny stopover at the Grangerford house one of my favorite parts of the book. Unlike Tom Sawyer, who is kind of a grade school lothario, Huckleberry Finn doesn't really have any interest in girls. Girls do not factor into his life at all. Becky Thatcher is a big character in Tom Sawyer but there really are no "girls" in Huckleberry Finn, just grim humorless female authority figures - and who's going to feel romantically about them?? But here at the Grangerford house, on the run, flying by the seat of his pants, using another name (which causes a humorous moment) - he meets Emmeline Grangerford - or, he doesn't really, because she's dead - but the house is full of her unfinished paintings and bad poetry and Huck kind of becomes a bit obsessed with Emmeline. He wonders about her. He thinks about her. He even prays for her soul. It's kind of an extraordinary little section and really shows Huckleberry's compassion - and not just that - but his ability to SEE.

Now there are some things he can't see - like how bad Emmeline's poetry actually is, and how her paintings sound ATROCIOUS (that's one of the funny things in the scene - Twain just blatantly telling us what Emmeline painted, letting the awfulness speak for itself - only Huckleberry, who has no taste in art or literature, thinks everything he encounters is AMAZING) ... so no, he doesn't look at the paintings and poetry and think: "Man. This work sucks." NO. He looks at it and wonders about a person who would do such paintings, who was she, did anyone love her like she obviously loved people? Was she okay where she was now?

He really cares for her.

This quality will come up again and again in Huckleberry Finn - his intuitive ability to see people - and yes, sometimes it comes too late ... but it's quite a gift, and it was a gift to me as a kid reading it. Because ... it taught me how to see. I mean, I was always going to be a sensitive little thing - I am convinced I was born that way ... but Huckleberry's ability to see really struck me, and made me want to be more like him. He reads her AWFUL poem ("stomach troubles laid him low" ... In a poem?? hahaha) and feels sad that she obviously cared so much that she would write a poem, and he wondered who cared about her, and who would write a poem for her. So he tries. Poor illiterate Huck Finn tries to write her - a girl he had never met - a poem. I don't know, it really touched me as a kid - and it still does.

So while the Grangerford section and the paintings of Emmeline may not be the most famous part of the book, that's the excerpt I knew I wanted to post today - because they had such power for me as a youngun. And even though I first encountered Emmeline's horrible unfinished painting when I was 10 years old, years and years and years ago - yikes - I still, to this day, remember exactly what the painting was - and what parts were unfinished - and the multiple pairs of arms, etc. To me, the book has great staying power (obviously).

One of my all-time faves.

EXCERPT FROM Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk -- that is what they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've come across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he warn't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing, on account of his troubles; so when he died I took what there was left, because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck passage, and fell overboard; and that was how I come to be here. So they said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most daylight and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was. So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I says:

"Can you spell, Buck?"

"Yes," he says.

"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.

"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.

"All right," says I, "go ahead."

"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n -- there now," he says.

"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't no slouch of a name to spell -- right off without studying."

I set it down, private, because somebody might want ME to spell it next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it.

It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash them over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as they do in town. They had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a sawlog. There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her.

Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. On the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that bad apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath.

This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr. Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too -- not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.

They had pictures hung on the walls -- mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before -- blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon -- and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.

This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head. It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D

And did young Stephen sicken,
And did young Stephen die?
And did the sad hearts thicken,
And did the mourners cry?

No; such was not the fate of
Young Stephen Dowling Bots;
Though sad hearts round him thickened,
'Twas not from sickness' shots.

No whooping-cough did rack his frame,
Nor measles drear with spots;
Not these impaired the sacred name
Of Stephen Dowling Bots.

Despised love struck not with woe
That head of curly knots,
Nor stomach troubles laid him low,
Young Stephen Dowling Bots.

O no. Then list with tearful eye,
Whilst I his fate do tell.
His soul did from this cold world fly
By falling down a well.

They got him out and emptied him;
Alas it was too late;
His spirit was gone for to sport aloft
In the realms of the good and great.

If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker -- the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly.

Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken" and play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside.

It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be better. And warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack

June 29, 2008

The Books: "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" - (Mark Twain)

0140390839.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , by Mark Twain

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with this book and wanted to slip into its pages. Not as much as Huckleberry Finn which propelled me into a mania ... I kind of had a crush on Huck Finn ... It was Huck and Lance Kerwin who took up my 10 year old fantasy life. But Tom Sawyer wasn't too bad either. I preferred Huck because he had less going for him, in terms of advantages and social graces and I always liked the underdog. Tom Sawyer was a slippery one, a popular boy, with a certain amount of ease and social standing (you know, basically putting all the neighborhood boys to work whitewashing so HE didn't have to do it!) ... but the feeling in Tom Sawyer, of kids free (mostly) to live entirely outside, getting up to no good, creating entire melodramas where they can act out make-believe games (or, not so make believe) ... was heaven to me. To be honest, except for the whole electricity thing, and the whole horse and buggy thing ... I had no real concept that Tom Sawyer did NOT live in my era. His childhood was very much like mine. I didn't sit inside watching television because, you know, there were only 3 stations ... so I watched cartoons on Saturday, and ABC Afterschool Specials (Hello, Lance Kerwin!), and Sunday night Disney, and Masterpiece Theatre. But there really wasn't all that much on ... at least not all the damn day ... so the kids in our neighborhood spent the majority of our time outside, in the woods, having mud wars, building forts, stealing raspberries from someone's garden, basically up to NO GOOD. Oh, and pushing it as long as we could - hearing our mother's voices calling us in to dinner ... one more minutes, please, one more minute!! To me, the crap that Tom Sawyer got up to was familiar. Of course things get much more serious at the end of the book, but that was part of the fun of it: the fantasy that you, as a child, would get caught up in grown-up forces beyond your control, that you would have to figure out a way to survive - be wily, sneaky, resourceful ... I mean, this was my main fantasy. All of my favorite books as a kid had that as an element. Mixed-Up Files (excerpt here), Harriet the Spy (excerpt here), Diamond in the Window (excerpt here), and a ton of L'Engle's books - Arm of the Starfish comes immediately to mind (excerpt here), with its story of a young boy stranded in Portugal, caught up in forces (international criminal forces) way beyond his understanding. In Tom Sawyer, what starts out as a kid's game (a blood oath, pretending to be pirates in search of hidden gold) turns deadly. The kids have to find their own way out of the dangerous situation. Heaven!!

Tom Sawyer is probably Mark Twain's best-known book - although it was not his best-seller (not until after his death). Innocents Abroad (excerpt here) sold better than any of his books - which is so interesting, and just goes to show you that you cannot predict, via SALES, what will "last", and what will not. Like I mentioned, Huck Finn was a favorite of mine as a kid, and, in my opinion, it feels more important than Tom Sawyer ... more like a precursor to Gatsby (excerpt here) or Catcher in the Rye (excerpt here), with its distinctive narrator, and point of view.

Tom Sawyer is the kind of book, like Anne of Green Gables (excerpt here), that depends on the power of each funny/touching/scary episode adding up to a great whole. Tom Sawyer was published originally in serial fashion - I have great fondness for the episodic form, and wish more books now were written that way - as opposed to just a straight-line one-plot narrative. I love episodes! (doesn't surprise me at all that Mark Twain would have written to Lucy Maud Montgomery on the publication of Anne, praising her to the skies and referring to Anne Shirley as "the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice" - a huge compliment. Montgomery's stuff is in the Twain vein, especially the Anne books).

I have my favorite episodes in Tom Sawyer - I like him and Huck hiding in the cemetery best - but I had to pick the excerpt below, because it makes me laugh out loud. Just the language!! So funny! How the priest "turns himself into a bulletin board" - and his comments on the badly behaved church choir: "There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country." hahahahahahaha And Twain's lampooning of the prayer:

A good, generous prayer it was, and went into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good. Amen.

It hit my funny bone when I was 10, and it is STILL funny to me! Any time anything chaotic happened in church, it was always hysterical because you were supposed to be so good and quiet.


EXCERPT FROM The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , by Mark Twain

About half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon. The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her -- Tom being placed next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd filed up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better days; the mayor and his wife -- for they had a mayor there, among other unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair, smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her hill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and much the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg could boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer Riverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of the village, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young heart-breakers; then all the young clerks in town in a body -- for they had stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet; and last of all came the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful care of his mother as if she were cut glass. He always brought his mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. The boys all hated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them" so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as usual on Sundays -- accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked upon boys who had as snobs.

The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more, to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago, and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in some foreign country.

The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country. His voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:

Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry beds
of ease,
Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' bloody seas?

He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church "sociables" he was always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps, and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "Words cannot express it; it is too beautiful, too beautiful for this mortal earth."
After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into a bulletin-board, and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of doom -- a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities, away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.

And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good. Amen.

There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat down. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer, he only endured it -- if he even did that much. He was restive all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously -- for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman's regular route over it -- and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together, embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat-tails; going through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for it they did not dare -- he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. But with the closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go.

The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod -- and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse. However, this time he was really interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion.

Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws -- a "pinchbug," he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart, too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle, lighting with his fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while; tried to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that; yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and died in the distance.

By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction pronounced.

Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of variety in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the dog should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright in him to carry it off.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 28, 2008

The Books: "The Innocents Abroad: Or, The New Pilgrims' Progress" - (Mark Twain)

413V-TM7JiL._SL500_AA240_.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress, by Mark Twain

Okay, so I know this isn't strictly fiction - it's more reportage/memoir - but it bothers me when I have to separate books by the same author just because they are in different genres. It haunts me at night. I thrash in bed worrying about it.

Interestingly enough, this book was Mark Twain's best-seller of all of his books. It remained so throughout his lifetime. I LOVE it. I read it a couple of years ago, and ate up every word. It made me laugh out loud (of course), but his insights, too - his sometimes jaundiced American eye about travel ... his observations about his fellow "pilgrims" (so funny!!) - but then, too, it's fascinating: The book was published in 1869 - it began as a series of articles Twain was writing for a newspaper, which were published separately and then put together as a book ... so when you read it now, you are getting an intimate look at the world of what is now Israel (and the surrounding lands) at that time in history. It could not be more fascinating. It's great, too, because there was no such thing as political correctness then - and so some of Twain's observations are scathing! He skewers entire countries based on a couple of people he met, he is vicious towards the Portugese, for example (vicious, and yet hilarious) . The book doesn't lack in seriousness - Twain doesn't make fun of everything. It's just that he can't help himself: human beings are funny to him, whether they are galloping Turks or pious Christians. Everyone is vaguely ridiculous. Especially because, in a trip such as this one, it's all about the group. And there is nothing funnier than a group dynamic. They cohere during the boat ride across the ocean. They are stuck on the ship together ... we get to know some of the characters, we hear about their activities, and the different quirks of his fellow pilgrims. It's a delight, this book. It's Twain at his very best.

The excerpt below is when, after a stormy crossing, they finally sight land - as they approach the Strait of Gibraltar. Much excitement. Much misinformation is flung around the ship - people who read guide books and think they are experts, people who repeat the same old legends time and time again until Mark Twain wants to pull his hair out ("don't inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore today!") I love how the entire ship has given one of these boobs a nickname: The Oracle. He is SUCH a recognizable type. Tell me you haven't met someone like him before! He means well, he is not malevolent ... just ignorant and defensive when his ignorance is pointed out to him. He sets himself up as an expert, spouting out facts (incorrectly) from the guidebooks ... and then when Twain tries to tell him that no, it actually isn't like that ... The Oracle gets uppity. As though there is no way to REALLY know what is true. Actually, Oracle, yes, there is. It's called reading and understanding what you read and backing it up with your own experience and what you can see with your own eyes. Just admit you made a mistake!! Don't dig the hole further!! But folks like The Oracle always have to dig the hole further. They cannot help themselves.

I love the book. Highly recommended.


EXCERPT FROM The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress, by Mark Twain

Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the tall yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled in a blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds -- the same being according to Scripture, which says that "clouds and darkness are over the land." The words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I believe. On our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait is only thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part.

At short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old stone towers -- Moorish, we thought -- but learned better afterwards. In former times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in their boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in and capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they could find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The Spaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a sharper lookout on the Moroccan speculators.

The picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes weary of the changeless sea, and by and by the ship's company grew wonderfully cheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained every eye like a magnet -- a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till she was one towering mass of bellying sail! She came speeding over the sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought, hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was beautiful before -- she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his country's flag is at home compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!

We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the African one, "Ape's Hill," a grand old mountain with summit streaked with granite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar, was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of navigation and the end of the world. The information the ancients didn't have was very voluminous. Even the prophets wrote book after book and epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the existence of a great continent on our side of the water; yet they must have known it was there, I should think.

In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing seemingly in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides by the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious traveled parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like that in one kingdom.

The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say, by 1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base. One side and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the side of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep slant which an army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of this slant is the walled town of Gibraltar -- or rather the town occupies part of the slant. Everywhere -- on hillside, in the precipice, by the sea, on the heights -- everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad with masonry and bristling with guns. It makes a striking and lively picture from whatsoever point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into the sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive of a "gob" of mud on the end of a shingle. A few hundred yards of this flat ground at its base belongs to the English, and then, extending across the strip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of a mile, comes the "Neutral Ground," a space two or three hundred yards wide, which is free to both parties.

"Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question was bandied about the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more tired of answering, "I don't know." At the last moment six or seven had sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did go, and I felt a sense of relief at once -- it was forever too late now and I could make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten rid of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another -- a tiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about it, even in the first place: "That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there when the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."

We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in them great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the perpendicular wall of the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford superb views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was hollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and whose windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far away, and a soldier said:

"That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because a queen of Spain placed her chair there once when the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."

On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no doubt the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from the narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the tiniest little toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes, and other vessels that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they said, and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through those same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an endless mass of batteries and on the other straight down to the sea.

While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to another party came up and said:

"Señor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair -- "

"Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me. Don't -- now don't inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore today!"

There -- I had used strong language after promising I would never do so again; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa and the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze and enjoy and surfeit yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have even burst into stronger language than I did.

Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly four years' duration (it failed), and the English only captured it by stratagem. The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so impossible a project as the taking it by assault -- and yet it has been tried more than once.

The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town, with moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in battles and sieges that are forgotten now. A secret chamber in the rock behind it was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman. Roman armor and Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave in the sea extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of the country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the statement.

In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be true -- it looks reasonable enough -- but as long as those parties can't vote anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this cave likewise are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any portion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that the channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the low, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at Gibraltar (after rock, perhaps -- there is plenty there), got closed out when the great change occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel, are full of apes, and there are now and always have been apes on the rock of Gibraltar -- but not elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an interesting one.

There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and so uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and turbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuán and Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink -- and Jews from all around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they are in pictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years ago, no doubt. You can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our pilgrims suggest that expression, because they march in a straggling procession through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of complacency and independence about them) like ours, made up from fifteen or sixteen states of the Union, found enough to stare at in this shifting panorama of fashion today.

Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people among us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle in that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has been there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken arguments, only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your very teeth as original with himself. He reads a chapter in the guidebooks, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been festering in his brain for years and which he gathered in college from erudite authors who are dead now and out of print. This morning at breakfast he pointed out of the window and said:

"Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It's one of them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say -- and there's the ultimate one alongside of it."

"The ultimate one -- that is a good word -- but the pillars are not both on the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a carelessly written sentence in the guidebook.)

"Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say nothing about it -- just shirks it complete -- Gibbons always done that when he got stuck -- but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, be says that they was both on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and Langomarganbl -- -- "

"Oh, that will do -- that's enough. If you have got your hand in for inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say -- let them be on the same side."

We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising idiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch -- to anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he wrote an "Ode to the Ocean in a Storm" in one half hour, and an "Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship" in the next, the transition was considered to be rather abrupt; but when he sends an invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to the commander in chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar with the compliments of the Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers.

The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright, not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he recollects the answers to all his questions. He is known about the ship as the "Interrogation Point," and this by constant use has become shortened to "Interrogation." He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal they pointed out a hill and told him it was 800 feet high and 1,100 feet long. And they told him there was a tunnel 2,000 feet long and 1,000 feet high running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He repeated it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes. Finally, he took a useful hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old pilgrim made:

"Well, yes, it is a little remarkable -- singular tunnel altogether -- stands up out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one end of it sticks out of the hill about nine hundred!"

Here in Gibraltar he comers these educated British officers and badgers them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform! He told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 27, 2008

The Books: "Anna Karenina" (Leo Tolstoy)

annakarenina.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

There was a time in Chicago when my entire group of friends read this book. It spread like a virus. One person started it, and began raving about it, so then another one picked it up, then another ... none of us were in the same parts of the novel as we read it, so secrets of the plot had to be preserved - "DON'T TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!" we would shout at one another ... I think Maria was the first one to finish. She preserved her silence, but it was tragic for her ... because she knew the ending, she knew where we all were headed ... It was also tragic because she couldn't talk about it with anyone!! I had never read Anna Karenina before - and, to this day, it is the only Tolstoy I have read (although War and Peace WILL be read by me this year ... my cousin Liam is spurring me on!). I absolutely loved the book, and if you haven't read it, all I can say is: do yourself a favor ...

There is something for everyone in this book. It is a giant accomplishment. It's a snapshot (hugely detailed) of society in Russia at that time (at a certain class level, of course) - it's a social melodrama - a romance - It stands as a bridge between 19th century realism and 20th century modernism. You can feel George Eliot in the book, the masters of the 19th century - with their ability to look at an entire society and say, while they are in that society themselves: "Here. This is what I see. This is what is going on." It's completely three-dimensional, no matter which way you look at it. There are even 5 or 6 chapters (which felt ENDLESS to me at the time) where you hang out with Levin on his farm in the country, and you learn about his harvest, and his threshing, and how he farms, and WHATEVS with Levin and his wheatfields - let's get back to the city, please!!! But it's all a part of the book - and it wouldn't work without it. Levin is a hugely important character - I have great sympathy for that poor guy, and seeing him at work - to contrast the glitter of the city with all its corruption and intrigue - with the simplicity of life out in the country - hugely important to the success of the book.

Many of these people are, frankly, nasty. You don't want to hang out with them. It's a cutthroat world - the world of the court - and people's ideals are compromised. People's virtue cannot remain intact. It's just impossible. Anna Karenina, in many ways, is a woman beyond the pale. She is one of the greatest of characters ever created. She cannot "fit in", it just is not in her nature. So Kitty (as seen in the excerpt below) - who is a much more conventional type of woman, with regular old dreams that society approves of ... is baffled by and drawn to Anna. But Anna stands apart. Kitty could never be BFFs with someone like Anna, and I get the sense that Anna could never be friends with another female anyway. Not just because she would entrap any male in a 5 mile radius - but because her interests lie outside the typical female realm. But I guess that's part of the tragedy. Anna, in another time, another life, would make a great lawyer, CEO, or - perhaps - a fulfilled wife and mother. But not in her time. No way. She is beyond the pale. She is not a victim of circumstance - or, not totally - her own unconventional character and the choices she is willing to make put her into the realm of free will. And, I suppose, destiny. There is no other way that Anna Karenina could behave. She is being true to herself.

I won't go into the ins and outs of the terrifically complex plot - because watching it all unfold is part of the fun (yes, fun!) of this book. Every person you meet, even bit characters, are fully drawn. Watch how Tolstoy (in the excerpt below) makes the ball come alive. He's got that kind of eye. His descriptions of the gowns are almost feminine, in their eye for detail. And - of course - as women (and as observant men) we all know what fashion means, and the signals that women give out when they choose one outfit over another. That is all going on here.

I'm nervous to start War and Peace because I know it will take up months of my life (like Bleak House did last year) - but I'm excited as well.


The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady noise, like that of a hive aswarm; and as they were giving the final little touches to hair and dresses before a mirror on the landing between potted trees, they heard, coming from the ballroom, the gently distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra, beginning the first waltz. A little ancient in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince Shcherbatsky called whelps, in an exceedingly open waistcoat, straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them and after running by, came back to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she had to promise this youth the second. An officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside in the doorway, and, stroking his mustache, admired the rosy Kitty.

Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had cost Kitty much trouble and planning, at this moment she walked into the ballroom in the elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as unconcernedly and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment's attention, as though she had been born in this tulle and lace, with this towering coiffure, surmounted by a rose and two small leaves.

When, just before entering the ballroom, the old Princess tried to adjust a sash ribbon that had become twisted, Kitty had drawn back a little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and graceful, and that nothing could need setting straight.

Kitty had one of her good days. Her dress was not uncomfortable anywhere; her lace bertha did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were neither crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, curving heels did not pinch, but gladdened her tiny feet; and the thick bandeaux of fair hair kept up on her head. All the three buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered her hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet ribbon of her locket nestled with special tenderness round her neck. This velvet ribbon was a darling; at home, regarding her neck in the looking glass, Kitty had felt that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a doubt, but the velvet ribbon was a darling. Kitty smiled here too, at the ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sensation of chill marble - a sensation she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips could not help but smile from the consciousness of their own attractiveness. She had scarcely entered the ballroom and reached the tulle-ribbon-lace-colored throng of ladies, waiting to be asked to dance - Kitty was never one of that throng - when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best partner, the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned conductor of the dances and master of ceremonies, married man, handsome and well built, Iegorushka Korsunsky. He had only just left the Countess Banina, with whom he had danced the first turn of the waltz, and, scanning his demesne - that is to say, a few couples who had started dancing - he caught sight of Kitty entering, and flew up to her with that peculiar, easy amble which is confined to conductors of the dances. Bowing and without even asking her if she cared to dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She looked round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess, smiling to her, took it.

"How good of you to come in good time," he said to her, embracing her waist; "such a bad habit to be late."

Bending her left arm, she laid it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink slippers began swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the slippery floor in time to the music.

"It's a rest to waltz with you," he said to her, as they fell into the first slow steps of the waltz. "It's charming - such lightness, precision." He said to her the same thing he said to almost all his partners whom he knew well.

She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room over his shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone the stale round of balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she had sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of the ballroom she saw the very flower of society grouped together. There - impossibly naked - was the beauty Liddy, Korsunsky's wife; there was the lady of the house; there shone the bald pate of Krivin, always to be found wherever the best people were; in that direction gazed the young men, not venturing to approach; there, too, she descried Stiva, and there she saw the charming figure and head of Anna in a black velvet gown. And he was there. Kitty had not seen him since the evening she refused Levin. With her farsighted eyes, knew him at once, and was even aware that he was looking at her.

"Another turn, eh? You're not tired?" said Korsunsky, a little out of breath.

"No, thank you!"

"Where shall I take you?"

"Madame Karenina's here, I think.... Take me to her."

"Wherever you command."

And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight toward the group in the left corner, continually saying, "Pardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames," and steering his course through the sea of lace, tulle and ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned his partner sharply round, so that her slim ankles, in light, transparent stockings, were exposed to view, and her train floated out in fan shape and covered Krivin's knees. Korsunsky bowed, set straight his open shirt front, and gave her his arm to conduct her to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty, flushed, took her train from Krivin's knees, and, a little giddy, looked round, seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had so urgently wished, but in a black, low- cut, velvet gown, showing her full shoulders and bosom, that looked as though carved in old ivory, and her rounded arms, with tiny, slender hands. The whole gown was trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black hair - her own, with no false additions - was a little wreath of pansies, and a similar one on the black ribbon of her sash, among white lace. Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was the little willful tendrils of her curly hair that persisted in escaping on the nape of her neck, and on her temples. Encircling her sculptured, strong neck was a thread of pearls.

Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had pictured her invariably in lilac. But now, seeing her in black, she felt that she had not fully perceived her charm. She saw her now as someone quite new and surprising to her. Now she understood that Anna could not have been in lilac, and that her charm was precisely in that she always stood out against her attire, that her dress could never be noticeable on her. And her black dress, with its sumptuous lace, was not noticeable on her; it was only the frame and all that was seen was she - simple, natural, elegant, and at the same time gay and animated.

She was standing, as always, very erect, and when Kitty drew near the group she was speaking to the master of the house, her head slightly turned toward him.

"No, I won't cast a stone"' she was saying, in answer to something, "though I can't understand it," she went on, shrugging her shoulders, and she turned at once with a soft smile of protection toward Kitty. With a cursory feminine glance she scanned her attire, and made a movement of her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by Kitty, signifying approval of her dress and her looks. "You came into the room dancing," she added.

"This is one of my most faithful supporters," said Korsunsky, bowing to Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had not yet seen. "The Princess helps to make any ball festive and successful. Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?" he said, bending down to her.

"Why, have you met?" inquired their host.

"Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white wolves - everyone knows us," answered Korsunsky. "A waltz, Anna Arkadyevna?"

"I don't dance whenever it's possible not to," she said.

"But tonight it's impossible," answered Korsunsky.

During the conversation Vronsky was approaching them.

"Well, since it's impossible tonight, let us start," she said, not noticing Vronsky's bow, and hastily put her hand on Korsunsky's shoulder.

"What is she vexed with him about?" thought Kitty, discerning that Anna had intentionally not responded to Vronsky's bow. Vronsky went up to Kitty, reminding her of the first quadrille, and expressing his regret at not having seen her all this time. Kitty gazed in admiration at Anna waltzing, as she listened to him. She expected him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not, and she glanced wonderingly at him. He flushed, and hurriedly asked her to waltz, but he had barely put his arm round her slender waist and taken the first step when the music suddenly stopped. Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and long afterward - for several years - this look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame.

"Pardon! Pardon! Waltz! Waltz!" shouted Korsunsky from the other side of the room, and, seizing the first young lady he came across he began dancing.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 26, 2008

The Books: "The Hobbit" (J.R.R. Tolkien)

hobbit.gifNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

As a child, I was never a Tolkien fanatic. I was a fanatic about other books - all of Madeleine L'Engle's "time" books, and I loved Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - and loved it so much that I didn't even get into the other books in that series (a situation that I do want to rectify some day). I read The Hobbit in 4th grade, and adored it - but it didn't propel me on to the level of fandom that some of my friends experienced - and I didn't read The Ring Trilogy until much later, high school maybe? I re-read all of them when Peter Jackson's movies came out, just to refresh - and I liked them better as an adult, but I feel like I missed that window - that tiny window that opens sometimes and creates a fanatic ... as opposed to just a fan. Not sure if that makes sense. I explain all of this mainly because I know how passionately people feel about these books, and I totally respect that. I respect passion about anything, pretty much (unless you say to me, "I am totally passionate about killing puppies with no remorse!" or "I am totally passionate about engineering some sort of genocide!" I am not supportive of THAT kind of passion!) So even though I don't share the passion for Tolkien's books, I totally get it, if that makes sense. I just somehow missed that moment. And, for me, I think The Hobbit is my favorite. There was something about it that captivated me as a small child (especially that kick-ass first chapter. You would be hard pressed to find a better opening to a book!) and I still feel it now as I flip through the pages.

There is something about how Tolkien sets up Bilbo Baggins in that first chapter which is just perfect. In not too many words, he paints a picture of the ultimate homebody. A cozy small creature who liked his fireplace and his meals and being cozy and warm inside. So to then picture him running and fleeing from monsters and such with huge scary wizards pushing him on is inconceivable. It's a classic tale - of someone called to a task who is not quite ready or prepared. But it was the picture of domestic warmth and comfort in that first chapter that sucked me in. I wasn't one of those little girls who really enjoyed "playing house" - but I DID like little small things ... I liked things in miniature. The people who lived behind the bookcase at Captain Kangaroo's house, for example. Or the entire "Borrowers" series - HEAVEN!! I loved Fisher Price ... because I loved the fact that they were so teeny ... I don't know why that caught my imagination so much, but it did. I wondered at the perspective of someone who was so small that he could use a human-sized thimble as a laundry basket. What would the world look like? I had a series of fairy books, where beautiful drawings of little fairies were shown lying around in buttercups or violets - flowers I knew well, I knew how small they were! So there was something about Bilbo's house, its perfect snugness, how he had everything he needed right there ... AND that he was small - not Fisher Price small - but small enough! I just loved that. I was sad when he had to leave his cozy house, and kept yearning and hoping for him to get back there again, where all was cozy and perfect. Which, of course, is Tolkien's point - not just in The Hobbit but in the Ring trilogy: the yearning for home ... Yearning for home makes up much of the world's great myths - it's probably the most human of all yearnings. Some hairy cave dude in 10,000 B.C. on a glacier killing a woolly mammoth is hoping that he will make it back to his hole in the rock by nightfall, where he will be safe for a time. You know ... we all have that. Tolkien was smart to make his heroes Hobbits, the most homebound of creatures - small, domestic, in love with comfort, not up for change ... and the simplest of pleasures are the best. To throw these creatures into the war between good and evil in their entire land ... Just perfect. Who else could save everything but a Hobbit??

And that's why the first chapter of The Hobbit is so perfect. Out of nowhere - seriously, out of a clear blue sky - dwarves show up at Bilbo Baggins' door, and breeze in, hanging up their many colored hats (I looooved as a kid that each dwarf had his own color hat ... It really appealed to my OCD side, and I memorized each dwarf's color, because it pleased me to do so. It gave order to the chaotic universe) and they all assume he is expecting them, but he not only has no idea what is going on, it takes Bilbo a while to really understand what is going to happen, and that he will not be able to say "no" to Gandalf.

I guess what I'm saying is I related to Bilbo. The picture Tolkien paints of the coziness of his house was so captivating to me that I never wanted to leave it myself. It was like the Beaver's house in Lion Witch Wardrobe (excerpt here) - a vision of coziness which is just made more poignant by the cold dangerous world just outside the warm yellow windows. Bilbo's house is like that. He has a moment in the first chapter when he gets sucked into the wizards' singing - and suddenly finds himself imagining unheard of things - dragons, jewels, being far far away from his home, caves, adventures - and it's terrifying to him.

Little does he know!

Here's an excerpt. I chose it because it has my favorite passage in the book, and maybe my second favorite thing Tolkien ever wrote (this has to be my first).


EXCERPT FROM The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

So they laughed and sang in the trees; and pretty fair nonsense I daresay you think it. Not that they would care; they would only laugh all the more if you told them so. They were elves of course. Soon Bilbo caught glimpses of them as the darkness deepened. He loved elves, though he seldom met them; but he was a little frightened of them too. Dwarves don't get on well with them. Even decent enough dwarves like Thorin and his friends think them foolish (which is a very foolish thing to think), or get annoyed with them. For some elves tease them and laugh at them, and most of all at their beards.

"Well, well!" said a voice. "Just look! Bilbo the hobbit on a pony, my dear! Isn't it delicious!"

Then off they went into another song as ridiculous as the one I have written down in full. At last one, a tall young fellow, came out from the trees and bowed to Gandalf and to Thorin.

"Welcome to the valley!" he said.

"Thank you!: said Thorin a bit gruffly; but Gandalf was already off his horse and among the elves, talking merrily with them.

"You are a little out of your way," said the elf: "that is, if you are making for the only path across the water and to the house beyond. We will set you right, but you had best get on foot, until you are over the bridge. Are you going to stay a bit and sing with us, or will you go straight on? Supper is preparing over there," he said. "I can smell the wood-fires for the cooking."

Tired as he was, Bilbo would have liked to stay a while. Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things. Also he would have liked to have a few private words with these people that seemed to know his names and all about him, although he had never seen them before. He thought their opinion of his adventure might be interesting. Elves know a lot and are wondrous folks for news, and know what is going on among the peoples of the land, as quick as water flows, or quicker.

But the dwarves were all for supper as soon as possible just then, and would not stay. On they all went, leading their ponies, till they were brought to a good path and so at last to the very brink of the river. It was flowing fast and noisily, as mountain-streams do of a summer evening, when sun has been all day on the snow far up above. There was only a narrow bridge of stone without a parapet, as narrow as a pony could well walk on; and over that they had to go, slow and careful, one by one, each leading his pony by the bridle. The elves had brought bright lanterns to the shore, and they sang a merry song as the party went across.

"Don't dip your beard in the foam, father!" they cried to Thorin, who was bent almost on to his hands and knees. "It is long enough without watering it."

"Mind Bilbo doesn't eat all the cakes!" they called. "He is too fat to get through key-holes yet!"

"Hush, hush! Good People! and good night!" said Gandalf, who came last. "Valleys have ears, and some elves have over merry tongues. Good night!"

And so at last they all came to the Last Homely House, and found its doors flung wide.

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. They stayed long in that good house, fourteen days at least, and they found it hard to leave. Bilbo would gladly have stopped there for ever and ever - even supposing a wish would have taken him right back to his hobbit-hole without trouble. Yet there is little to tell about their stay.

The master of the house was an elf-friend - one of those people whose fathers came into the strange stories before the beginning of History, the wars of the evil goblins and the elves and the first men in the North. In those days of our tale there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Elrond the master of the house was their chief.

He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves, and as kind as summer. He comes into many tales, but his part in the story of Bilbo's great adventure is only a small one, though important, as you will see, if we ever get to the end of it. His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley.

I wish I had time to tell you even a few of the tales or one or two of the songs that they heard in that house. All of them, the ponies as well, grey refreshed and strong in a few days there. Their clothes were mended as well as their bruises, their tempers and their hopes. Their bags were filled with food and provisions light to carry but strong to bring them over the mountain passes. Their plans were improved with the best advice. So the time came to midsummer eve, and they were to go on again with the early sun on midsummer morning.

Elrond knew all about runes of every kind. That day he looked at the swords they had brought from the trolls' lair, and he said: "These are not troll-make. They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the West, my kin. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars. They must have come from a dragon's hoard or goblin plunder, for dragons and goblins destroyed that city many years ago. This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foehammer that the king of Gondolin once wore. Keep them well!"

"Whence did the trolls get them, I wonder?" said Thorin looking at his sword with new interest.

"I could not say," said Elrond, "but one may guess that your trolls had plundered other plunderers, or come on the remnants of old robberies in some hold in the mountains. I have heard that there are still forgotten treasures of old to be found in the deserted caverns of the mines of Moria, since the dwarf and goblin war."

Thorin pondered these words. "I will keep this sword in honour," he said. "May it soon cleave goblins once again!"

"A wish that is likely to be granted soon enough in the mountains!" said Elrond. "But show me now your map!"

He took it and gazed long at it, and he shook his head; for if he did not altogether approve of dwarves and their love of gold, he hated dragons and their cruel wickedness, and he grieved to remember the ruin of the town of Dale and its merry bells, and the burned banks of the bright River Running. The moon was shining in a broad silver crescent. He held up the map and the white light shone through it. "What is this?" he said. "There are moon-letters here, beside the plain runes which say 'five feet high the door and three may walk abreast.'"

"What are moon-letters?" asked the hobbit full of excitement. He loved maps, as I have told you before; and he also liked runes and letters and cunning handwriting, though when he wrote himself it was a bit thin and spidery.

"Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them," said Elrond, "not when you look straight at them. They can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape and season as the day when they were written. The dwarves invented them and wrote them with silver pens, as your friends could tell you. These must have been written on a midsummer's eve in a crescent moon, a long while ago."

"What do they say?" asked Gandalf and Thorin together, a bit vexed perhaps that even Elrond should have found this out first, though really there had not been a chance before, and there would not have been another until goodness knows when.

"Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks," read Elrond, "and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the key-hole."

"Durin, Durin!" said Thorin. "He was the father or the fathers of the eldest race of Dwarves, the Longbeards, and my first ancestor: I am his heir."

"Then what is Durin's Day?" asked Elrond.

"The first day of the dwarves' New Year," said Thorin, "is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again."

"That remains to be seen," said Gandalf. "Is there any more writing?"

"None to be seen by this moon," said Elrond, and he gave the map back to Thorin; and then they went down to the water to see the elves dance and sing upon the midsummer's eve.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (49) | TrackBack

June 24, 2008

The Books: "Gulliver's Travels" (Jonathan Swift)

41TG4VRBYBL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Gulliver's Travels , by Jonathan Swift

Edgell Rickword said, of Jonathan Swift:

"[He is] the most vigorous hater we've ever had in our literature."

He said those words in the 20th century and I would imagine that the judgment will still stand, long into the future. Haters are easy to come by. But vigorous articulate haters with a skewering pen - leaving his enemies no escape? Rare indeed. I've read self-important political bloggers (is there any other kind?) describe what they are trying to do as Swiftian, and sorry, boys, gotta tell you: Don't flatter yourself. Meanie tantrum insults thrown like poo at a wall is not Swiftian, mkay, boys? And satire is more difficult to write properly than a well-wrought 5 act tragedy. Satire is out of style these days - the audience is much more literal now, that's just the way it is - so people (in general) don't have an ear for it. People are confronted with satire and the response more often than not is, "But he's exaggerating!!" Uhm, yeah. It's called satire. There's a reason why, to this day, "A Modest Proposal" is taught as the primary example of satire in Western literature. Nothing else comes close. It was published in 1729. That's how powerful it is. Everyone else is still trying to match it. I get so annoyed by people comparing themselves to Swift, I'm sorry. SPOOF is not satire. PARODY is not satire. That just goes to show you how definitions have been so degraded that nobody even knows what satire is. Anyway, whatever, I sound like the snot that I am, and I am totally fine with that, more and more every day. It's a delight when you come across an honest-to-God satirical piece of work nowadays - that really has the courage of its convictions, and doesn't crap out at the end. The first thing that comes to mind is the movie Election which so could have been terrible, or just a "spoof" of the election process. But it's not. It's deeper than that and it has deeper things to say. It's angrier. Satire is always angry. And the film just works as satire - with all its humor and rage and specificity.

Back to Swift. And his hating.

In 1725, Jonathan Swift wrote in a letter to his great friend Alexander Pope:

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals: for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-a-one and Judge Such-a-one: so with physicians - I will not speak of my own trade - soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon which I have governed myself many years, but do not tell, and so I shall go on till I have done with them. I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition animal rationale, and to show it would be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy, though not in Timon's manner, the whole building of my Travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my opinion. By consequence you are to embrace it immediately, and procure that all who deserve my esteem may do so too. The matter is so clear that it will admit of no dispute; nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in the point.

You know, I really love that. Swift hated the "group". We see that so clearly in Gullivers Travels - a book broken up into 4 parts, with 4 different journeys of Lemuel Gulliver, to fantastical lands ruled by teeny people or giants or horse-like creatures, or whatever. These people are not individuals. They are groups. Gulliver is kind of a pompous ass, truth be told, he's always like, "As someone who has studied Sanskrit I understood what they were saying ..." "As a person with a deep background in calculus and fire-eating, I understood my role here ..." Like, the man has done everything, seen everything, and there's nothing you could tell him that he didn't know. He's a big fat bore. His wife and kids are probably psyched he goes away on such long journeys, just so they won't have to suffer through his pompous lectures anymore. But of course Gulliver would never see that about himself. He is an insufferable companion. That's one of the reasons why he is so funny.

My only complaint about my copy of the book is that the footnotes suck. I want more detail. Satire is necessarily very local, and so much of what Swift is satirizing is lost in the mists of time. I'm no history ignoramus, especially not when it comes to Ireland, and the British policies in Ireland - but still - the footnotes just aren't good enough. I would have liked more detail.

The book ends with Gulliver hanging out with the Houyhnhnms (benign horse-like creatures) and becoming so enraptured and used to their peaceful ways that he finds Yahoos (humans) absolutely disgusting. He returns home, and his wife and children run towards him, thrilled to see him, and he is so revolted by them he slams the door in their faces. This goes back to Swift's generalized hatred of the human race. He liked Tom, Dick and Harry - but mankind could suck it, as far as Swift was concerned. Not to mention the fact that he doesn't really see women as part of mankind - they are completely "other" and he is revolted by them. We see that in Gulliver when Gulliver is standing on the breast of the giant woman, and he sees her pores and the blackheads and the dirt on her bosom and it is totally disgusting. So fine. Women aren't included in "mankind". Tell me something I didn't already know!

There are many fantastical worlds here (I love the floating island) - and Swift describes the different ways and customs with great verve, so that you can really see the worlds - but my favorite parts of the books are when you can feel Swift's anger. Has there been a more angry writer? I'm hard-pressed to think of one. There's the scene where the Lilliputian palace catches on fire, and Gulliver, full of wine from the night before, realizes he has the perfect solution to put out the inferno - he urinates onto the palace, putting out the fire. I don't need a guide book to understand that. But there's a great plausible deniability about the whole enterprise, which makes Swift seem quite devilish. He's just telling a story, don't you know ... a fairy tale, with tiny people, and giants. Don't read too much into it! Come on now! You're being too serious!! It's brilliant.

I love anger. I love subversive literature. I love those who despise the status quo, those who are uppity trouble-makers. There's a lot of trouble to be made. There are a lot of things which are assumed to be true by the majority of people ... and anyone who comes out and says, "I HATE this" is held in suspicion. Swift was one of those people (even though in many ways he was part of the establishment). But he couldn't help but see, with his laser eye, how horrible politics were, how stupid everybody was (for the most part), and really how awful people were, especially those with any authority - just look at how we treat each other. It is indefensible. Swift does not defend that which is indefensible and I love that about him.

One of the centerpieces of the book is when Gulliver sits down with the King of the giants - and tries to answer all of the King's questions about law/politics/society of the rest of the world (excerpt below). Swift is brilliant here. His pen is a sword. Sometimes you can't even tell that he IS cutting something. His enemy might never have known he has mortally wounded until his arm fell off - the slicing is that smooth and perfect. Swift often uses terms of praise and approbation - but in a way where you can tell he means the exact opposite. It's brutal. Swift shows the absurdity of all of this by putting it all into the questions from the King. One can imagine contemporaries of Swift howling with laughter at the thought of trying to answer those questions in the affirmative ("Were those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters?" "HELL NO!" etc.) ... and through that now-you-see-it now-you-don't literary maneuver, Swift stabs his opponent in the heart. The thing is: you could hear some pompous blowhard (who had been pricked, naturally, by the implications of the satire) try to defend himself - and say, 'Well, but yes, it is always more complicated than you would think ..." and it is THAT kind of person that Swift finds most disgusting. The ones with pride. The ones who have something to lose, the ones who choose to defend the indefensible. The rot goes to the deepest levels of society. If you try to deny it or defend it, you are Swift's enemy.

Yeats wrote a poem in honor of Swift:

Swift's Epitaph
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.

That "imitate him if you dare" challenge still stands. Incredible.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Gulliver's Travels , by Jonathan Swift

The King, who, as I before observed, was a Prince of excellent Understanding, would frequently order that I should be brought in my Box, and set upon the Table in his Closet: He would then command me to bring one of my Chairs out of the Box, and sit down within three Yards Distance upon the Top of the Cabinet, which brought me almost to a level with his Face. In this Manner I had several Conversations with him. I one Day took the Freedom to tell his Majesty, that the Contempt he discovered towards Europe, and the rest of the World, did not seem answerable to those excellent Qualities of the Mind he was Master of. That Reason did not extend it self with the Bulk of the Body: On the contrary, we observed in our Country, that the tallest Persons were usually least provided with it. That among other Animals, Bees and Ants had the Reputation of more Industry, Art and Sagacity, than many of the larger Kinds; and that, as inconsiderable as he took me to be, I hoped I might live to do his Majesty some signal Service. The King heard me with Attention, and began to conceive a much better Opinion of me than he had ever before. He desired I would give him as exact an Account of the Government of England, as I possibly could; because, as fond as Princes commonly are of their own Customs (for so he conjectured of other Monarchs, by my former Discourses), he should be glad to hear of any Thing that might deserve Imitation.

Imagine with thy self, courteous Reader, how often I then wished for the Tongue of Demosthenes or Cicero, that might have enabled me to celebrate the Praise of my own dear native Country in a Stile equal to its Merits and Felicity.

I began my Discourse by informing his Majesty that our Dominions consisted of two Islands, which composed three mighty Kingdoms under one Sovereign, beside our Plantations in America. I dwelt long upon the Fertility of our Soil, and the Temperature of our Climate. I then spoke at large upon the Constitution of an English Parliament, partly made up of an illustrious Body called the House of Peers, Persons of the noblest Blood, and of the most ancient and ample Patrimonies. I described that extraordinary Care always taken of their Education in Arts and Arms, to qualify them for being Counsellors born to the King and Kingdom; to have a share in the Legislature; to be Members of the highest Court of Judicature, from whence there could be no Appeal; and to be Champions always ready for the Defence of their Prince and Country, by their Valour, Conduct, and Fidelity. That these were the Ornament and Bulwark of the Kingdom, worthy Followers of their most renowned Ancestors, whose Honour had been the Reward of their Virtue, from which their Posterity were never once known to degenerate. To these we joined several holy Persons, as part of that Assembly, under the Title of Bishops, whose peculiar Business it is to take care of Religion, and of those who instruct the People therein. These were searched, and sought out, through the whole Nation, by the Prince and his wisest Counsellors, among such of the Priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the Sanctity of their Lives, and the depth of their Erudition; who were indeed the spiritual Fathers of the Clergy and the People.

That, the other Part of the Parliament consisted of an Assembly called the House of Commons, who were all principal Gentlemen, freely picked and culled out by the People themselves, for their great Abilities and Love of their Country, to represent the Wisdom of the whole Nation. And these two Bodies make up the most august Assembly in Europe, to whom, in Conjunction with the Prince, the whole Legislature is Committed.

I then descended to the Courts of Justice, over which the Judges, those venerable Sages and Interpreters of the Law presided, for determining the disputed Rights and Properties of Men, as well as for the Punishment of Vice, and Protection of Innocence. I mentioned the prudent Management of our Treasury; the Valour and Atchievements of our Forces by Sea and Land. I computed the Number of our People, by reckoning how many Millions there might be of each religious Sect, or political Party among us. I did not omit even our Sports and Pastimes, or any other Particular which I thought might redound to the Honour of my Country. And I finished all with a brief historical Account of Affairs and Events in England for about an hundred Years past.

This Conversation was not ended under five Audiences, each of several Hours, and the King heard the whole with great Attention, frequently taking Notes of what I spoke, as well as Memorandums of all Questions he intended to ask me.

When I had put an End to these long Discourses, his Majesty in a sixth Audience consulting his Notes, proposed many Doubts, Queries, and Objections, upon every Article. He asked what Methods were used to cultivate the Minds and Bodies of our young Nobility, and in what kind of Business they commonly spent the first and teachable Part of their Lives. What Course was taken to supply that Assembly when any Noble Family became extinct. What Qualifications were necessary in those who were to be created new Lords: Whether the Humour of the Prince, a Sum of Money to a Court Lady or a Prime Minister, or a Design of strengthening a Party opposite to the publick Interest, ever happened to be Motives in those Advancements. What Share of Knowledge these Lords had in the Laws of their Country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the Properties of their Fellow-Subjects in the last Resort. Whether they were always so free from Avarice, Partialities, or Want, that a Bribe, or some other sinister View, could have no Place among them. Whether those holy Lords I spoke of were always promoted to that Rank upon account of their Knowledge in religious Matters, and the Sanctity of their Lives, had never been Compliers with the Times while they were common Priests, or slavish prostitute Chaplains to some Nobleman, whose Opinions they continued servilely to follow after they were admitted into that Assembly.

He then desired to know what Arts were practiced in electing those whom I called Commoners: Whether a Stranger with a strong Purse might not influence the vulgar Voters to choose him before their own Landlord, or the most considerable Gentleman in the Neighbourhood. How it came to pass, that People were so violently bent upon getting into this Assembly, which I allowed to be a great Trouble and Expense, often to the Ruin of their Families, without any Salary or Pension: Because this appeared such an exalted Strain of Virtue and publick Spirit, that his Majesty seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere: and he desired to know whether such zealous Gentlemen could have any Views of refunding themselves for the Charges and Trouble they were at, by sacrificing the publick Good to the Designs of a weak and vicious Prince in Conjunction with a corrupted Ministry. He multiplied his Questions, and sifted me thoroughly upon every Part of this Head, proposing numberless Enquiries and Objections, which I think it not prudent or convenient to repeat.

Upon what I said in relation to our Courts of Justice, his Majesty desired to be satisfied in several Points: And this I was the better able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long Suit in Chancery, which was decreed for me with Costs. He asked, what Time was usually spent in determining between Right and Wrong, and what Degree of Expence. Whether Advocates and Orators had Liberty to plead in Causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive. Whether Party in Religion or Politicks were observed to be of any Weight in the Scale of Justice. Whether those pleading Orators were Persons educated in the general Knowledge of Equity, or only in provincial, national, and other local Customs. Whether they or their Judges had any Part in penning those Laws which they assumed the Liberty of interpreting and glossing upon at their Pleasure. Whether they had ever at different Times pleaded for and against the same Cause, and cited Precedents to prove contrary Opinions. Whether they were a rich or a poor Corporation. Whether they received any pecuniary Reward for pleading or delivering their Opinions. And particularly whether they were ever admitted as Members in the lower Senate.

He fell next upon the Management of our Treasury; and said, he thought my Memory had failed me, because I computed our Taxes at about five or six Millions a Year, and when I came to mention the Issues, he found they sometimes amounted to more than double; for the Notes he had taken were very particular in this Point, because he hoped, as he told me, that the Knowledge of our Conduct might be useful to him, and he could not be deceived in his Calculations. But, if what I told him were true, he was still at a Loss how a Kingdom could run out of its Estate like a private Person. He asked me, who were our Creditors; and where we should find Money to pay them. He wonder'd to hear me talk of such chargeable and extensive Wars; that certainly we must be a quarrelsome People, or live among very bad Neighbours, and that our Generals must needs be richer than our Kings. He asked what Business we had out of our own Islands, unless upon the Score of Trade or Treaty, or to defend the Coasts with our Fleet. Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing Army in the midst of Peace, and among a free People. He said, if we were governed by our own Consent in the Persons of our Representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my Opinion, whether a private Man's House might not better be defended by himself, his Children, and Family, than by half a dozen rascals picked up at a venture in the Streets, for small Wages, who might get a hundred times more by cutting their Throats.

He laughed at my odd Kind of Arithmetick (as he was pleased to call it) in reckoning the Numbers of our People by a Computation drawn from the several Sects among us in Religion and Politicks. He said, he knew no Reason, why those who entertain Opinions prejudicial to the Publick, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was Tyranny in any Government to require the first, so it was Weakness not to enforce the second: For a Man may be allowed to keep poisons in his Closet, but not to vend them about for Cordials.

He observed, that among the Diversions of our Nobility and Gentry, I had mentioned Gaming. He desired to know at what Age this Entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their Time it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their Fortunes: Whether mean vicious People, by their Dexterity in that Art, might not arrive at great Riches, and sometimes keep our very Nobles in Dependance, as well as habituate them to vile Companions, wholly take them from the Improvement of their Minds, and force them, by the Losses they have received, to learn and practice that infamous Dexterity upon others.

He was perfectly astonished with the historical Account I gave him of our Affairs during the last Century, protesting it was only a Heap of Conspiracies, Rebellions, Murders, Massacres, Revolutions, Banishments, the very worst Effects that Avarice, Faction, Hypocrisy, Perfidiousness, Cruelty, Rage, Madness, Hatred, Envy, Lust, Malice, or Ambition could produce.

His Majesty in another Audience was at the Pains to recapitulate the Sum of all I had spoken, compared the Questions he made with the Answers I had given; then taking me into his Hands, and stroaking me gently, delivered himself in these Words, which I shall never forget nor the Manner he spoke them in: My little Friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable Panegyric upon your Country: You have clearly proved that Ignorance, Idleness, and Vice may be sometimes the only Ingredients for qualifying a Legislator: That Laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose Interest and Abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some Lines of an Institution, which in its Original might have been tolerable, but these half erazed, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by Corruptions. It doth not appear from all you have said, how any one Virtue is required towards the Procurement of any one Station among you, much less that Men are ennobled on Account of their Virtue, that Priests are advanced for their Piety or Learning, Soldiers for their Conduct or Valour, Judges for their Integrity, Senators for the Love of their Country, or Counsellors for their Wisdom. As for yourself, (continued the King,) who have spent the greatest Part of your Life in Travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many Vices of your Country. But by what I have gathered from your own Relation, and the Answers I have with much Pain wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 23, 2008

The Books: "East of Eden" (John Steinbeck)

0142000655.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

I just love this book so much. There's one sentence in it about springtime coming to Salinas Valley in California (I looked for the sentence, and can't find it) - and the image is that the flowers become so gold that you could almost believe the color is molten, that you could dip a spoon into the flower and scoop out some liquid gold. To me, that's what the entire book feels like. Pure molten gold. So good you want to savor it, you want every word to last, you don't want it to end. It's just words on a page - in the same way that the flowers are just yellow .... but all together, it takes on a palpably fluid and tangible essence.

There is so much in it. It has minutia, conversation, details, and it has grandiosity to a Biblical level. It goes into family drama, the personalities of multiple people - fully drawn, complex ... and it also rhapsodizes about the development of the West, and all that that means. So much. There is the history of California, first of all. There is also the history of two families - the Hamiltons and the Trasks ... side by side ... and man, you couldn't get two families with more divergent energies than those two! The book goes through three generations. You get to know Samuel Hamilton as well as you know anyone in your own life. Same with Adam Trask. And Charles Trask (shivers). Not to mention Cathy - a demonic force who comes into their lives from the east (east of Eden?) - leaving a trail of destruction behind her, nothing that can be pinned on her, but she's a wrecker. You also get a parable of good vs. evil. I think Steinbeck truly believed that good prevails. Even if it takes many lifetimes. Even if it seems, at times, that evil wins out ... I think he felt that there was a morality at the heart of man, an essential goodness ... that could not be killed. His books can be quite dark, but there is an optimism there that cannot be destroyed, and that is never as clear as it is in East of Eden, which - with all its tragedy - has one of the most hopeful endings of all of Steinbeck's books (perhaps of any book!). People like Cathy are not malevolent because they're just born bad, and they like to stir up shit (although that is true with Cathy as well - but that's a symptom, not a cause). Someone like Cathy is malevolent because goodness actually disturbs her, she doesn't understand it, and so it cannot be allowed to stand. She is an alien from another planet. She would make a great dictator. She would understand Pol Pot, and Stalin. She is tone-deaf, when it comes to conventional morality and any kind of softness. She has learned to lie, and make the correct cooing noises that sound relatively human so that no one will pick up the scent ... but she looks around the world, sees everyone behaving in a way she finds incomprehensible (she only understands selfish motives), and will do whatever it takes to get whatever she wants. Steinbeck obviously sees that most of us are mixed bags - we all have good and evil, and if we are moderately healthy (meaning spiritually) - we can allow the two things to battle it out within us. If you are too good (like Adam Trask), you risk being naive, stupid, and forgiving towards those who do not deserve it. Look out. Don't be TOO good. Because then you'll have demons like Cathy and Charles walk all over you.

By the end of the book, we have another set of brothers - Cal and Aron ... again, with the good and evil, but by this time, perhaps it's been watered down - not so intensely stark as it was in earlier generations. Cal FEELS he is all bad, but that is only in comparison to his brother, Aron - the golden boy, who has his father's unconditional love. But Cal is obviously not all bad. It is his own psyche he must struggle with, his motherlessness state - his curiosity about who his mother is (it is Cathy, of course) - and how he feels that he must have some of Cathy in him. There's got to be a reason he has these bad thoughts, and wants to steal Aron's girlfriend, and all the other stuff.

Even to lay out the book like this does it a disservice, because reading it calls to mind the "feast of reason and flow of soul" from Alexander Pope. It is intellectually rigorous, yet it has a LAZY pace - and I mean that in the best way. We are not in a race to the finish. Life is long. There is time. There is time for long philosophical conversations - where the characters hash out things - not things that have anything to do with plot, or story - but with ideas. There is great passion in the book, and terror as well.

The character of Cathy scared the shit out of me from the first moment I met her, and she scares me still. She comes up often in my brain, as a marker, a reminder. I have many questions and thoughts about people who seem blatantly amoral - people who seem as though they are missing something. Where does that come from? Their environment? They weren't taught well? Or is it (as Steinbeck suggests) that monsters are possible? Psychological monsters. Cathy is "off" from the moment she is born. She looks at her parents and feels no attachment or familial feeling. Even as a tiny child, she looked at them and knew they would be obstacles. She is terrifying.

I suppose some people would find the themes of the book too black and white, too starkly oppositional - but I don't find it that way at all. Perhaps because it is NOT a condensed story, it has no urgency - so I never feel like Steinbeck is hammering me over the head. Yes, we have three generations of brothers - with the "good" brother having a name starting with A, and the "bad" brother having a name starting with C - Cain, Abel, yeah, we got it Steinbeck ... but again, because of the length and the unrushed pace of the book, I always felt more like I was just meeting people, not symbols or allegories.

I think a lot of what helps is that there is another family we also get to know - the Hamilton family, a huge sprawling Irish family who lives on the nearby farm. Steinbeck's actual mother's name was Olive Hamilton - and there's an Olive Hamilton in the book who marries a Steinbeck. So. Obviously, Steinbeck is blending fiction and autobiography here. The Hamiltons are just - God, I love those people. Many of their stories will stay in my brain forever. Olive Hamilton getting a ride from a barnstormer. The dressmaker daughter, fun-loving, awesome, and the heartbreak which changed her whole life. Liza, the matriarch - a tough humorless woman who does her best to keep her dreamy husband in line, with all his pipe dreams. She's an amazing character. The family: hard-working, faithful, loyal, tempestuous, impractical - the immigrant experience (the Irish immigrant experience) writ large.

And then, of course, there is Lee, the servant at the Trask house - a Chinese man - who befriends Samuel Hamilton. I can barely speak about Lee without getting a lump in my throat. He is one of my favorite characters in all of literature. He speaks pidgin English, and then one night - on a long buggy ride home with Samuel Hamilton - he finally breaks out of it, and speaks like normal, in perfect English. Yet he maintains the broken English for most people, because he finds it easier to get along with them ... He says that if he spoke properly other people wouldn't understand him. An amazing commentary on racism and how it colors how we see others. We can't even hear them. But Lee ... I don't even know where to start. He's in most of the book, since he comes to the Trask house early on and is there to the end - through generations. He is a philosopher, he's no dummy, but he's not a wise sage with all the answers - just a man who thinks deeply, and has ideas about the best way to live. I freakin' LOVE Lee. And I love Steinbeck for creating him, because sometimes I just pull down my copy of the book and read over some of the long conversational passages between Lee and Samuel - where they sit and discuss the Bible, and good and evil, and the words you should choose to live by if you want to live a good life.

Like I said, if you are anxious for plot or things to happen then East of Eden is not your book. But man, it has enriched my life immeasurably to read this book time and time again. It makes me think. It makes me proud of America, but in a really humble and sometimes complicated way. Because, like anything, it is a mixed bag. You must take the evil with the good. If you put your hands over your ears and shout LALALALA at the thought of evil ... then you are even more vulnerable to it. It is those who are slightly cynical, slightly distant (like Lee, like Abra, another great character who doesn't enter until the last third of the book) - who have the best fighting chance. They have not been totally corrupted, yet they are nobody's fools.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I just love all of these people. Not Cathy. No way. That bitch is on her own, she scares me ... but everyone else? It's just a pleasure to hang out with them. It's not always fun - they go through hell ... but don't we all.

It's a deeply human book, one of my all-time favorites.

Here's an excerpt. You can see here how Adam, with all his good intentions, is blind to reality and cannot sense that ... well. I suppose we are all blinded by love to some extent, so I do not judge him too harshly. But you can see Samuel Hamilton looking at Cathy, first time meeting her, and knowing that something is not quite right. It's a chilling scene, the most chilling part being Adam's utter oblivion - which seems almost willful. Like - he is CHOOSING to not see what is going on. He chose to be blind from the start. That is Steinbeck's complexity. Adam is not just an idiot, a moony-eyed moron who can't conceive of evil. No. He DECIDES to not believe in it, even when faced with it headon. It's a choice. Free will. His brother Charles, bad to the bone, looked at Cathy and knew exactly what kind of monster he was dealing with. But Adam? Adam fell in love. Nightmare.

EXCERPT FROM East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

Because the day had been hot, Lee set a table outside under an oak tree, and as the sun neared the western mountains he padded back and forth from the kitchen, carrying the cold meats, pickles, potato salad, coconut cake, and peach pie which were supper. In the center of the table he placed a gigantic stoneware pitcher full of milk.

Adam and Samuel came from the wash house, their hair and faces shining with water, and Samuel's beard was fluffy after its soaping. They stood at the trestle table and waited until Cathy came out.

She walked slowly, picking her way as though she were afraid she would fall. Her full skirt and apron concealed to a certain extent her swelling abdomen. Her face was untroubled and childlike, and she clasped her hands in front of her. She had reached the table before she looked up and glanced from Samuel to Adam.

Adam held her chair for her. "You haven't met Mr. Hamilton, dear," he said.

She held out her hand. "How do you do," she said.

Samuel had been inspecting her. "It's a beautiful face," he said. "I'm glad to meet you. You are well, I hope?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I'm well."

The men sat down. "She makes it formal whether she wants to or not. Every meal is a kind of occasion," Adam said.

"Don't talk like that," she said. "It isn't true."

"Doesn't it feel like a party to you, Samuel?" he asked.

"It does so, and I can tell you there's never been such a candidate for a party as I am. And my children - they're worse. My boy Tom wanted to come today. He's spoiling to get off the ranch."

Samuel suddenly realized that he was making his speech last to prevent silence from falling on the table. He paused, and the silence dropped. Cathy looked down at her plate while she ate a sliver of roast lamb. She looked up as she put it between her small sharp teeth. Her wide-set eyes communicated nothing. Samuel shivered.

"It isn't cold, is it?" Adam asked.

"Cold? No. A goose walked over my grave, I guess."

"Oh, yes, I know that feeling."

The silence fell again. Samuel waited for some speech to start up, knowing in advance that it would not.

"Do you like our valley, Mrs. Trask?"

"What? Oh, yes."

"If it isn't impertinent to ask, when is your baby due?"

"In about six weeks," Adam said. "My wife is one of those paragons - a woman who does not talk very much."

"Sometimes a silence tells the most," said Samuel, and he saw Cathy's eyes leap up and down again, and it seemed to him that the scar on her forehead grew darker. Something had flicked her the way you'd flick a horse with the braided string popper on a buggy whip. Samuel couldn't recall what he had said that had made her give a small inward start. He felt a tenseness coming over him that was somewhat like the feeling he had just before the water wand pulled down, an awareness of something strange and strained. He glanced at Adam and saw that he was looking raptly at his wife. Whatever was strange was not strange to Adam. His face had happiness on it.

Cathy was chewing a piece of meat, chewing with her front teeth. Samuel had never seen anyone chew that way before. And when she swallowed, her little tongue flicked around her lips. Samuel's mind repeated, "Something - something - can't find what it is. Something's wrong," and the silence hung on the table.

There was a shuffle behind him. He turned. Lee set a teapot on the table and shuffled away.

Samuel began to talk to push the silence away. He told how he had first come to the valley fresh from Ireland, but within a few words neither Cathy nor Adam was listening to him. To prove it, he used a trick he had devised to discover whether his children were listening when they begged him to read to them and would not let him stop. He threw in two sentences of nonsense. There was no response from either Adam or Cathy. He gave up.

He bolted his supper, drank his tea scalding hot, and folded his napkin. "Ma'am, if you'll excuse me, I'll ride off home. And I thank you for your hospitality."

"Good night," she said.

Adam jumped to his feet. He seemed torn out of a reverie. "Don't go now. I hoped to persuade you to stay the night."

"No, thank you, but that I can't. And it's not a long ride. I think - of course, I know - there'll be a moon."

"When will you start the wells?"

"I'll have to get my rig together, do a piece of sharpening, and put my house in order. In a few days I'll send the equipment with Tom."

The life was flowing back into Adam. "Make it soon," he said. "I want it soon. Cathy, we're going to make the most beautiful place in the world. There'll be nothing like it anywhere."

Samuel switched his gaze to Cathy's face. It did not change. The eyes were flat and the mouth with its small up-curve at the corners was carven.

"That will be nice," she said.

For just a moment Samuel had an impulse to do or say something to shock her out of her distance. He shivered again.

"Another goose?" Adam asked.

"Another goose." The dusk was falling and already the tree forms were dark against the sky. "Good night, then."

"I'll walk down with you."

"No, stay with your wife. You haven't finished your supper."

"But I --"

"Sit down, man. I can find my own horse, and if I can't I'll steal one of yours." Samuel pushed Adam gently down in his chair. "Good night. Good night. Good night, ma'am." He walked quickly toward the shed.

Old platter-foot Doxology was daintily nibbling hay from the manger with lips like two flounders. The halter chain clinked against wood. Samuel lifted down his saddle from the big nail where it hung by one wooden stirrup and swung it over the broad back. He was lacing the latigo through the cinch rings when there was a small stir behind him. He turned and saw the silhouette of Lee against the last light from the open shadows.

"When you come back?" the Chinese asked softly.

"I don't know. In a few days or a week. Lee, what is it?"

"What is what?"

"By God, I got creepy! Is there something wrong here?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know damn well what I mean."

"Chinee boy ju' workee - not hear, not talkee."

"Yes, I guess you're right. Sure, you're right. Sorry I asked you. It wasn't very good manners." He turned back, slipped the bit in Dox's mouth, and laced the big flop ears into the headstall. He slipped the halter and dropped it in the manger. "Good night, Lee," he said.

"Mr. Hamilton --"

"Yes?"

"Do you need a cook?"

"On my place I can't afford a cook."

"I'd work cheap."

"Liza would kill you. Why - you want to quit?"

"Just thought I'd ask," said Lee. "Good night."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 21, 2008

The Books: "The Grapes of Wrath" (John Steinbeck)

big0142000663.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

I was always an East of Eden fan myself - and while some people find fault in East of Eden, find the allegory too obvious, the structure too sprawling and nonlinear - I LOVE it, every word, every page. However, Steinbeck will probably be most remembered for Grapes of Wrath - which was published in 1939, the memories of the decade of the 30s, its grim earlier years - still fresh to the people of America. The book was a smash hit (and not without controversy). Steinbeck takes a reportorial role. Yes, the book is the story of the Joad family on the road to California looking for work, escaping the Dust Bowl, but it's more about the conditions at the time, and the larger issues of the day. It's a book of social and political critique. East of Eden feels like a more personal book, to me, even with all the Biblical allegory stuff. Not that personal = better ... just different. Grapes of Wrath has a preachy aspect to some of it - much in tune with the times, perhaps, but the book is dated because of it. Like reading Odets' Waiting For Lefty (excerpt here) and Paradise Lost (excerpt here) - you could not "update" those, they belong in the 1930s. Nothing wrong with that, again ... but that's where the preachiness comes from. East of Eden, with its generational sweep of characters, and its ruminations on good and evil as embodied by Cal and Abra and Cathy and all the other characters with names beginning with C and A, somehow feels less dated to me, and more human.

Steinbeck was a really interesting guy - and I love it that his books are among the most "challenged" books to this day, by prudish school boards and ninnies who find his work dangerous. Well, sure his books are dangerous. That's called literature. I don't know - you might not be a fan, but you can't really ignore him. That would be stupid. He was a man of his time - a 20th century observational writer, a critic, a man who wanted to expose certain things, bring them out into the light, with his eye on the "forgotten man". The underclass, the ignored.

He lived a wide life, with many different phases - a kind of Mark Twain of his time. He didn't limit himself to one genre. His output was incredible. He wrote screenplays, he was a journalist - although his concerns were American and what was going on in America as a whole, he was also one of the most local of writers - which really comes to play in East of Eden, and its amazing evocation of the Salinas Valley in California. That was his home, his peeps, and he wrote of that area deeply and sensitively. If you've read East of Eden, doesn't it just come alive? There are certain writers who not only remember their roots, but need their roots - it is the wellspring of their talent, their vision. Steinbeck was definitely one of those writers.

Grapes of Wrath has, in my humble opinion, the one of the greatest openings of a book, AND one of the greatest closings. That last scene is shattering, just shattering ... and the opening, with his haunting eerie chapter about the dust rising into the air ... is just magnificent. Steinbeck starts big in Grapes of Wrath - with undifferentiated characters - just "people" - it's the landscape and the dust storms that are the "stars" - and he ends small - with Rose of Sharon nursing the old man in the barn.

Here's an excerpt. There's something cinematic in the writing here. You can see the sweep of the landscape, from far above ... lines on a map, highways, the endless caravan of people. And again it goes from the grand, the huge, to the very small and minute and then back out again to the telescopic view. Reminds me of James Agee's writing quite a bit.


EXCERPT FROM The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66 - the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield - over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys.

66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

Clarksville and Ozark and Van Buren and Fort Smith on 64, and there's an end of Arkansas. And all the roads into Oklahoma City, 66 down from Tulsa, 270 up from McAlester. 81 from Wichita Falls south, from Enid north. Edmond, McLoud, Purcell. 66 out of Oklahoma City; El Reno and Clinton, going west on 66. Hydro, Elk City, and Texola; and there's an end to Oklahoma. 66 across the Panhandle of Texas. Shamrock and McLean, Conway and Amarillo, the yellow. Wildorado and Vega and Boise, and there's an end of Texas. Tucumcari and Santa Rosa and into the New Mexican mountains to Albuquerque, where the road comes down from Santa Fe. Then down the gorged Rio Grande to Las Lunas and west again on 66 to Gallup, and there's the border of New Mexico.

And now the high mountains. Holbrook and Winslow and Flagstaff in the high mountains of Arizona. Then the great plateau rolling like a ground swell. Ashfork and Kingman and stone mountains again, where water must be hauled and sold. Then out of the broken sun-rotted mountains o Arizona to the Colorado, with green reeds on its banks, and that's the end of Arizona. There's California just over the river, and a pretty town to start it. Needles, on the river. But the river is a stranger in this place. Up from Needles and over a burned range, and there's the desert. And 66 goes on over the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and the black center mountains hang unbearably in the distance. At last there's Barstow, and more desert until at last the mountains rise up again, the good mountains, and 66 winds through them. Then suddenly a pass, and below the beautiful valley, below orchards and vineyards and little houses, and in the distance a city. And, oh, my God, it's over.

The people in flight streamed out on 66, sometimes a single car, sometimes a little caravan. All day they rolled slowly along the road, and at night they stopped near water. In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting rods hammered and pounded. And the men driving the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehensively. How far between towns? It is a terror between towns. If something breaks - well, if something breaks we camp right here while Jim walks to town and gets a part and walks back and - how much food we go?

Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gearshift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses, for a change of tone, a variation of rhythm may mean - a week here? That rattle - that's tappets. Don't hurt a bit. Tappets can rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But that thudding as the car moves along - can't hear that - just kind of feel it. Maybe oil isn't gettin' someplace. Maybe a bearin's startin' to go. Jesus, if it's a bearing, what'll we do? Money's goin' fast.

And why's the son-of-a-bitch heat up so hot today? This ain't no climb. Le's look. God Almighty, the fan belt's gone! Here, make a belt outa this little piece a rope. Le's see how long - there. I'll splice the ends. Now take her slow - slow, till we can get to a town. That rope belt won't last long.

'F we can on'y get to California where the oranges grow before this here ol' jug blows up. 'F we on'y can.

And the tires - two layers of fabric worn through. On'y a four-ply tire. Might get a hundred miles more outa her if we don't hit a rock an' blow her. Which'll we take - a hunderd, maybe, miles, or maybe spoil the tubes? Which? A hunderd miles. Well, that's somepin you got to think about. We got tube patches. Maybe when she goes she'll only spring a leak. How about makin' a boot? Might get five hunderd more miles. Le's go on till she blows.

We got to get a tire, but, Jesus, they want a lot for a ol' tire. They look a fella over. They know he got to go on. They know he can't wait. And the price goes up.

Take it or leave it. I ain't in business for my health. I'm here a-sellin' tires. I ain't givin' 'em away. I can't help what happens to you. I got to think what happens to me.

How far's the nex' town?

I seen forty-two cars a you fellas go by yesterday. Where you all come from? Where all of you goin'?

Well, California's a big State.

It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat. Whyn't you go back where you come from?

This is a free country. Fella can go where he wants.

That's what you think! Ever hear of the border patrol on the California line? Police from Los Angeles - stopped you bastards, turned you back. Says, if you can't buy no real estate we don't want you. Says, got a driver's license? Le's see it. Tore it up. Says you can't come in without no driver's license.

It's a free country.

Well, try to get some freedom to do. Fella says you're jus' as free as you got jack to pay for it.

In California they got high wages. I got a han'bill here tells about it.

Baloney! I seen folks comin' back. Somebody's kiddin' you. You want that tire or don't ya?

Got to take it, but, Jesus, mister, it cuts into our money! We ain't got much left.

Well, I ain't no charity. Take her along.

Got to, I guess. Let's look her over. Open her up, look a' the casing - you son-of-a-bitch, you said the casing was good. She's broke damn near through.

The hell she is. Well - by George! How come I didn' see that?

You did see it, you son-of-a-bitch. You wanta charge us four bucks for a busted casing. I'd like to take a sock at you.

Now keep your shirt on! I didn' see it, I tell you. Here - tell ya what I'll do. I'll give ya this one for three-fifty.

You'll take a flying jump at the moon! We'll try to make the nex' town.

Think we can make it on that tire?

Got to. I'll go on the rim before I give that son-of-a-bitch a dime.

What do ya think a guy in business is? Like he says, he ain't in it for his health. That's what business is. What'd you think it was? Fella's got - See that sign 'longside the road there? Service Club. Luncheon Tuesday, Colmado Hotel? Welcome, brother. That's a Service Club. Fella had a story. Went to one of them meetings an' told the story to all them business men. Says, when I was a kid my ol' man give me a haltered heifer an' says take her down an' git her serviced. An' the fella says, I done it, an' ever' time since then when I hear a business man talkin' about service, I wonder who's gettin' screwed. Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

Danny in the back seat wants a cup a water.

Have to wait. Got no water here.

Listen - that the rear end?

Can't tell.

Sound telegraphs through the frame.

There goes a gasket. Got to go on. Listen to her whistle. Find a nice place to camp an' I'll jerk the head off. But, God Almighty, the food's gettin' low, the money's gettin' low. When we can't buy no more gas - what then?

Danny in the back seat wants a cup a water. Little fella's thirsty.

Listen to that gasket whistle.

Chee-rist! There she went. Blowed tube an' casing all to hell. Have to fix her. Save that casing to make boots; cut 'em out an' stick 'em inside a weak place.

Cars pulled up beside the road, engine heads off, tires mended. Cars limping along 66 like wounded things, panting and struggling. Too hot, loose connections, loose bearings, rattling bodies.

Danny wants a cup of water.

People in flight along 66. And the concrete road shone like a mirror under the sun, and in the distance the heat made it seem that there were pools of water in the road.

Danny wants a cup of water.

He'll have to wait, poor little fella. He's hot. Nex' service station. Service station, like the fella says.

Two hundred and fifty thousand people over the road. Fifty thousand old cars - wounded, steaming. Wrecks along the road, abandoned. Well, what happened to them? What happened to the folks in that car? Did they walk? Where are they? Where does the courage come from? Where does the terrible faith come from?

And here's a story you can hardly believe, but it's true, and it's funny and it's beautiful. There was a family of twelve and they were forced off the land. They had no car. They built a trailer out of junk and loaded it with their possessions. They pulled it to the side of 66 and waited. And pretty soon a sedan picked them up. Five of them rode in the sedan and seven on the trailer, and a dog on the trailer. They got to California in two jumps. The man who pulled them fed them. And that's true. But how can such courage be, and such faith in their own species? Very few things would teach such faith.

The people in flight from the terror behind - strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

June 20, 2008

The Books: "Prep" (Curtis Sittenfeld)

Prep.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld

My sister Jean was the one who made me read this book. I had heard about it - I mean, you'd have to have been actively not paying attention to NOT have heard about it ... It was one of those first novels that gets a tremendous amount of buzz (causing much envy in people like ... oh ... MYSELF), sits on the NY TImes bestseller list for a while, and has much press devoted to it. Sometimes that kind of buzz is a turnoff for me, especially with a first novel. But Bookslut also loved it - which usually means I will love it - and then my sister's opinion clinched the deal. Apparently she was on vacation with her boyfriend (now fiance), and she stood in the shallow end of the pool, in her bathing suit, standing there reading the book. She couldn't put it down. I love that image. They're in some Caribbean island paradise, and she's standing in the pool reading. Uhm, is your last name O'Malley? I thought so. But Jean has great taste in books - so I finally picked it up.

Like Jean said to me when we talked about it - the best thing about this book is the "voice". It should be taught to young writers who are trying to learn "voice". It's as distinctive a voice as Holden Caulfield, as potentially exasperating. But you HAVE to keep reading. I was amazed by how well Sittenfeld calls up the anxiety-ridden perceptive paranoid world of the teenage girl - Sometimes I found myself just cringing reading the book, but also thinking to myself, "Bravo, Sittenfeld. You just NAILED that moment." There are sections in the book which are as perceptive about teenage life as anything I have ever read - and it makes the book a pretty uncomfortable read, I have to say - because teenagers are awkward, and "playing" at being adults ... and you want to save Lee from all the trouble you know she's going to go through, but you can't. Sittenfeld also has a gift - a GIFT, I tell you - for honing in on a small moment, and exposing it, dissecting it. Most of these moments are things that are totally familiar to me, I have had such moments ... but I never thought to put them into words. The book has so many scenes like that. This is not a "Young Adult" book, although it's about high school.

Lee, our narrator, as a kid, was obsessed with prep schools. She is from the mid-west, her family is not a privileged wealthy family, but she somehow gets a scholarship to a prestigious New England prep school called Ault. And so she goes. The book is broken down into the four years of high school, and so we go through the entire time of her education with Lee. The book is episodic - there is not one thruline - some characters come and go, others stay ... It feels the way high school feels. Prep school is a whole different thing, though - and Sittenfeld, who went to prep school, just nails it. The huge class differences between the elite kids - born to go to prep school - and, say, the minority kids - most of whom have huge scholarships. Lee is not in either group. She's a middle-class kid, not brilliant academically, not a genius athlete - just determined to be there. Lee is not a pleasant companion (I suppose very few high school girls are). She is riddled with self-consciousness. It is horrible to read. But God, I recognize myself in it. She is concerned over who to be friends with, because of what it will look like. She has crushes on gorgeous junior boys. She struggles. But there comes a time when you realize: you know what, Lee? You need to fucking grow up. Sittenfeld does not sugarcoat Lee's social problems. Lee is not an ingratiating person - and I guess that was one of the main complaints Sittenfeld got with early drafts of the novel. Couldn't Lee be a bit more likable? But Sittenfeld stuck to her guns, and I think the book is MUCH stronger for it. It's not, perhaps, a fun read - as a matter of fact, the entire book made me wretchedly uncomfortable - but that's why it's literature, and not just fluff. Like my sister said: It's the voice. What a VOICE this book has. Completely successful in creating this character.

Another interesting thing about the voice is that you can tell that Lee is writing it from the perspective of being an adult and looking back on her prep school years. It is not the actual voice of a high school girl ... it is an adult woman looking back on and trying to put together her adolescence. There is a questioning tone to the voice at times, a psychological contemplation ... "I think what was going on with me in that moment was ..." etc. It's very effective. It's rather exhausting, too - because, you know, it's high school. High school is exhausting. And to look back on it, and look back on how you behaved, your moments of cruelty, your moments of indifference or stupidity ... It's not fun!

Lee has friendships, but they are suffused with self-consciousness. She has a lot of anxiety about school because she is not a brilliant student. She also is kind of embarrassed by her parents when they come to visit (and her father, man - he is just so well portrayed!!) - it's like she imbibes a certain snobbery that exists mostly in her own mind. Most of the kids around her are NOT snobs - but Lee, like most high school girls, wants to fit in, not be different, not stick out ... so she keeps herself distant from almost everyone, because nobody is "good enough" for her in her own mind. And the "voice" I keep talking about - the adult Lee - has a sense of sadness in it - a longing to go back, to have a "do over" ... because my God, what a waste. And don't we all have feelings like that??

But mostly it is Sittenfeld's acutely accurate observations about what goes on in social moments - the shifts, and silent signals - that is so superb. She really nails it, and I was in awe of much of what she was able to see. Those moments of clarity that even high school kids have - where they come out of themselves a bit - and realize who they are, or what really matters. Or also: that sensation of actually being seen. Having someone look at you, when you're 15, and seeing you. It is the road to being an adult. Of coming outside your own self-consciousness and self-absorption, and joining the world. You get the sense (and this is another reason why this is a very good book) that Lee is not going to have an easy time of it as an adult, either. Her high school awkwardness is not just a phase - it is going to inform her life forever ... and her regrets will be intense. Because it is hard for Lee to be her best self. It is hard for Lee to see beyond her own small circle. It's hard for most teenagers - but Lee is worse than most. And she mis-reads people terribly, despite her good eye for behavior. She misses HUGE clues and makes giant errors - which have big consequences. You know those moments in life when you accidentally, through your own awkwardness, hurt someone else's feelings? And you don't even know how to apologize but there's a frantic-ness in the need to make things right? But you don't think you can? Prep is so full of such moments that it is near agony to read at times.

Here's an example:

I believed then that if you had a good encounter with a person, it was best not to see them again for as long as possible lest you taint the previous interaction. Say it was Wednesday and there was an after-dinner lecture and you and your roommate struck up some unexpectedly fun conversation with the boys sitting next to you. Say the lecture turned out to be boring and so throughout it you whispered and made faces at one another, and then it ended and you all left the schoolhouse. And then forty minutes later, you, alone now, without the buffer of a roommate, were by the card catalog in the library and passed one of these boys, also without his friend - then what were you to do? To simply acknowledge each other by n odding would be, probably, unfriendly, it would be confirmation of the anomaly of your having shared something during the lecture, and already you'd be receding into your usual roles. But it would probably be worse to stop and talk. You'd be compelled to try prolonging the earlier jollity, yet now there would be no lecturer to make fun of, it would just be the two of you, overly smiley, both wanting to provide the quip onw hich the conversation could satisfactorily conclude. And what if, in the stacks, you ran into each other again? It would be awful!

This anxiety meant that I spent a lot of time hiding, usually in my room, after any pleasant exchange with another person. And there were rules to the anxiety, practically mathematical in their consistency: The less well you knew the person, the greater the pressure the second time around to be special or charming, if that's what you thought you'd been the first time; mostly it was about reinforcement. Also: The shorter the time that elapsed from your first encounter to your second, the greater the pressure; hence the lecture-to-library agony. And finally: The better the original interaction, the greater the pressure. Often, my anxiety would set in prior to the end of the interaction - I'd just want it to be over while we all still liked each other, before things turned.

And then this, about her friendship with Martha - this really struck a chord in me as well - I have great friends still from high school ... and something about this really resonates:

And as for Martha - I never understood when I was at Ault why she liked me as much as I liked her. Even now, I'm still not sure. I couldn't give back half of what she gave me, and that fact should have knocked off the balance between us, but it didn't, and I don't know why not. Later, after Ault, I reinvented myself - not overnight but little by little. Ault had taught me everything I needed to know about attracting and alienating people, what the exact measurements ought to be of confidence and self-deprecation, humor, disclosure, inquisitiveness; even, finally, of enthusiasm. Also, Ault had been the toughest audience I'd ever encounter, to the extent that sometimes afterward, I found winning people over disappointingly easy. If Martha and I had met when we were, say, twenty-two, it wouldn't have been hard for me to believe she'd like me. But she had liked me before I became likable; that was the confusing part.

"she had liked me before I became likable". Very astute.

And this might be my favorite passage in the book. I felt a chill reading it. I had a moment identical to this one. Identical.

"Where are you gonna go?" he said. "Harvard?"

"Yeah, right."

"I bet you're smart. Get all As."

"I'll probably go somewhere like --" I stopped. When Martha or I thought we'd done badly on a test, we'd say I might as well just apply right now to UMass, but invoking UMass as a last resort would, clearly, be a bad idea. "--to dog school," I said brightly.

"What?" Dave looked across the seat at me.

"Like obedience school," I said.

"You have a dog?"

"No, no, I'm the dog."

He looked at me again, and it was a look I always remembered, long after that night and after I'd left Ault. He was confused and was registering a new piece of information and this was what it was: that I was a girl who would, even in jest, utter the sentence, I'm the dog. It was a good lesson for me. It was a while before I stopped insulting myself so promiscuously, and I never stopped completely, but still -- it was a good lesson.


This is a first novel. It's extraordinary. Sittenfeld writes with a confidence and authority that many more established authors would be jealous of. I haven't read her second book, but I will. She's definitely someone to watch.

Here's an excerpt from Lee's freshman year. I just think it's so so accurate. I have LIVED these moments!! The impossible coolness of some kids in high school - the upperclassmen especially - who are dating, and probably having sex (we always speculated) ... the ones who seem to have zero self-consciousness - and how on earth is that possible (I would think as an awkward freshman) ... How could someone NOT care what other people thought? And it was always those people who were THE coolest (at least in my school). The ones who strolled around with some level of self-confidence - at least in appearance.

EXCERPT FROM Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld

All of this was still in the beginning of the year, the beginning of my time at Ault, when I was exhausted all the time by both my vigilance and my wish to be inconspicuous. At soccer practice, I worried that I would miss the ball, when we boarded the bus for games at other schools, I worried that I would take a seat by someone who didn't want to sit next to me, in class I worried I would say a wrong or foolish thing. I worried that I took too much food at meals, or that I did not disdain the food you were supposed to disdain - Tater Tots, key lime pie - and at night, I worried that Dede or Sin-Jun would hear me snore. I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.

Ault had been my idea. I'd researched boarding schools at the public library and written away for catalogs myself. Their glossy pages showed photographs of teenagers in wool sweaters singing hymns in the chapel, gripping lacrosse sticks, intently regarding a math equation written across the chalkboard. I had traded away my family for this glossiness. I'd pretended it was about academics, but it never had been. Marvin Thompson High School the school I would have attended in South Bend, had hallways of pale green linoleum and grimy lockers and stringy-haired boys who wrote the names of heavy metal bands across the backs of their denim jackets in black marker. But boarding school boys, at least the ones in the catalogs who held lacrosse sticks and grinned over their mouth guards, were so handsome. And they had to be smart, too, by virtue of the fact that they attended boarding school. I imagined that if I left South Bend, I would meet a melancholy, athletic boy who liked to read as much as I did and on overcast Sundays we would take walks together wearing wool sweaters.

During the application process, my parents were mystified. The only person my family knew who had gone to boarding school was the son of one of the insurance agents in the office where my mother was a bookkeeper, and this kid's boarding school had been a fenced-in mountaintop in Colorado, a place for screwups. My parents suspected, in a way that was only honest, not unsupportive, that I would never be accepted to the places I'd applied; besides, they saw my interest in boarding school as comparable to other short-lived hobbies, like knitting (in sixth grade, I'd completed one third of a hat). When I got in, they explained how proud they were, and how sorry that they wouldn't be able to pay for it. The day a letter arrived from Ault offering me the Eloise Fielding Foster scholarship, which would cover more than three quarters of my tuition, I cried because I knew for certain that I was leaving home, and abruptly, I did not know if it was such a good idea - I realized that I, like my parents, had never believed I'd actually go.

In mid-September, weeks after school had started in South Bend for my brothers and my former classmates, my father drove me from Indiana to Massachusetts. When we turned in the wrought-iron gates of the campus, I recognized the buildings from photographs - eight brick structures plus a Gothic chapel surrounding a circle of grass which I already knew was fifty yards in diameter and which I also knew you were not supposed to walk on. Everywhere there were cars with the trunks open, kids greeting each other, fathers carrying boxes. I was wearing a long dress with peach and lavender flowers and a lace collar, and I noticed immediately that most of the students had on faded T-shirts and loose khaki shorts and flip-flops. I realized then how much work Ault would be for me.

After we found my dorm, my father started talking to Dede's father, who said, "South Bend, eh? I take it you teach at Notre Dam?" and my father cheerfully said, "No, sir, I'm in the mattress business." I was embarrassed that my father called Dede's father sir, embarrassed by his job, embarrassed by our rusty white Datsun. I wanted my father gone from campus as soon as possible, so I could try to miss him.

In the mornings, when I stood under the shower, I would think, I have been at Ault for twenty-four hours. I have been at Ault for three days. I have been at Ault for a month. I talked to myself as I imagined my mother would talk to me if she actually thought boarding school was a good idea. You're doing great. I'm proud of you, LeeLee. Sometimes I would cry while I washed my hair, but this was the thing - this was always the thing about Ault - in some ways, my fantasies about it had not been wrong. The campus really was beautiful: the low, distant, fuzzy mountains that turned blue in the evenings, the perfectly rectangular fields, the Gothic cathedral (it was only Yankee modesty that made them call it a chapel) with its stained glass windows. This beauty gave a tinge of nobility and glamour to even the most pedestrian kind of homesickness.

Several times, I recognized a student from a photograph in the catalog. It was disorienting, the way I imagined it might be to see a celebrity on the streets of New York or Los Angeles. These people moved and breathed, they ate bagels in the dining hall, carried books through the hallways, wore clothes other than the ones I'd memorized. They belonged to the real, physical world; previously, it had seemed as if they belonged to me.


In big letters across the top, the signs said, Drag yourself out of the dorm!!! In smaller letters, they said, Where? The dining hall! When? This Saturday! Why? To dance! The paper was red and featured a copied photograph of Mr. Byden, the headmaster, wearing a dress.

"It's a drag dance," I heard Dede explain to Sin-Jun one night. "You go in drag."

"In drag," Sin-Jun said.

"Girls dress as boys, and boys dress as girls," I said.

"Ohhh," Sin-Jun said. "Very good!"

"I'm borrowing a tie from Devin," Dede said. "And a baseball cap."

Good for you, I thought.

"Dev is so funny," she said. Sometimes, just because I was there and because, unlike Sin-Jun, I was fluent in English, Dede told me things about her life. "Who are you borrowing clothes from?" she asked.

"I haven't decided." I wasn't borrowing clothes from anyone because I wasn't going. I could hardly talk to my classmates, and I definitely couldn't dance. I had tried it once at a cousin's wedding and I had not been able to stop thinking, Is this the part where I throw my arms in the air?

The day of the dance - roll call and classes occurred even on Saturday mornings, which was, I soon learned, a good detail to break out for people from home, to affirm their suspicion that boarding school was only slightly different from prison - neither Gates nor Henry Thorpe was at the desk when the bell went off announcing the start of roll call. Someone else, a senior girl whose name I didn't know, rang the bell, then stepped down from the platform. Music became audible and students stopped murmuring. It was disco. I didn't recongize the song, but a lot of other people seemed to, and there was a rise of collective laughter. Turning in my seat, I realized the source of the music was two stereo speakers, each being held in the air by a different senior guy - there weren't enough desks for everyone in roll call, so juniors and seniors stood in the back of the room. The seniors seemed to be looking out the rear doorway. A few seconds passed before Henry Thorpe made his entrance. He wore a short black satin nightgown, fishnet stockings, and black high heels, and he was dancing as he approached the desk where he and Gates usually stood. Many students, especially the seniors, cheered, cupping their hands around their mouths. Some sang and clapped in time to the music.

Henry pointed a finger out, then curled it back toward his chest. I looked to see where he'd pointed. From another door at the opposite end of the room, the doorway near which the faculty stood, Gates had appeared. She was dressed in a football uniform, shoulder pads beneath the jersey and eye-black across her cheekbones. But no one would have mistaken her for a guy: Her hair was down, and her calves - she wasn't wearing socks - looked smooth and slender. She, too, was dancing, holding her arms up and shaking her head. By the time she and Henry climbed on top of the prefects' desks, the room was in an uproar. They came together, gyrating. I glanced toward the faculty; most of them stood with their arms folded, looking impatient. Gates and Henry pulled apart and turned so they were facing opposite directions, Gates swiveling her hips and snapping her fingers. Her unself-consciousness astonished me. Here she was before a room of more than three hundred people, it was the bright light of day, it was morning, and she was dancing.

She gestured toward the back of the room, and the music stopped. She and Henry jumped down from the desk, and three seniors, two girls and a guy, climbed the three steps to the platform. "Tonight at eight o'clock in the dining hall ...." one of the girls said.

" ... it's the eleventh annual drag extravaganza," said the other.

"So get ready to party!" shouted the guy.

The room erupted again into wild cheers and applause. Someone turned on the music, and Gates grinned and shook her head. The music went off. "Sorry, but the show's over," she said, and students booed, but even the booing had an affectionate sound to it. Gates turned to the three seniors next to her. "Thanks, guys." She picked up the clipboard where the names of the people who'd signed up to make announcements were listed, and said, "Mr. Archibald?"

Mr. Archibald stepped onto the platform. Just before he spoke, a guy from the back of the room yelled, "Gates, will you dance with me?"

Gates smiled a closed-mouth smile. "Go ahead, Mr. Archibald," she said.

His announcement was about soda cans being left in the math wing.

Gates passed the clipboard to Henry.

"Dory Rogers," Henry called, and Dory said the Amnesty International meeting had been switched from Sunday to six to Sunday at seven. During the five or six other announcements, I found myself waiting for more theatrics - I wanted to see Gates dance again - but it appeared the show really was over.

After Henry had rung the bell, I approached the platform. "Gates," I said. She was putting a notebook in her bag and didn't look up. "Gates," I said again.

This time, she looked at me.

"Your dancing was really good," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "It's always fun to see people make fools of themselves."

"Oh, no, you weren't making a fool of yourself. Not at all. Everyone loved it."

She smiled, and I understood that she had already known everyone loved it. But she hadn't been asking for a compliment, as I myself was whenever I said something self-effacing. It was more like - this dawned on me as I looked at her - she was pretending to be regular. Even though she was special, she was pretending to be like the rest of us.

"Thanks," she said. "That's nice of you, Lee."


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 19, 2008

The Books: "We Need To Talk About Kevin" (Lionel Shriver)

B0002TX4QQ.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver

I read We Need To Talk About Kevin last year. I remember the brou-haha when the book was first published - a book like this was never going to be a quiet unassuming little book. I was haunted by it and I also read it like a bat out of hell. I was very busy at the time, and had no business spending 6 hours STRAIGHT finishing a book but I just couldn't put it down. It was horrifying. I remember overnighting a copy of it to my friend Beth - who is a teacher - I NEEDED her to read it so we could talk about it. I needed her input and response! It was great to talk about it with her.

All I can say is: read it. Read it.

It tells the story of a mother whose kid killed a bunch of people at his school. I won't go into too many more details because much of the book unfolds in a horrifying way - and I, for one, was surprised by much of it. I did not see the end coming. The true journey of the book is, yes, the journey of Kevin, the kid - but it is also the journey of his mother ... trying to figure out what she did to create such a horrible person capable of such evil. The book really takes an unblinking look at that primary relationship - mother-child - and it might make some people very uncomfortable. It messes with your assumptions. But it also taps into the anxiety that most mothers seem to feel - at least that's what I've heard from most of my girlfriends. Am I a good mother? If I don't/can't breastfeed - does that make me a failure? Will I be judged if I tell the La Leche nazis that I don't need the guilt trip? Life is hard enough without all that freakin' GUILT. There's a cookie-cutter version of pregnancy/motherhood that is foisted upon people - and make no mistake: it is indeed a controlled attack, there is nothing accidental about it ... and if, for whatever reason, you do not "fit in" to that norm - you are judged. People will stop you on the street to scold you. Mommy drive-bys. It is designed to make you lose confidence in your own decisions. Awful!!

What if motherhood doesn't come naturally to you? We Need to Talk About Kevin is not about a "bad" mother, meaning: abusive, or neglectful. But it is about a mother who doesn't really "take" to motherhood, shall we say - and since the entire book is told in first-person retrospective - she knows that her lack of attachment to her children - an attachment that never really formed for her - must have SOMETHING to do with who her son became. It is still disturbing to read some of this book and much of that has to do with my own assumptions and preconceived notions ... and that's exactly what Shriver is going after. Shriver is interested in looking at those assumptions - about parenthood, about children - staring at them relentlessly, being with them, not coming up with answers or reasons ... but just staring at the assumptions we have. And wondering what on earth went so wrong. This is not an easy book. It is not easy to take. If you need to "like" or be able to relate to the characters in a book, then We Need To Talk About Kevin will drive you up a wall. But I would say that you would be missing out on an unforgettable reading experience. Nobody is neutral about the book. People love it or hate it. Or they're freaked by it. Nobody is like, "Whatever, it was okay ..."

It was great to talk to Beth - because we had different responses to Franklin, the husband. The whole book is written in letters to Franklin - the wife, Eva, writes to him - it is obvious, from what she divulges, that they have separated in the aftermath of the tragedy - and that Kevin, their son, is in a juvenile detention center, or whatever the equivalent of jail is for a minor. Eva has moved out of their nice house and lives in a terrible apartment complex with very few amenities - but she has not moved out of the town, even though she is now Enemy #1 to the people there, because her son killed so many people. Anyway, Eva writes these letters almost to plead her case to her husband ... but she also doesn't defend herself too much. She knows she was no good at mothering. It bored her tremendously. But even before that - even when she was pregnant with Kevin ... there was a resentment in her towards the unborn baby ... and Franklin, her husband, tried to joke, jostle her out of it. Everything will be fine, you'll see .. you're just nervous ... everything will be fine ... Beth and I had a great conversation about the book and Beth had a VIOLENT response to Franklin. She hated him desperately. She sees parents like him in Parent-Teacher meetings all the time - parents who refuse to look at the fact that their child may be a bit "off" - "no no no, nothing's wrong with him, it's just a phase ... he's actually gifted..." That was why I wanted Beth to read the book - to hear her thoughts on these people! It made me look at my own assumptions and responses ... To me, at first reading, Franklin seemed like a man trapped in a life he didn't think he was choosing at the time - He thought he would have a good life, he assumed he would have a good life. He and Eva had a great marriage. They were a great pair. She was an independent person, he was a traditional kind of guy - she was surprised she would like someone like that, someone who would well up at "The Star Spangled Banner" and stuff like that, but she did. She loved him. It's just that maybe she should never have been a parent. Eva tries to tell Franklin this about herself, and he will not hear it.

What's interesting about the book is that so much of what is said in it is unspeakable. To talk about mothers who might have ambivalence about motherhood ... well, that's completely taboo. It causes much grief (at least I know this from my friends who are mothers. The expectation that everything is going to be wonderful and suffused with a maternal glow is so intense, and so imposed from above, that I think much of that contributes to the intensity of depression that can so often come after childbirth. It's the expectation that you should NEVER EVER COMPLAIN and also: that everything should be awesome and fun and glorious ... There's an assumed agreement about how you should feel ... and that is a recipe for disaster for some.)

And so the story of a horrible school killing - and the story of the development of Kevin, the son ... is told in tandem with Eva's story - and she's the one telling it, so she is inherently unreliable, and we know that. That's part of the horror of the story. How many times do kids shoot up schools and suddenly, in the aftermath, all sorts of people come forward saying, either: "I can't believe he would do something like that ... He was such a nice kid ..." or "He was always a weirdo ... it doesn't surprise me at all ..." People looking back into the past for clues ... how could this happen?? What confluence of events came together to allow this?? School officials torment themselves. Guidance counselors quit in despair. Other parents point fingers. It's a big deal. We come to recognize all the stages now - because, sadly, it happens so often. But when there is a school killing, it is never a cliche to the people involved, of course!! All those questions must be asked. And woe to those with kneejerk judgmental answers. There is a place for that, of course - but it should never be the stopping point. Because someone had better ask "Why?" Someone better!!

Lionel Shriver does not write a cookie-cutter book - this is the story of Kevin, specifically - not a "cliche" who kills people in his school. And Shriver dares to look at what might have been there in the parents to create such a monster. Someone capable of looking at his fellow human beings as targets. If you read the reviews to this book, and reader responses - you find very little consensus - it's that kind of book. It pushes people's buttons. It's still taboo - a mother without the "motherhood gene" - it still seems wrong, off. But let's talk about it, let's look at it! AND - let's look at Franklin, and his role in all of this. Not to let Kevin off the hook - and God, what a nasty little person Shriver has created in Kevin. He is just a terrific character - fully drawn, in all of his unforgiving contempt - and Shriver is somehow able to suggest that Kevin looks around, looks at his mother, and knows: She's just not into this. He can sense it from when he is first born.

But this isn't a book about placing blame fully on one person's head so I don't want to make it sound that way. It's a more difficult book than that. It's not about a "bad mother", it's not about A plus B equal C. There is something in Kevin, from the start, that seems to resent life. He was never a happy baby, never carefree or giggly. He always seemed pissed. (But again, we hear all of this from Eva - who is inherently unreliable when it comes to her own son). It's not an easy book and for those who want easy answers it will be a terrible book. The book should piss you off - Beth was basically screaming about Franklin on the phone with me - "I hate parents like that - I fucking HATE THEM!!" Ha ha - it's a great conversation-starter, this book.

The language of the book is not warm or welcoming. It's rather forbidding. Eva is not likable in the slightest. Your heart aches for her - you don't know where Franklin left to - why he couldn't "hack it" - what happened to their marriage ... but at the same time, hanging out with her is pretty awful. You need to keep going.

At the time that Eva writes the letters to her husband, she is beyond the pale, in terms of pretending. She spent her entire marriage "pretending" to be someone ... well, no, that's not true. Before the kids came, she wasn't "pretending" - she liked being married, she loved Franklin, their peripatetic life suited her ... it was the move to the house in the suburbs, the pregnancy, the sudden settling of traditional roles - that fucked her up. But now, in the aftermath of the tragedy, she is no longer interested in protecting herself. She doesn't feel she deserves it, first of all ... she deserves all the condemnation she gets. That's why she doesn't move out of the town where the "incident" happened. The hatred that she faces every day she leaves her house seems to be right to her, it seems to be just. They should hate her. Because she did create Kevin. And she knew from the start that he was evil.

But ... is he? Did he not understand, from even within the womb, that his mother was someone not to be trusted? Who would not love him? Did she create him? Or was he born that way?

Is he someone like Cathy, from East of Eden - a character who has haunted me from the first moment I met her, in 10th grade when we had to read the book. Here is Steinbeck on Cathy:

I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one's fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighed, some gear out of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth. And just as a cripple may learn to utilize his lack so that he becomes more effective in a limited field than the uncrippled, so did Cathy, using her difference, make a painful and bewildering stir in her world.

There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community. The one thing that may not be forgiven a witch is her ability to distress people, to make them restless and uneasy and even envious.

As though nature concealed a trap, Cathy had from the first a face of innocence. Her hair was gold and lovely; wide-set hazel eyes with upper lids that drooped made her look mysteriously sleepy. Her nose was delicate and thin, and her cheekbones high and wide, sweeping down to a small chin so that her face was heart-shaped. Her mouth was well shaped and well lipped but abnormally small -- what used to be called a rosebud. Her ears were very little, without lobes, and they pressed so close to her head that even with her hair combed up they made no silhouette. They were thin flaps sealed against her head.

Cathy always had a child's figure even after she was grown, slender, delicate arms and hands -- tiny hands. Her breasts never developed much. Before her puberty the nipples turned inward. Her mother had to manipulate them out when they became painful in Cathy's tenth year. Her body was a boy's body, narrow-hipped, straight-legged, but her ankles were thin and straight without being slender. Her feet were small and round and stubby, with fat insteps almost like little hoofs. She was a pretty child and she became a pretty woman. Her voice was huskily soft, and it could be so sweet as to be irresistible. But there must have been some steel cord in her throat, for Cathy's voice could cut like a file when she wished.

Even as a child she had some quality that made people look at her, then look away, then look back at her, troubled at something foreign. Something looked out of her eyes, and was never there when one looked again. She moved quietly and talked little, but she could enter no room without causing everyone to turn toward her.

She made people uneasy but not so that they wanted to go away from her. Men and women wanted to inspect her, to be close to her, to try and find what caused the disturbance she distributed so subtly. And since this had always been so, Cathy did not find it strange.

Cathy was different from other children in many ways, but one thing in particular set her apart. Most children abhor difference. They want to look, talk, dress, and act exactly like all of the others. If the style of dress is an absurdity, it is pain and sorrow to a child not to wear that absurdity. If necklaces of pork chops were accepted, it would be a sad child who could not wear pork chops. And this slavishness to the group normally extends into every game, every practice, social or otherwise. It is a protective coloration children utilize for their safety.

Cathy had none of this. She never conformed in dress or conduct. She wore whatever she wanted to. The result was that quite often other children imitated her.

As she grew older the group, the herd, which is any collection of children, began to sense what adults felt, that there was something foreign about Cathy. After a while only one person at a time associated with her. Groups of boys and girls avoided her as though she carried a nameless danger.

Cathy was a liar, but she did not lie the way most children do. Hers was no daydream lying, when the thing imagined is told and, to make it seem more real, told as real. That is just ordinary deviation from external reality. I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar -- if he is financially fortunate.

Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also -- either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.

Since Cathy was an only child her mother had no close contrast in the family. She thought all children were like her own. And since all parents are worriers she was convinced that all her friends had the same problems.

Cathy's father was not so sure. He operated a small tannery in a town in Massachusetts, which made a comfortable, careful living if he worked very hard. Mr. Ames came in contact with other children away from his home and he felt that Cathy was not like other children. It was a matter more felt than known. He was uneasy about his daughter but he could not have said why.

Nearly everyone in the world has appetites and impulses, trigger emotions, islands of selfishness, lusts just beneath the surface. And most people either hold such things in check or indulge them secretly. Cathy knew not only these impulses in others but how to use them for her own gain.

It is quite possible that she did not believe in any other tendencies in humans, for while she was preternaturally alert in some directions she was completely blind in others.

Brilliant. Terrifying.

Is Kevin a Cathy? Is there something "missing" in these people? Or were they created by the circumstances surrounding their birth and their early years? It's a question that fascinates me to my core. Why else am I obsessed with serial killers and Stalin and cults? And I am highly suspect of those who come back with answers too quickly. To me, that means an inherent discomfort with the question itself. I've experienced that time and time again on my blog when I discuss Stalin, or the Columbine killers or the Manson murderers. People don't like to ask questions. They want answers. I'm not one of them. Not with a topic as big as evil.

Notice in the excerpt below how Eva (ie: Shriver) assigns knowing and malevolent meanings to her baby's behavior. It's a symbiotic relationship - and I don't know, I was truly disturbed by it. The book scared the shit out of me, frankly - and I'm in awe of Shriver's writing. It's a bit cold, a bit off-putting - but that seems to me to be absolutely right for this story.

EXCERPT FROM We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver

In the end, mastitis put an end to my desperate search for whatever foodstuff was putting Kevin off my milk. Poor nutrition may have made me susceptible. That and fumbling to get Kevin to take the breast, which could have lacerated the nipples enough to transmit infection from his mouth. Inimical to my sustenance, he could still introduce me to corruption, as if already at year zero the more worldly party of our pair.

Since the first sign of mastitis is fatigue, it's little wonder that the early symptoms went unobserved. He'd worn me out for weeks. I bet you still don't believe me about his fits of pique, though a rage that lasts for six to eight hours seems less a fit than a natural state, from which the tranquil respites you witnessed were bizarre departures. Our son had fits of peace. And this may sound completely mad, but the consistency with which Kevin shrieked with precocious force of will the whole time he and I were alone, and then with the abruptness of switching off a heavy-metal radio station desisted the moment you came home - well, it seemed deliberate. The silence still ringing for me, you'd bend over our slumbering angel who unbeknownst to you was just beginning to sleep off his Olympian exertions of the day. Though I'd never have wished on you my own pulsing headaches, I couldn't bear the subtle distrust that was building between us when your experience of our son didn't square with mine. I have sometimes entertained the retroactive delusion that even in his crib Kevin was learning to divide and conquer, scheming to present such contrasting temperaments that we were bound to set at odds. Kevin's features were unusually sharp for a baby, while my own still displayed that Marlo Thomas credulity, as if he had leeched my very shrewdness in utero.

Childless, I'd perceived baby crying as a pretty undifferentiated affair. It was loud; it was not so loud. But in motherhood I developed an ear. There's the wail of inarticulate need, what is effectively a child's first groping after language, for sounds that mean wet or food or pin. There's the shriek of terror - that no one is here and that there may never be anyone here again. There's that lassitudinous wah-wah, not unlike the call to mosque in the Middle East or improvisational song; this is creative crying, fun crying, from babies who, while not especially unhappy, have failed to register that we like to constrain weeping to conditions of distress. Perhaps saddest of all is the muted, habitual mewl of a baby who may be perfectly miserable but who, whether through neglect or prescience, no longer anticipates reprieve - who in infancy has already become reconciled to the idea that to live is to suffer.

Oh, I imagine there are as many reasons that newborn babies cry as that grown ones do, but Kevin practiced none of these standard lachrymal modes. Sure, after you got home he'd sometimes fuss a little like a normal baby that he wanted feeding or changing, and you'd take care of it, and he'd stop; and then you'd look at me like, see? and I'd want to slug you.

With me, once you left, Kevin was not to be bought off with anything so petty and transitory as milk or dry diapers. If fear of abandonment contributed to a decibel level that rivaled an industrial buzz saw, his loneliness displayed an awesome existential purity; it wasn't about to be allayed by the hover of that haggard cow with her nauseating waft of white fluid. And I discerned no plaintive cry of appeal, no keen of despair, no gurgle of nameless dread. Rather, he hurled his voice like a weapon, howls smashing the walls of our loft like a baseball bat bashing a bus shelter. In concert. his fists sparred with the mobile over his crib, he kick-boxed his blanket, and there were times I stepped back after patting and stroking and changing and marveled at the sheer athleticism of the performance. It was unmistakable: Driving this remarkable combustion engine was the distilled and infinitely renewable fuel of outrage.

About what? you might well ask.

He was dry, he was fed, he had slept. I would have tried blanket on, blanket off; he was neither hot nor cold. He'd been burped, and I have a gut instinct that he didn't have colic; Kevin's was not a cry of pain but of wrath. He had toys dangling overhead, rubber blocks in his bed. His mother had taken six months off from work to spend every day by his side, and I picked him up so often that my arms ached; you could not say he lacked for attention. As the papers would be so fond of observing sixteen years later, Kevin had everything.

I have theorized that you can locate most people on a spectrum of the crudest sort and that it may be their position on this scale with which their every other attribute correlates: exactly how much they like being here, just being alive. I think Kevin hated it. I think Kevin was off the scale, he hated being here so much. He may even have retained some trace of spiritual memory from before conception, and glorious nullity was far more what he missed than my womb. Kevin seemed incensed that no one had ever consulted him about turning up in a crib with time going on and on, when nothing whatsoever interested him in that crib. He was the least curious little boy I've ever encountered, with a few exceptions to that rule that I shudder to contemplate.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBack

June 18, 2008

The Books: "Rally Round the Flag, Boys!" (Max Shulman)

rally.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, by Max Shulman

Max Shulman was one of those writers who could parody his own time. Not too many can - it's rare, in general, that people can have a larger view of "what's going on" - in terms of the culture, to see trends, and to also have a perception, while you're in it, of what is absurd and specific about your own time. I suppose most of us, actually, have a sense of "what's going on" in our own time - but it is the rare person who can write about it and make it funny. Shulman's books are strictly Cold War-era books. 1950s books. He writes about the suburbs. He gets that something is going on with the suburbs. With the commuting fathers, and the stay at home moms. The need for security after the upheaval of World War II. The paranoia about Communists - which is basically the whole point of Rally Round the Flag, Boys but comes up again in his Barefoot Boy With Cheek, his spoof on higher education and college life. Shulman looked around, saw what was going on - and he was actually a part of it, too (much of what he wrote about in Rally Round the Flag, Boys came from his own experience - he was from St. Paul, Minnesota - but he lived in Westport, Connecticut, with his wife and kids - and saw that whole commuter culture - which he goes after in the book so hard ... and he never comes off as bitter. Or one of those sour cultural commentators. It's always funny. He saw the absurdity of patriotism becoming equivalent to paranoia. He saw the absurdity of suburban life. He saw the absurdity in everything, basically - and that's the main thing I love about him. He was a social critic, a muckraker, a spoofer - I'm trying to think of someone doing that today. I suppose Tom Wolfe has a lot of that, with his insights into "what's going on" - and a lot of times, it's stuff that people do not want to hear! Shulman always went at everything with humor, so he gets away with MURDER!! The things he's making fun of! God, America, apple pie! Marriage! Sexual repression! Absent fathers! He makes fun of it all. Everyone is absurd in his books. He doesn't have one normal narrator who looks around thinking, "My goodness, isn't everyone so absurd?" No. EVERYONE is crazy. Nobody has a leg up on anybody else, everyone is stuck in the muck of their own lives - and the overall impression of his books are people racing around behaving like lunatics, doing the best they can in life. But Shulman, with his outsider's eye, a bit jaundiced, seems to look at "his fellow Americans" (because he was such an American writer - local to the core, I love that about him too) as though he is an alien from outer space, trying to learn the ways of this new peculiar race, observing what they do, and thinking: "Why on earth would they do that??" And don't we all have moments like that? We participate in this culture - most of us don't opt out of it altogether ... and instead of hating ourselves for it, or having contempt for ourselves ... it's better just to laugh. Shulman makes you laugh.

Rally Round the Flag, Boys tells the story of a small commuter town in Connecticut. All the men get on the train every morning and go to work in New York City. The women stay home. The kids play in the streets. There are problems with privileged "juvenile delinquents" in the James Dean vein, but in general, life is normal. On the outside. Into the middle of this comes the United States Army, who are going to build a gigantic Nike missile, and put it in the middle of their town - in order to protect Bridgeport from the Communist menace.

Rally Round the Flag, Boys! is written in a mock serious tone - so serious that at some level it becomes hilarious. But hilarity undermined by deep despair. It's my favorite kind of humorous tone. You can relax when reading the book. You know that serious issues are being raised, but the point of view is a manic absurdist point of view. Shulman was better at that than anyone!

I wish his books were better known, and still in print. They're a wonderful bit of Americana first of all, and social and cultural commentary on a specific time and place - yet, of course, it's completely relevant to who we are now as well. They're dated - but only a bit. Comedy is comedy. Husbands still feel dominated by their wives. Children still ask embarrassing questions about sex in the middle of a grown-up dinner party. Politics still have a way of filtering down into our everyday dealings with one another. Oh, and - as in his book about college life - college life is still pretty absurd, with pretentious snots, and jocks who get away with murder, and political activism on campus, and professors who have lost dreams ... It's all the same shit going on! So let's bring back Max Shulman, shall we??

I'd love to see his books re-issued, in nice editions. I think the man really deserves the props - for describing America as he saw it at that time, and for doing so in such a humorous manner.

Here's an excerpt from early on in Rally Round the Flag, Boys! - before the Nike missile comes to town. Harry is a commuter. I just like, here, how Max Shulman is going for the jugular, as all good comics do.


EXCERPT FROM Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, by Max Shulman

Harry Bannerman stood at the bar in the club car of the 5:29. In his hand was a bourbon and water, his second since leaving Grand Central Station twenty minutes earlier. Harry was not ordinarily a bourbon drinker - scotch was his usual tipple - but he had discovered that bourbon made him more drunk more quickly. That, in recent months, had become an important consideration.

Harry was a typical commuter of Putnam's Landing, Connecticut, which is to say that he was between 35 and 40 in age, married, the father of three children, the owner of a house, a first mortgage, a second mortgage, a gray flannel suit, a bald spot, and a vague feeling of discontent.

Though he loved his wife and children, though he enjoyed his house and had hopes of reforesting his bald spot, though he was, all in all, not dissatisfied with his lot, just the same, from time to time, a sort of helpless feeling took hold of him - a feeling that he had no control over the forces that shaped his life - that he was merely a puppet in the hands of some dimly understood power. Namely, his wife.

Make no mistake: he loved her. Grace was handsome, fair, supple, and bright, and he had wanted to marry her the minute he had clapped eyes on her. It had been right after World War II. Harry had just been mustered out of the Navy and had returned to New York where he found a job on the "Talk of the Town" section of The New Yorker. Grace was an assistant in the same department. When she saw Harry walk in wearing his pre-war civvies, his wrists and ankles sticking out like Huck Finn's, she promptly burst into laughter. But it was warm, friendly laughter, and Harry did not mind a bit. He told her that if she really wanted some laughs, she should see him in his tuxedo. So they went to dinner that night, and then they had a lot more dinners and rode in hansom cabs and listened to jazz at Condon's and took trips on the Hudson River Day Line and pressed their noses against Cartier's window and got married.

Harry's idea of married life was simple: you rented an apartment in Greenwich Village and sat on a pouf and listened to Rodgers and Hart records and drank wine from wicker covered bottles and held each other very tight.

Which is just how it was for the better part of a year. They lived in a high-ceilinged two-room apartment on Bank Street with a mattress, a box spring, a corduroy throw, a red and blue pouf, an electric percolator, a hot plate, and a phonograph without a changer. That was the only thing Harry lacked to make his happiness complete - a changer for the phonograph.

Grace's ambitions were rather larger. "Darling," she said to Harry one night, "don't you think people ought to start their families when they're young so they can grow up with their children?"

"Yes, I suppose so," he replied casually, and the next thing he remembered, his son Dan was upon him.

(That was Grace's idea of a conference. She was always coming up to Harry and saying something like "Wouldn't it be nice to have panelling in the basement?" or "Don't you wish we had more closet space?" and he would answer absently "Yeah", or "Uh-huh", and the next time he came home from work, the house was teeming with carpenters.)

So now they had their son Dan. He did not do much for the first six months except cry and spill things, including a bottle of cod liver oil on Harry's bed, and if you have never slept on a mattress reeking of cod liver oil, you have never known anguish. But Harry got a new mattress and eventually the boy turned fat and pink and no trouble to anyone.

One night after this satisfactory child had been put to bed and Harry and Grace were curled up on the red and blue pouf, she said to him, "You know, it must be terribly lonely to be an only child. Don't you think so?"

"I guess it is," he replied absently, and before you could saw twilight sleep, he was the father of another boy.

After Bud (for that was his name) joined the family, there were no longer enough poufs to go around, so, of course, they had to move to a bigger place. "Why not buy a house in the country?" suggested Grace. "It's just as cheap as paying rent, and it'll be so wonderful for the children."

"Well --" said Harry, and while he was scratching his head, he became the owner of a house on a hill in Putnam's Landing, Connecticut.

For Grace and Putnam's Landing, it was love at first sight. Almost before she was unpacked, she had had another baby, bought a large brown dog, joined the PTA, the League of Women Voters, the Women's Club, the Red Cross, the Nurses Aids, the Mental Health Society, and the Town Planning Commission. "How wonderful," she would cry, slinging Dan on one hip and Bud on the other, tucking young Peter under her arm, putting the dog beneath on a leash, and rushing out on errands of mercy, "to live in a town with real community spirit!"

Harry's enthusiasm for Putnam's Landing was kept under somewhat tighter control. He liked the place, mind you. It did have, as Grace said, real community spirit, and the people were interesting - writers, artists, actors, ad men, TV executives, and other such animated types - and there was a pleasant patina of New England upon the winding lanes and rolling land. But living in Putnam's Landing was a blessing not entirely unmixed. For one thing, it cost more money than Harry was making. For another, it required more hours than there were in a day.

Once, on a dullish afternoon at the office, Harry set down a time-table of a typical day in his life. It looked like this:

6:30 a.m. Rise, shave, shower, breakfast.
7:00 Wake Grace to drive me to station.
7:10 Wake Grace again.
7:16 Grace starts driving me to station.
7:20 Grace scrapes fender on milk truck.
7:36 Arrive station.
7:37 Board train for New York.
8:45 Arrive Grand Central.
9:00 Arrive New Yorker Magazine.
5:18 P.M. Leave New Yorker Magazine.
5:29 Board train to Putnam's Landing.
6:32 Arrive Putnam's Landing. Grace waiting at station.
6:51 Traffic jam at station untangles. We start home.
6:52 Grace tells me sump pump broken.
6:56 I ask Grace what is sump pump.
6:57 Grace tells me sump pump is pump that pumps sump.
6:58 I say Oh.
7:00 Grace tells me Bud swallowed penny.
7:02 Grace tells me Dan called his teacher an "old poop".
7:04 Grace tells me Peter is allergic to the mailman.
7:06 Grace tells me she signed me up to work all day Saturday in Bingo tent at Womans Club Bazaar.
7:12 Arrive home.
7:13 Dan, aged 8, Bud, aged 6, and Peter, aged 4, looking at television. Dan and Bud want to look at Looney Tunes. Peter wants to look at John Cameron Swayze. (?) Grace rules in favor of Peter. Bud swallows another penny.
7:30 Grace puts children to bed. I go out on lawn to pick up toys.
7:38 Dinner.
8:01 Mrs. Epperson, baby sitter, rings doorbell. I ask Grace what we need with baby sitter. Grace says tonight is PTA meeting. I remind Grace we just went to PTA meeting three days ago. Grace says that was regular meeting, tonight is special emergency protest meeting. We go to special emergency protest meeting.
8:32 Arrive special emergency protest meeting. Special emergency protest seems to be about a hole in the school playground. Chairman of Board of Education, a conservative Yankee type, says no appropriation in budget for fixing hole. Grace rises and demands special appropriation. Chairman of Board calls this creeping socialism. I doze off.
9:51 Grace jams elbow in my ribs, wakes me to vote on motion to refer hole to Special Committee to Study Hole in Playground. Motion carried.
9:52 Meeting adjourned.
9:53 Grace and I go to Fatso's Diner with O'Sheels and Steinbergs, fellow PTA members. Women discuss hole further. Men yawn.
10:48 Leave Fatso's Diner.
11:25 Arrive home. Grace asks Mrs. Epperson, baby sitter, if everything all right. Mrs. Epperson says Bud woke up once and started crying but she gave him some pennies and he went back to sleep.
11:58 Grace and I go to bed.
12:04 Grace says she hears animals around garbage can. I go out.
12:05 Grace is right. There are animals around garbage can. I go back in.
12:53 Animals finish garbage.
1:10 I sleep.

And so passed the days of Harry Bannerman's years. If it wasn't a meeting, a caucus, a rally, or a lecture, then it was a quiet evening at home licking envelopes. Or else it was a party where you ate cubes of cheese on toothpicks and talked about plywood, mortgages, mulches, and children. Or it was amateur theatricals. Or ringing doorbells for worthy causes. Or umpiring Little League games. Or setting tulip bulbs. Or sticking decals on cribs. Or trimming hedges. Or reading Dr. Spock. Or barbecuing hamburgers. Or increasing your life insurance. Or doing anything in the whole wide world except sitting on a pouf with a soft and loving girl and listening to Rodgers and Hart.

It was more and more on Harry's mind - the pouf, the phonograph records, the long, languorous nights. He would look at Grace in a nubby tweed skirt and a cardigan with the sleeves pushed up, rushing about dispensing civic virtue, wisps of hair coming loose, her seams crooked - and he would remember another Grace in pink velvet lounging pajamas, curled up like a kitten next to him on the pouf, in one hand a cigarette lazily trailing smoke, the other hand doing talented things to the back of his neck.

He would look at his house - the leaks, the squeaks, the chips, the cracks, the things that had to be repaired, recovered, rewired, replaced, remodeled - and he would recall the days when all you did when something went wrong was phone the landlord.

He would look at his children. He would watch them devouring sides of beef and crates of eggs; poking toes through stockings and elbows through sweaters; littering the yard with balls, bats, bicycles, tricycles, scooters, blocks, crayons, paints, tops, hoops, marbles, bows, arrows, darts, guns, and key bits of jigsaw puzzles; trailing mud on the rugs; breaking off the corners of playing cards; eating watermelon in bed; nailing pictures of athletes to walls; leaving black rings in the tub; getting carsick - he would observe this arresting pageant and he would think, "Yes, they are fine children, they are normal, I love them very much, and I will guard and keep them always ... But, oh, how sweet and satisfactory those golden days on the pouf!"

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

June 17, 2008

The Books: "I Was A Teenage Dwarf" (Max Shulman)

dwarf.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

I Was a Teenage Dwarf, by Max Shulman

This is one of the reasons why I love my library, and why I love its alphabetical setup. Because you go from Frankenstein to I was a teenage dwarf, and it's all normal.

I first read this book when I was about 15 years old. I worked in the local library and somehow stumbled over a copy of it, and I'm not sure why but I picked it up. I sat in the school library during a study period, when everything was quiet and serious, and opened it up. The first two pages made me laugh so loud that Mrs. Wood, the librarian, came over and asked me to leave the premises. I couldn't stop. I staggered out of the library and stood in the hallway, guffawing like a maniac. I read it multiple times over my high school years. I never got sick of it. It is the story of Dobie Gillis (who, of course, would later be the star of another book by Shulman which would then become a popular television series) - a boy who is the shortest kid in his high school. This does not stop him, however, from being a ladies man to beat the band. The kid is a Lothario. Every chapter in the book details another romance he had - and some of them are so ridiculous (like when his parents take him to France, and he hooks up with a snarling snotty cliche of a French girl) - no, make that ALL of them are ridiculous. Dobie Gillis is not a discerning lover.

I have no idea why this book affected me so much - but it did.

The funny thing is: Max Shulman, nearly forgotten now, was one of the most popular writers of his day, the 1950s. He wrote Rally Round the Flag, Boys, another hilarious book, which was turned into a film. He wrote best-sellers. If you see photographs of him, he looks like all of the Mission Control guys in Apollo 13, buzz cut, glasses, conservative white shirt, tie ... but his books are absolute MANIA. And it seems that he loved nothing better than making fun of convention, and undermining all of the common assumptions of the day - using humor. He's like an anarchist, for God's sake - most comedians are - but you would never know it from looking at him. He looks like he would belong on Leave It to Beaver, or something like that, but his sensibility is truly subversive. I love that!

Also, any man who creates a character whose name is Loadstone O'Toole - LOADSTONE O'TOOLE??? - is okay by me.

Strangely enough, this book connected me to my parents - in the midst of high school when, you know, I wasn't really about connecting with my parents. But he was the big writer when they were growing up, so they both knew him, and loved that I was getting such a kick out of him. I remember my mother trying to tell me about Rally Round the Flag, Boys and starting to laugh so hard about the name Loadstone O'Toole that SHE would have been asked the high school library as well, if she had been there!

Here's a post I wrote about Max Shulman, and my whole journey with his books, and tracking them all down a couple of years ago (before I had become an Amazon maniac, and a genius at tracking down books online - I feel like I can find ANYTHING now) - but maybe 7 or 8 years ago, this was not the case. I had found The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis at The Strand - so that was cool - but I Was a Teenage Dwarf was like the Holy Grail. It had disappeared off the face of the earth.

I mentioned to my dad how I was trying to track down a copy, and he said he would keep an eye out for it. A couple months later, a box arrived at my apartment door - and I opened it up - and inside was 4 copies of Max Shulman's books - including I Was A Teenage Dwarf! Halleluia! I sat down immediately and read it again, almost nervous that I wouldn't find it so funny - but nope. I found myself snorting and guffawing yet again. It is such a funny book!!

My favorite chapter is the one that tells the story of his romance with the girl next door. Her name is Red Knees. That is not actually her name - her real name is Alice - but Dobie Gillis refers to her as Red Knees because she's a tomboy and is always running and falling down, so she always has red scabs on her knees. He calls her Red Knees. TO HER FACE.

So my excerpt is from the "Red Knees" chapter.


EXCERPT FROM I Was a Teenage Dwarf, by Max Shulman

I hate Red Knees like poison, but I'll tell you a funny thing: sometimes I kind of like her. I mean sometimes I can't help it, she's so cuckoo. She's got the biggest braces on her teeth of any girl I ever saw, and her hair is a million laughs because she keeps cutting it with a nail clippers. Sometimes when I look at that comical hair and the braces and the red knees which she keeps skinning because she is always running and falling down, I can't help myself, I just have to bust out laughing. This gets her pretty sore, which I let her do for a little while and then I grab her and hug her to calm her down. That's the only time Red Knees is really quiet - when I am hugging her.

Well, enough talk about Red Knees. What I started to tell you about was puberty, which is a subject that does not concern Red Knees because if she is having any puberty, it sure is not visible to the naked eye.

I was saying that I don't understand puberty. I understand all right about the changes that happen in the body. Some of them are pretty unlikely, but just the same, I understand them. What I don't understand is the changes that happen in the mind. I mean the mind of girls, not boys. What happens in the mind of boys is very simple: they start thinking about girls all the time. But what do girls think about? What strange, mysterious, evil thing happens that makes them so goofy? Why can you never tell what they're going to do next?

I'll give you a perfect example: Tuckie Webb. Last spring at John Marshall Junior High, after my reprieve from military academy, Tuckie and I had a romance that warmed the heart of the entire school. I mean Alma Gristede had been just a feeble flicker by comparison. Every time we walked down the hall holding hands everybody would smile and say, "Here comes Tuckie and Dobie walking down the hall holding hands." Even Mr. Knabe, the tin shop teacher, would say it, and he hated me like poison because I once used up fourteen feet of sheet brass trying to make a charm for Tuckie's charm bracelet.

Tuckie and I were together all the time. We came to school together every morning. We went to classes together. After school we got on our bikes and went to the Sweet Shoppe together for a lime Coke, Dutch treat. Every Wednesday night we went to the early show at the Bijou, Dutch treat, Saturday mornings I picked her up at ten and we played tennis, or went to the beach. Saturday night there was always a party at one of the kids' houses, and we ate little tiny sandwiches and looked at television and kissed each other. Tuckie only let me kiss her on Saturday night, which was all right with me because kissing really takes it out of a guy.

All this was last spring. On June 17 we graduated from John Marshall, which was the next-to-the-last time I kissed Tuckie. The last time was Saturday, our regular kissing night. I tried to kiss her Sunday morning at the station too but her father kept giving me hostile looks. Her whole family was down at the station where she was going to spend the summer as counselor at a girls' camp.

Myself, I don't go to camp. I hate greenery. I think trees are nowhere, and grass is about as dull as it can get. To tell you the honest truth, I wouldn't mind if the whole world was paved.

But Tuckie likes that kind of scam, so she went up to New Hampshire and spent the summer pulling little girls out of poison ivy, and I just stayed home and laid around all summer carving my initials in things. At night I would usually go next door and chew the fat with Red Knees Baker. Red Knees' parents leave her home alone nearly every night because they have to go out on business. They're interior decorators. They've got this spooky antique shop on the Post Road, all made out of cruddy old barn siding, and they get about four million dollars apiece for brass door knockers and wooden fire-screens and hobnail glasses and all kinds of Early American scam like that. At night they go over to people's houses to advise them on decoration. When they do, they come into your house and look over your furniture and keep giving you a kind of pitying smile and shaking their heads and clicking their tongues. Pretty soon they get you so shaky that you can hardly wait to run down to their store and stock up on brass door knockers.

While her mother and father go out sneering at people's furniture, Red Knees stays home alone, and I'll tell you something you won't believe: she's scared. Wouldn't that snow you? This girl who knows where the Orinoco River is, who's got more money than Fort Knox, who won't let man or nature stand in her way when she makes up her mind to go after something - this tiger is afraid to stay home alone at night. On the nights last summer when I couldn't go over and keep her company, she would barricade the doors and crouch all night behind the sofa.

Well, naturally, I came over as often as I could. I hate to think of any girl crouching behind a sofa all night. And, besides, I didn't have too bad a time. We played a lot of Scrabble, at which she would always beat me, but on the other hand, I was six times as good as she was at darts and smoking. Her folks would get home about ten, and we'd all go into the kitchen and take out some cottage cheese and Sally Lunn bread and have Early American sandwiches.

So it wasn't too bad - for a fill-in, that is. Naturally, I didn't intend to make this a steady thing. I mean spending my evenings with Red Knees. It was only a way to kill time till Tuckie got back from camp. Then, thought I, we would pick up right where we left off - the star-crossed lovers of John Marshall Junior High. Only we wouldn't be at John Marshall any more; in fall we were going up to Central High School. But that wouldn't make any difference, I felt sure, because our love, Tuckie's and mine, was deep and strong and abiding and would easily survive the journey from John Marshall to Central.

Hah! That's all I knew about it.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

June 15, 2008

The Books: "Frankenstein" (Mary Shelley)

0192833669.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Lord Byron's physician Dr. John Polidori sat around one rainy summer night in 1816- they were neighbors in Switzerland - and after a series of rainy days when they were housebound - Byron (who was working on Childe Harold at the time) came up with a suggestion for a way to amuse themselves as a group. Each person was to write a ghost story (there was an old volume of ghost stories in one of their vacation homes - and that was the inspiration for this little party game. Yeah, you know, a party game with two of the most influential poets of their day and a woman who was about to write a classic novel. At the age of nineteen years old. Mm-hm. That was some party game.)

Here is Mary Shelley describing this. It is a perfect and personal description of the artistic process. Anyone who has ever tried to create something ... or wanted to create something and just felt they needed to have an idea ... will recognize themselves in Mary Shelley's words.

Watch how she works it out. Lets her subconscious lead her. She doesn't ask too many questions. She gets her idea, and she GOES. (Rather akin to Dr. Frankenstein's own journey with his monster. There are so many levels here.)

But I just love that she has given us such a detailed essay about how she wrote this book. Goosebumps.

"We will each write a ghost story," said Lord Byron, and his proposition was acceded to. There were four of us. The noble author began a tale, a fragment of which he printed at the end of his poem of Mazeppa. Shelley, more apt to embody ideas and sentiments in the radiance of brilliant imagery and in the music of the most melodious verse that adorns our language than to invent the machinery of a story, commenced one founded on the experiences of his early life. Poor Polidori had some terrible idea about a skull-headed lady who was so punished for peeping through a key-hole - what to see I forget: something very shocking and wrong of course; but when she was reduced to a worse condition than the renowned Tom of Coventry, he did not know what to do with her and was obliged to dispatch her to the tomb of the Capulets, the only place for which she was fitted. The illustrious poets also, annoyed by the platitude of prose, speedily relinquished their uncongenial task.

I busied myself to think of a story - a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror - one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered - vainly. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull. Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. "Have you thought of a story?" I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.

Everything must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.

Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated. They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin (I speak not of what the doctor really did or said that he did, but, as more to my purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him), who preserved a piece of vermicelli in a glass case till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth.

Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Craetor of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade, that this thing which had received such imperfect animation would subside into dead matter, and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench forever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes.

I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still: the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond. I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story - my tiresome, unlucky ghost story! Oh! If I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frighttened that night!

Swiftly as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. "I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow." On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story.

So exciting! And so now WE, the reader, have a "spectre" to "haunt our midnight pillow". I re-read Frankenstein a year or so ago, it had been a long time since I read it - maybe 20 years ... and so I was amazed to discover, yet again, the philosophy that is in the book (very prescient stuff, I think - in terms of technology and man vs. nature - eternal questions) - The writing, at times, is almost over-the-top romantic:

The abrupt sides of vast mountains were before me; the icy wall of the glaceir overhung me; a few shattered pines were scattered around; and the solemn silence of this glorious presence-chamber of imperial nature was broken only by the brawling waves or the fall of some vast fragment, the thunder sound of the avalanche or the cracking, reverberated along the mountains, of the accumulated ice, which, through the silence working of immutable laws, was ever and anon rent and torn, as if it had been but a plaything in their hands. these sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling, and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it. In some degree, also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month. I retired to rest at night; my slumbers, as it were, waited on and ministered to by the assemblance of grand shapes which I had contemplated during the day. They congregated round me; the unstained snowy mountaintop, the glittering pinnacle, the pine woods, and ragged bare ravine, the eagle, soaring amidst the clouds - they all gathered round me and bade me be at peace.

Where had they fled when the next morning I awoke? All of soul-inspiriting fled with sleep, and dark melancholy clouded every thought. the rain was pouring in torrents, and thick mists hid the summits of the mountains, so that I even saw not the faces of those mighty friends. Still I would penetrate their misty veil and seek in them their cloudy retreats. What were rain and storm to me? My mule was brought to the door, and I resolved to ascend to the summit of Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it. It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and the majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life.

To me, that calls to mind Maxfield Parrish's work. Those high-flung vistas, and mountains catching the light - beautiful yet daunting.

The torment of the creator is brought to the forefront with such accuracy in Mary Shelley's writing. She just gets it. Her imagination was such that she could follow her story to its logical conclusion - and yet it is not 'just' a horror story. It's a story about creation, and progress (pros and cons) - and the question which comes up so often today: Just because we CAN do such and such with the latest technology, doesn't mean we SHOULD. Frankenstein is all about that. But once Pandora's box is opened, as we know, you can't close it up again. It's out. The monster is created. He lives. He has a consciousness. The creator is not in charge. He is foolish to think he ever was.

I remember a night early on in my friendship with Allison - we were getting to know each other - and we sat at our favorite little French bistro called Les Deux Gamins - it had maybe 6 tables, was quiet, dark, romantic - and I remember somehow we started talking about Frankenstein. It is one of Allison's favorite books, and she started talking about it - and telling me about a paper she had written in college, one of those times when you get an idea and you can tell it sticks, you know how to back up your case, you know how to write it - and it was all about technology, and the frightening vision of the future that Mary Shelley had expressed. A future we live in right now. Allison was so eloquent on all of this, so obviously excited, that it made me want to go back in time and read her college paper! It was one of those moments, too, when I realized I needed to re-read something. I had read Frankenstein in college. I'm familiar with the story. Even people who haven't read it know the story! Because of all the movies out there! But to read the actual source ... I was totally amazed when I went back and read it again. I had forgotten much of it, including the writing - which still, to this day, amazes me. It's a style, sure - a kind of Gothic overwrought style, easily parodied ... but she manages to get all of her serious points made as well, the terror at what has been unleashed. It's really a work of philosophy, when you get right down to it.

Here's an excerpt.



EXCERPT FROM Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind, and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been irksome, and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy: but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had taken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no supernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale of superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness had no effect upon my fancy; and a churchyard was to me merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of beauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining and analysing all the minutia of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me--a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised, that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret.

Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great and overwhelming that all the steps by which I had been progressively led to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been the study and desires of the wisest men since the creation of the world was now within my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it all opened upon me at once: the information I had obtained was of a nature rather to direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them towards the object of my search, than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I was like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a passage to life, aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual, light.

I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted; that cannot be: listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that subject. I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to your destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.

When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles, and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour. I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like myself, or one of simpler organisation; but my imagination was too much exalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at present within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an undertaking; but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I prepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be incessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect: yet, when I considered the improvement which every day takes place in science and mechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least lay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the magnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its impracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation of a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hinderance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large. After having formed this determination, and having spent some months in successfully collecting and arranging my materials, I began.

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 14, 2008

The Books: "The Story Of An African Farm" (Olive Schreiner)

9780140431841H.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner

Published in 1883 to much acclaim and controversy, The Story of an African Farm has a bland title, but an absolutely radical outlook and structure. It's hard to describe this book - it was quite ahead of its time in many ways, yet it also fits in perfectly with the "novels of ideas" that were so in vogue at the time. It's a big book. It challenges your brain. Olive Schreiner was a South African, a feminist, a radical, influenced by Emerson, John Stuart Mill - their influences can be felt in the book. Her ideas on sexual equality, equal rights in general, religion, politics, economics - it's all in the book. Yet it's not a bore. It's a fascinating read. It doesn't have a typical format - we jump around in time. Years pass in between paragraphs. There are long sections of intellectual discussions (reminiscent of Joyce's devices in some of his books - like the religious retreat in chapter 3 of Portrait of the Artist - excerpt here, with the sermon that goes on for 20 pages) - where Olive Schreiner sets forth her main concerns. It is not a realistic book. It is a book of ideas. People embody types and new ideas - so much so that feminists at the time, and political thinkers, took up Lyndall (for example) as either an ideal of the New Woman, or a warning of the downfall of society. Olive Schreiner was a true radical. Her vision of equality included a new type of man as well - the modern man, the open-minded New Man. The book was published in 2 volumes, and was a smash hit. It made her name.

I'm perhaps making the book sound rather dry - but it's not that at all. It's a juicy thought-provoking book - and it's too bad it's not taught in high schools, because the main characters are kids - and much of the book has to do with seeing the world through the eyes of a kid - There are class issues here as well, issues of work and God and family and parental expectations. A man shows up on the farm one day, from seemingly out of nowhere. His name is Bonaparte Blenkins. He's Irish, if I am remembering correctly - and it's been years since I've read it, but Blenkins is your basic conman, only very few people see through him. He is allowed to insinuate himself into the life of the farm, and he brings about ruin whereever he goes. The main characters in the story are Waldo and Lyndall. They are not brother and sister, but they are kindred spirits, two halves of the same coin. He's the practical son of the hired man, she the intellectual young daughter of the main house, they complement one another, even as they argue out their differences. Lyndall is a young girl, but she already can sense what marriage will have in store for her, and she is totally not down with that. Marriage depends upon the submission of the woman, and she is not having any of that. Lyndall's experiences throughout the book are quite shocking, seen in the tenor of the time, but she struck a huge chord in readers. Olive Schreiner was bombarded with letters. Lyndall feels trapped, already, in the role set out for her by society (much of what she says and feels comes from John Stuart Mill's essay On the Subjection of Women - a huge influence on Schreiner's thoughts).

I first picked up The Story of an African Farm after reading Lucy Maud Montgomery's journals (quote here) - it was one of her favorite books. Not so much for its ideas, perhaps, but for its accurate and specific portrait of childhood. She, of course, went on to be a master at evoking childhood, through all of her books - and Olive Schreiner, in describing the games and conversations and concerns of Lyndall and Waldo, as young people, was showing Lucy Maud the way. To children, their questions about God or love or the future or death are not silly, or precocious ... they are completely serious. Lucy Maud often included in her books sections where kids go off the deep end in terms of their passion - like Marigold (excerpt here) deciding she wanted to be a missionary, and basically fasting, and praying on her knees for hours on end, until she finally makes herself ill. Like Anne playing "The Lady of the Lake" with such commitment that she is stranded in the middle of the river, with no way to get out, ruining the neighbor's boat. Or Anne (excerpt here) going on and on and on to Marilla about how she didn't like to memorize prayers, it seemed totally wrong to her ... she would prefer to walk out into the woods and just feel a prayer. Marilla is, of course, shocked - but Anne's point is made (or Lucy Maud's point is made, through the mouthpiece of her 11 year old heroine). Anne has a point. She actually has thought about God, and who he is, and what kind of relationship she wanted to have with him - not in any scholarly way, or intellectual - it's more of a feeling, an intuition, and she speaks from her own (albeit limited) experience. You can really feel the influence of Olive Schreiner in Lucy Maud Montgomery's books. Not so much the radical feminism, or the attempt at sexual equality (sex outside of marriage, all that) - but the view that childhood was a vast three-dimensional world, just as serious and interesting as the adult world. Perhaps even more so because children still question things, they ask "Why?", they don't blindly accept things - they have to find it out themselves.

Here's an excerpt - from the day Bonaparte Blenkins appears on the farm. It gives a sense of the early parts of the book - the later parts get much more philosophical, and intellectual ... but here, Lyndall and Waldo are young kids, maybe in their early teens. Waldo, if I am remembering correctly, is the son of the long-time hired man on the farm. These kids also have grown up in a world of intense (and stifling) faith. Questioning it is not an option. But Waldo does. He has a horrible moment one night when he realizes that he loves Jesus but he hates God. These thoughts are beyond the pale, in his world. He's tormented. There's something of the visionary in Waldo, even though his imaginings are usually pretty awful. The physical world and objects comes across to him as sentient beings - the whole book opens with Waldo listening to a clock tick through the night, and seeing visions of ranks of people, throughout all of time, strolling off to their death. You can see here, in the excerpt below, his fascinating with the real, and what it might be trying to tell him. The answers of the little Christian girl ("God made it God did it, don't ask why, He just did) are completely unsatisfactory.

Lyndall and Em sit outside at the farm, and Waldo approaches. He has the news that a man has arrived. On a rock behind them are paintings of the Bushmen.

Again, I feel like I'm making this book sound dry. As you can see from the prose below, it is not at all. I love the book.

More on Olive Schreiner, a fascinating woman (and a very good writer) here.

EXCERPT FROM The Story of an African Farm, by Olive Schreiner

'What have you been doing to-day?' asked Lyndal, lifting her eyes to his face.

'Looking after ewes and lambs below the dam. Here!' he said, holding out his hand awkwardly, 'I brought them for you.'

There were a few green blades of tender grass.

'Where did you get them?'

'On the dam wall.'

She fastened them beside the leaf on her blue pinafore.

'They look nice there,' said the boy, awkwardly rubbing his great hands and watching her.

'Yes, but the pinafore spoils it all; it is not pretty.'

He looked at it closely.

'Yes, the squares are ugly; but it looks nice upon you - beautiful.'

He now stood silent before them, his great hands hanging loosely at either side.

'Someone has come to-day,' he mumbled out suddenly, when the idea struck him.

'Who?' asked both girls.

'An Englishman on foot.'

'What does he look like?' asked Em.

'I did not notice; but he has a very large nose,' said the boy slowly. 'He asked the way to the house.'

'Didn't he tell you his name?'

'Yes - Bonaparte Blenkins.'

'Bonaparte!' said Em, 'why that is like the reel Hottentot Hans plays on the violin --

' "Bonaparte, Bonaparte, my wife is sick;
In the middle of the week, but Sundays not,
I give her rice and beans for soup" --

It is a funny name.'

'There was a living man called Bonaparte once,' said she of the great eyes.

'Ah, yes, I know,' said Em - 'the poor prophet whom the lions ate. I am always so sorry for him.'

Her companion cast a quiet glance upon her.

'He was the greatest man who ever lived,' she said, 'the man I like best.'

'And what did he do?' asked Em, conscious that she had made a mistake, and that her prophet was not the man.

'He was one man, only one,' said her little companion slowly, 'yet all the people in the world feared him. He was not born great, he was common as we are; yet he was master of the world at last. Once he was only a little child, then he was a lieutenant, then he was a general, then he was an emperor. When he said a thing to himself he never forgot it. He waited, and waited, and waited, and it came at last.'

'He must have been very happy,' said Em.

'I do not know,' said Lyndall; 'but he had what he said he would have, and that is better than being happy. He was their master, and all the people were white with fear of him. They joined together to fight him. He was one and they were many, and they got him down at last. They were like the wild cats when their teeth are fast in a great dog, like cowardly wild cats,' said the child, 'they would not let him go. They were many; he was only one. They sent him to an island in the sea, a lonely island, and kept him there fast. He was one man, and they were many, and they were terrified of him. It was glorious!' said the child.

'And what then?' said Em.

'Then he was alone there in that island, with men to watch him always,' said her companion, slowly and quietly, 'and in the long, lonely nights he used to lie awake and think of the things he had done in the old days, and the things he would do if they let him go again. In the day when he walked near the shore it seemed to him that the sea all around him was a cold chain about his body pressing him to death.'

'And then?' said Em, much interested.

'He died there in that island; he never got away.'

'It is rather a nice store,' said Em; 'but the end is sad.'

'It is a terrible, hateful ending,' said the little teller of the story, leaning forward on her folded arms; 'and the worst is, it is true. I have noticed,' added the child very deliberately, 'that it is only the made-up stories that end nicely; the true ones all end so.'

As she spoke the boy's dark, heavy eyes rested on her face.

'You have read it, have you not?'

He nodded. 'Yes; but the brown history tells only what he did, not what he thought.'

'It was in the brown history that I read of him,' said the girl; 'but I know what he thought. Books do not tell everything.'

'No,' said the boy, slowly drawing nearer to her and sitting down at her feet. 'What you want to know they never tell.'

Then the children fell into silence, till Doss, the dog, growing uneasy at its long continuance, sniffed at one and the other, and his master broke forth suddenly -

'If they could talk, if they could tell us now!' he said, moving his hand out over the surrounding objects - 'then we would know something. This "kopje", if it could tell us how it came here! The "Physical Geography" says,' he went on most rapidly and confusedly, 'that what are dry lands now were once lakes; and what I think is this - these low hills were once the shores of a lake; this "kopje" is some of the stones that were at the bottom, rolled together by the water. But there is this - how did the water come to make one heap here alone, in the centre of the plain?' It was a ponderous question; no one volunteered an answer. 'When I was little,' said the boy, 'I always looked at it and wondered, and I thought a great giant was buried under it. Now I know the water must have done it; but how? It is very wonderful. Did one little stone come first, and stopped the others as they rolled?' said the boy, with earnestness, in a low voice, more as speaking to himself than to them.

'Oh, Waldo, God put the little "kopje" here,' said Em with solemnity.

'But how did he put it here?'

'By wanting.'

'But how did the wanting bring it here?'

'Because it did.'

The last words were uttered with the air of one who produces a clinching argument. What effect it had on the questioner was not evident, for he made no reply, and turned away from her.

Drawing closer to Lyndall's feet, he said, after a while, in a low voice,

'Lyndall, has it never seemed to you that the stones were talking to you? Sometimes,' he added, in a yet lower tone, 'I lie under there with my sheep, and it seems that the stones are really speaking - speaking of the old things, of the time when the strange fishes and animals lived that are turned into stone now, and the lakes were here; and then of the time when the little Bushmen lived here, so small and so ugly, and used to sleep in the wild dog holes, and in the "sloots", and eat snakes, and shot the bucks with their poisoned arrows. It was one of them, one of these old wild Bushmen, that painted those,' said the boy, nodding towards the pictures - 'one who was different from the rest. He did not know why, but he wanted to make something, so he made these. He worked hard, very hard, to find the juice to make the paint; and then he fond this place where the rocks hang over, and he painted them. To us they are only strange things, that make us laugh, but to him they were very beautiful.'

The children had turned round and looked at the pictures.

'He used to kneel here naked, painting, painting, painting, and he wondered at the things he made himself,' said the boy, rising and moving his hand in deep excitement. 'Now the Boers have shot them all, so that we never see a little yellow face peeping out among the stones.' He paused, a dreamy look coming over his face. 'And the wild bucks have gone, and those days, and we are here. But we will be gone soon, and only the stones will lie on here, looking at everything like they look now. I know that it is I who am thinking,' the fellow added slowly, 'but it seems as though it were they who are talking. Has it never seemed so to you, Lyndall?'

'No, it never seems so to me,' she answered.

The sun had dipped now below the hills, and the boy suddenly remembering the ewes and lambs, started to his feet.

'Let us also go to the house and see who has come,' said Em, as the boy shuffled away to rejoin his flock, while Doss ran at his heels, snapping at the ends of the torn trousers as they fluttered in the wind.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 13, 2008

The Books: "The ABCs of Love" (Sarah Salway)

9780345467034-l.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The ABCs of Love, by Sarah Salway

I read this funny and clever novel in its entirety during one sleepless night. It's not even 200 pages long. I picked it up because of Ted's post on her 2nd novel Tell Me Everything - which sparked my interest (also notice the coolness of the fact that she showed up and posted a comment on Ted's blog about it!!) - I loved the writing he excerpted there - and Tell Me Everything is on my short stack of To Be Read books. Well, my To Be Read stack is actually HUGE, but I have a lifelong "To Be Read" list, which is so extensive I get frightened when I look at it ... and then I have a more shortterm one. Like all the Master & Commander books. And War & Peace this summer. And Lionel Shriver's latest. And Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman Union book. Those will be read in 2008, I am sure of it.

The ABCs of Love is written in snippets - and it's done alphabetically. We have "entries", like a dictionary or a thesaurus - multiple entries per letter of the alphabet - and over the entirety of the book, a story emerges. This might seem like a gimmick, and it is - to some degree - but her writing is so interesting and clear that I found myself swept away by it. I also laughed out loud at a couple of points - and that's always good. I'm eager to read her second novel now. You might think, by looking at the cover, and reading the plot description, that this might as well be called Bridget Jones' Diary Part Deux, but you would be wrong. That's the problem with the "chick lit" label. Eventually, it has come to mean any book that deals with romance, and that pisses me off. Because romance is not just a female concern. Men are involved too. Anna Karenina isn't a romance? But no one would dare put a "chick lit" label on THAT thing. I think it's dismissive of women's concerns - and yes, there is the Devil Wears Prada version of chick lit - where it's basically about urban single women who care about shoes and bags and labels and getting married. That's fine - it's a genre of writing - and there is obviously a huge audience for it. I don't happen to care for it, but that's immaterial. I don't really care for sci-fi either, or horror novels. Whatever, it's personal taste. What annoys ME is that books that are NOT that brand of chick lit - books that have a much wider appeal (see: Elinor Lipman) are lumped under some marketing umbrella, which then, of course, frightens away male readers, which is unfortunate.

One of the neat things about me doing my Book Excerpt thing, is that some people are turned on to books that they might never have picked up otherwise. I was so so pleased to see that the male blogger at Quiet Bubble had picked up The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman because of my post on it. I mean, even the title of that book screams "This is for girls" ... and the new cover design is typical: headless cartoon-y women, glass of wine, string of pearls, strappy heels ... You know. But it's not like that at all. It's a deep and insightful sociological portrait of working at a big city hospital ... all the different personalities ... and this kind of humorless Asperger's type lead character ... It's a wonderful book. NOT just for girls.

And come on, if I can read and love the Master & Commander series, where women sometimes don't show up for an entire book, then you boys can come over to our side as well, just to visit! There are good books out there! Marketing Departments be damned ... what's inside the book??

(A side issue is that I am not at all turned off by a book just because it is "meant for" men, or marketed to men, or seems like a boy-book. I am annoyed by men who, say, haven't read Jane Eyre, because it seems like a "girl book". You know what? Fuck you. Basically, that is my response.) Perhaps it is because, you know, I was educated in a time before politically correct canons were thrust upon students - where Native American chants were given as much time in class as the Magna Carta - where a housewife who wrote one poem in 1481 is put on par with William Blake - where literature was taught to redress grievances, as opposed to, you know, read the great books out there - so most of the books we read in high school were by men, and whatever, I dealt with it, because that's the way of the world. As a girl, you get used to reading books where you are not represented in the slightest. Harper Lee was read in high school. In any poetry units, we'd read Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, others ... we read Wuthering Heights in 11th grade ... but you know, the exceptions only prove the rule. I feel protective of women authors I love, and angry when they get short shrift, because of their gender. Not all books dealing with romance are Sex and the City knock-offs. Yes, many books are - but not ALL books, and to lump Elinor Lipman in with that?? Without even reading her? No. You're an idiot if you do that.

What if I had decided to not read Moby Dick because it was written by a man and there are no girls in that book? Wouldn't that be a retarded reason to not read a book?

This reminds me of the poor gentleman who emailed me and tried to compliment me by going on and on and on about how surprised he was that he found my writing interesting, engaging, smart, thought-provoking ... he was surprised by it because I was a woman. He was quite open about his surprise. He said, "Most women are of the Fried Green Tomatoes type of writing..." Uh ... they are? Joyce Carol Oates? Joan Didion? Anne Fadiman? Annie Proulx? AS Byatt? AM Homes? Margaret Atwood? Mary Gaitskill? Elinor Lipman? Alice McDermott? Jhumpa Lahiri? Do you want me to go on? He wouldn't have picked up any of those books because the author had a vagina. That was basically what he was saying. He just could not get over that he liked my blog and I was a woman!! And he kept referencing Fried Green Tomatoes. The accomplishments of great women writers through the centuries were nothing to this guy. All women will be judged by Fried Green Tomatoes. It really was about his judgment of what he saw as female concerns, for which he had nothing but contempt. Men wrote about REAL things, women were just silly. He said, with SOME concession to manners, "I suppose you think I'm a Neanderthal." I had to really think about my response to him before I hit "Send". I obviously needed to slaughter him, because I am over trying to 'teach' unevolved people in how to appreciate my awesomeness without being total jagoffs. Some people just aren't jagoffs NATURALLY, and those are the people I want to hang with. So I wrote him back and just said, "I don't think you're a Neanderthal. Just a bigot. I cannot allow you to sideswipe my entire gender repeatedly and feel that that is somehow okay. Also, you seem to have a really limited reading list if you judge all women authors by Fried Green Tomatoes. So that is a lacking in your education, not a fault of women writers. It's not OUR fault that you aren't a more adventurous reader." I then provided him with a reading list including George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte, Mary Shelley, Flannery O'Connor, Willa Cather, AS Byatt, Madeleine L'Engle, Annie Proulx ... the list went on forever. Women who never, in a million years, would be put on the same level as Fried Green Tomatoes. Don't blame WOMEN for your bullshit reading list, bub. He apologized, but (strangely enough!!) I never heard from him again! Huh! Maybe he'll think twice before being such an open bigot again, but I doubt it.

To me, there's a big problem in book design, too - although I understand the rationale. They want to find the "niche" audience - and they want to make sure that it appeals. But, as someone who is turned OFF by the "clacking heels Manohlo Blahniks Prada bag" version of chick lit - I get annoyed when I see Lipman's books re-released with covers that suggest that THAT is what is inside. And here's the deal: It's like marketing of movies as well. I get that it's a business, so please don't lecture me about that. HOWEVER: I am a consumer, too - and when you ignore me, you ignore a vast swath of the audience that you might actually NEED. You market a movie as a wacky American Pie 2 and I probably won't see it. But if you lie about what a movie actually is ... like the way Weatherman was marketed.... What a mess. I thought that film was a brilliant and bleak portrait of a man at the end of his rope. The more I think about it, the more I love that film. It was marketed to the folks who like Nicholas Cage one way, over the top, whatever ... and so ... they made it seem like a movie it wasn't. And so it bombed. That's a shame. Because, like I mentioned: I dislike being ignored as a consumer. There are people in America who like serious films about serious subjects. Ignore us at your peril, basically. I am also a valid audience member who will shell out 12 bucks for a movie ... so if you skip over me, just because I like more serious fare, you're an idiot - it's not smart marketing.


Book Slut focuses quite a bit on the whole chick lit thing ... here's a really interesting recent piece about chick lit covers - and it's not to dis those books. But, for example - Jessa (the original Book Slut) has been writing quite a bit about Inglorious, a book she thought was fantastic. It has been released in the States in paperback - with a new non-chick-lit-ty cover - here is her post on it. I can only speak from my own experience - as someone who does not enjoy the typical urban-single-girl chick lit and will actually not pick up a book with a cover like that, because I'm not into it (Thank God I read Elinor Lipman before her books were all re-designed to look like chick lit) - so I remember seeing the first version of Inglorious in bookstores, and just passing right by it. In general, I'm not going to like a book that has, on its cover, strappy heels, a headless woman, a cute purse ... It's just not my thing. But apparently, the book is not that way at all - and the marketing team, of course, made some decisions to reach out to a wider audience ... but in doing so, ignored ME, someone who WOULD be interested (and very interested) in reading a book of that description.

What does all this have to do with The ABCs of Love?

Oh, nothing. hahahahaha No, but seriously: even with a title like ABCs of Love I can sense the limit of the appeal of the book - and perhaps there is something to that. It's not a big book, with big themes - but it's also not a silly piece of fluff. There is some middle ground.

The book is broken down into the alphabet - but as you go through, there is a chronology that emerges ... I really liked the structure. Like, there's a story being told here: of a woman and her romance, and her best friend being the mistress of a married man ... but because of the alphabetical structure of the book, there's a fragmented aspect to the whole thing, which I think really suits the story. It's very funny, too: after each entry she cross-references with other entries, like an index - and sometimes they are touching, other times hilarious. For example, in one "entry" when she rhapsodizes about the beginning of her relationship, one of the index cross-references is also the entry titled "Endings". You know, who can't relate to that? You look at the beginning of something, and you know the end of it, you know the whole story - so it's hard not to have that retrospective knowledge bleed into the entire thing.

So. Hope you enjoyed my rant! It's been on my mind a bit because I've been disgusted by the misogynistic tone of much of the Sex and the City reviews, a movie I don't plan on seeing - I loved the series, but I have no interest in seeing the movie - but the viciousness of the reviews have been such a turnoff. What women use as escapism is seen as silly and trivial, and men's escapes are given much more weight and gravitas. Or it's given a pass. Like the many MANY sit coms with big slobby guys married to skinny hot chicks. Yeah, fine, you want me to not question it, and just buy into it as reflective of reality ... I kinda don't, but whatevs. It's escapist fare, it's a fantasy ... and that's fine. Fantasy has its place. Just don't ask me to accept it as real, and then expect me to put up silently with your misogynistic ravings about how shallow women are based on THEIR fantasies. Please.

I say all of this, too, as someone who is not all that "girlie", who never fits in with generalizations about women. But again, that's okay - because I know who I am, and I can make my own way. Society may have a vested interest in saying, again and again, 'Men are like this" and "women are like this" but I'm old enough to know that, fine, that may be the norm for some, but I don't fit in with that, and thank God I have good friends and excellent boyfriends who love me for who I am, in all my weirdness and "deviations". I find the materialism of much of the chick lit genre actually anxiety-provoking ... But that's another post for another day. I don't discount that chick lit like that is akin to porn for many women - and that's fine - but it's not that for me. I like my porn to be, well, porn, frankly. Like I said. I'm actually a man. I'm okay with that.

Here's an excerpt from the "B" section of the book.



EXCERPT FROM The ABCs of Love, by Sarah Salway

blackbirds, robins, and nightingales

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between how you sound in your head and how other people seem to hear you.

For instance, I have noticed that I can make what I think is a perfectly pleasant comment but that it can still cause offense. I do not mean to have a sharp tongue, it is just the way the words come out.

Perhaps it is because I have such low self-esteem and do not think so much of myself as someone like Sally, for example.

Personally, though, I blame the nuns. At the convent school I went to, we were split into three groups for singing. There were the Nightingales, who could sing beautifully; the Blackbirds were all right; and the Robins were what Mother Superior called "orally challenged". I was one of only three Robins in the whole school, although I had a cold at the auditions, so it wasn't really fair.

The Robins were hardly ever allowed to sing in public and particularly not if the song had anything to do with God. We had to mouth along instead, which got very boring, and sometimes it was hard to keep in the words. Once, an unidentified Robin joined in on a particularly loud and lively hymn, one we all loved. In the middle of our Lord stamping out the harvest, Mother Superior held out her hand for silence.

"Hark!" she said, raising her other hand to her ear. "I can hear a Robin singing." Everyone looked at me.

That moment has always stayed with me. One of the things I hate most about myself is the way I blush in public even when I am not necessarily to blame. It is the same feeling that makes you itch every time anyone talks about fleas.

-- See also Captains; God; Outcast; Voices

blood

It used to be a craze at school to scratch the initials of your boyfriend into your arm with a compass and squeeze the skin until the blood came up. Then you'd rub ink over the graze so you'd be tattooed for life. Luckily, it rarely worked.

Once I was doing it with Sally, but as neither of us had a boyfriend at that time, we just dug the compass randomly into each other's arms. It made me think of the time I punctured my aunt's favorite leather sofa one Christmas with the screwdriver from the toy carpentry set I'd got from Santa. I did that again and again too.

It was Sally's idea to mix the blood drops together. She kept flicking her cigarette lighter, and we sang "Kumbaya" as we did it to make it seem more meaningful. Sally said that we were sisters now and that nothing could separate us, not even a boy.

-- See also Codes; Mars Bars; Vendetta; Yields; Zzzz

bosses

The only trouble with my job is the bosses. My current one is possibly the worst I have ever had. His name is Brian. He is from Yorkshire and has a short bristly beard, which he is always fondling, and if I don't manage to look away, I can sometimes see his little tongue hanging out, all red and glistening.

Brian won't leave me alone. He seems to think we have a special relationship. He's always telling me that I mustn't mind if he teases me, that he does it to everyone he's fond of. "It means you're one of the family, Ver," he says, putting his arm around me.

It's funny, though, that while Brian is always standing too close to me, when it comes to work, he likes to dictate his typing for me into a machine rather than face-to-face. He'll do it even when I'm in the room, and he'll leave little messages to me as he's dictating, which means I have to hear them twice. Once he said into the machine: "Good morning, Verity. You're looking very nice this morning," so I called across, "Thank you, Brian," and he told me off for spoiling his dictation. He said he'd have to start again now. I left the room, and when I eventually listened to his tape, I noticed that this time he didn't say I looked nice.

Another time he dictated a rude joke to me. A man in an office asked to borrow another man's Dictaphone. The other man said no, he couldn't. He should use his finger to dial like everyone else.

I listened to this through my headphones with a stony face because I knew Brian was watching me, hoping I would laugh.

-- See also Ambition; Zero


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBack

June 12, 2008

The Books: "Light Years" (James Salter)

9780141188638H.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Light Years, by James Salter


Unbelievable book so full of great writing that you want to shout, "Slow down a minute! Give me a second to ABSORB this prose!!" I found the book almost unbearably intense at times, and yet I couldn't exactly point to why. I read it when I was in my 20s, so I wonder if a small intimation of middle-age came to me through the book - and the loneliness I would experience ... I don't know. It's an eerie book. There's a deep sadness and loss being expressed - and yet a lot of the book is lengthy dinner parties, meetings with the tailor, playing games with the children ... You can't quite point to what is wrong, but ... isn't that the way life is a lot of the time? At least it is for me.

Light Years tells the story of a married couple - Nedra and Viri. They have two children. They seem to live a charmed life, a life of ease. They have a big house in Westchester. Nedra is the wife, a beautiful woman - the book starts in the late 1950s, and perhaps things are a bit simpler then, with assumptions not being questioned ... As the book unfolds, we start to see (or sense) the cracks beneath the flawless picture. We're not sure how it will go and if or when the cracks will be revealed but it is impossible to read the descriptions of their garden, the games they make up for their kids, their skating on the lake ... without wondering when it will all end. This is due to Salter's mastery of language. He is so so good. Again, like in Sport and a Pastime, much of the book is descriptive. The sky, the air, the trees, the river ... and it is spare language, not sumptuous or anything like that. But the overall impression is one of the fleetingness of life and beauty ... It's a deeply sad book. I was shattered by the end of it.

It's been years since I read it so much of the details of the plot are lost. I know that Nedra and Viri eventually split, and whatever silence was behind their union, whatever it was that was not being said, pours into the void, filling up their lives. If I remember correctly, Nedra has an easier time with the split, moving gracefully into single life as though she were born to it. I have to read it again.

Light Years seems, to me, to be a true middle-aged book. Sport and a Pastime (excerpt here) is a young man's book, with a young man's concerns ... but here in Light Years, things are not so much in flux, people have settled, life has taken on its solid form - it is what it is (seemingly). Change is supposed to be good, right? If we don't change, we die. But middle-aged people, with their bodies starting to go, their youth fading, having to make room for the next generation, all that ... change is something to be feared. It rarely means something good. Light Years is full of that anxiety. It's heartbreaking.

A great novel.

Here's an excerpt: About that indefinable sadness: notice how in the excerpt below, which is all about family life - a "compact that will never end" - and while there is much to envy here, the calm beauty of being part of a group, a family ... Salter at one point describes them all as "a group of devoted actors who know nothing beyond themselves, beyond the pile of roles from old ..." That's what I mean by sadness. It cannot be pointed to, nothing can be identified as "the thing that is wrong" - but it's Salter's gift as a writer, his eloquent and very specific choices of images - that gives to us the impression that all is not quite well.


EXCERPT FROM Light Years, by James Salter

Danny is less obedient; she has a stubborn quality. She is less beautiful. In the summer her leanness and tan skin conceal it. She goes out in the deep water in a rubber tube, daring, kicking like an insect. It is morning, the surf falling forward, its white teeth hissing on the shore. Viri watches, sitting on the sand. She waves at him, her shouts carried off by the wind. He understands suddenly what love of a child is. It overwhelms him like the line from a song.

Morning; the sea sound faint on the wind. His sunburned daughters walk on creaking floors. They pass their life together, in a compact that will never end. They go to the circus, to stores, the market shed in Amagansett with its laden shelves and fruits, to picnics, pageants, concerts in wooden churches among the trees. They enter Philharmonic Hall. The audience is hushed. They are seated, the program is in their laps. To listen to a symphony is to open the book of faces. The maestro arrives. He collects himself, stands poised. The great, exotic opening chords of Chabrier. They go to performances of Swan Lake, their faces pale in the darkness of the Grand Tier. The vast curve of seats is lighted like the Ritz. A huge orchestra pit, big as a ship, a ceiling of gold, hung with bursts of light, with pendants that glitter like ice. The great Nureyev comes out after, bowing like an angel, like a prince. They beg each other for the glasses; his neck, his chest are gleaming with sweat, even the ends of his hair. His hands, like those of a child, play with the cape tassels. The end of performances, the end of Mozart, of Bach. The solo violinist stands with her face raised, utterly drained, the last chords still sounding, as if from a great love. The conductor applauds her, the audience, the beautiful women, their hands held high.

They pass their life together, they pass boys fishing, walking to the end of the pier with a small eel tied, doubled up, on the hook. The mute eye of the eel calls out, a black dot in his plain, silver face. They sit at the table where their grandfather eats, Nedra's father, a salesman, a man from small towns, his cough yellow, the Camel cigarettes always near his hand. His voice is out of focus, his eyes are filmed, he hardly seems to notice them. He brings death with him into the kitchen; a long, wasted life, the chrysalis of Nedra's, its dry covering, its forgotten source. He has cheap shoes, a suitcase filled with samples of aluminum window frames.

Their life is formed together, woven together, they are like actors, a group of devoted actors who know nothing beyond themselves, beyond the pile of roles from old, from immortal plays.

The summer ends. There are misty, chilly days, the sea is quiet and white. The waves break far out with a slow, majestic sound. The beach is deserted. Occasional strollers along the water's edge. The children lie on Viri's back like possums; the sand is warm beneath him.

Peter and Catherine join them, together with their little boy. The families sit separated, in the solitude and mist. Peter has a folding chair and wears a yachting cap and a shirt. Beside him is a bucket filled with ice, bottles of Dubonnet and rum. An eerie and beautiful day. The fine points of mist drift over them. August has passed.

At a pause in the conversation, Peter rises and walks slowly, without a word, into the sea, a solitary bather, swimming far out in his blue shirt. His strokes are powerful and even. He swims with assurance, strong as an iceman. Finally Viri joins him. The water is cool. There is mist all about them, the swelling rhythm of the waves. No one is in sight except their families sitting on shore.

"It's like swimming in the Irish Sea," Peter says. "Never any sun."

Franca and Danny come out to them.

"It's deep here," Viri warns.

Each of the men holds a child. They huddle close.

"The Irish sailors," Peter tells them, "never learn to swim. Not even a stroke. The sea is too strong."

"But what if the boat sinks?"

"They cross their hands on their chests and say a prayer," Peter says. He performs it. Like the carved lid of a coffin he sinks from sight.

"Is it true?" they ask Viri later.

"Yes."

"They drown?"

"They deliver themselves to God."

"How does he know that?"

"He knows."

"Peter is very strange," Franca says.

And he reads to them, as he does every night, as if watering them, as if turning the earth at their feet. There are stories he has never heard of, and others he has known as a child, these stepping stones that are there for everyone. What is the real meaning of these stories, he wonders, of creatures that no longer exist even in the imagination princes, woodcutters, honest fishermen who live in hovels. He wants his children to have an old life and a new life, a life that is indivisible from all lives past, that grows from them, exceeds them, and another that is original, pure, free, that is beyond the prejudice which protects us, the habit which gives us shape. He wants them to know both degradation and sainthood, the one without humiliation, the other without ignorance. He is preparing them for this voyage. It is as if there is only a single hour, and in that hour all the provender must be gathered, all the advice offered. He longs for the one line to give them that they will always remember, that will embrace everything, that will point the way, but he cannot find the line, he cannot recognize it. It is more precious, he knows, than anything else they might own, but he does not have it. Instead, in his even, sensuous voice he laves them in the petty myths of Europe, of snowy Russia, the East. The best education comes from knowing only one book, he tells Nedra. Purity comes from that, and proportion, and the comfort of always having an example close at hand.

"Which book?" she says.

"There are a number of them."

"Viri," she says, "it's a charming idea."


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 11, 2008

The Books: "A Sport and a Pastime" (James Salter)

11013756.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter


James Salter sneaks up on you. His writing is deceptively simple. Kinda like Hemingway. He reminds me a bit of Fitzgerald as well. You may think that Salter just describes surfaces (and does so very well - he totally transports you) - but you would be wrong. He's unbelievably deep. I find his writing hypnotic ... and I can't really put my finger on what is so good about it ... I just know when I read his books (and I've only read two of them: Sport and a Pastime and Light Years), it's like I'm under a spell. Reynolds Price calls Salter's prose a "dense net" and I think that's perfect. The writer in me tends to stand back a little bit from James Salter, looking at this or that paragraph, thinking to myself, "How does he do it? What the hell is he actually doing here that makes it so effective?" For whatever reason, James Salter is not as well-known as some of his contemporaries (Sport and a Pastime came out in the 60s, it was his third novel) - and I'm not sure why that is. He's accessible, too - there's nothing opaque or intellectually distancing about his books. He seems to be interested in digging in to the sensory reality of any given moment. And so his books are full of colors and tastes and sounds ... nothing calling too much attention to itself. He is not at ALL a "clever" writer. And you might be lulled into the impression that not much happens in his books. People sit around in a cafe and have wine. They walk home over cobblestones. They wake up in the morning and see the frost on the trees. But Salter is getting at deep truths throughout, moments of insight that are piercing - those moments in life when people are truly alive. And it's not always a pleasant feeling - being that alive. Most people choose to dull things down a bit, to not walk around in such an aware state because it can be unbearable. James Salter, with no fanfare, no self-importance, navigates his characters through life and experience, showing us what they see, hear, touch, feel ... and by the end (more so in Light Years than in Sport and a Pastime), we are rocked to the core. And because of the "dense net" of his writing, it is difficult to point to what exactly it was that moved us so much. You come out of the maze (his books are short, they can be read in about 3 days) and wonder where you have been, how long you have been gone ... There is a piercing sense of awareness. He makes you see. I mean, how many writers can do that? The fact that James Salter is, in some crowds, considered a "minor" writer is ridiculous to me. This man is a major talent, a major American writer.

Sport and a Pastime is the story of a romance between an American boy and a French girl. She is 18, he is maybe 20. The way it is written, we are not sure if the narrator (who is first-person) is actually the boy - or just an observer. He goes into the bedroom with the two lovers, there's a lot of sex in this book - it's about the intoxication of - well, not first love - but first sex. These people have probably had sex before, but they haven't gotten lost in it. But anyway, the narrator - who may be looking on ... would have no way of knowing what goes on in the bedroom, unless his friend tells him what happened ... But there are clues in the book that the narrator is not, shall we say, reliable. He tells us that what we read is not true. We wonder what his investment in all of this is. Why is he so obsessed with his friend's sexual affair with the French girl? Is he living vicariously? The book takes place in a small rural town in France. Our narrator is living there, and Philip Dean - a guy who is kind of mysterious - it seems he was kicked out of Princeton and is now bumming around France - comes to visit him. They had met at a party in Paris. Philip Dean is the one who has the affair with Anne Marie, the French teenager. It is a summer of love. It was, perhaps, a more innocent time then - not as sexualized - so the discovery of the pleasures of sex for these two characters is an intense revelation. Sex IS love, in many respects - whether or not you ever say the words "I love you" and these two have a sexual combustability that rocks both of their worlds. She can barely speak English. He can barely speak French. None of that matters.

It's one of those books where woman is completely "Other". She is barely seen as human. She is an alien from outer space. She IS her parts. There is nothing there besides her body, which intoxicates Philip Dean. It is an intensely objectified portrait of a female - so if you're turned off by that (and I am) - just know that going in. It's not hostile objectification (although all objectification is, of course, to some degree, hostile - you're not seeing the other person as, you know, a person) - I didn't feel a disgust for femaleness or any of that other stuff that often comes with objectification. No ... it was just that Philip Dean does not see her as a whole ... and, I suppose, that's what first love and first sex really feels like ... You're not looking at the other person, appreciating them for who they are, their life experience, their quirks ... You're all about what they smell like, what their thighs feel like, what they taste like. So I have no idea who Anne-Marie is. She IS her body, in all its weirdness (meaning: not like men's) ... she IS what she tastes like, how she fucks, what she smells like. We never get inside her brain. We can surmise what she is going through, based on her behavior ... but Philip Dean doesn't even seem to realize that knowing who she is, in terms of her brain, her thoughts, her psychology, is part of being in love with someone. He does love her. But there is something in the love affair that is inherently temporary for him. SHE doesn't know that ... but he does, even if he doesn't admit it to himself. Is he slumming? Yeah, a little bit. He may have dropped out of Princeton (or been kicked out), and on the run from the American-dream expectations back home ... but he won't be on the run forever. He will eventually go home and join the rat race and stop borrowing money from everyone and make his own. (At least you get the sense from him that this all temporary ... He won't be an ex-patriate forever). And you just can't picture poor little Anne-Marie being transplanted to the fast-track United States. She lives in a small village, with a billiard hall, a cafe, a church, and green fields all around. Her life is small. She cannot speak English. But of course sex is not separated from love (not for men OR for women) - and so she is probably spinning fantasies of being taken back to America as his wife. But from the little we know about Philip Dean, we know that that will probably never happen. It's not like she is wildly inappropriate - he hasn't fallen in love with a hooker, or a homeless girl ... She is a perfectly respectable young French girl, but that's about it. Philip Dean is not callous. In many ways, he does not know what is in his own heart (although our observational narrator often guesses at it) ... and he's not cavalier, he's not a ladies' man - You totally get the sense that he has never experienced sex like this before either. And I'm not talking about different positions or anything technical - I'm talking about sex as true communication between two people. He is blown away by that aspect of it. In that way, she is NOT objectified: he could only have experienced such a thing with her. They "click", is basically the message of all of the sex scenes in the book.

But, like Fitzgerald, Salter has a way of suggesting that the end is coming, even in the midst of the summer blooming romance. There's a wistful nostalgia in his tone, a sense that we are all middle-aged now, looking back on the time when we were young ... and it's heartbreaking. You can't really point to where it is so heartbreaking, it is just an overall impression - from his writing.

To me, Light Years is a superior book - but Sport and a Pastime is what put him on the map - and I'm glad to see it's been re-released, in a nice new edition, with a preface by Reynolds Price - and it's given the props it deserves. Salter recently came out with a memoir that I am excited to read, I don't know much about the guy. But God, what insight, what ... EYES he has. I don't know how he does it. There are times when it seems he is just listing objects he sees ... but the cumulative effect of all of that is haunting. You begin to get the sense that you are looking at a world that is long gone. The summer he describes in Sport and a Pastime will never come again.

It's difficult to excerpt, I have found - but I did adore the following section (here you can see what a great psychologist Salter is as well: his observations about a young Lothario in a bar ... and what he SEES in such people. Seriously: so so good.) And also, just his powers of observation: sitting in the stands, watching a soccer practice ... and the stands are almost empty ... so there seem to be no sounds, no sounds from the players - just the thud of the ball ... and that seems to me to be just so right. Imagine the scene, and how James Salter gets that detail so so right: the lack of sound. And the bit about the lady's false teeth. In 18 words, 3 short sentences, he creates an entire life.

He's marvelous that way. I'm observant but he makes me realize just how much I miss. So good!


EXCERPT FROM A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter

Four in the afternoon. The trees along the street, the upper branches, are catching the last, full light. The stadium is quiet, some bicycles leaning against the outer wall. I read the schedule once again and then go in, turning down towards the stands which are almost empty. Far away, the players are streaming across the soft grass. There seem to be no cries, no shouting, only the faint thud of kicks.

It is the emptiness which pleases me, the blue dimensions of this life. Beyond the game, as far as one can see, are the fields, the trees of the countryside. Above us, provincial sky, a little cloudy. Once in a while the sun breaks out, vague as a smile. I sit alone. There are the glances of some young boys, nothing more. There's no scoreboard. The game drifts back and forth. It seems to take a long, long time. Someone sends a little boy to the far side to chase the ball when it goes out of bounds. I watch him slowly circle the field. He passes behind the goal. He trots a while, then he walks. He seems lost in the journey. Finally he is over there, small and isolated on the sideline. After a while I can see him kicking at stones.

I am at the center of emptiness. Every act seems purer for it, easier to define. The sounds separate themselves. The details all appear. I stop at the Cafe St. Louis. It's like an old schoolroom. The varnish is worn from the curve of the chairs. The finish is gone from the floor. It's one large, yellowing room, huge mirrors on the wall, the same size and position as windows, generous, imperfect. Glass doors along the street. Wherever one looks, it seems possible to see out. They're playing billiards. I listen without watching. The soft click of the balls is like a concert. The players stand around, talking in hoarse voices. The rich odor of their cigarettes ... They're never there in the daytime. It's very different with the morning light upon it, this cafe. Stale. The billiard table seems less dark. The wood is drawing apart at the corners. It's quite old, at least a hundred years I should think, judging from the elaborate legs. Beneath the pale green cloth which is always thrown over it, the felt is worn, like the sleeves of an old suit.

"Monsieur?"

It's the old woman who runs the place. False teeth, white as buttons. Belonged to her husband probably. I can hear them clattering in her mouth.

"Monsieur?" she insists.

Later on, about nine, there's the hotel where there's music in the bar and somebody at least, a few couples, sitting around. The three or four gilded youths of the town, too, slouched on the divans. I know them by sight. One is an angel, at least for betrayal. Beautiful face. Soft, dark hair. A mouth like spoiled fruit. Nothing amuses them - they don't talk until somebody leaves, and then they begin little laughing cuts, sometimes calling over to the barman. The rest of the time they sit in boredom, polishing the gestures of contempt. The angel is taller than the rest. He has an expensive suit and a tie knotted loosely at the neck. Sometimes a sweater. Soft cuffs. I've seen him on the street. He's about seventeen, and he seems less dangerous in the daylight, merely a bad student or a boy already notorious for his vices. He's ready to start seductions. Perhaps he even says it's easy, and that women are simple to get. To believe is to make real, they say. A chill passes through me. I recognize in him a clear strain of assurance which has nothing to imitate, which springs forth intact. It feeds on its own reflection. He looks carefully at himself in the mirror, combing his hair. He inspects his teeth. The maid has let him undress her. She hates him, but she cannot make him go. I try to think of what he's said. He has an instinct for it. He is here to hunt them down, to discover the weaklings. I don't know what he feels - the assassin's joy.

I am modeling myself after him, just for the evening. As I walk home I see my image floating on the glass of darkened shopfronts. I stop and look at clothes. It's like coming out of a movie. I have discarded my identity. I am still at large, free of my old self until the first encounters, and now I imagine, very clearly, meeting Claude Picquet. For a moment I have the sure premonition I am about to, that I am really going to see her at the next corner and, made confident by the cognacs, begin quite naturally to talk. We walk along together. I watch her closely as she speaks. I can tell she is interested in me, I am circling her like a shark. Suddenly I realize: it will be her. Yes, I'm sure of it. I'm going to meet her. Of course, I'm a little drunk, a little reckless, and in an amiable condition that lets me see myself destined as her lover, cutting into her life with perfect ease. I've noticed you passing in the street many times, I tell her. Yes? She pretends that surprises her. Do you know the Wheatlands, I ask. The Wheatlands? Monsieur and Madame Wheatland, I say. Ah, oui. Well, I tell her, I'm staying in their house. What comes next? I don't know - it will be easy once I am actually talking to her. I want her to come and see it, of course. I want to hear the door close behind her. She stands over by the window. She's not afraid to turn her back to me, to let me move close. I am going to just touch her lightly on the arm ... Claude ... She looks at me and smiles.

Mornings with clouds. Windy mornings. Mornings with black wind rushing like water. The trees quiver, the windows are creaking like a ship. It's going to rain. After a while the first silent drops appear on the glass. Slowly they increase, cover it, begin to run. All of Autun beneath the cool, morning rain, the sculptures on the Roman gates streaking and then turning dark, the slate roofs gleaming now, the cemetery, the bridges across the Arroux. Every once in a while the wind returns, the rain moves sideways, beats against the windows like sand. Rain falling everywhere, on all the avenues and enterprises, the ancient glories of the town. Rain on the plate glass of the Librairie Lucotte, rain on les Arcades, on au Cygne de Montjeu. A long, even rain that makes me quite content.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 10, 2008

The Books: "Children of the Arbat" (Anatoli Rybakov)

44978.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Children of the Arbat, by Anatoli Rybakov

To a Stalin addict like myself, this book was a pile of crack. A PILE!!

Written over the course of almost 20 years, and repressed in Russia, because of its honesty about the Stalin terror - it finally was published in 1988 in Russia - and quickly sold out (so much for the Marxist brand of economics). The book was such a hot commodity that people were paying exorbitant amounts for it on the black market. The entire country was coming out of a haze of state-sponsored information, and The Children of the Arbat, the story of a group of people who lived in the Arbat section of Moscow (an artistic neighborhood), tells the story of the early years of the Five Year Plan - as the noose begins to tighten around the country. There are various characters we follow - Sasha, Yuri - many of them enthusiastic members of the Komsomol, but as we now know - loyalty was not a simple thing. In a paranoid atmosphere, a paranoid top-down atmosphere - things like differences of opinion, or even humor - are misconstrued. Not just misconstrued, but seen as a direct threat to the State, as Sasha discovers to his chagrin. Sasha is sent into exile, he's in big trouble - so we follow his journey out into Siberia. The rest of the characters back in the Arbat struggle along, and the book really gives the sense of that time - the denial, the fanaticism of some, the struggle to still have personal relationships ... Because of course the State had a vested interest in making ITSELF the primary relationship in the country - it was quite conscious ... The child who denounced his parents as saboteurs became a hero in the country, statues erected to him (some still standing) ... It was the ultimate test of loyalty: to stand on the side of the State, and not your personal life. Obviously, this destroys people. It's a horror. I cannot even imagine being forced to make such a choice, and millions of people went through it. Alongside the detailed intricate plot lines of all of the "children of the Arbat", the book also has Stalin as a character. It's a BIG book. Stalin emerges as an anomaly, a weirdo, an outsider (he wasn't even Russian!) - but it is all of those things that made him so "successful" as a terrifying leader who died, basically, of old age. This was not a man who was in a hurry. Most dictators have a sense of urgency - and also a need for glory - both of which end up sinking them, 9 times out of 10. They get careless. They grab for too much too soon. Not Stalin. He had the patience of a tree sloth. He sat back, watching, waiting, sometimes for YEARS ... he never forgot a slight. Ever. But he had the ability to wait for a decade, at times, to get his revenge. This quality is so rare in a leader as to be almost freakish. The "Stalin sections" in the book are chilling.

Children of the Arbat tells the story on the ground-level of the "children of the Arbat" but it also tells the story of the insane Five Year Plan, and Stalin's insistence on modernization at any cost, and also his growing suspicion that Kirov, the CP leader in St. Petersburg was a threat to his power. Kirov and he were old friends (if Stalin could be said to have friends). Kirov was pretty much autonomous in his position and it began to gnaw at Stalin. That's Stalin's journey through the book. A growing obsession with Kirov ... and what should be done about Kirov. Well, as we all know (and if we don't, then we should), Kirov was murdered on December 1, 1934 (my post about it here) - and the question of who did it is still up for grabs to this day (a book called Who Killed Kirov?: The Kremlin's Greatest Mystery just came out a couple of years ago.) It is now generally agreed that while Stalin obviously did not pull the trigger, he was the one behind the murder. And the murder of Kirov, so early on in the Soviet "experiment", became the reason given for the decades of terror following. Stalin used the murder of Kirov as an excuse to terrorize the entire population, all of whom ended up being somehow indicted as involved in the killing. Vast circles of saboteurs, their families, no one - NO ONE - in Russia was untouched by the murder of Kirov. Robert Conquest, in his book Stalin and the Kirov Murder writes:

This century has seen horrible crimes on a mass scale, culminating in the Jewish Holocaust. No comparison with these can be sustained. But as an individual murder, there is, for various reasons, none to match the Kirov murder. Single events - even accidental ones - have often turned the path of history. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, just over twenty years previously, brought on a perhaps otherwise avoidable Great War. At any rate, that is the only individual crime (or dual crime, since the Archduke's morganatic wife was also killed) with which the Kirov murder can remotely be compared. But even the assassination of the Archduke had no further intrinsic result beyond the crisis leading to war. There was no mystery about the responsibility. No long-lasting politicies were based on any theoretical view of it.

The Kirov murder, however, was made the central justification for the whole theory of Stalinism and the necessity for endless terror.

Conquest referred to the Kirov murder "the crime of the [twentieth] century", because millions perished because of it. Stalin was at the funeral of Kirov, of course he was - and he vowed to find out who did this, who murdered this man - and so began the Terror.

I guess you could say I'm kind of obsessed with the Kirov murder and now is the time!! Robert Conquest was obsessed with it back in the 60s and 70s when Russia was behind an Iron Curtain, with no archives opened - and nobody even admitted that Stalin was involved at all, despite the evidence. Despite Kruschev's famous "secret speech" in 1956, when the sins of Stalin were finally admitted (at least amongst the Party), the murder of Kirov is still a grand mystery. But to be obsessed with the Kirov murder now, in the early 21st century, is NOT such a challenging thing - because now we have more information, now books are written about it, with theories put forth, etc. - you can dig into it, hear all the sides, the archives are opened - and while much was wiped out, it is generally agreed that the assassin was hired by Stalin. The whole thing was a huge piece of theatre, and Stalin was the director.

Anyway, back to Children of the Arbat. Kirov is also a character in the book - not just out in the world, but as a spectre, a threat, in Stalin's mind. Stalin understands from the beginning that he is playing a zero-sum game. Nobody else did. They all seemed to think that after the upheavals of the Five Year Plan, a necessary thing to go through in order to achieve their goals, the terror could be relaxed ... they could get back to the dialogue and conversation set forth by Lenin and Trotsky ... they could actually argue about what Marxism meant, and how the Communist Party should operate. Stalin had other things in mind. He was the only one who really understood. He actually understood "the secret black book" in 1984 (excerpt here) which reveals the true nature of the whole thing. It was never about bringing forth a glorious new Communist society. It was always about creating a situation where one man could rule supreme. And that's IT. Everything else was just chatter.

Fascinating. Awful.

Children of the Arbat takes place over 1932, 1933 - a time of great upheaval, and a famine in the Ukraine - Stalin gathering his forces, and realizing that one man stood in his way. To echo Lenin's question: What is to be done? Stalin knew what was to be done. But how? He had to make it seem like an opposition killed Kirov. He needed to create the illusion that a group of saboteurs killed Kirov - not him. He knew it was what he needed in order to completely terrorize and atomize the population.

If you want to know something about Stalin (and it's difficult - so much of what we know about him is lies, obfuscation - he was very gifted at erasing his past) I would suggest Children of the Arbat. Yes, there are biographies - many of which are really worthwhile (Edvard Radsinksy's Stalin is fantastic - excerpt here) - Children of the Arbat is a psychological portrait of a man whom nobody really knew. He stood over the grave of his first wife, at her funeral, and said the words, "With her dies any warmth I might feel for another human being." He meant what he said. It is difficult to imagine our way into such a person - but Rybakov comes the closest. It's chilling.

A grand sweeping book, one of the most important publishing events in the 20th century in Russia - The Children of the Arbat deserves to stand alongside Master and Margarita, although it doesn't have the transcendent genius of the latter (excerpt here). But Children of the Arbat, in its simple homespun language (at least the translation I have is simple and homespun), its evocation of Moscow in the early 1930s, its psychological portrait of what it was like back then - the pressures, the escapism, the social mores ... and, also, the spectacular glimpse into the psychology of Stalin, the architect of all of it ... is a vastly important book.

Here's an excerpt from one of the many "Stalin" sections of the book. What is so amazing here is that Stalin knows all of the grand "ideas" were naive and ridiculous. But he utilized them for his own end. A massively cynical man. Unbelievable.

The excerpt below really explains, in detail, why Robert Conquest - in all of his great books about Stalin - continuously says about Stalin's fellow revolutionaries and bureaucrats: "They did not understand Stalin yet."

And of course, once you understood Stalin, once you realized the true nature of the man you were dealing with - it would be far too late.

EXCERPT FROM The Children of the Arbat, by Anatoli Rybakov

Stalin put aside his book, got up, and paced around the room clutching his pipe. He stopped at the window and gazed out at the familiar sight of the yellow and white Arsenal building and the bronze cannons lined up along its facade.

The diplomat from Motovilikha! It wasn't an unarmed Germany that posed a threat, it was Japanese troops in Manchuria, in our rear in the Far East. Budyagin knew that perfectly well, however limited his outlook. He hadn't come to talk about Hitler.

He'd come to make it known that there were people in the Party who had their own point of view, and that they were defending their right to their point of view, and that at the proper time they would advance it against his point of view. Budyagin hadn't come on his own initiative, he was too unimportant. He'd come on instructions from the same people who had allegedly helped him, Stalin, to rout his enemies, the same people he was supposed to rely on, and was relying on, because he had to, otherwise they'd get rid of him the way they'd got rid of the others. They thought he was indebted to them for everything.

They were profoundly misguided. The true leader emerges by himself, he owes his power to himself alone. Otherwise he is not a leader, but a puppet. They hadn't chosen him, he had chosen them. They hadn't pushed him to the front, he had pulled them along behind him. It wasn't they who had helped him to consolidate himself, it was he who had raised them to the pinnacles of state power. They had become what they were solely because they had taken their places alongside him.

To whom had Lenin been indebted? Some emigres in London and Geneva? And Peter the Great? To Menshikov and Lefort? The fact that his power had been inherited didn't change the essence of the point. To reach the pinnacle of power, the monarch had to destroy the entourage that had become accustomed to seeing him as a puppet. That's how it had been with Peter, and the same was true of Ivan the Terrible.

Stalin hadn't become leader because he had managed to wipe out his opponents. He had wiped out his opponents because he was leader. It was he who had been destined to run the country. His enemies hadn't understood that and therefore they were defeated. They still didn't understand it, and so they had to be destroyed. The failed pretender is always a potential enemy.

History's choice had fallen on him because he was the only one who understood the secret of supreme power in this country, the only one who knew how to rule this nation, the only one who knew its every virtue and shortcoming. Especially its shortcomings.

The Russians were a nation of the collective. The commune had been their way of life since time immemorial; equality was at the root of their national character. This provided the right conditions for the sort of society the people were building now in Russia. Tactically, Lenin's NEP had been the right maneuver, but the idea that it should be applied "seriously and for a long time" had been mistaken. The move had been a temporary deal with the peasants in order to get more food. "Seriously and for a long time" implied a policy based on the wealthy land-owning farmer, the kulaks. Farmers implied the path of inequality, and that was contrary to the psychological makeup of the people.

Stalin went to the bookshelf and took down a volume of Lenin and reread the passage where Lenin had said: "To get every member of the population to take part in the cooperative venture by way of the NEP would take an entire historical epoch. Without universal literacy and adequate know-how, and without teaching the population how to use books, without the material basis and some measure of assurance against, say, crop failure or famine and so on, without all this we will not attain our goal." He closed the book and put it back.

This was the reasoning of an emigre who did not know Russia or the Russian village or the peasant. What had happened to the famous electric plow that Lenin had gazed on with such naive hope in 1922? Where was it now? It wasn't that Lenin didn't understand technology, just that he didn't understand the Russian village and the Russian peasant. In order to make the peasant literate and cultured and in order to safeguard the village from famine and so on, we needed not decades but centuries.

That approach, the approach that tried to inculcate the psychology of the farmer, was alien to the peasant. The farmer didn't need the dictatorship of the proletariat. The farmer, the private farmer and the individualist, has to be stifled at birth in the Russian peasant. As for cooperatives, by all means, but the kind in which the peasant will be a simple worker. That's what he had accomplished: the second Russian revolution, and it was no less important than the first one.

In the October Revolution we had the peasants on our side, and in the collectivization we had them against us. Yes, of course we need books and science and protection against crop failure, but we need all that, not as preliminaries of collectivization, but on the basis of it. Lenin had said: first culture, then collectivization. Stalin's way was: first collectivization, then culture.

What Lenin had called bureaucratic perversion was in fact the only possible way to run the country. It had its dangers: the bureaucracy tries to stand between the people and the leadership, it tries to supplant the leadership. That has to be stamped out without mercy. The apparatus must be the unquestioning executor of the supreme will, it has to be kept in a state of fear, which it will in turn pass on to the people.

Did he have such an apparatus? No, he did not! The present apparatus had been formed in the struggle for power and was not yet an instrument of the leader; it regarded itself as a partner in the victory. Budyagin's visit had been a reminder of this.

The apparatus of the true leader is the one he creates for himself after he has come to power. Such an apparatus must not be eternal or permanent, otherwise ties become cemented and the apparatus acquires a monolithic quality and strength of its own. One must keep shuffling it, renewing and replacing it.

The creation of such an apparatus is more complicated than just getting rid of rivals. The apparatus consists of hundreds of thousands of people who have been concentrated into a single organism, linked and welded together from top to bottom. The present members of the Politburo were no longer those who had returned with Lenin from abroad. The Politburo members now had their own connections within the apparatus, their own links, which stretched from the top to the bottom. You only had to touch one link for the whole chain to rattle.

Did he trust his own entourage?

In politics you trust nobody.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

June 9, 2008

The Books: "Franny and Zooey" (J.D. Salinger)

0316769495.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger


There's a reason why Salinger fans tend to annoy non-Salinger fans. Because we tend to get evangelical, passionate - and (to the non-Salinger eyes) "melodramatic". We say things like, "This book changed how I looked at life." I think the non-Salinger fans do us a great disservice by dismissing our comments out of hand. Not because we're right and they're wrong, but because I think it's always interesting to hear from someone else about a book that made a great impact on the person. Whether or not it had a great impact on me doesn't matter because, uhm, I have boundaries between me and my fellow man - so I know when they say a book that I didn't like changed their lives - I don't take it personally just because it didn't change MY life. Because I know that that person is speaking from his or her experience - not mine. I will never understand the defensiveness in response to difference of opinion about purely subjective things. I don't get pissy and defensive when I hear someone going on and on about something that didn't do it for me. If I'm interested in that person, and if that person is articulate, well then - please - go on forever about why a certain book changed your life. I find such conversations fascinating. But it's not often a two-way street, which is why I've gotten such pissy defensive responses to Bloomsday here on the blog because some people have no boundaries - and so they take it PERSONALLY that I am going "on and on" about something they do not care about. I get the pissiness to some degree, but the defensiveness I will NEVER get. What are you defending yourself against? One woman's personal opinion? So weird. I don't operate like that, so I just don't understand it. This is a different phenomenon, by the way, than the annoying people who act like you "should" like something, just because it's a classic, or Harold Bloom liked it, whatever. I certainly can make up my own mind about things, and I do.

So now, on to Salinger: Because I usually have to with Salinger and other authors tremendously important to me, I have to talk about my life first. The book is entwined inextricably with my life, and where and when I was at when I read it. I loved Catcher in the Rye from the moment I first read it in high school. I read Franny and Zooey some time later, and have to admit it didn't make much of an impression on me. I missed the PLOT in Catcher - Franny and Zooey was just all talk talk talk and I didn't quite know what they were going on about. I was 17 or 18 when I read it. Cue forward to my mid to late 20s. I was living in Chicago, and doing pretty well. I was independent, flagrantly single but with one main flame, and acting in shows all the time. Nothing was "missing" except for, possibly, that dream-mate I was looking for. Still am. I did find that dream-mate, by the way, but it didn't work out, which changed everything. It was the biggest possible bump in the road, wrench in the works, whatever. To say I was "stopped" by that heartache is to under-state it completely. For a good 4 or 5 months, I didn't even know which end was up. I always put the date in the front of books I buy - not the date I read it, but the date I buy it. It's a habit. I look at the date in the front of my copy of Franny and Zooey - March 95 - and while that won't mean anything to anyone else, to me it calls up an entire time, place, atmosphere, mindset ... a certain quick trip to snowy Ohio, a panicky call to Mitchell (his calm firm voice, "Come home. Don't sign anything. Just come home and sleep on it."), a crazy night at a ridiculous pub called The Gingerman with M., my main flame - which put us on hiatus for a good 4 months because I decided never to speak to him again (until, of course, I did speak to him again) ... a show I was doing, an audition I had that seemed like it would lead somewhere - and then the fucking nightmare I was still experiencing of the aftermath of the bust-up with dream-mate. That is what March 95 was to me. So in the middle of that, I bought Franny and Zooey, which, like I mentioned, I had read, but not really remembered - not like I remembered parts of Catcher word for word. I was sitting in a coffee shop I loved on Irving Park and Ravenswood. It was a freezing cold March Chicago day. And I read Franny and Zooey in one sitting. I didn't sit down to have some epiphany or moment of truth. I'm sure I wouldn't have sat down at all with the book if I had guessed what would come. Obviously I was ripe for some upheaval (or, I should say, MORE upheaval). I wasn't flat-lining until Franny and Zooey came along. Please. I'm not that shallow. I had a lot of struggles and thoughts and unrealized things percolating in me ... not sure what to do with all of it ... hoping it would "all work out" ... and as I read Franny and Zooey - a 200 page book - everything shifted. I guess what happened was: that everything got urgent, as opposed to me passively assuming that "things would work out". It was urgent. it didn't happen immediately - the book starts slowly, as you know if you've read it ... and it's talky, very philosophical and intellectual ... funny, too ... but then in the last 10 pages ... it's like the truth of life, in all its fear and longing and mess and being stuck-edness - is revealed ... in the words of Zooey to his sister ... and you are confronted with yourself, finally. That there is nothing to do but what you were born to do.

And let's not forget: all of the Glass children, of which Franny and Zooey are the youngest two, are extraordinary people, verging on freakiness. I mean, we're all special, kumbaya, but there are those who are destined for other things ... the stars, the prodigies, the ones who are beyond other people - the extraordinary ones. This is not a popular thing to talk about these days, when every kid gets a trophy, whether he comes in first or last ... but let's not quibble about that. The Glass children are freaks - Zooey says that himself, he has figured it out - Franny is still struggling, with being conventional, with trying to fit into some round hole set up for her by society ... Meanwhile, the other siblings - Seymour was a poet and a Buddhist who committed suicide. They have still not dismantled his room. Walt was killed in WWII. Buddy is the caretaker, the one who keeps them all together ... they keep wanting to call Buddy during Franny's nervous breakdown because he will know what to say ... and then there's Boo Boo ... (all of these folks show up in all of Salinger's other stories, they're like old friends) - who doesn't seem quite as "out there" as her siblings. In a funny way, she - in her normal wife and mother mode - is the black sheep of the family. BUT I DIGRESS. These are not normal people, who "fit in", and I speak from experience - we live in a society that puts a high premium on "fitting in" - and so either you wrestle with that openly, and try to find your own way of getting through life (while, of course, obeying the laws) - or you try to fit yourself into a round hole, and live a life of misery and frustration. When I read Franny and Zooey in that cafe on that cold day, I wasn't trying to fit into a round hole. I was already a weirdo, just in terms of what my life looked like - compared to the majority. I was in my late 20s. I was single. I was not on a marriage track. I was an actress. I was free of obligations. I didn't own much. I was poor. And that didn't worry me too terribly. But society is a strong thing, and expectations live IN you - they are not just external forces ... so it is (and still is) a constant struggle. To be true to myself ... and to always ask myself, "Am I living my best life right now? And if I'm not - what can I do to change?" Franny and Zooey didn't just make me ask that question - it caused the question to be screamed into my ear at top volume. Something needed to change. I needed to take the wheel. But how? What needed to be done? In March of 95, I was ensconced in Chicago. I was happier in Chicago than I had been in any other city I lived in, and I had lived in a bunch. I had great friends, a wonderful guy to hang out with (even though he wasn't my dream-mate), and projects I believed in. Chicago was my home. But things started shifting so drastically after reading Franny and Zooey that I moved to New York a mere 5 months later. I didn't even see it coming. I didn't WANT to leave, it killed me to leave ... but I felt I HAD to leave. Looking back on it, I have mixed feelings ... but at the time, it was imperative. Zooey was talking to ME, and to me alone, when he said:

"Somewhere along the line - in one damn incarnation or another, if you like - you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to - be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to - there's nothing wrong in trying." There was a slight pause. "You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around."

That passage seared right through me, a blazing light. I didn't even want to deal with the implications because I just knew - in a flash - that it would mean great change and upheaval. I could feel it. I knew I would move. I didn't know when, but I knew it would be soon, because of those "goddam sands" running out on me. I could actually feel the goddam sands - and it seems to me that a part of the human condition is to rarely have a palpable sense of our own mortality. There's always time for that "later". When I retire, when the kids go to college, whatever ... But there is no guarantee about that kind of long-term plan. We could die at any moment. No time like the present.

William James wrote:

To change your life: Start immediately; do it flamboyantly; no exceptions.

Scary. That's the state that Franny and Zooey put me into. I actually haven't read it all the way through since ... Maybe I'm afraid that I'll have the same response?? Maybe I need to read it again.

Bare bones of story: Franny and Zooey are college-age kids, both of them are actors. Franny, after a date with her Yalie boyfriend Lane, has what can be termed as a nervous breakdown - she moves home and lies on the couch. She says a 'Jesus prayer' to herself, over and over - she can't stop ... And part of her crisis has to do with whether or not she will actually commit to being an actress. So much of acting and theatre life is CRAP. Yes, that's true. But a Salinger point of view is: yes. Most people are assholes, or phonies. But try to get along with them the best you can. There is such a thing as being too critical. Franny is judgmental and a snot about campus life and college students. She finds it all a sham. Zooey tries to talk to her about it. Salinger knows the danger of seeing all of life, or an entire group of people, as a sham. Zooey gets quite confrontational with her about it, eventually - but he lets her blow off steam, before weighing in with his opinion. You know those people who think everyone sucks but them? Whose main complaint of life seems to be: "Why on earth doesn't everyone on the planet have the common sense and good judgment that I have?" Now that's fine to blow off steam a bit, if you want ... but to have that be your default position? Seriously, you need to look at how judgmental you are, and what you are afraid of, and what you are resisting. If you are in a state where you relish your own rightness 9 times out of 10 - well, first of all, I need to tell you even if I haven't met you: You are a big fucking bore. Second of all, you need to look at your behavior and see where it might be coming from. Franny is coming close to being a terminal case - and Zooey senses that danger. Instead of having a passing annoyance at her fellow man and his pretensions and phoniness - it is becoming her default position. And Zooey loves her too much to let that happen. Franny is a rigid person, in her way - very much like myself, I might add ... passionate people are often extremely rigid as well, which confuses anyone who doesn't experience life that way. How can someone so passionate also be so rigid?? I should give seminars. Zooey, her brother, in lieu of Seymour, their absent brother, tries to talk her off the cliff. She lies on the couch, praying. She can't stop. It has become a compulsion. If she takes her concentration off the "Jesus prayer" for too long, she starts to unravel. Zooey, using all the philosophy he has as her brother, and also as a member of this weirdo family, tries to talk to her about the prayer - and doesn't tell her to stop doing it - but, like in the excerpt above - tries to make her put it to use. Be God's actress if you want to ... there's no reason you can't combine the two. Don't be so rigid. Life isn't either/or.

One more quote, and then I'll get to the excerpt:

Great acting teacher Stella Adler said once:

It isn't that important to know who you are. It is important to know what you do, and then do it like Hercules.

When the story opens, Franny is nervous, twitchy and self-conscious - because she is desperately trying to figure out who she is. Is she conventional girlfriend of Lane? Is she an actress? Artist? Who is she?? Zooey, in his 40 page long conversation with his sister, tries to get her to shift her thinking away from who she is towards what she does ... which is ACT, for God's sake. If you have a gift, then you must use it. Do it like Hercules.

Here's an excerpt.

This is Franny describing to Zooey how the plague of self-righteousness and loathing of everyone took over her entire mind and how awful it was.

Oh, and it's also important to keep in mind: Salinger has great compassion for Franny's position. After all, it is his position. This is not about Zooey being right, and Franny being annoying and childish and snotty. She's got valid points. It's just: do you want to live like that? How does one negotiate the world - when one is sensitive, rigid, passionate? How does one live??

And also let's not forget: Seymour committed suicide. The poet-philosopher, the leader of them all. They still look to him for help, advice, escape ... If he couldn't hack it - he who was greater and smarter than all of them - then what chance do they have? Seymour is really a character in this story, in his absence.

EXCERPT FROM Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

Franny at that moment was gazing at a sunlit faded spot in the carpet over near the piano, her lips very discernibly moving. "This is all so funny, you can't even imagine," she said, with the faintest tremor in her voice, and Zooey looked over at her. Her paleness was emphasized by the fact that she was wearing no lipstick at all. "Everything you're saying brings back everything I was trying to say to Lane on Saturday, when he started digging at me. Right in the middle of Martinis and snails and things. I mean we're not bothered by exactly the same things, but by the same kind of things, I think, and for the same reasons. At least, it sounds that way." Bloomberg just then stood up in her lap and, more like a dog than a cat, began to circle around to find a sleeping position he liked better. Franny absently, yet like a guide, placed her hands gently on his back, and went on speaking. "I actually reached a point where I said to myself, right out loud, like a lunatic, If I hear just one more picky, cavilling, unconstructing word out of you, Franny Glass, you and I are finished - but finished. And for a while I wasn't too bad. For about a whole month, at least, whenever anybody said anything that sounded campusy and phony, or that smelled to high heaven of ego or something like that, I at least kept quiet about it. I went to the movies or I stayed in the library all hours or I started writing papers like mad on Restoration Comedy and stuff like that - but at least I had the pleasure of not hearing my own voice for a while." She shook her head. "Then, one morning - bang, bang, I started up again. I didn't sleep all night, for some reason, and I had an eight-o'clock in French Lit, so finally I just got up and got dressed and made some coffee and then walked around the campus. What I wanted to do was just go for a terribly long ride on my bike, but I was afraid everybody'd hear me taking my bike out of the stand - something always falls - so I just went to the Lit building and sat. I sat and sat, and finally I got up and started writing things from Epictetus all over the blackboard. I filled the whole front blackboard - I didn't even know I'd remembered so much of him. I erased it - thank God! - before people started coming in. But it was a childish thing to do anyway - Epictetus would have absolutely hated me for doing it - but ..." Franny hesitated. "I don't know. I think I just wanted to see the name of somebody nice up on a blackboard. Anyway, that started me up again. I picked all day. I picked on Professor Fallon. I picked on Lane when I talked to him on the phone. I picked on Professor Tupper. It got worse and worse. I even started picking on my roommate. Oh, God, poor Bev! I started catching her looking at me as if she hoped I'd decide to move out of the room and let somebody halfway pleasant and normal move in and give her a little peace. It was just terrible! And the worst part was, I knew what a bore I was being, I knew how I was depressing people, or even hurting their feelings - but I just couldn't stop! I just could not stop picking." Looking more than a little distrait, she paused just long enough to push downward on Bloomberg's roving hindquarters. "It was the worst of all in class, though," she said with decision. "That was the worst. What happened was, I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping - and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge - when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly." Nervously, and without any real need whatever, Franny pushed back her hair with one hand. "I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned! Do you want to hear something funny? Do you want to hear something really funny? In almost four years of college - and this is the absolute truth - in almost four years of college, the only time I can remember ever even hearing the expression 'wise man' being used was in my freshman year, in Political Science! And you know how it was used? It was used in reference to some nice old poopy elder statesman who'd made a fortune in the stock market and then gone to Washington to be an adviser to President Roosevelt. Honestly, now! Four years of college, almost! I'm not saying that happens to everybody, but I just get so upset when I think about it I could die." She broke off, and apparently became rededicated to serving Bloomberg's interests. Her lips now had very little more color in them than her face. They were also, very faintly, chapped.

Zooey's eyes were on her, and had been. "I want to ask you something, Franny," he said abruptly. He turned back to the writing-table surface again, frowned, and gave the snowman a shake. "What do you think you're doing with the Jesus Prayer?" he asked. "This is what I was trying to get at last night. Before you told me to go chase myself. You talk about piling up treasure - money, property, culture, knowledge, and so on and so on. In going ahead with the Jesus Prayer - just let me finish, now, please - in going ahead with the Jesus Prayer, aren't you trying to lay up some kind of treasure? Something that's every goddam bit as negotiable as all those other, more material things? Or does the fact that it's a prayer make all the difference? I mean by that, is there all the difference in the world, for you, in which side somebody lays up his treasure - this side, or the other? The one where thieves can't break in, et cetera? Is that what makes the difference? Wait a second, now - just wait'll I'm finished, please." He sat for a few seconds watching the little blizzard in the glass sphere. Then: "There's something about the way you're going at this prayer that gives me the willies, if you want to know the truth. You think I'm out to stop you from saying it. I don't know whether I am or not - that's a goddam debatable point - but I would like you to clear up for me just what the hell your motives are for saying it." He hesitated, but not long enough to give Franny a chance to cut in on him. "As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure - or even intellectual treasure - and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure's treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety per cent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are."

Franny said, as icily as she could with a faint tremor in her voice, "May I interrupt now, Zooey?"

Zooey let go the snowman and picked up a pencil to play with. "Yes. yes. Interrupt," he said.

"I know all you're saying. You're not telling me one thing I haven't thought of by myself. You're saying I want something from the Jesus Prayer - which makes me just as acquisitive, in your word, really, as somebody who wants a sable coat, or to be famous, or to be dripping with some kind of crazy prestige. I know all that! My gosh, what kind of imbecile do you think I am?" The tremor in her voice amounted now almost to an impediment.

"All right, take it easy, take it easy."

"I can't take it easy! You make me so mad! What do you think I'm doing here in this crazy room - losing weight like mad, worrying Bessie and Les absolutely silly, upsetting the house, and everything? Don't you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That's exactly what's bothering me so. Just because I'm choosy about what I want - in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things - doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else. If anything, I'm more so! I don't need the famous Zachary Glass to tell me that!" Here there was a marked break in her voice, and she began to be very attentive to Bloomberg again. Tears, presumably, were imminent, if not already on the way.

Over at the writing table, Zooey, pressing down heavily with his pencil, was filling in the "o"s on the advertisement of a small blotter. He kept this up for a little interval, then flipped the pencil toward the inkwell. He picked up his cigar from the lip of the copper ashtray where he had placed it. It was now only about two inches in length but was still burning. He took a deep drag on it, as if it were a kind of respirator in an otherwise oxygenless world. Then, almost forcibly, he looked over at Franny again. "Do you want me to try to get Buddy on the phone for you tonight?" he asked. "I think you should talk to somebody - I'm no damn good for this." He waited, looking at her steadily. "Franny. What about it?"

Franny's head was bowed. She appeared to be searching for fleas in Bloomberg's coat, her fingers very busy indeed turning back tufts of fur. She was in fact crying now, but in a very local sort of way, as it were; there were tears but no sounds. Zooey watched her for a full minute or so, then said, not precisely kindly, but without importuning, "Franny. What about it? Shall I try to get Buddy on the phone?"

She shook her head, without raising it. She went on searching for fleas. Then, after an interval, she did reply to Zooey's question, but not very audibly.

"What?" Zooey asked.

Franny repeated her statement. "I want to talk to Seymour," she said.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (13)

June 6, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'Teddy' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the ninth and final story 'Teddy'

Not too wacky about the closer story. It just doesn't work for me. I can see what Salinger is going for - and I guess part of it is that I find the whole philosophy that Teddy spouts annoying and grating. I like logic, and I like thought. I know it's deeper than that, and Teddy isn't some new-age hippie-dip - he is a swami, a 10 year old swami prodigy - who knows that in a former life he was a holy man who got distracted by a "lady" which is why he did not reach enlightenment and had to come back as a small American boy. He's enough of a phenom that he is famous, and is brought to universities to be interviewed by professors of philosophy and theology - his parents are cranky and seem to have no idea what kind of person they have created. Teddy seems to be in a transcendent state at all times, oddly calm, uttering thoughts about reality and existence which baffle his parents ... He seems strangely unattached from everything. He knows the end of things. He is not afraid of death. I don't think that Salinger was trying to create a charming child prodigy. I don't think he cared one way or the other how we perceive Teddy. I'm just speaking for myself. Anyone who is that unattached to humanity has elements of either a sociopathic or psychopathic personality, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe the Dalai Lama would disagree, or some Hindu holy man, and that's fine - I'm just a logical thought-bound American woman. I'm cool with that. Salinger wasn't really counted as one of the "Beats" - but much of his experience and interest was in the same realm. Looking "east" for the answers, or letting go of the need to have answers at all. A true and deep rebellion against the materialism and conventionality of life in America (for a white person anyway) in the 1950s. Salinger put many of those interests into Seymour Glass -but here he has them embodied in Teddy, a little boy. The story doesn't work, I don't think. The ending does pack a punch - but it might have packed more of a punch if I didn't see it coming from 10 miles away, and it was hugely controversial at the time it was originally published, but Teddy seems like such a little demon-spawn to me that it doesn't really have any resonance. Salinger apparently agreed. He didn't think Teddy worked either - and in Seymour An Introduction (excerpt here), Buddy Glass (the narrator) says that HE wrote "Teddy' - one of those strange confluences of narrator, author, persona ... whatever. He did not think "Teddy" was successful. To me, it feels like Salinger is USING Teddy as a vehicle for self-expression: Here, let me explain to the world my thoughts about the Vedanta Karma Theory and reincarnation ... but I won't write a personal essay - I'll just make this little boy say it all .... And it doesn't feel right. It feels contrived, that's the word. I fully admit my bias here as well. Teddy doesn't seem wise to me. He seems mentally ill and possibly sociopathic. I feel sorry for him, being so emptied out like that. No wonder his little sister despises him. I don't blame him for detaching himself from his parents who are rather awful (although more interesting than anybody else in the story) - it's just the execution of it all that detaches ME from caring about Teddy's journey. Consider the difference between Teddy and a character like Owen Meany (excerpt here) - another little psychological prodigy, who has insights into not only the way things are, but the way things should be - he is one of the most selfless of characters, as complex as he is - but he never comes off as a drip. He always seems human (if bizarre) ... and if he has insights into the universe and God and destiny, the effect on me, the reader, is that I am dying to know more. HOW does he see it? He doesn't sit around meditating. Does he pray? Or does he just know? Teddy just seems creepy to me.

Salinger didn't think the story worked - but it was published anyway in 1953, and does seem all of a piece with the literature of America in that decade - but I prefer his other stuff. This one has zero sense of humor. The story opens in the cabin of the ship, with Teddy staring out the porthole, and his weirdo parents arguing and talking and trying to get Teddy to come down off the bag he is standing on. The first line of the story is awesome: "I'll exquisite day you, buddy, if you don't get off that bag this minute." We are in the middle of an ongoing argument, no prelude, no catchup ... launched into the middle of the action. It's real Michael Gazzo/Clifford Odets (excerpt here) stuff: let's start the story in the middle of an argument, almost mid-sentence even ... and not give you any backup information. Just toss you in. Neither of Teddy's parents are pleasant people - as a matter of fact they are both awful - but they are at least interesting. Because they are ATTACHED TO REALITY unlike their bad-seed son who strolls about like a wee Lama of Wisdom, freaking out all of the adults in his path.

I'll excerpt the opening of the story because hey, I'm biased. I'm attached to it, Teddy would say.

EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the ninth and final story 'Teddy'

"I'll exquisite day you, buddy, if you don't get off that bag this minute. And I mean it," Mr. McArdle said. He was speaking from the inside twin bed - the bed farther away from the porthole. Viciously, with more of a whimper than a sigh, he foot-pushed his top sheet clear of his ankles, as though any kind of coverlet was suddenly too much for his sunburned, debilitated-looking body to bear. He was lying supine, in just the trousers of his pajamas, a lighted cigarette in his right hand. His head was propped up just enough to rest uncomfortably, almost masochistically, against the very base of the headboard. His pillow and ashtray were both on the floor, between his and Mrs. McArdle's bed. Without raising his body, he reached out a nude, inflamed-pink, right arm and flicked his ashes in the general direction of the night table. "October, for God's sake," he said. "If this is October weather, gimme August." He turned his head to the right again, toward Teddy, looking for trouble. "C'mon," he said. "What the hell do you think I'm talking for? My health? Get down off there, please."

Teddy was standing on the broadside of a new-looking cowhide Gladstone, the better to see out of his parents' open porthole. He was wearing extremely dirty, white ankle-sneakers, no socks, seersucker shorts that were both too long for him and at least a size too large in the seat, an overly laundered T shirt that had a hole the size of a dime in the right shoulder, and an incongruously handsome, black alligator belt. He needed a haircut - especially at the nape of the neck - the worst way, as only a small boy with an almost full-grown head and a reedlike neck can need one.

"Teddy, did you hear me?"

Teddy was not leaning out of the porthole quite so far or so precariously as small boys are apt to lean out of open portholes - both his feet, in fact, were flat on the surface of the Gladstone - but neither was he just conservatively well-tipped; his face was considerably more outside than inside the cabin. Nonetheless, he was well within hearing of his father's voice - his father's voice, that is, most singularly. Mr. McArdle played leading roles on no fewer than three daytime radio serials when he was in New York, and he had what might be called a third-class leading man's speaking voice: narcissistically deep and resonant, functionally prepared at a moment's notice to outmale anyone in the same room with it, if necessary even a small boy. When it was on vacation from its professional chores, it fell, as a rule, alternately in love with sheer volume and a theatrical brand of quietness-steadiness. Right now, volume was in order.

"Teddy. God damn it - did you hear me?"

Teddy turned around at the waist, without changing the vigilant position of his feet on the Gladstone, and gave his father a look of inquiry, whole and pure. His eyes, which were pale brown in color, and not at all large, were slightly crossed - the left eye more than the right. They were not crossed enough to be disfiguring, or even to be necessarily noticeable at first glance. They were crossed just enough to be mentioned, and only in context with the fact that one might have thought long and seriously before wishing them straighter, or deeper, or browner, or wider set. His face, just as it was, carried the impact, however oblique and slow-travelling, of real beauty.

"I want you to get down off that bag, now. How many times do you want me to tell you?" Mr. McArdle said.

"Stay exactly where you are, darling," said Mrs. McArdle, who evidently had a little trouble with her sinuses early in the morning. Her eyes were open, but only just. "Don't move the tiniest part of an inch." She was lying on her right side, her face, on the pillow, turned left, toward Teddy and the porthole, her back to her husband. Her second sheet was drawn tight over her very probably nude body, enclosing her, arms and all, up to the chin. "Jump up and down," she said, and closed her eyes. "Crush Daddy's bag."

"That's a Jesus-brilliant thing to say," Mr. McArdle said quietly-steadily, addressing the back of his wife's head. "I pay twenty-two pounds for a bag, and I ask the boy civilly not to stand on it, and you tell him to jump up and down on it. What's that supposed to be? Funny?"

"If that bag can't support a ten-year-old boy, who's thirteen pounds underweight for his age, I don't want it in my cabin," Mrs. McArdle said, without opening her eyes.

"You know what I'd like to do?" Mr. McArdle said. "I'd like to kick your goddam head open."

"Why don't you?"

Mr. McArdle abruptly propped himself up on one elbow and squashed out his cigarette stub on the glass top of the night table. "One of these days --" he began grimly.

"One of these days, you're going to have a tragic, tragic heart attack," Mrs. McArdle said, with a minimum of energy. Without bringing her arms into the open, she drew her top sheet more tightly around and under her body. "There'll be a small, tasteful funeral, and everybody's going to ask who that attractive woman in the red dress is, sitting there in the first row, flirting with the organist and making a holy--"

"You're so goddam funny it isn't even funny," Mr. McArdle said, lying inertly on his back again.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 5, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the eighth story 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period'

God, I love this story. The structure of it has now become a cliche: young person has a life-changing revelation brought about by the tiniest of moments ... But Salinger really shows you how it's done. It's hard to do. I've tried to do it in stories I've written, not because I want to participate in a cliche - but because often it IS the smallest of moments in life that give us the greatest vision ... and there ARE moments in life where you can point, and say, "Before that moment, I was one way ... and afterwards, I was another ..." At least I have experienced it. But to write it down, and to make it clear and not hokey to a reader ... that's another thing entirely. Salinger approaches it with the most moving mixture of unselfconsciousness and terrible self-consciousness - which is his trademark. The narrator is supremely unaware, on some level - he's a liar, he's living in a delusional world ... and yet at the same time, he IS aware ... that there is an emptiness at the heart of his experience, that there is a loneliness inside him that causes him to act the way he does ... and yet he can't stop himself. He lost his mother. He's totally lost. His only way to survive is to create a whole other personality and try to live inside THAT world, as opposed to his own. The "voice" of the narrator is key here - and there is nobody like Salinger who can get "voice". The narrator here is very witty (there are times I laughed out loud), dry and cynical - and writing from the perspective of years having past. He is a grown man looking back on his "blue period", so he is writing with a bit of distance - which gives the story much of its humor. He can be kind to his younger self, forgiving - but mainly this is the case because of the life-changing revelation he had, staring into the shop-window of an orthopedic supply store ... It was in that moment that he truly joined the human race. It's not Gabriel Conroy staring out at the falling snow but it's pretty damn close. Human beings are self-involved. We only see as far as our own egos allow. We can't get "out" of ourselves ... we are in relation to other people only insomuchas they reflect US. But there are moments, moments, when we transcend ... when we feel connected to all people ... and perhaps such a perspective cannot last, perhaps it is not meant to last ... but we cannot experience such a moment and go back to the way we were before. We will never again be quite so isolated. That's what happens in 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period' - and I love how Salinger writes about it too. He makes no bones about it - and yet there is also a bit of embarrassment and self-consciousness - which I totally relate to:

Something extremely out of the way happened to me some fifteen minutes later. A statement, I'm aware, that has all the unpleasant earmarks of a build-up, but quite the contrary is true. I'm about to touch on an extraordinary experience, one that still strikes me as having been quite transcendent, and I'd like, if possible, to avoid seeming to pass it off as a case, or even a borderline case, of genuine mysticism.

I feel like you could have shown me a blind copy of that excerpt and I would be able to guess it was by Salinger. It has all the defining characteristics of his stuff (much of which his detractors find totally annoying - but which I find deeply true and resonant. )

If you haven't read the story, then I certainly won't ruin the ending for you - all I can say is, it's a beautiful story, one that is comedic as well as human and serious. Sometimes we are lost souls. De Daumier-Smith (and that's not even his real name!) is a lost soul. He tries to find himself by making up stories about his background, he was a personal friend of Picasso's, he has homes all over the world, he has a mustache - guy is only 19, but he is trying, trying desperately, to not fit into the world - he doesn't WANT to fit in to such a world ... but trying to create some kind of persona that would be armor enough so that the world would no longer hurt him. The story begins with him moving back to New York after his childhood in France - and being completely disgusted with people's rude behavior on the subway, and other things - which grate. He yearns for solitude, aloneness. His mother has died. He lives with his stepfather who has started to date another woman. He feels that that other woman also wants to sleep with him. You know the guy's a virgin - he exudes it ... and he wants to devote himself to art, French, and quiet. But as the story goes along, you get the sense that he wants those things only because they will 'protect' him from ever being hurt again. It's a pose - but not because he's obnoxious and pretentious. Quite the contrary. It's a pose because he needs it, for survival.

The narrator reads in the paper that an art school in Montreal is looking for an instructor. The narrator, out of desperation, applies. But he makes up an entire life-story in his application - he is a man of the world, he knew Picasso, he is in demand in the art world, and his name is Jean De Daumier-Smith. That is not his name. We never learn his real name but that is NOT his name. It's all a lie. But he gets the job. He goes off to Montreal only to find that the art school is run by a Japanese couple, out of their apartment - and it is strictly a correspondence course. "Artists" send in their work for evaluation and they mark up the work with tracing paper comments and send them back. Mr. De Daumier-Smith is bored, angry, and feels useless. He continues to make up stories about Picasso, hoping to impress, but the Japanese couple don't seem to care. It is also apparent that they have sex every night - our narrator can hear the moans through the walls ... but, and this is key, he doesn't recognize the sounds, and thinks that they are actually bad sounds. He wonders what the problem is in the relationship. He looks at their faces at the dinner table, and wonders why they spend so much time moaning behind closed doors. So our narrator feels superior, like a true man of the world because he has lived in Paris ... but when it comes to basic reality, he is a babe in the woods. Salinger manages to suggest all of that in the writing.

De Daumier-Smith becomes obsessed with one of the correspondence students - a nun named Sister Irma. I don't know if she has talent, or what - but he becomes engrossed in her art and starts off on an extensive one-way correspondence with her. He is totally in the dream-space. He dreams of visiting her in the convent, talking to her about art. He wonders what her goals are. (But it's so hysterical - because you read her application for the art school ... and you can see that he has totally made her up as this fascinating person in his head ... It's all a fantasy for him!) He writes her 10 page letters ... it borders on stalking, although he certainly doesn't mean it that way.

And then, one night, staring through the window of an orthopedic supply store - he has his transcendent experience - which only lasts about 3 seconds.

It changes everything.

MARVELOUS story. One of my favorites in the collection.

Here's an excerpt. This is where he describes his students.

EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the eighth story 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period'

The first was a twenty-three-year-old Toronto housewife, who said her professional name was Bambi Kramer, and advised the school to address her mail accordingly. All new students at Les Amis Des Vieux Maitres were requested to fill out questionnaire forms and to enclose photographs of themselves. Miss Kramer had enclosed a glossy, eight by ten print of herself wearing an anklet, a strapless bathing suit, and a white-duck sailor's cap. On her questionnaire form she stated that her favorite artist were Rembrandt and Walt Disney. She said she only hoped that she could some day emulate them. Her sample drawings were clipped, rather subordinately, to her photograph. All of them were arresting. One of them was unforgettable. The unforgettable one was done in florid wash colors, with a caption that read: "Forgive Them Their Trespasses." It showed three small boys fishing in an odd-looking body of water, one of their jackets draped over a "No Fishing!" sign. The tallest boy, in the foreground of the picture, appeared to have rickets in one leg and elephantitasis in the other - an effect, it was clear, that Miss Kramer had deliberately used to show that the boy was standing with his feet slightly apart.

My second student was a fifty-six-year-old "society photographer" from Windsor, Ontario, named R. Howard Ridgefield, who said that his wife had been after him for years to branch over into the painting racket. His favorite artists were Rembrandt, Sargent, and "Titan", but he added, advisedly, that he himself didn't care to draw along those lines. He said he was mostly interested in the satiric rather than the arty side of painting. To support this credo, he submitted a goodly number of original drawings and oil paintings. One of his pictures - the one I think of as his major picture - has been as recallable to me, over the years, as, say, the lyrics of "Sweet Sue" or "Let Me Call You Sweetheart". It satirized the familiar, everyday tragedy of a chaste young girl, with below-shoulder-length blond hair and udder-size breasts, being criminally assaulted in church, in the very shadow of the altar, by her minister. Both subjects' clothes were graphically in disarray. Actually, I was much less struck by the satiric implications of the picture than I was by the quality of workmanship that had gone into it. If I hadn't known they were living hundreds of miles apart, I might have sworn Ridgefield had had some purely technical help from Bambi Kramer.

Except under pretty rare circumstances, in any crisis, when I was nineteen, my funny bone invariably had the distinction of being the very first part of my body to assume partial or complete paralysis. Ridgefield and Miss Kramer did many things to me, but they didn't come at all close to amusing me. Three or four times while I was going through their envelopes, I was tempted to get up and make a formal protest to M. Yoshoto. But I had no clear idea just what sort of form my protest might take. I think I was afraid I might get over to his desk only to report, shrilly: "My mother's dead, and I have to live with her charming husband, and nobody in New York speaks French, and there aren't any chairs in your son's room. How do you expect me to teach these two crazy people how to draw?" In the end, being long self-trained in taking despair sitting down, I managed very easily to keep my seat.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 3, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the seventh story 'Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes'

In Googling around for information on this story (there ain't much) I came across a couple of disagreements about what actually happens in this story. That's ridiculous.

It is perfectly clear what happens in this story. The other "interpretations" out there seem to come from reader incomprehension or reader boredom ("I'm bored, therefore I don't 'get' the story"), or just making shit up based on no evidence ("I think what happens is ...")- rather than, oh, you know, literary analysis. Thank you, Mr. Crothers, for teaching me not just how to write a paper - but how to actually analyze a story in 10th grade.

It starts with a grey-haired man in bed with a young woman. The phone rings. Grey-haired man answers phone. It is his friend and also co-worker - they had all been out that night - his friend is drunk, it's very late, and his wife Joanie has not come home. He is sure she is cheating on him. He's hysterical and he will not be calmed down.

The girl in the story is never given a name - but it is apparent that this is Joanie, the wife. The clues are in the small bits of behavior Salinger gives to the grey-haired man, as he sits on the phone, trying to talk his friend out of the clocktower. He never really gets a word in edgewise - the hysterical friend does all the talking, unloading all of his problems about his wife. The girl never speaks. She just lies in bed listening to the grey-haired man on the phone. Finally, grey-haired man tells his friend to get some sleep, Joanie is sure to return sooner or later - and hangs up. The conversation that follows between the grey-haired man and the girl involves the girl telling him how "wonderful" he was on the phone - and how she feels like a dog. "Look at me! I'm limp!" she says. Why on earth would she feel like a dog if she weren't the Joanie in question, cheating on her husband at that very moment?

The phone rings again - and it's the hysterical friend calling back to tell the grey-haired man that "Joanie just barged in" - she's home.

Now. Having read some of the disagreements out there - people seem to take the guy's word for it: that Joanie has returned. It seems totally clear to me that he is LYING, and calling back his friend because he feels embarrassed at how out of control he got - not to mention the fact that they are co-workers, and the grey-haired man is his senior at the firm. He calls back and babbles on about how his wife is now home, nothing to worry about, "I don't want you to think I called you back because I'm worried about my job!" (why on earth would he say that if it weren't actually true?) - He is embarrassed that he called so late, so he calls back - and lies ... to cover his ass.

Now - none of this is spelled out, and if you took it all at face-value then it would seem that the grey-haired man and the girl have no connection, not really, with the hysterical guy calling on the phone about his missing wife. So the missing wife returns. Great! But if you read it that way, then there is actually no meaning in the story, nothing deeper, no resonance - and Salinger was all about depth. But also not spelling things out (see The Laughing Man - excerpt here).

So picture this. The girl in bed with the grey-haired man is Joanie, the wife. We learn a lot about her from the rantings and ravings of her husband on the other end of the line. She thinks she's a "goddam intellectual", she makes him feel like shit, they're always going to parties and she ends up making out with someone in the kitchen ... she's wild. He's hoping that moving her out to Connecticut will calm her down a little bit. He tells the grey-haired man everything - upending his life - even though it may make their professional relationship a little bit wonky the next day ... completely unaware that his wife Joanie has gone home with his colleague! She's sitting in bed right next to him! The grey-haired man does the best he can with the situation, and I don't get the sense that he is in love with Joanie - the way he speaks to his friend is basically: Calm down, she'll come home eventually, don't worry so much. That seems to be a sincere position.

So then when the friend calls back to say that Joanie had come home - when obviously she couldn't have - because she's lying in bed right there ... it's not just pathetic, but it takes on aspects of tragedy. To know your friend has lied to save face, but you can never ever point it out to him ... it will drive a wedge in the relationship, certainly ... It's one of those moments when you truly see how vulnerable somebody else is, and it's a terrible thing - that knowledge - when you can't do anything about it.

The story packs a huge punch when you read it in the way I described, and packs no punch whatsoever if you believe that the girl in bed is NOT Joanie. I happen to think that some things are NOT up for interpretation, even if they were not spelled out for you in the story. There would be no reason whatsoever to tell the story if there weren't some connection between grey-haired man, girl, and guy on phone. The clues are there in the behavior, not in the language (which is how real life so often is) ... when someone chooses to light a cigarette, what someone chooses NOT to say, etc. etc. This is the roadmap to the truth that Salinger lays out for us.

I know when I read the story, and the guy calls back, all psyched that his wife has returned - I feel a dull thud of embarrassment for him, but also compassion - because I might do the same thing. A little lie to save face. You just hope you aren't caught, because it's embarrassing.

The man is unraveling. There are enough clues in the text, too, that he is in trouble at work - his colleagues are not pleased with him, for professional reasons ... I think Salinger has dropped those hints deliberately. Things are falling apart for this man. So perhaps Joanie has a point. Maybe she doesn't want to go down with the sinking ship. Or maybe she just is a stupid "goddam intellectual". Who knows. She remains a bit of a mystery, and in the end my heart goes out to the guy on the phone - the desperate lonely midnight-caller, trying to understand why everything is going so haywire.

Funny thing, too: If you read it in the way I just described, and not like: "Oh yay, his wife came back ... So ... what was the point in that story?" - then you realize that the guy calling on the phone has every right to be freaking out, because Joanie actually IS cheating on him, right at this moment, with his colleague - whom he is calling to rant to. His suspicions are confirmed - only NOT by him - by us.

Sad little story.


EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the seventh story 'Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes'


"All right, try to take it a little easy now, Arthur," the gray-haired man said. "In the first place, if I know the Ellenbogens, they probably all hopped in a cab and went down to the Village for a couple of hours. All three of 'em'll probably barge -"

"I have a feeling she went to work on some bastard in the kitchen. I just have a feeling. She always starts necking some bastard in the kitchen when she gets tanked up. I'm through. I swear to God I mean it this time. Five goddam--"

"Where are you now, Arthur?" the gray-haired man asked. "Home?"

"Yeah. Home. Home sweet home. Christ."

"Well, just try to take it a little - What are ya - drunk, or what?"

"I don't know. How the hell do I know?"

"All right, now, listen. Relax. Just relax," the gray-haired man said. "You know the Ellenbogens, for Chrissake. What probably happened, they probably missed their last train. All three of 'em'll probably barge in on you any minute, full of witty, night-club--"

"They drove in."

"How do you know?"

"Their baby-sitter. We've had some scintillating goddam conversations. We're close as hell. We're like two goddam peas in a pod."

"All right. All right. So what? Will ya sit tight and relax, now?" said the gray-haired man. "All three of 'em'll probably waltz in on you any minute. Take my word. You know Leona. I don't know what the hell it is -- They all get this god-awful Connecticut gaiety when they get in to New York. You know that."

"Yeah. I know. I know. I don't know, though."

"Certainly you do. Use your imagination. The two of 'em probably dragged Joanie bodily --"

"Listen. Nobody ever has to drag Joanie anywhere. Don't gimme any of that dragging stuff."

"Nobody's giving you any dragging stuff, Arthur," the gray-haired man said quietly.

"I know, I know! Excuse me. Christ, I'm losing my mind. Honest to God, you sure I didn't wake you?"

"I'd tell you if you had, Arthur," the gray-haired man said. Absently, he took his left hand out from between the girl's upper arm and chest wall. "Look, Arthur. You want my advice?" he said. He took the telephone cord between his fingers, just under the transmitter. "I mean this, now. You want some advice?"

"Yeah. I don't know. Christ, I'm keeping you up. Why don't I just go cut me --"

"Listen to me a minute," the gray-haired man said. "First - I mean this, now - get in bed and relax. Make yourself a nice, big nightcap, and get under the --"

"Nightcap! Are you kidding? Christ, I've killed about a quart in the last two goddam hours. Nightcap! I'm so plastered now I can hardly --"

"All right. All right. Get in bed, then," the gray-haired man said. "And relax - ya hear me? Tell the truth. Is it going to do any good to sit around and stew?"

"Yeah, I know. I wouldn't even worry, for Chrissake, but you can't trust her! I swear to God. I swear to God you can't. You can trust her about as far as you can throw a -- I don't know what. Aaah, what's the use? I'm losing my goddam mine."

"All right. Forget it, now. Forget it, now. Will ya do me a favor and try to put the whole thing out of your mind?" the gray-haired man said. "For all you know, you're making - I honestly think you're making a mountain --"

"You know what I do? You know what I do? I'm ashameda tell ya, but you know what I very nearly goddam do every night? When I get home? You want to know?"

"Arthur, listen, this isn't --"

"Wait a second -- I'll tell ya, God damn it. I practically have to keep myself from opening every goddam closet door in my apartment - I swear to God. Every night I come home, I half expect to find a bunch of bastards hiding all over the place. Elevator boys. Delivery boys. Cops--"

"All right. All right. Let's try to take it a little easy, Arthur," the gray-haired man said. He glanced abruptly to his right, where a cigarette, lighted some time earlier in the evening, was balanced on an ashtray. It obviously had gone out, though, and he didn't pick it up. "In the first place," he said into the phone. "I've told you many, many times, Arthur, that's exactly where you make your biggest mistake. You know what you do? Would you like me to tell you what you do? You go out of your way - I mean this, now - You actually go out of your way to torture yourself. As a matter of fact, you actually inspire Joanie --" He broke off. "You're bloody lucky she's a wonderful kid. I mean it. You give that kid absolutely no credit for having any good taste - or brains, for Chrissake, for that matter --"

"Brains! Are you kidding? She hasn't got any goddam brains! She's an animal!"

The gray-haired man, his nostrils dilating, appeared to take a fairly deep breath. "We're all animals," he said. "Basically, we're all animals."

"Like hell we are. I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 30, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'For Esmé with Love and Squalor' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the sixth story 'For Esmé with Love and Squalor'

God, I love this story. It is perfection. It was one of Salinger's most successful short stories, in terms of the fan response to it - and actually Nine Stories was published under the title For Esme with Love and Squalor, and you can still find copies of it with that name. The story has a poignancy to it that makes the heart swell up like the Grinch's. And it delivers on the promise - not just in the title, but in the promise the army sergeant made to the young girl Esme - who wanted a story that involved "squalor" because she adored squalor. He puts the love into it. Because in the middle of war, he found love for her. And it is love that will save us all. There will always be squalor - but without love, you will never make it through with (to quote the last line of the story) your f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact. Beautiful story.

There is some speculation that the unnamed narrator in the story is Buddy Glass. Some people have said he is Seymour, but that makes no sense because there is mention of an "older brother in Albany" and Seymour was the oldest of the Glass children. I suppose it doesn't matter - and there is no definitive proof either way. What matters is the story - and it's one of the most delicate moving stories in the whole collection.

The story opens with a man receiving a wedding invitation. He's in America, the invitation comes from England. He would love to be there, but his wife convinces him that now is not a good time for such and such obligations, etc. But he remembers the girl who is getting married ... and, on a personal note, it just makes me so happy that these two souls would stay in touch. Now that is beautiful.

He met her when he was stationed in England during WWII. He leaves the barracks one night, and wanders around the town, stopping off in a church to watch the local choir practice. He is taken with one of the girls singing. She is about 13 years old, and has the most beautiful clear voice in the bunch, and there is something about her that strikes the narrator. Afterwards, he goes off and sits in a coffee house, to get out of the rain. Eventually, the girl he saw at choir practice comes in - and she is with her younger brother (one of Salinger's most wonderful child creations - I LOVE this kid - his name is Charles) and an older woman who seems to be a governess. The girl ends up walking over to the narrator's table and asking if she can sit and talk. They chat. It's a casual conversation, although deep themes are touched - the girl was orphaned by the war, she obviously has taken on the raising of her brother Charles (who is 4 years old, and quite a handful), and she wears on her wrist an enormous watch that obviously has come from someone else. A big man's watch. The war is not over yet. Esme asks him what he does, he says he is a short story writer. She asks if one day he would write a story, just for her - and would he please put a lot of "squalor" in it?

The encounter ends. She leaves the coffee house, waving good bye - and Salinger writes, in that simple way he has that can clutch at your throat: "It was a strangely emotional moment for me."

Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he knows that once his training is over, he will be plunged into the war, and all its horror ... and he will need the vision of innocence that he got through talking with Esme. Perhaps he knows what is ahead of him. The next time we meet him, it is after D Day. He sits in his barracks in Germany - and suddenly the narration is no longer first person - he is now referred to as "X". A strange distancing technique - incredibly moving because you get the sense of how bad it got for him, psychologically. He's had a nervous breakdown. He has the shakes, he can barely hold his cigarette. He can't sleep. He's unraveled.

Another soldier comes in - kind of a dumb-bum - X writes his letters to his wife for him, interspersing German words into it - so that he will sound smarter. You know, he's a moron. He means well, but there's a callousness to him. X is all alone in the world. The other soldier brings him a letter and when he's alone, X reads it. It is from Esme. They had exchanged addresses. She has finally written to him - very excited the war is over, and all that - and she has enclosed a gift for him, something he might get more use out of than she would. It is the wristwatch.

After reading the letter, poor X - who is psychologically in torment - suddenly is overwhelmed by exhaustion. The best kind. He lies down. He will be able to sleep now. In a way, her letter saved him. Reminded him, perhaps, of what he had been fighting for ... to preserve innocence like that, to protect it ... or maybe just a reminder of all of the good things in life, even amidst the horror of war. Who knows. But she saved him.

And so 6 years later, when she invites him to her wedding ...

Well. It's killer. He's an American in his early 20s. She's an English girl in her early teens. But they are kindred spirits.

Beautiful story. Here's an excerpt.


EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the sixth story 'For Esmé with Love and Squalor'

The next thing I knew, the young lady was standing, with enviable poise, beside my table. She was wearing a tartan dress - a Campbell tartan, I believe. It seemed to me to be a wonderful dress for a very young girl to be wearing on a rainy, rainy day. "I thought Americans despised tea," she said.

It wasn't the observation of a smart aleck but that of a truth-lover or a statistics-lover. I replied that some of us never drank anything but tea. I asked her if she'd care to join me.

"Thank you," she said. "Perhaps for just a fraction of a moment."

I got up and drew a chair for her, the one opposite me, and she sat down on the forward quarter of it, keeping her spine easily and beautifully straight. I went back - almost hurried back - to my own chair, more than willing to hold up my end of a conversation. When I was seated, I couldn't think of anything to say, though. I smiled again, still keeping my coal-black filling under concealment. I remarked that it was certainly a terrible day out.

"Yes; quite," said my guest, in the clear, unmistakable voice of a small-talk detester. She placed her fingers flat on the table edge, like someone at a seance, and then, almost instantly, closed her hands - her nails were bitten down to the quick. She was wearing a wristwatch, a military-looking one that looked rather like a navigator's chronograph. Its face was much too large for her slender wrist. "You were at choir practice," she said matter-of-factly. "I saw you."

I said I certainly had been, and that I had heard her voice singing separately from the others. I said I thought she had a very fine voice.

She nodded. "I know. I'm going to be a professional singer."

"Really? Opera?"

"Heavens, no. I'm going to sing jazz on the radio and make heaps of money. Then, when I'm thirty, I shall retire and live on a ranch in Ohio." She touched the top of her soaking-wet head with the flat of her hand. "Do you know Ohio?" she asked.

I said I'd been through it on the train a few times but that I didn't really know it. I offered her a piece of cinnamon toast.

"No, thank you," she said. "I eat like a bird, actually."

I bit into a piece of toast myself, and commented that there's some mighty rough country around Ohio.

"I know. An American I met told me. You're the eleventh American I've met."

Her governess was now urgently signalling her to return to her own table - in effect, to stop bothering the man. My guest, however, calmly moved her chair an inch or two so that her back broke all possible further communication with the home table. "You go to that secret Intelligence school on the hill, don't you?" she inquired coolly.

As security-minded as the next one, I replied that I was visiting Devonshire for my health.

"Really," she said. "I wasn't quite born yesterday, you know."

I said I'd bet she hadn't been, at that. I drank my tea for a moment. I was getting a trifle posture-conscious and I sat up somewhat straighter in my seat.

"You seem quite intelligent for an American," my guest mused.

I told her that was a pretty snobbish thing to say, if you thought about it at all, and that I hoped it was unworthy of her.

She blushed - automatically conferring on me the social poise I'd been missing. "Well. Most of the Americans I've seen act like animals. They're forever punching one another about, and insulting everyone, and - You know what one of them did?"

I shook my head.

"One of them threw an empty whiskey bottle through my aunt's window. Fortunately, the window was open. But does that sound very intelligent to you?"

It didn't especially, but I didn't say so. I said that many soldiers, all over the world, were a long way from home, and that few of them had had many real advantages in life. I said I'd thought that most people could figure that out for themselves.

"Possibly," said my guest, without conviction. She raised her hand to her wet head again, picked at a few limp filaments of blond hair, trying to cover her exposed ear rims. "My hair is soaking wet," she said. "I look a fright." She looked over at me. "I have quite wavy hair when it's dry."

"I can see that. I can see you have."

"Not actually curly, but quite wavy," she said. "Are you married?"

I said I was.

She nodded. "Are you very deeply in love with your wife? Or am I being too personal?"

I said that when she was, I'd speak up.

She put her hands and wrists farther forward on the table, and I remember wanting to do something about that enormous-faced wristwatch she was wearing - perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her waist.

"Usually, I'm not terribly gregarious," she said, and looked over at me to see if I knew the meaning of the word. I didn't give her a sign, though, one way or the other. "I purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an extremely sensitive face."

I said she was right, that I had been feeling lonely, and that I was very glad she'd come over.

"I'm training myself to be more compassionate. My aunt says I'm a terribly cold person," she said and felt the top of her head again. "I live with my aunt. She's an extremely kind person. Since the death of my mother, she's done everything within her power to make Charles and me feel adjusted."

"I'm glad."

"Mother was an extremely intelligent person. Quite sensuous, in many ways." She looked at me with a kind of fresh acuteness. "Do you find me terribly cold?"

I told her absolutely not - very much to the contrary, in fact. I told her my name and asked for hers.

She hesitated. "My first name is Esmé. I don't think I shall tell you my full name, for the moment. I have a title and you may just be impressed by titles. Americans are, you know."

I said I didn't think I would be, but that it might be a good idea, at that, to hold on to the title for a while.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 29, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'Down at the Dinghy' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the fifth story 'Down at the Dinghy'

There's not much to this story, it seems to me to be the "thinnest" in the collection. If you put it alongside 'The Laughing Man' (excerpt here) or 'Perfect Day for Bananafish' (excerpt here) it seems pretty near inconsequential. It features Boo Boo Tannenbaum (that's her married name - her maiden name is "Glass" and she is yet another of the Glass siblings - her name comes up often, I mean how many people are called BOO BOO?? Boo Boo is known as the maternal one, the nurturing one - and although we have heard much about her from other stories, here she takes center stage). Boo Boo is married, and she has a small son Lionel, who seems to run away every other day. He is four years old or something like that, but he's been running away since he was two years old. They never can figure out why. They try to put two and two together, someone said something mean to him at school, whatever ... but Lionel doesn't really divulge. Boo Boo and family are staying at their summer house on the lake, and they've decided to stay through October. Boo Boo is only 25, but you know, it was a different time. She's the lady of the household. In cut-off jeans, with a pack of cigarettes in her back pocket. If you've read the other Glass stories, you've heard so much good stuff about Boo Boo that you're excited to meet her. And she seems really nice. Nice-ness is underrated. Seymour Glass may have been a more stimulating companion, but he also could be frustrating and opaque. Boo Boo seems straight-up nice, like you could hang with her. The story opens with Boo Boo's housekeeper gossiping with another local housekeeper - Boo Boo's housekeeper Sandra is bitching about how she always has to watch what she says about Lionel, and how annoying it is. She's obviously upset about something - something she said that Lionel heard ... but instead of admitting any wrongdoing herself, she keeps insisting that the kid is weird, he sneaks around the house quietly, and you have to watch what you say. The other housekeeper, Mrs. Snell, tries to tell Sandra not to worry about it, and Sandra keeps saying she's not worried. Yet she still keeps talking about it.

Boo Boo enters. Her son Lionel is apparently sitting down in the dinghy by the dock, and he has threatened to run away again. He is just sitting there, thinking it out. Boo Boo goes down to talk to her son, try to find out what happened, and how to get to the bottom of what he's going thru. Turns out, Lionel overheard Sandra call his father a "dirty sloppy kike" and this upset him. But he doesn't even know what the word means - he thinks a "kike" is a thing you put a string on and let it fly up into the air. Okay. So Sandra, the housekeeper, is anti-Semitic - a comment she makes about Lionel's nose is more evidence of that - but Boo Boo doesn't fly into a rage about it, or fire Sandra or anything like that ... Her tactic is more Glass-ish, of course. She takes a philosophical approach, a Zen approach ... Who knows what will happen after the story has finished - maybe she will fire Sandra ... but in the moment, Lionel needs her to kiss and coddle him and say how silly Sandra is, and so she does.

That's the story. There's nothing wrong with it, and like all of Salinger's stuff, it is beautifully written and observed. He is so good at writing about children - their non sequitirs, their behavior ... There may be something more here that I am missing. I suspect so. But to me, it's a very surface story. It IS its surface.

But check out how Salinger describes Boo Boo in the excerpt below. That is economical and effective description. She just springs to life, fully, up off of the page - I love that.


EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the fifth story 'Down at the Dinghy'

The swinging door opened from the dining room and Boo Boo Tannenbaum, the lady of the house, came into the kitchen. She was a small, almost hipless girl of twenty-five, with styleless, colorless, brittle hair pushed back behind her ears, which were very large. She was dressed in knee-length jeans, a black turtleneck pullover, and socks and loafers. Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was - in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces - a stunning and final girl. She went directly to the refrigerator and opened it. As she peered inside, with her legs apart and her hands on her knees, she whistled, unmelodically, through her teeth, keeping in time with a little uninhibited, pendulum action of her rear end. Sandra and Mrs. Snell were silent. Mrs. Snell put out her cigarette, unhurriedly.

"Sandra ..."

"Yes, ma'am?" Sandra looked alertly past Mrs. Snell's hat.

"Aren't there any more pickles? I want to bring him a pickle."

"He et 'em," Sandra reported intelligently. "He et 'em before he went to bed last night. There was only two left."

"Oh. Well, I'll get some when I go to the station. I thought maybe I could lure him out of that boat." Boo Boo shut the refrigerator door and walked over to look out of the lake-front window. "Do we need anything else?" she asked, from the window.

"Just bread."

"I left your check on the hall table, Mrs. Snell. Thank you."

"O.K.," said Mrs. Snell. "I hear Lionel's supposeta be runnin' away." She gave a short laugh.

"Certainly looks that way," Boo Boo said, and slid her hands into her hip pockets.

"At least he don't run very far away," Mrs. Snell said, giving another short laugh.

At the window, Boo Boo changed her position slightly, so that her back wasn't directly to the two women at the table. "No," she said, and pushed back some hair behind her ear. She added, purely informatively: "He's been hitting the road regularly since he was two. But never very hard. I think the farthest he ever got - in the city, at least - was to the Mall in Central Park. Just a couple of blocks from home. The least far - or nearest - he ever got was to the front door of our building. He stuck around to say goodbye to his father."

Both women at the table laughed.

"The Mall's where they all go skatin' in New York," Sandra said very sociably to Mrs. Snell. "The kids and all."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Snell.

"He was only three. It was just last year," Boo Boo said, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a folder of matches from a side pocket in her jeans. She lit a cigarette, while the two women spiritedly watched her. "Big excitement. We had the whole police force out looking for him."

"They find him?" said Mrs. Snell.

"Sure they found him!" said Sandra with contempt. "Wuddaya think?"

"They found him at a quarter past eleven at night, in the middle of - my God, February, I think. Not a child in the park. Just muggers, I guess, and an assortment of roaming degenerates. He was sitting on the floor of the bandstand, rolling a marble back and forth along a crack. Half-frozen to death and looking --"

"Holy Mackerel!" said Mrs. Snell. "How come he did it? I mean what was he runnin' away about?"

Boo Boo blew a single, faulty smoke-ring at a pane of glass. "Some child in the park that afternoon had come up to him with the dreamy misinformation, 'You stink, kid.' At least, that's why we think he did it. I don't know, Mrs. Snell. It's all slightly over my head."

"How long's he been doin' it?" asked Mrs. Snell. "I mean how long's he been doin' it?"

"Well, at the age of two-and-a-half," Boo Boo said biographically, "he sought refuge under a sink in the basement of our apartment house. Down in the laundry. Naomi somebody - a close friend of his - told him she had a worm in her thermos bottle. At least, that's all we could get out of him." Boo Boo sighed, and came away from the window with a long ash on her cigarette. She started for the screen door. "I'll have another go at it," she said, by way of goodby to both women.

They laughed.

"Mildred,"Sandra, still laughing, addressed Mrs. Snell, "you're gonna miss your bus if ya don't get a move on."

Boo Boo closed the screen door behind her.


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 27, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'The Laughing Man' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the third story 'The Laughing Man'

One of Salinger's perfect blends of comedy and pathos - another great example (if I could only follow it) of not saying too much. Saying just enough ... but leaving some of the meaning and interpretation outside the lines... If you weren't a careful reader, you would think that the Chief and Mary, in this story, were just having a fight. Maybe breaking up. But you need to read carefully. NOTHING is accidental or coincidental in a Salinger story (which is one of the reasons why he engenders such a fanatic following). But to paraphrase one of my old teachers, Doug Moston, "If you think it means something - it does mean something. You just haven't figured it out yet." Catcher in the Rye is full of stuff like that - which is why it is so good for high school students: Holden's obsession with where ducks go in winter. The whole "catcher in the rye" thing AND Phoebe's response to his monologue about it ("Mom and Dad are gonna kill you ...") ... Phoebe's hunter cap. All of these things have layers of meaning ... you can't just say A to B here. Salinger is working on multiple three-dimensional levels. That's one of the reasons I find him so fun to read. What you see is not just what you get.

Take 'The Laughing Man'. A simple story, on its surface: A man looks back on 1928, when he was nine years old, and part of an after-school program called The Comanches. They would all pile onto a bus after school and be transported to Central Park where they would play baseball, basketball ... If it was raining, they would be taken to a museum. On the weekends, they were driven out to a baseball field in Jersey to play games. The head of this club is Joe Gedsudski, a 23 year old guy from Staten Island. They all call him "The Chief". Words cannot express how much I love "the Chief". And how much all the boys love "The Chief". As their bus takes them to whatever destination they are headed for, The Chief tells an ongoing story about a horrifying and yet heroic creature called The Laughing Man. He is obviously making it up as he goes along, and he's an awesome storyteller. I got hooked into the saga of The Laughing Man. I particularly love how The Laughing Man goes back and forth across the "Paris-Chinese" border. Yeah, cause we all know those countries abut each other. The kids don't care about details like that, and neither does The Chief. The point is that The Laughing Man's influence spans the entire world. He has enemies who want to get him. The story is quite violent at times. And The Laughing Man is ruthless when he needs to be. There's so much going on in The Laughing Man story that I know I am not getting half of it. And what the connection is ... although I can make up my own interpretations.

And one day - it is noticed that a snapshot of a girl is taped up on the windshield. A girl? Who is that?? The Chief kind of evades the question. But then - horrors - the next Saturday, they make a pitstop on the Upper West Side - and a GIRL gets on the bus!! The boys are furious. No girls allowed should be the rule. Now they don't know how to act, how to be, they resent her presence, they also resent that The Chief's focus is now split - he's obviously way more aware of HER than he is of THEM and that is NOT. RIGHT. He's nervous, too. He's awkward, trying to make the whole situation work. And Mary (that's her name) just babbles on to him about her train ride, and the boys sit in scowling silence, and nobody gets to hear the next installment of The Laughing Man ... because she has wrecked everything just by being there. Girls have a way of doing that.

They get to the baseball field and are getting ready to play - when Mary asks if she can play, too. The boys are HORRIFIED. You? In your dress and heels? Play? They are so pissed. Girls should know when to go away! But they do end up letting her play - and that's the excerpt below. It's one of my favorite parts of the story - Mary playing baseball with the Comanches.

But over the course of the next couple of weeks, they not only end up getting used to her - but they expect her presence.

One day they wait for her on the corner where she always is, and she doesn't show. Because the story is told from the perspective of an outsider - not to mention a little boy who doesn't have the depth of understanding about adult relationships ... we don't quite get what is going on. We just know that The Chief is disturbed. They finally drive off without her, but The Chief is silent and distracted. The boys, by now, are so used to Mary that they are all thrown out of whack by her no-show. Where is she? They head out to the baseball field, and as they play the game, our narrator glances into the stands and sees Mary sitting there, flanked on either side by two other onlookers, both rocking enormous baby carriages. (Again: with Salinger nothing is accidental) The narrator points out Mary's presence to The Chief - who seems elated and also agitated that she has shown up. He runs over to her - and from afar, the boys watch as ... well, it's not exactly clear what is happening. It seems that they are having a fight on the sidelines, some kind of altercation. The Chief ends up walking away from her, and she stands there, near third base, crying. The narrator calls out to her does she want to play and she says to him, "Leave me alone!" - which is stunning behavior to a little boy. He backs away from her, and trips over a baby carriage standing on the sidelines. (So again. You should, if you think a little bit, be able to guess what the situation is. It's never spelled out - and even the narrator says he's not sure what exactly was going on between The Chief and Mary but that he can guess ...) My guess: The Chief has gotten Mary pregnant (hence the preponderance of baby carriages in this last scene). She didn't show up at the appointed time on her corner because she had a doctor's appointment. Maybe an appointment for an abortion, who knows. Or maybe it was just the appointment that would confirm or deny what they already suspected - that she was pregnant. Let's remember that in the excerpt below, it is made clear that Mary hates first base, and always pushes whatever hit she got into a double or triple. Hmmmm. Coincidence? I think not. So when she shows up at the game, on her own steam, he runs over to find out what happened at the doctor's office - and they have a fight. She ends up running off in tears, and the Comanches and The Chief head back to the city alone, on their bus.

On the way, The Chief gives the final (or, what will end up being the final) installment of The Laughing Man - which is pretty horrible, almost like a Jack London story. The boys sit there gaping, one of them starts crying ... everything has changed ... the story has changed, The Chief has changed - he is now more recognizably grown-up, definitely not "one of them" anymore.

Wonderful story.

There's so much great stuff to excerpt here - a lovely tightly-wound deep emotional story ... but I'm going with the day Mary forces herself onto the baseball team with the Comanches, and they are all so PISSED about it ... but watch how they come around. Classic Salinger.

I love this line too: "Then the Chief took over, revealing what had formerly been a well-concealed flair for incompetence." hahahahaha


EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the third story 'The Laughing Man'

When we got out of the bus, Mary Hudson stuck right with us. I'm sure that by the time we reached the baseball field there was on every Comanche's face a some-girls-just-don't-know-when-to-go-home look. And to really top things off, when another Comanche and I were flipping a coin to decide which team would take the field first, Mary Hudson wistfully expressed a desire to join the game. The response to this couldn't have been more clean-cut Where before we Comanches had simply stared at her femaleness, we now glared at it. She smiled back at us. It was a shade disconcerting. Then the Chief took over, revealing what had formerly been a well-concealed flair for incompetence. He took Mary Hudson aside, just out of earshot of the Comanches, and seemed to address her solemnly, rationally. At length, Mary Hudson interrupted him, and her voice was perfectly audible to the Comanches. "But I do," she said. "I do, too, want to play!" The Chief nodded and tried again. He pointed in the direction of the infield, which was soggy and pitted. He picked up a regulation bat and demonstrated its weight. "I don't care," Mary Hudson said distinctly, "I came all the way to New York - to the dentist and everything - and I'm gonna play." The Chief nodded again but gave up. He walked cautiously over to home plate, where the Braves and the Warriors, the two Comanche teams, were waiting, and looked at me. I was captain of the Warriors. He mentioned the name of my regular center fielder, who was home sick, and suggested that Mary Hudson take his place. I said I didn't need a center fielder. The Chief asked me what the hell did I mean I didn't need a center fielder. I was shocked. It was the first time I had heard the Chief swear. What's more, I could feel Mary Hudson smiling at me. For poise, I picked up a stone and threw it at a tree.

We took the field first. No business went out to center field the first inning. From my position on first base, I glanced behind me now and then. Each time I did, Mary Hudson waved gaily at me. She was wearing a catcher's mitt, her own adamant choice. It was a horrible sight.

Mary Hudson batted ninth on the Warriors' lineup. When I informed her of this arrangement, she made a little face and said, "Well, hurry up, then." And as a matter of fact we did seem to hurry up. She got to bat in the first inning. She took off her beaver coat - and her catcher's mitt - for the occasion and advanced to the plate in a dark-brown dress. When I gave her a bat, she asked me why it was so heavy. The Chief left his umpire's position behind the pitcher and came forward anxiously. He told Mary Hudson to rest the end of her bat on her right shoulder. "I am," she said. He told her not to choke bat too tightly. "I'm not," she said. He told her to keep her eye right on the ball. "I will," she said. "Get outa the way." She swung mightily at the first ball pitched to her and hit it over the left fielder's head. It was good for an ordinary double, but Mary Hudson got to third on it - standing up.

When my astonishment had worn off, and then my awe, and then my delight, I looked over at the Chief. He didn't so much seem to be standing behind the pitcher as floating over him. He was a completely happy man. Over on third base, Mary Hudson waved to me. I waved back. I couldn't have stopped myself, even if I'd wanted to. Her stickwork aside, she happened to be a girl who knew how to wave to somebody from third base.

The rest of the game, she got on base every time she came to bat. For some reason, she seemed to hate first base; there was no holding her there. At least three times, she stole second.

Her fielding couldn't have been worse, but we were piling up too many runs to take serious notice of it. I think it would have improved if she'd gone after flies with almost anything except a catcher's mitt. She wouldn't take it off, though. She said it was cute.

The next month or so, she played baseball with the Comanches a couple of times a week (whenever she had an appointment with her dentist, apparently). Some afternoons she met the bus on time, some afternoons she was late. Sometimes she talked a blue streak in the bus, sometimes she just sat and smoked her Herbert Tareyton cigarettes (cork-tipped). When you sat next to her in the bus, she smelled of a wonderful perfume.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 26, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'Just Before The War With the Eskimos' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the third story 'Just Before The War With the Eskimos'

A story so compact, so perfectly structured, that if you remove one word the whole thing would unravel. If you've ever tried to write a short story, you know how difficult it is ... how to use symbols without being obvious, how to SHOW not TELL, all that ... I love reading people who are masters of the form, because it feels easy in their hands. Like Lorrie Moore (excerpt here), Mary Gaitskill (excerpt here), James Joyce (excerpt here - although it is usually unfair to lump anyone else with James Joyce - even the good writers suffer from the comparison), AS Byatt (excerpt here) ... These people are masters of the form. They are master enough that they can also mess with the form (AS Byatt) and get away with it. It's a joy to read these people, and it's a joy to read JD Salinger. There is something going on in 'Just Before the War With the Eskimos' that somehow remains beneath the surface. It's all THERE, it's just a bit elusive - and it shifts if you try to put your finger on it. 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut' (excerpt here) is pretty straightforward, leaving not much to the imagination - It is what it says it is, the meaning and "event" of the story is clear - but 'Perfect Day for Bananafish' (excerpt here) and now 'Just Before the War With the Eskimos' ... hides its meaning, cloaks its true intentions. But it's such a TAUT story, so tightly wound ... that I could spend days ruminating upon it. How can a story 15 pages long have so much in it? And also contain so much mystery? Like the last line ... which appears to come out of NOWHERE ... but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. It brings a depth and power to the story that you might otherwise miss if you only read it as a surface encounter. And THAT is what makes a good short story - because you have a limited amount of space. If you're going to use symbolism, please do it subtly and let it sneak up on us - because otherwise the whole thing becomes way too top-heavy, and I end up feeling like you, the writer, are treating me, the reader, like I'm half-tard or quarter-tard.

Ginnie and Selena are two high-school age girls who live in New York City and go to some upscale prep school. They play tennis every weekend. Ginnie is the lead of this story. It's her POV. She starts the story annoyed because she always gets stuck with the whole cab fare on their tennis days ... the cab drops Selena off and then goes on to drop Ginnie off, and Selena never leaves her any money. Ginnie finally has had it and brings it up to Selena. Selena is offended, pissed, defensive ... says something about how her mother is sick ... Ginnie is like, "I didn't make her sick, did I?" Selena huffs off into her house to wake up her sick mother and get Ginnie the money she is owed - leaving Ginnie waiting in the living room. This is a world of privilege - we know that because it's Salinger writing it, first of all - that is his milieu - urban privilege - Ginnie stares around the living room at all the furniture and has the desire to throw it all out the window. I'm not sure what's going on there - if there are some issues going on here between Ginnie and Selena that I am not perceiving - issues coming to the foreground because of Selena's cheapness and pettiness when it comes to paying her half of the cab fare. Old money vs. new money? There is NOTHING like the contempt old money has for new money. So that might be what is going on, because it seems like an odd reaction to a set of living room furniture.

Selena's older brother Franklin comes into the room - he is in his early 20s, kind of raggedy, in a bathrobe, and he has cut his finger. Ginnie has never met him before. Their encounter makes up the bulk of 'Just Before the War With the Eskimos'. And although this is just an interpretation, here goes: Ginnie goes through some sort of obvious transformation as she talks to Franklin. He has cut his finger, he seems to think she will know what to do, but then he ruins things by making a sneering comment about her sister, and how she is a snob. Ginnie at first is enraged - how dare he talk to her like that - but somehow, through the next couple pages, she lets that go and seems to start to find him funny. Is it that somehow Ginnie knows he's right - that her sister is a snob? That there is something refreshing about his honesty, in the middle of all of that upper-class repression? Not sure. He divulges that he had rheumatic fever when he was a kid and there is something the matter with his heart. Yet there he is, smoking. He also reveals that he quit college, and spent 37 months in Ohio working in an airplane factory. Ginnie starts to ask him questions about all of this, and his responses are overwhelmingly sarcastic - "I love airplanes ... they're so cute ..." and yet he also offers her his sandwich, he actually insists on her taking it ... Do they connect? Maybe. Salinger leaves that out of the story, it's between the lines - nothing is explicit. But the Ginnie who walks out of that house is a different girl. Selena's brother (his name is Franklin) is waiting for a friend who is coming to get him - they're going to a movie. Franklin leaves, to go get dressed - and his friend arrives, and HE sits in the living room with Ginnie. He is obviously gay - although I suppose if you have no gaydar whatsoever you might not pick up on it. He compliments Ginnie's coat. He complains about the dog hairs on Selena's mother's couch. He and Franklin are going to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. He launches into a long rather boring story about this horrible free-loading roommate he had - a writer (you can hear his contempt) - but you have to wonder if it was a thwarted lover situation. And then he reveals that he too worked in the airplane factory in Ohio. I have nothing to back this up, but I think that Franklin may be gay, too - so although he is an outsider due to his cynicism, his bad heart, all that - his true outsider status is his sexual orientation. He sneers out the window at humanity - all the men going to the draft board. You might think he was turned away because of his bad heart, but perhaps it was the gay thing. Perhaps he was "placed" in the airplane factory for the duration of the war - again, none of it is made clear - Perhaps Franklin himself is not gay. I didn't get a gay vibe from him - there are intimations that he might have a crush on Ginnie, and that he certainly had a crush on Ginnie's sister ... but who knows.

The world outside suddenly seems to be marching along towards a destiny that involves none of the characters in the story. There will be war with the Eskimos next. Franklin will stand by the window, with his bad heart, looking on at the ridiculous foibles of humanity. Let them all stroll towards destruction, see what he cares.

The last image of the story - Ginnie walking off down the street, having told Selena that it's okay, she doesn't want her money, and by the way - can I come over later? -leaves much mysterious ... What happened to Ginnie in her encounters with the two men? Something did. It seems she has lifted her head a bit from total self-involvement (which is typical of most teenagers) and seen a bit further, gained perspective - became interested in someone other than herself. To even write that out, makes the story sound hokey and preachy and it is neither of those things. Salinger spells nothing out. Ginnie walks down the street, taking out the sandwich Selena's brother gave her, she contemplates tossing it ... but then thinks better of it and puts it in her pocket again.

It's my favorite kind of story. The writer treats me like I am intelligent. And he leaves enough for me to contemplate ... there is enough left unsaid that I can continue to think about it and wonder about it. I love that.

Here is an excerpt.


EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the third story 'Just Before The War With the Eskimos'

"You Ginnie?" he said, squinting at her through his glasses. "You Ginnie Mannox?"

"Yes," said Ginnie, uncrossing her legs.

Selena's brother turned back to his finger, obviously for him the true and only focal point in the room. "I know your sister," he said dispassionately. "Goddam snob."

Ginnie arched her back. "Who is?"

"You heard me."

"She is not a snob!"

"The hell she's not," said Selena's brother.

"She is not!"

"The hell she's not. She's the queen. Queen of the goddam snobs."

Ginnie watched him lift up and peer under the thick folds of toilet paper on his finger.

"You don't even know my sister."

"Hell I don't."

"What's her name? What's her first name?" Ginnie demanded.

"Joan ... Joan the Snob."

Ginnie was silent. "What's she look like?" she asked suddenly.

No answer.

"What's she look like?" Ginnie repeated.

"If she was half as good-looking as she thinks she is, she'd be goddam lucky," Selena's brother said.

This had the stature of an interesting answer, in Ginnie's secret opinion. "I never heard her mention you."

"That worries me. That worries hell outa me."

"Anyway, she's engaged," Ginnie said, watching him. "She's gonna be married next month."

"Who to?" he asked, looking up.

Ginnie took full advantage of his having looked up. "Nobody you know."

He resumed picking at his own first-aid work. "I pity him," he said.

Ginnie snorted.

"It's still bleedin' like mad. Ya think I oughta put something on it? What's good to put on it? Mercurochrome any good?"

"Iodine's better," Ginnie said. Then, feeling her answer was too civil under the circumstances, she added, "Mercurochrome's no good at all for that."

"Why not? What's the matter with it?"

"It just isn't any good for that stuff, that's all. Ya need iodine."

He looked at Ginnie. "It stings a lot, though, doesn't it?" he asked. "Doesn't it sting a helluva lot?"

"It stings," Ginnie said, "but it won't kill you or anything."

Apparently without resenting Ginnie's tone, Selena's brother turned back to his finger. "I don't like it when it stings," he said.

"Nobody does."

He nodded in agreement. "Yeah," he said.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 25, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the second story 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut'.


My favorite in the collection. I think it would make a terrific short film, too. Don't change a word. But there's something revealed in 'Uncle Wiggily' - some truth about life exposed- that makes it feel almost radioactive to me. I can't look directly at it for too long or my retinas will burn off or something. I guess I take 'Uncle Wiggily' personally, somehow ... it has gotten under my skin.

It's a fast-paced story made up almost entirely of dialogue, and things happen so quickly, and there are so many italics, that the ending is like a sucker-punch. I almost resented it the first time I read it because I wasn't prepared for it. But then again, going back to read it again you can see that Salinger was leading us to that tragic ending all along (to me it's tragic, anyway - like "Eleanor Rigby" tragic) - the ice-bound suburbs, the icy Merritt Parkway - everything encased in ice. That's the first image of the story. Eloise has "iced" herself to such a degree in order to bear the life she has chosen. She can't allow any warmth, not even towards her daughter Ramona (who is such a trip - I adore her. Salinger writes children so well!) because if she opens herself up to love, all she will be able to think about will be the love she once lost. (Who is, by the way, Walt Glass - another sibling in the famous Glass family. I don't even think Salinger mentions his last name - but to Glass fanatics, the second you see "Walt" you know who it is).

Mary Jane and Eloise were friends from college. Neither of them graduated, but they have kept in touch. Eloise lives in Connecticut, with her husband Lew and her daughter Ramona. Mary Jane (if I am remembering correctly) is unmarried (although she was married once for three months) and lives in New York City. She is awkward and kind of overly friendly to Ramona when she meets her. She doesn't know how to talk to kids. Ramona stalks around with her imaginary friend whose name is "Jimmy Jimmereeno" and he carries a sword. Eloise is exasperated by Ramona, there's something about mothering that seems to harass her ... we're getting close to the abyss here, the abyss at the heart of Eloise's life. We can see it in her treatment of her daughter, which is not abusive - just kind of tired and "over it". Eloise looks around at her own life, full of solid things - like a house, a husband, a black maid, a daughter - and doesn't recognize herself in it. She doesn't say so, Salinger is never that obvious - it's just the feeling we get. Eloise and Mary Jane immediately begin to drink martinis and smoke cigarettes, talking about the old days, and laughing hysterically. Eloise keeps them drinking ... until finally Mary Jane passes out face down on the couch. They are wasted. Salinger manages to suggest this without ever coming out and saying it: most of the story, like I mentioned, is dialogue - so they'll be chatting along, and then - through the dialogue you can tell a drink is spilled - or that one of them has stumbled ... It's a very effective way to show drunkenness, I think. And somehow Salinger also manages to suggest the sadness hovering underneath all of this - that cannot somehow be spoken (although with enough martinis it eventually is).

Brilliant story - one of my favorites of Salinger's, certainly - but also one of my favorite short stories ever written. Even if it does burn my retina if I look at it too long.

The last line of the story is so killer it makes me want to weep. How often have I said the same thing to myself. Brilliant story.

Here's an excerpt.


EXCERPT FROM Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the second story 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut'.

"I mean you didn't really know Walt," said Eloise, at a quarter of five, lying on her back on the floor, a drink balanced upright on her small-breasted chest. "He was the only boy I ever knew that could make me laugh. I mean really laugh." She looked over at Mary Jane. "You remember that night - our last year - when that crazy Louise Hermanson busted in the room wearing that black brassiere she bought in Chicago?"

Mary Jane giggled. She was lying on her stomach on the couch, her chin on the armrest, facing Eloise. Her drink was on the floor, within reach.

"Well, he could make me laugh that way," Eloise said. "He could do it when he talked to me. He could do it over the phone. He could even do it in a letter. And the best thing about it was that he didn't even try to be funny - he just was funny." She turned her head slightly toward Mary Jane. "Hey, how 'bout throwing me a cigarette?"

"I can't reach 'em," Mary Jane said.

"Nuts to you." Eloise looked up at the ceiling again. "Once," she said, "I fell down. I used to wait for him at the bus stop, right outside the PX, and he showed up late once, just as the bus was pulling out. We started to run for it, and I fell and twisted my ankle. He said, 'Poor Uncle Wiggily.' He meant my ankle. Poor old Uncle Wiggily, he called it ... God, he was nice."

"Doesn't Lew have a sense of humor?" Mary Jane said.

"What?"

"Doesn't Lew have a sense of humor?"

"Oh, God! Who knows? Yes. I guess so. He laughs at cartoons and stuff." Eloise raised her head, lifted her drink from her chest, and drank from it.

"Well," Mary Jane said. "That isn't everything. I mean that isn't everything."

"What isn't?"

"Oh ... you know. Laughing and stuff."

"Who says it isn't?" Eloise said. "Listen, if you're not gonna be a nun or something, you might as well laugh."

Mary Jane giggled. "You're terrible," she said.

"Ah, God, he was nice," Eloise said. "He was either funny or sweet. Not that damn little-boy sweet, either. It was a special kind of sweet. You know what he did once?"

"Uh-uh," Mary Jane said.

"We were on the train going from Trenton to New York - it was just right after he was drafted. It was cold in the car and I had my coat sort of over us. I remember I had Joyce Morrow's cardigan on underneath - you remember that darling blue cardigan she had?"

Mary Jane nodded, but Eloise didn't look over to get the nod.

"Well, he sort of had his hand on my stomach. You know. Anyway, all of a sudden he said my stomach was so beautiful he wished some officer would come up and order him to stick his other hand through the window. He said he wanted to do what was fair. Then he took his hand away and told the conductor to throw his shoulders back. He told him if there was one thing he couldn't stand it was a man who didn't look proud of his uniform. The conductor just told him to go back to sleep." Eloise reflected a moment, then said, "It wasn't always what he said, but how he said it. You know."

"Have you ever told Lew about him - I mean, at all?"

"Oh," Eloise said. "I started to, once. But the first thing he asked me was what his rank was."

"What was his rank?"

"Ha!" said Eloise.

"No, I just meant -"

Eloise laughed suddenly, from her diaphragm. "You know what he said once. He said he felt he was advancing in the Army, but in a different direction from everybody else. He said that when he'd get his first promotion, instead of getting stripes he'd have his sleeves taken away from him. He said when he'd get to be a general, he'd be stark naked. All he'd be wearing would be a little infantry button in his navel." Eloise looked over at Mary Jane, who wasn't laughing. "Don't you think that's funny?"

"Yes. Only, why don't you tell Lew about him sometimes, though?"

"Why? Because he's too damn unintelligent, that's why," Eloise said. "Besides. Listen to me, career girl. If you ever get married again, don't tell your husband anything. Do you hear me?"

"Why?" said Mary Jane.

"Because I say so, that's why," said Eloise. "They wanna think you spent your whole life vomiting every time a boy came near you. I'm not kidding, either. Oh, you can tell them stuff. But never honestly. I mean never honestly. If you tell 'em you once knew a handsome boy, you gotta say in the same breath he was too handsome. And if you tell 'em you knew a witty boy, you gotta tell 'em he was kind of a smart aleck, though, or a wise guy. If you don't, they hit you over the head with the poor boy every time they get a chance." Eloise paused to drink from her glass and to think. "Oh," she said, "they'll listen very maturely and all that. They'll even look intelligent as hell. But don't let it fool you. Believe me. You'll go through hell if you ever give 'em any credit for intelligence. Take my word."

Mary Jane, looking depressed, raised her chin from the armrest of the couch. For a change, she supported her chin on the forearm. She thought over Eloise's advice. "You can't call Lew not intelligent," she said aloud.

"Who can't?"

"I mean isn't he intelligent?" Mary Jane said innocently.

"Oh," said Eloise, "what's the use of talking? Let's drop it. I'll just depress you. Shut me up."

"Well, wudga marry him for, then?" Mary Jane said.

"Oh, God! I don't know. He told me he loved Jane Austen. He told me her books meant a great deal to him. That's exactly what he said. I found out after we were married that he hadn't even read one of her books. You know who his favorite author is?"

Mary Jane shook her head.

"L. Manning Vines. Ever hear of him?"

"Uh-uh."

"Neither did I. Neither did anybody else. He wrote a book about four men that starved to death in Alaska. Lew doesn't remember the name of it, but it's the most beautifully written book he's ever read. Christ! He isn't even honest enough to come right out and say he liked it because it was about four guys that starved to death in an igloo or something. He has to say it was beautifully written."

"You're too critical," Mary Jane said. "I mean you're too critical. Maybe it was a good--"

"Take my word for it, it couldn't've been," Eloise said. She thought for a moment, then added, "At least you have a job. I mean at least you --"

"But listen, though," said Mary Jane. "Do you think you'll ever tell him Walt was killed, even? I mean he wouldn't be jealous, would he, if he knew Walt was - you know. Killed and everything."

"Oh, lover! You poor, innocent little career girl," said Eloise. "He'd be worse. He'd be a ghoul. Listen. All he knows is that I went around with somebody named Walt - some wisecracking G.I. The last thing I'd do would be to tell him he was killed. But the last thing. And if I did - which I wouldn't - but if I did, I'd tell him he was killed in action."


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 24, 2008

The Books: "Nine Stories"- 'A Perfect Day For Bananafish' (J.D. Salinger)

31SFH69JEVL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - excerpt from the first story 'A Perfect Day For Bananafish'.


A superb short story collection, published in 1953. Most of these stories originally appeared in The New Yorker, and the Glass family - featured so strongly in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (excerpt here), Seymour An Introduction (excerpt here) and Franny and Zooey - also stroll through the pages of Nine Stories. Sometimes they are peripheral characters, or only exist in memory (like in "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" - my favorite story in the collection) - but sometimes, like in 'Perfect Day for Bananafish' they take center stage. If you're immersed in Salinger-land then you know all of these people like you know your own family. Wes Anderson is obviously hugely influenced by Salinger, although his own sensibility of course has much to do with his film-making - but he is haunted by the Glass family, and it shows.

the_darjeeling_limited_movie_image_adrien_brody__jason_schwartzman_and_owen_wilson__1_.jpg

thumbnail.php.jpeg

royaltenenbaums01.jpg

Siblings. That relationship. Especially in precocious kids who maybe didn't have the best childhood. What binds us together (or doesn't bind us together?) In Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, Seymour An Introduction, and Franny and Zooey, we meet the Glass family at various stages ... all post-Seymour's suicide. He is the oldest brother. A poet. A Buddhist. Obviously brilliant, but obviously troubled - he would never have had a conventional path. But, as Salinger writes in Catcher in the Rye (excerpt here), it is those who follow another path, or hear another drumbeat - however you want to call it - who sometimes have the hardest time of it, especially in a society that values conformity above all else. And Salinger was writing from the 1950s, a time of great conformity (which, ironically or not so ironically, engendered a lot of great art) - when you either had to drop out and be a biker Beat dude on the fringes of society, or join the masses. This is oversimplified, naturally - but often it is the oversimplification of cultural movements and forces that bring out some pretty good art - movies, music, poetry ... People reacting to what they see as some larger forces. Salinger is right on the edge of all of that. His Holden Caulfield is deeply surrounded by conventionality - he is on the path all of his peers are on. His boarding school is, obviously, a hotbed of conventionality - even with all the different characters - and even if no one says anything to him, Caulfield gets the message loud and clear: "Why can't you be ... more ... well ... NORMAL?" As someone who has struggled with my own sense of self and surrounded by forces which seem to either want to tell me who to be (those are easily ignored) - or say to me: "Why aren't you like everyone else?" (not so easily ignored - if you listen to questions like that long enough, the end result can be neurosis) I understand Holden Caulfield's struggle, and I also understand JD Salinger's antipathy for phonies, fakers, and people who "play along with the rules" in order to fit in. We're kind of approaching Joseph Heller territory here (excerpt here), where the Catch-22 is: the entire world is fucked up. If you accept the rules, you are fucked up yourself. If you DON'T accept the rules, you will be viewed as THE most fucked up, even though you are saner than everyone. Yossarian knows that "people" are trying to kill him. His commanding officer shouts, in frustration, "Of COURSE they're trying to kill you - it's a war!" Yossarian thinks that is the stupidest explanation he has ever heard. How on earth will that change his experience of flying above the earth knowing that people down there are shooting up at him? And how on earth is he supposed to NOT take that personally??? "They're trying to KILL ME!" he shouts to anyone who will listen, and you know, he's got a point. He's not swayed by generalized explanations about "war" or "duty" or "patriotism". He just wants to avoid the bullet. Heller writes about huge societal forces - swaying enormous groups of people in one direction ... and within that, there is a ton of variety ... and those who try to resist that sway - are seen as certifiable lunatics. Ken Kesey is another one who writes in this vein. You know, these are all 1950s writers.

Seymour Glass is a mystery - regardless of all of the time Salinger spends on him. There are great gaps in our information about him. We know he was beloved by his siblings. We know that he treats little kids with respect - he meets them at their level, maybe he finds their honesty refreshing. Seymour Glass seems to have a hard time with, you know, "fitting in". And choosing to NOT "fit in" is sometimes a lifelong commitment - and you have to just deal with the fact that you are outside the norm, and people will not understand you - or they will fall silent when you answer a question, because they won't know what to say ... There are expectations placed ON us, and we can either submit or rebel (and this is not to say that those who DO submit are drones, or unthinking people - so do not purposefully misunderstand me here) - there are those who DO "fit in" with the cultural norm - naturally, and it deeply expresses who they are, what they want, and what they expect from life. So bully for them. Seymour Glass is trapped in a world that thinks he is a weirdo. He has been outraging convention for years - no matter what he does. You hope against hope that someone like that is okay with the fact that everyone thinks he is weird ... and despite the fact that Seymour kills himself, it is still not clear why.

"A Perfect Day For Bananafish" tells the story of Seymour Glass on a holiday in Florida with his wife Muriel. It is the only time that Seymour is the lead of a story. For the most part, we hear about him through others. So here we are with him. It's a brutal story. Short, unforgiving, and mysterious. It opens with Seymour's wife Muriel on the phone with her mother - Muriel is in the hotel room in Florida, painting her nails and smoking a cigarette. Muriel's mother is beside herself with worry, and is obviously kind of obsessed with how weird Seymour is. He has a tattoo. There are vast swathes of stories behind her words - things left unexplained - Seymour said something inappropriate to "Grandma" when Grandma revealed her plans for her funeral ... things like that. Seymour is unpredictable. It is worried over. He plays the piano in the hotel bar?? Has he done anything else wildly inappropriate? Does he call Muriel by that awful nickname? Muriel seems exasperated with her mother, and keeps trying to reassure her that everything is fine - but eventually it is revealed that Muriel spoke to a psychiatrist and his wife who are staying at the hotel - and yes, the bar was really loud so they had to shout ... but there is something creepy about Muriel going behind her husband's back like this. Muriel doesn't seem like a bad sort, and it is refreshing how she treats her mother. Seymour's nickname for Muriel is "Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948" and Muriel thinks that is hysterical. So I like Muriel for that. But Muriel's mother is absolutely horrified. Tramp?? What? Her daughter has obviously married a maniac. Muriel seems a bit more philosophical about her husband's idiosyncracies - the fact that he wears his bathrobe on the beach, the fact that he gave her a book of poetry in German and told her she should learn the language in order to read it ... You know, he's not malevolent ... but you definitely get the sense of forces larger than Seymour Glass trying to marginalize him or psychopathologize him. Who knows.

Next scene is on the beach. It's shattering and I've read it a million times and I still can't get to the bottom of it. Seymour lies on the beach. A little 4 year old girl named Sybil who is also on vacation with her parents has befriended Seymour (she calls him "See more glass") - and they go swimming together, and Seymour tells her a story about bananafish, a tragic breed of fish who swim through a hole in a cave in order to eat the bananas there, and then they gorge themselves until they become so fat they can't exit the cave again. They die. A rather grim story for a 4 year old, but you know ... little kids can handle grim stories better than adults can. You ever read the actual Sleeping Beauty? That's some scary shit. So Sybil, floating on the raft, starts to peer into the water for bananafish, and reports to Seymour that she saw one swim by and he had six bananas in his mouth!

Seymour then heads back to the hotel. He stands in the elevator, in his bathrobe, barefoot. Another person in the elevator keeps glancing down at Seymour's bare feet and Seymour can't stand it anymore and calls them out on it. "My feet are normal and I can't see the slightest God-damn reason anyone should stare at them." Woah. A kind of scary moment where social norms are totally set aside. You don't talk to strangers in elevators. And if someone is behaving in a rude manner, staring at you, you should grin and bear it, perhaps keep your mouth shut. Having seen Seymour now only in context with his encounter with Sybil - where he is sweet, humorous, kind - it's jarring how rude and angry he is in the elevator. What is going on with this man?

If you haven't read the story, be aware that there are spoilers coming up. Seymour returns to his hotel room. There are twin beds. His wife lies asleep in one of them. Seymour goes to his suitcase, takes out a gun, sits on the other twin bed, puts the gun to his temple and fires.

That's it.

It's horrifying. It's horrifying because it ends right there and you know that the gun blast will wake up his wife - and that she will be left with the mess and the horrifying sight of her husband with his brains blown out in the next bed.

It's my favorite kind of short story. The "meaning" is left out. Whatever it "means" is between the words. It's 15 pages long. It's nothing, a snippet, really. But every time I read it, I either notice new things, or I remember, yet again, why the story haunts me.

Here's an excerpt.


Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger - 'A Perfect Day For Bananafish'

Sybil released her foot. "Did you read 'Little Black Sambo'?" she said.

"It's very funny you ask me that," he said. "It so happens I just finished reading it last night." He reached down and took back Sybil's hand. "What did you think of it?" he asked her.

"Did the tigers run all around that tree?"

"I thought they'd never stop. I never saw so many tigers."

"There were only six," Sybil said.

"Only six!" said the young man. "Do you call that only?"

"Do you like wax?" Sybil asked.

"Do I like what?" asked the young man.

"Wax."

"Very much. Don't you?"

Sybil nodded. "Do you like olives?" she asked.

"Olives - yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without 'em."

"Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?" Sybil asked.

"Yes. Yes, I do," said the young man. "What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won't believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn't. She's never mean or unkind. That's why I like her so much."

Sybil was silent.

"I like to chew candles," she said finally.

"Who doesn't?" said the young man, getting his feet wet. "Wow! It's cold." He dropped the rubber float on its back. "No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait'll we get out a little bit."

They waded out till the water was up to Sybil's waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float.

"Don't you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?" he asked.

"Don't let go," Sybil ordered. "You hold me, now."

"Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business," the young man said. "You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish."


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 23, 2008

The Books: "Seymour An Introduction" (J.D. Salinger)

0316769517.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Seymour An Introduction, by J.D. Salinger

How on earth should I describe this novella? First of all, I should say that it is in the tradition of Ulysses and Proust and all of those giant modernist writers mainly interested in upending the personal sensoral experiences of moment-to-moment living ... that's what's going on in Seymour, although it's not so much sensoral - as intellectual. It's an excavation of memory. The narrator, Buddy Glass, is determined to put Seymour, his brother, on paper - but he finds it more challenging than he realized, and eventually has to just stop writing. It's devastating. You want to shout at him to keep going, but nope. Buddy Glass is done. Whatever or whoever Seymour was - it remains between the lines. And isn't that true of people we love? You can try to describe them - what they looked like, for example ... or, more accurately, you can describe what they did, their actions, their behavior. That gets closer to someone's essence. The books they read, their climactic moments in life ... But still: you can't capture someone. And Buddy Glass wants to capture Seymour - his brother who committed suicide - he wants to somehow capture him in words. Words are inadequate to the job. And that is shattering to a writer. You hear stories about writers who finally have to put down their pens forever, because their whole raison d'etre, their only skill really - has proven to be not up to the job. What, if not words?

The book is called Seymour An Introduction. There is no more. It is an introduction to nothing. And so we are left bereft, along with the Glass family ... unable to understand, unable to see enough between the lines to maybe understand WHY ... WHY did this beautiful beloved original soul kill himself? Why? What was it that Seymour "saw" that was so unbearable that he decided to check out?

It's an extraordinary piece of writing. It is the meaning of stream-of-conscious writing. And as the story goes on, the parentheticals become longer and longer and longer. You get lost in them. Buddy Glass cannot state anything unequivocally. Writing becomes a noose, strangling expression. How much of this was Salinger? I have no idea. But to read a writer, over the course of one story, become unable to write anymore is just shattering. I only read Seymour An Introduction once - in one sitting- I remember where I was when I read it, and I remember the tears streaming down my face. It's amazing.

In a comment to my Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters post, I said:

I may be foolish ( wouldn't be the first time) but I still hold out hope as long as Salinger is alive that Seymour will come back. I believe that there is a manuscript somewhere - I mean, Seymour: An Introduction ... an introduction!! He had more to say - he did - but to watch him in that story kind of spiral out of control (in the best way) and to be unable to keep going ... it's almost like his own parentheticals became ropes that bound and gagged him ... Everything he writes has to be qualified with a parenthetical - until finally language itself loses its meaning. I found it so so hard and moving to read. It's one of the most human pieces of literature I have ever read. Now I am probably confusing Buddy Glass with JD Salinger - and perhaps they are NOT one and the same ... but I felt Salinger the writer in Seymour: An Introduction finally, after 60 pages, just throw up his hands and say, "You know what? No. Screw this. I'm not writing anymore."

But wouldn't it be wonderful if there were more? If there exists a manuscript in that house of his that someday will come to light? I do like to imagine that.

Seymour An Introduction is one of the most immediate pieces of literature I have ever read. The writer struggling with writing as he writes. Navel-gazing? Sure. I don't happen to have a problem with that (of course not - look at my blog) ... and it is also a piece of art that is also about the artistic process. Buddy Glass (JD Salinger) is doing battle through the prose. Not just with the memory of his brother, but with how to write about it. He wrestles with words. He gets angry. Frustrated. It's hard to take. It reminds me a bit of John Cassavetes' film Opening Night (my favorite of all of his films). It's about actors putting on a play. It's a movie about how hard it is to act, sometimes ... and the movie looks at it in an unblinking way. It's the kind of thing that is the thing itself at the same time it is about that thing itself (like that great quote from Sam Beckett about Finnegans Wake: "You cannot complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.")

Here's an excerpt from Seymour An Introduction:

EXCERPT FROM Seymour An Introduction, by J.D. Salinger

Do I go on about my brother's poetry too much? Am I being garrulous? Yes. Yes. I go on about my brother's poetry too much. I'm being garrulous. And I care. But my reasons against leaving off multiply like rabbits as I go along. Furthermore, though I am, as I've already conspicuously posted, a happy writer, I'll take my oath I'm not now and never have been a merry one; I've mercifully been allowed the usual professional quota of unmerry thoughts. For example, it hasn't just this moment struck me that once I get around to recounting what I know of Seymour himself, I can't expect to leave myself either the space or the required pulse rate or, in a broad but true sense, the inclination to mention his poetry again. At this very instant, alarmingly, while I clutch my own wrist and lecture myself on garrulousness, I may be losing the chance of a lifetime - my last chance, I think, really - to make one final, hoarse, objectionable, sweeping public pronouncement on my brother's rank as an American poet. I mustn't let it slip. Here it is: When I look back, listen back, over the half-dozen or slightly more original poets we've had in America, as well as the numerous talented eccentric poets and - in modern times, especially - the many gifted style deviates, I feel something close to a conviction that we have had only three or four very nearly nonexpendable poets, and I think Seymour will eventually stand with those few. Not overnight, verständlich. Zut, what would would you? It's my guess, my perhaps flagrantly over-considered guess, that the first few waves of reviewers will obliquely condemn his verses by calling them Interesting or Very Interesting, with a tacit or just plain badly articulated declaration, still more damning, that they are rather small, sub-acoustical things that have failed to arrive on the contemporary Western scene with their own built-in transatlantic podium, complete with lectern, drinking glass, and pitcher of iced sea water. Yet a real artist, I've noticed, will survive anything. (Even praise, I happily suspect.) And I'm reminded, too, that once when we were boys, Seymour waked me from a sound sleep, much excited, yellow pajamas flashing in the dark. He had what my brother Walt used to call his Eureka Look, and he wanted to tell me that he thought he finally knew why Christ said to call no man Fool. (It was a problem that had been baffling him all week, because it sounded to him like a piece of advice, I believe, more typical of Emily Post than of someone busily about his Father's Business.) Christ had said it, Seymour thought I'd want to know, because there are no fools. Dopes, yes - fools, no. It seemed to him well worth waking me up for, but if I admit that it was (and I do, without reservations), I'll have to concede that if you give even poetry critics enough time, they'll prove themselves unfoolish. To be truthful, it's a thought that comes hard to me, and I'm grateful to be able to push on to something else. I've reached, at long last, the real head of this compulsive and, I'm afraid, occasionally somewhat pustulous disquisition on my brother's poetry. I've seen it coming from the very beginning. I would to God the reader had something terrible to tell me first. (Oh, you out there - with your enviable golden silence.)

I have a recurrent, and, in 1959, almost chronic, premonition that when Seymour's poems have been widely and rather officially acknowledged as First Class (stacked up in college bookstores, assigned in Contemporary Poetry courses), matriculating young men and women will strike out, in singlets and twosomes, notebooks at the ready, for my somewhat creaking front door. (It's regrettable that this matter has to come up at all, but it's surely too late to pretend to an ingenuousness, to say nothing of a grace, I don't have, and I must reveal that my reputedly heartshaped prose has knighted me one of the best-loved sciolists in print since Ferris L. Monahan, and a good many young English Department people already know where I live, hole up; I have their tire tracks in my rose beds to prove it.) By and large, I'd say without a shred of hesitation, there are three kinds of students who have both the desire and the temerity to look as squarely as possible into any sort of literary horse's mouth. The first kind is the young man or woman who loves and respects to distraction any fairly responsible sort of literature and who, if he or she can't see Shelley plain, will make do with seeking out manufacturers of inferior but estimable products. I know these boys and girls well, or think I do. They're naive, they're alive, they're enthusiastic, they're usually less than right, and they're the hope always, I think, of blase or vested-interested literary society the world over. (By some good fortune I can't believe I've deserved, I've had one of these ebullient, cocksure, irritating, instructive, often charming girls or boys in every second or third class I've taught in the past twelve years.) The second kind of young person who actually rings doorbells in the pursuit of literary data suffers, somewhat proudly, from a case of academicitis, contracted from any one of half a dozen Modern English professors or graduate instructors to whom he's been exposed since his freshman year. Not seldom, if he himself is already teaching or is about to start teaching, the disease is so far along that one doubts whether it could be arrested, even if someone were fully equipped to try. Only last year, for example, a young man stopped by to see me about a piece I'd written, several years back, that had a good deal to do with Sherwood Anderson. He came at a time when I was cutting part of my winter's supply of firewood with a gasoline-operated chain saw - an instrument that after eight years of repeated use I'm still terrified of. It was the height of the spring thaw, a beautiful sunny day, and I was feeling, frankly, just a trifle Thoreauish (a real treat for me, because after thirteen years of country living I'm still a man who gauges bucolic distances by New York City blocks). In short, it looked like a promising, if literary, afternoon, and I recall that I had high hopes of getting the young man, a la Tom Sawyer and his bucket of whitewash, to have a go at my chain saw. He appeared healthy, not to say strapping. His deceiving looks, however, very nearly cost me my left foot, for between spurts and buzzes of my saw, just as I finished delivering a short and to me rather enjoyable eulogy on Sherwood Anderson's gentle and effective style, the young man asked me - after a thoughtful, a cruelly promising pause - if I thought there was an endemic American Zeitgeist. (Poor young man. Even if he takes exceptionally good care of himself, he can't at the outside have more than fifty years of successful campus activity ahead of him.) The third kind of person who will be a fairly constant visitor around here, I believe, once Seymour's poems have been quite thoroughly unpacked and tagged, requires a paragraph to himself or herself.

It would be absurd to say that most young people's attraction to poetry is far exceeded by their attraction to those few or many details of a poet's life that may be defined here, loosely, operationally, as lurid. It's the sort of absurd notion, though, that I wouldn't mind taking out for a good academic run someday. I surely think, at any rate, that if I were to ask the sixty odd girls (or, that is, the sixty-odd girls) in my two Writing for Publication courses - most of them seniors, all of them English majors - to quote a line, any line from "Ozymandias," or even just to tell me roughly what the poem is about, it is doubtful whether ten of them could do either, but I'd bet my unrisen tulips that some fifty of them could tell me that Shelley was all for free love, and had one wife who wrote "Frankenstein" and another who drowned herself.* I'm neither shocked nor outraged at the idea, please mind. I don't think I'm even complaining. For if nobody's a fool, then neither am I, and I'm entitled to a non-fool's Sunday awareness that, whoever we are, no matter how like a blast furnace the heat from the candles on our latest birthday cake, and however presumably lofty the intellectual, moral, and spiritual heights we've all reached, our gusto for the lurid or partly lurid (which, of course, includes both low and superior gossip) is probably the last of our fleshy appetites to be sated or effectively curbed. (But, my God, why do I rant on? Why am I not going straight to the poet for an illustration? One of Seymour's hundred and eighty-four poems - a shocker on the first impact only; on the second, as heartening a paean to the living as I've read - is about a distinguished old ascetic on his deathbed, surrounded by chanting priests and disciples, who lies straining to hear what the washerwoman in the courtyard is saying about his neighbor's laundry. The old gentleman, Seymour makes it clear, is faintly wishing the priests would keep their voices down a bit.) I can see, though, that I'm having a little of the usual trouble entailed in trying to make a very convenient generalization stay still and docile long enough to support a wild specific premise. I don't relish being sensible about it, but I suppose I must. It seems to me indisputably true that a good many people, the wide world over, of varying ages, cultures, natural endowments, respond with a special impetus, a zing, even, in some cases, to artists and poets who as well as having a reputation for producing great or fine art have something garishly Wrong with them as persons: a spectacular flaw in character or citizenship, a construably romantic affliction or addiction - extreme self-centeredness, marital infidelity, stone-deafness, stone-blindness, a terrible thirst, a mortally bad cough, a soft spot for prostitutes, a partiality for grand-scale adultery or incest, a certified or uncertified weakness for opium or sodomy, and so on, God have mercy on the lonely bastards. If suicide isn't at the top of the list of compelling infirmities for creative men, the suicide poet or artist, one can't help noticing, has always been given a very considerable amount of avid attention, not seldom on sentimental grounds almost exclusively, as if he were (to put it much more horribly than I really want to) the floppy-eared runt of the litter. It's a thought, anyway, finally said, that I've lost sleep over many times, and possibly will again.

(How can I record what I've just recorded and still be happy? But I am. Unjolly, unmerry, to the marrow, but my afflatus seems to be punctureproof. Recollective of only one other person I've known in my life.)


*Just for the sake of making a point I could be embarrassing my students unnecessarily here. Schoolteachers have done it before. Or maybe I've just picked out the wrong poem. If it's true, as I've wickedly posed, that "Ozymandias" has left my students vividly unimpressed, perhaps a good deal of the blame for this can be laid to "Ozymandias" itself. Perhaps Mad Shelley wasn't quite mad enough. Assuredly, in any case, his madness wasn't a madness of the heart. My girls undoubtedly know that Robert Burns drank and romped to excess, and are probably delighted about it, but I'm also equally sure they also know all about the magnificent mouse his plow turned up. (Is it just possible, I wonder, that those "two vast and trunkless legs of stone" standing in the desert are Percy's own? Is it conceivable that his life is outliving much of his best poetry? And if so, is it because - Well, I'll desist. But young poets beware. If you want us to remember your best poems at least as fondly as we do your Racy, Colorful Lives, it might be as well to give us one good field mouse, flushed by the heart, in every stanza.)

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 22, 2008

The Books: "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" (J.D. Salinger)

0316769517.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger


Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters always makes me think of him, because it was his favorite of Salinger's. I always found that so interesting. But then, I found everything about him interesting. Here we are in the Glass family, Salinger's eternal obsession. The family of precocious New York kids, all in the same family, all are artists or jugglers or Tao Buddhists ... troubled, naturally. As any Salinger fan knows, Seymour Glass is the linchpin of all of these stories - the older brother who kills himself while on vacation with his wife in Florida. It is an event from which the family never recovers. He seemed to be the glue. He is the vortex. Everyone imitates him, and loves him, and he sets the tone of the entire family. Perfect Day for Bananafish, JD Salinger's haunting short story about Seymour's suicide, gets us closer to Seymour than ever before - in general, in the other stories, it is always through one of his siblings that we see him. He's omnipresent, and remembered, but just not around. In Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, it is his brother Buddy Glass who is the narrator, and doing the remembering. He sits in a limousine on the day of Seymour's wedding, a couple of years before his suicide - and Seymour actually is a no-show to his own wedding. Buddy finds himself in a limo with the Matron of Honor on the bride's side and a couple of other family members from the bride's side who do not know that Buddy Glass is not only related to Seymour, but his brother. They go OFF on Seymour, and many of them have never even met him yet. So he is as omnipresent and yet as invisible to them as he is to his own family. J.D. Salinger was working at something in his incessant dog-with-a-bone examination of the Glass family, and Seymour - and he really just lets himself be unleashed in Seymour: An Introduction (which I'll get to when I get to).

The opening of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, with its reminiscence about a teenage Seymour reading an infant Franny a Tao story and what Buddy has taken from that - is just killer. It slashes at my heart. Seymour Glass committed suicide, leaving behind a void that will never be filled. It is the Glass family obsession ... and we only see him through the eyes of other people (except in Bananafish, if I'm not mistaken). He takes on an almost mythological status, in the way that dead people often do. They haunt us. Especially if they left behind desolation and questions. For all intents and purposes it seems as though Seymour was the heart and intellect of the family (note his quote door that nobody seems able to take down. I have imitated Seymour in my own life - and always have a quote wall in whatever abode I live in ...it's just something I find comforting to do). The Glass family won't recover. He's a compass of some kind.

Here's Buddy, trying to survive being trapped in the wrong limo on the day his brother Seymour didn't show up for his own wedding.

I just love Salinger's observations. And his italics. I adore his italics.



EXCERPT FROM Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger

I was staring, as I remember, directly in front of me, at the back of the driver's neck, which was a relief map of boil scars, when suddenly my jump-seat mate addressed me: "I didn't get a chance to ask you inside. How's that darling mother of yours? Aren't you Dickie Briganza?"

My tongue, at the time of the question, was curled back exploratively as far as the soft palate. I disentangled it, swallowed, and turned to her. She was fifty, or thereabouts, fashionably and tastefully dressed. She was wearing a very heavy pancake makeup. I answered no - that I wasn't.

She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza's boy. Around the mouth. I tried to show by my expression that it was a mistake anybody could make. Then I went on staring at the back of the driver's neck. The car was silent. I glanced out of the window, for a change of scene.

"How do you like the Army?" Mrs. Silsburn asked. Abruptly, conversationally.

I had a brief coughing spell at that particular instant. When it was over, I turned to her with all available alacrity and said I'd made a lot of buddies. It was a little difficult for me to swivel in her direction, what with the encasement of adhesive tape around my diaphragm.

She nodded. "I think you're all just wonderful," she said, somewhat ambiguously. "Are you a friend of the bride's or the groom's?" she then asked, delicately getting down to brass tacks.

"Well, actually, I'm not exactly a friend of--"

"You'd better not say you're a friend of the groom," the Matron of Honor interrupted me, from the back of the car. "I'd like to get my hands on him for about two minutes. Just two minutes, that's all."

Mrs. Silsburn turned briefly - but completely - around to smile at the speaker. Then she faced front again. We made the round trip, in fact, almost in unison. Considering that Mrs. Silsburn had turned around for only an instant, the smile she had bestowed on the Matron of Honor was a kind of jump-seat masterpiece. It was vivid enough to express unlimited partisanship with all young people, all over the world, but most particularly with this spirited, outspoken local representative, to whom, perhaps, she had been little more than perfunctorily introduced, if at all.

"Bloodthirsty wench," said a chuckling male voice. And Mrs. Silsburn and I turned around again. It was the Matron of Honor's husband who had spoken up. He was seated directly behind me, at his wife's left. He was seated directly behind me, at his wife's left. He and I briefly exchanged that blank,uncomradely look which, possibly, in the crapulous year of 1942, only an officer and a private could exchange. A first lieutenant in the Signal Corps, he was wearing a very interesting Air Corps pilot's cap - a visored hat with the metal frame removed from inside the crown, which usually conferred on the wearer a certain, presumably desired, intrepid look. In his case, however, the cap didn't begin to fill the bill. It seemed to serve no other purpose than to make my own outsize, regulation headpiece feel rather like a clown's hat that someone had nervously picked out of the incinerator. His face was sallow and, essentially, daunted-looking. He was perspiring with an almost incredible profusion - on his forehead, on his upper lip, and even at the end of his nose - to the point where a salt tablet might have been in order. "I'm married to the bloodthirstiest wench in six counties," he said, addressing Mrs. Silsburn and giving another soft, public chuckle. In automatic deference to his rank, I very nearly chuckled right along with him - a short, inane, stranger's and draftee's chuckle that would clearly signify that I was with him and everyone else in the car, against no one.

"I mean it," the Matron of Honor said. "Just two minutes - that's all, brother. Oh, if I could just get my two little hands -"

"All right, now, take it easy, take it easy," her husband said, still with apparently inexhaustible resources of connubial good humor. "Just take it easy. You'll last longer."

Mrs. Silsburn faced around toward the back of the car again, and favored the Matron of Honor with an all but canonized smile. "Did anyone see any of his people at the wedding?" she inquired softly, with just a little emphasis - no more than perfectly genteel - on the personal pronoun.

The Matron of Honor's answer came with toxic volume: "No. They're all out on the West Coast or someplace. I just wish I had."

Her husband's chuckle sounded again. "What wouldja done if you had, honey?" he asked - and winked indiscriminately at me.

"Well, I don't know, but I'd've done something," said the Matron of Honor. The chuckle at her left expanded in volume. "Well, I would have!" she insisted. "I'd've said something to them. I mean. My gosh." She spoke with increasing aplomb, as though perceiving that, cued by her husband, the rest of us within earshot were finding something attractively forthright - spunky - about her sense of justice, however youthful or impractical it might be. "I don't know what I'd have said to them. I probably would have just blabbered something idiotic. But my gosh. Honestly! I just can't stand to see somebody get away with absolute murder. It makes my blood boil." She suspended animation just long enough to be bolstered by a look of simulated empathy from Mrs. Silsburn. Mrs. Silsburn and I were now turned completely, supersociably, around in our jump seats. "I mean it," the Matron of Honor said. "You can't just barge through life hurting people's feelings whenever you feel like it."

"I'm afraid I know very little about the young man," Mrs. Silsburn said, softly. "As a matter of fact, I haven't even met him. The first I'd heard that Muriel was even engaged -"

"Nobody's met him," the Matron of Honor said, rather explosively. "I haven't even met him. We had two rehearsals, and both times Muriel's poor father had to take his place, just because his crazy plane couldn't take off. he was supposed to get a hop here last Tuesday night in some crazy Army plane, but it was snowing or something crazy in Colorado, or Arizona, or one of those crazy places, and he didn't get in till one o'clock in the morning, last night. Then - at that insane hour - he calls Muriel on the phone from way out in Long Island or someplace and asks her to meet him in the lobby of some horrible hotel so they can talk." The Matron of Honor shuddered eloquently. "And you know Muriel. She's just darling enought o let anybody and his brother push her around. That's what gripes me. It's always those kind of people that get hurt in the end ... Anyway, so she gets dressed and gets in a cab and sits in some horrible lobby talking with him till quarter to five in the morning." The Matron of Honor released her grip on her gardenia bouquet long enough to raise two clenched fists above her lap. "Ooo, it makes me so mad!" she said.

"What hotel?" I asked the Matron of Honor. "Do you know?" I tried to make my voice sound casual, as though, possibly, my father might be in the hotel business and I took a certain understandable filial interest in where people stopped in New York. In reality, my question meant almost nothing. I was just thinking aloud, more or less. I'd been interested in the fact that my brother had asked his fiancee to meet him in a hotel lobby, rather than at his empty, available apartment. The morality of the invitation was by no means out of character, but it interested me, mildly, nonetheless.

"I don't know which hotel," the Matron of Honor said irritably. "Just some hotel." She stared at me. "Why?" she demanded. "Are you a friend of his?"

There was something distinctly intimidating about her stare. It seemed to come from a one-woman mob, separated only by time and chance from her knitting bag and a splendid view of the guillotine. I've been terrified of mobs, of any kind, all my life. "We were boys together," I answered, all but unintelligibly.

"Well, lucky you!"

"Now, now," said her husband.

"Well, I'm sorry," the Matron of Honor said to him, but addressing all of us. "But you haven't been in a room watching that poor kid cry her eyes out for a solid hour. It's not funny - and don't you forget it. I've heard about grooms getting cold feet, and all that. But you don't do it at the last minute. I mean you don't do it so that you'll embarrass a lot of perfectly nice people half to death and almost break a kid's spirit and everything! If he'd changed his mind, why didn't he write to her and at least break it off like a gentleman, for goodness' sake? Before all the damage was done."

"All right, take it easy, just take it easy," her husband said. His chuckle was still there, but it was sounding a trifle strained.

"Well, I mean it! Why couldn't he write to her and just tell her, like a man, and prevent all this tragedy and everything?" She looked at me, abruptly. "Do you have any idea where he is, by any chance?" she demanded, with metal in her voice. "If you have boyhood friends, you should have some -"

"I just got into New York about two hours ago," I said nervously. Not only the Matron of Honor but her husband and Mrs. Silsburn as well were now staring at me. "So far, I haven't even had a chance to get to a phone." At that point, as I remember, I had a coughing spell. It was genuine enough, but I must say I did very little to suppress it or shorten its duration.

"You had that cough looked at, soldier?" the Lieutenant asked me when I'd come out of it.

At that instant, I had another coughing spell - a perfectly genuine one, oddly enough. I was still turned a sort of half or quarter right in my jump seat, with my body averted just enough toward the front of the car to be able to cough with all due hygienic propriety.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 21, 2008

The Books: "The Catcher In the Rye" (J.D. Salinger)

catcher-in-the-rye-bantam-cover.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt:

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Like most people, I had to read the book in high school. I read it in 10th grade - the formative year, one of the best classes (to this day) I have ever had. Mr. Crothers was the teacher - and we all called him "The Crud". TO HIS FACE. And yet it was somehow endearing. A nickname, not an insult. Hand raises at end of class. "Crud, will there be a quiz on the next chapter?" So hysterical, looking back on it. I've written before about that English class. The Crud taught me to write. Now I already knew how to write (as should be OBVIOUS) but The Crud taught me how to write a paper. I've written before about that struggle, and how difficult it was - how I got my first D in his class - in an ENGLISH class!! where I had always shone - and then worked my ass off and got a C - and then got a case of writer's block so bad that I remember throwing myself onto my parents bed and bursting into sobs because I had to write a paper for the next day and I couldn't even start ... but I eventually started. And I got a C+. Crud was a hard-ass! When I got a B in that class, it was a major moment. It really meant something. The Crud knew how to construct a paper. Thesis statement, paragraph A, Paragraph B, how to back up your thoughts with text and quotes, how to structure your thoughts, how to get your freakin' act together so you could actually say something. I was only in 10th grade but I got As on every paper I wrote in college, and it is all due to The Crud. I knew how to do it. It's a great example of giving a teenager a tool. Or - no - not "giving" but making me work for it. Thank you, Crud! But in addition to the paper-writing skills I learned, we read the following in that class: Moby Dick (excerpt here), Tale of Two Cities (excerpt here), The Great Gatsby (excerpt here), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (excerpt here), Catcher in the Rye - it was a heavy year of book-reading. I've written before about deciding, in 2001, to go back and re-read all of the books I had been forced to read and hated in high school. So that meant that Tale of Two Cities, The Great Gatsby and Catcher In the Rye were not on the list - because I had loved them instantly. My 15 year old self thrilled to those books the first time around. I count Tale of Two Cities as one of my favorite novels ever. But Moby Dick Tess? Ew. So what a pleasure it was to go back, as an adult, and re-read these books. Because I wanted to. It was SO awesome and I highly recommend doing that, if you haven't. Take, especially, the book you hated most. That's the one you need to read. I recently re-read Billy Budd (post about it here), a book that literally made us ANGRY in high school we hated it so much ... and you know what? I still didn't like it. Too clearly allegorical. Too Christian-y simplistic. "Oh! So ... Billy Budd with his BLONDE HAIR and Greek physique .... is 'good'? And Mr. Claggart, with his dark hair and dark eyes ... is 'evil'? WHO KNEW???" Boring. But I HAD to face it again, because my prejudices against it were so ingrained, and I just cannot let such prejudice stand! An unexamined life is not worth living and all that. So because I went back and did this I had the unbelievable excitement of reading Moby Dick - my God, what a book - and all the others.

Anyway, like I said The Catcher In the Rye was not on that "must read again" books, because from the time I read it in high school it found a place in my heart forever.

I know lots of people who go back and re-read the book and find it annoying, or self-pitying - but I don't find it that way at all. He's a teenager, first of all. Teenagers are annoying and often self-pitying - so I just find the voice to be true. Also, if he seems self-pitying, I think he has a damn right to indulge in that a bit - because of the death of his beloved brother Allie. It makes sense to me. But that's neither here nor there. I also wonder if ... well, I still read "young adult" fiction for fun. I love books geared for teenagers. I still go back and re-read Judy Blume, for God's sake, and Madeleine L'Engle and Beverly Cleary ... and those books obviously are ground-level books for kids. It gets in the muck with kids and they don't condescend ... it takes their concerns seriously. The Catcher In the Rye is a more prickly book, obviously - more obviously geared for adults - but the sensibility is adolescent. I remember talking to the doppelganger once about it, and he said something like, "There's a reason why every maniac who goes with a gun into a clocktower has a copy of this book in his back pocket." It definitely can speak to the outsider, the freak, the kid who feels "misunderstood" - all of those things that people eventually grow out of, and learn to get along with their fellow man, etc.

So as a piece of literature - just that, not a treatise, not a book that made me feel validated, not a book that feels written by my own soul - just a piece of literature - I think it works beautifully. It is a classic case of "VOICE". The VOICE of the book is key. Holden Caulfield's voice. I mentioned this a couple days ago in my post about Mating (excerpt here), another book with a first-person narrator whom many people find unbearably annoying. If you can't get past your annoyance of the voice telling the story, you'll probably hate the book. I am trying to think of an example of a book where I felt that annoyance. Nothing comes to mind right now, but I know I have experienced it. But not with Catcher In the Rye. I love Holden Caulfield. I just love him. My love for him is different now than it was when I was a teenager - so he's one of those characters who seems to have grown right along with me. I thought the book was a RIOT when I read it in high school. Not just the events, like with the hooker, or the headmaster of his school - although these are comic events ... but the VOICE. I just thought how Holden Caulfield talked, and his random 'goddam's that don't seem connected to anything - his sudden bursts of irritation and italics - was absolutely HYSTERICAL. I re-read the book a couple years ago and I don't think I laughed once. Or maybe I did, I'm exaggerating, but the overwhelming feeling I got from the book was sadness. A deep awful almost unbearable ache. I wanted to hold Holden Caulfield and let him cry it out. All I felt was his grief about his brother's death and how everyone thinks he's weird for not being "over it" yet. It was awful!! No wonder he cracks up at the end watching Phoebe on the carousel! No wonder he's institutionalized!

To be honest (see, there I am talking like Holden) - I'm a Franny and Zooey girl myself. Now THAT book spoke outloud my innermost soul ... that book actually made me make some significant changes in my life, because I had an "A-ha!" moment reading it ... Catcher In the Rye, to me, is just a damn good read. And a book with one of the most distinctive unforgettable "voices" I have ever heard.

Oh. And reading this book, I still can remember, sometimes word for word, some of The Crud's lectures on it. I remember what he pointed out, I remember what he told us to look for, I remember his observations. Man. That's a good teacher. 10th grade and I still remember those lectures.

One of the most lasting things I took from Holden Caulfield - and it was reiterated by dad - was a contempt for phonies. Give me a douchebag any day. But spare me the phonies.

Here's an excerpt I have always loved.


EXCERPT FROM The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed. I mean when she was talking and she got excited about something, her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions, her lips and all. That killed me. And she never really closed it all the way, her mouth. It was always just a little bit open, especially when she got in her golf stance, or when she was reading a book. She was always reading, and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all. She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie's baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She'd never met Allie or anything, because that was her first summer in Maine - before that, she went to Cape Cod - but I told her quite a lot about him. She was interested in that kind of stuff.

My mother didn't like her too much. I mean my mother always thought Jane and her mother were sort of snubbing her or something when they didn't say hello. My mother saw them in the village a lot, because Jane used to drive to market with her mother in this LaSalle convertible they had. My mother didn't think Jane was pretty, even. I did, though. I just liked the way she looked, that's all.

I remember one afternoon. It was the only time old Jane and I ever got close to necking, even. It was a Saturday and it was raining like a bastard out, and I was over at her house, on the porch - they had this big screened-in porch. We were playing checkers. I used to kid her once in a while because she wouldn't take her kings out of the back row. But I didn't kid her much, though. You never wanted to kid Jane too much. I think I really like it best when you can kid the pants off a girl when the opportunity arises, but it's a funny thing. The girls I like best are the ones I never feel much like kidding. Sometimes I think they'd like it if you kidded them - in fact, I know they would - but it's hard to get started, once you've known them a pretty long time and never kidded them. Anyway, I was telling you about that afternoon Jane and I came close to necking. It was raining like hell and we were out on the porch, and all of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. I didn't know him too well or anything, but he looked like the kind of guy that wouldn't talk to you much unless he wanted something off you. He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn't answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still wouldn't answer him. She didn't even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn't even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares - boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her - I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over - anywhere - her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears - her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking. After a while, she got up and went in and put on this red and white sweater she had, that knocked me out, and we went to a goddam movie. I asked her, on the way, if Mr. Cudahy - that was the booze hound's name - had ever tried to get wise with her. She was pretty young, but she had this terrific figure, and I wouldn't've put it past that Cudahy bastard. She said no, though. I never did find out what the hell was the matter. Some girls you practically never find out what's the matter.

I don't want you to get the idea she was a goddam icicle or something, just because we never necked or horsed around much. She wasn't. I held hands with her all the time, for instance. That doesn't sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. Jane was different. We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd start holding hands, and we wouldn't quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

May 20, 2008

The Books: "Mortals" (Norman Rush)

mortals.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Mortals by Norman Rush

Years ago, on my old blog, I wrote a post called Waiting for Norman Rush and what I have written below is an edited version of that. Mortals (Rush's follow-up book to his spectacular Mating, which came out over 10 years after Mating) was an intolerable bore to me - but still: the story behind that book (at least from my experience), and my expectation of it - is pretty cool. I sound very sad to myself in the post below. I must have been really sad when I wrote this. 2003? Yup. That's when I wrote it. Still recovering from 2002, my annus horribilis. 2003 is a wash, I was just stepping carefully, trying not to step on the cracks, doing my best to not attract the attention of the universe.

But it's interesting nonetheless. NATURALLY, when I talk about the book I first must talk about myself. Mating was that kind of book, and it left me wanting more. It really made a difference in my life.

A couple interesting things about the post below:

1. It dovetails very nicely, at points, with my post about A Woman's Face - the part where I talk about hope always coming hand in hand (for me) with sadness. Because of all that has gone before, the years of exile, whatever.

2. I just hung out with "my Nelson Denoon" for a couple of days. So it's odd, in general, that we would get to the Mating books now, of all times.

Now for the spoiler:

SPOILER:

The last section of Mating, a kind of epilogue, is called "About the Foregoing". It is very mysterious. She has left Africa, and has left Denoon, her great love. Things have fallen apart. She is now trying to get her life together when suddenly she gets a mysterious message, telling her to come back to Africa. It is not Denoon who calls her. It is a woman. She does not know who this woman could be. Or why she has been summoned. She obsesses about it, wondering what to do. Should she return? What would be waiting for her in Africa? If Denoon did not summon her, then perhaps she would not be welcome anymore? The book ends with these two lines:

Je viens. Why not?

I have been haunted by this. Then what? Then what? It has been so long since Mating came out. I have tried to reconcile myself to the fact that I need to, a la Rilke, "live the questions".

The fact that the book ends mysteriously, that it could go either way, confirms for me one of the essential tenets of my life: You just never know what will happen. Things can always go either way. Also: Things never really end. Not really. They transform, they morph. Love never dies. Ever. I'm not a "love/hate" kind of girl. Sometimes I wish I were. It might be easier if love turned readily to hate, but for me, it does not.

So alongside my relatively quiet life now are the vibrant exciting love affairs of my past. They make me who I am today. They do not go away, or submerge into the past for good. They are still very much with me, late and soon.

So literally last week, I became obsessed again by the up-in-the-air ending of Mating. What does it signify? What is the message, dammit?

And more than that, on a more literal and literary level: What happened when she returned to Africa? Are they together now out on that alternate plane for fictional characters? I always liked to imagine that they were. It made me happy to imagine so. It made me happy to fantasize that on that alternate plane, all turned out well. Eventually.

It's a sort of "Somewhere over the rainbow" sentiment. Things may be lonely here on this plane, but somewhere -- even if it's just for characters in a book -- things might work out. And this alone gives me reason to hope. Things just might work out -- because the ending of Mating doesn't make it clear whether they do or no. This is the degree to which this book affected me, and the degree to which these characters LIVE on in my imagination.

On a personal note: I used to have these old crazy fantasies about "my Nelson Denoon", fantasies which felt more (to me) like getting a glimpse of an alternate path, a very real future. I comforted myself, after it was all over, by imagining that on that other plane, down that other path, things might have worked out. Or in another lifetime, although reincarnation and alternate lifetimes are not quite in my belief system.

So I digress. All of these crazy thoughts are very tied up, for me, in Norman Rush's Mating.

All of this came up to the foreground again, in the last week, (it all began dovetailing), and I thought, impulsively: "I should just write to Norman Rush and ask him what he's up to ... if he's working on anything ..." He hasn't published anything else since Mating, so -- I wondered --- is he chugging away at a sequel? Is he dead? I needed to know desperately.

"Mr. Rush -- are you just going to leave me hanging with the end of Mating? Do you know how important it is, how essential it is in terms of my understanding of how the world works, that I know what happened with the two of them? Will I ever know the outcome?"

Wanting to write to Norman Rush was a random fleeting thought. I have written to authors before, so it wasn't too far-fetched.

Then, a couple of days ago, I stopped off at a computer place to check my email. While there, I visited my Statscounter, to check in on my traffic. I saw that someone had gotten to me by typing "Norman Rush" into Google. It led this person to a post of mine. And this piqued my interest. Somebody else is looking for Norman Rush right now? Why? Is something going on?

So I blatantly Googled the man.

The first thing that came up was a Village Voice article dated May, 2003. I opened it, and lo and behold, it was a review of his new book. The man has a new book out. Mortals.

I hope I have conveyed how important this is to me.

It would be like hearing that JD Salinger had suddenly come out of hiding and published a new novel. While Salinger is still alive, there is still hope that he may write again. He just might. And the book might be crap, but that wouldn't matter. At least not at first. It would be a miracle. To hear from that writer again.

So Rush has a new huge novel out. And again, it takes place in Botswana, Africa. Botswana! The country that Rush made live for me.

Mortals (and I just skimmed the article feverishly ... I didn't want to read any spoilers, no give-aways, nothing that would ruin the experience) is NOT about Nelson Denoon and our unnamed narrator. It is another couple altogether, although Rush again tackles romantic male/female relationships, only this time in the context of marriage. It doesn't seem to be so much about finding the right mate, and how arduous that process is, how it can break your heart. Rush now goes into the realm of established intimacy, and ... what happens then?

And here's the thing: (WARNING: SPOILER ALERT)

I raced through the book review excitedly and could not believe my eyes: Nelson and "she" DO show up in this new book, peripherally. They ARE characters on the outskirts. And, oh so casually, Village Voice reviewer states: "We learn that they have married."

What? They married?? I almost shouted out loud for joy. I'm not kidding. I freaked out.

I didn't read the rest of the review, I signed out immediately, paid my bill, and hustled my ass down to Barnes & Noble to find the book, which had been published THAT WEEK.

(Okay, let's just take a moment to reflect on how weird that is. I randomly contemplate writing to Norman Rush, pestering him to write a sequel, and dammitall if he doesn't have a new book published on almost that same exact day. What?)

And there it was. A huge book. Hardcover. With a map of Botswana inside. I got a chill of excitement. I felt voracious. Almost sick to my stomach, actually. I wanted to download the entire book into my brain immediately. I glanced through and saw that there was a chapter called "The Denoons", and I had to restrain myself. Prolong the anticipation, more pleasure that way.

And as I was walking down the street, with my booty in my bag, I suddenly got weirdly emotional.

It was as though I had heard that real friends of mine had finally gotten married after much strife.

There have been times in the past couple of years when life has been the cliched howling wilderness. "My Nelson Denoon" remains a kind of monument, a sort of goal. I have tried to knock him off that pedestal, but I have finally accepted the fact that he actually deserves to be up there. Whether I am with him or not. When things did not, to put it mildly, "work out", my baffled thought was: If that didn't work out, that which seemed so damn right, then what the hell will work out? For quite a long time, my answer to that question was: Nothing. Nothing.

But then ... here ... years later ... walking down the street, knowing that she and Nelson got married -- after all that --

I suddenly felt an upsurge of hope. Not for me and "my Nelson Denoon", because like I said earlier: that is no longer possible. But what I mean is: hope in general.

A word on hope:

Hope for me, now, always goes hand in hand with a bittersweet and vague pain. Hope never ever comes by itself anymore, the way it used to when I was a little kid, or a teenager. I suppose that's indicative of age and experience. It seems so to me anyway. That's life. I am not saying this exactly as I wanted to. Basically: Hope no longer comes alone.

The sadness and hope I felt, walking down the street, wasn't about Nelson and the narrator of Mating being married... at least, not only about them. The sadness and hope was also from how I see life now. In terms of mating. I feel like I had my run. It was a good run. I had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs. But that all has stopped now. And that's why hope never comes alone anymore.

I still feel hope, occasionally, but never ever by itself.

So I got overwhelmed by this weird sense of sad hope --- a feeling that STILL, after all THAT, "things" might "work out". For me, in my life. It's awful when one becomes afraid to feel hope anymore, protecting oneself against the inevitable disappointment. This is a constant balancing act.

I am in my 30s, and I've been through a lot. Not all bad. Of course not all bad. Like I said: a lot of laughs. Much fun. But now, I just find it easier not to hope ... at least in that arena ... and focus on other things. My work. My ambition, my plans.

But ... but ....

They got married. They got married. What does that mean? For me?

(This is the level to which literature can affect me - if I let it! The Shipping News had a similar impact.)

I am so used to the state of affairs I live in now, since I have lived there now for about a decade. I mean, I have changed and grown, of course, I have moved from city to city, I got my Master's, I've made new friends, it has been a very full existence. But I have been alone the entire time. THAT has not changed. Not even close.

Perhaps a breakthrough is approaching. A breakthrough in how I see all of this. And the appearance of Norman Rush's Mortals is the harbinger of something good. Or, something different. Something exciting, unforeseen, challenging. That's what I was feeling as I walked down the street, too. I'm scared of it ... and yet. Perhaps it is time. I don't know. Even as I write that, the logical side of my brain, the side that has all the experience, that knows the let-downs, etc., says: "Yes, but you have felt this before. You have felt this so strongly before. And you were never right."

But maybe ... maybe ... Maybe this is it.

There is SOMETHING weird about how all of this has come about:

Mating
The book being wrapped up with "my Nelson Denoon"
Wishing the main characters well -- hoping they are happy in another reality
Holding onto a weird strange hope that things worked out well, at least for them
Wondering if a sequel was coming
Studying the book over the last couple of weeks
That book, for me, is the monument, the goal
Wanting to write to Norman Rush
Someone coming to MY blog, through Googling Norman Rush ...during the very week I was obsessing about Rush, and where he was, and whether or not he was writing
Finding out that Rush has written a new book ... published last week ... in which we discover the Denoons have married

And so:
Things are not what they seem.

Back to the old painful belief: You never ever know what will happen. You can never tell what the future will hold. Your predictions will all be wrong.

I have tentatively and slowly begun Mortals, forcing myself not to browse ahead, looking for references to the Denoons. I want to savor every word.

I have waited for this day for so long.

Thoughts on MORTALS

Mortals was a huge disappointment, although I read it at the speed of light. Ray and Iris are a married couple, living in Botswana. Nelson Denoon and "narrator" from Mating are not involved in the story at all until far into the book. So you have to stick with Ray and Iris. And God, what bores the two of them are. I couldn't past it. Many people found the narrator of Mating so unlikable that they couldn't move on with the book. I was the opposite. I adored her. I would read 10 more books narrated by her. But Ray and Iris were insufferable. I know that Rush was going for a study of marriage - but my God. There are so many structural problems with the book - and there are (of course) moments of high genius ... that typical Rush language ... but because it's all in service of two people that I kind of despise (and I'm supposed to love and find charming) ... I found it REALLY hard to get through it. I stuck with it, though, because I was determined to find out what happened to Nelson Denoon and "her". I love those two, flaws and all. Iris appears to be having some kind of affair with an African doctor. Ray works for the CIA but since the fall of communism the entire agency has been in flux, and problematic ... the focus lost. I found all that CIA stuff fascinating, naturally ... it wouldn't surprise me if Norman Rush had been somehow "in intelligence" - but that's neither here nor there. The main point of the novel is what goes down between Ray and Iris ... but they have got to be the most annoying married couple in the history of married couple. They make George and Martha look like relaxing companions. Ray, first of all, is obsessed with Iris. I think Rush is trying to say something else here ... something about paying attention, but there is a fine line between paying attention to your partner and being fucking creepy. Ray is fucking creepy. Everything - everything - is under a microscope. Maybe that's a side effect of being a spy - but again, I don't think Rush handled the problem of this well, because within 5 pages I was sick of Ray. The whole being married to an intelligent agent plot is potentially fascinating but becomes flabby and uninteresting here - because Ray is such a drip. And I feel that Norman Rush is so in love with Ray and Iris that he could not discern the flaws. Perhaps he had more distance with Nelson Denoon and ... whatever the heck her name is ... they feel more obviously alive and unprotected. But here, in Mortals, Rush keeps telling us what we should perceive - how funny they are, how interesting their conversations are ... Meanwhile, i was so irritated I could barely stand it. I would have said at one point, if I was married to him, "You know what, Ray? Love ya. But shut the fuck up. It's 2 in the morning and I have no interest in parsing my childhood for you because you're so fucking creepily obsessed with me. I'M YOUR WIFE. If I wanted a stalker, I'd be dating again! It's no fun having a stalker for a husband. Leave me ALONE."

So. Oh well. It's a bummer. I read the whole book - and it has its fans - and I do not want to throw the bath out with the babywater or whatever the hell ... As a matter of fact there is an X-rated 30 page sex scene (in line with the rest of the obsessive description of the book) which actually is very hot. You don't need to describe sex for me to get hot (I think Hemingway's line from For Whom The Bell Tolls is pretty damn hot - they get in the sleeping bag together and the line is something like, "and then the world moved." That's hot). But still: for explicit sex scenes, the one in Mortals is a doozy. Would have been nice if I hadn't been so irritated by the two characters. I'm happy when two characters I love have hot sex. I am happy for them. But two irritating characters ... I find myself begrudgingly happy for them and almost jealous, "Oh well. You're assholes. Congrats on having hot sex." And the whole picture of the intelligence work done in Africa, the almost imperialistic interest that Christians have in Africa, and how this one doctor (a very interesting character) is determined to keep the Christians at bay. Want to know what's wrong with Africa? It's the Christians. (That's his view. So calm down.)

So. Bummer.

And reading my burst of hope from 2003 is sad for me now. Because it was an illusion. It meant nothing that Nelson and "she" get married. It meant nothing. Nothing made a difference, nothing changed ... Delusional. I sound delusional to myself.

My love for the book Mating is untouched, however. Perhaps that was Norman Rush's one story. Some writers only have one tale in them. They may try to do more, tell other stories - but they fail.

Perhaps Rush is one of those writers.


EXCERPT FROM Mortals by Norman Rush

They were together in the kitchen. He was being companionable while she got the food onto the table. The lights were on in Dimakatso's quarters. Ray had a feeling the meal tonight might be vegetarian. They seemed to be drifting that way, which was ironic in a country with the healthiest, best-tasting grass-fed and cheapest beef in the entire world. Botswana beef had an odd taste. It was sweet.

The light in the kitchen was a trial for both of them. The room was lit by a fluorescent donut that belonged in an industrial museum. The house was all-electric. The fluorescent fixture emitted a fizzing sound from time to time that suggested it was about to malfunction. It would capture their attention and then the sound would quit and life would go on.

Iris said, "Everything spoils so fast in Africa, I hate it." She made a face as she unscrewed the lid of a mayonnaise jar she'd just taken out of the refrigerator.

"This needs to go directly to the Mayo Clinic," she said.

"Haha," Ray said, stating the laugh to show he was less than amused.

She looked at him for an explanation.

God damn me, he thought.

"What do you mean by that Haha?"

"Nothing."

"What, though?"

"Well I just wondered if you're trying to be funnier than usual for my benefit. I mean are you trying to be funnier?

"You don't have to, you know." God damn me, he thought.

"What are you talking about, Ray?"

"I don't know, I felt for a minute that maybe you were trying to mimic my brother. I mean he presents himself as such a wit. His letters to you are all about what a wit he is. What I'm saying is you don't need to be more amusing than you already naturally are. You can relax. You don't need to keep me amused." He thought, Anyone would hate this, I have no right to do this, But I had years of his wit to live with and that was enough.

She stared at him. Plainly he had hurt her in several ways.

"Oh boy. I'm sorry. I think this is what it is. I think I'm aggravated about Rex's sudden interest in writing to you all the time. His sudden desire to be your pen pal. You don't know him. You may think he's clever but there is, believe me, nothing there, he's useless, he ..."

She broke in. "Well, you remember the potato salad I made last week that you praised to high heaven?"

He was in the pantry, searching for a new jar of mayonnaise.

"Can you hear me? That salad was made with baked potatoes instead of boiled potatoes."

Ray emerged from the pantry with the new jar of mayonnaise, which he handed to her.

"You mean now Rex is sending you recipes?"

"It isn't a recipe just to comment on a potato salad he had at a fancy buffet somewhere. He thought it was delicious so he asked the host what there was about it, that's all, and he passed that along, and you enjoyed it, I'm pointing out."


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 19, 2008

The Books: "Mating" (Norman Rush)

mating.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Matingby Norman Rush

I don't even know where to start. I'm scared. Someone hold me. This is one of my most important books. Definitely a desert island book. I've written quite a bit about it before and I've been re-reading old posts, trying to gear up for what I want to say about this magnificent novel. Funnily enough, except for critics (oh, and also Mitchell), I don't know anyone else who loves this book. As a matter of fact, most people seem annoyed by it (at least people out in the real world). People I love and respect couldn't get past certain aspects of the novel: the narrator's voice, her vocabulary ... and let's face it: It's a first-person narration. If you can't stand the voice, you probably won't get very far. It's like people who are somehow irritated by Holden Caulfield's voice. Not the story or the plot - but his VOICE. The whole BOOK is his voice ... so if that is what irritates you, it would be difficult to move forward. have experienced that with other books, but with Mating definitely not.

It's odd to have a book that you love so much that you cannot discuss with anyone. I mean, it won the National Book Award in 1991, was critically acclaimed, but it wasn't a book like Shipping News (excerpt here) - where you saw people reading it everywhere. So thank you, Mitchell, wherever you are, for reading it, and loving it, too. It's one of those books that became contextual for me. There's only a couple of those out there. Actually, speaking of Salinger, Franny and Zooey was another one. But I'll get to that when I get to Salinger. Possession (excerpt here) was another contextual book (excerpt here). By "contextual" I mean: I read the books in question, and along with loving the stories and the characters and the writing - the books helped me either make decisions about my life and how I was living it, OR it helped me put into context events and situations that either haunted me, or remained unfinished. I recognized myself in the books, sure - and that's a rare thing (I am not a particularly literary character. Meaning: I don't come across my self in books often. But with Possession I did. And with Mating I did to such a degree that I considered writing an angry letter to Norman Rush asking him to return my journals.) Mating was even more contextual than Possession.

The main male character in the book is "Nelson Denoon", and even that name takes on almost a magical sound to me, knowing where I was at in my life when I read it. Mitchell and I used "Nelson Denoon" as a shorthand. Shorthand for: Great guy, difficult guy, challenging guy, but the guy for you. THE guy for you. I read it during the beginning stages of falling in love with someone and my situation drove me almost as crazy as the situation in Mating drives the unnamed narrator. This isn't no regular old courtship. There are no "dates" here. There is just a meeting of the goddamn MINDS ... and for some people, that is a crazy-making situation (and yeah, I'm talking about myself. That was why my "encounter" with the doppelganger - part 1 and part 2 - was so ultimately unbalancing for me. In a bad way. It's great to get unbalanced if things, as they say, "work out in the end" - but to be that unbalanced and to have it not work out ... Well, first of all, that's my life story. But second of all, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I wouldn't wish it on myself. Ever again.)

The narrator in Mating is weird, in the very same way that I am weird. She is vulnerable, yet she uses her intellect to intimidate, in order to not get hurt. She has an inferiority complex about her worth, especially in academia. She is aware that things do not come easily to her, and she wonders if that is because she just doesn't have the genius to make it in her chosen field (anthropology). Her vocabulary throughout the book is, indeed, daunting - even obnoxious - but I've read interviews with Rush where he explained his reasoning for it, and it makes total sense. She uses language as a fortress, it is how she knows she can "win". It's not a particularly sympathetic trait, but then - she's not all that sympathetic. Perhaps that is why I loved her so much. We have nothing in common, at least on the outside - but intellectually, we are identical twins. She is obsessively analytical, her desire to get to the bottom of everything sinks her, and also sets her on the path of the book. Her desire to know things other people do not know - and not just in anthropology, but higher up - as in: how the world works, and who is pulling the strings and what EXACTLY is going on here - is akin to my total immersion in foreign affairs and my whole index card project, which I'm too embarrassed to even write about and I think it's about time I threw them all away. It represents YEARS of work, but unless the CIA is interested in recruiting me (and seriously. I'm available for hire), I honestly don't know what those boxes and boxes of index cards really provide me. It was a way for me to organize information, to try to create a big picture, to catalog - one of my great obsessions.

The narrator in Mating is a great cataloger. First, as an anthropologist, of course ... but then, once she falls in love - she takes that cataloging impulse to an almost pathological level. He (Nelson Denoon) is a great anthropological study, for her - far more enthralling to her than her dissertation, because she's in love with him. She keeps notes. She always has one eye on the larger picture and how they fit into it. Nelson Denoon is a man who appears to know things. Not just about his own life and his own project, but about how the world works. His ideas may be faulty, flawed - but he is actually walking the walk, and trying to bring his ideas into reality. Not too many people do that. Dictators do that. Nelson Denoon is a kind of dictator. The narrator is an exhausting companion. I get that. I suppose I am over-identifying because I have often been described - well, not as exhausting - but the general complaint from men is that I am "too much", which is just another word for exhausting. The men usually say it as a compliment, they do not insult me, they love my too-much-ness - it's just that they choose not to live side by side with it. So where does that leave me? I am unable to not be "too much". (I am also unable to talk about Mating without talking about myself). I'm a big book-reader (as should be obvious) but I have very few books that I identify with at this level. Hopeful Monsters is another one - I am incapable of talking about that book without also talking about myself. I mean, I talk about other things as well - but the context of the whole book is either how it expresses for me how I see things or how it expresses how things are for me. Interesting that those are two books written by males.

Mating is a first-person narration - written by a male - and the voice is a female voice. I found it utterly convincing. But then: it is important to remember how weird I am, how unconventional (I don't mean that in a pretentious self-conscious way - I am being quite literal), how "too-much", how every time there's some jagoff quiz about "what women are like" I come up with a score that is off-the-charts "Are you sure you're really a woman?" There's some web gadget you can run your blog through and it guesses if it was written by a man or a woman. I did it once and it came up with: "We are 100% positive that this blog was written by a male." I am not one of those types who say "I like men better than women" - Bigotry in its most open-faced guise. So you won't mind if I don't take you seriously if you talk like that, because I tend to not take bigots seriously. Thanks. But I do know that very often I relate more to men, their concerns, worries, their senses of humor, how they actually operate. Even when it's not the most sensible or practical way to go about things. Many found the voice of Mating to be not all that convincing. Perhaps they have more engrained views of how women talk, how men talk, whatever, I have no interest in analyzing it. To me, I felt the voice was spot-ON. Not just because I identified, but because I could hear her in my own head. Again, I do not often encounter my sensibility in books. I did in Middlemarch with poor Dorothea Brooke, I did in Franny and Zooey with Franny, I did in Possession with Maud, and I do here with unnamed narrator in Mating. Cerebral. Rigid. Obsessive. Passionate. Perhaps bordering on the fanatic (like Franny, definitely). She's monastic in her habits and lifestyle, with one overriding passion that is NOT a man, or domestic bliss. Well, poor Dorothea Brooke. But like I mentioned in my post about Middlemarch - if she had been born in the 20th century instead of the 19th she'd be getting her doctorate in medieval tapestries or something equally as obsessive and cerebral - and men would be calling her "too much" and staying far far away. She was born in the wrong century.

Let's get back to Mating, the actual book. Mating is all about intellectual compatability. Not just lust or desire or wanting the same things out of life, or even thinking the same way about things. Compatable in the brain - "intellectual love" the narrator in Mating calls it. That may sound dry to the majority of people, but that's the thing: I am not the majority (every quiz I ever take confirms that!!) - and her vision of "intellectual love" is something that calls to my deepest soul. I read it, amazed - amazed first of all that a man wrote in this voice - but also amazed that it was expressed so perfectly ... as though lifted from my own life.

I came across this wonderful review of it on Amazon, which is kind of creepy - in that I feel like I could have written every word of it:

I took forever deciding whether I should read Mating, whether I wanted to commit my time to such a long and apparently difficult book, whether it would be worth it in the end. I thought about buying it a number of times, but couldn't get up the courage -- what if it just gathered dust on a shelf? I borrowed a copy from the library, finally, and promised myself that if I hated it (as a number of my friends had) I would abandon it quickly.

Now Mating is one of the few books I would want to have with me on a desert island. I can easily, happily say it was one of the great reading experiences of my life so far. But it's also a book that seems tailor-made to my sensibilities, as if somebody asked me, "What would you like a big novel to contain?" and then set out to write it.

There's a compelling narrative voice. There's tremendous erudition, so I felt like I learned something about the world on every page. There's a careful attention to language, and yet the language is free and full to bursting. There's all sorts of talk about politics, the history of leftist political movements (particularly anarcho-syndicalism, my own favorite), and utopia. There's a love story, but it's written about without mushy romantic spewings. There's an exotic locale. I'm a happy reader!

But you won't like this book if you're looking for a standard storyline and if you don't have patience for intellectual dialogues scattered throughout the action and if you want clean and unambiguous answers to everything. You also won't like it if you demand that first person narrators be always appealing. I found the narrator often annoying, but in the end was quite glad to have known her.

To have known her -- yes, by the end you speak of the narrator and her obsession and love, Nelson Denoon, as people you have known. (Or perhaps I shouldn't use the second-person here, since I know people who do not agree with me, who found the characters simply exasperating. So let me rephrase: I felt like I had known them.)

If you're fairly well-read, you can test whether you're going to find this book stunning or frustrating by playing a cross-referencing mindgame of this sort: Imagine that James Joyce finished Ulysses and was annoyed that his writing hadn't tackled all of the problems of human civilizations. Just then, a time warp appeared, and Paulo Freire and Emma Goldman stepped out and lectured Joyce for 40 days and 40 nights. He was thrilled. He began to write and discovered that a small part of his talent had been taken over by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and another part by Don DeLillo. Ben Okri had found his way in there somewhere, too. Writing was hard with all those different voices pulling at him, but he got through, and the book he produced was Mating.

If the names above are unfamiliar to you, then ask yourself how you felt while reading it. If you made it through to this paragraph, and you're not mad at me for inserting the above (in fact, you found it piqued your curiosity), then you'll do just fine with Mating, and you may be deeply grateful, as I am, that Norman Rush had the courage and genius to write it.

Yes, yes, and yes. My thoughts exactly.

Mating is, on the surface, the story of a love affair. Other themes are: what to do about Africa, the problems with "development projects" and do-gooders in Africa, socialism in Africa, differences between men and women, competition between females for males (hence, the title), satirical observations about academania - and then, more specifically, an in-depth description of the world of Botswana: the diplomatic community in Gaborone, the issues with "villagization", the issues with development, how the development community lives high on the hog in Africa - etc. It's a BIG book, with BIG themes.

The main theme is something the author/narrator calls "intellectual love". Rush describes a very specific kind of love, and because he did so, and took such care with it, the concept became real to me. He articulated one of my deepest longings in a way I had never before encountered. It was like his words illuminated my own needs.

My utopia is equal love, equal love between people of equal value, although value is an approximation for the word I want. Why is it so difficult? Assortative mating shows there has to be some drive in nature to bring equals together in the toils of love, so why even in the most enlightened and beautifully launched unions are we afraid we hear the master-slave relationship moving its slow thighs somewhere in the vicinity? It has to be cultural. In fact the closest thing to a religion I have is that this has to be cultural. I could do practically anything while he was asleep and not bother him. I wrote in my journal, washed dishes in slow motion if we hadn't gotten around to them. I was emotional a lot, privately. I wanted to incorporate everything, understand everything, because time is cruel and nothing stays the same.

"I wanted to incorporate everything, understand everything, because time is cruel and nothing stays the same."

God. Yes.

Intellectual love is not the same animal as landing a mentor, although women I've raised the construct with want to reduce it to that. I distrust and shun the whole mentor concept, which is just as well since I seem not to attract them. Nelson was not my mentor, ever. I gave as well as I got, with him. But there was intellectual love on my part, commencing circa that night.

Intellectual love is a particular hazard for educated women, I think. Certain conditions have to obtain. You meet someone -- I would specify of the opposite sex, but this is obviously me being hyperparochial -- who strikes you as having persuasive and wellfounded answers to questions on the order of Where is the world going? These are distinctly not meaning-of-life questions. One thing Denoon did convince me of is that all answers so far to the question What is the meaning of life? dissolve into ascertaining what some hypostatized superior entity wants you to be doing, id est ascertaining how, and to whom or what, you should be in an obedience relationship. The proof of this is that no one would ever say, if he or she had been convinced that life was totally random and accidental in origin and evolution, that he or she had found the meaning of life. So, fundamentally, intellectual love is for a secular mind, because if you discover someone, however smart, is -- he has neglected to mention -- a Thomist or in Baha'i, you think of him as a slave to something uninteresting.

What beguiles you toward intellectual love is the feeling of observing a mental searchlight lazily turning here and there and lighting up certain parts of the landscape you thought might be dubious or fraudulent but lacked the time or energy to investigate or the inner authority to dismiss tout court. The searchlight confirms you.

"The searchlight confirms you."

I have tears in my eyes. All I can say is that is exactly what it is, and exactly what I respond to. "The searchlight confirms you." Anything less is a total bore for me.

To me, the book has it all. It has the love story, it has the intellectual questions I find interesting, it takes on big issues, world events, socialism vs. capitalism - and it also, in parts, is laugh-out-loud funny. I find the narrator's voice inherently funny. Even when she is at her most manic.

Another element of the book is the religious aspect, which becomes of the ultimate importance in the final third. But I wouldn't dream of giving it away. Suffice it to say, there is a bit of a Master and Margarita (excerpt here) trick going on in the book: If the devil came to Moscow, a city that supposedly did not believe in God, how would they interpret him? In Mating, it is the confrontation with forces beyond understanding that undoes our obsessive narrator. And she's not just obsessive, she's rigid, she has beliefs, she has a system of beliefs ... and when things occur outside of that, she hunkers down and holds onto her beliefs rather than adapt. An interesting quandary for an anthropologist. But it's the essential question ... and what I think Rush was really driving at all along through his magnificent book.

There's more to be said, and I'm sure I'll do more excerpts. I knew what the first one HAD to be ... it comes very early on in the book, and it was when I realized, first time through, that not only was this a great read, but that it would be one of my all-time favorite books. I could just feel it.

Our unnamed narrator lives in Botswana. She was there to finish her dissertation on hunger-gatherers, but her research exploded into irrelevance, wasting years of her life. She decides to renew her Visa, to basically live there - and hang out - unattached for a year ... She's in her mid to late 20s. She immediately starts to have love affairs with unattached men in Botswana - and some of them are laugh out loud funny, because you know she CAN'T be serious about these guys! One is a vain gorgeous photographer - the other is a political activist in exile from nearby South Africa, and the last one is ... well, it's unclear ... but it turns out he's in intelligence. These are all men she might be able to be serious about ... if she were in a different headspace. Nelson Denoon has not made an appearance. And while she is "dating" the photographer (who seems like a silly kind of clueless guy), he gets a gig to photograph the falls in Zimbabwe (which was still in the throes of becoming Zimbabwe at the time of the book's timeline) - and she decides, in a mercenary way, to keep the ridiculous relationship going, at least until she gets to see Victoria Falls. "I'll break up with him, but at least I'll see the Falls first."

And she has a breakdown staring at the Falls. It's my favorite part of the book.

I am unable to read it without getting moved.

Mating is one of those books I feel proprietary about. I feel like it's MINE. More to come, more to say.

EXCERPT FROM Mating: A Novelby Norman Rush

Weep for Me

Well before you see water you find yourself walking through pure vapor. The roar penetrates you and you stop thinking without trying.

I took a branch of the path that led out onto the shoulder of the gorge the falls pour into. I could sit in long grass with my feet to the voice, the falls immense straight in front of me. It was excessive in every dimension. The mist and spray rise up in a column that breaks off at the top into normal clouds while you watch. This is the last waterfall I need to see, I thought. Depending on the angle of the sun, there were rainbows and fractions of rainbows above and below the falls. You resonate. The first main sensation is about physicality. The falls said something to me like You are flesh, in no uncertain terms. This phase lasted over an hour. I have never been so intent. Several times I started to get up but couldn't. It was injunctive. Something in me was being sated and I was paralyzed until that was done.

The next phase was emotional. Something was building up in me as I went back toward the hotel and got on the path that led to overlooks directly beside and above the east cataract. My solitude was eroding, which was oddly painful. I could vaguely make out darkly dressed people here and there on the Zambia side, and there seemed to be some local African boys upstream just recreationally manhandling a huge dead tree into the rapids, which they would later run along the bank following to its plunge, incidentally intruding on me in my crise or whatever it should be called. The dark clothing I was seeing was of course raingear, which anyone sensible would be wearing. I was drenched.

You know you're in Africa at Victorial Falls because there is nothing anyplace to keep you from stepping off into the cataract, not a handrail, not an inch of barbed wire. There are certain small trees growing out over the drop where obvious handholds on the limbs have been worn smooth by people clutching them to lean out bodily over white death. I did this myself. I leaned outward and stared down and said out loud something like Weep for me. At which point I was overcome with enormous sadness, from nowhere. I drew back into where it was safe, terrified.

I think the falls represented death for the taking, but a particularly death, one that would be quick but also make you part of something magnificent and eternal, an eternal mechanism. This was not in the same league as throwing yourself under some filthy bus. I had no idea I was that sad. I began to ask myself why, out loud. I had permission to. It was safe to talk to yourself because of the roar you were subsumed in, besides being alone. I fragmented. One sense I had was that I was going to die sometime anyway. Another was that the falls were something you could never apply the term fake or stupid to. This has to be animism, was another feeling. I was also bemused because suicide had never meant anything to me personally, except as an option it sometimes amazed me my mother had never taken, if her misery was as kosher as she made it seem. There was also an element of urgency underneath everything, an implication that the chance for this kind of death was not going to happen again and that if I passed it up I should stop complaining - which was also baseless and from nowhere because I'm not a complainer, historically. I am the Platonic idea of a good sport.

Why was I this sad? I needed to know. I was alarmed. I had no secret guilt that I was aware of, no betrayals or cruelty toward anyone. On the contrary, I have led a fairly generative life in the time I've had to spare from defending myself against the slings and arrows. Remorse wasn't it. To get away from the boys and their log I had moved to a secluded rock below the brink of the falls. At this point I was weeping, which was disguised by the condensation already bathing my face. No bypasser would notice. This is not saying you could get away with outright sobbing, but in general it would not be embarrassing to be come upon in the degree of emotional dishevelment I seemed to be in.

What was it about? It was nothing sexual: I was not dealing on any level with uncleanness, say. My sex history was the essence of ordinary. So any notion that I was undergoing some naughtiness-based lustral seizure was worthless, especially since I have never been religious in the slightest. One of the better papers I had done was on lustral rites. Was something saying I should kill myself posthaste if the truth was that I was going to be mediocre? This was a thought with real pain behind it. To my wreck of a mother mediocre was a superlative - an imputation I resisted with all my might once I realized it involved me. I grew up clinging to the idea that either I was original in an unappreciated way or that I could be original - this later - by incessant striving and reading and taking simple precautions like never watching television again in my life.

There must be such a thing as situational madness, because I verged on it. I know that schizophrenics hear people murmuring when the bedsheets rustle or when the vacuum cleaner is on. The falls were coming across to me as an utterance, but in more ways than just the roar. There seemed to be certain recurrent elongated forms in the falling masses of water, an architecture that I would be able to apprehend if only I got closer. The sound and the shapes I was seeing went together and meant something, something ethical or existential and having to do with me henceforward in some way. I started to edge even closer, when the thought came to me If you had a companion you would stay where you are.

I stopped in my tracks. There was elation and desperation. Where was my companion? I had no companion, et cetera. I had no life companion, but why was that? What had I done that had made that the case, leaving me in danger? Each time I thought the word "companion" I felt pain collecting in my chest. I suddenly realized how precipitous the place I had chosen to sit and commune from was. The pain was like hot liquid, and I remember feeling hopeless because I knew it was something not amenable to vomiting. I wanted to expel it. Vomiting is my least favorite inevitable recurrent experience, but I would have been willing to drop to all fours and vomit for hours if that would access this burning material. It was no use saying mate or compadre instead of companion: the pain was the same. Also, that I genuinely deserved a companion was something included. I wish I knew how long this went on. It was under ten minutes, I think.

Who can I tell this to, was the thought that seemed to end it. I may have been into the diminuendo already, because I had gotten back from the ledge, back even from the path and into the undergrowth. It all lifted. I sat in the brush, clutching myself. I had an optical feeling that the falls were receding. Then it was really over.

I hauled myself back to the hotel feeling like a hysteric, except for the sense that I had gotten something germane, whatever it was, out of my brush with chaos.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 18, 2008

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'Dump Junk' (Annie Proulx)

c10193.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Dump Junk'.

A woman dies, and it is up to her two children to sort out all of her "junk", accumulated over her lifetime. The woman who died was 102 - so her kids are ripe old ages of 80+. It appears that the dead woman had never thrown a damn thing out, and her house is overflowing with STUFF. It's an overwhelming task. She was a packrat. What is there to salvage? Anything? Christina and Bobcat - the "kids" - get a truck to load up the junk ... but before they can load it up they need to go through everything. It is an enormous task. Two of the nephews in the family show up to help haul the stuff into the truck. Christina and Bobcat look through relics ... memories spouting up, but much of the stuff is incomprehensible, and they can't imagine why she saved EVERYTHING. Christina and Bobcat had both moved away from Wyoming - years ago - years and years - and they haven't really kept in touch. Maybe Christmas cards. So meeting up again, in this kind of morbid atmosphere, is powerful - a bizarre familiy reunion. If I am recalling correctly, the whole story turns on an ancient teakettle ... which Christina feels is hers. It's her "inheritance". In the midst of the piled-up paper bags (apparently her mother never ever threw away a paper bag) ... Christina eyes the teakettle. It is hers. Struggling with feeling like they both are teenagers again, confronted by the world they fled from ... Christina and Bobcat painstakingly go through everything. The teakettle, though, takes on almost a conscious form ... as though it is sentient. Typical Proulx - who has a thing about "things". Things have an inner life. The tractor in "The Bunchgrass Edge of the world" (excerpt here), the accordion in her novel Accordion Crimes ... Objects that have an inner life are often not benign. They mean something. Bad luck. An omen. The teakettle is no different.

There's something meaner in Bad Dirt than in Close Range, Proulx's other collection of "Wyoming Stories". She seems to enjoy tormenting her characters. She stands above them, a cackling God, throwing disaster in their paths. No emotion. It's certainly a kind of perspective, but I have to say I miss the universal transcendence of Close Range (and the characters there are hardly all good or all heroic ... but Proulx seems "closer" to them somehow).

Anyway, here's an excerpt. I love how Proulx describes objects. I learn a lot from her as a writer.


EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Dump Junk'.

In the house Christina, Patsy, and Wendy struggled with the mass of folded paper sacks.

"There are just hundreds! Now I save some of the plastic bags, but these - they're all mouse droppings and dust." The paper bags stuck to one another in great chunks as though they were trying to return to their earliest incarnation as trees.

"Watch out, Aunt Christina, you can get hantavirus messing with mouse droppings."

"I'm not messing. I've got on my rubber gloves, and I'm just putting these awful old sacks into a big trash bag. She must have seen she wasn't getting any use out of them after a few years, but she just kept on saving them."

"I don't think so." Patsy pulled a grocery receipt from one of the sacks on top of the pile. "Actually I think she stopped somewhere along the line. Look at the date - it's 1954. She must have stopped back then." She pulled out a sack near the bottom and found a handwritten grocery slip for a hundred pounds each of flour and sugar dated 1924. The amount paid was small as there was a notation that she had brought in six dozen fresh eggs to trade against her purchases.

"I remember those chickens," said Christina. "There were quiet a few and she was very particular about them. I always believed she thought more of her chickens than her children."

"I'd feel better if we had some dust masks, handling this stuff," said Wendy, who was the fussier of Bobcat's daughters.

The old lady had gone in for jars, fabric scraps, and old clothing that might be used in a quilt, and, of course, recipes. She was a tireless clipper of recipes for Golden Raisin Hermits, Devil's Food cake, pickles, leftovers masquerading under such names as "Pigs in Potatoes" (leftover sausages and cold mashed potatoes), "Roman Holiday" (leftover spaghetti with chopped string beans), "Salmon Loaf" (canned salmon, more leftover spaghetti). For decades Vivian Stifle had pasted the recipes in notebooks, account boos, novels, and books of instruction, each collection dated on the flyleaf. There were dozens of them lined up in the parlor glass-fronted bookcase. The recipes disclosed that the Stifles' diet was dominated by a sweet tooth of enormous proportion. The old lady must have used ten pounds of sugar a week on chocolate cream pie, "Filled Cookies from Oklahoma," and cream cake. She made her own maraschino cherries, too, and ketchup, the old kind of mincemeat that called for chopped beef, suet, and leftover pickles juice steeped in a crock - food that nobody now knew how to make. Still, the corporate food purveyors had been making headway, for many of the recipes featured Crisco, Borden evaporated milk, Kingsford cornstarch, and other mass-produced foodstuffs. Sometime in the 1950s she had stopped collecting recipes. The last book on the shelf was dated 1955, and there were only a few recipes pasted onto the pages of a Reader's Digest condensed book.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 13, 2008

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'The Wamsutter Wolf' (Annie Proulx)

c10193.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'The Wamsutter Wolf'.

A lot of Annie Proulx's stories are dominated by silence and space. Maybe there's wind, the sound of snow on the windshield - but her people, in general, are not talkers. But 'The Wamsutter Wolf' is so "noisy", so crowded - that I ended up aching for Buddy (the lead character) to get away, get away ... so he could at least hear himself think! Buddy Millar is a drifter, not really tied down to anyone. Well, he's a bit tied to his parents - who are openly disappointed and angry at him, for the way he lives his life. Buddy tried to work for his father, but that didn't work out. His dad has a temper, and Buddy couldn't take it. He is broke, he eventually rents a trailer for forty bucks a month in a bleak place called Wamsutter - it's filthy, but he can't afford anything else. There's a big dirty loud family who lives in the trailer next door - Buddy watches them from afar for a while, gives them nicknames (Fat Wife, Big Dad) - and it eventually becomes clear (and that's in the excerpt below) that Buddy went to high school with the mother and father (their names are Cheri and Rase). This is not an overwhelmingly joyful reunion - Rase is a sociopath who smashed Buddy's face into the pavement in grade school. Cheri was pathetic in high school and she's pathetic now. They live in squalor. This is not about being poor. This is about not giving a crap about where you live. This is about being so lazy you can't ever wash a dish. The kids are filthy. Their parents let them drink beer, to start them young. Annie Proulx has never been so mean. She's merciless. Buddy is the only one here who comes off looking okay ... he's actually kind of sensitive, and he's doing the best he can. But he gets sucked into the disgusting family drama across the way, and increasingly he feels he cannot escape. Cheri and Rase both treat him as an intimate, there's no polite neighborliness - these people have no boundaries whatsoever, with anyone - and Buddy comes home sometimes and Cheri is sleeping on the floor of his trailer because she had a fight with Rase. Rase is a terrible character. A violent ignorant man with a giant chip on his shoulder. Poor Buddy. He tries to be polite at first, after all he went to high school with these people - and they're all grown up now, right? The past is in the past, right? Buddy realizes very quickly the error of letting such people into his life. These people are barely civilized. It's horrible. A horrible story. Well written but I was sure glad when it was over.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'The Wamsutter Wolf'.

Fat Wife opened the door. The smell of cigarette smoke came with her.

"Yeah?" she said, lighting another.

"Hi. I'm your neighbor - Buddy Millar. Uh - I'm having a little problem with your dogs. Dog. the brown one." Two were black and one was brown, all of indeterminate breed.

"Buddy Millar! I knew there was something. I told Rase you looked real familiar."

He stared at her. The frizzled red hair showed dark at the roots, and the long ends straggled across her shoulders like damp raffia, the finer strands caught in the fleece fabric of the grimy anorak she wore. Her face was so oily it seemed metaled. Behind her he could see a brown chair, the floor littered with clothing and toys.

"I'm Cheri. Cheri Bise back in high school. Cheri Wham now. Me and Rase Wham got married."

Slowly it came to him, the high school bully, Rase Wham, had dropped out in tenth grade. Wham had been a vicious sociopath. Cheri Bise, the overweight slut whose insecurity made her an easy sexual conquest, had disappeared around the same time.

"Come on in, have a cup of coffee." There was a highway of festering pimples alongside her nose. She cleared a path in the debris by kicking toys left and right. Reluctantly he went inside. It stank of cigarettes, garbage, and feces. The television set stuttered colors.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked, taking shallow breaths.

"Rase is workin for Halliburton now. He used a work for a drillin outfit but the well froze and there was a blowout and it kind a hurt him. He had a concussion. Last year. And I work Fridays in the school cafeteria."

He understood from the tone in her voice that she considered the cafeteria job a career.

"Barbette's in school, second grade, and that's Vernon Clarence - " She pointed at the dull-faced boy of four or five holding a box of Cracker Jacks. "And that's the baby, Lye." The diaper-clad baby was crawling toward them, his sticky fingers furred with lint and clutching a tiny red car that Buddy recognized as an Aston Martin. The kid, clinging to Buddy's knee, clawed himself upright and thrust the toy at him.

"Caw!" said the child.

"Yes, it's a nice car," said Buddy. In the room beyond he could see a bed heaped with grimy blankets.

"Caw!"

Cheri reheated stale coffee in a saucepan, poured the pungent liquid into mugs emblazoned GO POKES, set one before him. She did not proffer milk nor sugar. She sat down at the table and blew on her coffee.

"And we're expectin the next one in December, week before Christmas. It's ahrd ona kid have a birthday that close a Christmas, but you sure don't think a that when you're doin it." She had a spit-frilled way of talking.

The baby was staring at Buddy with savage intensity, as though he were going to utter a great scientific truth never before known. His face reddened and the vein in his forehead stood out. He grunted and with an explosive burst filled his diaper.

While Cheri changed him on the kitchen table less than eighteen inches from Buddy's coffee cup, he looked around to avoid watching her mop at Lye's besmeared buttocks and scrotum. On the floor several feathers were stuck in a coagulated blob. Wads of trodden gum appeared as archipelagoes in a mud-colored sea while bits of popcorn, string ends, torn paper, a crushed McDonald's cup, and candy wrappers made up the flotsam. An electric wall heater stuck out into the room. On top of it were three coffee mugs, two beer cans, several brimming ashtrays, a tiny plastic fox, and a prescription bottle. Through the amber plastic of the bottle he could see the dark forms of capsules.

There was a sudden plop as Cheri threw the loaded diaper into an open pail already seething with banana peels, coffee grounds, and prehistoric diapers.

The older child, Vernon Clarence, edged along the sofa toward the wall heater. His small hands grasped a beer can and shook it. He dropped it on the floor and tried the other, which responded with a promising slosh. He drank the dregs, warm beer running down his chin and soaking his pajama top. Buddy wondered if he should mention to Cheri that the kid was drinking beer, decided against it. The freshly emptied can rolled under the sofa.

Cheri suddenly got up, lunged for the cupboard, and retrieved a package. She shook several small bright pink cakes bristling with shredded coconut onto a chipped saucer.

"Go on! Take one!" She held the saucer in front of his face as Lye had held the toy car.

He took one. A coconut point stuck into his finger like a staple. He put the cake on the table. Lye seized it and mumbled "Caw!" as he gummed the confection. From across the room Vernon Clarence started to bawl, pointing eloquently at Lye, whose face was crowded by the pink mass.

"Here you go! Catch!" shouted Cheri, hurling a cake at the child. It hit an ashtray on the coffee table and sent butts and ash flying.

"I've got a get going," said Buddy, rising. "I just wanted to mention about the dogs - dog. And introduce myself."

"Well, I'm thrilled," said Cheri. "I always had a big crush on you in school. All the girls thought you was cute. Rase will just about pass out when I tell him who our new neighbor is." She snapped a cigarette from the package on the table.

"Say hello to him for me," said Buddy, struggling with the door latch, which was some devious childproof design. He glanced around the room as he backed out. The fastidious Vernon Clarence was picking a cigarette butt from his confectionary prize.

Buddy's trailer seemed a cozy haven in contrast with the Whams', and he quickly made his bed and washed the dishes lest he become like them.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 12, 2008

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'Man Crawling Out Of Trees' (Annie Proulx)

c10193.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Man Crawling Out Of Trees',

I love this story. It's about two transplants from New England to Wyoming - and the culture is so different they might as well have moved to Turkmenistan. Mitchell and Eugenie are a couple in their 50s - who have spent their lives in New York (I think they lived in Brooklyn) - until a couple of bad things happen (a mugging on the subway?) and they decide to move. Their daughter Honor is a young woman now - with her own life - so they decide to move to Wyoming. Their dream is to live near Yellowstone or one of the national parks, but they soon discover that any property anywhere NEAR any of the parks is way beyond millions of dollars. They eventually settle on something - smaller, scraggly ... and it's almost like they're stepping into a dream-state. Like, to people in Wyoming, it's all real, for God's sake ... there's no fantasy in living how they live - but Mitchell and Eugenie are foreigners and they have a fantasy of the West, and what their lives will be like. Mitchell was a philanderer - and we eventually realize that Eugenie is no saint, either - so I think they're hoping that a change of venue might help their marriage. Yeah, well, the people who actually live in Wyoming are used to folks like Mitchell and Eugenie - people who move there with some sort of "dream" - and they try to accept Mitchell and Eugenie but it's like the two of them just cannot get the language straight. They miss symbols, they don't pick up on messages ... they keep breaking "the rules". It's like they are still living by New York rules (the "man crawling out of trees" incident is a perfect example ... Eugenie sees an injured man crawl out of her trees on a snowy day and is so terrified she locks all the doors and calls the sheriff's department. Turns out, the man was an injured skier, who was calling for help - and so the town judges Eugenie - In Wyoming, even if a man is your mortal enemy, you help him if, say, his truck broke down, or he's fallen on hard times. Even the sheriff yells at Eugenie. But there's more. Mitchell and Eugenie are not particularly close - you can tell - and their daughter Honor has had a baby with a man Mitchell's age - her boyfriend (he sounds a little bit like the Tim Robbins' character in High Fidelity - they live in Maine - and Mitchell and Eugenie are baffled as to who their daughter has become. They don't know how to deal with it. At the same time, they are now trapped in the reality of Wyoming - wondering where the dream went.

Great story. Very funny, but with Proulx's insightful observations - and her accurate aim - not only at folks like Mitchell and Eugenie, their pretensions and mistakes - but the folks of the town who are rigid and close-minded. Culture clash. And you write people off at your peril. But also: some people are just assholes, and never forget that. A total lack of curiosity about another person and another region in the country means you are an asshole.

Proulx rides both sides here - although the story is from Mitchell and Eugenie's point of view. Proulx lives in Wyoming and has for many years. She knows it intimately. But she can slip inside Mitchell and Eugenie, because that's what she does, as a writer.

And the response of the folks in the town, their neighbors, reminds me of the B&B we stayed in on Achill Island, a big island off the west coast of Ireland. The couple who owned the B&B had lived there on Achill for thirty years. And they were still referred to, by the villagers, as "blow-ins". Blown in from somewhere else. How long would you have to live there before they just accepted that you were one of them? Probably a very long time. But also: if you move to Achill, with some leprechaun-filled fantasy of the 'auld country' - you will be doomed to disappointment. Deal with reality, please. Have real curiosity about the culture you are visiting.

Proulx describes this whole divide perfectly.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Man Crawling Out Of Trees',

Wyoming had seemed civilized when they first moved out, but gradually evidence appeared that forced them to recognize that they were in a place people in the east would regard as peripheral to the real world. There were disturbing proofs that the weight of a harsh past still bore down with force. Every few months something inexplicably rural happened: on a back road one man shot another with his great-grandfather's 45.70 vintage buffalo gun; a newcomer from Iowa set out for an afternoon hike, and fell off a cliff as she descended Wringer Mountain. Black bears came down in September and smashed Eugenie's bird feeders. A hawk hid under the potentilla bush and leaped suddenly on an overconfident prairie dog a little too far from its burrow. In Antler Spring, the town where they bought their liquor and groceries, a young woman expecting her first child was widowed when her husband, fighting summer wildfires in Colorado, was killed by a Pulaski tool that fell from a helicopter. Vacationers locked themselves out of their cars and were struck by lightning. Ranchers, their eyes on their cattle, drove off the road and overturned. Everything seemed to end in blood.

Outside the Star Lily Ranch community Eleanora Figg was their nearest neighbor. She was an elderly widow rancher in her mid-seventies of the classic Republican, conservative, art-hating, right-wing, outspoken, flint-faced type. She ran both cattle and some sheep, drove an ancient black Jeep. She loathed environmentalists and people from somewhere else. Mitchell understood the bumper sticker on her Jeep - SHOOT, SHOVEL AND SHUT UP - to express her opinions on wolves. She had taken one look at the Fairs' Infiniti and recognized them as sybarites who dined on camel heels and foreign olives. She herself lived on home-killed beef, boiled potatoes, and black coffee. She was always dressed in jeans, manure-caked boots, and a ragged barn coat. When they first met, Mitchell shook the old woman's hand, feeling the coarse, hard fingers gripping his own with remarkable strength.

"How's your teeth?" she said. "Pretty sharp?"

"I don't know," said Mitchell, nonplussed by the odd question. "Why?"

"Always lookin for somebody help us castrate lambs."

At the post office the woman told him about Eleanora Figg.

"Her and her boys Condor and Tommy just about run this place." She added that there had been a third son, Cody, who had died of heatstroke hiking in the Grand Canyon on his first and only vacation.

He had met Condor Figg. The first winter he learned the hard way that the truck he had bought was best as a summer truck. It skidded and slewed in the lightest snow. The inevitable happened, and while he was trying to call a tow truck on his cell phone, damning the hundreds of Wyoming dead spots that made smoke signals more practical than cell phones, a big flatbed truck carrying a thousand-pound roll of hay pulled up.

"Got a chain?" yelled the driver, a big chunky man wearing a T-shirt despite the cold and snow. He had a curly black beard and eyes as narrow and darting as two fingerling trout.

"No," said Mitchell, and before his mouth closed the man was out of the truck and dragging a heavy chain with hook ends from it. In less than forty seconds he had the chain wrapped around Mitchell's trailer hitch and the truck up on the road, pointed the wrong way.

"My God," said Mitchell, "how can I thank you?" He fumbled for money, looking at the hole in the snow where the truck had been. Beyond the fence thirty or forty pronghorn grazed with cool detachment. He rushed on, his voice fast out of his throat. "My name's Mitchell Fair. We live in Star Lily Ranch." And he held out a twenty-dollar bill.

The man looked at him with hatred. "Yeah. I know. Keep your money. Where your house sets is where my folks had a stock tank. When old Dean Peraine had that truck you bought off a him he run it ever weather for damn near ten years. Had some weight to her. Never went off the road unless he wanted to." He jumped in the big truck, stood on the gas, and was gone in a blast of blue smoke. But Mitchell put four hundred pounds of sandbags in the bed of his truck and his winter driving skills improved. He stayed on the road.

There was another old woman in Swift Fox - Mrs. Conkle. She was also a rancher's widow but lived in a decrepit trailer with a yellow stucco exterior. Over the years wind-driven dirty had discolored the structure as the stucco cracked and buckled into a leprous mass. Sometimes when the Fairs drove past they saw the old woman outside, struggling to hang some wet grey garments on a drooping clothesline.

"That old thing," said Eugenie. "You have to wonder how somebody gets to that state."

Mitchell, who talked with local people more than she did, had heard a tale of hard luck and swindle.

The day the Fairs left Swift Fox on their journey to Maine they had passed Mrs. Conkle's ugly trailer. The yard was full of trucks, and men were coming from the trailer carrying a bureau, a box of canning jars, a rocking chair.

"Ah," said Eugenie. "There must have been a fire. Or maybe the poor old lady died and the relatives are going through her things."

Mitchell didn't think so. As they neared the bottom of the hill, coming toward them was Condor Figg's flatbed loaded with lumber and logs. In the side mirror Mitchell saw him turn in to Mrs. Conkle's yard.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 11, 2008

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?' (Annie Proulx)

c10193.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - excerpt from her sweeping saga in 30 pages 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?'

Another one of Proulx's stories that feels like a novel, 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?' appeared in The New Yorker in 2003. It tells the story of a man named Gilbert Wolfscale, a rancher in Elk Tooth (the fictional town where all of the stories in Bad Dirt take place) who is a rigid workaholic, a rancher to the core - and it is this that messes up his personal life on all fronts. His sons, his wife - all are driven away by his controlling personality. A rancher needs to be controlling, obviously - and Gilbert is highly possessive of his land - almost bordering on the fanatic. But then, of course, there are so many things a rancher cannot control - weather, drought, the world financial markets ... Gilbert cannot really understand things beyond his own perspective. One of his sons is obviously gay. The other son knows it, tries to tell his father, and Gilbert just has no coping skills for something like that. His wife Suzzy has a gambling problem - and eventually goes to jail for embezzlement (if I'm remembering correctly - it's been a long time since I read it). He is ashamed of his wife. Ashamed of his sons. And his old mother lives with him, and she needs a lot of help just getting through the day ... and Gilbert grows more and more rigid in his isolation. He's kind of a son of a bitch, although you feel for him too. The younger generation, personified by his sons, seem way more laidback. He cannot understand that. His sons take a more philosophical view of their mother's misfortunes ... and they don't seem to mind the whole gay thing. Gilbert Wolfscale begins to seem like an old cow put out to pasture. And that he cannot abide.

He was a model of rancher stubbornness, savagely possessive of his property. He did everything in an odd, deliberate way, Gilbert Wolfscale's way, and never retreated once he had taken a position. Neighbors said he was self-reliant, but there was a way they said it that meant something else.

Here's an excerpt. This tells of how Gilbert came to marry Suzzy. Great concise character development.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx - 'What Kind Of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?'

Seven miles north of the Harp on the Stump Hole Road lived May and Jim Codenhead of his generation. He had gone to grade school with May - she was then May Alwen - in the old century during the postwar fifties, the Eisenhower era of interstate highway construction that changed Wyoming forever by letting in the outside. May's brother, Sedley Alwen, a big, good-natured kid with stringy arms, had been Gilbert's best friend. Gilbert courted May for a year, had taken it for granted that Sedley would be his brother-in-law, but she strung him along and then, in a sudden move on Christmas Day in 1966, married Jim Codenhead. Jim was then nothing more than an illiterate Montana hand working on the Alwen place. May taught him to read until he could fumble through the newspaper.

"That's the shits, man," said Sedley sympathetically and took Gilbert on a two-day drunk that was as much a salute to his draft notice as balm for Gilbert's disappointment.

The marriage wasn't unprecedented. For those who took the long view and had patience, it was the classic route for a lowly cowhand to own his own spread - marry the rancher's daughter. In retaliation Gilbert went to a New Year's dance, found Suzzy New, and in ten days pressured her into a fast marriage.

Suzzy New was slender and small-boned, something French about her child-size wrists, a contrast to Gilbert, six foot four, bullnecked with heavy shoulders. She was nimble-fingered and a talented embroiderer. In the flush of their first months together Gilbert bragged that she was so handy she could make a pair of chaps for a hummingbird. She was quiet, disliked arguments and shouting. She held herself tensely and had a way of retreating into her thoughts. She believed herself to be a very private person. She slept badly, sensitive to the slightest abnormal sound - the creak of an attic timber, the rising wind, a raccoon forcing its way through the skirting of the house and under the kitchen floorboards. She had let herself be bullied into marrying Gilbert, and within days of the ruinous act bitterly regretted it.

All her life she had heard and felt the Wyoming wind and took it for granted. There had even been a day when she was a young girl standing by the road waiting for the school bus when a spring wind, fresh and warm and perfumed with pine resin, had caused a bolt of wild happiness to surge through her, its liveliness promising glinting chances. She had loved the wind that day. But out at the ranch it was different and she became aware of moving air's erratic, inimical character. The house lay directly in line with a gap in the encircling hills to the northwest, and through this notch the prevailing wind poured, falling on the house with ferocity. The house shuddered as the wind punched it, slid along its sides like a released torrent from a broken dam. Week after week in winter it sank and rose, attacked and feinted. When she put her head down and went out to the truck, it yanked at her clothing, shot up her sleeves, whisked her hair into raveled fright wigs. Gilbert seemed not to notice, but then, she thought, he probably regarded it as his wind, and no doubt took pleasure in such a powerful possession.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 10, 2008

The Books: "Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" - 'The Trickle-Down Effect' (Annie Proulx)

c10193.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2by Annie Proulx

Anything coming after Close Range was going to be a disappointment - especially since Proulx explicitly connected them by calling this short story collection "Wyoming Stories 2". However, I'm such a diehard fan that when I heard that she has a third short story collection coming out this fall, I think - and I heard it's "Wyoming Stories 3" I got so excited I could barely count the days until it came out. So you see how it is. Proulx lives in Wyoming, she obviously has a lot to say about it. And each of the collections (so far) has its own feel. None of the stories in Bad Dirt would fit in in Close Range and vice versa. The setting is the same, but it's almost like Proulx is using two different languages in the two books. Close Range reflects the size of Wyoming - the scope of sky and plain and mountain that is so startling when you go there. It's beautiful, sure, but Proulx isn't interested in the beauty. She is interested in what such scope does to human beings. She is interested in the culture of Wyoming - brought about for all different reasons - every state has its own culture, its own identity ... That's what she delved into in Close Range - the people of grit and hardiness, but also the close-mindedness and rigidity that often comes with such grit. But there's the flipside - in such a landscape, with such a history - these are pioneer people - rigidity is often a necessary quality, so it's difficult to judge or stand back from the people, cluck-clucking at them. She's inside. She can be a merciless writer, but I never feel that she is unfair. Life can be unfair, but I don't feel her cackling behind the scenes, laughing at what she is putting her own characters through. I hate that kind of writing. Close Range has a kind of majesterial desolation to it that seriously makes it a short story collection worthy to be placed alongside the great short story collections of all time. It is not just a collection of someone's random work - there is a thruline, a theme, a keening chord of loneliness running through the whole thing. It takes your breath away.

So Bad Dirt was quite a jolt. All the stories take place in one town - Elk Tooth - in Wyoming, but it's a different Wyoming. A wackier Wyoming. It borders on the supernatural at times. There's almost a slapstick feel to some of the action. The characters are living their lives, but you don't get that telescopic feeling of universality like you did in Close Range. These people in Bad Dirt are eccentric, and you don't really worry about them too much. They all seem like they are going to be fine. I think I ws looking for Close Range in Bad Dirt - so it was rather a disappointment, although many of the stories - standing on their own - are just great. Time magazine said it best, in the quote excerpted on the back cover:

Annie Proulx renews the Western tradition of the short story as the tall tale ... [She] does a matchless job of summing up the human comedy of the modern West.

Very insightful, I think. These are "tall tales". The first story is called 'Hell Hole' and it tells of a guy who inadvertently discovers a place in the ground in the woods that occasionally opens up- showing a dark hot red tunnel of fire and lava within - and swallows people whole, the ground closing up behind them. So he takes his various enemies out there, and asks them to please, just jump up and down on that bit of earth - just to humor him - and whoosh - the ground opens up and swallows the person whole, leaving nary a trace behind. Proulx stays on the ground-level with these people, for the most part ... not catapulting herself back up and into the ether, looking down on them from above ... which is why Close Range is such a devastating read. You cannot separate yourself from any of those people, even if your life has nothing in common with theirs. She is talking about the human family. But Bad Dirt feels like gossip (not that that's a bad thing - just way different from Close Range). Each story feels like something someone would tell you at a bar one night, if you're just driving through Elk Tooth and know nothing about the inhabitants or the history of the place. "So let me tell you about the time Creel Zmundzinski found the fiery entrance to hell out in the woods over there ..." Every town has its tall tales.

Critics were not kind to Bad Dirt, although because she's Annie Proulx - she was cut a ton of slack. It's hard to 'get over' Close Range. It really is. You keep looking for "Brokeback Mountain" (excerpt here) or "The Mud Below" (excerpt here) in Bad Dirt ... but you don't find them.

'The Trickle-Down Effect' is the story of one of Annie Proulx's aimless loser protagonists - Deb Sipple, a guy who goes job to job, who has two crazy ex-wives behind him, and who is basically an alcoholic. He works to keep up with paying off his bar tabs. That's all he wants out of life. In 'The Trickle-Down Effect' he gets a job transporting bales of hay from Wisconsin and Minnesota to a "lady rancher" in Elk Tooth named Fiesta Punch. (I adore that name). Fiesta Punch is nobody's fool, a tough dame, who knows Deb Sipple is kind of a loser - but trusts him to do this job for her.

The last image of this story - and the way Proulx writes it - is almost laugh-out-loud funny - even though you gasp at what Deb Sipple has done and what a disaster it is (not just for him but for the entire county). He sure is made to pay for his sins, and then some. I wouldn't dream of giving it away - it's too good an ending ... but anyway, here's an excerpt - where we meet Deb and we meet Fiesta.

The stories in Bad Dirt stay on the surface. We get the details of life, but we no longer feel that we are on the inside.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2by Annie Proulx - 'The Trickle-Down Effect'

Deb's only asset was his flatbed truck. Most of what little money he made with occasional hauling funneled straight into Elk Tooth's three bars, what bartender Amanda Gribb called the Wyoming trickle down effect. He would run up a big tab at the Pee Wee, and when Amanda leaned on him he switched to the Silvertip and the Pee Wee saw him not. When the Silvertip debt began to be mentioned he favored Muddy's Hole and dropped hints that he was looking for a job or two. Everyone understood that he wasn't interested in a real job but in a few days' work. Sooner or later something came up, and when he collected he'd hit the Pee Wee, pay off his tab, and start a new one. So went the cycle of Deb Sipple's years measured in bar bills and small work.

Wyoming had been dry as a quart of sand for three years and Elk Tooth was in the heart of the drought disaster zone. Those ranchers who had held on to their herds hoping for rain were caught like mice. As the summer drew to its stove-lid end, the most precious commodity to those in the cow business was hay, and the prices demanded for it matched the prices for rubies. Ranchers spent hours on the telephone and searching the Internet for reasonably priced hay. No flimsy or wild rumor could be ignored. If a rancher heard of hay up in Saskatchewan that a seller described simply as "not moldy" she'd try for it.

Most of the desperate ranchers were women, for in Elk Tooth lady ranchers abound, some who had stepped into ownership when a husband rancher died, some the mature daughters of men who had sired no male heirs, some ex-CEOs who had tossed up everything and headed for the high country, as close to Jackson as they could get.

One of the ranchers was Fiesta Punch, a good horsewoman, but rough on the hired help. She ran Red Cheerios, a weird brand of exotics with white rings around their eyes her grandfather had bred up, but this summer their range was so badly gnawed it resembled the surface of an antique billiard table in an attic heavily populated by moths. There was no point in selling. The market was glutted and prices lower than breakeven. And she wanted to hold on to what was probably the only herd of Red Cheerios in existence. She had to get her hands on enough hay to carry them through the fall and winter. She owed that much to family heritage.

The double trouble with scarce hay was that in addition to paying through the nose for the stuff, when she finally located some, she would have to face fearsome transport charges. The only decent hay grew in distant parts, and hay transporters knew a penned turkey when they saw one. Hauling the hay from Farmer X to Rancher Z could double the cost of the precious bales. Fiesta Punch was in a position to lose her shirt. On the pan of the scale Deb Sipple, with his big flatbed truck, could almost guarantee himself several years of elbow security at the Pee Wee.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 9, 2008

The Books: "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" - 'Brokeback Mountain' (Annie Proulx)

51SF97BJN3L.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Brokeback Mountain'.

First published in The New Yorker in 1997, 'Brokeback Mountain' of course went on to be her most famous short story ever, due to the movie and the brou-haha around the movie (which I loved). I was nervous to see the movie, because I had originally read the story in The New Yorker (any time I see Annie Proulx's name ANYwhere, I'll read it ... I'd read her grocery list) and it made me cry. On the subway. A lot of her stories have that sucker-punch feel to them, but this one even more so. Annie Proulx often creates characters who are not all that likable, but you end up loving them in spite of yourself. But in 'Brokeback Mountain', you just love these two men. You love them. So I had apprehensions about the film, although the fact that Ang Lee was directing soothed me somewhat. Jake Gyllenhall is not at ALL the "Jack" in the story - and both actors have better teeth than either of these guys ever would - but I understand how Hollywood works. And I was astonished when I saw the film. First of all, the adaptation was amazing. Word for word it's the story. Very little is added. Which is amazing because the story is only 30 pages long. Annie Proulx has said that 'Brokeback Mountain' took her as long to write as a novel. It feels like a novel (most of her short stories do). So the movie didn't need to "flesh out" the story, they filmed what was on the page. As I watched the film, I felt that odd feeling of proprietary pride and joy ... because the story meant so much to me ... within 10 minutes of the film, I realized: "Yup. They're doing it." Annie Proulx was interviewed by The Advocate and she said, in regards to the two actors playing Ennis and Jack::

I thought they were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist...wasn't the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhaal's sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge. The scenes he's in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable.

I agree. I loved her comment on why the story took her so long to write. She almost talks like an actress here:

I had to imagine my way into the minds of two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men, and that takes some doing if you happen to be an elderly female person. I spent a great deal of time thinking about each character and the balance of the story, working it out, trying to do it in a fair kind of way.

That's one of Annie Proulx's greatest gifts: her ability to imagine herself into other people's lives and psyches. I've read reviews written by men who say, to paraphrase, "She totally understands men." She writes about men with respect, love, and understanding. They're not always good, they're not heroic, they're not even all that nice ... but she is able to slip inside the skin ... and be them for a while. You forget it's a woman writing it. I wish more male writers could do the same thing when they write female characters. I suppose it's a rare trait in a writer anyway.

'Brokeback Mountain' tells the story of two down-and-out cowboys - Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist. They are job to job kind of guys. Both of them weren't really brought up - their childhoods were chaotic, quick, and violent. Jack dreams of being a rodeo cowboy. Ennis ... well, who knows what Ennis dreams of. Ennis Del Mar made an indelible impression on me years ago when I first read the story. He is why I cried on the subway. We will never know who Ennis is, and the pain Ennis has experienced ... he can barely be with it himself. The story ends with him in his windy trailer, staring at the postcard of Brokeback Mountain, holding Jack Twist's shirt and saying, with tears in his eyes, "Jack, I swear ---"

You swear what? What were you going to say? He doesn't finish the thought. He can't. Ennis Del Mar is a man of vague and deep yearnings, but with the grit to bear up under a life that wants none of that from him. Jack Twist is more of the restless dreamer, the one who wants to talk about things ... and I suppose that Ennis Del Mar speaks more with Jack Twist than he speaks with anyone else in his life. (Let me just say that Heath Ledger is extraordinary in the part. I loved Jake too - but that movie is Ledger's movie, rest in peace).

The two men get a job watching over a herd of sheep on Brokeback Mountain. They'll be up there for the whole summer - one minding the camp, the other watching over the sheep. One cold night, they share the tent, and Jack pushes the envelope. He's the one. Later in the story, we learn that Jack has been going down to Mexico on the weekends ... a place notorious (to Ennis) for the fact that men can have sex with men, in alleys, wherever. That's where you go to have a little anonymous sex. So Jack is more tormented, in the end, by this "thing" (that's what they call it) in him. He gets married, he has kids, so does Ennis. But Ennis is like an animal. Meaning - an animal suffers in mute silence. An animal bears up. Like D.H. Lawrence's poem "Self-Pity":

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Jack Twist feels sorry for himself. That's where the rage comes from at the end. He and Ennis, after their first summer, go years without seeing each other. Until they finally get into a groove, and go on hunting and fishing trips about once a year - in isolated places - so that they can make love and do their thing and not be bothered. Ennis looks forward to these trips. It is the only escape he has in his miserable trapped life. But to Jack, they are everything. When Ennis can't make it, because of work or obligations, Jack flips out. It's unbearable.

Whatever it is in Ennis that makes him bear the unbearable, it makes him one of the most memorable characters in fiction I've ever encountered.

It's kind of like the old saying from acting teachers - If you cry, the audience will not. If you try not to cry, you'll be wiping the audience up off the floor.

Ennis does not express his sadness. And so we, the reader, the audience, ache. I can feel Jack's desperation, and I ache for him, too ... He is a reckless man, willing to take enormous risks to satisfy this "thing" in him ... Ennis just bites the bullet, and trudges through the days, knowing and accepting that he will only truly come to life once a year.

The story is magnificent, and I just re-read it now and am blown away all over again by how much she gets in in 30 pages. These guys live. The story spans 25 years of life. I don't know how she does it - but the story puts you through the wringer. Every time.

The following excerpt is my favorite part of the story. And (again, with me being all proprietary, etc.) I was so glad to see that they included it in the film ... and it's just as I imagined it. It's a quiet moment, a snagged glimpse ... And so often in life, isn't it the smallest things we remember from our love affairs? Not the big moments, or the "firsts", but small moments. Jack and Ennis have a hunger for one another, for sex with one another ... but this is a moment of love. Again, it's the kind of story where the word "love" is never used, never would be used ... but maybe it doesn't need to be used. At some point, it becomes redundant.

EXCERPT FROM Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'Brokeback Mountain'.

What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.

They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words "see you tomorrow," and the horse's shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing married it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 8, 2008

The Books: "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" - 'A Lonely Coast' (Annie Proulx)

51SF97BJN3L.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'A Lonely Coast'.

A depressing story all-around. With a couple of rarities in terms of Proulx's other work: It's a first-person narrative, and it's also mainly about women. The narrator is a woman, and the subject matter of the story is straight-up single-girl romance, albeit with a couple of black eyes, and kids in detention halls, and loneliness that hollows you out. The narrator is the observer of events - she is not the center of the story. Josanna Skiles is a single woman in her mid to late 30s, living in the wilds of Wyoming, trying to get by. She's a cook at a bar (the same bar where the narrator bartends). She goes out with her girlfriends for "girls nights out" - but they mainly involve getting wasted, whipping off their shirts as they dance on bars, and then humping some dude in his truck in the parking lot. You know. It's bleak. Especially because there is a yearning for something more. You're not going to find your mate like that ... but in the particular world that Annie Proulx describes, that's the only option really. Josanna meets a guy through a personal ad - his name is Elk Nelson, and the narrator can tell he's bad news from the second she lays eyes on him. He exudes hatred of women - not in a passive-aggressive "Mommy was mean to me" way ... but open active hostility, which makes him chuckle. The fact that Josanna is into him is proof that women are pieces of shit. It's that kind of thing. He's malevolent. Proulx just nails that kind of guy. I've met guys like that. The best thing to do is to just get the hell out of his way. Do not let that toxic energy anywhere near you. But Josanna is lonely. She's hot for him, too. She sees what she wants to see. The narrator writes:

When you are bone tired of being alone, when all you want is someone to pull you close and say it's all right, all right now, and you get one like Elk Nelson you've got to see you've licked the bottom out of the dish.

Unexpected choice of words. Indelible. Mean, blunt. I just love Proulx's stuff.

The world of romance Proulx describes in 'A Lonely Coast' is hopeless, awful, there's no way out. Especially if you're pushing 40 and a woman and alone. You get glimpses of the desolation - but Josanna is running so fast, and living so wild - that she never sits still for a moment, and realize what a bad situation she is in. Not that there's any solution. There is no solution.

Loneliness hollows you out. And if you have enough loneliness, it can damage you forever. Your judgment, your choices, how you look at the world ... Don't ever let anyone try to convince you that damage like that is irreversible. It's a damn lie.

So the collision of Josanna and Elk has a sense of the inevitable about it. A necessary meeting of two unfit people ... Josanna's energy at this point will only attract a horrible person like Elk, but she can't see that.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'A Lonely Coast'.

I tended bar on the weekends at the Gold Buckle and watched the fire take hold of her. She would smile at what he said, listen and lean, light his damn cigarette, examine his hands for cuts - he had a couple of weeks' work fencing at the 5 Bar. She'd touch his face, smooth a wrinkle in his shirt and he'd say, quit off pawin me. They sat for hours at the Buckle seesawing over whether or not he'd made a pass at some woman, until he got fed up enough to walk out. He seemed to be goading her, seeing how far he could shove before she hit the wall. I wondered when she'd get the message that she wasn't worth shit to him.

August was hot and drouthy, a hell of grasshoppers and dried-up creeks. They said this part of the state was a disaster area. I heard that said before any grasshoppers came. The Saturday night was close, air as thick as in a closet with the winter coats. It was rodeo night and that brings them in. The bar filled up early, starting with ranch hands around three in the afternoon still in their sweaty shirts, red faces mottled with heat and dirt, crowding out most of the wrinkle-hour boys, the old-timers who started their drinking in the morning. Palma was there a little after five, alone, fresh and high-colored, wearing a cinnamon red satin blouse that shined with every move she made. Her arms were loaded with silver bracelets, one metal ring on another clinking and shifting. By five-thirty the bar was packed and hot, bodies touching, some fools trying to dance - country girls playing their only card, grinding against the boys - people squeezed eight to a booth meant for four, six deep at the bar, men hat to hat. There were three of us working, me and Zeeks and Justin, and as fast as we went we couldn't keep up. They were pouring the drinks down. Everybody was shouting. Outside the sky was green-black and trucks driving down the street had their headlights on, dimmed by constant lightning flashes. The electricity went off for about fifteen seconds, the bar black as a cave, the jukebox dying worrr, and a huge, amorous, drunken and delighted moan coming up from the crowd that changed to cussing when the light flickered back on.

Elk Nelson came in, black shirt and silver belly hat. He leaned over the bar, hooked his finger in the waistband of my jeans and yanked me to him.

"Josanna in yet?"

I pulled back, shook my head.

"Good. Let's get in the corner then and hump."

I got him a beer.

Ash Weeter stood next to Elk. Weeter was a local rancher who wouldn't let his wife set foot in a bar, I don't know why. The jokers said he was probably worried she'd get killed in a poolroom fight. He was talking about a horse sale coming up in Thermopolis. Well, he didn't own a ranch, he managed one for some rich people in Pennsylvania, and I heard it that half the cows he ran on their grass was his. What they didn't know didn't hurt them.

"Have another beer, Ash," Elk said in a good-buddy voice.

"Nah, I'm goin home, take a shit and go to bed." No expression on that big shiny face. He didn't like Elk.

Palma's voice cut through a lull, Elk looked up, saw her at the end of the bar, beckoning.

"See you," said Ash Weeter to no one, pulling his hat down and ducking out.

Elk held his cigarette high above his head as he got through the crowd. I cracked a fresh Coors, brought it down to him, heard him say something about Casper.

That was the thing, they'd start out at the Buckle then drive down to Casper, five or six of them, a hundred and thirty miles, sit in some other bar probably not much different than the Buckle, drink until they were wrecked, then hit a motel. Elk told it on Josanna that she got so warped out one time she pissed the motel bed and he'd had to drag her into the shower and turn it on cold, throw the sheets in on top of her. Living life to its fullest. He'd tell that like it was the best story in the world and every time he did it she'd put her head down, wait it out with a tight little smile. I thought of my last night back on the ranch with Riley, the silence oppressive and smothering, the clock ticking like blows of an axe, the maddening trickle of water into the stained bathtub from the leaky faucet. He wouldn't fix it, just wouldn't. Couldn't fix the other thing and made no effort in that direction. I suppose he thought I'd just hang and rattle.


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 7, 2008

The Books: "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" - 'The Bunchgrass Edge Of the World' (Annie Proulx)

51SF97BJN3L.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - excerpt from the story 'The Bunchgrass Edge of the World'.

Like 'People In Hell Just Want A Drink Of Water', another story in the collection (excerpt here), 'The Bunchgrass Edge Of the World' is the story of a family - How do you get a "saga" into 25 pages? I don't know, but Annie Proulx does. In quick brush strokes, she creates an entire family. The Touhey family moved to Wyoming during the Depression, and have been ranching there ever since. There's Old Red, the patriarch, born in 1902 - his son Aladdin, Aladdin's wife - and their kids, all grown-up now. Shan and Tyler, two of Aladdin's kids, have taken off for Vegas - and the last child, Ottaline, stays. She's an odd one. The family is embarrassed by her. She is not a social being. She is obese. She shuffles along, doing the work on the ranch, and it's pretty obvious that she will never marry. Shan, the other daughter, moved to Vegas and became a bodybuilder - she sends home pictures of her in a bikini, flexing her muscles. It is as though she has moved to Jupiter. The plains and mountains of Wyoming have nothing to do with who Shan has become. Ottaline stares at the pictures. Old Red is still alive, and feisty - in his 90s - but he can feel himself being pushed aside in his own home. The tragedy of old age. But this is really Ottaline's story. Ottaline takes over the narrative, which begins as a group tale ... but seriously, she dominates.

I can't describe it without making it sound "cute", or imposed - you'll just have to read the story yourself. Ottaline is a hard worker. She does not question her lot in life (although looking at the pictures of her sister makes her think that maybe she should lose weight? Maybe?) - just puts her nose to the grindstone. There's a gravel pit on the ranch, with an enormous tractor sitting there, idle ... and one day Ottaline goes and sits in it, to rest. It becomes a daily thing for her. Just a half hour or so, sitting in the tractor. And one day, as she approaches the gravel pit, the tractor starts talking to her. Confused at first, Ottaline does not know where the voice is coming from. The voice is grumpy, disgruntled, and yet not cruel. It's a voice full of complaints - rust, peeling paint, etc. - but somehow the tractor has chosen Ottaline as his confidante. Ottaline starts to talk back. And she and the tractor soon become best friends. See? Hard to "describe" ... Ottaline sits in the tractor and the tractor tells her all of its problems, and at the same time - really for the first time in her life - she is noticed. She is chosen. And so something begins to stir in the sludgy quiet heart of Ottaline. Something like life. Something like hope.

This is Annie Proulx territory. She covered it brilliantly in The Shipping News, with Quoyle ... and Ottaline, in her way, wearing muu muus and muddy boots, lying in bed listening to cell phone conversations on her scanner - falling into other people's lives ... is a counterpoint to Quoyle.

There's so much in this story - it's a novel in miniature - but I'll pick one of the excerpts about Ottaline.

EXCERPT FROM Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - 'The Bunchgrass Edge of the World'.

What was there for Ottaline when the work slacked off? Stare at indigo slants of hail forty miles east, regard the tumbled clouds like mechanics' rags, count out he loves me, he loves me not, in nervous lightning crooked as branchwood through all quarters of the sky.

That summer the horses were always wet. It rained uncommonly, the southwest monsoon sweeping in. The shining horses stood out on the prairie, withers streaming, manes dripping, and one would suddenly start off, a fan of droplets coming off its shoulders like a cape. Ottaline and Aladdin wore slickers from morning coffee to goodnight yawn. Wauneta watched the television weather while she ironed shirts and sheets. Old Red called it drip and dribble, stayed in his room chewing tobacco, reading Zane Grey in large-print editions, his curved fingernail creasing the page under every line. On the Fourth of July they sat together on the porch watching a distant storm, pretending the thick, ruddy legs of lightning and thunder were fireworks.

Ottaline had seen most of what there was to see around her with nothing new in sight. Brilliant events burst open not in the future but in the imagination. The room she had shared with Shan was a room within a room. In the unshaded moonlight her eyes shone oily white. The calfskin rug on the floor seemed to move, to hunch and crawl a fraction of an inch at a time. The dark frame of the mirror sank into the wall, a rectangular trench. From her bed she saw the moon-bleached grain elevator and behind it immeasurable range flecked with cows like small black seeds. She was no one but Ottaline in that peppery, disturbing light that made her want everything there was to want. The raw loneliness then, the silences of the day, the longing flesh led her to press her mouth into the crook of her own hot elbow. She pinched and pummeled her fat flanks, rolled on the bed, twisted, went to the window a dozen times, heels striking the floor until old Red in his pantry below called out, "What is it? You got a sailor up there?"

Her only chance seemed the semiliterate, off-again, on-again hired man, Hal Bloom, tall legs like chopsticks, T-shirt emblazoned Aggressive by Nature, Cowboy by Choice. He worked for Aladdin in short bursts between rodeo roping, could not often be pried off his horse (for he cherished a vision of himself as an 1870s cowboy just in from an Oregon cattle drive). Ottaline had gone with him down into the willow a dozen times, to the damp soil and nests of stinging nettles, where he pulled a pale condom over his small, hard penis and crawled silently into her. His warm neck smelled of soap and horse.

But then, when Ottaline began working on the ranch for hard money, Aladdin told Hal Bloom to go spin his rope.

"Yeah, well, it's too shit-fire long a haul out here anyways," Bloom said, and was gone. That was that.

Ottaline was dissolving. It was too far to anything. Someone had to come for her. There was not even the solace of television, for old Red dominated the controls, always choosing Westerns, calling out to the film horses in his broken voice, "Buck him off, kick his brains out!"

Ottaline went up to her room, listened to cell-phone conversations on the scanner.

"The balance on account number seven three five five nine is minus two hundred and oh four ...."

"Yes, I can see that, maybe. Are you drinkin beer already?" "Ha-ha. Yes."

"I guess maybe you didn't notice." "It wasn't all smashed like that, all soft. I took it out of the bag and it was - you goin a carve it?" "Not that one. It's nasty."

"Hey, is it rainin there yet?"

"Is it rainin yet?" she repeated. It was raining everywhere and people were alive in it except in the Red Wall country.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 6, 2008

The Books: "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" - 'People In Hell Just Want A Drink Of Water' (Annie Proulx)

51SF97BJN3L.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx.

'People In Hell Just Want A Drink Of Water' tells the story of two ranching families - the Dunmires and the Tinsleys - going back in generations, to the early days of the 20th century. Drought, flood, and some man-made horrors (like Mrs. Tinsley throwing her infant baby into a river - who knows why - she seems a little touched in the head - the baby was swept away, never to be heard of again) - Proulx also describes the development of the character of a particular family, and how that happens. The Dunmires are survivors - and saw the worst of the worst in their lives - locust plagues, drought, all that ... they are ranchers, they work livestock, and Proulx writes:

The country, its horses and cattle, suited them and if they loved anything that was it, and they ran that country because there were eight of them and Ice and they were of one mind. But there builds up in men who work livestock in big territory a kind of contempt for those who do not. The Dunmires measured beauty and religion by what they rode through every day, and this encouraged their disdain for art and intellect. There was a somber arrogance about them, a rigidity of attitude that said theirs was the only way.

The Dunmires - obviously righteous people (in the good and bad sense of the word) - and the Tinsleys who, uhm, are a little bit "off".

Eventually, through the generations, we get to the present one. Ras Tinsley, one of the Tinsley boys, goes off - leaves Wyoming - and disappears. Until they get a postcard from some preacher in Schenectady saying that there is a horribly injured person in the hospital there, who has been in a coma for weeks (I think - can't remember) - or at least couldn't speak or identify himself ... but finally regained enough speech that he told him his name and that he hailed from Laramie. He had been in a terrible car wreck. The minister pays his train fare back to Wyoming - and Ras returns. He is now a wreck of a man, with one leering gleaming eye - and he's obviously been brain damaged. He speaks in monosyllabic grunts. He goes out for horse rides and doesn't come back for days. There's a bad feeling about him. Eventually, a neighbor complains: Ras exposed his penis to his wife. It becomes a common complaint. People are pissed. The Tinsleys try to handle the situation, they reprimand Ras - who is now a 25 year old man - telling him he can't go around exposing himself like that, people don't "'preciate the show" ... and it is unclear whether Ras is conscious of what he is doing or not. It seems like he is. And it seems like there is a deep rage in him towards his mother (the woman who tossed her own baby into a rushing river, for no apparent reason whatsoever) ... She's a fanatic, she cleans her house like a maniac, she can't stand sex - finds marriage itself disgusting ... and when Ras left, for the first time, he never wrote. He never looked back - you get the sense that he was running as far away as he could from his stifling family. And now, injured and helpless, he is back in their midst ... and even though he doesn't say anything, Proulx has a way of suggesting the deep rage and trapped feeling he must have. Anyway, things finally get so bad that a group of men attack Ras and castrate him. He is so beyond language and normal human behavior that he lies in bed at home, sick, and doesn't say what happened to him. His is the mute suffering of an animal.

The story is a mini-novel, and has elements of East of Eden in it, with its stories of the two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - and how their development runs alongside and is important to the development of America. They are intertwined. Without families like the Dunmires and the Tinsleys, America wouldn't have prospered. But thank God we, as a nation, are not ONLY made up of the Dunmires and the Tinsleys (see Proulx's paragraph above) because that's some, well, fucked up shit, frankly.

But look (in the excerpt below) at how Annie Proulx begins this horrifying story, with its violence and blood and plagues and its cast of specific characters. Amazing. Like I said in my post about The Shipping News, Proulx is unafraid of going for the big and grand gesture. She does it sparingly, but when she goes for it? Look out!

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - 'People In Hell Just Want A Drink Of Water'

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country - indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky - provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.

Dangerous and indifferent ground: against its fixed mass the tragedies of people count for nothing although the signs of misadventure are everywhere. No past slaughter nor cruelty, no accident nor murder that occurs on the little ranches or at the isolate crossroads with their bare populations of three or seventeen, or in the reckless trailer courts of mining towns delays the flood of morning light. Fences, cattle, roads, refineries, mines, gravel pits, traffic lights, graffiti'd celebration of athletic victory on bridge overpass, crust of blood on the Wal-Mart loading dock, the sun-faded wreaths of plastic flowers marking death on the highway are ephemeral. Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that.


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 5, 2008

The Books: "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" - 'The Mud Below' (Annie Proulx)

51SF97BJN3L.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx.

The stories in Close Range show a world both transcendent and brutal. There's not a lot of love here ... or what there is, is thwarted and twisted. People are quiet or loud, but whatever their externals - they don't chat about their feelings. However, the feelings run deep. The plains and mountains and hot springs of Wyoming take on an almost unbearably lonely aspect - beautiful, inspiring ... yet it makes men feel small. These are present-day stories, but they often do not feel so. This is a world with a pre-modern code. Manly stoic men, fierce pioneer-spirit women (or trashy whores) - and a bit of chaos. Proulx writes about those on the fringes of society, those who "get by", or who don't register on any radar screen of "accomplishment". They aren't heroic - unless you count suffering in silence. In the same way that she created an entire community of cranky crackpots The Shipping News - and you find yourself loving them with the white-hot heat of a million suns ... the people in Close Range are not easily lovable, they're prickly, they're sometimes violent, they don't let you in easily, they don't analyze themselves and say, "Okay, maybe I'm over-reacting ..." ... and yet you love them dearly. You ache for them.

A Barnes & Noble review says:

Indeed, the defining characteristic of Proulx's Wyoming seems to be the sparseness of its population; according to one rancher, the state's unofficial motto is "take care a you own damn self." The landscape of these stories -- topographical and emotional -- is marked by vast barren stretches, punctuated by the dim twinkle of a solitary ranch or by the fading memory of a one-night stand. These Wyos have been trained to bat away loneliness like a gnat, to accept the pain of isolation as natural, and to turn to the quotidian demands of rural and ranch work for consolation. As one character remarks, "There's no lonesome, you work hard enough."

In the story 'The Mud Below' (another award-winner) we meet Diamond Felts, a small-time rodeo rider with a painful family past behind him. His mother was adamant against him going into the rodeo, but he did it anyway. And now he travels around to little dusty towns, and takes his chances on massive heaving bulls. He feels most alive and most himself when he is riding. But there's an aimlessness to his life, a loneliness - but he doesn't have the wherewithal to do anything "normal" about it. He has violent sexual interactions with random women in the back of his truck, there's a casual disregard for his emotional life (and I guess, his physical too - he takes enormous risks with his job) ... and the ties to his past are cut. But they keep coming back to haunt him.

Another masterpiece of a story. It's eloquent about loneliness, and the pleasure of the physical. Wyoming comes across as a vast and empty place, punctuated by tiny pockets of humanity. It's built to make a man feel tiny, unimportant.

Here's an excerpt. This is when Diamond first got on a bull - after working a day's job at a ranch. It is the moment that Diamond feels his calling.


EXCERPT FROM Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx.

"You want a have some fun?" said Leecil Bewd to Diamond and Wallace. The others were already walking to a small corral some distance away.

"Like what," said Wallace.

Diamond had a flash that there was a woman in the corral.

"Bullridin. Dad's got some good buckin bulls. Our rodeo class come out last month and rode em. Couldn't hardly stay on one of em."

"I'll watch," said Wallace, in his ironic side-of-the-mouth voice.

Diamond considered rodeo classes the last resort of concrete-heads who couldn't figure out how to hold a basketball. He'd taken martial arts and wrestling all the way through until they spiked both courses as frills. "Oh man," he said. "Bulls. I don't guess so."

Leecil Bewd ran ahead to the corral. There was a side pen and in it were three bulls, two of them pawing dirt. At the front of the pen a side-door chute opened into the corral. One of the crotchsnatchers was in the arena, jumping around, ready to play bullfighter and toll a bull away from a tossed rider.

To Diamond the bulls looked murderous and wild, but even the ranch hands had a futile go at riding them. Lovis scraped off on the fence; Leecil's father, bounced down in three seconds, hit the ground on his behind, the kidney belt riding up his chest.

"Try it," said Leecil, mouth bloody from a face-slam, spitting.

"Aw, not me," said Wallace. "I got a life in front of me."

"Yeah," said Diamond. "Yeah, I guess I'll give it a go."

"Atta boy, atta boy," said Como Bewd, and handed him a rosined left glove. "Ever been on a bull?"

"No sir," said Diamond, no boots, no spurs, no chaps, T-shirted and hatless. Leecil's old man told him to hold his free hand up, not to touch the bull or himself with it, keep his shoulders forward and his chin down, hold on with his feet and legs and left hand, above all not to think, and when he got bucked off, no matter what was broke, get up quick and run like hell for the fence. He helped him make the wrap, ease down on the animal, said, shake your face and git out there, and grinning, blood-speckled Lovis opened the chute door, waiting to see the town kid dumped and dive-bombed.

But he stayed on until someone counting eight hit the rail with the length of pipe to signal time. He flew off, landed on his feet, stumbling headlong but not falling, in a run for the rails. He hauled himself up, panting from the exertion and the intense nervy rush. He'd been shot out of the cannon. The shock of the violent motion, the lightning shifts of balance, the feeling of power as though he were the bull and not the rider, even the fright, fulfilled some greedy physical hunger in him he hadn't known was there. The experience had been exhilarating and unbearably personal.

"You know what," said Como Bewd. "You might make a bull-rider."


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 4, 2008

The Books: "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" - 'The Half-Skinned Steer' (Annie Proulx)

51SF97BJN3L.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx.

Oh God, I love this collection of short stories. I read many of them (like "Brokeback Mountain") when they first appeared in The New Yorker - and remembered them vividly (even cut some of them out and saved them). You get used to how most writers sound. You get used to nice language, eloquence, delicate plot development ... but, to me, Annie Proulx stands apart from all that. Her prose feels muscular to me. Emotional, yet in a fierce way. Kind of blunt and primal. She doesn't veer into the sheer apocalyptic ferociousness of Cormac McCarthy - but her sense of the landscape (especially the Western landscape) is just as specific, just as important to her books as Texas and the borderlands are to McCarthy. It's not atmosphere, it's a character. I mean, the collection is called "Wyoming Stories". Wyoming is evoked here in all its guises - bleak, beautiful, wide open, disorienting, calming ... And then I think of Proulx's evocation of Newfoundland in The Shipping News, and that whole landscape - completely different from what's here in Close Range (and also in her second collection of "Wyoming Stories" called Bad Dirt) - and I'm just in awe at her own range. It's all in the specifics. But the words she chooses to describe things ... cannot be said to have anyone's stamp but her own. I'm trying to think of someone to compare her to. There's certainly a Hemingway-ish feel to some of her characters, and how they express themselves. She does not write about verbal people. She does not write about people who ever say the words, "I feel ..." They have no introspection. They are blunt, stoic, and deep. Her writing is more grandiose than Hemingway's, though - I don't know, I find it hard to compare her to anyone. The stories in the collection seem stripped bare of extraneous things ... editing just one word out would unravel the thread. They are tight.

If you haven't read the collection, I obviously highly recommend it - and I also recommend reading it front to back, like you would a novel. At least the first time. I normally don't read short story collections like that - I dip into whatever story grabs me the most from its first paragraph, and then skip around. But with Close Range, I read it beginning to end - and it had a cumulative effect, very important to the feeling of the work as a whole. Bad Dirt, her second collection of "Wyoming Stories" takes an almost slapstick tone, the stories are funny, ridiculous, small slices of life, a bit more absurd. In Close Range we have none of that. It's life stripped to its essentials, by the wind across the plains. It's people up against their dreams for themselves in their youths ... lost now forever ... memories in the wind, the grasses, the sky ... Mortality approaching. All you have to do is get through the rest of your life. Just put your head down and bear it. And so the effect of the whole collection is basically a giant heart-ache. There's no real redemption here. Nothing like that last paragraph of The Shipping News. We're in a different world here. More brutal.

And the people she creates! They leave indelible marks. And their names: Rollo. Mero. Sweets Musgrove. Diamond. Leeland. Roany. Jaxon. Even their names sound like ghost towns.

The first story in the collection is 'The Half-Skinned Steer'. Garrison Keillor chose it for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories (1998) and John Updike chose it as inclusion in 1999's The Best American Short Stories of the Century. In the story we meet Mero, a man in his 80s, who just got a call that his brother, Rollo, has passed away. He hasn't seen his brother in, what, 50 years? Some insanely long time. They grew up on a ranch, rough and tough, with their father and his trashy girlfriend ... and Mero got out of there as quickly as he could. He went to war. He married a couple of times. He became a vegetarian. He got a regular job, not a cowboy-job. He moved far far away from Wyoming, and got into local politics, I think. But the news that his brother died brings back memories - which comes in spurts ... as he drives back to Wyoming for the funeral. By now, the old ranch where he grew up has been turned into a tourist attraction called "Down Home Wyoming" - a kind of faux ranch for tourists. Sad (although life on that ranch was no picnic, and Mero has no nostalgia about it at all. As a matter of fact, his memories of it are almost uniformly full of dread and gloom. There was a "bad luck" feeling to the ranch ... which ended up being played out after he left - with bankruptcy, etc.) It takes Mero 4 days to drive home. He drives in a Cadillac (his customary car). We go back and forth from the past to the present. He's haunted by a memory (although that's not quite right ... that suggests he's been walking around with it all these years. No. It is quite conceivable that Mero has not thought of Tin Head and the half-skinned steer for 60 years - it is just the landscape of Wyoming approaching, the landscape of his long-lost youth ... that brings the memory to the foreground.)

I wouldn't dream of revealing what the actual story is of "the half-skinned steer" - what happened back there that made such a deep scar in everyone - you'll have to find that out yourself. Suffice it to say, it haunts me now, too.

Here's an excerpt.


EXCERPT FROM Close Range : Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx - 'The Half-Skinned Steer'

He was half an hour past Kearney, Nebraska, when the full moon rose, an absurd visage balanced in his rearview mirror, above it a curled wig of a cloud, filamented edges like platinum hairs. He felt his swollen nose, palped his chin, tender from the stun of the air bag. Before he slept that night he swallowed a glass of hot tap water enlivened with whiskey, crawled into the damp bed. He had eaten nothing all day yet his stomach coiled at the thought of road food.

He dreamed that he was in the ranch house but all the furniture had been removed from the rooms and in the yard troops in dirty white uniforms fought. The concussive reports of huge guns were breaking the window glass and forcing the floorboards apart so that he had to walk on the joists and below the disintegrating floors he saw galvanized tubs filled with dark, coagulated fluid.

On Saturday morning, with four hundred miles in front of him, he swallowed a few bits of scorched eggs, potatoes painted with canned salsa verde, a cup of yellow coffee, left not tip, got on the road. The food was not what he wanted. His breakfast habit was two glasses of mineral water, six cloves of garlic, a pear. The sky to the west hulked sullen, behind him smears of tinselly orange shot through with blinding streaks. The thick rim of sun bulged against the horizon.

He crossed the state line, hit Cheyenne for the second time in sixty years. There was neon, traffic and concrete, but he knew the place, a railroad town that had been up and down. That other time he had been painfully hungry, had gone into the restaurant in the Union Pacific station although he was not used to restaurants and ordered a steak, but when the woman brought it and he cut into the meat the blood spread across the white plate and he couldn't help it, he saw the beast, mouth agape in mute brawling, saw the comic aspects of his revulsion as well, a cattleman gone wrong.

Now he parked in front of a phone booth, locked the car although he stood only seven feet away, and telephoned the number Tick's wife had given him. The ruined car had had a phone. Her voice roared out of the earpiece.

We didn't hear so we wondered if you'd changed your mind.

No, he said, I'll be there late this afternoon. I'm in Cheyenne now.

The wind's blowing pretty hard. They're saying it could maybe snow. In the mountains. Her voice sounded doubtful.

I'll keep an eye on it, he said.

He was out of town and running north in a few minutes.

The country poured open on each side, reduced the Cadillac to a finger-snap. Nothing had changed, not a goddamn thing, the empty pale place and its roaring wind, the distant antelope as tiny as mice, landforms shaped true to the past. He felt himself slip back, the calm of eighty-three years sheeted off him like water, replaced by a young man's scalding anger at a fool world and the fools in it. What a damn hard time it had been to hit the road. You don't know what it was like, he told his ex-wives until they said they did know, he'd pounded it into their ears two hundred times, the poor youth on the street holding up a sign asking for work, and the job with the furnace man, yatata yatata ya. Thirty miles out of Cheyenne he saw the first billboard, DOWN UNDER WYOMING, Western Fun the Western Way, over a blown-up photograph of kangaroos hopping through the sagebrush and a blond child grinning in a manic imitation of pleasure. A diagonal banner warned, Open May 31.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 3, 2008

The Books: "The Shipping News" (Annie Proulx)

71QB6T2Y96L.gifNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx.

(Some of my thoughts on this book are already on this blog - I went through some of the posts and pulled some of my own language ... so I am plagiarizing myself, frankly. I give myself permission.)

My experience of The Shipping News was what I call "one of THOSE reading experiences". I can count "THOSE" reading experiences on almost one hand. By that I mean: intensely personal - I take the book not just as a book, but a message that seems directly to me. I feel pointed out by the book. I feel recognized. I feel seen. I think: "How on earth could this author know about what goes on in the deepest recesses of my soul?" It's almost embarrassing, that feeling. You don't want people to know your own pettiness, your own sadness, your own cruelty, your lies. I am different when I finish the book, because of this recognition factor. You can't have "one of THOSE reading experiences" too often. It takes too much out of you.

Other books that were like that for me:

-- Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn (excerpt here)
-- Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving (excerpt here)
-- Atonement, by Ian McEwan (excerpt here)

Atonement was such a devastating book that it still seems radioactive to me. I went to pick it up and flip through it again a while back, glanced at a couple of paragraphs, and thought: "Uhm. No. No need to read this again."

I don't think I will ever put myself through Geek Love again. (However, I don't want to make this sound too bleak and grim. I'm not talking about sad books. I'm talking about books that feel like they were written for me and me alone.) These are books that describe the human condition in such a way that I feel KNOWN. The spotlight shines onto the darker corners. These books slice back any artifice I might hold onto. These books made me look into the abyss. My own abyss. To see my own sham, my own drudgery, my own redemption.

THOSE reading experiences.

The Shipping News was one of THOSE books for me.

There was a good 5 or 6 months in 1994 when it seemed like everyone was reading that book. I saw people on the El train reading it. My entire family read it. Everyone talked about it. My parents kept pestering me: "Have you read it yet? Have you read it yet?" They seemed personally invested in me, specifically, reading The Shipping News. (And now, having read the book, I see why) I remember, to this day, how my dad described the book to me. The characters, what it was about ... Every conversation I had with my parents, the same refrain: "Have you read The Shipping News yet?" Finally, I would just cut to the chase before they even asked: "I'm doing great, I got cast in a show, I'm doing great, and NO, I haven't read The Shipping News yet."

So, of course, I didn't read it. You never do anything just because 5,000 people tell you have to.

I was madly in love with someone in 1994. And he, too, was on the "YOU OF ALL PEOPLE HAVE TO READ THE SHIPPING NEWS." chorus-line. I just rolled my eyes at him. He went on vacation at one point, to Florida - and he came back ... this was when we were in the flirty unexpressed part of the whole thing ... madly in love but not admitting it ... and he said, "I thought about you my entire vacation." "You did?" "Yeah. I sat on the beach and read The Shipping News and I just kept wanting to tell you how much you would love this book. It reminds me of you." "It does?" "Totally!" "Why?" But he never could say why. All he said was, "The lead character is this ... kind of loser guy ... a sad sap ... who has a really big chin ... and he gets a job on a newspaper ... and he starts to see his entire life in terms of headlines ... " That was all he would say. I still couldn't get a line on why this book reminded him of me. Loser guy? Sad sap? Big chin? And ... this to you says SHEILA? You wanna explain that to me??

On the very same day that this man told me "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK", I came home and there was a package in my mailbox from my parents. I opened it up, and there was a dern copy of the book.

It makes me laugh, in retrospect. They were desperate for me to read it. They just knew how I would respond to it, and they could. not. wait. for me to read it on my own.

And I'm not exaggerating ... I got the package on the same day I talked with Love-Man. I laughed out loud when I pulled out The Shipping News, like: "Okay, universe, okay, I GET THE MESSAGE!"

Long story even longer (see this is why this book means so much to me ... it's all wrapped in that year - 1994 - a wacko year if ever there was one):

I still didn't read the damn book though, at that time ... because my life got nuts and kind of awful. Love-Man and I ended up not working out ... and it was a huge disaster with long-term implications. It wrecked my life. And suddenly I couldn't bear to even LOOK at The Shipping News. It seemed to represent him or something. I remember being bummed out, though (in addition to all the other stuff I was bumming on) - thinking: Wow, I'll probably never read that book now.

But I did. A year later. I had moved from Chicago to New York by then. Everything was different, including my zip code. My entire life had changed in 6 months. So I picked up that book.

And never. EVER. wanted it to end.

EVER.

I will never forget my experience reading that book. It shimmers in my memory. I laughed out loud. It gave me searing pain. And at times, I could feel myself not really reading, but searching, searching for clues ... clues as to why Love-Man had thought of me so much when he read it. Maybe it would tell me something about him, maybe it would illuminate for me something about how he felt about me, and how I should interpret the fact that everything was wrecked. The book is about a bunch of weirdos who live in Newfoundland. Why was that book so full of me for him? I will never know now. But I do know that The Shipping News is also so full of him for me - to this day. I mean ... it's about pain, and redemption ... about finding what it is that you do (or are supposed to do), and then doing it like Hercules. It's about thinking that you have a "lot" in life. That you have a certain path, and then ... often with wrenching results ... you go another way. But ... I can't even talk about what that book is about. It's not about what it's about.

The writing is startling. It's a rare rare thing, to come across an original voice. Proulx's voice in that book is original. It's funny, it's biting ... each character has a different and distinct speaking pattern, accent. Everyone has secrets. Things are left unexplained. This is not a book where nothing happens. The plot is out of control. So interesting. You are introduced to a small three-dimensional world, full of weirdos, cranks, curmudgeons, and lonely hermits. And yet ... while they may not be "likable", in any sense, you end up loving them.

My experience, by the end of that book, was painful. It wasn't that anything bad happened. No. It was that it brought up all this weird love in my heart - for these characters, for the Love-Man, for my parents and siblings, for Annie Proulx - love that HURT. Like, you want to clutch your heart and say "Ouch."

The last paragraph of the book is not just amazing - it's transcendent. Transcendent. After spending time with all the crabs and secretive curmudgeons and unpleasant people in the book ... to have Annie Proulx draw back the curtain ... and let the heart flow forth ... in that last paragraph ... It was almost too much for me. So many writers today resist the large message. And it's understandable why - it's really difficult to do well. Cynicism, too, is in style - but the success of Annie Proulx shows that cynicism isn't the only style today (something you might miss in the omnipresent bitching and moaning of the "what has happened to today's society?? Everyone is so cynical" nitwits. Yeah, well, nitwits: I suggest you all widen your reading list a little bit, how's that? Everyone is cynical? Really? Everyone? Huh.) Proulx does not pull her punches. I so admire that. She does not try to hide emotion, or present it subtly, or bury the message in layers of metaphor. Nope. She is unafraid. She comes right out and says it, and she says it so well (that last paragraph!!) that I feel her hand coming out of her prose and grabbing me by the throat.

When I finished the book, how much I wanted to go back in time and talk with the guy I loved (and still loved) about it ... talk about every tiny detail. But the time for that was long long past. I felt a lot of sadness and loss about that.

I'll probably do a couple excerpts, we'll see. I was flipping thru the book this morning, and the prose, once again, just leapt off the page ... I would recognize Annie Proulx's writing anywhere, in a blind copy of something I could probably guess it was her. I couldn't imitate it if I tried - it is completely her own rhythm.

I have to excerpt the opening of the book. Because it has everything I've been talking about on display. Her odd jerky rhythm - she's not big on full sentences - her absolutely specific Proulx-ian imagery (seriously, I can't think of another writer to compare her to) - I mean: "features as bunched as kissed fingertips". That is spectacular. I don't know where she comes up with it - but it's perfect ... and in the beginning, she cuts to the chase of the story immediately. Not just the plot, but the story: Here is what we are going to hear about in the following book. To start a book like that takes balls. She's got balls.

The Shipping News is one of my favorite books of all time. And thank you. Thank you to:
-- parents
-- siblings
-- friends
-- guy I loved
for making sure I read it.

I still read these beginning 3 pages and feel the awe start up in me all over again. Wow.



EXCERPT FROM The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx.

Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.

Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing. He ate prodigiously, liked a ham knuckle, buttered spuds.

His jobs: distributor of vending machine candy, all-night clerk in a convenience store, a third-rate newspaperman. At thirty-six, bereft, brimming with grief and thwarted love, Quoyle steered away to Newfoundland, the rock that had generated his ancestors, a place he had never been nor thought to go.

A watery place. And Quoyle feared water, could not swim. Again and again the father had broken his clenched grip and thrown him into pools, brooks, lakes and surf. Quoyle knew the flavor of brack and waterweed.

From this youngest son's failure to dog-paddle the father saw other failures multiply like an explosion of virulent cells - failure to speak clearly; failure to sit up straight; failure to get up in the morning; failure in attitude; failure in ambition and ability; indeed, in everything. His own failure.

Quoyle shambled, a head taller than any child around him, was soft. He knew it. "Ah, you lout," said the father. But no pygmy himself. And brother Dick, the father's favorite, pretended to throw up when Quoyle came into a room, hissed, "Lardass, Snotface, Ugly Pig, Warthog, Stupid, Stinkbomb, Fart-tub, Greasebag," pummeled and kicked until Quoyle curled, hands over head, sniveling on the linoleum. All stemmed from Quoyle's chief failure, a failure of normal appearance.

A great damp loaf of a body. At six he weighed eighty pounds. At sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh. Head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back. Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face.

Some anomalous gene had fired up at the moment of his begetting as a single spark sometimes leaps from banked coals, had given him a giant's chin. As a child he invented stratagems to deflect stares: a smile, downcast gaze, the right hand darting up to cover the chin.

His earliest sense of self was as a distant figure: there in the foreground was his family; here, at the limit of the far view, was he. Until he was fourteen he cherished the idea that he had been given to the wrong family, that somewhere his real people, saddled with the changeling of the Quoyles, longed for him. Then, foraging in a box of excursion momentoes, he found photographs of his father beside brothers and sisters at a ship's rail. A girl, somewhat apart from the others, looked toward the sea, eyes squinted, as though she could see the port of destination a thousand miles south. Quoyle recognized himself in their hair, their legs and arms. That sly-looking lump in the shrunken sweater, hand at his crotch, his father. On the back, scribbled in blue pencil, "Leaving Home, 1946."

At the university he took courses he couldn't understand, humped back and forth without speaking to anyone, went home for weekends of excoriation. At last he dropped out of school and looked for a job, kept his hand over his chin.

Nothing was clear to lonesome Quoyle. His thoughts churned like the amorphous thing that ancient sailors, drifting into arctic half-light, called the Sea Lung; a heaving sludge of ice under fog where air blurred into water, where liquid was solid, where solids dissolved, where the sky froze and light and dark muddled.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 2, 2008

The Books: "Galatea 2.2" (Richard Powers)

galatea2.2.jpgNext book on my adult fiction shelves:

Galatea 2.2, by Richard Powers. Unlike Goldbug Variations - which I raved about yesterday - I can't really remember much about Galatea 2.2 except that the love story really struck a chord with me. It's poignant, it's bittersweet ... it has that fine beautiful ACHE that I know so well ... Powers writes about it perfectly. I remember where I was in my life when I read this book - a strange surreal time - the summer of 96 ... when Mitchell got his diagnosis and when he got married. I was living on 63rd Street with two other people, neither of whom I knew - I was staying in a room that had a big blanket up as a fourth wall ... no closets, nothing ... it was surreal, to be having such an intense time in my life (like: sobbing myself to sleep intense) and be living with strangers, and to have NO privacy whatsoever. As in: NO DOOR. And for some reason, my memory of Galatea 2.2 is all wrapped up in that summer ... And so that's probably why all I remember of the book is the love story. But I don't even remember the particulars - just the feeling it brought that Powers was expressing my sense of unrequited lost love perfectly.

The book's protagonist is named Richard Powers. He has lived abroad for years, and he has also written four novels (Richard Powers himself had written four novels before Galatea 2.2). Powers has come back to the States to be the artist-in-residence at some huge center for advanced study. He somehow gets involved in a project that has as its goal to create a human brain through computer-based networks. I don't know - synapses firing, computer chips ... something ... The book really becomes about a meditation on life itself (as so many of Powers' books do). What is life? Where is it? Can any of us touch it? Powers is instructed to teach this computer all of the great books in the canon - basically filling its microchips with literary information from the Dawn of Time. So that's how Powers spends his time. Pouring Great Literature into the computer - which gradually becomes smarter and smarter - until it seems to develop something of a consciousness. It wants to know its own name, for example.

Now. What the heck was it about the love story that moved me so much?? I wish I could remember more. Funny what remains in the memory. I am pretty sure that Powers has been living abroad for a reason - to run away from a failed love affair that devastated him - and so being back has brought up all these memories. Of "Her".

Regardless of the rest of the book surrounding it (and like I said I wish I could remember more) - it has one of my most favorite paragraphs in any book ever:

One ought to be able to hold on to anything. Anyone. It did not matter who, so long as they were there. Yet the first one, this picture said, the generative template for all that you might come to care for in this place, your buddy, your collaborator in plying life: that is the one you recognize. You learn that voice along with learning itself. You can only say, "Yes, to everything" once. Once only, before your connections have felt what everything entails.

God, that kills me.

And it killed me back then in that hot miserable summer when I learned about Mitchell and I learned about him getting married. I felt totally bereft. Galatea 2.2 was a comfort to me in those terrifying days.

Flipping through the book now makes me want to read it again.

I wanted to find a resonant excerpt that had to do with the love story Powers describes in the book (is it really Richard Powers in the book? What is fiction? What is autobiography?) ... and so here it is.

Strange how a book can act as a time-traveler. A transporter. I read this excerpt and I see my claustrophobic room on 63rd Street, with the blanket for the wall, and I see myself lying in bed, clutching my pains to myself, trying to get through the day.

Must read again.


EXCERPT FROM Galatea 2.2, by Richard Powers.

My decade of letters to C. came back, fourth class. No note. But then, I didn't need one. Any explanation would just be something I would be obliged to send back in turn. I was supposed to follow suit, return hers. I told myself I would, as soon as I found a mailer and could get to the post office.

I laid the bundle in the back of a drawer, alongside the lock whose combination I'd forgotten. I told myself the scrap might be useful all the same. Useful, despite everything, in some other life some other me might someday live.

One day, tripping blindly into it, I finished my last novel. I made my final edit, and knew there was nothing left to change. I could not hang on to the story in good faith even a day longer. I printed the finished draft and packed it in the box my publishers had just used to send me the paperback copies of my previous one.

I sealed the carton with too much packing tape and sat staring at it where it lay on my kitchen counter. I thought of C.'s great-grandmother, who, before she turned twenty, had buried three such shoe boxes of stillborns in the grove above E. I asked myself who in their right mind would want to read an ornate, suffocating allegory about dying pedes at the end of history.

The calculation came a little late. I biked the box down to the post office and shipped it off to New York, book rate. New York had paid for this casket in advance. They couldn't afford to be depressed by what I'd done. The long science book had been a surprise success. They were hoping to manufacture a knock-off. I hadn't given them much of a chance.

The moment the manuscript left my hands, I went slack. I felt as if I'd been in regression analysis for three years. At long last, I had revived the moment of old trauma. But instead of catharsis, I felt nothing. Anesthesia.

What was I supposed to do for the rest of my life? The rest of the afternoon alone seemed unfillable. I went shopping. As always, retail left me with an ice-cream headache.

I figured I might write again, at least once, if the thing could start with that magic first line. But the train - that train I asked the reader to picture - was hung up at departure. It did its southward stint. Then it was gone, leaving me in that waiting room slated on the first timetable.

To figure out where the line was heading, I had to know where it had been. I felt I must have heard it out loud: the opener of a story someone read to me, or one I'd read to someone.

When C. and I lived in that decrepit efficiency in B., we used to read aloud to each other. We slept on the floor, on a reconditioned mattress we'd carried on our heads the five blocks from the Salvation Army. Our blanket was a piling brown wool rug we called the bear.

We huddled under it that first midwinter, when the temperature at night dropped so low the thermometer went useless. After a point, the radiators packed it in. Even flat out, they couldn't keep pace with the chill blackness seeping through brick and plaster. The only thing that kept us, too, from giving in and going numb were the read-alouds. Then, neither of us wanted to be reader. That meant sticking hands above the covers to hold the book.

It would get so cold our mouths could not form the sounds printed on the page. We lay in bed, trying to warm each other, mumbling numbly by small candlelight - "Silver Blaze," Benvenuto Cellini - giggling at the absurd temperature, howling in pain at the touch of one another's frozen toes. We were the other's entire audience, euphoric, in the still heart of the arctic cold.

That's how I remembered it, in any case. Maybe we never spoke the notion out loud, but just lying there in the soft, frozen flow of words filled us with expectation. The world could not get this brittle, this severe and huge and silent, without its announcing something.

Somewhere, some shelf must still hold a book with broken black leather binding. A blank journal in which C. and I wrote the titles of all the books we read aloud to each other. If I could find that log, I though, I might search down the first lines of every entry.

Our life in B. was a tender playact. That dismal rental, a South Sea island invented by an eighteenth-century engraver. C. guarded paintings at the Fine Arts. I wrote expert system routines. For pleasure, we etched a time line of the twentieth century onto the back of a used Teletype roll that we pasted around the top of the room. The Peace of Beijing. Marconi receives the letter "S" from across the Atlantic. Uzbekistan absorbed. Chanel invents Little Black Dress. The limbo becomes national dance craze.

We furnished our first nest with castoffs. Friends alerted us to an overstuffed chair that someone on the far side of the ballpark was, outrageously, throwing out. No three dishes matched. We owned one big-ticket item: a clock radio. Every morning, we woke to the broadcast calls of birds.

When we weren't reading to each other, we improvised a narrative. The courtyard outside our window was an autograph book of vignettes waiting to be cataloged. The scene below played out an endless penny merriment for our express amusement.

Cops rode by on horseback. Robbers rode by in their perennial hull-scraping Continentals. Parent-free children mined the bushes for dirt clumps to pop in their mouths. A conservatory student blew his sax out the open window, even in December. He threaded his way precariously up a chromatic octave, the cartoon music for seasickness. That's how I would describe it in the book I still had no idea I would write. The player always, always missed the A-flat on the way up but hit it, by chance, on descending. "Something to do with gravity," C. joked.

Youngish adults in suits came by selling things. They represented strange and fascinating causes, each more pressing than the last. When the canvassers buzzed our intercom, we sometimes shed some small bills. Or we made the sound of no one home.

A heavy woman on workman's comp who walked with a cane hobbled by at regular intervals to air out her dog. The dog, Jena, who we decided was named after the battle where Hegel watched Napoleon rout Prussia, was even more fossilized than its owner. Jena would stand thick and motionless, halfway down the sidewalk, contemplating some spiritual prison break, never bothering to so much as tinkle. Its owner, whose name we never learned, waited in the doorway, repeatedly calling the beast with the curt panic of abandonment. The dog would gaze a lifetime at the horizon, then turn back in desolation.

I relayed these anecdotes to C., who lay in bed with her eyes closed, pretending to be blind and paralyzed, at the mercy of my accounts. I elaborated events for her, embroidering until the improbability of the whole human fabric made her smile. When she smiled, it always stunned me that I'd discovered her before anyone else had.

Even while we playacted it, I recognized that fantasy. It came from a collection of ghost stories that a famous editor had assembled before we were young.

I told C., from memory, the one about two men lying in the critical ward. The one, a heart patient, has the window bed. He spends all day weaving elaborate reports of the community outside to amuse his wardmate. He names all the characters: Mr. Rich. The Messenger Boy. The Lady with the Legs. He weaves this endless, dense novel for the quadriplegic in the next bed, who cannot see through the window from wher ehe lies.

Then one night the window narrator has a heart attack. He convulses. He grapples for his medicine on the nightstand between the beds. The paralyzed man, seizing his chance at last to see this infinite world for himself, summons from nowhere one superhuman lunge and dashes the medicine to the floor.

When they move him to the emptied window bed the next day, all he can see is a brick wall.

"That's a great story," C. told me. In the icy dark, I felt her excitement. The world lay all in front of us. "I love that one. I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you for it."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

May 1, 2008

The Books: "The Goldbug Variations" (Richard Powers)

goldbugV.jpgNext book on my adult fiction shelves:

Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers.

First off, a link (because basically I don't know where to start). And an excerpt from that link:

There's something — something I can't quite articulate — being said about art here — painting (which figures in the book), literature (by extrapolation), but especially music. It's beyond science, beyond knowing, yet it's key to one's ability to know anything else. Indeed, art and love, those inarticulate things, the only things to really mean anything.

That post, in its entire, makes me cry. It is her first response to the book - a book I read years ago, when it first came out ... and was blown AWAY by. It's not one of those books I would tell just anyone to read - it's too difficult, too huge, too ... brain-taxing - but I did give it to Ted to read - I just knew ... He HAD to read it. So Ted and I are now Goldbug Variations fanatics. To me, the book works on every level it needs to work - and not only does it work, but it upends itself, mirrors itself, goes back, forwards, and then - breathtakingly - sometimes stands still. It is an exhilarating ride. And how do you talk about a book that encompasses ... so much? I tapped into it on such a profound psychological and also emotional level that it's one of the few times, after reading a book, when I can say I felt actually changed. The thing about the language of the book ... it is daunting. It is. I find that fun. That's just me. It's also intellectually rigorous - it's a quest ... that takes our characters far and wide, through all kinds of disciplines ... But also, for me, the book is a piercing love story - and having read Richard Powers' novel Galatea 2.2, which is even more so just about the love story - I can say that he is a master at writing about unrequited love. There was just something about the tone of his writing that clicked me right into that line of the music. And so even during the long sections about Mendel or Bach or DNA .... I still was hearing that chord. I think it's an essential chord to understanding Powers' work. Let's go back to that link from Magnificent Octopus again. I just love her responses ... and the quotes she pulls. It really reflects my own response to the book ... which knocked me on my ass. Not just because it's about so much ... but because of what it had to say about love. I think some people might miss that about the book, or they look at it - and they see the mathematical equations and lines of music running through the text - and might think it's too intellectual, or too "hard", whatever. But in the end: it's all about LOVE. And it just KILLED me.

In the present day, we meet Janet O'Deigh, a librarian in a big New York Public Library branch. Well, the book opens with her receiving a postcard from a guy named Todd, informing her that their "friend" had died. The book then goes back in time - to Jan's first meeting with their "friend" - in the library where she works. Their friend is an old hermit named Stuart Ressler, a dignified kind of ratty old chap ... who works as a data entry processor in a midnight shift with Todd. Todd (who doesn't know Jan yet) becomes really interested in Ressler - who is this guy? What is his story? He plays classical music in the break room, and goes off into a trance ... Todd decidees to do a little research and shows up at the library, which is how HE meets Jan. He is looking to find out who this Stuart Ressler guy is. (I'm just talking about the plot now, not all the swirling subtext). Eventually, they discover that Stuart Ressler was, in 1957, part of a team of scientists hired to try to crack the DNA code. There were teams all over the country, and Ressler, a young man at the time, was one of them. But why did he drop out? Why wasn't he scientist anymore? Why does he work the midnight shift in data entry? The book sweeps us back and forth - from multiple times in the present: Jan, by herself, after Todd has somehow left (we don't know why ...) - and she sets herself the task of researching everything she can that will help her understand Dr. Ressler - so she's studying biology, chemistry, microbiology - oh yeah, and also music. Specifically Bach's Goldberg Variations as played by Glenn Gould in a famous recording. We also see, a bit further back, Todd and Jan befriending the elderly Stuart Ressler ... and beginning to get to know his story. The book also takes us back, far back, into 1957 ... with a young Stuart Ressler traveling to a college campus in the midwest, to join a team of code-crackers. It's two books, running along side by side.

The book has a very intricate design: it is a double helix, first of all - and second of all - it mirrors all of the movements of Bach's famous piece of music. I would need to understand far more about the music (and DNA, I suppose) to pick up on the multiple strands woven through here. Suffice it to say ... in The Goldberg Variations, Bach starts with a simple theme, easily heard ... which then morphs and submerges itself - over the variations - although the theme is always here - it just is inverted, or down a third, or whatever - you have to know where to look for it ... but the thing is: It's there. So The Goldbug Variations (yes, Poe's famous story is an important plot-point) follows the theme of "The Goldberg Variations" - as well as the structure of DNA. It takes my breath away.

Richard Powers is a phenom, and his books are not always comprehensible. There have been a couple I had to put down. But this one and Galatea 2.2 rocked me to my core. He writes about love - the experience of love - not exactly the fulfillment of it - but what it feels like to love - like no other author.

The Goldbug Variations is a book that is about codes ... and it is also a code in and of itself.

It's a breathtaking work of literature. I can't say enough about it.

Here's an excerpt. Jan's research into DNA and enzymes and all that - is a way to know and understand Stuart Ressler better. Who was this man, and what did he see back in 1957 that made him walk away? What is left undone?

How can cells and molecules and enzymes put together end up in the miracle of a human being? How does that happen?? Also: how can we, who are made up of those elements, how can we investigate ourselves? Stuart Ressler walked away from that question. He couldn't take it.

And let's not forget - that the book is also a double love story. And so often we talk about love in metaphors. It's difficult to describe its essence. And so often scientists talk in metaphors - making things either visual or comprehensible - to us, the layman audience, or even to themselves. Dr. Ressler wants to get past metaphor in his understanding of DNA and genetic inheritance. It is his only ambition in life. And Jan and Todd, trying to understand Dr. Ressler, also want to get past metaphor. They want to understand him, his essence ... can they name it? And by naming something, do you take away its essence?

I am in awe of Richard Powers. He is magnificent.


EXCERPT FROM Gold Bug Variations, by Richard Powers.

Landscape with Conflagration

I've reached a sticking point in my homework, the background reading that must take me inside the man. Not a barrier to comprehension: I remember, flexing my intellect again this season, that given time, I have the capacity to tackle anything, however formidable. And I have more than enough time - time spreading from sunny sahara mornings alone over onion bagels and oranges to arctic nights, postponing sleep as long as possible, armed with only thick books and a headboard lamp. I've hit a barrier not to comprehension but credulity. How can an assortment of invisible threads inside one germ cell record and pass along the construction plans of the whole organism, let alone the cell housing the threads themselves? I've grasped the common metaphor: the blueprint gene somehow encodes a syntactic message, an entire encyclopedia of chemical engineering projects. I feel the thrill of attaching abstract gene to physical chromosome. But it remains analogy, lost in intermediary words.

The task Dr. Ressler set himself was merely - and only he could have thought "merely" - to capture the enigma machine that tweaks this chromosomal message into readability. Did he believe that nothing was lost in translation as signals percolated up from molecules in the thread into him, that brain, those limbs, that hurt, alert face? Searching for his own lexicon required faith that the chemical semaphore could serve as its own rosetta, faith that biology too could be revealed through its particulars. Faith that demonstration could replace faith.

It grows like a crystal, this odd synthesis of evolution, chemistry, and faith, spreads in all directions at once, regular but aperiodic. By Ressler's birth, enzymes - catalysts driving the chemical reactions of metabolism - were identified as proteins. The structure of proteins - responsible for everything from the taste of sole to the toughness of a toenail - strikes me as ridiculously simple: linear, crumpled necklaces of organic pearls called amino acids. What's more, the protein necklaces directing all cell processes consist of series of only twenty different amino acid beads.

It seems impossible: twenty can't be sufficient word-hoard to engineer the tens of thousands of complex chemical reactions required to make a thing live. But lying in bed under my arctic nightlight, carrying out the simple arithmetic, I see how the abject simplicity of protein produces more potential than mind can penetrate. A necklace of only two beads, each one in twenty colors, can assume any of four hundred different combinations. A third bead increases this twenty times - eight thousand possible necklaces. I learn that the average protein necklace floating in the body weighs in at hundreds of beads. At that length, the possible string combinations exceed the printed sentences in man-made creation. Room to grow, in other words.

The protein bead string folds up, forms secondary structures determined by its amino acid sequence. The shape of these fantastic landscapes, fuzz-motes as convoluted as the string is simple, gives them their specific, chemical power. Their jungle of surface protrusions provides - like so many dough forms - niches for other chemicals to assemble and react.

But if these cookie cutters - in countless possible fantastically complex shapes - build the body, what builds the builders? The answer appalls me. The formula for the builder molecules as well as its implementation are contained in another long, linear molecule. This time the beads come in only four colors. It says something about my progress in scientific faith that I accept that calculation showing that the possible combinations in one such foursquare informational molecule exceed the total number of atoms in the universe.

But I hang up on the idea of such a linear molecule encoding a breathing, hoping, straining, failing, aging, dying scientist. I find as I read that I'm in good company. If I still ran the Quote Board, I'd use tomorrow that gem of Einstein's when meeting Morgan and hearing of his project to mechanize biology:

No, the trick won't work ... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

But I no longer run the Quote Board. I run nothing now except the Jan O'Deigh Continuing Education Project. And for that, I have only more history. When counting aminos fails to put me to sleep, I charm insomnia by reading Beadle and Tatum's 1940 work on the bread mold Neurospora. Only seventeen years old when Ressler got his brainstorm, it must have read like a classic to a student raised on it. While the world once more indulged its favorite occupation, Beadle and Tatum dosed mold with X-rays to induce mutations. Raising thousands of test-tube strains, they produced mutants that could no longer manufacture required nutrients. Mutated chromosomes failed to produce necessary enzymes.

With an excitement that penetrates even the sober journal account, they crossed a mutant that could no longer make enzyme E with its normal counterpart. Half the offspring had the mutation and half did not. Enzyme production precisely mirrored Mendelian inheritance. One gene, one enzyme, Each time I read the conclusion, I hear his perverse question: "What could be simpler?"

A unique gene, coding for a unique enzyme: Cyfer inherited as dogma what actually arose only through recent, bitter debate. The limited informational content of DNA - the four bases adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine - did not seem adequate to build the fantastically varied amino acid necklaces. For some time, the size of DNA was underestimated, and even after the enormous molecular weight was correctly determined, many scientists believed that the four bases followed one another in repeating order. Redundant series carry no more information than a news program repeating, "Earlier today, earlier today ..."

DNA was long rejected as the chromosomal message carrier. Some researchers believed that proteins themselves were the master blueprint, even though every protein would require others to build it. Avery blazed the trail out of confusion. His 1944 paper showed that the substance transforming one bacterial strain to another was not protein but DNA. Inheritance was rapidly being reduced from metaphor to physical construct. DNA was a plan that somehow threaded raw amino acid beads into proteins. These protein chains in turn catalyzed all biological process. Cyfer's question - the coding problem - was how a long string of four types of things stood for thousands of shorter, twenty-thing strings.

Before the problem could even be posed, scientists had first to determine a structure for DNA that fit the evidence. The structure fell the year Ressler attained legal adulthood, one of the most celebrated solutions in science. X-ray diffractions of crystalline nucleic acid suggested a helix. The beautiful Chargaff Ratios demanded the amount of adenine equal that of thymine, guanine equal cytosine, and G + A equal C + T. DNA presented too many structural possibilities to be cracked by standard organic analysis. By starting with the constraints in Franklin's and Wilkins's data, Watson and Crick tinkered with cutouts until the shoe dropped. They hit upon the double helix, where complementary base pairs - G pairing always with C, A always with T - form the spiral rungs.

Temperament, coded in long strings of base pairs, plays a big part in any interpretation of data. The full ramifications of the model were not quickly grasped. It followed neatly that chromosomes were just supercoiled filaments of DNA. Mendel's genes were simply sections of chromosome, a length of spiral staircase - say ten thousand base-pair rungs spelling out auburn hair. But using four letters to convey the content of all living things seemed like transmitting every Who's Who of this century in staticky dots and dashes across a copper filament.

How was the message read? How to determine the language of the cipher? Understand that question and I've understood him. Dr. Ressler, receiving intact the work of the structurists, trained his temperament on the smallest end of the genetic spectrum, the connecting link. The task given him was to determine how twin-helical sequences of four bases

...A-C-C-G-T-G-T-G-A-A-C-G-G...
...T-G-G-C-A-C-A-C-T-T-G-C-C...

strung amino acids into enfolded protein:

...threonine-valine-tryptophan ...

Dr. Ressler's question was not primarily cytological or chemical or even genetic, although it was all these. Heredity's big hookup lay in information, pure form. It floated agonizingly close in the air, an all-expenses-paid trip to Stockholm taped to the bottom of some chair in the lecture hall. Yet prestige played no more than ironically in Ressler's mind. His was a drive deeper than recognition, a need to cross that hierarchical border, that edge, that isomorph, that metaphor, to get to the thing itself, to arrive at the enigma machine, reach it on pattern alone, reach down and take into his hands the first word, name it, that string of base-pairs coding for all inheritance, desire, ambition, the naming need itself - first love, forgiveness, frailty.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 29, 2008

The Books: "The Bell Jar" (Sylvia Plath)

belljarc.gifNext book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. Like many high school girls, I went through a huge Plath phase when I was about 17. I didn't just read The Bell Jar, Plath's only novel, but I read all the poems, the diary, the letters home to her mother, the posthumously published collection of short stories, everything. Here's a gigantic post I wrote about Plath. Like many authors, I have now had almost a lifelong relationship with Sylvia Plath. I have gone through phases with her. There was the first feverish adolescent phase, when I idolized her, and she seemed to express some of the desolation and disorientation I felt as an adolescent girl. The Bell Jar is often just remembered as the autobiographical novel about her suicide attempt, but to me - in high school - it was about what it was like to be a girl. Now Plath was writing about the much more restrictive 1950s - and what those restrictions did to an unconventional (internally, I mean) female spirit. Plath was a perfectionist, and a high achiever. She did all the things she was supposed to. She was a genius at school, she published her poems, she got scholarships, she really had a wave of huge successes as a young woman. But there is a mania there, which can really be seen when you read her journals (not to mention her letters to her mother, which are truly disturbing). The whole sex thing, and the good girls don't thing ... absolutely trapped her. She knew what was going on, she looked around and saw how the social rules were different for boys, and it is my opinion that it is THAT that caused her to crack up in college, NOT the fact that she didn't get into the writer's workshop she wanted to get into and was forced to spend the summer at home. The Bell Jar makes that pretty clear. The social restrictions were unfair, and Plath questioned them. But life was a howling wilderness, it was pre-sexual revolution, and for someone like Plath - the pressure on being normal was enough to make her go nuts. It really was. She found herself split off from herself. There was the good girl and then ... the other girl. The real girl. Nobody can sustain a split for that long without either one or the other side winning. Plath, instead, cracked, tried to commit suicide and spent a year in a mental institution. So she fell into the own crack in her psyche. That's what The Bell Jar is about.

I have read The Bell Jar many times, and while I was captivated by it in high school, it doesn't really hold up as a whole, when I read it now. Her poems are another story altogether. But I'll get to those when I get to my poetry bookshelf, which, at this rate, should be sometimes in the year 2018. The Bell Jar is a kind of selfconscious work, stilted at times - and there is much that is quite wonderful about it - and there are set-piece scenes that I will remember forever. The entire intern staff getting food poisoning in the hotel. Breaking the thermometer in the hospital and playing with the mercury. Seeing the baby born. And the excerpt below. Not to mention the stunner of a first sentence:

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

The writing is cold, and mean. Plath was not a "nice" person, and that was one of her biggest problems. Women are supposed to be "nice"! I think Plath found it very freeing in her writing when she stopped putting the pressure on herself to be nice. And when she started ignoring her mother's usually malevolent advice to be "nice". I actually don't think Aurelia Plath was well-intentioned. I think she had a lot of anger and jealousy towards her daughter - she was at the same time living vicariously and also trying to suppress her. Talk about being angry at the restrictions placed on women - I think Aurelia Plath's rage at her OWN life was titanic in nature. But she covered it up with a sickly sweet "nice"ness ... Now I'm seeing her thru Plath's eyes, it is true - but seriously - read her simpering defensive preface to Letters Home, and you'll see what I mean. What I hear in her words is rage. Plath eventually realized that the relationship with her mother was toxic and basically had to move to England, to put an ocean between them.

All that being said, I don't think The Bell Jar holds up very well. It seems to me to be MADE for adolescent girls, who want to be "deep", or who are relishing their own deep-ness. I went through that phase, and The Bell Jar was perfect for me at that time. But as a grownup, I read it and think, "Oh, come now, dear, I know it seems horrible now, but it'll pass. Just go out and get laid, don't worry so much about the rules, you'll be fine, dear ... just CHILLAX." And so the book loses its oomph if you think that our main character is, well, kind of over-reacting.

Again, the poems are completely another story altogether - I'm choosing now to just focus on The Bell Jar.

It is the story of Esther, a college student, who has won a prestigious summer internship at a ladies magazine in New York City. There are only 11 girls or something like that, and they are all put up in a women's hotel. Esther is an over-achiever, a scholarship girl, and is overwhelmed by New York City. She's kind of fragile, in some ways. She has internalized the "good girl" restrictions to such a degree that she has become rigid. But, tellingly enough, the other girl she befriends is a blowsy platinum blonde bombshell named Doreen, who doesn't seem to give a hoot about the world's restrictions, and she does whatever she wants. There's something freeing about being with Doreen. She's not portrayed as a slut, just as a woman of the world ... and Esther is envious, wishes she could be like that. Meanwhile, the Rosenbergs are going to be electrocuted, and Esther starts to obsess about it. Not about the case or the trial ... but about the fact of electrocution and what it must be like. (Later in the book, when she goes through electroshock treatment, she finds out). It upsets her.

The first third of the book takes place in New York. Then Esther goes home, bringing the second section of the book - hoping that she will receive the letter accepting her into the writer's workshop in Boston ... her mother picks her up at the station and tells her that she was rejected. So now the summer yawns before Esther - she has nothing to do, nothing to look forward to ... and she begins to spiral downward. Her mother wants her to take shorthand classes, just so she will have a backup career (until she gets married, of course). Esther begins to lose it. She begins to forget that she has any good qualities, that she can do anything well ... she feels trapped by the suburbs (Plath's evocation of that kind of claustrophobia is pretty damn great) ... and things get so bad that she is finally brought to see a psychiatrist. He recommends electroshock therapy on an outpatient basis. Good idea, bro! The therapy is brutal, handled awkwardly and unsensitively, and Esther comes out of it disoriented and upset. This goes on until she finally can't take it anymore, and tries to commit suicide.

The last third of the book takes place in the mental institution where Esther is in recovery. She's there for a long time. And she actually ends up getting a GOOD doctor, as opposed to the asswipe she saw earlier. This doctor is a woman, and there's something about her that Esther finds deeply encouraging ... not to mention the fact that the doctor seems to understand what the real problem is: the whole good girl/bad girl sex thing ... and basically gets Esther fitted for a diaphragm, and tells her not to worry so much about it. That she can be free, too. Just be safe. As Esther starts to recover, she is allowed "out" on short jaunts, and during one of those jaunts - she decides to lose her virginity. Let's get this thing OVER WITH so I can just MOVE ON. I can't remember now who she chooses - some guy she meets ... and the virginity-loss goes unbelievably badly (like 1 in a thousand badly) and she begins to hemorrhage. She has to go to the hospital. But somehow, in the chaos of all of that, Esther finds herself better. In the head. Her boyfriend from college Buddy comes to visit her in the hospital - and she no longer is tormented by the fact that Buddy seems to want to domesticate her (he says stuff to her, smugly, like, "When we get married, you won't feel like writing poetry anymore...") ... all of that stuff is still going on with Buddy, but Esther just laughs at it now. She doesn't care. Buddy can't "get" her, if she doesn't want to be gotten. She's free. Truly free. That is not to say that she is "back to normal" because that is just the point. "Normal" is too high a bar for some people. And trying to fit into "normalcy" is too much pressure for some people. I'm one of those people. I'm not a wack-job, but I'm not "normal" and I came to terms with that a long time ago. If I tried to "fit in", if I worried about the concerns of others and why don't those same things concern me?? ... I'd be crushed. I still struggle with it ... but I have pretty much won the battle as a whole. Esther is in no way, shape, or form, normal. There's one sentence in the book that suggests Esther has gone on to get married and have a baby - and it totally doesn't work for me. Plath has created a character (let's forget about the autobiographical elements for a minute) who seems like she will NEVER fit in with societal norms, and her journey is such to accept that. So it's inconceivable that she would go on to have some sort of domestic harmony!

One last thing and then I'll get to the excerpt:

I haveThe Bell Jar on tape - read by Frances McDormand - and I HIGHLY recommend it. It was given to me as a gift, years ago, and I remember one day I just put it on and cleaned my whole apartment, listening to it. And sometimes laughing out loud. I had forgotten how funny some of it is! Or - it was revealed to me, by McDormand's line readings, how FUNNY a lot of it is. It's mean humor, all of it is mean observational humor ... but it was great. This was recently, and so yet another level of that book was revealed to me. Like I said - it's a lifelong relationship.

Plath's major work is her poems. As a poet, she ranks among the best of her generation. As a novelist, not so much. It's the poems that really set her free.

And I can't let this post go by without providing a link to Cara Ellison - who read one of my Plath posts in 2006 - and went on a tear. She had never read her before. Cara took obsession to a whole other level, and it's been so fun to watch and read her stuff about Plath.

Here's the excerpt (and a bunch of Plath links right here):


EXCERPT FROM The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath.

"I'm so glad they're going to die."

Hilda arched her cat-limbs in a yawn, buried her head in her arms on the conference table and went back to sleep. A wisp of bilious green straw perched on her brow like a tropical bird.

Bile green. They were promoting it for fall, only Hilda, as usual, was half a year ahead of time. Bile green with black, bile green white white, bile green with nile green, its kissing cousin.

Fashion blurbs, silver and full of nothing, sent up their fishy bubbles in my brain. They surfaced with a hollow pop.

I'm so glad they're going to die.

I cursed the luck that had timed my arrival in the hotel cafeteria to coincide with Hilda's. After a late night I felt too dull to think up the excuse that would take me back to my room for the glove, the handkerchief, the umbrella, the notebook I forgot. My penalty was the long, dead walk from the frosted glass doors of the Amazon to the strawberry-marble slab of our entry on Madison Avenue.

Hilda moved like a mannequin the whole way.

"That's a lovely hat, did you make it?"

I half expected Hilda to turn on me and say, "You sound sick," but she only extended and then retracted her swanny neck.

"Yes."

The night before I'd seen a play where the heroine was possessed by a dybbuk, and when the dybbuk spoke from her mouth its voice sounded so cavernous and deep you couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman. Well, Hilda's voice sounded just like the voice of that dybbuk.

She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist. The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault.

So I said, "Isn't it awful about the Rosenbergs?"

The Rosenbergs were to be electrocuted late that night.

"Yes!" Hilda said, and at last I felt I had touched a human string in the cat's cradle of her heart. It was only as the two of us waited for the others in the tomblike morning gloom of the conference room that Hilda amplified that Yes of hers.

"It's awful such people should be alive."

She yawned then, and her pale orange mouth opened on a large darkness. Fascinated, I stared at the blind cave behind her face until the two lips met and moved and the dybbuk spoke out of its hiding place, "I'm so glad they're going to die."




"Come on, give us a smile."

I sat on the pink velvet loveseat in Jay Cee's office, holding a paper rose and facing the magazine photographer. I was the last of the twelve to have my picture taken. I had tried concealing myself in the powder room, but it didn't work. Betsy had spied my feet under the doors.

I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

This was the last round of photographs before the magazine went to press and we returned to Tulsa or Biloxi or Teaneck or Coos Bay or wherever we'd come from, and we were supposed to be photographed with props to show what we wanted to be.

Betsy held an ear of corn to show she wanted to be a farmer's wife, and Hilda held the bald, faceless head of a hatmaker's dummy to show she wanted to design hats, and Doreen held a gold-embroidered sari to show she wanted to be a social worker in India (she didn't really, she told me, she only wanted to get her hands on a sari).

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know.

"Oh sure you know," the photographer said.

"She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything."

I said I wanted to be a poet.

Then they scouted about for something for me to hold.

Jay Cee suggested a book of poems, but the photographer said no, that was too obvious. It should be something that showed what inspired the poems. Finally Jay Cee unclipped the single, long-stemmed paper rose from her latest hat.

The photographer fiddled with his hot white lights. "Show us how happy it makes you to write a poem."

I stared through the frieze of rubber-plant leaves in Jay Cee's window to the blue sky beyond. A few stagey cloud puffs were traveling from right to left. I fixed my eyes on the largest cloud, as if, when it passed out of sigh, I might have the good luck to pass with it.

I felt it very important to keep the line of my mouth level.

"Give us a smile."

At last, obediently, like the mouth of a ventriloquist's dummy, my own mouth started to quirk up.

"Hey," the photographer protested, with sudden foreboding, "you look like you're going to cry."

I couldn't stop.

I buried my face in the pink velvet facade of Jay Cee's loveseat and with immense relief the salt tears and miserable noises that had been prowling around in me all morning burst out into the room.

When I lifted my head, the photographer had vanished. Jay Cee had vanished as well. I felt limp and betrayed, like the skin shed by a terrible animal. It was a relief to be free of the animal, but it seemed to have taken my spirit with it, and everything else it could lay its paws on.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

April 27, 2008

The Books: "1984" (George Orwell)

Orwell1984.gifNext book on my adult fiction shelves:

1984, by George Orwell. I covered much of my thoughts about this book in my post yesterday about Animal Farm.





A bit more about Orwell the man (there's so much there): Orwell himself wrote about his youth:

I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.

His entire life can be seen as a process of "facing" (something that Christopher Hitchens goes into in depth in his book Why Orwell Matters). What does it mean to "face"? To really face? Not just unpleasant facts about outer reality - but unpleasant facts about how you think about things, and where you might be wrong - or just too rigid? I mean, how many people do that? As in: Okay, I can feel I have a bias against such and such ... it's a strong bias ... Can I look at that bias and see where it might be really coming from? Is it just from "the way things are" and I am convinced I am right ... or am I missing something? Am I afraid of something? Am I wrong? Orwell's whole life was about asking such questions about himself. It is truly remarkable. He questioned Empire, racism, Stalinism, Communism, misogyny, anti-Semitism ... he recognized his biases in all of these areas. Some could not be overcome, some were not meant to be overcome, but ALL were "faced" ... and he did it through his writing. A straining questioning curious ruthless sensibility he had. No wonder he intimidates. No wonder he is seen as an enemy by many. Not just for his views (or, I don't think it's just because of his views) ... but because he shames those who refuse to question themselves. He shames the "people of the lie" - those who absolutely refuse to examine themselves, refuse. People have blinders on. People insist that SUCH AND SUCH IS TRUE ... you ask me why it is true? Well, that should be obvious - because I FEEL SO STRONGLY ABOUT IT. Strong feelings are not enough for Orwell. They are just the jumping-off point to ask the tough questions. He is not above having "strong feelings" ... but instead he wonders: Maybe such and such is NOT true ... you ask me why it is not true? Well, that should be obvious ... BECAUSE I feel so strongly about it ... I'm thinking of the raging (loud) homophobic folks - preachers, politicians, whatever - who inevitably are discovered paying some gigolo for gay sex and having a wide stance in a bathroom stall in the midwest somewhere. These people (as far as I know, I don't know them obviously) ... are not questioning themselves. They are not saying: "I have a violent reaction to homosexuals. Where is that coming from? Is it because I REALLY believe that it is wrong? Or is something else going on?" If you really believe it's wrong, that's one thing - I don't respect your position, but I see that it's a sincere belief. But these loudly homophobic anti-gay guys have been revealed, time and time again, as closet cases ... you know, an example of "he doth protest too much". Orwell had his blind-spots, just like everybody else on the planet. He worked at himself. He looked, he examined ... he was not afraid to break with the pack, and he was not afraid to show himself as in process - which I think many people find VERY threatening. I have found it in small doses on my blog - when I write a post that is mainly about questioning or contemplating, or NOT being positional ... overwhelmingly, people show up to tell me what to think, how to react, whatever. The very fact of NOT taking a position, or questioning one's own motives or thoughts ... is seen as contemptible by many. Or - not contemptible. I'm going to stay with the word "threatening". When I see these what seem to be kneejerk reactions to me being in process ... it always makes me think - I don't know ... people get threatened by that. They can't stand it. It makes them nuts.

Sometimes a violent anti-reaction to something is indicative of deeper issues. That's been my experience anyway. Not just in observing others but in observing myself. There have been times in my life (and I'm sure we've all experienced stuff like this) - where I will have a really bad reaction to somebody - like they just rub me the wrong way, they push my buttons ... I find it uncomfortable to be around them, etc. And usually I suffer through the situation, getting annoyed, ranting about it to my friends, writing in my journal, whatever ... But it's happened a couple of times that eventually I have a breakthrough in my thinking about this person. It happened with a woman in an acting class I was in a couple of years ago. She was what I could call an "emotional vampire" ... she was very talented, but her self-deprecating manner was overwhelming and eventually annoying. She would almost bow in front of me, like, "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy" ... and it made it impossible to have a conversation with her. She latched onto me. She would glance at me during the notes given to her during a scene, seeing how I would respond. It made me so uncomfortable. I could feel she was giving me WAY too much power. Listen, babe, I'm struggling just like you, I'm in the shit just like you ... focus on your own damn self!! She took up a lot of brain space. Like - I thought about her a lot. I bitched about her. I was in a state of unconsciousness - I was just reacting. And I'm not sure what it was that snapped ... but eventually, after all of this, I finally asked myself the question, "Sheila. What is going on with YOU right now? Forget about her - what is happening with YOU?" It was not a comfortable moment. I was so certain that I was "right" in my opinion, I felt harassed by her - she hovered by my side, she over-complimented me, whatever - I felt "right". So to take a step back from that and say, "Wait a second ... why am I so invested in being RIGHT here? What is going on with you??" And I made some realizations. I saw myself in her. (Of course). It's not a part of myself that I am particularly proud of, and it is a part of myself that I work to suppress. The openly insecure person, the one who doesn't feel worthy to be in the same room with tremendously talented successful people, the one who is unable to take a compliment without brushing it off, the one who is so talented - but can't ever own it. Blah blah blah, the list goes on. My anti-reaction to this person was a reaction to those parts of myself that I am ashamed of. That she was just wearing on her sleeve. Jung talks about shadow sides ... the darker side of you, the things you can't admit or won't admit ... This woman was my shadow side. I'm suddenly moved. I'm not sure why. And as I made these realizations, all of my annoyance at her dissolved ... immediately. Never to return again, actually. I was so far removed from being all righteous and annoyed that it was like I was a different person. My birthday was that week, and I was having a huge party at a club in New York. Dear friends, family members, etc. And impulsively - without stopping to examine it - I called her - using the number on the class roster I had in my address book. She answered. When she heard it was me, she did this big "oh my god I can't believe you're calling me" thing - which would have driven me up the freakin' wall a week before - but now, I felt kind towards her. And in being kind towards her, I was being kind to myself. Forgiving of myself. I know that "Oh my God I can't believe you're calling me" feeling. And I invited her and her husband to come to my party. She had three grade-school age kids - so I knew it would be a long-shot that she could come out on a weeknight - but she was so thrilled to be asked - it made me want to cry. I had been withholding something from her, something that was good and kind and soft ... and I was so rewarded when I let go. She basically just wanted to be my friend, for God's sake! She and her husband got a babysitter and came to my party, and they were totally awesome, and we all had the best time. She was terrific! We played ridiculous games. For example, someone had brought a pack of Bubblicious - you know, the kind that has a fortune in the wrapper. And we would do dramatic readings of the fortunes ... or turn them into songs ... we were acting like total retards, and laughing so hard we were crying. It was an awesome night. She and her husband had a BALL. It wasn't the "beginning of a beautiful friendship" - she eventually left that class, and I never saw her again ... but it was a real learning moment for me. The "power of facing unpleasant facts" - not focusing on what was wrong with her, but focusing on what was it in me that was having such a strong negative reaction to her?? And maybe I was a bit "off"? That I was "off" BECAUSE I had such a strong negative reaction to her!

I have strayed far from my topic, but that felt really good to write. And it is relevant, in its way. I have written before about my problem with those who "relish their rightness" and I hope I was clear in my post - that one of my biggest problems with those kinds of people is that it reveals to me my OWN "relishing" of my OWN rightness - and it's a button I don't want pushed ... and I have a hard enough time NOT relishing my rightness ... so I have to actively avoid such people. It's my choice. I do not set myself above or beyond them. It is that I am in process ... and I am trying to NOT be that way anymore. I can certainly go there, and it doesn't mean not having strong opinions ... but there's a huge difference between having a strong opinion and relishing your own rightness. It's a line I walk, and those who do not question their own rightness, who are incapable of seeing that maybe THEY have a little bit of work to do ... I experience them as toxic. Actually toxic.

And so this is one of the main reasons why I find Orwell so, not just refreshing, but exhilarating. He shows me the way. He really does. Bless him!

Hitchens writes about this whole "facing unpleasant facts" thing:

A commissar who realizes that his five-year-plan is off-target and that the people detest him or laugh at him may be said, in a base manner, to be confronting an unpleasant fact. So, for that matter, may a priest with 'doubts'. The reaction of such people to unpleasant facts is rarely self-critical; they do not have the 'power of facing'. Their confrontation with the fact takes the form of evasion; the reaction to the unpleasant discovery is a redoubling of efforts to overcome the obvious. The 'unpleasant facts' that Orwell faced were usually the ones that put his own position or preference to the test.

And that's really the jist of it.

It's an interesting point. Stalinist tyranny required of the Party members to be "self-critical" - meaning: to examine their own thought processes and admit where they were "incorrect". Self-criticisms. But we can see how bogus that really is - that what that brand of "self-criticism" represents is a whittling away of independent thought. And not just independent thought but man's ability to know that he even does think independently. Mikhail Bulgakov has some amazing scenes in The Master and Margarita - where someone realizes, through coercion, double-think, double-speak, and intense psychological pressure, that what they REALLY saw (a huge black cat riding the streetcar, holding onto the rails as though he was a human being) was NOT what they really saw ... they were mistaken. Even though, in their hearts, they KNOW what they saw. (An excerpt from that great book illustrating this point here.) Stalinism required human beings to split themselves. And so with all the damage Stalin wrought - the aftermath of which we still live in today - the psychological damage was the most shattering.

And that's what Orwell addresses so brilliantly in 1984. I have so many favorite sections of this book - but I figured I'd go with the "newspeak" section because it is so chilling. (And highly relevant still.)

Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz (my post about him here) who grew up in Poland - suffering under the Nazis and then under increasingly Stalinist Communism, wrote this about 1984 in 1953:

A few have become acquainted with Orwell's 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.

What a compliment.

EXCERPT FROM 1984, by George Orwell.

"How is the dictionary getting on?" said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

"Slowly," said Syme. "I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating."

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

"The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition," he said. "We're getting the language into its final shape - the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words - scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050."

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

"You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston," he said almost sadly. "Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useful shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?"

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled sympathetically, he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak," he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. "Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050-, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?"

"Except --" began Winston doubtfully, and then stopped.

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say "Except the proles," but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.

"The proles are not human beings," he said carelessly. "By 2050 - earlier, probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 26, 2008

The Books: "Animal Farm: A Fairy Story" (George Orwell)

51WKWV3RHNL.jpgNext book on my adult fiction shelves:

Animal Farm: A Fairy Story , by George Orwell.

Nothing like starting off the weekend with a little Orwell. And I am of the mind that we should never forget why Orwell matters ... to borrow a phrase. (That's a wonderful book, by the way. We actually just brought it up yesterday in a conversation over at Jonathan's place. It's one of my favorite kind of blog conversations: it starts out at one place, someone brings something else up, a couple respond to that point, someone chimes in on the original point ... and how did we get from Armond White to Orwell? Who knows. But it's awesome.

Do they still have kids read Animal Farm in 8th grade? That's when I read it first. It's simply told, and if you don't get the allegory - which I probably didn't as an 8th grader - it doesn't really matter - because the story is clear, and tyranny is a concept that at least can be comprehended by an 8th grader. The Iran hostage situation was one of the formative events of my early adolescence - that and the hunger strikes in Belfast (well, and of course the miracle on ice too ... which seemed to encapsulate the entire WORLD at that time) - The hostages and the hunger strikes were the first couple of times that I was really aware of the news as something I could understand and was invested in. I prayed for the hostages. And I prayed for Bobby Sands. I know it sounds stupid, but I did. We were actually in Ireland while the hunger strikes were going on - so it made it even more palpable to me. It made it real. So in junior high I was beginning to understand that much of reality basically sucks for most of the people on the planet, and things happened that were unfair and totally not cool. A sort of elementary revelation to make - but whatever, I was 11. So I'm not saying I read Animal Farm and thought of the Ayatollah Khomeini - I didn't - but my understanding of world events was such that I do remember reading the book and knowing that "the fairy story" part of the title was extremely cynical ... this was no "fairy story" I had ever heard. Animal Farm is SCARY and I knew enough to be scared of it when I read it the first time.

I re-read the book in 2000 ... for the first time since I was an adolescent. This is different from Orwell's other book 1984 which we had to read in 11th grade - and it immediately hooked me in - it was one of those books I had to read that I loved immediately - like The Catcher in the Rye, A Tale of Two Cities (excerpt here), The Great Gatsby (excerpt here). Some of the books we were forced to read (Tess of the D'Urbervilles (excerpt here), Moby-Dick (excerpt here) I hated and saw the reading list as a kind of purgatory. But there were gems that got through - and 1984 was one of them. Also, the book was called 1984 and I read it in 1984 - so there was this whole creepy aspect to it - but also, I remember feeling relieved, like, "Well, Orwell was wrong - we've still got a COUPLE years to go before we have THAT kind of society ..." My American girl response. Because of course that society existed in many nations across the world at that time ... but it didn't exist in MY world, and it was 1984! Phew! Dodged a bullet!

Animal Farm languished on my shelves, however, for decades before I picked it up again. By 2000 I was already into my obsession with Stalin - and so a whole other level of the book revealed itself to me. It almost didn't read as allegory anymore - it almost just felt like journalism. Ha. I know that Trotsky was not, in actuality, a pig like Wilbur ... but all of the events of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath are laid out in no uncertain terms in Animal Farm. It's A to B. The overturning of the old guard. The looting of the farm (like the Bolsheviks looting the Winter Palace). The manifesto released. The intellectual insistence on accuracy of thought. No, you can't think THIS way anymore ... THIS is the correct way to think ... The workings of the farm - and how to pick up where the humans left off. And naturally, there is great waste. The cows are milked by the pigs - and the milk lies in the bucket, and is not distributed and then later when someone goes to get the milk - it's gone, it's been pilfered. Total anarchy.

The system doesn't work at first. And so by sheer force of will Napoleon and Snowball - the two main pigs - begin to re-educate all of the animals. If it doesn't fit with reality, then let's just change the words we say. For example, they come out with commandments at the beginning of the revolution - one of the commandments is: No animal shall sleep in a bed. Later in the book, when the pigs take over the farmhouse - naturally they want to sleep in the beds. But ... oops ... the manifesto - that THEY WROTE - says that No animal shall sleep in a bed. So how to deal with the PAST when it doesn't align with the present? Well, you just change the past then, and you convince everyone that your version of the past is the correct one. "No, no, the commandment said that No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets." A couple of the animals know that that was not really what was said ... but eventually it is agreed upon that it is okay to sleep in a bed as long as it doesn't have sheets.

So there's that kind of obliteration of the past - one of the main weapons in tyranny's arsenal. If you can dominate the past, if you can convince a large group of people to accept your version of the past (and even if they don't accept it - they are afraid to say so) - then you win. You are the alpha dog. Then of course there is Snowball's disappearance - and how he takes on mythical aspects to those left behind. Everything that goes wrong on the farm is blamed on Snowball. A convenient scapegoat, like Trotsky was. If things don't work then Snowball is to blame! He's a saboteur! How convenient, isn't it ... it's almost like it was scripted. If Trotsky hadn't existed, they would have had to invent him. And, essentially, they did. He was a real man, but he was re-invented as Enemy Number One, an omnipresent source of mischief and disaster ... trains crashed. Trotsky was behind it. Not enough grain. Trotsky sabotaged the harvest (even though he wasn't even in Russia at the time. He pulled the strings from abroad). In a way, without Trotsky - it is debatable how successful all of this would have been, at least in terms of dominating and terrorizing the population at large. They NEEDED him. Because for the first 10 years after the Revolution, all hell broke loose. Millions of people died. Millions upon millions. Famine, terror, gulags, exile -

And this is something I've said time and time again in response to those who want to excuse all of this (these are the same people who would NEVER excuse Hitler's actions) because they like the idea of Socialism and so they take the stance of "It was a good idea and who knows what would have happened if Stalin hadn't messed it all up!" (Then, of course, there were those in the West who loved Stalin and were swayed by him - Stalin called them "the useful idiots" - the Beatrice and Stanley Webbs of the world ... bought the lie. Funny thing - in the "witness" sections of the movie Reds, Rebecca West, in her big googly-eyed glasses, said, "You know who was an idiot? Beatrice Webb. She didn't know a thing." Ha! Go, Dame Rebecca!). But to the "it was a good idea messed up by Stalin" folks, I say: No. It's not that it was good idea messed up by Stalin. It was that it was a bad idea in the first place. And actually, I'm not even convinced that there were any "ideas" going on at all in the Russian Revolution - that all of that talk and theory wasn't just a smokescreen for a giant power grab. And Stalin won. That was always the point. (I am thinking now of the "secret book" in 1984 which basically admits that "secret": that it was never about equality, or workers paradise ... it was always about creating an atomized society where one man ruled supreme) You can only think that it was all a good idea if you believe that man himself can change his spots - that he can obliterate his own greed and selfishness. I happen to not believe this. And so I don't think any of that stuff is a good idea, because it doesn't factor in, you know, human nature - which has been in evidence since Eve ate the apple and Cain killed his brother for a totally asinine reason. People are selfish, curious, mischievous, and self-involved. This is and always shall be. (This is my beef, too, with the people who use nostalgia as a political weapon. The people who seem to believe that there was a Golden Age in the past - when everything was BETTER. Yeah, it was better if you were a white straight middle-class male - of course it was ... come on, peeps! Get a grip! Learn your history! There is no mythical perfect past. Maybe things were simpler - yes - but "simpler" often means that much of the ugliness and prejudice and unfairness which does exist was actively repressed. The definitions were "simpler" and sure that might have been comforting - but only if you were in the dominant group. And so no, I am not down with saying that such a time was BETTER. Sorry. You can count me out of your delusion. Thanks. I know this is a post full of links to my own blog but whatever, that is just evidence that I am self-involved and all is right with the world ... It occurs to me that I wrote a bit on this whole "nostalgia" question in my two competing movie reviews: of Pleasantville and Blast From the Past - the two sides of nostalgia, which is not, in and of itself a bad thing - it is when one group wants THEIR version of nostalgia to dominate: OUR version of the good-ness in the past is what everyone should accept! ) So you can blather about "wouldn't it be great if ..." all you want ... it still doesn't change the fact that there is going to be some MORON in your utopia who says, "I don't WANT my house to look like everyone else's ... I want it to be a little bit taller." A benign example, but that's the start of it. (Stephen King shows this in The Stand - excerpt here - with the "new society" created in Colorado ... but ... but ... not everybody cooperates with the rules ... not everybody is on board with the utopia ... and so what is to be done with THOSE folks? Brilliant.)

In the excerpt below, poor little Mollie - the mare - shows us that problem with the mindset, when applied to individuals. She is mainly concerned with the fact that there might be no sugar after the Revolution, and she also doesn't want to have to give up her pretty ribbons in her mane. I mean, she is painted as a ridiculous individual - they're trying to talk about upheaval and social change, and she worries about her sweet tooth. BUT THAT'S THE THING. That's human nature. If you can somehow create a human race who will never say, "But I like sugar - I want to have sugar as a treat every day ..." ... then maybe you can have your perfect society. You can count me out of it, though ... because I'm with Mollie. There are things I WANT, that have nothing to do with the "greater good" ... they are my interests, my individuality expressing itself. Yes, we clump up into packs - human beings are wired that way ... but the individual cannot be crushed. Greed, or ... just the experience of wanting more ... seems to be wired into us. Lots of people just don't LIKE that about the human race and say stuff like, "Wouldn't it be great if people were just satisfied with what they had and didn't want more?" Yeah, well, I think it would be great if I could have a pet centaur - and I would take him on walks past Alexander Hamilton's bust ... and then I would leap on his back and we could fly over the Manhattan skyline singing "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay" ... but I know that I can't. I don't waste too much time being sad about the fact that centaurs don't exist, and therefore I can't "have" one - because if I did - I think I would have a problem with, you know, reality. And reality is tough enough for me to accept and deal with ... without adding my own fantasy disappointments on top of it. Regardless, this is my view, and it's very hard for some to admit that - people who devoted their lives to defending the Soviet Union - at all costs ... because they believed in the idea. And you can turn yourself inside out, saying: that it was a bastardization of true socialism (which obviously is the case - just talking in terms of the stated ideas now - Orwell makes that point in Animal Farm, with the sort of give and take the animals have with the truth and with their original goals).

In the tyranny of Stalin, what eventually became clear (and Robert Conquest makes the point again and again in his books on Stalin, that the men surrounding Stalin - while brutes and murderers themselves - were not as beyond the pale as Stalin, in terms of conventional morality ... Conquest says, like a refrain: "They didn't understand Stalin yet"), was that the point was not to bring about Socialism. The point, for Stalin, was to never relax the terror ... or, perhaps he would allow it to relax for a couple of years, after big purges - but that would only be a lull, to make people lower their guards - so that he could then re-assert the terror. This kept people on edge. Psychologically, it was devastating. After everyone was dead, all of his comrades, the only guys left around him were the toadies, the sycophantic imbeciles, illiterates - who were brutal enough to do what was necessary and not question why. Kirov is a prime example of one of the higher-ups in the Party who had an independent mind. He and Stalin were good friends and they went way back. But Kirov headed up the Party apparatus in St. Petersburg and Stalin became convinced that it was a kind of fifth column ... and Kirov ... Kirov began to haunt Stalin, haunt his every thought. Kirov was a big deal. A big wig. But he must be made to disappear. And he was. To quote Robert Conquest (from his great book The Great Terror):

This killing [the murder of Kirov] has every right to be called the crime of the century. Over the next four years, hundreds of Soviet citizens, including the most prominent political leaders of the Revolution, were shot for direct responsibility for the assassination, and literally millions of others went to their deaths for complicity in one or another part of the vast conspiracy which allegedly lay behind it. Kirov's death, in fact, was the keystone of the entire edifice of terror and suffering by which Stalin secured his grip on the Soviet peoples.

This is the crazy-making world portrayed in Animal Farm. Orwell is brutal, with no sentimentality. He goes for the jugular. If you go back, back to the world of the 1930s ... the comfortable political labels that we throw around have no meaning. Orwell was a Communist, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side - he despised imperialism (his experience as a policeman in Burma, under the flag of the British Empire, convinced him of imperialims being a grave sin against humanity) - he believed in freedom of speech, in the artist being able to say what he wanted to say. He believed in democracy. He felt that democracy was the only way to ensure liberty. His word for his beliefs were "Democratic Socialism". Again, there are folks out there today who have such a biased view of the word "Socialism" that they are unable to see the more complex historical realities at work - in the hot and chaotic decade of the 1930s. They write it off. They say stupid things. They are hardened in their understanding of the labels. Things would morph - yet again - after World War II - with the descent of the "Iron Curtain" - but in the 1930s, all of this was up for grabs. It was philosophical in nature - and yet there were those (like Orwell) who were fighting for their "side". Partisans, yes. But Orwell broke with the pack with his anti-Stalinism - Stalin went against everything he believed in, everything he had worked his life for ... If turning a blind eye to Stalin was required of the "Left" (and again, that word has been so changed in its meaning as to be nearly unrecognizable - especially when said by retards like Sean Hannity) ... then Orwell would have no part of it. There were many many awesome writers and thinkers who were in the same boat. Arthur Koestler. Rebecca West. These are giants of the 20th century. Orwell, because of 1984 ... well, it's stupid, but there's a feeling out there that Orwell's book was an endorsement of that kind of tyranny. I mean, people who think such things are nuts, as far as I'm concerned - did they even read the book?? But Orwell is a tough case, man - he's elusive. If you think you have him pinned down, you are wrong. So people get up in arms about him. They love him for his Socialism but then feel betrayed by his anti-Stalinism. They love him for his love of democracy, but then can't stand that he was a Communist. Whatever ... he is indicative of the upheavals of the 1930s, in general.

Here's an excerpt from early on in Animal Farm, a nice little fairy story of the tyranny of the 20th century.

I prefer 1984 to Animal Farm - I think it's a deeper book, more haunting, more of a clearer warning ... it leaves the specific spectre of Stalinism behind (which Animal Farm describes very literally - there is no question of who all the main characters are supposed to be- they each have their correlation in the Russian Revolution story) ... but 1984 goes for a more universal story, and therefore more terrifying. I'm a big Orwell fan. A couple years ago I read a collection of his essays - which range from memories of boarding school life, his time in Burma, a fantastic in-depth 50 page analysis of Charles Dickens (not to be missed!), and his possibly most famous essay about politics and the English language - an eclectic collection. I love the essays.

EXCERPT FROM Animal Farm: A Fairy Story , by George Orwell.

Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep. His body was buried at the foot of the orchard.

This was early in March. During the next three months there was much secret activity. Major's speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life. They did not know when the Rebellion predicted by Major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it. The work of teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognised as being the cleverest of the animals. Pre-eminent among the pigs were two young boars named Snowball and Napoleon, whom Mr. Jones was breeding up for sale. Napoleon was a large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way. Snowball was a more vivacious pig than Napoleon, quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character. All the other male pigs on the farm were porkers. The best known among them was a small fat pig named Squealer, with very round cheeks, twinkling eyes, nimble movements, and a shrill voice. He was a brilliant talker, and when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer that he could turn black into white.

These three had elaborated old Major's teachings into a complete system of thought, to which they gave the name of Animalism. Several nights a week, after Mr. Jones was asleep, they held secret meetings in the barn and expounded the principles of Animalism to the others. At the beginning they met with much stupidity and apathy. Some of the animals talked of the duty of loyalty to Mr. Jones, whom they referred to as "Master," or made elementary remarks such as "Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were gone, we would starve to death." Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead?" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?", and the pigs had great difficulty in making them see that this was contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white mare. The very first question she asked Snowball was: "Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion?"

"No," said Snowball firmly. "We have no means of making sugar on this farm. Besides, you do not need sugar. You will have all the oats and hay you want."

"And shall I still be allowed to wear ribbons in my mane?" asked Mollie.

"Comrade," said Snowball, "those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?"

Mollie agreed, but she did not sound very convinced.

The pigs had an even harder struggle to counteract the lies put about by Moses, the tame raven. Moses, who was Mr. Jones' especial pet, was a spy and a tale-bearer, but he was also a clever talker. He claimed to know of the existence of a mysterious country called Sugarcandy Mountain, to which all animals went when they died. It was situated somewhere up in the sky, a little distance beyond the clouds, Moses said. In Sugarcandy Mountain it was Sunday seven days a week, clover was in season all the year round, and lump sugar and linseed cake grew on the hedges. The animals hated Moses because he told tales and did no work, but some of them believed in Sugarcandy Mountain, and the pigs had to argue very hard to persuade them that there was no such place.

Their most faithful disciples were the two carthorses, Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having one accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments. They were unfailing in their attendance at the secret meetings in the barn, and led the singing of Beasts of England, with which the meetings always ended.

Now, as it turned out, the Rebellion was achieved much earlier and more easily than anyone had expected. In past years Mr. Jones, although a hard master, had been a capable farmer, but of late he had fallen on evil days. He had become much disheartened after losing money in a lawsuit, and had taken to drinking more than was good for him. For whole days at a time he would lounge in his Windsor chair in the kitchen, reading the newspapers, drinking, and occasionally feeding Moses on crusts of bread soaked in beer. His men were idle and dishonest, the fields were full of weeds, the buildings wanted roofing, the hedges were neglected, and the animals were underfed.

June came and the hay was almost ready for cutting. On Midsummer's Eve, which was a Saturday, Mr. Jones went into Willingdon and got so drunk at the Red Lion that he did not come back till midday on Sunday. The men had milked the cows in the early morning and then had gone out rabbiting, without bothering to feed the animals. When Mr. Jones got back he immediately went to sleep on the drawing-room sofa with the News of the World over his face, so that when evening came, the animals were still unfed. At last they could stand it no longer. One of the cows broke in the door of the store-shed with her horn and all the animals began to help themselves from the bins. It was just then that Mr. Jones woke up. The next moment he and his four men were in the store-shed with whips in their hands, lashing out in all directions. This was more than the hungry animals could bear. With one accord, though nothing of the kind had been planned beforehand, they flung themselves upon their tormentors. Jones and his men suddenly found themselves being butted and kicked from all sides. The situation was quite out of their control. They had never seen animals behave like this before, and this sudden uprising of creatures whom they were used to thrashing and maltreating just as they chose, frightened them almost out of their wits. After only a moment or two they gave up trying to defend themselves and took to their heels. A minute later all five of them were in full flight down the cart-track that led to the main road, with the animals pursuing them in triumph.

Mrs. Jones looked out of the bedroom window, saw what was happening, hurriedly flung a few possessions into a carpet bag, and slipped out of the farm by another way. Moses sprang off his perch and flapped after her, croaking loudly. Meanwhile the animals had chased Jones and his men out on to the road and slammed the five-barred gate behind them. And so, almost before they knew what was happening, the Rebellion had been successfully carried through: Jones was expelled, and the Manor Farm was theirs.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8)

April 25, 2008

The Books: "Wise Blood" (Flannery O'Connor)

M-3382.jpgNext book on my adult fiction shelves:

Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor.

Oh, Flannery, I love thee so. She's another one I came to late - I didn't have to read her in high school or college, which is how I was introduced to most books back then (well, unless it was written by Ellen Emerson White (excerpt here), Norma Johnston (excerpt here), Madeleine L'Engle (excerpt here), or Lucy Maud Montgomery (excerpt here) - THOSE writers I sought out all on my own!) - and so I moved on through my adult life without encountering Flannery. Then Maria and Jean and Brendan collectively found out I hadn't read it and basically (yet again) told me: "YOU HAVE TO READ FLANNERY O'CONNOR!" Maria even took down her copy of Wise Blood, and read a bit of it out loud to me, just to whet my whistle. You know. I come from a family where books are important to us. We love our books. We insist that others read them. We get passionate. We shout. It's all part of the drill. The opening paragraphs of Wise Blood are stunning. They almost dare you not to read further.

Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car. The train was racing through tree tops that fell away at intervals and showed the sun standing, very red, on the edge of the farthest woods. Nearer, the plowed fields curved and faded and the few hogs nosing in the furrows looked like large spotted stones. Mrs. Wally Bee Hitchcock, who was facing Motes in this section, said that she thought the early evening like this was the prettiest time of day and she asked him if he didn't think so, too. She was a fat woman with pink collars and cuffs and pear-shaped legs that slanted off the train seat and didn't reach the floor.

He looked at her a second and, without answering, leaned forward and stared down the length of the car again. She turned to see what was back there but all she saw was a child peering around one of the sections and, farther up at the end of the car, the porter opening the closet where the sheets were kept.

"I guess you're going home," she said, turning back to him again. He didn't look, to her, much over twenty, but he had a stiff black broad-brimmed hat on his lap, a hat that an elderly country preacher would wear. His suit was a glaring blue and the price tag was still stapled on the sleeve of it.

The details in those paragraphs open up a world which is often called, in a kind of shorthand, Southern gothic, or "grotesque" - it's an overused term, I think, and can be a distancing technique - a bit condescending - to how powerfully good she really is. Flannery O'Connor herself had some funny things to say about this "grotesque" label:

"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic."

There's almost a hyper-reality to everything in the book - the dirt, the sunsets, the empty streets, the sense of dread, people are too intense, nobody just sits around and chillaxes. They're all on the edge. Of poverty, sanity, religious hysteria, sexual oblivion - whatever it is. Flannery O'Connor is on the edge. Hazel Motes is one of the great literary creations. Just from that opening sequence you know that something is kind of off about this guy. Even though he's just sitting on a train, can't you sense the violence underneath everything? And her details - the price tag stapled to the arm ... it's like dream logic, hallucinatory. Hazel Motes doesn't believe in Jesus. But everyone keeps telling him he should be a preacher. He so doesn't believe in Jesus that he wants to create a church called "Church Without Christ". He returns to his hometown in Tennessee after the war ... he has no family ... he keeps being mistaken for a preacher (small wonder - the guy's a fanatic - not about Jesus, but his fanaticism could easily be mistaken for evangelical fervor). He meets some people - a blind street preacher and his pre-adolescent (yet sexually knowing) daughter ... and also Enoch Emery - a character whose chapters freak me out. Talk about there being something "off". He's the one with "wise blood". He's 18, 19 years old ... and he's looking for a savior. He begins to have visions - that act as commands ... It's been a while since I read it, but just flipping through the book just now transported me a little bit, like it always does. The book creeps me out, frankly - and I mean that in the best way.

O'Connor herself had a very interesting life. Her literary idols were Hawthorne and Poe - which make total sense when you read her stuff. Hawthorne and Poe were not in vogue at the time (although naturally they were in the canon) - she was writing her stories in the 50s and early 60s. So her stuff is a bit of a throwback, back to the literature of symbolism and terror and Gothic atmosphere. To her, though, those things were real. It wasn't a style so much, as her outlook on life. And that's what her writing feels like to me. It's not a POSE, that writing ... it's her VOICE.

Considering the disease that ravaged her body, it is incredible that she was able to put out so much. Her short stories are among the greatest American short stories ever written.

Oh, and just for fun - here is one of my favorite quotes from Flannery (who, let's remember, came out of the presitigious Iowa Writer's Workshop):

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

True then, and true now!

Here's an excerpt. I had a hard time picking what I wanted to excerpt - but I decided to go with one of the Enoch sections, because they're just so damn good, and - I find them very frightening as well. It's a completely convincing "voice", as far as I'm concerned. I do not feel a writer here - behind Enoch Emery ... I don't sense O'Connor at all ... He appears to have taken over the narrative all by himself. And God, the bit about the moose in the photograph is genius, I think. Genius.

Great book - If you haven't read it, I will take a page from the book of Maria and Jean and Brendan and scream at you "YOU HAVE TO READ WISE BLOOD!!!"


EXCERPT FROM Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor.

Enoch Emery knew now that his life would never be the same again, because the thing that was going to happen to him had started to happen. He had always known that something was going to happen but he hadn't known what. If he had been much given to thought, he might have thought that now was the time for him to justify his daddy's blood, but he didn't think in broad sweeps like that, he thought what he would do next. Sometimes he didn't think, he only wondered; then before long he would find himself doing this or that, like a bird finds itself building a nest when it hasn't actually been planning to.

What was going to happen to him had started to happen when he showed what was in the glass case to Haze Motes. That was a mystery beyond his understanding, but he knew that what was going to be expected of him was something awful. His blood was more sensitive than any other part of him; it wrote doom all through him, except possibly in his brain, and the result was that his tongue, which edged out every few minutes to test his fever blister, knew more than he did.

The first thing that he found himself doing that was not normal was saving his pay. He was saving all of it, except what his landlady came to collect every week and what he had to use to buy something to eat with. Then to his surprise, he found he wasn't eating very much and he was saving that money too. He had a fondness for supermarkets; it was his custom to spend an hour or so in one every afternoon after he left the city park, browsing around among the canned goods and reading the cereal stories. Lately he had been compelled to pick up a few things here and there that would not be bulky in his pockets, and he wondered if this could be the reason he was saving so much money on food. It could have been, but he had the suspicion that saving the money was connected with some larger thing. He had always been given to stealing but he had never saved before.

At the same time, he began cleaning up his room. It was a little green room, or it had once been green, in the attic of an elderly rooming house. There was a mummified look and feel to this residence, but Enoch had never thought before of brightening the part (corresponding to the head) that he lived in. Then he simply found himself doing it.

First, he removed the rug from the floor and hung it out the window. This was a mistake because when he went to pull it back in, there were only a few long strings left with a carpet tack caught in one of them. He imagined that it must have been a very old rug and he decided to handle the rest of the furniture with more care. He washed the bed frame with soap and water and found that under the second layer of dirt, it was pure gold, and this affected him so strongly that he washed the chair. It was a low round chair that bulged around the legs so that it seemed to be in the act of squatting. The gold began to appear with the first touch of water but it disappeared with the second and with a little more and with a little more, the chair sat down as if this were the end of long years of inner struggle. Enoch didn't know if it was for him or against him. He had a nasty impulse to kick it to pieces, but he let it stay there, exactly in the position it had sat down in, because for the time anyway, he was not a foolhardy boy who took chances on the meanings of things. For the time, he knew that what he didn't know was what mattered.

The only other piece of furniture in the room was a washstand. This was built in three parts and stood on bird legs six inches high. The legs had clawed feet that were each one gripped around a small cannon ball. The lowest part was a tabernacle-like cabinet which was meant to contain a slop-jar. Enoch didn't own a slop-jar but he had a certain reverence for the purpose of things and since he didn't have the right thing to put in it, he left it empty. Directly over this place for the treasure, there was a gray marble slab and coming up from behind it was a wooden trellis-work of hearts, scrolls and flowers, extending into a hunched eagle wing on either side, and containing in the middle, just at the level of Enoch's face when he stood in front of it, a small oval mirror. The wooden frame continued again over the mirror and ended in a crowned, horned headpiece, showing that the artist had not lost faith in his work.

As far as Enoch was concerned, this piece had always been the center of the room and the one that most connected him with what he didn't know. More than once after a big supper, he had dreamed of unlocking the cabinet and getting in it and then proceeding to certain rites and mysteries that he had a very vague idea about in the morning. In his cleaning up, his mind was on the washstand from the first, but as was usual with him, he began with the least important thing and worked around and in toward the center where the meaning was. So before he tackled the washstand, he took care of the pictures in the room.

These were three, one belonging to his landlady (who was almost totally blind but moved about by an acute sense of smell) and two of his own. Hers was a brown portrait of a moose standing in a small lake. The look of superiority on this animal's face was so insufferable to Enoch that, if he hadn't been afraid of him, he would have done something about it a long time ago. As it was, he couldn't do anything in his room but what the smug face was watching, not shocked because nothing better could be expected and not amused because nothing was funny. If he had looked all over for one, he couldn't have found a roommate that irritated him more. He kept up a constant stream of inner comment, uncomplimentary to the moose, though when he said anything aloud, he was more guarded. The moose was in a heavy brown frame with leaf designs on it and this added to his weight and his self-satisfied look. Enoch knew the time had come when something had to be done; he didn't know what was going to happen in his room, but when it happened, he didn't want to have the feeling that the moose was running it. The answer came to him fully prepared: he realized with a sudden intuition that taking the frame off him would be equal to taking the clothes off him (although he didn't have on any) and he was right because when he had done it, the animal looked so reduced that Enoch could only snicker and look at him out the corner of his eye.

After this success he turned his attention to the other two pictures. They were over calendars and had been sent him by the Hilltop Funeral Home and the American Rubber Tire Company. One showed a small boy in a pair of Doctor Denton sleepers, kneeling at his bed, saying, "And bless daddy," while the moon looked in at the window. This was Enoch's favorite painting and it hung directly over his bed. The other pictured a lady wearing a rubber tire and it hung directly across the moose on the opposite wall. He left it where it was, pretty certain that the moose only pretended not to see it. Immediately after he finished with the pictures, he went out and bought chintz curtains, a bottle of gilt, and a paint brush with all the money he had saved.

This was a disappointment to him because he had hoped that the money would be for some new clothes for him, and here he saw it going into a set of drapes. He didn't know what the gilt was for until he got home with it; when he got home with it, he sat down in front of the slop-jar cabinet in the washstand, unlocked it, and painted the inside of it with the gilt. Then he realized that the cabinet was to be used FOR something.

Enoch never nagged his blood to tell him a thing until it was ready. He wasn't the kind of boy who grabs at any possibility and runs off, proposing this or that preposterous thing. In a large matter like this, he was always willing to wait for a certainty, and he waited for this one, certain at least that he would know in a few days. Then for about a week his blood was in secret conference with itself every day, only stopping now and then to shout some order at him.

On the following Monday, he was certain when he woke up that today was the day he was going to know on. His blood was rushing around like a woman who cleans up the house after the company has come, and he was surly and rebellious. When he realized that today was the day, he decided not to get up. He didn't want to justify his daddy's blood, he didn't want to be always having to do something that something else wanted him to do, that he didn't know what it was and that was always dangerous.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 24, 2008

The Books: "The Things They Carried' (Tim O'Brien)

tttcto.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. Fiction? Journalism? Reportage? Memoir? Do we really care? I know I don't. But lots of people seem to reallllllly care about those labels. As we have seen time and time again in the last couple of years with the big-fat-lie "memoir" trend. Here's my view, which has changed over time. I don't like James Frey. I don't like his writing, and I could not stand his persona in interviews. But the shaudenfraud I originally felt with his big huge fall has changed. Now it stands at this:

So James Frey made some shit up. Okay. It was fiction and we thought it was a memoir. (Not to brag or anything, but I called the James Frey thing. I CALLED IT. Way before it came out that the book was made up, I called his phoniness - just from interviews. Didn't believe a word the guy said.) But here, for me, is the question: Was it a good book? Did it move you? Does it make it LESSER because it was made up? Knowing it was made up means it's less good? I did not read the book, full disclosure, although I did read the first chapter and thought it was a piece of shit, and not worth my time. Just not my cup of tea. If I read a memoir it's usually because I am already interested in the topic - like Frank McCourt's, or Joan Didion's stuff - whatever. The addiction memoirs hold very little interest for me - and I wasn't impressed with Frey's writing at all. Just to clarify that I am talking about my taste here. I am under no obligation to think something is good just because the rest of the world thinks it's good, or it's in vogue right now, or whatever.

Fiction can be "truer" than reality - I happen to think that Anne of Green Gables or Ulysses or Cat's Eye or Blood Meridian or A Streetcar Named Desire is SUPERIOR to most non-fiction - FAR superior, and also more true. Or true in a deeper and longer-lasting way. Naturally. Look at how I have chosen to live my life. Makes total sense that I would see things in this light. So give me INVENTION, give me IMAGINATION ... make some shit UP. Go for it. There's some anecdote of a reporter going to interview John Banville (I think) - and she actually had the gall to just ask about the book, and his writing process, and how he worked on it ... She DIDN'T ask him if HE had been molested as a child just like his main character. So so tiresome. Looking for truth only through biography, rather than the merits of the work. John Banville's books seen ONLY as fodder for some salacious interview. Ew. So what does this rant have to do with The Things They Carried? I'm not sure, but it felt really good.

Tim O'Brien was in Vietnam, obviously - and the same guys are featured in most of the stories in The Things They Carried, they're all part of a whole. He calls it a "work of fiction" and much of it reads like fiction - but he also made no bones about it that it's based on truth. He put his own life into words. That's what a writer does. Who cares if it's real? Does it move you? Why is making shit up seen as dishonest? Well, I know why - you can't have people walking around lying all the time - but when you're in the realm of art, making shit up is the name of the game. And whether you upend your own experience, or create from scratch - the question about it all is (or should be, dammit): Is it good? Do you like it? Did it interest you?

To me, The Things They Carried feels almost like a diary, a running sometimes hallucinatory diary, of being in a platoon in Vietnam. Sleep-deprived, hyper-realistic, out of it imagery ... It has some of the horrible poetry of Dispatches, another classic of Vietnam literature - only that is supposed to be seen as "journalism". But if you read Dispatches (excerpt here) it reads sometimes like a novel, or a long tone-poem. So we're in a muddy area here. It's the area that Ryzsard Kapuscinski inhabited (all my posts about him here - journalism as creation, a conjuring act, a snake up out of a basket ... Now this is a very very hot topic, obviously. Can you say Jayson Blair. Can you say Stephen Glass. I know you can. Kapuscinski did NOT always "tell the truth". If you fact-check his books, you're going to get the impression that he was a big fat liar. But he felt no obligation to tell the truth. He was interested in something else: evoking the feeling of tyranny, the little moments that happen in the middle of war, the long stretches of boredom ... He looks at a border gate in Siberia and goes off on a 10 page long tangent about fences and borders, in general. He creates as he goes -that's one of the reasons why his prose is so hypnotic. I think a reader needs to know what he or she is reading, first of all ... Are you going to get frustrated with Dostoevsky because it's fiction and not a true-crime novel? Well, then you really need to look at how you read books, and realize that the problem is not with Dostoevsky, the problem is with you. Fine, don't like Dostoevsky is you don't like him ... but at least know what it is. Kapuscinski's books are historical - reportage - but there are no footnotes, no indices, nothing ... so if you yearn for sources, or back-up quotes - you will not get them. It can be frustrating and there have been times when, yes, I have yearned for an index of some kind - at least a bibliography! But Kapuscinski is under no compulsion to provide ME with what I need. I try to meet him on the ground that HE chooses, because he's an idol of mine. Same with Black Lamb and Grey Falcon - excerpt here - although that one has a massive index). I guess we're in the realm of blurred boundaries ... and that's the realm I like best. My favorite "reportage" is stuff like Robert Kaplan (excerpt here), Rebecca West, Ryzsard Kapusinski, VS Naipaul (excerpt here), all of Solzhenitsyn (excerpt here): highly biased - there's no pretense at all at "objectivity" - what a relief- beautifully written - almost poetic, self-effacting - although all of them do appear in their own books - they are "travelogues" essentially ... although they become highly political when seen in another context.

Tim O'Brien's Vietnam stuff lives in that in-between world. They are short stories, and they could be seen as "just" that (although as I think I have made clear: I hold the attitude that fiction is lesser than non-fiction with contempt) ... but they could also be seen as essays, reportage ... They stand up on their own in multiple genres. No wonder the book struck such a huge chord with people - then and now. It crosses genres, it can't be easily classified. People hooked into it who never read a book like that in their lives. His writing is accessible (terrible word, but applicable) - but also gutsy, fearless, and yes, poetic. People who don't like short stories could get into it because they feel like mini-essays or articles. People who don't like non-fiction could totally lose themselves in the stories told here.

The title story is "The Things They Carried". There's no "plot". I hesitate to even say more about it because if you haven't read it - you really should do yourself a favor and pick it up. The power of it is in experiencing it the first time. O'Brien pulls his vision in to a microscopic level and then pulls it back into a telescope - this is the motion of the entire story, going back and forth - minutia, universal truths ... The platoon troops through the jungle. What are "the things they carried?" Some of it is gear - and O'Brien goes into that in great detail. But of course some of it is NOT gear. Letters from home. Photos of sweethearts. Talismans. And then there are things that have no weight at all. Memories. Hopes. Daydreams.

"The Things They Carried" is a powerful piece of American literature. And it makes the question "But is it true??" that is so in vogue today with similar works seem small and petty. Is Anna Karenina not "true"? Wow. What a limited literal world view. Count me out, thanks. I read a review of The Things They Carried that referred to it as a "testament" - and I think that's pretty darn accurate. I like that a lot.

Here's an excerpt.


EXCERPT FROM The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.

They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos, and much more. Twice a week, when the resupply choppers came in, they carried hot chow in green mermite cans and large canvas bags filled with iced beer and soda pop. They carried plastic water containers, each with a two-gallon capacity. Mitchell Sanders carried a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occasions. Henry Dobbins carried Black Flag insecticide. Dave Jensen carried empty sandbags that could be filled at night for added protection. Lee Strunk carried tanning lotion. Some things they carried in common. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC-77 scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignia of rank. Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the Code of Conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds. They carried the land itself - Vietnam, the place, the soil - a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity. They moved like mules. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down, just humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility. Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then forming up and moving on to the next village, then other villages, where it would always be the same. They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous. In the heat of early afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was dangerous but which helped ease the strain. They would often discard things along the route of march. Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same, then a day or two later still more, fresh watermelons and crates of ammunition and sunglasses and woolen sweaters - the resources were stunning - sparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for Easter - it was the great American war chest - the fruits of science, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford, the Minnesota forests, the machine shops, the vast fields of corn and wheat - they carried like freight trains; they carried it on their backs and shoulders - and for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack

April 23, 2008

The Books: "Going After Cacciato" (Tim O'Brien)

n150039.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien.

Jean was the one who turned me on to Tim O'Brien - or, should I say, she demanded in no uncertain terms that I read Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried. She basically screamed in my face, "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS!" My dad loves those books, too. Actually, come to think of it, Going After Cacciato is akin to Catch-22 in the collective O'Malley Book Shelf: Everyone - cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings - everyone has read Catch-22 and everyone loves it. God forbid an O'Malley would read Catch-22 and say, "I found the book kind of ... meh." We would not know how to handle such a person. We would wonder if they were adopted. Reading Catch-22 is an O'Malley rite of passage - and even if you don't FEEL like reading it, you had best read it - so that you at least can pick up on the jokes at Thanksgiving, or the references thrown around to Major Major Major Major. You'll be in the dark if you don't read it! Anyway, Going After Cacciato isn't quite as important to the O'Malleys as a whole, but it is close.

Ironically, I think Jean came to Tim O'Brien outside the family circle - I think she had to read it for a class in college - and she went apeshit for him. Just nuts. So naturally I had to pick up the books as well. I'm starting with Going After Cacciato because, in its own way, The Things They Carried knocked me even more on my ass and I feel like I need to sneak up on it.

Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award in 1979 and is now considered a classic of Vietnam War literature. Private Cacciato, who appears in the book almost as a shadow, a nonentity, puts down his rifle and walks away. But he doesn't return. He vanishes into the jungle. Into ... where did he go? The book blends fantasy and reality, daydreaming and nightmares ... sometimes we aren't sure if we are actually seeing what Cacciato is doing (he's going to walk to Paris, going west, from Vietnam ... okay, so that's a long way ...) or if we are seeing what his buddies in the platoon are imagining him doing. Cacciato takes on almost mythical proportions. His journey becomes something they all invest in, they live it vicariously - even though ... it's not like Cacciato sends postcards, saying, "Hey guys - made it to Tibet! Wish you were here!" No. Cacciato vanishes. And so he becomes the symbol on which everyone can project their longings, their hopes, fears ... He is more important not there than he was when he was there. Paul Berlin, the lead character (oh my god, i love him so much) "goes after Cacciato" ... but as you read the book, it becomes hallucinatory at points. I think it's wonderful writing ... Most of the men are sleep-deprived, they've smoked a bunch of weed, they're disoriented, and exhausted. Sometimes things get un-real, or hyper-real, when you are in that state. The book reads like that, at times. Almost overly clear ... and you wonder: Is this a dream? Or is this really happening? Are they really spending Christmas in Tehran, as they "go after Cacciato"? Or ...

Tim O'Brien is a wonderful writer. He rips your heart out. He doesn't overdo anything - and don't even get me started on The Things They Carried ... he dives into the details, the sensory details of the experience - the mud, the rain, the whites of eyeballs, the cigarette smoke, whatever ... His writing to me sounds like a voice. At least in Going After Cacciato. Wait - let me edit that thought. Here is how the book opens. It's a "voice". You can totally hear it:

It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death on the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot through the nose. Bernie Lynn and Lieutenant Sidney Martin had died in tunnels. Pederson was dead and Rudy Chassler was dead. Buff was dead. Ready Mix was dead. They were all among the dead. The rain fed fungus that grew in the men's boots and socks, and their socks rotted, and their feet turned white and soft so that the skin could be scraped off with a fingernail, and Stink Harris woke up screaming one night with a leech on his tongue. When it was not raining, a low mist moved across the paddies, blending the elements into a single gray element, and the war was cold and pasty and rotten. Lieutenant Corson, who came to replace Lieutenant Sidney Martin, contracted the dysentery. The tripflares were useless. The ammunition corroded and the foxholes filled with mud and water during the nights, and in the mornings there was always the next village, and the war was always the same. The monsoons were part of the war. In early September Vaught caught an infection. He'd been showing Oscar Johnson the sharp edge on his bayonet, drawing it swiftly across his forearm to peel off a layer of mushy skin. "Like a Gillette Blue Blade," Vaught had said proudly. There was no blood, but in two days the bacteria soaked in and the arm turned yellow, so they bundled him up and called in a dustoff, and Vaught left the war. He never came back. Later they had a letter from him that described Japan as smoky and full of slopes, but in the enclosed snapshot Vaught looked happy enough, posing with two sightly nurses, a wine bottle rising from between his thighs. It was a shock to learn he'd lost the arm. Soon afterward Ben Nystrom shot himself through the foot, but he did not die, and he wrote no letters. These were all things to joke about. The rain, too. And the cold. Oscar Johnson said it made him think of Detroit in the month of May. "Lootin' weather," he liked to say. "The dark an' gloom, just right for rape an' lootin'." Then someone would say that Oscar had a swell imagination for a darkie.

That was one of the jokes. There was a joke about Oscar. There were many jokes about Billy Boy Watkins, the way he'd collapsed of fright on the field of battle. Another joke was about the lieutenant's dysentery, and another was about Paul Berlin's purple biles. There were jokes about the postcard pictures of Christ that Jim Pederson used to carry, and Stink's ringworm, and the way Buff's helmet filled with life after death. Some of the jokes were about Cacciato. Dumb as a bullet, Stink said. Dumb as a month-old oyster fart, said Harold Murphy.

In October, near the end of the month, Cacciato left the war.

So that's the voice. It's weary, it's specific, it's over it ... and then, there are moments of high philosophy, a sweeping sense of spiritual truth, of Man being with Himself ... an acute awareness of what it is to be alive.

The excerpt I chose today has Paul Berlin going through a night-watch. He's tired, so tired that he's not sure what he's seeing is real. And time appears to have literally stood still. Cacciato has already left, which changes everything in the platoon. Everyone gets disoriented. Especially because there is never a word from him again. Where did he go? Everyone's mind becomes unhinged, as they follow Cacciato.

It's a great American book.


EXCERPT FROM Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien.

Spec Four Paul Berlin tilted his wristwatch to catch moonlight. Twelve-twenty now - the incredible slowness with which time passed. Incredible, too, the tricks his fear did with time.

He wound the watch as tight as it would go. Facing east, out to sea, he counted to sixty very slowly, breathing with each count, and when he was done he looked at the watch again. Still twelve-twenty. He held it to his ear. The ticking was loud, brittle-sounding. The second hand made its infinite sweep.

Maybe it was the time of night that created the distortions. Middle-hour guard, it was a bad time. First-hour guard was better; the safest time, and surest, and once it ended you could sleep the night through. Or last-hour guard. Last guard was all right, too, because there was the expectation of dawn coming upon the sea, and you could watch the water turn to color as if paint had been poured into it at the horizon, and the pretty colors helped sustain pretty thoughts.

Sure, it was the hour. Things shimmered silver in the moonlight, the sea and the coils of wire below the tower, the sand winding along the beach. The night was moving now. He tried not to look at it, but it was true - the night moved in waves, fluttering. The grasses inland moved, and the far trees. Middle-hour guard, it was a bad time for keeping watch.

Kneeling, he lit a cigarette, cupping it in his hand to hide the glow, then he stood and leaned against the sandbagged wall and looked down on the sea. The sea helped. It protected the back and gave a sense of distance from the war, a warm washing feeling, and a feeling of connection to distant lands. His mind worked that way. Sometimes, during the hot afternoons beneath the tower, he would look out to sea and imagine using it as a means of escape - stocking Oscar's raft with plenty of rations and foul-weather gear and drinking water, then shoving out through the first heavy breakers, then hoisting up a poncho as a sail, then lying back and letting the winds and currents carry him away - to Samoa, maybe, or to some hidden isle in the South Pacific, or to Hawaii, or maybe all the way home. Pretending. It wasn't dreaming, it wasn't craziness. Just a way of passing time, which seemed never to pass.

He could make out the dim outlines of Oscar's raft bobbing at anchor in the moonlight. They used it mostly for swimming. Sometimes, when boredom got the best of them, they would take it out to deeper water and fish off it, spend the whole day out there, separating themselves from the daily routine.

He watched the sea and the bobbing raft for a long time. Then he checked the watch again. Twelve twenty-two.

He tried to remember tricks for making time move.

Counting, that was one trick. Count the remaining days. Break the days into hours, and count the hours, then break the hours into minutes and count them one by one, and the minutes into seconds.

He began to figure it. Arrived June 3. And now it was ... What was it? November 20, or 25. Somewhere in there. It was hard to fix exactly. But it was November, he was sure of that. Late November. Not like the old-time Novembers along the Des Moines River, no lingering foliage. No sense of change or transition. Here there was no autumn. No leaves to turn with the turning of seasons, no seasons, no crispness in the air, no Thanksgiving and no football, nothing to guage passing by. Inland, in the dark beyond the beach, there were a few scrawny trees, but these were mostly pines, and the pines did not change whatever the season.

November-the-what?

Oscar's birthday had been in July. In August, Billy Boy Watkins had died of fright - no, June. That was in June. June, the first day at the war. Then, in July, they'd celebrated Oscar's birthday with plenty of gunfire and flares, and they'd marched through the sullen villages along the Song Tra Bong, the awful quiet everywhere, and then, in August, Rudy Chassler had finally broken the quiet. That had been August. Then - then September. Keeping track wasn't easy. The order of things - chronologies - that was the hard part. Long stretches of silence, dullness, long nights and endless days on the march, and sometimes the truly bad times: Pederson, Buff, Frenchie Tucker, Bernie Lynn. But what was the order? How did the pieces fit, and into which months? And what was it now - November-the-what?

He extinguished the cigarette against his thumbnail and flipped it down to the beach.

Stepping over the sleeping men, he moved to the tower's west wall and faced inland.

He tried to concentrate on the future. What to do when the war was over. That was one happy thought. Yes - when the war ended he would ... he would go home to Fort Dodge. He would. He would go home on a train, slowly, looking out at the country as it passed, recognizing things, seeing how the country flattened and turned to corn, the silos painted white, and he would pay attention to the details. At the depot, when the train stopped, he would brush off his uniform and be certain all the medals were in place, and he would step off boldly, boldly, and he would shake his father's hand and look him in the eye. "I did okay," he would say. "I won some medals." And his father would nod. And later, the next day perhaps, they would go out to where his father was building houses in the development west of town, and they'd walk through the unfinished rooms and his father would explain what would be where, how the wiring was arranged, the difficulties with subcontractors and plumbers, but how the houses would be strong and lasting, how to took good materials and good craftsmanship and care to build houses that would be strong and lasting.

The night was moving. He concentrated hard, squinting, trying to stop the fluttering ...

He would go to Europe. That's what he would do. Spend some time in Fort Dodge, then take off for a tour of Europe. He would learn French. Learn French, then take off for Paris, and when he got there he would drink red wine in Cacciato's honor. Visit all the museums and monuments, learn the history, sit in the cafes along the river and smile at the pretty girls. Take a flat in Montmartre. Rise early and walk to the open market for breakfast. He would eat very slowly, crossing his legs and maybe reading a paper, letting things pass by, then maybe he'd walk about the city and learn the names of places, not as a tourist but as a man who comes to learn and understand. He would study details. He would look for the things Cacciato would have looked for. It could be done. That was the crazy thing about it - for all the difficulties, for all the hard times and stupidity and errors, for all that, it could truly be done.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 22, 2008

The Books: "Desolation Island" (Patrick O'Brian)

OBrian5-Desolation.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Desolation Island , by Patrick O'Brian.

And now I come to the end (so far) of my experience with the M&C series. I finished Desolation Island last week, and am now re-reading James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime (post about it here) ... but I will eventually pick up the next in the series. I am, how you say, hooked. I love them. I love every word. I know I have a long way to go to actually finish the series, with much ahead of me - but I'll say this, from my experience of having read the first five - Desolation Island is, so far, my favorite in the series. There are a couple of set-piece events which absolutely knocked me on my ass and I had a really hard time picking which excerpt I wanted to do today. There is the scene where the ship hits the iceberg. Terrifying. It's a misty day and visibility is bad and suddenly - towering above the masts - is a wall of ice. Brilliantly written. There is the outbreak of plague on the boat which kills hundreds of people, and runs Maturin ragged - tryiing to contain it. There is the frantic pumping and bailing out scene after hitting the berg - trying to save the ship ... and those who want to bail, and those who want to stay. Panic growing. Factions erupting. There is the section on Desolation Island itself, with the surly American ship - and the growing threat of war between the two countries. And then there is the unbeLIEVABLE battle between the Leopard and the Waakaamheid (that excerpt won out - or at least part of it - since the battle goes on for more than 10 pages) - I seriously felt like I was actually transported reading that battle. I may have been sitting on the bus reading it, but I wasn't actually there. I was on the Leopard - climbing the mountains of water, descending into the troughs - looking over my shoulder for the ship pulling up behind us - sometimes blocked by a wall of water - and then - oh look - there it is - on the top of the mountain behind us ... Trying to outrun the ship in the middle of a hurricane with Perfect-Storm-like conditions. I could see it. It was excruciating to read. How to time the shots fired - so that they might hit their mark - even while going wildly up up up and then wildly down down down ... God. Kudos.

There was just something about the particular brand of desperation expressed in this book that really spoke to me. How people behave when they are panicking: sometimes it brings out the best (the relentless night-and-day pumping) and sometimes it brings out the worst (the chaos and looting as people decided to jump into lifeboats). Nobody is ONLY noble. We all have demons within us. Sometimes they win out. I just found that aspect of the book totally fascinating.

Like I said, the set-piece battle is spectacular - some of the best writing in the series so far. It's the only battle in the whole book (if I'm remembering correctly - I honestly think I'm reading these books too fast!! Sometimes details are lost - but I just can't seem to slow myself down). The rest of the book has to do with the perils of life at sea, and it also goes into the details of intelligence work with much more depth than in the other books. At least that is my impression. There is a female prisoner on board the boat - who is also a spy (and not a very adept one) - and there is her lover, a stowaway. Maturin plays them off each other, and has to hide his motivations, and make it seem like much of what is going on is purely accidental. There are deeps in Stephen Maturin - I feel like I am just getting to know the man.

But what I am really left with from Desolation Island is the battle in the middle of the hurricane, and the ship striking the iceberg.

O'Brian outdoes himself.

If you haven't read the books, and you plan to, and you do not want to know how the battle ends in Desolation Island, then skip this excerpt! It has the most powerful ending of a chapter yet! And it reveals the true character of Jack Aubrey. Spectacular.


EXCERPT FROM Desolation Island , by Patrick O'Brian.

They cast loose the guns, removed the wing deadlights, and looked out on to a soaring green cliff of water fifty yards away with the Leopard's wake trace down its side. It shut out the sky, and it was racing towards them. The Leopard's stern rose, rose: the enormous wave passed smoothly under her counter, and there through the flying spume lay the Waakzaamheid below, running down the far slow. 'When you please, Mr Burton,' said Jack to the gunner. 'A hole in her foretopsail might make it split.' The larboard gun roared out and instantly the cabin was filled with smoke. No hole: no fall of shot either. Jack, to starboard, had the Dutchman in his dispart sight. A trifle of elevation and he pulled the lanyard. Nothing happened: flying spray had soaked the lock. 'Match,' he cried, but by the time he had the glowing end in his hand the Waakzaamheid was below his line of sight, below the depression of the gun. From down there in the trough she fired up, a distant wink of flame, and she got in another couple of shots before the grey-green hill of water parted them again.

'May I suggest a cigar, sir?' said Moore. 'One can hold it in one's mouth.' He was acting as sponger and second captain, and his face was six inches from Jack's: he was encased in oilskins and there was nothing of the Marine about him but his fine red face and the neat stock showing under his chin.

'A capital idea,' said Jack, and in the calm of the trough, before the Waakzaamheid appeared again, Moore lit him a cigar from the glowing match in its tub.

The Leopard began to rise, the Dutchman appeared, black in the white water of the breaking crests high up there, and both nine-pounders went off together. The guns leapt back, the crews worked furiously, grunting, no words, sponged, loaded, and ran them out again. Another shot, and this time Jack saw his ball, dark in the haze of lit water, flying at its mark: he could not follow it home, but the line was true, a little low. Now they were on the crest, and the cabin was filled with wind and water mingled, unbreathable: the gun-crews worked without the slightest pause, worked through and through.

Down, down the slope amidst the white wreckage of the wave, the guns run out and waiting. Across the hollow and up the other side. 'I believe I caught his splash,' said Moore. 'Twenty yards short of our starboard quarter.'

'So did I,' said Burton. 'He wants to knock our rudder, range along, and give us a broadside, the bloody-minded dog.'

The Waakzaamheid over the crest again: Jack poured the priming into the touch-hole with his horn, guarding it with the flat of his hand, the cigar clenched between his teeth and the glow kept bright; and this bout each gun fired three times before the Leopard mounted too high, racing up and up, pursued by the Dutchman's shot. On and on: an enormous switchback, itself in slow, majestic motion, but traversed at a racing speed in which the least stumble meant a fall. Alternate bursts of fire, aimed and discharged with such an intensity of purpose that the men did not even see the storm of flying water that burst in upon them at each crest. On and on, the Waakzaamheid gaining visibly.

Here was Babbington at his side, waiting for a pause. 'Take over, Moore,' said Jack, as the gun ran in. He stepped over the train-tackle, and Babbington said, 'She's hit our mizzen-top, sir, fair and square.'

Jack nodded. She was coming far too close: point-blank range now, and the wind to help her balls. 'Start the water, all but a ton; and try the jib, one-third in.'

Back to the gun as it ran out. Now it was the Waakzaamheid's turn to fire, and fire she did, striking the Leopard's stern-post high up: a shrewd knock that jarred the ship as she was on the height of the wave, and a moment later a green sea swept through the deadlights.

'Good practice in this sea, Mr Burton,' said Jack.

The gunner turned his streaming face, and its fixed fierce glare broke into a smile. 'Pretty fair, sir, pretty fair. But if I did not get home two shots ago, my name is Zebedee.'

The flying Leopard drew a little way ahead with the thrust of her jib, a hundred yards or so; and the switchback continued, the distances the same. It was the strangest gunnery, with its furious activity and then the pause, waiting to be fired at; the soaking at the crest, the deck awash; the intervening wall of water; the repetition of the whole sequence. No order; none of the rigid fire-discipline of the gun-deck; loud, gun-deafened conversation between the bouts. The dread of being pooped by the great seas right there in front of their noses, rising to blot out the sun with unfailing regularity, and of broaching to, hardly affected the cabin.

A savage roar from Burton's crew. 'We hit her port-lid,' cried Bonden, the second captain. 'They can't get it closed.'

'Then we are all in the same boat,' said Moore. 'Now the Dutchmen will have a wet jacket every time she digs in her bows, and I wish they may like it, ha ha!'

A short-lived triumph. A midshipman came to report the jib carried clean away - Babbington had all in hand - was trying to set a storm-staysail - half the water was pumped out.

But although the Leopard was lighter she felt the loss of the jib; the Waakzaamheid was coming up, and now the vast hill of sea separated them only for seconds. If the Leopard did not gain when all her water was gone, the upper-deck guns would have to follow it: anything to draw ahead and preserve the ship. The firing was more and more continuous; the guns grew hot, kicking clear on the recoil, and first Burton and then Jack reduced the charge.

Nearer and nearer, so that they were both on the same slop, no trough between them: a hole in the Dutchman's foretopsail, but it would not split, and three shots in quick succession struck the Leopard's hull, close to her rudder. Jack had smoked five cigars to the butt, and his mouth was scorched and dry. He was staring along the barrel of his gun, watching for the second when the Waakzaamheid's bowsprit should rise above his sight, when he saw her starboard chaser fire. A split second later he stabbed his cigar down on the priming and there was an enormous crash, far louder than the roar of the gun.

How much later he looked up he could not tell. Nor, when he did look up, could he quite tell what was afoot. He was lying by the cabin bulkhead with Killick holding his head and Stephen sewing busily; he could feel the passage of the needle and of the thread, but no pain. He stared right and left. 'Hold still,' said Stephen. He felt the red-hot stabbing now, and everything fell into place. The gun had not burst: there was Moore fighting it. He had been dragged clear - hit - a splinter, no doubt. Stephen and Killick crouched over him as a green sea gushed in: then Stephen cut the thread, whipped a wet cloth round his ears, one eye and forehead, and said, 'Do you hear me now?' He nodded; Stephen moved on to another man lying on the deck; Jack stood up, fell, and crawled over to the guns. Killick tried to hold him, but Jack thrust him back, clapped on to the tackle and helped run out the loaded starboard gun. Moore bent over it, cigar in hand, and from behind him Jack could see the Waakzaamheid twenty yards away, huge, black-hulled, throwing the water wide. As Moore's hand came down, Jack automatically stepped aside; but he was still stupid, he moved slow, and the recoiling gun flung him to the deck again. On hands and knees he felt for the train-tackle in the smoke, found it as the darkness cleared, and tallied on. But for a moment he could not understand the cheering that filled the cabin, deafening his ears: then through the shattered deadlights he saw the Dutchman's foremast lurch, lurch again, the stays part, the mast and sail carry away right over the bows.

The Leopard reached the crest. Green water blinded him. It cleared, and through the bloody haze running from his cloth he saw the vast breaking wave with the Waakzaamheid broadside on its curl, on her beam-ends, broached to. An enormous, momentary turmoil of black hull and white water, flying spars, rigging that streamed wild for a second, and then nothing at all but the great hill of green-grey with foam racing upon it.

'My God, oh my God,' he said. 'Six hundred men.'

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 21, 2008

The Books: "The Mauritius Command" (Patrick O'Brian)

030762.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O'Brian

The fourth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series. While all of the books could be called historical fiction - this one is based on actual events (or so says O'Brian's preface). Captain Jack Aubrey is ordered to sail to the Cape of Good Hope - and from there try to take the two islands Mauritius and La Reunion, held by the French. It's a daunting mission - the French are well-entrenched, and Aubrey also has his hands full with his captains on the ship - many of whom are, well, nightmares. Or emotional vampires. Or too competitive. Whatever the case may be. They have their own psychological things they are trying to work out (subconsciously) and it makes them tiresome companions and not very good captains. O'Brian, like I said before, is just so awesome in this realm - the best, really: when breaking down a man's personality, when observing what it is that makes him tick (even if he can't see it himself) - observing him in different situations, which is usually very revealing ... you know, the whole warp and weft of humanity thing. No man is just one thing. Not even Jack Aubrey. He's not just a good commander, and great at manning a ship. He's also a kind of exhausted husband, he's a bit touchy when it comes to questioning of authority (and of course he is - that's the rules of the game - but Stephen Maturin is always there to make some comment about how authority corrupts everyone ... so it gives him pause) - he's a generous and open friend, he's good with the young kids on the ship, showing them the ropes - he sometimes always wants it HIS way - even when he is NOT in the position of ultimate authority, and he is also prone to fits of sentimentality which Stephen, as an Irishman, finds incredibly boring. Jack Aubrey is made up of a million different impulses and pieces - just like all of us. O'Brian gives us everyone - pretty much every character - in a three-dimensional guise. I love his analysis of personality. He's a psychologist of the highest order.

That's what the excerpt is today.



EXCERPT FROM The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O'Brian

This 'time out', this happy interval with a straightforward and agreeable task in hand, sailing through warm seas with winds that, though often languid, were rarely downright contrary, sailing southwards in a comfortable ship with an excellent cook, ample stores and good company, had its less delightful sides, however.

His telescope was a disappointment. It was not that he could not see Jupiter: the planet gleamed in his eyepiece like a banded gold pea. But because of the ship's motion he could not keep it there long enough or steadily enough to fix the local time of its moons' eclipses and thus find his longitude. Neither the theory (which was by no means new) nor the telescope was at fault: it was the cleverly weighted cradle slung from the maintopgallantmast stay that he had designed to compensate for the pitch and roll that did not answer, in spite of all his alterations: and night after night he swung there cursing and swearing, surrounded by midshipmen armed with clean swabs, whose duty it was to enhance the compensation by thrusting him gently at the word of command.

The young gentlemen: he led them a hard life, insisting upon a very high degree of promptitude and activity; but apart from these sessions with the telescope, which they loathed entirely, and from their navigation classes, they thoroughly approved of their captain and of the splendid breakfasts and dinners to which he often invited them, although on due occasion he beat them with frightful strength on the bare breech in his cabin, usually for such crimes as stealing the gunroom's food or repeatedly walking about with their hands in their pockets. For his part he found them an engaging set of young fellows, though given to lying long in their hammocks, to consulting their ease, and to greed; and in one of them, Mr Richardson, generally known as Spotted Dick, because of his pimples, he detected a mathematician of uncommon promise. Jack taught them navigation himself, the Boadicea's schoolmaster being incapable of maintaining discipline; and it soon became apparent to him that he should have to keep his wits as sharp as his razor not to be outstripped by his pupil in the finer points of spherical trigonometry, to say nothing of the stars.

Then there was Mr Farquhar. Jack esteemed him as an intelligent, capable, gentlemanlike man with remarkable powers of conversation, excellent company for the space of a dinner, although he drank no wine, or even for a week; but Mr Farquhar had been bred to the law, and perhaps because of this a little too much of his conversation took the form of questioning, so that Jack sometimes felt that he was being examined at his own table. Furthermore, Mr Farquhar often used Latin expressions that made Jack uneasy, and referred to authors Jack had never read. Stephen had always done the same (indeed, it would have been difficult to refer to any author with whom Jack was acquainted apart from those who wrote on fox-hunting, naval tactics, or astronomy), but with Stephen it was entirely different. Jack loved him, and had not the least objection to granting him all the erudition in the world, while remaining inwardly convinced that in all practical matters other than physic and surgery Stephen should never be allowed out alone. Mr Farquhar, however, seemed to assume that a deep knowledge of the law and of the public business embraced the whole field of useful human endeavour.

Yet Mr Farquhar's vastly superior knowledge of politics and even for his more galling superiority at chess would have been as nothing if he had had some ear for music: he had none. It was their love of music that had brought Jack and Stephen together in the first place: the one played the fiddle and the other the 'cello, neither brilliantly, yet both well enough to take deep pleasure in their evening concerts after retreat; they had played throughout every voyage they had made together, never interrupted by anything but the requirements of the service, the utmost extremity of foul weather, or by the enemy. But now Mr Farquhar was sharing the great cabin, and he was as indifferent to Haydn as he was to Mozart; as he observed, he would not give a farthing candle for either of them, or for Handel. The rustling of his book as they played, the way he tapped his snuffbox and blew his nose, took away from their pleasure; and in any case, Jack, brought up in the tradition of naval hospitality, felt bound to do all he could to make his guest comfortable, even to the extent of giving up his fiddle in favor of whist, which he did not care for, and of calling in the senior Marine lieutenant as the fourth, a man he did not much care for either.

Their guest was not always with them, however, for during the frequent calms Jack often took the jolly-boat and rowed away to swim, to inspect the frigate's trim from a distance, and to talk with Stephen in private. 'You cannot possibly dislike him,' he said, skimming over the swell towards a patch of drifting weed where Stephen thought it possible they might find a southern variety of sea-horse or a pelagic crab related to those he had discovered under the line, 'but I shall not be altogether sorry to set him down on shore.'

'I can and do dislike him intensely when he pins my king and a rook with his lurking knight,' said Stephen, 'At most other times I find him a valuable companion, an eager, searching, perspicacious intelligence. To be sure, he has no ear at all, but he is not without a tincture of poetry: he has an interesting theory on the mystic role of kings, founded upon his study of tenures in petty serjeanty.'

Jack's concern with petty serjeanty was so slight that he carried straight on, 'I dare say I have been in command too long. When I was a lieutenant, messing with the rest, I used to put up with people far, far more trying than Farquhar. There was a surgeon in the Agamemnon that used to play 'Greensleeves' on his flute every evening, and every evening he broke down at exactly the same place. Harry Turnbull, our premier - he was killed at the Nile - used to turn pale as he came nearer and nearer to it. That was in the West Indies, and tempers were uncommon short but no one said anything except Clonfert. It don't sound much, 'Greensleeves', but it was a pretty good example of that give and take there has to be, when you are all crammed up together for a long commission: for if you start falling out, why, there's an end to all comfort, as you know very well, Stephen. I wish I may not have lost the way of it, what with age and the luxury of being post - the luxury of solitude.'

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

April 20, 2008

The Books: "H.M.S. Surprise" (Patrick O'Brian)

030761.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

H.M.S. Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian

The third book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.

In this book, we find the two men back in business - after running from debt - and they sail around the tip of Africa, on their way to India. Their personal problems, however, follow them. Diana Villiers, the woman Stephen and Jack competed for, is in India - she had fled England with a man as her protector - it is clear that she has not married him, and she has left a wake of scandal and heartache behind her. Stephen, in particular, is consumed by Diana. O'Brian does not belabor the point ... and the Indian subcontinent is a huge place ... but Maturin knows that the odds of him running into Diana are pretty high, and how does he feel about that? There's something bewitching about that woman. She's cruel to Stephen. Yet she also counts him as one of her best friends. She's blatantly open with him, even when she knows it will hurt him. I'm not sure if she will continue to be a major player in the rest of the books (don't tell me!!) - but she fascinates. I can see why Stephen is so mesmerized by her. And of course Jack is now courting Sophia, a much more conventional young woman - which seems to suit him much better. But enough of these personal romantic concerns. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean is a fleet of ships sent by Napoleon ... and I'm not recalling all the details, but I know that Jack is obsessed. Where are they? If he captured them, there would be a huge prize - and it's all about the prize-money. (I'm learning so much about how the Royal Navy worked - I had no idea!) Aubrey is the underdog in this particular fight - and some of the details are lost right now (I think maybe I'm reading these books too fast, but I can't help it!) ... he is trying to rebuild his career after the devastation of being on the run from debt. He takes what he can gets, in terms of a command. And he is eager, perhaps even voracious, to prove himself again. Not to mention the fact that Sophia's terrible mother would never approve of her daughter marrying a debt-ridden out-of-work captain. Aubrey has huge stakes here. But that's one of the best things about the character, in general: his stakes are always high. Whether it's running the conversation around the captain's table, or dealing with disciplinary issues on the ship, or fighting a battle ... This is a man who lacks the indifferent gene. He really does.

And, as always, the relationship between the two men is really what hooks me in. And because Stephen Maturin is a bit of an outsider - to sea life, anyway - not to mention being Irish - he's our way in to this world. The other sailors on the ships kind of gently make fun of him, his dumb questions, his lack of sea legs, and yet they also totally respect him because he's such an amazing surgeon. They trust him with their very lives. Seeing the world of the ship through Stephen's eyes is tremendously helpful and illuminating ... because we're new to it too.

Now.

There is a description of some major weather and waves - in this book - as the ship shrieks down the coast of Africa. I could barely get through it it was so terrifying. SO well written. My God. My nightmares often run to tidal waves - and have done so since I was a little kid. I think of a 10 story wave coming at me ... I mean, I can't imagine that anyone would find that a cozy thought, so I know I'm not alone ... but waves like that haunt my dreams. Maybe it's growing up in "the Ocean State", and I've certainly seen some weather, I've certainly seen waves big enough that I thought: "All righty then, I'm not going swimming TODAY thankyouverymuch ..." Perhaps it's that there is some basis for comparison in my head. Having seen dauntingly big waves where they close the beach is one thing - add 7 or 8 or 9 STORIES to those waves I've already seen ... and I can try to picture what the sailors deal with. I just never want to see a wave that big, basically. In December, 2004, I had a dream about a tidal wave. You know how you have regular old dreams where, you know, you're naked in church, or you're trying to run and your legs won't work - or run of the mill anxiety dreams ... No biggie. But sometimes a dream comes along that changes everything. I call them (unimaginatively) "those dreams". I've had a couple in my lifetime. Myabe 2 or 3. Where my subconscious or whatever you want to call it was forced to be so damn clear to me, so specific ... that I wake up very slightly altered. The tidal wave dream was like that. I wrote more about it here. And let us please not dwell TOO much on the fact that I wrote a post called "The Tidal Wave: Let It Come" on December 22, 2004. It freaks me out to even think about it. I know I didn't cause the damn tsunami, but still - to put out a huge call to tidal waves, telling them to come ... and then ... uhm ... to have one obey, and to have it be the deadliest damn thing in recorded history ... I don't know. Just don't want to think about those things too much. Anyway. Back to Patrick O'Brian. His description of the sea - in the middle of that storm - the mountains of water ... I swear to God, it put a chill in my heart just to read it. I just hope I never ever fucking see anything like that in my life.

Again, we're seeing it through Stephen's astonished eyes - which makes it even worse. Jack's used to bad weather. All sailors are. Stephen THOUGHT he knew what bad weather was until he saw this.

Wonderful writing.

Excerpt below.


EXCERPT FROM H.M.S. Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian

South and south she ran, flanking across the west wind, utterly alone under the grey sky, heading into the immensity of ocean. From one day to the next the sea grew icy cold, and the cold seeped into the holds, the berth-deck and the cabins, a humid, penetrating cold. Stephen came on deck reflecting with satisfaction upon his sloth, now a parlour-boarder with the Irish Franciscans at Rio, and a secret drinker of the altar-wine. He found the frigate was racing along under a press of canvas, lying over so that her deck sloped like a roof and her lee chains were buried in the foam; twelve and a half knots with the wind on her quarter - royals, upper and lower studdingsails, almost everything she had; her starboard tacks aboard, for Jack still wanted a little more southing. He was there, right aft by the taffrail, looking now at the western sky, now up at the rigging. 'What do you think of this for a swell?' he cried.

Blinking in the strong cold wind Stephen considered it: vast smooth waves, dark, mottled with white, running from the west diagonally across the frigate's course, two hundred yards from crest to crest: they came with perfect regularity, running under her quarter, lifting her high, high, so that the horizon spread out another twenty miles, then passing ahead, so that she sank into the trough, and her courses, her lower sails, sagged in the calm down there. In one of these valleys that he saw was an albatross flying without effort or concern, a huge bird, but now so diminished by the vast scale of the sea that it might have been one of the smaller gulls. 'It is grandiose,' he said.

'Ain't it?' said Jack. 'I do love a blow.' There was keen pleasure in his eye, but a watchful pleasure too; and as the ship rose slowly up he glanced again at the topsail-studdingsail. As she rose the full force of the wind laid her over, and the studdingsail-boom strained forward, bending far out of the true. All the masts and yards showing this curving strain: they all groaned and spoke; but none like the twisting studdingsail-booms. A sheet of spray flew over the waist, passing through the rigging and vanishing over the larboard bow, soaking Mr. Hailes the gunner as it passed. He was going from gun to gun with his mates, putting preventer-breechings to the guns, to hold them tighter against the side. Rattray was among the booms, making all fast and securing the boats: all the responsible men were moving about, with no orders given; and as they worked they glanced at the Captain, while he, just as often, put out his hand to test the strain on the rigging, and turned his head to look at the sky, the sea, the upper sails.

'This is cracking on,' said Joliffe.

'It will be cracking off, presently,' said Church, 'if he don't take in.'

For a glass and more the watch on deck had been waiting for the order to lay aloft and reduce sail before the Lord reduced it Himself: yet still the order did not come. Jack wanted every last mile out of this splendid day's run; and in any case the frigate's tearing pace, the shrill song of her rigging, her noble running lift and plunge filled him with delight, a vivid ecstasy that he imagined to be private but that shone upon his face, although his behaviour was composed, reserved, and indeed somewhat severe - his orders cracked out sharp and quick as he sailed her hard, completely identified with the ship. He was on the quarterdeck, yet at the same time he was in the straining studdingsail-boom, gauging the breaking point exactly.

'Yes,' he said, as though a long period of time had not passed. 'And it will be more grandiose by half before the end of the watch. The glass is dropping fast, and it will start to blow, presently. Just you wait until this sea gets up and starts to tumble about. Mr Harrowby, Mr Harrowby, another man to the wheel, if you please. And we will get the flying jib and stuns'ls off her.'

The bosun's pipe, the rush of feet, and her tearing speed sensibly diminished. Mr Stanhope, clinging to the companion-ladder, cruelly in the way, said, 'It is a wonder they do not fall off, poor fellows. This is exhilarating, is it not? Like champagne.'

So it was, with the whole ship vibrating and a deep bass hum coming from the hold, and the clean keen air searching deep into their lungs: but well before nightfall the clean keen air blew so strong as to whip the breath away as they tried to draw it in, and the Surprise was under close-reefed topsails and courses, topgallantmasts struck down on deck, running faster still, and still holding her course south-east.

During the night Stephen heard a number of bumps and cries through his sleep, and he was aware of a change of course, for his cot no longer swung in the same direction. But he was not prepared for what he saw when he came on deck. Under the low grey tearing sky, half driving rain, half driving spray, the whole sea was white - a vast creaming spread as far as eye could see. He had seen the Bay of Biscay at its worst, and the great south-west gales on the Irish coast: they were nothing to this. For a moment the whole might have been a wild landscape, mountainous yet strangely regular; but then he saw that the whole was in motion, a vast majestic motion whose size concealed its terrifying dreamlike speed. Now the crests and troughs were enormously greater; now they were very much farther apart; and now the crests were curling over and breaking as they came, an avalanche of white pouring down the steep face. The Surprise was running almost straight before them, east by south; she had managed to strike her mizzentopmast at first light - anything to diminish the wind-pressure aft and thus the risk of broaching-to -- and man-ropes were rigged along her streaming deck. As his eye reached the level of the quarterdeck he saw a wave, a green-grey wall towering above the taffrail, racing towards them - swift inevitability. He strained his head back to see its top, curving beyond the vertical as it came yet still balancing with the speed of its approach, a beard of wind-torn spray flying out before it. He heard Jack call an order to the man at the wheel: the frigate moved a trifle from her course, rose, tilting her stern skywards so that Stephen clung backwards to the ladder, rose and rose; and the mortal wave swept under her counter, dividing and passing on to smother her waist in foam and solid water, on to bar the horizon just ahead, while the ship sank in the trough and the shriek of the rigging sank an octave as the strain slackened.

'Seize hold, Doctor,' shouted Jack. 'Take both hands to it.'

Stephen crept along the life-line, catching a reproachful look from the four men at the wheel, as who should say 'Look what you done with your albatrosses, mate,' and reached the stanchion to which Jack was lashed. 'Good morning, sir,' he said.

'A very good morning to you. It is coming on to blow.'

'What?'

'It is coming on to blow,' said Jack, with greater force. Stephen frowned, and looked astern through the haze of spray; and there, whiter than the foam, were two albatrosses, racing across the wind. One wheeled towards the ship, rose to the height of the taffrail and poised there in the eddy not ten feet away. He saw its mild round eye looking back at him, the perpetual minute change of its wing-feathers, its tail; then it banked, rose on the wind, darted down, and its wings raised high it paddled on the face of an advancing cliff of water, picked something up and shot away along the valley of the wave before it broke.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 19, 2008

The Books: "Post Captain" (Patrick O'Brian)

030706.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Post Captain , by Patrick O'Brian

Second in the Aubrey Maturin series. The book spends much of its time on land (and I'm jumping ahead of myself, but whatevs - ) One of the reasons I am LOVING this series is because it is always a surprise. The characters are the same. But what is going on (so far) has changed RADICALLY from book to book. Patrick O'Brian is not afraid to shake things up a bit. There may be readers who are only in it for the war battles. That's great - but Patrick O'Brian isn't writing ONLY for them (It's kinda like The Sopranos viewers who were pissed when there weren't any "whackings" in an episode) ... Desolation Island (which I am almost done with) has only one battle. The series is not monotonous. Each book has its own thread. The thread of Post Captain is basically Jack Aubrey being on the run from debt - hiding out at Stephen's house - war breaking out all around them ... Oh yes, and suddenly there are GIRLS in the book - and romances start popping up. Naturally because we're talking about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, their romances are rather complicated (especially Stephen's, poor guy). These are vibrant difficult sometimes prickly men - who have overriding passions for other things (the sea, medicine, music) - and so to see them putting these elements of themselves aside to go courting is FASCINATING. I'm already just hooked in to the psychologies of these men - so it's just so much fun to see them in all different kinds of situations. There's a family of women (with a terrifically awful mother) - and she's trying to marry them all off. There's a cousin - named Diana Villiers - who is a widow, although she's very young - and she's kind of the black sheep. Gorgeous, too. And not like a woman, or not like a coy simpering 19th century kind of woman. She's sassy. She gallops her horse. She speaks frankly. Both Jack and Stephen start pursuing her - much to the chagrin of the family of women who treat Diana as though she's a wild animal. The fact that Jack and Stephen are both interested in the same girl puts a little kink in their relationship and suddenly there are things they cannot talk about. It's agony. You just yearn for them to be good friends again. One of the daughters in the family is Sophia, a sweet gentle girl - who also is "in the running" for the affections of the two men ... she starts to read up on war and ships and the sea, so she can seem educated when she talks to Jack. And etc. There's just SO much happening in the book. Not to mention the fact that Stephen becomes an intelligence agent. Post Captain is a rich detailed book, and the women are drawn with just as much sensitivity and specificity as the men. O'Brian is a master. A master of the human element. He can describe the ebbs and flows of a conversation, the jostling for position, the underlying motivations - better than anyone else I can think of. You just "get it" - and sometimes what he is describing is so subtle, something that is never spoken or acknoweldged - but that we all know, we've all experienced. So I'll read some passage and think, excitedly, "YES. That is exactly what it is like when you are talking to such a person ..." Oh, and as a woman - I very much appreciate the fully drawn female characters - who are just as full of potential for nastiness, or selfishness, or idiocy as the men ... They are not cardboard cutouts, O'Brian doesn't just stay on the surface with them - telling us what they DO - he examines them, in the same way everyone is examined - even minor characters. Diana comes to life. Mrs. Whatshername (it escapes me right now - the awful mother) TOTALLY comes to life. She's a silly horrid woman, but she is totally real. Sophia comes to life - and is vibrantly different than Diana. I don't mean to belabor this point but so many male authors can't write women, or they THINK they can but no - I am here to tell them they cannot. It's annoying. And disappointing. Because it pulls me out of the story, and I also experience such things as a betrayal, a little bit. That might be silly, but whatever, it's true. I don't like to experience my gender, my entire gender, as a caricature. It's annoying. But O'Brian never falters. He remains, at all times, specific, true, clear, and precise. Insightful. How did he do it?? He just had a damn good eye, first of all - he could see people.

Here is an excerpt. Jack and Stephen are hiding out in a cottage. They are roommates. How will THAT go? I picked this excerpt because I absolutely adore Stephen's thoughts about Jack and music. It's stuff like that that hooks me in to these books, over and over and over. Almost every page has a jewel on it ... like the one below about why "there was no greater proof of their friendship" .... Yes, yes, yes. I know JUST what he is talking about there.

EXCERPT FROM Post Captain , by Patrick O'Brian

At present they were lodging in an idyllic cottage near the Heath with green shutters and a honeysuckle over the door - idyllic in summer, that is to say. They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack's opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic'd bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea=cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade.

Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. 'My plate and saucer will serve again,' said Stephen. 'I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,' he cried, 'that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk? Will I dry up?' he called through the open door.

'No, no,' cried Jack, who had seen him do so. 'There is no room - it is nearly done. Just attend to the fire, will you?'

'We might have some music,' said Stephen. 'Your friend's piano is in tolerable tune, and I have found a German flute. What are you doing now?'

'Swabbing out the galley. Give me five minutes, and I am your man.'

'It sounds more like Noah's flood. This peevish attention to cleanliness, Jack, this busy preoccupation with dirt,' said Stephen, shaking his head at the fire, 'has something of the Brahminical superstition about it. It is not very far removed from nastiness, Jack - from cacothymia.'

'I am concerned to hear it,' said Jack. 'Pray, is it catching?' he added, with a private but sweet-natured leer. 'Now, sir,' - appearing in the doorway with the apron rolled under his arm - 'where is your flute? What shall we play?' He sat at the little square piano and ran his fingers up and down, singing,

'Those Spanish dogs would gladly own
Both Gibraltar and Port Mahon

and don't they wish they may have it? Gibraltar, I mean.' He went on from one tune to another in an abstracted strumming while Stephen slowly screwed the flute together; and eventually from this strumming there emerged the adagio of the Hummel sonata.

'Is it modesty that makes him play like this?' wondered Stephen, worrying at a crossed thread. 'I could swear he knows what music is - prizes high music beyond almost anything. But here he is, playing this as sweetly as milk, like an anecdote: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And the inversion will be worse ... It is worse - a sentimental indulgence. He takes pains; he is full of good-will and industry; and yet he cannot make even his fiddle utter anything but platitudes, except by mistake. On the piano it is worse, the notes being true. You would say it was a girl playing, a sixteen-stone girl. His face is not set in an expression of sentimentality, however, but of suffering. He is suffering extremely, I am afraid. This playing is very like Sophia's. Is he aware of it? Is he consciously imitating her? I do not know: their styles are much the same in any case - their absence of style. Perhaps it is diffidence, a feeling that they may not go beyond certain modest limits. They are much alike. And since Jack, knowing what real music is, can play like a simpleton, may not Sophia, playing like a ninny-hammer ...? Perhaps I misjudge her. Perhaps it is a case of the man filled with true poetic feeling who can only come out with ye flowery meads again - the channels blocked. Dear me, he is sadly moved. How I hope those tears will not fall. He is the best of creatures - I love him dearly - but he is an Englishman, no more - emotional, lachrymose. Jack, Jack!' he called out. 'You have mistook the second variation.'

'What? What?' cried passionately. 'Why did you break in upon me, Stephen?'

'Listen. This is how it goes,' said Stephen, leaning over him and playing.

'No it ain't,' cried Jack. 'I had it right.' He took a turn up and down the room, filling it with his massive form, far larger now with emotion. He looked strangely at Stephe, but after another turn or two he smiled and said, 'Come, let's improvise, as we used to do off Crete. What tune shall we start with?'

'Do you know St. Patrick's Day?'

'How does it go?' Stephen played. 'Oh, that? Of course I know it: we call it Bacon and Greens.'

'I must decline to improve on Bacon and Greens. Let us start with Hosier's Ghost, and see where we get to.'

The music wove in and out, one ballad and its variations leading to another, the piano handing it to the flute and back again; and sometimes they sang as well, the forecastle songs they had heard so often at sea.

Come all you brave seamen that ploughs on the main Give ear to my story I'm true to maintain, Concerning the Litchfield that was cast away On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day.

'The light is failing,' observed Stephen, taking his lips from the flute.

'On the Barbary shore by the dawn of the day,' sang Jack again. 'Oh, such a dying fall. So it is but the rain has let us, thank God,' he said, bending to the window. 'The wind has veered into the east - a little north to east. We shall have a dry walk.'

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 18, 2008

The Books: "Master & Commander" (Patrick O'Brian)

OBrian1-Master.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian.

I came to these books late. As in, RIGHT NOW. Master & Commander was the last book I read in 2007 - and I am now nearly finished with Desolation Island, the fifth in the series. I will certainly read all of them. I find them addictive - which was a surprise to me. I'm not sure what I was expecting but acute psychological observations filling page after page was not on the list. I expected the gripping war scenes (which are SO well written - you can actually see what is going on - and that is no small thing, especially for a landlubber reader like myself) - and I expected the evocations of the sea in all its different moods - but what I really really LOVE about these books is how psychological they are. The dissection of a man's character (or a woman's, too, actually) - what he is hiding, what he uses to cover up his soul/flaws/whatever, how he navigates social situations, his secret griefs and how they come to the surface - just all of that ... O'Brian is so so good at putting our fellow man on display, in all his different guises - and seeing how he operates. I just love that. He has SUCH a good eye for personality and motivation. Not to mention, of course, how well he immerses us in that world and that time. Never once do I feel an anachronism - because, of course, not only is the technology different in the early years of the 19th century - but man is different too. I mean, not totally, of course - things like love, anger, fear, competition - we all have all of that in us, and we always have and I believe we always will. But Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin (and all the other characters) feel like 19th century people to me. Not that I know any 19th century people, but you know what I mean.

I just LOVE hanging out with these characters and I am so thrilled that I have so many more books to go, so I can just linger on in them ... it's an embarrassment of riches.

Master & Commander starts with Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin meeting for the first time in a small concert at a private house. I love that O'Brian chooses to introduce us to both of them in the context of music - which is so important to both of the main characters, and one of their main bonds of friendship. Some of my favorite bits of writing in these books is when Aubrey and Maturin meet up at evening in the captain's quarters, and Aubrey plays his violin and Maturin plays his cello - It is a silent communion of friendship - and it is how they can be truly intimate with one another. They're outside the realm of language and social niceties - they are communicating, freely and without barriers - delving themselves into Mozart, Bach, whoever. God, it's just marvelous how O'Brian brings us to that particular scene again and again - and you know, each time it's different. Because different things are being communicated. Sometimes it's loneliness, sometimes it's hope ... sometimes it's a long breath of fresh air after a weary day ... It's like they allow themselves to sink into their own personal experiences - after so much pure ACTION during the day. They can step back, and let the music do the talking for them. Wonderful stuff.

I also love Stephen Maturin's diary entries. Terrific writing, first of all, on O'Brian's part ... I can hear Stephen's voice. And his psychological and intellectual observations are like blood to a vampire for me. I can't get enough.

So that's the excerpt I chose from this book - one of his diary entries.

And one last thing. The main gift of these books (for me) is that I have truly come to love these people. I love Jack Aubrey, and I love Stephen Maturin. Maturin's my favorite - and his journey, over the course of the books, has been so pleasing to me to read ... his laudanum addiction, his intellectual and scientific curiosity, his observations, his love affair (Ouch!), his intelligence work, his hatred of tyranny and authority of any kind, his medical work and his devotion to it, his friendship with Aubrey ... He has quickly become one of my favorite literary characters ever. I adore Jack Aubrey, too, but Stephen Maturin is my main man.

I LOVE THESE BOOKS.


EXCERPT FROM Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian.

It was an enchanting house for meditation, backing on to the very top of Mahon's cliff and overhanging the merchants' quay at a dizzy height - so high that the noise and business of the harbour was impersonal, no more than an accompaniment to thought. Stephen's room was at the back, on this cool northern side looking over the water; and he sat there just inside the open window with his feet in a basin of water, writing his diary while the swifts (common, pallid and Alpine) raced shrieking through the torrid, quivering air between him and the Sophie, a toy-like object far down on the other side of the harbour, tied up to the victualling-wharf.

'So James Dillon is a Catholic,' he wrote in his minute and secret shorthand. 'He used not to be. That is to say, he was not a Catholic in the sense that it would have made any marked difference to his behaviour, or have rendered the taking of an oath intolerably painful. He was not in any way a religious man. Has there been some conversion, some Loyolan change? I hope not. How many crypto-Catholics are there in the service? I should like to ask him; but that would be indiscreet. I remember Colonel Despard's telling me that in England Bishop Challoner gave a dozen dispensations a year for the occasional taking of the sacrament according to the Anglican rite. Colonel T-, of the Gordon riots, was a Catholic. Did Despard's remark refer only to the army? I never thought to ask him at the time. Quaere: is this the cause for James Dillon's agitated state of mind? Yes, I think so. Some strong pressure is certainly at work. What is more, it appears to me that this is a critical time for him, a lesser climacteric - a time that will settle him in that particular course he will never leave again, but will persevere in for the rest of his life. It has often seemed to me that towards this period (in which we all three lie, more or less) men strike out their permanent characters; or have those characters struck into them. Merriment, roaring high spirits before this: then some chance concatenation, or some hidden predilection (or rather inherent bias) working through, and the man is in the road he cannot leave but must go on, making it deeper and deeper (a groove, or channel), until he is lost in his mere character - persona - no longer human, but an accretion of qualities belonging to this character. James Dillon was a delightful being. Now he is closing in. It is odd - will I say heart-breaking? - how cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is its great enemy - the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority. The senior post-captains here; Admiral Warne. Shrivelled men (shrivelled in essence: not, alas, in belly). Pomp, an unwholesome diet, a cause of choler, a pleasure paid too late and at too high a price, like lying with a peppered paramour. Yet Ld Nelson, by Jack Aubrey's account, is as direct and unaffected and amiable a man as could be wished. So, indeed, in most ways is JA himself; though a certain careless arrogancy of power appears at times. His cheerfulness, at all events, is with him still. How long will it last? What woman, political cause, disappointment, wound, disease, untoward child, defeat, what strange surprising accident will take it all away? But I am concerned for James Dillon: he is as mercurial as he ever was - more so - only now it is all ten octaves lower down and in a darker key; and sometimes I am afraid in a black humour he will do himself a mischief. I would give so much to bring him cordially friends with Jack Aubrey. They are so alike in so many ways, and James is made for friendship: when he sees that he is mistaken about JA's conduct, surely he will come round? But will he ever find this out, or is JA to be the focus of his discontent? If so there is little hope; for the discontent, the inner contest, must at times be very severe in a man so humorless (on occasion) and so very exigent upon the point of honour. He is obliged to reconcile the irreconcilable more often than most men; and he is less qualified to do so. And whatever he may say he knows as well as I do that he is in danger of a horrible confrontation: suppose it had been he who took Wolfe Tone in Lough Swilly? What if Emmet persuades the French to invade again? And what if Bonaparte makes friends with the Pope? It is not impossible. But on the other hand, JD is a mercurial creature, and if once, on the upward rise, he comes to love JA as he should, he will not change - never was a more loyal affection. I would give a great deal to bring them friends.'

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

April 17, 2008

The Books: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (Flann O'Brien)

FlannO%27BrianAtSwimTwoBirds.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien.

It's kinda hard, as an O'Malley, to talk about this book in a normal book-report kind of way. I think I even sort of believed, as a child, that Flann O'Brien might have been related to us. Or something. There must be SOME personal connection. And O'Brien is my grandmother's maiden name. So it was possible! I didn't even read the book until after college - but the title - At Swim-Two-Birds - was already in my life and consciousness (forever) by, oh, age 4? I don't know. I can't remember a time when I wasn't aware that there was a man named Flann O'Brien and he had written a book with a mysterious title called At Swim-Two-Birds. My first blog's URL was atswimtwobirds.blogspot.com. And then, of course, there was my first published essay - if you go here and scroll down, you can see that they excerpted my essay on the back cover and it's called "Two Birds". It's not even a book to me, for God's sake. It's basically the story of my family, my childhood, everything. I have no idea why. It's one of the weirdest books ever written. I write about the book a bit here - and link to a terrific John Updike article about Flann O'Brien (one of his many monikers). I might be repeating myself a bit from that post, but here goes:

At Swim-Two-Birds anticipates the experimental meta-literature of today - Dave Eggers, for example, owes a great debt to At Swim-Two-Birds, with his narrator that suddenly steps forward, looks right at the reader, and starts addressing us directly. The goofiness, the non-literal structure ... things have no real substance, everything is malleable. The book is really about a young Holden Caulfield type narrator - a college student, who lives with his uncle, and basically lies around in his room smoking all day, dreaming up the great novel he will write. And then occasionally he goes out with his buddies and gets absolutely wasted. His uncle is pretty much horrified at what a loser his nephew is. The book also, fantastically, becomes about the entire history of Ireland - its myths, legends, old tales come back to life in a modern context. The novel the narrator is writing is about Finn McCool - or, he's one of the characters - and also Mad King Sweeney - the dude who turned into a bird - and the narrator keeps writing outlines of what he wants to write - the whole book is broken up into headings and sub-headings, as though it itself is the outline for another book ... and at some point, the narrator loses control of his own characters. They start to behave in ways he finds incomprehensible, they say and do whatever the hell they want - and he is struggling to rein back them in, to take charge again. But once Pandora's box is opened ... Finn McCool and Mad King Sweeney stroll the modern streets of Dublin. They're out. Flann O'Brien also directly references Joyce - especially in one section that is set up exactly like the famous ithaca episode in Ulysses (excerpt here) - with the call-and-response ... James Joyce casts a giant shadow. Irish writers struggle to either be compared TO him or defined AGAINST him ... Either way, he can't be ignored. Even when an Irish writer comes out and says, "You know what? I hate Joyce!" - it's still evidence of the fact that Joyce dominates the landscape still, to this day. Flann O'Brien doesn't wrestle with Joyce in private, he brings it on out into the open, and puts it all in his book. He doesn't worry about structure or narrative. He lets Irish history - fanciful and literal - be unleashed ... Ireland, so consumed by its own past (one of the things Joyce found so annoying and why he looked elsewhere for inspiration) - here in At Swim-Two-Birds the past has come to life. It's not a tale in a dusty book. It's real people, stepping out of the pages of a manuscript ... despite the author's intentions.

I have to say, too, that At Swim-Two-Birds is laugh-out-loud funny - although perhaps it's very specific humor. I would imagine if Catch-22 (excerpt here) made you laugh out loud, At Swim-Two-Birds would, too. There is a laboriousness to some of the descriptions - that just go on forever - and it gets funnier and funnier, the more specific Flann O'Brien gets. Like this. The elaborate sentence goes against what he is talking about - a most base human experience - and that just makes it funnier. There are also about 20 more words in the sentence than there "needs" to be, and that just makes it funnier too:

Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I became subsequently addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me.

Like, that is RIDICULOUS. But soo funny to me. This formal intricate sentence basically saying, "I love beer, even though it makes me barf." And then there's the even more ridiculous first sentence of the book, which is a masterpiece of self-consciousness:

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression.

See, I've read the book a couple of times and that kind of sentence is STILL funny to me. It's ridiculous. It's observant. It's hugely overwritten. You want to say to him, "Oh, get OVER yourself!!" Who describes their own behavior that way?? But that's why it's funny.

I can't really talk more about the book - it's very weird, with 25 page long discourses on Irish history - with poems and songs and Finn McCool tromping through the pages ... but it's one of the all-time great Irish books. And it's funny: its influence is enormous. He is the precursor of the self-conscious looking-in-mirror-at-self literature we see in vogue today. It feels very very modern, this book - when you read it now. At the time it was published, it was unlike anything else out there - and in a way, it still is unlike anything else. But his experimentation with form, and content matching form, was hugely influential.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O'Brien.

That same afternoon I was sitting on a stool in an intoxicated condition in Grogan's licensed premises. Adjacent stools bore the forms of Brinsley and Kelly, my two true friends. The three of us were occupied in putting glasses of stout into the interior of our bodies and expressing by fine disputation the resulting sense of physical and mental well-being. In my thigh pocket I had eleven and eightpence in a weighty pendulum of mixed coins. Each of the arrayed bottles on the shelves before me, narrow or squat-bellied, bore a dull picture of the gas bracket. Who can tell the stock of a public-house? Many no doubt are dummies, those especially within an arm-reach of the snug. The stout was of superior quality, soft against the tongue but sharp upon the orifice of the throat, softly efficient in its magical circulation through the conduits of the body. Half to myself, I said:
Do not let us forget that I have to buy Die Harzreise. Do not let us forget that.

Hazreise, said Brinsley. There is a house in Dalkey called Heartrise.

Brinsley then put his dark chin on the cup of a palm and leaned in thought on the counter, overlooking his drink, gazing beyond the frontier of the world.

What about another jar? said Kelly.

Ah, Lesbia, said Brinsley. The finest thing I ever wrote. How many kisses, Lesbia, you ask, would serve to sate this hungry love of mine? - As many as the Libyan sands that bask along Cyrene's shore where pine-trees wave, where burning Jupiter's untended shrine lies near to old King Battus' sacred grave:

Three stouts, called Kelly.

Let them be endless as the stars at night, that stare upon the lovers in a ditch - so often would love-crazed Catallus bite your burning lips, that prying eyes should not have power to count, nor evil tongues bewitch, the frenzied kisses that you gave and got.

Before we die of thirst, called Kelly, will you bring us three more stouts. God, he said to me, it's in the desert you'd think we were.

That's good stuff, you know, I said to Brinsley,

A picture came before my mind of the lovers at their hedge-pleasure in the pale starlight, no sound from them, his fierce mouth burying into hers.

Bloody good stuff, I said.

Kelly, invisible to my left, made a slapping noise.

The best I ever drank, he said.

As I exchanged an eye-message with Brinsley, a wheezing beggar inserted his person at my side and said:

Buy a scapular or a stud, Sir.

This interruption I did not understand. Afterwards, near Lad Lane police station a small man in black fell in with us and tapping me often about the chest, talked to me earnestly on the subject of Rousseau, a member of the French nation. He was animated, his pale features striking in the starlight and his voice going up and falling in the lilt of his argumentum. I did not understand his talk and was personally unacquainted with him. But Kelly was taking in all he said, for he stood near him, his taller head inclined in an attitude of close attention. Kelly then made a low noise and opened his mouth and covered the small man from shoulder to knee with a coating of unpleasant buff-coloured puke. Many other things happened on that night now imperfectly recorded in my memory but that incident is still very clear to me in my mind. Afterwards the small man was some distance from us in the lane, shaking his divested coat and rubbing it along the wall. He is a little man that the name of Rousseau will always recall to me. Conclusion of reminiscence.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

April 16, 2008

The Books: "Girls In Their Married Bliss" (Edna O'Brien)

country%20girls.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Girls In Their Married Bliss, by Edna O'Brien. Girls In Their Married Bliss, with its obviously sarcastic title, is the final book in Edna O'Brien's famous "Country Girls Trilogy".

Here's my post about The Country Girls Trilogy as a whole, and Edna O'Brien as a writer. And here's my post about The Lonely Girl, the second book in the trilogy. Things get pretty damn bleak in Girls In Their Married Bliss - marriage is obviously seen as no great shakes. As a matter of fact, it's a nightmare in some ways. BUT we do get a bit of relief - because the narrators have switched. The other two books were narrated by Kate who is a bit more earnest and naive. Baba is her best friend, and Baba is a bit wild, and she knows about things like sexy underwear, and how to order a fancy cocktail, and she has a bit of irreverence for things that Kate holds sacred. She's a wonderful character - and her no-nonsense voice is totally different from Kate's voice ... which is kind of a relief. My favorite of all of the trilogy is the first one, when they are teenagers, and just starting out. Girls In Their Married Bliss is just depressing! It was published in 1964 - which, in terms of Ireland - but also in terms of the world in general - was a much more conservative time, much more like the 50s than the late 60s. So the book needs to be seen in its proper context. It was early to be writing a book which is so vicious about marriage - and women's roles in particular - which is why, yet again, Edna O'Brien found her book banned in her native country. It's kind of like reading Margaret Atwood's earliest books - like The Edible Woman (excerpt here) and Surfacing (excerpt here. Those were published in the late 60s, and have nothing like the power and beauty and horror of her later books (although they are still good) - and her views on marriage and women and men were shocking, at the time. Now books like that are a dime a dozen (although perhaps not written so well). Girls In Their Married Bliss is a brutal examination of marriage, and being trapped in it, of making bad choices in a man because you don't know you have more agency in your life, and also - how women could get lost in marriage. Even down to the fact that you lose your last name. You disappear. Kate definitely disappears. She marries Eugene - the dude from The Lonely Girl - he finally gets a divorce. And he gets Kate pregnant. And they have a shotgun wedding. Very scandalous. The Catholic Church wouldn't bless a marriage like that. But Baba was always more practical. Kate believed in love. She was looking for love. Baba always just wanted a bit of a laugh, maybe some sex, and a comfortable life where she could buy things. Her standards were much lower. And she also lacked the earnestness of her best friend Kate ... she is not as easily hurt. Here's an excerpt from where Baba meets the guy she will eventually marry. Again, seen in the context of that time - especially in Ireland - all of this was quite shocking - I mean, birth control!!, and nobody wanted to hear it. (Well, everybody wanted to hear it ... but the powers-that-be freaked out. You can't say that!!!) Well, yes she could, and did.

EXCERPT FROM Girls In Their Married Bliss, by Edna O'Brien.

His name was Frank and he was blowing money around the place and telling jokes. I'll repeat one joke so as you'll have an idea how hard up I was. Two men with fishing tackle have an arm around an enormous woman and one says to the other, "A good catch." When people are drunk they'll laugh at anything, provided they're not arguing, or hitting each other.

Anyhow, he drove me home and offered me money - he has a compulsion to offer money to people who are going to say no - and asked if I thought he looked educated. Educated! He was a big, rough fellow with oily hair, and his eyebrows met. So I said to him, "Beware of the one whose eyebrows meet, because in his heart there lies deceit." And sweet Jesus, next time we met he'd had them plucked over his broken nose. He's so thick he didn't understand that the fact they met was the significant thing. Thick. But nice, too. Anybody that vulnerable is nice, at least that's how I feel. Another dinner. Two dinners in one week and a bunch of flowers sent to me. The first thought I had when I saw the flowers was, could I sell them at cut rates. So I offered them to the girls in the bed-sits above and below, and they all said no except one eejit who said yes. She began to fumble for her purse, and I felt so bloody avaricious that I said, "Here's half of them," so we had half each, and when he came to call for me that evening, he counted the number of flowers that I'd stuck into a paint tin, for want of a vase. And you won't believe it, but didn't he go and ring the flower shop to say they'd swindled him. There he was out on the landing phone, yelling into it about how he'd ordered three dozen. Armagh roses and what crooks they were, and how they'd lost him as a customer, and there was I in the room with a fist over my mouth to smother the laughter. "You may not be educated," said I, "but you're a merchant at heart. You'll go far." It ended up with the flower shop saying they'd send more, and they did. I was driven to go out to Woolworth's and buy a two-shilling plastic vase because I knew the paint tin would topple if one more flower was put in.

He didn't propose bed for at least six dinners, and that shook me. I didn't know whether to be pleased or offended. He was blind drunk the night he said we ought to, and my garret was freezing and far from being a love nest. The roses had withered but weren't thrown out, and I had this short bed so that his feet hung out at the bottom. I lay down beside him - not in the bed, just on it - with my clothes on. He fumbled around with my zip and of course broke it, and I thought, I hope he leaves cash for the damage, and even if he doesn I'll have to go to a technical school to learn how to stitch on a zip, it's that complicated. I knew the bed was going to collapse. You always know a faulty bed when you put it to that sort of use. So he got the zip undone and got past my vest - it was freezing - and got a finger or two on my skin, just around my midriff, which was beginning to thicken because of all the big dinners and sauces and things. I reckoned I ought to do the same thing, and I explored a bit and got to his skin, and the surprising thing was, his skin was soft and not thick like his face. He began to delve deeper, very rapacious at first, and then he dozed off. That went on for a while - him fumbling, then dozing - until finally he said, "How do we do it?" and I knew that was why he hadn't made passes sooner. An Irishman: good at battles, sieges, and massacres. Bad in bed. But I expected that. It made him a hell of a sight nicer than most of the sharks I'd been out with, who expected you to pay for the pictures, raped you in the back seat, came home, ate your baked beans, and then wanted some new, experimental kind of sex and no worries from you about might you have a baby, because they liked it natural, without gear. I made him a cup of instant coffee, and when he went to sleep I put a quilt over him and put the light out. I sat on the chair, thinking of the eighteen months in London, and all the men I'd met, and the exhaustion of keeping my heels mended and my skin fresh for the Mr. Right that was supposed to come along.

I knew that I'd end up with him, he being rich and a slob and the sort of man who would buy you seasick tablets before you traveled. You won't believe it but I felt sorry for him, the way he worried about not being educated, or being fooled by florists, or being taken for an Irish hick by waiters. Never mind that they're Italian hicks. I could tell them all to go to hell because I had a brazen, good-looking face and was afraid of none of them, not even afraid whether people liked me or not, which is what most people are afraid of, anyhow. I know that people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love, too, only more so.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

April 15, 2008

The Books: "The Lonely Girl" (Edna O'Brien)

country%20girls.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Lonely Girl, by Edna O'Brien.

Here's my post about The Country Girls Trilogy as a whole, and Edna O'Brien as a writer. The Lonely Girl is the second book in this famous trilogy - it was published in 1962. And again, like the first in the trilogy, it was banned. This one is even more shocking - because Caithleen, the main character, the "I" of the book, has an affair with a married man. And there's sex and stuff, and sex vs. religion - all of the hot Catholic topics. Eugene is the name of Caithleen's love - and if I'm recalling correctly (it's been a while since I've read the book), the romance blossoms for quite some time before it is revealed that he has a wife. The wife, I believe, is in California. Caithleen discovers a letter from her, I think. Sorry so vague - it's been years. And there's also a child in the picture, which complicates things even more. Eugene, obviously, is not presented as a prince among men ... but he's also not a blackguard villain. Life is a bit more complicated than that, and Caithleen gets sucked into a domestic drama, and because Eugene is her first and all that - she has no perspective. She can't be like Baba, her more worldly best friend, and stroll away saying, "Oh well!! Lesson learned!" Caithleen's family somehow finds out about the situation, and pretty much kidnap her. She is trapped at her house out West, and she is harangued, and harassed - her letters are opened, she is not allowed to go anywhere without a chaperone - a priest is called in for an intervention ... Caithleen, more than anything, yearns for an escape. Who might be looking for her? If someone called the house, would she get the message? How will she get out of here? Edna O'Brien has made no secret about the fact that her family was pretty awful - not just ignorant but openly malevolent towards her and who she actually was. Literature itself was seen as suspect - so, oh well. That means they can't have a relationship with their daughter, since literature is all she cares about. O'Brien really delves into the flash points of culture and sex and religion in The Lonely Girl - and, again, found herself in trouble. Her book banned, everyone furious at her ... But here we are today, talking about The Lonely Girl, and Edna O'Brien is still writing, so I suppose revenge is sweet.

Here's an excerpt from the "kidnapping" section of the book. I love the bleakness of her imagery ... and how she totally captures the brown and grey desolation of the west of Ireland. She writes simply, there aren't a hell of a lot of extra words or flowery passages - but it's still so evocative, I think.

EXCERPT FROM The Lonely Girl, by Edna O'Brien.

I had been thinking of some way of escaping, but the thought of their chasing me made me frightened.

"This vale of tears," my aunt said desolately. Burying the calf had saddened her. Death was always on her mind. Death was so important in that place. Little crosses painted white were stuck up on roadside ditches here and there to mark where someone had been killed for Ireland, and not a day seemed to pass but some old person died of flu, or old age, or a stroke. Somehow we only heard of the deaths; we rarely heard when a child was born, unless it was twins, or a blue baby, or the vet had delivered it.

"Th' evenings will be getting long soon," I said to my aunt to cheer her up, but she just sighed.

We ate dinner in the kitchen. We had salty rashers, a colander of green cabbage, and some potatoes reheated from the previous day. While we were eating in silence, a car drove up and around by the side of the house. My aunt blessed herself as she saw a stranger help my father out.

"Grand evening," my father said as he came in and handed her a brown paper parcel of meat soggy with blood. The stranger had had some drinks but did not stagger.

"You're settling down!" he said to me. I tried to ignore him by concentrating on peeling a cold potato.

"I met Father Hagerty over in the village, he wants to have a chat with you," he said.

My heart began to race, but I did not say anything.

"You're to go and see him."

I put butter on the potato and ate it slowly.

"D'you hear me?" he said with a sudden shout.

"There, there, she'll go," my aunt said, and she linked him into the back room. The stranger hung around for a few minutes until she came out, and then asked for a pound. We had no money, but we gave him three bottles of porter which had been hidden in a press since Christmastime.

My aunt put them in a paper bag and he went off, swearing. We had no idea where he came from.

We sat by the cooker and listened for my father's call. At about nine o'clock he cried out and I ran in to him.

"I think I'm going to die," he said, as his stomach was very sick. The news cheered me up no end - I might get away - so I gave him a dose of health salts.

We went to bed early that night. I slept in the room opposite my aunt's, and when I had closed the door I sat down on the bed and wrote a long letter to Baba, for help. I wrote six or seven pages, while the candle lasted. I had already written a postcard, but had no answer. It occurred to me that maybe they had told the postmistress to keep my letters.

A wind blew down the chimney, causing the candle flame to blow this way and that. There was electricity in the house, but we were short of bulbs. I hid the letter under the mattress and undressed. The sight of my purple brassiere made me recall with longing the Sunday morning Baba and I had dyed all our underwear purple. Baba read somewhere that it was a sexy color, and on the way home from Mass we bought five packets of dye. Sneaky old Gustav must have been peeping through the keyhole of the bathroom, because suddenly Joanna had rushed upstairs and pushed the door in.

"Poison color in the basin," she shouted as she burst in.

"You might have knocked, we could have been doing something very private," Baba said.

"Poison water," Joanna said, pointing to the weird-colored water in the basin. Our underwear turned out very nice, and some boy asked Baba if she was a cardinal's niece.

I kept a jumper on in bed. We were short of blankets. I had only an ironing blanket over me and a quilt that my aunt had made. The candle had burned right down to the saucer as I lay on my side and closed my eyes to think of Eugene. I remembered the night he asked me to do some multiplication for him. He knew all about politics, and music, and books, and the insides of cameras, but he was slow to add. I totted up the amount of money he should get for one hundred and thirty-seven trees, at the rate of thirty-seven and six per tree. He had sold some trees to a local timber merchant, because the woods needed thinning. There were blue paint marks on the "sold" trees, but he said that at night the timber merchant had sent a boy along to put paint marks on extra trees.

"Nearly three hundred and fifty pounds," I said, reckoning it roughly first, the way we were taught to at school, so that we should know it if our final answer was wildly wrong.

"And out of that he'll make a small fortune," Eugene said, detailing what would happen to the tree from the time it was felled until it became a press or a rafter. I could see planks of fine white wood with beautiful knots of deeper color, and golden heaps of sawdust on a floor, while he fumed about the profit which one man made.

I went to sleep wondering if I would ever see him again.

In the morning my aunt brought me tea and said that the priest had sent over word that he was expecting me. I dressed and left the house around eleven. My father had stayed in bed that morning and Mad Maura ran to the village for a half-bottle of whiskey, on tick.

Always when I escaped from the house I felt a rush of vitality and hope, as if there was still a chance that I might escape and live my life the way I wanted to.

It was a bright windy morning, the fields vividly green, the sky a delicate green-blue, and the hills behind the fields smoke-gray.

It's nice, nice, I thought as I breathed deeply and walked with my aunt's bicycle down the field toward the road.

I did not go to the priest's house. I was too afraid, and anyhow, I thought that no one would ever find out.

I went for a spin down by the river and with the intention of posting Baba's letter in the next village.

The fields along the road were struck into winter silence, a few were plowed and the plowed earth looked very, very dead and brown.

If only I could fly, I thought as I watched the birds flying and then perching for a second on thorn bushes and ivied piers.

I cycled slowly, not being in any great hurry. It was very quiet except for the humming of electric wires. Thick black posts carrying electric wires marched across the fields and the wires hummed a constant note of windy music.

At the bottom of Goolin Hill I got off the bicycle and pushed it slowly up; then halfway I stood to look at the ruined pink mansion on the hill. It had been a legend in my life, the pink mansion with the rhododendron trees all around it and a gray gazebo set a little away from the house. A rusted gate stood chained between two limestone piers, and the avenue had disappeared altogether. I thought of Mama. She had often told me of the big ball she went to in that mansion when she was a young girl. It had been the highlight of her whole life, coming across at night, in a rowboat, from her home in the Shannon island, changing her shoes in the avenue, hiding her old ones and her raincoat under a tree. The rhododendrons had been in bloom, dark-red rhododendrons; she remembered their color, and the names of all the boys she danced with. They had supper in a long dining room, and there were dishes of carved beef on the sideboard. Someone made up a song about Mama that night and it was engraved on her memory every after.

Lily Neary, swanlike
She nearly broke her bones
Trying to dance the reel-set
With the joker Johnny Jones.

"Who was Johnny Jones?" I used to ask.

"A boy," she would say dolefully.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

April 13, 2008

The Books: "The Country Girls" (Edna O'Brien)

country%20girls.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Country Girls Trilogy, by Edna O'Brien.

Published in one volume, the three books known as "The Country Girls Trilogy" - were what put Edna O'Brien on the map. Her first novel was "The Country Girls", published in 1960. True to Irish tradition, her book was banned. Not just that book - but all the subsequent Country Girls books, as well as many of her other books. O'Brien just wasn't "playing nice" with Irish sensibilities, and wrote openly about sex and the life of Dublin girls, and marriage, and religion - and so stepped right into hot water. As a young girl, Edna O'Brien read James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and it changed her life. She didn't know what she wanted to do - but it had to be something to do with literature. She recently wrote a biography of Joyce (one of my favorite quotes from it: "He would carry his work 'like a chalice' and all his life he would insist that what he did 'was a kind of sacrament.' Father, Son and Holy Ghost along with Jakes McCarthy informed every graven word. On a more secular note he liked blackberry jam because Christ's crown of thorns came from that wood and he wore purple cravats during Lent."), and I believe at one point she also wrote a book about the marriage of James and Nora Joyce. Her artistic mentor, the star she followed. There's a funny line in The Country Girls - Kate and Baba, the two best friends, hang out in Dublin in pubs (and this is 1950s Dublin) - and at one point Baba pulls Kate aside and says, "Stop asking the boys if they're read James Joyce's Dubliners." Like - that is NOT a good courtship technique!

Edna O'Brien has been asked (of course) if the books are autobiographical. It's about two girls from the country, who go away to a convent school together, before moving to Dublin - as single girls - to get jobs, and have love affairs, and eventually get married. These experiences make up the whole trilogy. Edna O'Brien was born in County Clare (to a family who sounds horrendous, frankly - judgmental, rigid, lots to rebel against) - and she also went to a convent school before moving to Dublin where she got a job in a pharmacy. She eventually became a pharmacist. She also got married, to a writer - who (according to my dad) was jealous of his wife's burgeoning gift with the pen ... a nightmare ... O'Brien published her first book ("The Country Girls") in 1960. So anyway. Of course she is asked repeatedly if the book is autobiographical. In one interview she replied, "The novel is autobiographical insofar I was born and bred in the west of Ireland, educated at a convent, and was full of romantic yearnings, coupled with a sense of outrage."

The books are not long litanies of how horrible the men in the country girls' lives are - but there is definitely a sense of isolation, and separation of the genders - which makes intimacy nigh on impossible. Men and women cannot connect. There's the whole sex thing, too. The girls are, of course, Catholics, and have been raised in a homogenous rigid world, where the Church dominates everything - their education, their emotional lives, everything. But when sex starts to come up, all of their teachings are thrown into a tizzy ... can it be reconciled? Kate and Baba don't just want to get married in order to solve the sex problem. They try to struggle it out, in affairs which are pretty terrible at times - questionable - married men, awful people sometimes ... but there is the struggle between living your own life FIRST, and then "settling down" ... can you be a happy individual in a marriage? Remember, this is the late 40s, early 1950s - when choices were much more limited - and those who were NOT just yearning to get married had a helluva time making their way. Square pegs in round holes. The books are now seen as high works of feminist art (although I hesitate to label them because it might turn someone off - but hey, I'm just reporting the facts here - and the fact is that these books are hailed as major events in the history of 20th century feminism) - although many feminists had a problem with Edna O'Brien's stuff because the main focus of the characters in the books was usually on men. So as you can see, Edna O'Brien doesn't completely please anyone. She seems ornery enough that that would make her happy. If you please everyone, you certainly can't be an artist of any import. She grew up in an environment where her mother found a book of Sean O'Casey's plays in Edna's bag, and burned it. Okay? So her mother was an ignorant ridiculously rigid and awful person - who must have been horrified at the free spirit she had given birth to. Sorry, I don't know them - but Edna has spoken about that upbringing herself. And so to fight against that, to fight against family, church, tradition ... well. I'm thinking of Joyce here, right? The age-old Irish artist's fight. To live freely, and write what they want.

O'Brien has said that she wrote her first novel The Country Girls- the first in the trilogy - like a bat out of hell. She just sat down and it streamed out of her. The book reads that way, too. A confident beautiful detailed personal stream of prose - exquisitely rendered at points - events moving us on, things happening, things halting ... Kate and Baba in the country, in the convent ... Who really cares if it's autobiographical or not? What ever happened to just getting into the story? I like the first of the trilogy the best - with Kate and Baba as teenagers and young women, making their way. To me, it is most evocative. The writing!! When they end up getting married, life becomes a drag ... and so do the books a bit. But still: it's a major Irish work, controversial to this day (and you have to wonder: why? It must be seen in the context of the time to get how controversial it was - girls talking about their breasts, and sex, and money ... going behind closed doors to hear what girls talk about when no men are around.) I mean, I won't trivialize it by calling it Sex and the City Dublin-style - because there's way more going on here - but there is a level of everyday reality, the ins and outs of life, the pubs, the dates, the dances ... that seems pretty tame in comparison to coming-of-age stories nowadays. BUT. This is about girls. Coming-of-age stories about boys can have their controversies as well (as James Joyce found out) ... but girls are always a more touchy matter, especially in a patriarchal conservative society. So Kate and Baba - who are not in any, way, shape or form - slutty girls ... have experiences, nonetheless (with married men, with birth control, with sex) - that must have been tremendously shocking at the time. Knowing Edna O'Brien's family situation, it is clear that writing, for her, was a blazing act of rebellion - and it shows. This isn't maudlin "Yellow Wallpaper" stuff - or that terrible story about the woman who drowns herself at the end (I read that book and thought on, oh, about page 2 - "Jeez, hope this lady drowns herself soon. She's a drip.") ... The Country Girls is vibrant slice-of-life stuff, with writing that verges on poetry.

I highly recommend these books to anyone interested in good writing. Also anyone interested in landmark moments in Irish literature.

Edna O'Brien said recently in an interview:

"I wrote The Country Girls in three weeks having blown the 50 quid advance. I was young, married with two small children, and whenever I met people, I was spouting poetry. I had this thing that writing was real – I mean other people's writing – literature, great literature, not rubbish. There's so much rubbish written now, so much garbage, and it's extolled. But writing was to me animate; it was real; it was as real as the people I knew.

"I only thought of one thing – the country, the landscape, my mother, the people I had left. Now I was dying to leave, this is not nostalgia, and I feel permanently, in life, quite isolated. I both belong very intensely to that place where I come from and I'm running from it still. So when I sat down to write, I was extremely emotional and yet the language is not emotional; it just came out. I didn't have to call on memory. To use the cliché – it wrote itself. And that is sometimes true for a first book.

"I knew there'd be a storm. I was accused of betraying my country, my locality, my sex. The nuns in my convent went bonkers with rage. But the books survived. I suppose that's what counts."

Here's an excerpt from The Country Girls, the first in the trilogy. As you can see, it's a simple tale, told simply ... but it broke new ground nonetheless, and paved the way for a more honest and true depiction of Irish womanhood. Edna O'Brien was a trailblazer and it's never easy for such people!! They always get the brunt of the criticism! But she's right - "the books survived" and "that's what counts".

EXCERPT FROM The Country Girls, by Edna O'Brien.

"Will you fit on the brassiere, Miss Brady?" the shopgirl asked. Pale, First Communion voice; pale, pure, rosary-bead hands held the flimsy, black, sinful garment between her fingers, and her fingers were ashamed.

"No. Just measure me," I said. She took a measuring tape out of her overall pocket, and I raised my arms while she measured me.

The black underwear was Baba's idea. She said that we wouldn't have to wash it so often, and that it was useful if we ever had a street accident, or if men were trying to strip us in the backs of cars. Baba thought of all these things. I got black nylons, too. I read somewhere that they were "literary" and I had written one or two poems since I came to Dublin. I read them to baba and she said they were nothing to the ones on mortuary cards.

"Good night, Miss Brady, happy Easter," the First Communion voice said to me, and I wished her the same.

When I came in they were all having tea. Even Joanna was sitting at the dining-room table, with tan makeup on her arms and a charm bracelet jingling on her wrist. Every time she lifted the cup, the charms tinkled against the china, like ice in a cocktail glass. Cool, ice-cool, sugared cocktails. I liked them. Baba knew a rich man who bought us cocktails one evening.

There were stuffed tomatoes, sausage rolls, and simnel cake for tea.

"Good?" Joanna asked before I had swallowed the first mouthful of crumbly pastry. She was a genius at cooking, surprising us with things we had never seen, little yellow dumplings in soup, apple strudel, and sour cabbage, but how I wished that she didn't stand over us with imploring looks, asking, "Good?"

"Tell jokes, my tell jokes?" Herman asked Gustav. He had taken a glass of wine, and always after a glass of wine he wanted to tell jokes.

Gustav shook his head. Gustav was pale and delicate. He looked unemployed, which of course was proper, because he did not go to work. He suffered from a skin disease or something. I was never sure whether I liked Gustav or not. I don't think I liked the cunning behind his small blue eyes, and I often thought that he was too good to be true.

"Let him tell jokes," Joanna said; she liked to be made to laugh.

"No, we go to pictures. We have good time at pictures," Gustav said, and Baba roared laughing and lifted her chair so that it was resting on its two back legs.

"There no juice at pictures," Joanna said, and Baba's chair almost fell backward, because she had got a fit of coughing on top of the laughing. She coughed a lot lately, and I told her she ought to see about it.

"No juice" was Joanna's way of saying that the pictures were a waste of money.

"We go, Joanna," Gustav said, gently nudging her bare, tanned arm with his elbow. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and his jacket was hanging on the back of his chair. It was a warm evening and the sun shone through the window and lit up the apricot jam on the table.

"Yes, Gustav," Joanna said. She smiled at him as she must have smiled when they were sweethearts in Vienna. She began to clear off the table and warned us about the good, best china.

"Ladies come nightclub with me?" Herman asked jokingly.

"Ladies have date," Baba said. She lowered her chin onto her chest, to let me know that it was true. Her hair was newly set, so that it curved in soft black waves that lay like feathers on the crown of her head. I was raging. Mine was long and loose and streelish.

"More cake?" Joanna asked. But she had put the simnel cake into a marshmallow tin.

"Yes, please." I was still hungry.

"Mein Gott, you got too fat." She made a movement with her hand, to outline big fat woman. She came back with a slice of sad sponge cake that was probably put aside for trifle. I ate it.

Upstairs, I took off all my clothes and had a full view of myself in the wardrobe mirror. I was getting fat all right. I turned sideways and looked around so that I could see the reflection of my hip. It was nicely curved and white like the geranium petals on the dressmaker's window ledge.

"What's Rubenesque?" I asked Baba. She turned around to face me. She had been painting her nails at the dressing table.

"Chrissake, draw the damn curtains or they'll think you're a sex maniac." I ducked down on the floor, and Baba went over and drew the curtains. She caught the edges nervously between her thumb and her first finger, so that her nail polish would not get smudged. Her nails were salmon pink, like the sky which she had just shut out by drawing the curtain.

I was holding my breasts in my hands, trying to gauge their weight, when I asked her again, "Baba, what's Rubenesque?"

"I don't know. Sexy, I suppose. Why?"

"A customer said I was that."

"Oh, you better be it all right, for this date," she said.

"With whom?"

"Two rich men. Mine owns a sweets factory and yours has a stocking factory. Free nylons. Yippee. How much do your thighs measure?" She made piano movements with her fingers, so that the nail polish would dry quickly.

"Are they nice?" I asked tentatively. We had already had two disastrous nights with friends that she had found. In the evenings, after her class, some other girls and she went into a hotel and drank coffee in the main lounge. Dublin being a small, friendly city, one or the other of them was always bound to meet someone, and in that way Baba made a lot of acquaintances.

"Gorgeous. They're aged about eighty, and my fellow has every bit of himself initialled. Tiepin, cufflinks, handkerchief, car cushions. The lot. He has leopards in his car as mascots."

"I can't go then," I said nervously.

"In Christ's name, why not?"

"I'm afraid of cats."

"Look, Caithleen, will you give up the nonsense? We're eighteen and we're bored to death." She lit a cigarette and puffed vigorously. She went on: "We want to live. Drink gin. Squeeze into the front of big cars and drive up outside hotels. We want to go places. Not to sit in this damp dump." She pointed to the damp patch in the wallpaper, over the chimneypiece, and I was just going to interrupt her, but she got in before me. "We're here at night, killing moths for Joanna, jumping up like maniacs every time a moth flies out from behind the wardrobe, puffing DDT into crevices, listening to that lunatic next door playing the fiddle." She sawed off her left wrist with her right hand. She sat on the bed exhausted. It was the longest speech Baba had ever made.

"Hear! Hear!" I said, and I clapped. She blew smoke straight into my face.

"But we want young men. Romance. Love and things," I said despondently. I thought of standing under a streetlight in the rain with my hair falling crazily about, my lips poised for the miracle of a kiss. A kiss. Nothing more. My imagination did not go beyond that. It was afraid to. Mama had protested too agonizingly all through the windy years. But kisses were beautiful. His kisses. On the mouth, and on the eyelids, and on the neck when he lifted up the mane of hair.

"Young men have no bloody money. At least the gawks we meet. Smell o' hair oil. Up the Dublin mountains for air, a cup of damp tea in a damp hotel. Then out in the woods after tea and a damp hand fumbling up your shirt. No, sir. We've had all the bloody air we'll ever need. We want life." She threw her arms out in the air. It was a wild and reckless gesture. She began to get ready.

We washed and sprinkled talcum powder all over ourselves.

"Have some of mine," Baba said, but I insisted, "No, Baba, you have some of mine." When we were happy we shared things, but when life was quiet and we weren't going anywhere, we hid our things like misers, and she'd say to me, "Don't you dare touch my powder," and I'd say, "There must be a ghost in this room, my perfume was interfered with," and she'd pretend not to hear me. We never loaned each other clothes then, and one worried if the other got anything new.

One morning Baba rang me at work and said, "Jesus, I'll brain you when I see you."

"Why?" The phone in the shop and Mrs. Burns was standing beside me, looking agitated.

"Have you my brassiere on?"

"No, I haven't," I said.

"You must have; it didn't walk. I searched the whole damn room and it isn't there."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm in a phone booth outside the college and I can't come out."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm flopping all over the damn place," and I laughed straight into Mrs. Burns's face and put down the phone.

"Oh, darling, I know how popular you must be. But tell your friends not to phone in the mornings. There might be orders coming through," Mrs. Burns said.

That night Baba found the brassiere mixed up in the bedclothes. She never made her bed until evening.

We got ready quickly. I put on the black nylons very carefully so that none of the threads would get caught in my ring and then looked back to see if the seams were straight. They were bewitching. The stockings, not the seams. Baba hummed "Galway Bay" and tied a new gold chain around the waist of her blue tweed dress.

I was still wearing my green pinafore dress and the white dancing blouse. They smelled of stale perfume, all the perfume I had poured on before going to dances. I wished I had something new.

"I'm sick o' this," I said, pointing to my dress. "I think I won't go."

So she got worried and loaned me a long necklace. I wound it round and round, until it almost choked me. The color was nice next to my skin. It was turquoise and the beads were made of glass.

"My eyes are green tonight," I said, looking into the mirror. They were a curious green, a bright, luminous green, like wet lichen.

"Now mind - Baubra; and none of your Baba slop," she warned me. She ignored the bit about my eyes. She was jealous. Mine were bigger than hers and the whites were a delicate blue, like the whites of a baby's eyes.

There was nobody in the house when we were leaving, so we put out the hall light and made sure that the door was locked. A gas meter two doors down had been raided and Joanna warned us about locking up.

We linked and kept step with one another. There was a bus stop at the top of the avenue, but we walked on to the next stop. It was a penny cheaper from the next stop, to Nelson's Pillar. We had plenty of money that night, but we walked out of habit.

"What'll I drink?" I asked, and distinctly somewhere in my head I heard my mother's voice accusing me, and I saw her shake her finger at me. There were tears in her eyes. Tears of reproach.

"Gin," Baba said. She talked very loudly. I could never get her to whisper, and people were always looking at us in the streets, as if we were wantons.

"My earrings hurt," I said.

"Take them off and give your ears a rest," she said. Still aloud.

"But will there be a mirror?" I asked. I wanted to have them on when I got there. They were long giddy earrings, and I loved shaking my head so that they dangled and their little blue-glass stones caught the light.

"Yeh, we'll go into the cloaks first," Baba said. I took them off and the pain in the lobes of my ears was worse. It was agony for a few minutes.

We passed the shop where I worked; the blind was drawn, but there was a light inside. The blind wasn't exactly the width of the window; there was an inch to spare at either side and you could see the light through that narrow space.

"Guess what they're doing in there," Baba said. She knew all about them, and was always plying me with questions - what they are and what kind of nightgowns were on the clothesline and what he said to her when she said, "Darling, I'll go up and make the bed now."

"They're eating chocolates and counting the day's money," I said. I could taste the liqueur chocolates Mr. Gentleman had given me long ago.

"No, they're not. They're taking a rasher off every half pound you've weighed before going up to confession," she said, going over and trying to see through the slit at the corner. I saw a bus coming and we ran to the stop thirty or forty yards away.

"You're all dolled up," the conductor said. He didn't take our fares that night. We knew him from going in and out of town every other evening. We wished him a happy Easter.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

April 12, 2008

The Books: "The Time Traveler's Wife" (Audrey Niffenegger)

timetraveler.jpgNext book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

This is not my kind of book. I never would have picked it up on my own, for multiple reasons:

1. It's "popular fiction" - and for a while there the book was EVERYWHERE, and usually I don't like books like that (Nicholas Sparks, Tuesdays with Morrie, and etc. etc. - although I have been ringingly wrong in this department before, and am not afraid to admit it. But, in general, if it's so popular that everyone is reading it, it is usually not my cup of tea.

2. It's a first novel by the author. In general, I stay away from first novels - unless it's an author who has proved him/herself with a bunch of other books and then I go BACK to check out the first novel. Now, there are exceptions of course to this - here, or here - and thank God I read Nancy Lemann's first novel (and I read it first of all of her books) - because her books and her writing and her outlook on life have become SO important to me now .... in the warp and weft, as it were. But in general. I don't read first novels.

3. It seemed too soulmate-y. This is obviously totally subjective (but duh - why on earth would anyone look for "objectivity" -whatever that means - on a personal website??) - and I just am not into that stuff. It seemed like it might go the way of Nicholas Sparks' stuff - which is not just boring but horribly written. Or maybe it would be well-written ... but too much about love conquering all, and timeless soul-time continuums, and meeting in the space-time ether, and souls communing ... I was into that stuff once upon a time, but now I find it almost unbearable. My mega-essays on soulmates and Richard Bach are here, here, and here. Again, if you're into soulmate stuff, then please do not get defensive. It is ridiculous to get defensive when someone is expressing her subjective opinion. It shouldn't touch your opinion at all, unless you're interested in having it be touched. So. Okay. I'm against that soulmate stuff.

Now. I've talked about my reasons for resisting the book.

Then something kind of extraordinary happened. A dear friend of mine told me I had to read the book. And here's the thing: my friend has never recommended a book to me in her life. She doesn't really read. Or - she reads for information - you know, job applications, and health books, and stuff like that ... but to sit down and read for pleasure is just not her thing. So it was stunning. She had gone on a vacation all by herself, to the Cape - and someone had left a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife behind in the motel room - so what the hell, she was all alone, she picked it up - and read it. All the way through. That was all she did for about 3 days. She'd lie in bed reading. She'd sit on the beach reading. I know my friend very well - and just the way she told me this story, I could tell what a HUGE deal it was. Reading?? For pleasure??? You?? She has a lot of guilt about free time and stuff like that, always feels like she needs to be doing something and reading doesn't count. But she got lost in The Time Traveler's Wife. And she couldn't WAIT to talk to me about it - because there are epigraphs through the book - and one of them was from Possession and she knew how much I loved Possession, so she thought maybe I would like this book. Anyway, I have friends who recommend me books all the time. It's a give and take thing. My siblings, David, Allison, Kate, Mitchell, Ted ... but this friend? She would NEVER have recommended me a book - so it was a big deal. And she actually had bought me a copy so that I could read it. Well. I dropped whatever I was reading, and picked up Time Traveler's Wife - not so much because I suddenly ached to read it - but because this was a big moment ... a moment when a friend was asking to share something with me, and it was not at all casual ... a singular moment ... It was important to me to respond immediately. I don't feel like I'm describing what a big deal it was for this particular friend to recommend a book to me and why I felt obligated (terrible word - think about "obligation" in the beautiful sense of the word, and you will know where I was at) to read it immediately - even though I didn't think it was my cup of tea.

NOW. ONTO THE BOOK. FINALLY.

I absolutely LOVED it. I loved the writing, I loved the story, I loved the Chicago setting, I loved the humor of it (the book REALLY gets what it's like to be in Chicago when you're in your 20s), and I also loved more than anything its lack of sentimentality. Niffenegger uses sentimentality very sparingly, and I so appreciated it. It's not a "this was my great love once upon a time and let us all weep for what I have lost" kind of thing ... it's not suffused with bittersweet melancholy, or a kitsch version thereof. It's about a guy who - for some unknown reason - has the ability to leap through time. He's been doing it since he was a kid. So imagine Sam Beckett of Quantum Leap leaping through time on his own - and then returning home - knowing the future, the past, what's going to happen - and then leaping out again. He never knows where he's going to land (although, like Quantum Leap, it's always within his own lifetime. Also, just to throw a wrench into the works - a horrible wrench - whenever he leaps, he finds himself stark naked in the new time and place. Naked! He could land in the middle of Michigan Avenue during a big shopping day - NAKED. So he becomes expert at how to handle this - he knows where every thrift store is in the city, he knows how to rummage through garbage for a coat, shoes - he knows what to do first. And during one of his leaps - Henry meets a little girl named Clare. She is curious about him. She runs into her house to get him clothes from her father. Henry is a grown man when he first meets Clare - although in reality they are closer to the same age. So it's this weird time-wrinkle thing ... where Henry is a little boy, and he leaps into himself at age 35 or whatever ... and he knows the end. He knows that he and Clare eventually get married. And they have problems. They have a deep love. There is much to struggle against and work out ... but he still, with all this prior knowledge, has to go through with the courtship, the romance ... he loves her dearly. But the time travel thing is so much a part of his life and he can't count on it, or plan for it ... sometimes he returns to their apartment, and he's lying in the hallway, battered and bloody from something that happened back there in the past. Clare has to accept this part of him. She is "the time traveler's wife". The story is told from both points of view - we leap back and forth from Henry to Clare - and the story is broken up into the dates and the ages - which gives you a dizzying sense of travel, and disorientation, the way it must be for Henry. Like: April 12, 1984. Henry is 36, Clare is 12. So you start to ache for them to "catch up" with each other, to bridge the gap ... to have Henry come closer in time to Clare's age ... so they can actually connect. It's a huge burden on Henry. To know the future. It gives him a great sadness that hovers around him. He's an odd guy. And Clare is wonderful.

I think the book is maybe 100 pages too long ... that's my only complaint - BUT - the ending packed such a huge punch that I almost had to go lie down. It ended so perfectly, on such a resonant symmetrical note - I thought: Yes. Of course. That's where we have been going all this time ... Of course.

It's a helluva first novel, I have to say. Niffenegger writes with great confidence, sweeping her characters through the landscape - and I just loooove the FEEL of Chicago she gets into the book. Clare is in Chicago, in her mid-20s - during the mid-1990s - which is when I lived there, and the age I was when I lived there. The clubs mentioned - Berlin! Aragon! - Niffenegger is obsessed with Chicago, and it becomes another character in the book. I could SEE every scene - the intersections, the specific place-names - Ann Sather, etc. It's got a great sense of place. Clare and Henry, to me, feel very Chicago-ish. They are locals. It's obvious.

Loved the book. I was nervous when I heard they were making a movie of it - scared that it might be ruined - or made too maudlin or treacly - but then I heard that Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana were starring - and I thought: Well. Now I can't WAIT to see it.

The book is so episodic and almost frantic in its pace - that I found a hard time picking an excerpt. I decided to go with the following. One of the best things about it is that it displays Niffenegger's sense of WHIMSY - how romance is so often silly and whimsical - that couples have private jokes, a way of being with each other - that is not lovey-dovey ... but simple enjoyment ... I love that about the book, and the way she writes it.

EXCERPT FROM The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

March 1994 (Clare is 22, Henry is 30)

CLARE: And so we are married. At first we live in a two-bedroom apartment in a two-flat in Ravenswood. It's sunny, with butter-colored hardwood floors and a kitchen full of antique cabinets and antiquated appliances. We buy things, spend Sunday afternoons in Crate & Barrel exchanging wedding presents, order a sofa that can't fit through the doors of the apartment and has to be sent back. The apartment is a laboratory in which we conduct experiments perform research on each other. We discover that Henry hates it when I absentmindedly click my spoon against my teeth while reading the paper at breakfast. We agree that it is okay for me to listen to Joni Mitchell and it is okay for Henry to listen to the Shaggs as long as the other person isn't around. We figure out that Henry should do all the cooking and I should be in charge of laundry and neither of us is willing to vacuum so we hire a cleaning service.

We fall into a routine. Henry works Tuesdays through Saturdays at the Newberry. He gets up at 7:30 and starts the coffee, then throws on his running clothes and goes for a run. When he gets back he showers and dresses, and I stagger out of bed and chat with him while he fixes breakfast. After we eat, he brushes his teeth and speeds out the door to catch the El, and I go back to bed and doze for an hour or so.

When I get up again the apartment is quiet. I take a bath and comb my hair and put on my work clothes. I pour myself another cup of coffee, and I walk into the back bedroom which is my studio, and I close the door.

I am having a hard time, in my tiny back bedroom studio, in the beginning of my married life. The space that I can call mine, that isn't full of Henry, is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptors, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from the tiny space. I make maquettes, tiny sculptures that are rehearsals for huge sculptures. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth. At night I dream about color, about submerging my arms into vats of paper fiber. I dream about miniature gardens I can't set foot in because I am a giantess.

The compelling thing about making art - or making anything, I suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nimbue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art. The magic I can make is small magic now, deferred magic. Every day I work, but nothing ever materializes. I feel like Penelope, weaving and unweaving.

And what of Henry, my Odysseus? Henry is an artist of another sort, a disappearing artist. Our life together in this too-small apartment is punctuated by Henry's small absences. Sometimes he disappears unobtrusively; I might be walking from the kitchen into the hall and find a pile of clothing on the floor. I might get out of bed in the morning, and find the shower running and no one in it. Sometimes it's frightening. I am working in my studio one afternoon when I hear someone moaning outside my door; when I open it I find Henry on his hands and knees, naked, in the hall, bleeding heavily from his head. He opens his eyes, sees me, and vanishes. Sometimes I wake up in the night and Henry is gone. In the morning he will tell me where he's been, the way other husbands might tell their wives a dream they had: "I was in the Selzer Library in the dark, in 1989." Or: "I was chased by a German Shepherd across somebody's backyard and had to climb up a tree." Or: "I was standing in the rain near my parents' apartment, listening to my mother sing." I am waiting for Henry to tell me that he has seen me as a child, but so far this hasn't happened. When I was a child I looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was an event. Now every absence is a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure I will hear about when my adventurer materializes at my feet, bleeding or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am afraid when he is gone.

HENRY: When you live with a woman you learn something every day. So far I have learned that long hair will clog up the shower drain before you can say "Liquid-Plumr"; that it is not advisable to clip something out of the newspaper before your wife has read it, even if the newspaper in question is a week old; that I am the only person in our two-person household who can eat the same thing for dinner three nights in a row without pouting; and that headphones were invented to preserve spouses from each other's musical excesses. (How can Clare listen to Cheap Trick? Why does she like the Eagles? I'll never know, because she gets all defensive when I ask her. How can it be that the woman I love doesn't want to listen to Musique du Garrot et de la Farraille?) The hardest lesson is Clare's solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I've interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreamy silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare's face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I've discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me.

When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise. Clare has turned the second bedroom into a wonder cabinet, full of small sculptures and drawings pinned up on every inch of wall space. There are coils of wire and rolls of paper tucked into shelves and drawers. The sculptures remind me of kites, or model airplanes. I say this to Clare one evening, standing in the doorway of her studio in my suit and tie, home from work, about to begin making dinner, and she throws one at me; it flies surprisingly well, and soon we are standing at opposite ends of the hall, tossing tiny sculptures at each other, testing their aerodynamics. The next day I come home to find that Clare has created a flock of paper and wire birds, which are hanging from the ceiling in the living room. A week later our bedroom windows are full of abstract blue translucent shapes that the sun throws across the room onto the walls, making a sky for the bird shapes Clare has painted there. It's beautiful.

The next evening I'm standing in the doorway of Clare's studio, watching her finish drawing a thicket of black lines around a little red bird. Suddenly I see Clare, in her small room, closed in by all of her stuff, and I realize that she's trying to say something, and I know what I have to do.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (16)

April 11, 2008

The Books: "Ahab's Wife" (Sena Jeter Naslund)

0688177859.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgNext book on my adult fiction shelves: Even the title kind of embarrasses me, there's a lot that is embarrassing about this book - however I read it, and loved it (and also retained almost NONE of it - which says a lot) - anyhoo, whatevs: Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund. Also: Sena Jeter Naslund? Can you have a more high-maintenance name??

OKAY. Here's the deal. Normally I despise even the idea of such books (although Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is a ringing exception - that was beautifully conceived, wonderfully written - and obviously struck a huge chord) - and when I see the Pride and Prejudice sequels that line the shelves - that take us into Elizabeth and Darcy's bedroom and stuff - I see red. Like: can't you just leave it? Or ... can't you just write fanfic on Livejournal like any normal person?? Do you have to try to compete with Jane freakin' Austen in the marketplace? I know it's a tribute, blah blah, it's the writer saying, "I loved those books so much and I just want MORE." I actually don't happen to think that that is a valid reason to write a book ... sometimes "wanting more" is the whole point of the original book. I close Jane Eyre and I will never stop wondering what marriage between jane and Mr. Rochester will be like. What on earth do they talk about at the dinner table? Do they have children? What the hell???? But that is part of the beauty of a stand-alone book like Jane Eyre. It is itself. It is singular. We are not meant to know more. Charlotte Bronte actually meant it when she said "The End".

All that being said, let me throw a wrench into all of it: I am a huge fan of fanfic and have actually written some myself - because it pleases me. The following is mortifying to admit, but whatever, that's why I'm here - to admit mortifying things and have other people say, "You did that?? I did that, too!!" - In 6th grade, I was so in love with Han Solo that I wrote stories about Han and how he had a younger sister - very similar in character to him - she was feisty, obnoxious, aggressive, and, hmmm, she was 11 years old, and looked incredibly just like me!! I inserted her into the regular Star Wars stories - like Han Solo was trying to dodge her in Tatooine - he needed to get this transport job, and fly off in the Millennium Falcon and not have to have his stupid little sister tagging along - but she somehow stowed herself on board ... and then uh-oh, they are now warp-speeding away ... and it is revealed that she is a stowaway and Han is pissed but what can he do?? And of course Han Solo's sister - I can't remember the name I gave her now - is courageous, fierce with her laser guns, and refuses to be pushed aside - just because she's only 11 years old!! I had a ball writing this stuff. I was imagining myself into that epic, I loved those movies so much that I basically wanted to be IN them. Not as an actress, but as a character ... Anyway, you get the point. I found it greatly satisfying. There is a place for such fanfic - and I know that Star Wars has its own cottage industry of "other stories" that you can read ... and I suppose the domestic drama of Han Solo and, er, his younger sister ... could be placed in that canon. So I'm not saying I don't get the impulse - and I think in some respects the Star Wars offshoot stories are in a different realm than the Pride and Prejudice sequels. I'm not sure why one makes me pissed off and one doesn't. Such as we are made.

Now that my rant is over, let's talk about Ahab's Wife. In Moby-Dick(one of my excerpts of the book here) - there is one paragraph where Ahab, alone on deck, brooding over his revenge, remembers his new wife back home - something about her head denting the pillow. We learn that that "sweet resigned girl" had had a child by him ... and that's pretty much it. From those two lines of text, Sena Jeter Naslund (sorry. I know it's unfair but her name pisses me off) - has created an entire book about the wife of Captain Ahab.

First off, let me just say: Read Moby Dick if you haven't already. Don't just read Ahab's Wife and think that you have somehow gotten close to that other tale. No. You won't be let off the hook that easy.

Secondly: I don't know, after all my thrashing about here - I have to say that I enjoyed Ahab's Wife, for what it was. It's not badly written, first of all (although there are some major problems - which I'll get to in a minute) - and it's written in a way (at least structure-wise) that mirrors Moby Dick: short chapters with evocative poetic titles, a narrative that is not quite linear, sudden philosophical ramblings in the middle of the plot, etc. Also - my copy of the book is illustrated with woodcuts, and it gives a really nice "old-fashioned" feel to the whole thing. Yes, it's kitsch, to some degree - but I got no beef with kitsch if it's well done, and somehow fits into a greater whole. I never for one second forgot that it was a modern woman writing this book - but the format of the book is pleasingly old-fashioned, and nobody can say that Naslund doesn't adore and revere Moby Dick - and so that I appreciate. Ahab's Wife is not about crashing Ahab off of his pedestal (although why that madman would be on a pedestal is beyond me) - it's not just about humanizing him and showing another side to him (the husband) - it's about the life of the wives of sea captain's at that time, living on Nantucket mostly, walking the widow's walk, staring out to sea. Now that's a good story - and it has NOT been told ... and so that aspect of it is fascinating. This is a story (the story of going to sea in the 19th century) that does involve both genders - the women who stayed home ran things, they didn't see their husbands for years on end - they flourished, they had far more independence and power than other women, just from the fact that there was no man in the picture, and etc. etc. So I actually found that side of the book really interesting and well done.

One of the problems here, though (besides the problem of: why do you even need to write this book? Isn't Moby Dick enough?) is that the only bad thing that really happens to "Ahab's Wife" is the fact that her husband goes mad and comes back from that one voyage missing a leg and raving like a lunatic for his revenge. Other than that? The world is full of good and helpful people, everyone has a benevolent side, there is almost no conflict (at least this is how I remember it) ... Ahab's wife has many experiences (pre-marriage, and then as a married woman) - and for the most part, everything turns out okay in all of them. I don't know. It's not good novel-writing. You need conflict. You need things to NOT work out. You need to not love your character so much that you can't bear anything bad happening to her. That's what I feel has gone on here with Ahabs wife. I feel like Derek Jeter Nasboot loves her main character so much that she just wants her to keep living and loving and growing and changing ... with almost no interference from the universe. Well, I have lived long enough to know that the universe always interferes. So that element of the book is tiresome - dare I say amateurish??

However, I wish I would write such an amateurish book and have it be a New York Times bestseller for weeks on end.

There are indeed some set-piece events in the book that have sticked with me. A particularly harrowing river crossing where the characters have to step from ice block to ice block. A storm at sea.

I looked up the NY Times review of the book and much of it made me laugh out loud. First of all, the review is entitled "Call me Una". And the subheading reads: According to his wife, Ahab was a decent guy (and good in bed) until that whale came along. hahahaha That pretty much sums up the trajectory of the book. The review is quite interesting - here it is - and I almost feel bad of making fun of a book with such good and earnest intentions. But you know, great novels are not written with good and earnest intentions. I'm not saying that See-no-evil Jeter Naslund was trying to write a great novel - and that's one of the reasons I feel a bit bad - because she obviously is an enormous fan of Moby Dick and wrote her book with a great deal of research and passion behind it. So it's hard to "review" it, in a way. D'Erasmo, the reviewer, writes:

Naslund, Ahab-like, has taken on an overwhelming quarry in pursuing Melville, but, true to her maternal, liberal philosophy, she does not harpoon the master so much as harness his force to her own. That Naslund is unstintingly reasonable, empathetic and kind should not, however, blind one to the fact that she is, in the most nonaggressive way, rewriting American history, revising American literature and critiquing traditional masculinity. On the froth and foam and rage of ''Moby-Dick'' Naslund lays a cool hand, as if to say: ''There, there. Such a fuss about a fish.''

Yup. Which is rather ironic considering Melville's towering misogyny, in general.

D'Erasmo praises the writing itself - and that's true - the book is beautifully written, and doesn't read in a modern manner - it feels like the 19th century. But the critique there is my critique: the world of Una is so gentle and loving - everyone she meets so kind and good ... that it's a bit of a yawn at times, and you yearn to get back out on the ocean, where all the men are, to see how they are faring against that great white whale. Life is NOT kind and good. Nature is red in tooth and claw, Derek Jeter, come on - you can't ignore that! Women, of all people, should know that best! Women bringing life into the world - often died in that very moment - it was a given that their chances were not good. And the chances of the baby living to adulthood was even worse ... so the whole thing is cruel, risky, horrifying, and yet - hey, it's what we do. But that element does not exist in Naslund's universe. And that's the main problem with the book.Another good sentence from that review: "IN this respect, ''Ahab's Wife'' is sometimes reminiscent of a Marge Piercy or Marilyn French novel, circa 1976, minus any anger." Ha. Yes, exactly.

So I cannot find it in me to be really angry about this book, because I did enjoy much of it - even the yawn-inducing happiness throughout ... It is by no means a replacement for Moby Dick and her version of Captain Ahab doesn't at all touch the one that Melville created, or the one that lives on in my head. Her book just isn't that powerful. (Wicked IS that powerful ... I can't think about the Wicked Witch of the West now without at least considering the question: What on earth happened to her to make her like that? Some people don't find that an interesting question at all - or they just find it annoying. I remember a while back I wrote a post about the musical Wicked and some jagoff drive-by made a comment that it was a "blue state version of the story - the witch isn't evil, she's just misunderstood". Oh for Christ's sake.How difficult is it for you to walk around carrying that giant CHIP on your shoulder? Go away. Kinda like the eejit who read a post I wrote about a big red moon - and decided to tell me, in the most condescending way possible, how "out of touch" I was with reality, because of my one comment (a joke!) in the post about immigration. "You obviously are so out of touch with reality that you are not aware that such and such and such and such about immigration and what a problem it is and how INS is full of shit and how our country is being overrun by illegal aliens and how such and such is a huge issue ... you obviously are such an idiot." I write a post about a big red moon and you show up ranting about immigration and then you call ME an idiot? Pathetic. CHILL.

I actually think it's interesting - to re-think things ... there's a series of books out now with modern authors writing their own versions of Greek mythology and they are fantastic - I'm making my way through all of them. Margaret Atwood wrote one, Jeanette Winterson wrote one about Atlas - it's my favorite thing of hers she's written in years ... I like it: stories are meant to be re-told, re-thought, re-worked - at least the good ones are ... ) But here, with Ahab's Wife we aren't in that realm. I think if we heard the story through, say, Starbucks point of view - or Queequeg's - we might have something a bit more resonant.

I feel like this review is all over the place. I enjoyed the book, as I said - at least the writing of it - she's a very beautiful writer.

But, for me, the serious problems with the narrative (mainly how everyone in the book is good) is what I am left with.

Here's the excerpt. For me, it's the main event I remember in the book (although the context is lost): Ahab's wife (who has just given birth) is helping Susan - a slave woman, escape. They come to a river Susan must cross - and there is no bridge - only floating huge ice floes. I think Nasboot-Jeter-Prenup's writing cannot be denied. It's good.


EXCERPT FROM Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund.

That night, Susan and I stood on the banks of the river, which was moving blackly with its load of white ice floes. The floes were flat on the top and big as the floor of my cabin. Some were as big as a river barge. They all moved downstream in a ghostly procession, separated by jagged black lines where the water was bare. The edges crunched when they touched and hissed when they swept by. In the center of the river, where the current ran swifter, a band of floes moved, much more quickly than those near the sides.

The moon was full, which would make the footing easier for Susan, for she must jump from floe to floe to cross the river. We stood alone - hand in hand at the edge of the water, our skin separated by the wool of our mittens. No other eyes, no other soul, would watch her go. Silence, stillness, cold. They chimed about us as one snowy chord.

Susan and I had fashioned her a coat from a quilt, and called it a Joseph's coat, because it was truly of many colors, and I had given her my own knitted cap and, under the patchwork coat, an oat-colored sweater. In a cloth bag, she carried some cooked potatoes and johnnycake and a pair of my mother's shoes. She wore another pair of Mother's shoes, and we had driven nails from the inside so that the soles would prick into the slippery ice and keep her feet from sliding. Around her neck, in a tiny gathered bag, she carried a lock of my baby's hair, for he was born with hair and it was red as flame. I have a lock of it, too, intertwined with one of Susan's, but I do not have a lock of my mother's hair. I'd given Susan my red mittens; I wore the new black ones. We loosened our grip on one another's hand.

When I saw Susan step upon the ice, I bit my lower lip till the blood flowed down my chin and crusted in the cold. Here the riverbank was no higher than a step, as from house to yard. In the moonlight, new snow like sugar glittered atop the sheet of ice lying along the bank. Behind her, in a lengthening path, Susan's footprints indented the sparkling snow. She moved toward the center of the river as calmly as though crossing a broad moonlit road cut through the crush and trees of the wilderness.

When she came to the first black edge, she stepped across the open water as though it were a mere stream. The next floe was smaller, and the next even smaller; they dipped or tilted slightly when she stepped onto them. The spans of open water between them seemed wider and wider, and sometimes she waited for the current to bring the ice rafts closer together. Then she leapt the narrowed fissure and walked on.

It seemed to me Susan was walking on clouds in a black sky. There were clouds in the sky, but they stayed far from the moon and did not block her benevolent light. I blessed the moon that held up her lantern for us. Over the water, from seeming cloud to cloud, some silvery, some gray, some white and bright as mirrors for the moon, Susan stepped across the black water.

As the current accelerated and the spaces between floes widened, Susan ran and jumped from raft to raft; my heart hung in the air with her. In the center of the river, the swifter current zipped the ice rafts downstream, with Susan standing on one of them. Her arms fluttered once for balance, twice.

I began to walk downstream and then to run to keep up with the central river as it swept Susan's floe downstream. She never turned to look at me, nor did I want to distract her, and I never called any words of encouragement except as the mind blazes out messages brighter than a lighthouse.

Fly! Fly! as she leapt and landed, the floe she landed on already taking her downstream.

At last the treacherous midsection of the river was traversed. She was far from me now - a dark upright using the flatness: flying and landing, running and leaping, from floe to floe. I saw shapes in the ice rafts, mostly like enormous animals, flat, not like a natural swan or bear but flat as a cookie animal or a tin weathervane. Near the other side, approaching a bend, she had to wait for her floe to come close to the bank. Holding the stitch in my side, I continued walking as rapidly downstream as I could till I came to a high but tangled shoreline that thwarted me. Soon the current would sweep Susan's floe beyond my sight. O, carry her close, carry her close, now, I prayed to the ice, and I prayed that Susan would not feel herself passing beyond my sight and take the risk of trying to jump ashore when the gulf remained too great. The floe that wheeled her toward the far shore was like the palm of a hand, open and presentational.

Patient Susan! Her ice raft nudged the shore, and she jumped. Even as her shoes landed on the snowy bank, she turned and looked exactly where I stood. Together we lifted our arms, blowing each other a kiss across the water, for we had not kissed on parting, saving it till she should be safe, and trusting the sweet air to be our go-between. And then one shout, though it was small from the distance, from Susan: Freedom!

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack

April 10, 2008

The Books: "The Discovery of Heaven" (Harry Mulisch)

300px-Discovery_of_heaven.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf:

The Discovery of Heaven, by Dutch author Harry Mulisch.

It seems to me that the book's Wikipedia page is full of editorial comments, which is rather annoying and has no place in Wikipedia ("albeit shallow" "written with humor", etc. - Thanks for the "review", nerdy jagoff at the keyboard - who do you think you are, Manohla Dargis?) - but there is some very good information there about the history of the book there - and here is Mulisch's page - he is a fascinating guy. A legendary figure in Dutch literature - one of those great towering intellectual figures who is rather omnipresent - he wrote novels, essays, op-ed columns, plays - you know, the works.


Now. Discovery of Heaven. To be perfectly frank, I remember nothing about the book (or, almost nothing) - but due to the amount of markings on the pages, I know I had an interesting time reading it. I remember being fascinated by the intellectual sweep of the book. It's kind of a Da Vinci Code for intellectuals. There are tablets hidden under the tabernacle - made of sapphire - the tablets with the 10 commandments on them - or, there is a rumor that they are still hidden there - and finding them will release the human race from its bondage ... (Please forgive me, I honestly don't remember much of the book - but I do remember the tablets and that they are VERY important). Mulisch seems to find the convergence of mathematics, architecture and religion to be extremely important. The famous architects, and their understanding of space, seem to have something to do with God - with a visual expression of God here on earth. And the tablets are somehow ... relevant ... in a world-shaking way that I cannot recall.

The book is a "novel of ideas" - every review says so! I read this book in my very spare spare time while I was in grad school, it was the kind of thing I could just pick up and read a couple pages, and put down - and pick it back up again a week later, and not feel behind. The characters are not "the thing" here. It's the ideas. That took some getting used to. Mulisch kills a character off early on. Someone who is, you know, a main guy. BOOM. He's dead. It's a plot device. And it's obviously a plot device. That's the whole thing. It's a meta moment. But it was jarring for me! I hadn't really come to "care" about the character, because these aren't really real people - but it still was a bit jarring to have him disappear like that. But once I got used to Mulisch, I stopped looking for in-depth characters and subconscious motivations - and I got into the story, the ideas, what the book was trying to say - about the three major religions all grouped in Jerusalem, how they could speak to one another - if they would shut the fuck up for one second and listen - how mathematics has glimpses of God in it ... and ... I'm not sure what else. That's all I really remember. I do remember the long treatises on geometry and the vanishing point - reminiscent of my Humanities classes in high school when we learned about all that stuff. These are Mulisch's obsessions.

If you want an invigorating intellectual read - with tons of ideas thrown around, I highly recommend The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch. Looking at all of my feverish underlining makes me want to read the book again, when I am not so distracted by other things.

I picked an excerpt for today based SOLELY on how many underlines and exclamation points I have added to the pages. Hahaha I seriously don't remember much of the book, in terms of why the hell the tablets come up, and how they all get to Jerusalem, and what all of that has to do with the vanishing point - but I do remember loving it. So I'm picking an excerpt that I cannot preface, or give context to - since my memory is so sparse - but I obviously found it important at the time! I re-read it just now and still found it interesting. It may be malarkey - like I said, this very well could be Da Vinci Code for intellectuals, but whatever, I loved The Da Vinci Code, I recognize it is malarkey, and I loved it anyway (excerpt here). I read it in about 6 hours or something like that. Couldn't put it down. The Discovery of Heaven isn't as much a thriller - as it is a 700 page pondering of ideas, although it does leap from country to country, in pursuit of ... the secrets about those tablets, and what the architecture has to say about all of this.

In the following excerpt, someone goes to talk to someone else about something.

But read on! I have no idea what is happening (and I read the damn book) but I still find the conversation VERY interesting.


EXCERPT FROM The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch.

"Well, QuQu ..." he said. "Times change. How old are you now?"

"Sixteen."

"Sixteen already ..." He focused on the oak beams in the ceiling. "When I was sixteen, it was 1927. In that Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic - I can remember precisely. I was living in Haarlem then, close to the flea field, as we called it; I used to hang around there a lot with my friends. It was an extended grass field opposite a great white pavilion from the end of the eighteenth century, with columns and an architrave and everything that you're crazy about." Quinten could see that he was seeing it again, although he could only see the ceiling. "It was so grand, it didn't fit into the bourgeois surroundings of Haarlem at all." He looked at Quinten. "I myself was much more interested in the New Architecture, in the de Stijl, the Bauhaus, and so on. I always find your preferences rather strange for such a young boy, but shall I tell you something? You're really modern with your Palladio and your Boullée and those people."

"How do you mean?"

Mr. Themaat raised his hand for a moment, perhaps to brush his face, but a moment later he dropped it, trembling.

"I haven't kept up with the literature for quite some time, but after classicism and neoclassicism, all those classical forms are coming back for the third time. By the year 2000 the world will be full of them - you mark my words, you'll see. At the beginning I thought it was just a whim of fashion but it goes much deeper. You'll be proved right, and I'm not sure if I'm pleased about that. In the visual arts and literature and music, it might be the end of modernism, and in politics as well. Gropius, Picasso, Joyce, Schönberg, Lenin - they determined my life. It looks as though soon it will all be in the past."

"Freud and Einstein, too?" asked Quinten. At home he had always heard those names in that kind of list.

"It wouldn't surprise me. The last few years I've felt like a champion of the Gothic must have felt at the rise of classicism. All those magnificent cathedrals had suddenly become old-fashioned. Are you still interested in that kind of thing?"

Quinten had the feeling that Themaat was not quite sure who he was talking to. It was though he were regarding Quinten as a retired professor like he himself was.

"I've never been interested in that way."

"In what way, then?"

Quinten thought for a moment. Should he tell him about the Citadel of his dreams? But how could you really tell someone about a dream? When you told someone about a dream, it always sounded stupid, but while you were dreaming it, it wasn't stupid at all - so when you tell a dream precisely, you are still not telling the person what you dreamed. Telling someone about a dream was impossible.

"Well, I was just interested," he said. "I don't know. I think you've told me everything that I wanted to know."

Themaat looked at him for a while, then turned his legs laboriously off the sofa and sat up, with his back bent, two flat white hands next to his thighs.

He closed his eyes and opened them again. "Shall I tell you one thing that you may not know yet?"

"Yes, please."

"Perhaps you'll think it's nonsense, just the chatter of a sick old man, but I want to tell you anyway. Look, how is it that that ideal Greco-Roman architecture and that of the Renaissance could turn into the inhuman gigantism of someone like Boullée? And how couldd it later, with Speer, even degenerate into the expression of genocide?"

"You once said that it had something to do with Egypt. With the pyramids. With death."

"That's right, but how could it have had anything to do with that?"

"Do you know, then?"

"I think I know, QuQu. And you must know too. It comes from the loss of music."

Quinten looked at him in astonishment. Music? What did music suddenly have to do with architecture? It seemed to him as though a vague smile crossed the mask of Mr. Themaat's face.

The humanist architects, like Palladio, he said, were guided in their designs not only by Vitruvius's discovery of the squared circle, which determined the proportions of the divine human body, but also by a discovery of Pythagoras in the sixth century before Christ: that the relationship between the harmonic intervals was the same as that between prime numbers. If you plucked a string and then wanted to hear the octave of that note, then you simply had to halve its length - the harmony of a note and its octave was therefore determined by the simplest ratio, 1:2. With fifths, it was 2:3 and with fourths, 3:4. The fact that the fantastic notion 1:2:3:4, which was as simple as it was inexpressible, was the basis of musical harmony, and that the whole of musical theory could be derived from it, gave Plato such a shock 150 years later that in his Dialogue "Timaeus" he had a demiurge create the globe-shaped world according to musical laws, including the human soul.

Fifteen hundred years later, that still found an echo in the Renaissance. And in those days the architects realized that the musical harmonies had spatial expressions - namely, the relationships of the length of strings, and spatial relationships were precisely their only concern. Because both the world and the body and soul were composed according to musical harmonies by the demiurge architect, both the macrocosm and the microcosm, they must therefore be guided in their own architectural designs by the laws of music. In Palladio that developed into an extremely sophisticated system. And subsequently that Greek divine world harmony also became connected with the Old Testament Jahweh, who had ordered Moses to build the tabernacle according to carefully prescribed measurements - but he could no longer remember the details. He'd forgotten.

"The tabernacle?" asked Quinten.

"That was a tent in which the Jews displayed their relics on their journey through the desert."

"Did it have to be square or round?"

"Yes, you've put your finger on it. That was precisely the obstacle to reconciling Plato and the Bible. There were also squares involved, if I remember correctly, but nothing round. The whole tent must be oblong."

"Oblong? Greek and Egyptian temples were oblong too, weren't they - like beds?" Quinten's eyes widened for a moment, but he wasn't given the opportunity to pursue his thoughts, because Themaat came to a conclusion.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he said, at the birth of the new age, when modern science originated, it had all been lost. The view that musical theory should be the metaphysical foundation of the world, of body and soul and architecture, was rejected as obscurantist nonsense - and that led directly to Boullée and Speer. The harmonic relationships of course did not automatically change when the elements were enlarged a hundredfold; but the dimensions of the human body, as the measure of all things, remained unchanged - that is: it became proportionately a hundred times smaller, thus ultimately disturbing all harmony and eliminating the human soul in an Egyptian way.

Slowly, as though he were lifting something heavy, Mr. Themaat raised an index finger. "And what you see at the moment, QuQu, is the unexpected return of all those classical motifs, all those stylobates and shafts and capitals and friezes and architraves - fortunately on a human scale again, but also in a totally crazy way. It's just as though somewhere high in space the classical ideal exploded and the fragments and splinters are now falling back to earth, all confused, distorted, broken and out of their equilibrium. Here," he said, and took hold of a large, thick book, which he had obviously laid out ready. "Catalog of the Biennale in Venice. Four years ago there was an architecture exhibition there, which made me first see what was brewing. 'The Presence of the Past' was the theme. Look," he said, and opened the book where he had laid a bookmark. "The Acropolis in a distorting mirror." With half-closed lids, he handed the book to Quinten.

Was it a view of the Citadel? Quinten's eyes began to shine. How splendid! They were photos of a fantastic street, indoors, consisting of a covered hallway: huge pieces of scenery consisting of gables, designed by different architects, all the gables differing totally from each other and yet belonging together, while each gable also consisted of elements that didn't belong together and yet formed a whole. While Themaat said that Vetruvius would have a heart attack if he saw that and that Palladio would kill himself laughing, Quinten looked at a paradoxical portico with four standing columns very close together: the first was a bare tree trunk,t he second stood on a model of a house, the third was only half built - the upper half, which floated in the air and still pretended to support the architrave - the fourth was a hedge cut in a form of the column; the architrave was indicated by a curved strip of blue neon. Everything had a fairy-tale paradoxical quality, the disharmony as harmony. Mr. Themaat might meanwhile maintain that it was classical language, but with all the words wrongly spelled and the syntax turned into an Augean stable, such as toddlers wrote, it gave him an overwhelming feeling of happiness.

"I thought you'd like it, QuQu," said Mr. Themaat, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief. "For me it's an end, a kind of fireworks to conclude the great banquet, which once began in Greece. But then you had the balanced world view of Ptolemy, with the earth resting in the center of the universe; according to humanism you got that from Copernicus, with the sun resting in the middle; afterward you got the infinite universe of Giordano Bruno, which no longer had any center at all. All those universes were eternal and unchanging, but recently we have been living in the explosive, violent universe of your foster father, which suddenly has a beginning. Then you get a postmodern sort of spectacle; then everything bursts into pieces and fragments. Everything's exploding at the moment, up to and including the world population, and that's all because of the crazy development of technology. Suddenly a whole new age has dawned, which fortunately I won't have to experience."

Quinten looked out of the window thoughtfully. "But a beginning is also some kind of fixed point, isn't it? What is more fixed than a beginning? You really ought to see that as progress after the previous universe, which had no center anymore."

"Yes," said Themaat. "You could look at it like that."

"Anyway, I suddenly remember what Max once said: that human beings are smaller than the universe in approximately the same proportion as the smallest particle is smaller than the human being."

For a few seconds Mr. Themaat fixed his great staring eyes on him. "So it is true after all? So is man in the middle after all? They should have known that."

"Who?"

"Well, Plato, Protagoras, Vitruvius, Palladio - all those fellows."

Groaning a little, he lay down again, and there was a moment's silence. "For the last few weeks I've found myself thinking of music all the time, QuQu. The Platonic harmony of the spheres has disappeared from the world since Newton, and harmony disappeared from music itself with Schönberg, in Einstein's time. But just like those wretched columns in the catalog, tonality is making a comeback at the moment - except that in the meantime music has become a bane instead of a boon. Here it's still relatively quiet - here it's just dogs barking - but in the city there's no escaping it anymore. There's music everywhere, even in the elevators and the bathrooms. Music comes out of cars, and on the scaffolding every building worker has his portable radio on as loud as it will go. Everywhere is like it only used to be at the fair. But all that harmonic music now together forms cacophony, compared with which Schönberg's relativist twelve-tone system was nothing. And that ubiquitous cacophony is what the new-fangled cacophonous architecture expresses. That bomb that you once talked about, Quinten, has exploded. That's what I wanted to tell you, but perhaps you should forget it again at once. Anyway, I've gotten tired. I think I'm going to close my eyes for a minute."




Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

April 9, 2008

The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

n128983.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf: This will be my fourth excerpt from Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

First excerpt

Second excerpt

Third excerpt

Max takes over the narrative in Chapter 4. He and Eleanor have met, and then he went back to England, to go to college at Cambridge. They have exchanged addresses and yes, they begin to write letters - and often the letters are frustrating - because how can you put such a feeling into words? So what they do is - they talk about what they are studying, and they talk about what has been on their minds. Max becomes very interested in the mathematics of Paul Dirac - and shares some of his theories with Eleanor. Eleanor returns the letter, pondering the theories - making conjectures, connections ... In the meantime, life goes on. Max is in college. The Labour Government in England collapses - the stock market in America crashes and the fallout goes round the world. The Nazis are gaining power in Germany, becoming omnipresent and there are strange rumblings about what is going on in Russia. Max is very aware of all of this, because it seems connected, somehow with Eleanor, and it also is becoming hard to ignore that the world is about to explode. Eleanor is struggling, in Germany, to keep it together. She is going the route of her mother, and becoming more and more involved in left-wing politics, which is quite a dangerous activity, given the crack-downs. But she thinks it is the only way. She has been studying the manuscripts of Karl Marx with Bruno. Cambridge, as of now, is still relatively protected from that - but not for long. Max continues his studies, and becomes very interested in not only Dirac but Wittgenstein, who is also at Cambridge at that time. Max befriends a kind of horrible person named Melvyn - a queeny bitchy type, who snarks about everything and everyone - and Melvyn introduces Max to Mullen, who is studying Russian art - Mullen will be a very important figure later in the book. What is going on in Russia? What is Stalin really doing? Max would love to know. Max also meets a young girl named Suzy, whose father is a professor at Cambridge - and they start to date. Dating someone else doesn't seem to threaten what he feels for Eleanor, not at all. But he does wonder how all of this will play out. So much of what Max thinks is fate - is how you deal with whatever comes up. Max takes a summer job in a small working-class community, to help them build a community center. It used to be a shipbuilding community, but now there are no more ships being built, and the economic depression is acute. Capitalism has crumbled. While Max is working in the community (and having some sort of strange intense relationship with Peter Reece, the local priest - who is in charge of the building project) - he gets a letter from Eleanor. She will be coming to England with a group of her Marxist revolutionary friends - they are going on a pilgrimage to all of the important places in Karl Marx's life, and are taking a bus through England. Can she see Max? It becomes increasingly complicated for them to hook up again. Major forces seem against them. Eleanor has to make her entire tour bus of revolutionaries go hours out of their way so she can see a boy she only talked to for half an hour once upon a time. What is going on here? And they end up missing each other anyway.

Max writes this chapter in an increasingly frustrated voice - continuously talking to Eleanor - saying "Oh my beautiful German girl ..." He wishes all obstacles could be swept away. But since they cannot, in the meantime, there is Suzy ... who is young and sexy and silly. He enjoys her. They sleep together. Melvyn is jealous, and makes snarky comments ... Max doesn't tell Eleanor about Suzy. There are other side-plots, having to do with Max befriending (basically) a homeless family in the working-class town where he works ... and saving the youngest daughter from the clutches of her own father. He's not sure how to save her, or why he is doing so, but he knows she needs help.

There is always a child - between Max and Eleanor ... the end of Chapter III saw Max and Eleanor helping a child down from the rioting audience outside the theatre ... they look at each other, wonderingly ... Is this our child? Isn't this absurd that we have only just met and now we have a child?

This is an ongoing theme.

Here we are, though, early on in the chapter - as Max sets up the themes ... And now, it is interesting - I find that I myself am embodying one of the main themes of the book: how difficult (nearly impossible) it is to put certain things into words. And how you should be quite careful when trying to articulate certain things ... because some things disappear when you name them. I feel that writing down "the plot", as it were, does this great book a huge disservice - although if you've been reading the excerpts, you will be able to tell that there is way more here than just "what happens". If you just hear "what happens" it sounds like a big chaotic mess. When really what it is is a treatise on the interconnectedness of all things - how politics and science and love and war intersect - and how each can inform the other, or - no, that's too polite. How each informs the other, whether we can see the connections or not ... they are there ... and Max and Eleanor, struggling to just survive the early 1930s in Europe, are also trying to see beneath surface events - to see what is really going on.

And when there are elements such as Nazis and Stalin and Hitler and world-wide economic depression running amok - it is important to talk about what might be really going on.


EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

I remember that we talked about politics, you and I: were you not closer to Communism at that time than you remember? (You imagined you had got away from your mother?) You certainly showed your antipathy to those Nazi boys: I suspected at first that you did not go down to the performance of the play in the evening because your friends had joined up with them - or was I even then being too modest? You showed some antipathy to me when I suggested that in the cannibal-race of the Western world these Nazis might play the part of scavengers, garbage-collectors, to clean the mess up. But then was not this the sort of thing that was being said by the Communist friends of your mother's?

In Cambridge before 1930, it is true, we did not know much of either Communism or Fascism. It was the fashion, I suppose, to say about Russia 'Of course, the experiment might go either this way or that.' And about Italy 'At least Mussolini makes the trains run on time.' Reactions amongst students were influenced by the contempt we had for what we saw and read of politicians at home. These seemed to be like dinosaurs already half fossilised in rock: we thought - Hurry on, ice-cap, come down from the pole.

I would say to my mother 'Freud doesn't seem too optimistic about the chances of improvement.'

My mother would say 'Truth after all does not depend upon the chances of improvement.'

I said to my father 'But if there is no guiding principle in evolution, then why should one form of behaviour be at better than another.'

My father said 'Science and ethics belong in different worlds.'

I would think - But might not this attitude be like that of the dinosaurs just before they were caught by the cold?

But then I would think of you, my beautiful German girl, whose legs as they moved within your skirt were like the clappers of a bell, the memory of whose mouth still sometimes took me by the throat so that it was as if I could not breathe. I thought - There are connections here beyond the reach of our scientific world; sailors are lured to rocks by sirens; rocks are where fishes and humans crawl out on to a new land.

In Cambridge, young men put their heads into the sand of scrums on football fields. OId men stood and watched them as if they themselves would leap in and be blind.

Oh yes, I felt as if I were an agent in occupied territory. But what was the agency? What was it for? Who were the other agents? (Of course, you.)

Indeed one should not stay too long in the company of someone whom one feels is a fellow agent: there is such work to be done!


Posted by sheila Permalink

April 8, 2008

The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

n128983.jpgNext book on my adult fiction bookshelf: This will be my third excerpt from Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

First excerpt

Second excerpt

It's been a couple years since I've read Hopeful Monsters and I'm really enjoying leafing through the book, reminding myself of it ... my favorite sections and events. This book has the potential to remind me of what is important to me, my essence, what matters ... much of it is 100% cerebral, but so am I, most of the time. What are my intellectual concerns? How do I see the world? What is the role of chance? Do I experience life as random chaos or is there a pattern? Mosley is all about that. His characters are scientists, researchers - they look for patterns in the chaos. And who knows what might mean something and what might not ... This scientific level of inquiry is used in the experience of personal life as well, love, and friendship, and competition. And so through the book great themes of connection are woven between all of these elements - love, socialism, philosophy, college life, physics, theatre (yes! even theatre!) - and Max and Eleanor revolve through it, entering and re-entering each other's lives ... but why? Why is there a connection? What happens when they first meet? And why is it so important?

In the third chapter of the book Eleanor takes over the narrative. This is a long chapter, with many different sections to it. She's basically filling Max in on what happened to her in the couple of years before they met for the first time. Eleanor goes to school. She becomes best friends with a giggly crazy girl named Trixie (how I love Trixie) and a snarky funny boy named Bruno, who is probably gay. They are three peas in a pod. They have all kinds of adventures - some that border on illegal. It's the mid 20s in Berlin. The world Christopher Isherwood described so well. Decadence, unbridled. The three teenagers decide to have an adventure - so Trixie and Eleanor dress up, so they will look older, and go to a bar frequented by fat cats and prostitutes - a bar where there is a phone at each table, so you can call up someone you are interested in, and make a proposition. Eleanor and Trixie are "acting". Acting like they are grownups. Just for the fun of it. There is a love between them, too. They drink too much, and sit at their table and suddenly start kissing each other. This, naturally, gets the attention of someone who calls their table. But Eleanor and Trixie are not prepared to go "all the way" - they were just in it for the laughs. There are a couple of episodes of such shenanigans. Eleanor, Trixie, and Bruno hover on the edge of the abyss - that is Germany before the 1930s. There is something unleashed in the air - they all can feel it ... nobody is sure what is coming, but everyone knows something is. And yet, life goes on. Nothing has stopped yet. And childhood is gone. Eleanor loses her virginity to Bruno. She then goes off to university - the University of Freiburg. Sometimes Trixie and Bruno come to visit her, but things have changed. Their old careless intimacy is different now. Eleanor gets caught up in the world of the fraternities at the university - there are German fraternities and Jewish fraternities - and these groups of guys are always fighting duels - a way to let off steam, I suppose, but also a way to express the underlying tension between the two groups. Eleanor thinks it is all foolish, but at the same time she recognizes that these duels are rituals, and man obviously needs rituals. She befriends and has a crush on a girl named Minna, a German girl like an Amazon, who has no fear. Minna is a nudist in her spare time. The students have campfires and Minna takes off all her clothes and dances around. Eleanor also befriends and has a crush on a German guy named Franz (a marvelous character who will end up being very important later). Franz is suicidal. Eleanor tries to save him. They have long conversations about the meaning of life. And what it is they all are really doing. What is life, what is love ...

Around this same time, Eleanor becomes interested in the work of Heidegger - who I believe is at the University at the same time she is studying there. His philosophy revolves around silence - and the fact that "certainty cannot be put into words". In the same way that Einstein, in the first chapter, provided the basis for how Eleanor experienced and interpreted her life ... so Heidegger, and his theories, provide the basis for Eleanor here. When is there a value in silence? When are words inadequate? All around her is chatter - people arguing and fighting and discussing. But it's meaningless. It's just noise. When is it important NOT to say anything?

The Nazis have already begun their rise. It is the late 20s. They are not yet omnipresent, but occasionally Eleanor runs into a group of them. She talks about it with her father. Her father and mother have split up, by the way. Her father has moved to Heidelberg, and her mother stayed in Berlin to continue on her work in left-wing political circles. Eleanor says:

I had not come across Nazis much at this time. Hitler's first attempt to get power in 1923 in Munich had failed: he had gone to jail. Afterwards not much was heard of him till the first Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg in 1927. Then I had said to my father 'But what is it that makes them different from other right-wing groups?'

My father had said 'They are the only political party who are honest about what they want.'

I had said 'What do they want?'

He had said 'To kill everyone who is not like them.'

I had said 'But what are they like?'

He had said 'They are like people who want to kill everyone who is not like them.'

I had said 'But then surely other people will kill them first.'

My father had said 'No, because they are politicians and no one believes them.'

Franz, Minna, Bruno and Eleanor go to the big youth conference in the Black Forest. It is filled with young German kids, setting up camp, having sing alongs, putting up tents. There are certainly Nazi groups, but they are not the only ones. Bruno and Franz get into philosophical arguments over the campfire. Bruno is Jewish. Franz is German. Bruno demands of Franz why he isn't a Nazi. Franz says "Because on the whole I would rather be dead." Minna is the goddess around whom they all circle. Bruno wants to sleep with her. Franz wants to sleep with her. Eleanor wants to sleep with her. Minna remains vaguely oblivious of all of this, like every good goddess.

There is a play that is going to happen at an old castle in the Forest. Goethe's Faust - part 1 and part 2. Part 1 on one night, Part 2 on another night. Mosley's description of that play - and how it was put on - and what it meant to Eleanor, watching ... is extraordinary. One of my favorite sections in the whole book. It makes me wish I was there. Eleanor realizes that what she is seeing on the stage is a reflection of all of humanity ... and that all of us are looking for something, our counterpart, our mate ... she feels that the actors, when they turn to the audience, are saying, inside, "Is it you? Is it you?"

And so, of course. It is in between Part 1 and Part 2 when Max (who is also there at the youth conference - he came with Hans, the young German exchange student who had stayed with his family) and Eleanor finally meet.

Here is that excerpt. Notice how once the conversation begins, Eleanor stops calling him "the boy" and switches to "you". She's talking to Max, reminiscing about their first encounter. And as they speak, they realize that they have the same set of symbols, thought-processes ... they have come to them separately, this is their first meeting ... but they realize they think in exactly the same way. And what can be said about that? How can it be put into words?


EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters

Back in our camp, Franz collected firewood and Bruno made the fire and Minna and I prepared food we had got earlier in the village. In the camp next door the two boys who spoke English seemed to have had a quarrel. The younger one, who was like a faun, had walked away and had come and sat with his back against a tree between his camp and ours. I thought -- There is a painting like this: a girl is lying on the ground; there is a faun at her head: I have the impression that I should be part of this painting.

The other boy, who was like a large white dog, came and knelt by the boy who was like a faun. He said in English but with a German accent 'You are angry with me because of what I told you about your mother.'

The boy who had his back against the tree said 'I don't care a damn about you and my mother. What I am bored with is Faust. In fact I think you and my mother are quite like Faust.' Then he turned and looked at me.

I thought -- Hullo, it is as if you remember me?

The boy said 'Oedipus is boring, Faust is boring, Mephistopheles is boring. And Nazis and Jews are boring. If we think them evil, we only encourage them. Nothing is going to change unless we think such things are boring.'

The boy who was like a dog said 'Come and have supper.'

The boy who was looking in my direction said 'Seen any good child-murders lately?'

The other boy said 'Be quiet, people will hear you.'

The boy who was looking at me said 'That is why I am speaking English, lest people might understand and be saved.'

I thought I might say -- I understand you.

The boy who was kneeling said 'You asked me to talk about your mother.'

The boy who was like a faun said 'What would be interesting would be a play about the people who are sitting and watching and loving that sort of stuff. Then at the end they could go off, yes, happy, and blow themselves up.'

I thought I might say - But it would still be boring to have to watch them blowing themselves up.

Then you said to me 'Do you understand English?'

I said 'Yes.'

After a time the boy who was like a dog stood up and went back to his fire.

You were sitting with your back against that tree. There were millions of pine-needles on the ground like forks in pathways. I thought -- We can pick them up; move them this way or that. After a time you looked away.

I said 'But it would still be boring to have to watch them blowing themselves up.'

You said 'Yes.'

I said 'So what would you do?'

You said 'Something quite different, I suppose.'

You were staring in front of you as if you were expecting to be shot with your back against the tree.

I said 'What?'

You said 'I've thought it would be something to do with just what turns up.'

I said 'I've thought it would be to do with what you're talking about and what is happening, happening at the same time.'

You said 'But there would have to be some sort of code.'

I said 'Why?'

You said 'Because otherwise it would go away.'

I said 'But if you know the code, you would know the message.'

You said 'We should know the message. We don't have a code.'

People from our two camps were calling us to come to supper. They were saying that there were only a few minutes before we would have to leave for the performance of the second part of the play.

I said 'Do you want to see the second part of Faust?'

You said 'No.' Then -- 'I think what is happening now and what we are talking about is the same.'

I thought -- Also there is indeed this that has turned up: we are sitting beneath the trees.

I said 'What is your name?'

You said 'Max.' Then -- 'What is yours?'

'Eleanor.'

You said 'Helena?'

I said 'Eleanor.'

You said 'This is absurd.'

The others were saying that they were setting off to see the play; we could join them later if we liked.

We seemed to sit for a long time in silence beneath our trees.

I said 'You mean, there is some pattern in what turns up?'

You said 'I have thought sometimes that it would be like being in the inside of a painting.'

I said 'Yes, this is absurd.'

You said 'Why?'

I said 'Because I have thought that it would be like --' Then -- "But I suppose if I say it, it will go away.'

You said 'I see.'

It was as if we were on some plane that might at any moment tip over: if I moved towards you, you might go away; if you moved towards me, I might fall.

I said 'How old are you?'

You said 'Nearly eighteen.'

'I'm nineteen.'

'You are at a university?'

'Freiburg.'

'I am going to Cambridge next year.'

'What are you studying?'

'Biology or physics.'

'I am studying medicine.'

You said 'You see, this is almost unbearable, unless there is a code.'

I said 'Unbearable for ourselves?'

You said 'Oh, and for others!'

I thought - But, I mean, we have got some sort of code.

Then - We are like two people stuck on a rock-face connected by rope: cut the rope and one of us dies; don't cut the rope and both of us may die, or live.

I said 'Are you staying here long?'

You said 'We go tomorrow.'

I said 'Will you give me your address, so that I can write to you?'

You said 'Yes, and will you give me yours?'

I said 'I will put it on a piece of paper; then I can swallow it.'

You said 'Or you can put it down the lavatory. Or in a bottle to float on the sea.'

There was the faint sound of people acting, orating, further down the valley. I thought - You mean, other people might hurt us: we might hurt ourselves?

I said 'You know the image of Plato's about the two halves of something, that look for each other?'

You said 'Yes.'

I said 'That is too obvious--'

You said 'I can't think of anything better to say.'

There was the sound of clapping from further down in the valley. I thought - Perhaps it would be easier if one of us took a short walk. Perhaps it would be easier if we were in circumstances of danger.

I said 'What happens to Faust and Helena in Part II, do you know?'

You said 'They have a child.'

I said 'What happens to the child?'

You said 'It flies too close to the sun. It falls into the fire.'

I said 'I don't think I should have a child.'

You said 'You don't think you should have a child?'

I said 'Do you?'

After a time you said 'There are enough in the world.'

You seemed to have been listening to the sounds that were coming up from the valley.

I said 'But what is it that makes Faust finally say "Stop!"?'

You said 'I thought he never did. I thought he only said "If I were to say 'Stop!--"'

I said 'I thought it was when he was reclaiming a new bit of land from the sea.'

You said 'Well perhaps we are reclaiming a new bit of land from the sea.'

I said 'I suppose what is interesting is what Faust said to those terrible beings when he got to heaven.'

You said 'Well what shall we tell them.' Then - 'I suppose we are in heaven.'

I said 'Sh!'

We began laughing.

You left your tree and crawled towards me. It was as if you were pulling yourself along by a rope. To preserve balance, it seemed, I had to stretch out toward you. When we met, it was as if we had to become enfolded.

You said 'It's like a line in a play - "I've got to go in the morning!"'

I said 'But we might just stick it out till then.'

It was as if we were on - not exactly a tightrope: rather a pole that was balancing the earth which itself was on a tightrope: we had moved to the centre of the pole and had to stay very still; to hold on tight, or the earth would tip over.

I said 'Are you comfortable?'

You said 'Yes, very.'

I said 'Do you think this is by chance?'

You said 'Oh, I think chance might be to do with heaven.'

We got into a position like that of a circle divided into two shapes like tadpoles: these fit into each other to make the circle whole. I thought - Or the world is on the back of an elephant, the elephant is on a tortoise, the tortoise is on the sea.

I said 'I am older than you.'

You said 'I know you are older than me.'

I said 'Hold on tight.'

You said 'Or we shall go over.'

When the others came back up the hill from the valley they were having their arguments about the meaning of the scenes from Faust, Part II: why was Faust saved? was it just because of his ceaseless striving? And what of Helena, who had appeared and disappeared; what was the point? People were talking about these things as if there might be answers in words.

We had been lying very still. Oh yes, of course, we had from time to time used more words.

When the others were back I said 'You've got my address?'

You said 'Yes.'

I said 'And I've got yours.'

I thought - I suppose we have to go down, like angels, do we, to the cities of the plain.

Franz and Bruno and Minna had been joined by the boys who had been with you; also by a few of the Nazi boys. They all came and sat round our fire. They bobbed to and fro; they drank wine and beer.

You said 'We have to leave very early.'

I said 'That does not matter.'

You said 'No.'

The people round the fire were not paying much attention to us. I thought - We are too embarrassing: we have been into and out of the fire.

- Do not look at us and we are there: look at us and I suppose we go away.

Bruno was encouraging Minna to take off her clothes. The Nazi boys were clapping. I thought - She is like that child of Faust and Helena: she may be destroyed by the fire.

One of the Nazi boys put an arm round Franz's shoulders. Franz looked at me. Then, when I looked at him, he looked away.

You had gone back to your camp and were sitting on your own by your fire.

I thought - Oh strange and terrible world, you should not be destroyed! There are people whom you can love: who love you -

- Just let us know, every now and then, what might be an ark.

One of the Nazi boys picked a flaming stick out of the fire and held it towards Minna. The stick seemed slightly to burn her. Minna was half naked, dancing round and round the flames.

Bruno called out 'Nellie, come and join us!'

I thought - Oh but I am happy sitting here with my head in my hands, my cage -

- Or am I a child in a pram looking up towards the leaves, the sunlight?

The next morning you and your group had gone. I did not know whether or not I had heard you leaving. I had been having a dream. We were in the courtyard of a castle. There were ladies and gentlemen on the grass. Then the ground flipped over, and there were huts and watchtowers.

I thought - The dream leaves the dreamer: what is left to the dreamer of the dream?

I had the piece of paper with your name and address on it.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

April 7, 2008

The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

n128983.jpgSecond excerpt from Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley. My first excerpt, and my post about the book itself and what it means to me is here.

It's difficult to talk about the book (although I did manage to post 17,000 words about it) - and Ted is my main partner-in-crime in terms of this book - although it is nice to know many more people love this book. It did win prizes, but I suppose it is not a book "for everyone" - It's not a book I would recommend to just anyone. It has to be someone who I think would already like a book like this. Because it's challenging, daunting, and isn't immediately accessible. It's a workout. And I've read it maybe 10 times? And it's always daunting. But I find myself lulled into the gentle persistent questioning mode of the narrative ... and slowly I find my brian opening up to the implications, the questions being asked ... It's a contemplative intellectual read, with moments of searing violence and fear - the world is falling apart, dictators are on the loose, Europe is in flames. But it's not a "cold" book. It's not unemotional.

There's another book, which I will get to shortly, by Harry Mulisch - called The Discovery of Heaven - and it is a purely intellectual exercise, that book. It has a ton of interest to me - thoughts on mathematics, religion, the convergence of religions in Jerusalem - and there are three main characters who do not really "live", or come to life ... The book is about the intellectual side of it. It's fascinating, don't get me wrong - but I can't remember one of the characters' names, and I had to let go of my idea that I was supposed to care primarily about them as I read it. No. I had to care about the ideas in the book. And I do.

Hopeful Monsters is different. Although it is a book about ideas (as they are encapsulated in war, physics, genetics, anthropology, myth, psychoanalysis, politics, revolution) - it is also a book about Max and Eleanor, two characters who, like I mentioned before, split up the chapters, taking turns ... but there is not a discernible difference between their two voices. They have separate interests/questions - but eventually, they converge - and you realize they've been asking the same questions, just in different fields. They are two halves of a whole. The questions Eleanor was asking about Einstein's theories reflect the questions Max has about genetics in the next chapter. They haven't even met yet. It will be a couple of chapters before Max and Eleanor meet. But they are already talking to each other, and sometimes they do so directly - saying, "You were wondering this about Einstein? Well, and so I was wondering this about such and such ..." It's not a tricky book. It's not trying to reveal itself slowly, or not play its cards, or hide things from the reader ... It's all out there, at once. The point is not to figure it out, and wait for something to happen ... The point is to let yourself fall into the prose, with its questions and theories ... and to take on the ideas put forth in the book. You don't need to sign up with anything, you don't need to 'agree' ... Just take the ideas on, see what that does for you.

Max and Eleanor are all about fate masquerading as coincidence. There are some moments of stunning coincidence in the book (one, in particular, that takes place at some palatial dinner in Spain in the middle of the Spanish Civil War - always brings tears to my eyes, no matter how many times I have read it) - and Max and Eleanor, in their pursuit of one another, stop being surprised by coincidence - although sometimes it is unbearable. "It is everything making sense that is so unbearable" one of them says at one point. I don't want to make this sound like a highbrow Richard Bach book because it's not (although right now I am reminded of this excerpt). Max and Eleanor are scientists, both ... (well, they're not in the opening chapters of the book because they're just kids or teenagers - but later on) ... and they look for chance openings in their work, random connections that might not be so random, a "coincidence" that leads to a giant transformation ... the things of scientific inquiry. And why should not that play itself out in our personal lives? And also in world politics and war? Max and Eleanor, racing around Europe and Russia - trying to continue their work, while avoiding the war which appears to be breaking out everywhere, they cannot escape - ask those questions repeatedly. If something appears to be a coincidence ... might there be something else going on underneath? But what??? That is the question.

The first chapter begins with Eleanor asking the question:

If we are to survive in the environment we have made ourselves, may we have to be monstrous enough to greet our predicament?

She writes that from the perspective of being a German-Jewish girl in the early 1920s, the beginning of the decadent Weimar decade - and all its nasty uneasy undertones. She is overwhelmed by the thought that something, something monstrous, might be around some corner ... she just can't see it yet.

The next chapter, Max takes over the narrative, and he begins with a reply to Eleanor's original question:

If we are talking about an environment in which the acceptance of paradoxes might breed, then this can happen in an English hot-house, I suppose, as well as in a melting-pot of Berlin streets.

Then the products might come together, as a result of what it seems you call 'gravity'?

Max is two years younger than Eleanor, and he grows up in Cambridge - "the centre of the intellectual and cultural life of England" at that time. His father is a biologist, whose main interest is genetic inheritance. And Max's mother grew up "on the fringes if what was even then known as the Bloomsbury group". She is a troubled woman, with no boundaries - she emasculates her young son, she is overly close with him, mainly because her husband is a prick who doesn't pay attention to her. She sits around reading fairy tales and books on Freudian analysis. In the same way that Eleanor's father's interests in physics and Einstein seep down into Eleanor's consciousness - the questions of genetics as well as Freud and the use of myth and fairy tale in our lives - seeps down into Max's consciousness. Max writes:

There was a good deal of controversy in the area as he grew up; orthodox Darwinists were under attack; it was difficult for them to explain how evolution could have occurred simply through chance mutations and natural selection. There seemed to be too many coincidences required for the emergence, by these means, of complex organic forms.

So there it is. "Too many coincidences required."

During the time of Max's childhood, a Viennese biologist named Kammerer comes to study at the University. He studies Lamarckian inheritance - which will become very important in later chapters, when Max goes to Russia to study for a semester - and the biology department of the university is all ablaze with the ideas of Lysenko (if you've studied Stalinist Russia, you know about him). So there are connections here - Kammerer was discredited - and committed suicide (an event which comes up in Hopeful Monsters). Max has many moments with Kammerer, who comes to visit their house in Cambridge - and he becomes very interested in creating an experiment of his own - having to do with salamanders. Kammerer was able to keep his salamanders alive under unnatural conditions far longer than his colleagues - and this was cause for great resentment. Max wonders about this. Max's father and mother have a lot of stress about Dr. Kammerer. Max's father thinks he's an asshole, and says derogatory things about him at the dinner table. Max's mother appears to have a crush on Kammerer, and defends him. It is obvious, from these exchanges, that Max's parents' marriage is not just bad - but toxic. Max is naturally aligned with his mother - his father is too much of an asshole to side with, also he's gone a lot on lecture tours ... so Max decides (for all kinds of reasons he doesn't understand) to try to duplicate one of Kammerer's experiments, with salamanders. He wants to see if he can keep the salamanders alive, too. Max's mother is all into the Freudian stuff ... and Max, even as a young boy, realizes that, in some way, he is in competition with his father for his mother's love - and maybe he will beat his father, if he "wins" at the salamander experiment. But also, you can feel the budding biologist here. Max is only 11, 12 years old ... but he is devoted to his experiment. Max wonders if perhaps Kammerer could keep the salamanders alive because he loved them. Was that the difference? Is that why he was so ridiculed? Max isn't sure. But is love what makes the difference, even in something like natural selection? Okay, so you can see where Mosley is going here.

There are other forces at work here, too. It is 1925, in England. Scientists from Germany have been flocking out of the country, perhaps feeling which way the wind is going there. Many of them wash up on the shores of Britain. So already there is a thin thread of connection between Max in Cambridge and Eleanor in Berlin. A German exchange student named Hans stays with Max's family for a while. It is obvious that he is fucking Max's mother. He also makes a pass at Max. Max finds it all vaguely ridiculous and embarrassing. His main concern is his salamanders - and also "getting" his father, who is a horrible man. Max begins to wonder about Lamarck - which is what will (4 chapters from now) get him to Russia - where his ideas are still in favor. But Hans ends up being the connection with Eleanor - it is through Hans that the two finally meet. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Max sets up his salamander experiment. Here is the excerpt. Some important themes established here - not to mention the introduction of the idea in the title of the book itself. The bit about creating a framework "in which love could operate" kills me. That's what I'm trying to do right now in my life and man. It is not easy.


EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley.

I discovered that my mother had kept her own small heap of newspaper cuttings about Kammerer: they were in a drawer of her desk: she seemed to have got some psychoanalyst friend to send her them from Vienna. Some of them gave details of Kammerer's private life (I could put to good use here the German I had learned from Hans). The cuttings referred to Kammerer as a Don Juan, a Byron, a Lothario: he ahd left his wife, married a painter, and then later his wife had taken him back. There were innumerable women, the writer suggested, who were dying for the love of Kammerer: how terrible it was to let oneself be loved thus by women!

I thought - Well, what is all this about death instinct; life instinct, was it not Kammerer's salamanders that had been able to stay alive, and other people's that were dying?

I tried to talk to my mother about this. I could not let her know that I had been going through the drawers of her desk.

'Did you ever see Dr Kammerer again?'

'No, why do you ask that?'

'I expect a lot of people fall in love with him, don't they --'

'Why do you say that too--'

'I remember your saying that you thought his salamanders must love him.'

'What I think I said, surely, was that he must love them.'

'What do you think he does to make things love him?'

'Perhaps he just makes people think he loves them!'

'But then why do people talk about dying for love --'

'Hey, hold on, what have you been reading --'

My mother had become dreamy again; glowing, as if she was listening to music round some corner.

I thought - Dr Kammerer himself couldn't have sent her those cuttings from Vienna?

Then suddenly - She couldn't have been meeting Dr Kammerer in London?

She said 'Perhaps what you think is love isn't true. Or perhaps sometimes you love, or want to love, and then there is no set-up, or framework, in which you can.'

I said 'I see.' Then -- 'Can't you make a framework?'

She said 'How?'

I said 'I don't know.' Then -- 'Do you think Dr Kammerer made one?'

She said 'For whom?'

I said 'For his salamanders.'

That autumn, in my evenings and weekends away from school, I set about preparing my experiment with my salamanders. My idea was: how can animals be expected to live - let alone reproduce; let alone be recipient of a chance mutation - if they are kept in glass boxes like those which contain sandwiches in a railway station. Kammerer had perhaps loved his salamanders: but what was love? I wanted to provide for my salamanders a suitable setting. Was it not something like this that my mother's psychoanalysis books were suggesting too - that settings are important, but human beings for the most part are no good at providing settings for love: they liked running things down, displaying jealousy and envy. Well perhaps I did too: but if I saw this, could I not provide at least my salamanders with some setting in which love could operate?

I obtained materials from Miss Box and constructed a glass case that was larger than the ones in which she and my father had kept their salamanders. I went out each evening to gather objects which would be fitting for my salamanders' setting. I found clean white sand and stones shining with crystals: I picked out sticks that were shaped and polished like ivory. I put on the sand some shells and even a starfish. I thought - Why should not landlocked salamanders have a glimpse of something outlandish from the sea? I collected red earth, and alpine plants, and one or two very tiny and expensive trees: I made a shelter of wire and bark and moss and leaves and coral. I constructed a mountain stream out of Plasticine and silver paper and a hidden electric motor and a pump: I bought (with money borrowed from my mother) a lamp that shone like the sun. I was aiming to produce for my salamanders a setting that would be surpassingly etherial and strange. I looked down on my creation from above. I thought - I think I am God, and this is my Garden of Eden.

The two salamanders that I was going to pick up when my garden was ready were another breed of lowland salamanders, known as Salamandra salamandra, or Fire Salamanders: their usual habitat was dark and damp woods. They stayed for the most part during the day under rotting bark or leaves; they came out in the evenings to get food. I learned what I could about them from books lent to me by Miss Box: my father, when he overheard me talking to Miss Box, would smile and look away (I thought - His feelings about Miss Box are what are called 'paradoxical'?) My plan had been originally to make for these lowland salamanders something that could be called an alpine setting. But my enthusiasm had now gone beyond this: I wanted to make for them something beautiful like a setting for jewels, or the inside of a painting. Then I would see how my salamanders might stay alive! The inside of a painting, it seemed to me, was to do with what is immortal.

The breeding habits of these lowland salamanders were that they mated in the spring and then fifty or more tadpole-like larvae were born in water the following year. I had been told by Miss Box that the two salamanders designated for me had been together for some time. I did not know if they had mated: I assumed they were male and female. The point of my experiment had at one time been to see whether these lowland salamanders, in their new setting, might produce offspring in the manner of alpine salamanders - which was to give birth not to larvae but to two fully formed offspring. But this was what I had put out of my mind: my plan now was not to expect, but just to let things occur on their own. I thought - Things grow, develop on their own, don't they; once you have provided a setting.

The day came when my garden (in the books it was called an 'aquaterrareum') was ready: I bicycled in to Miss Box to pick up my salamanders. They were two small bright lizards about six inches long: their skin was mainly black but had golden patches and hoops. They seemed to sit, or lie, or stand, completely still, even when I was transporting them in a cardboard box on my bicycle from the laboratory. And then, when they were in the bright fair world that I had constructed for them, they were, yes, like jewels! they were so beautiful.

I had set up my aquaterrareum in my bedroom: I wanted it here rather than in the room with my chemistry set next door because I wanted to be with my salamanders at night. I do not know why I felt particular about this. Perhaps I felt - What strange influences, chances, flit about beneath the moon at night.

My salamanders sat or stood or lay sometimes parallel, sometimes apart, something with their noses close together like an arrow. I hardly ever saw them move. They would be, yes, on the silver sand, by the stones like gold or diamonds, like things made immortal by a painting.

My mother came up to look at my aquaterrareum. She had that expression on her face that my father sometimes had when it was as if he could not make up his mind whether to be deprecating or impressed. She said 'That's beautiful!'

I said 'Yes.'

'What are they called?'

'Adam and Eve.'

'What good names!'

I said 'I think they might also be what are called "hopeful monsters".'

She said 'What are hopeful monsters?'

I said 'They are things born perhaps slightly before their time; when it's not known if the environment is quite ready for them.'

She said 'So you have made an environment that might be ready for them.'

I said 'Yes.'

She put her arms round me and hugged me. She said 'You are my hopeful monster!'

I thought I might say - But hopeful monsters, don't you know, nearly always die young.

-- Because the Gods love them?

Then -- But was God ever with his mother, by that garden, looking down?





Posted by sheila Permalink

April 5, 2008

The Books: "Hopeful Monsters" (Nicholas Mosley)

n128983.jpgI emailed Ted this morning, because it was time to pick up Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley, for my Daily Book Excerpt - and this was the next book on my adult fiction shelves and I was freaked out. Ted is the only other person I know who read this book - no, that's not right ... maybe Bren read it? I know my father read it, on my recommendation - and it's a dense HUGE book - and I remember my dad joking, "Don't ever give a book to me again" because it took him so long to get through it. But bless him, he finished it!! I have mentioned the book many times on the blog:

Contemporary must-read fiction

Cherished objects

10 books I couldn't live without

although it has never gotten its own post. I find it daunting, not sure how to begin to talk about a book that means so much to me.


It feels as though Hopeful Monsters is actually expressing, in novel-form, my own beliefs and worldviews. I have never before encountered a book that I took so personally. Never. I have responded to books, I have loved the writing, the story, the characters - but this is more of a philosophical treatise, which speaks exactly to how I see the world. And so it is tremendously specific. Most books don't reflect my own experience directly. And this one obviously doesn't - it's the dual story of a German-Jewish girl and a British boy - in the years between World War I and World War II ... It has nothing to do with me, my life, what my life looks like. But the thoughts it ponders (and the whole book is a pondering - there are no answers, just insistent questions, over and over and over ... I am sure the prose would drive some people nuts - but me? I eat this shit UP.) It's not that the book told me what to think, it's not that the book revealed to me a way of thinking that I responded to ... No. It expressed how I already feel and think. In a way I have never seen before. So I suppose one way you could look at all of this is that I am an unbelievable narcissist. Of course I am. But I don't just read to be entertained, or for escape - although often that is why I go to books. Other times, I read to stretch, to think, to grow, to deal with issues in my own life - but Hopeful Monsters stands alone, as a great and surging expression of truths and questions ... like Rilke says, "Live the questions." That's what the book is about. Living the questions. Ted emailed me back this morning and said, "How do you write about a book that is about everything?" It is. It is about everything. It takes as its topic everything. War, politics, science, sex, religion, genetics, physics, Stalinism, agriculture, art, literature, socialism, the Spanish Civil War, Freudian psychoanalysis, the rise of Hitler, the upheavals of the 20th century - in all of these areas ... and how the upheavals surge through the main characters' lives. It goes from Germany to England to Spain to Russia to Africa to America, following events ... one thing after another ... It has a singular voice - a persistent questioning repetitive voice - Hopeful Monsters wants to know why. Hopeful Monsters wants to look beneath surface events and see what we are really saying. What are we really doing? It's not that there are no easy answers. Sometimes the answers are quite easy - but knowing the answers does not make our lives easier. Sometimes truth is the most difficult thing of all. How to live with truth? How to live with the knowledge beneath things? How does one see so much and still just survive? How do you get through life without burning up? There's a line in the book, something like: "It is the everything making sense that is so unbearable."

It's amazing to me, too, that the book is so obscure. Nicholas Mosley is so obscure that there is a literary prize with his name attached to it - and explanatory notes have to be given out to the press to explain who Nicholas Mosley is. Nicholas Mosley is the son of English fascist Oswald Mosley, who was married to Diana Mitford (my post about the Mitfords here). What a background. And to grow up to write such a book - with such an implicit indictment of his father's ideas running through the book ... Mosley (the son) has made no secret of his feelings about his father's political opinions. As a matter of fact, Hopeful Monsters - with its sweeping course of intellectual inquiry and individualism and freedom - could be seen as the ultimate in a reply to his father.

The scariest thing is that I picked it up on a whim. I had just finished Possession (excerpt here) - another book that seemed to capture something very specific about my own life experience that had never quite been captured before: the challenge a cerebral person finds in falling in love. Love is not easy, especially when you are overloaded with context and literature and "this reminds me of that ..." associations. Love is never just love. It is the history of love, and that poem, and that literary character, etc. Many people wouldn't even understand what I'm talking about - and that's fine - I suppose that's why books that tackle such a challenge are few and far between. I felt named by Possession. I felt seen and recognized. I wasn't ready to let it all go. I needed another big reading experience. And so I browsed in a Barnes & Noble. And for whatever reason (thank you, God, for leading me to this book!) I picked up Hopeful Monsters. I had never heard of it. I read the back cover:

Hopeful Monsters is a tour de force of intellect and eros - one in which Albert Einstein taunts a lecture hall full of Nazis and Ludwig Wittgenstein is an awkward guest at an English garden party. Like A.S. Byatt's Possession, it is a love story, in which a young English physicist and a German-Jewish anthropologist pursue each other across landscapes that range from Hitler's Germany to Los Alamos on the eve of the atomic age. Like the works of John Fowles and Umberto Eco, it is also a pyrotechnically accomplished novel of ideas, in which communism, psychoanalytic theory, uncertainty, and relativity attain visceral emotional force and help us understand the cataclysms of our century.

Can you say sign me up? First of all, there was the comparison with Possession, the book I had just read. So that had it in its favor. Also the phrase "novel of ideas" - which is such a turn-on for me, when it is done well.

And then, most superficially, there was the cover. Sadly, I cannot find any image of the cover of my copy of the book online. There are now new covers - and the book is pretty hard to find, in general. It's rarely in book stores. And when it is, it doesn't have the cover of the Vintage International copy I have. The cover has a photograph on it, a kind of blurry black-and-white photo of a statue, a female - her head raised to the sky - her hands placed in front of her - on her breast, and one held up in a gesture of, what, supplication? Resistance? (See, I'm writing like Nicholas Mosley now) It's a stark image, mysterious - and when you read the book, it is not directly applicable. I love Vintage's book covers - they come up with some awesome artistic ideas (the cover of Possession is a perfect example). They are not literal. And the cover of Hopeful Monsters called to me, for some reason. Even more so than the back cover description, and the comparison with Possession. It was the cover. It said to me, "This is big. A big book. Are you ready?" There have been times when I have literally shivered at the thought that it was a book cover that made me buy the book - it seems so ephemeral, so whimsical ... to have discovered such a book by chance??

Of course, thinking about the plot of the book - it is only perfect that I would have discovered it by chance. Of course chance would have brought the book to me. That would be the only possible way.

There are two narrators in the book: Eleanor Anders, a German-Jewish girl and Max Ackerman, a British boy. They split the book up, chapter by chapter - telling their version of events. Most of the time they are apart, and so much of their story has to do with filling each other in, through the writing: "Here is what it was like for me before you came along ..." "Here is what I did during that summer we never saw each other ..." They talk to each other, too, referring back to the other's chapters: "You said that such and such was going on with you at this time. Well, don't you know that such and such was going on with me, too?' Their encounters are few and far between, but soul-stirring. It is not about love. It is about recognition. You know when you are in the presence of a kindred soul. And sometimes, when that happens, it is best to just keep quiet. Don't make any quick moves, don't startle the universe ... it hangs in the balance in such moments. The images are of Max and Eleanor, on opposite ends of a tightrope wire. Meanwhile, the world is exploding around them.

Eleanor grows up in Berlin. Her father is a philosophy professor at Berlin University, but he is most passionate about physics - especially the theories of Albert Einstein, who was at the University at that time. Her mother is a left-wing politician, who spends all of her time trying to organize the socialist revolution that is supposed to follow upon the heels of the world war (the first world war). Eleanor is 8 or 9 years old when WWI ends. She tries to interpret the events around her, her parents, their struggles. Her mother aligns herself with Rosa Luxemburg (the book is full of cameos: Einstein, Luxemburg, Hitler, Lysenko, Wittgenstein). Eleanor gets the sense that her father agrees with her mother's opinions but disagrees in the manner in which she is going about it all. There is stress and strain. The first chapter takes place in the late teens and early 1920s. Eleanor describes, as from a great distance, her childhood at this time. We don't know who she is talking to - but we know it is someone specific (Max doesn't enter this chapter at all, he is having his own childhood over in England). The book opens with this stunner of a sentence:

If we are to survive in the environment we have made ourselves, may we have to be monstrous enough to greet our predicament?

There are multiple connections here, and Eleanor is not sure yet how it will all fit together: Communists, socialists, world war, the outrageous inflation in Germany, and the anti-Semitism which pierces to the surface now ... and then, of course, there is Einstein's work, the publishing of his special and general theories - and how her father gets totally caught up in it, and tries to explain it to his young daughter. Eleanor's mother, more and more obsessed by her socialist political work, feels left out of this duo, and she resents it. She thinks every moment should be a fight. Then, of course, Rosa Luxemburg is murdered. And everything starts to fall apart. Eleanor is taken to see a lecture of Einstein's - where he was heckled and booed by the audience. Eleanor's father is German. Eleanor's mother is Jewish. This will obviously have enormous implications in later chapters, the 1930s chapters. Eleanor's mother is not "well". She becomes obsessed, and unwell. She must live on her own, in a soup kitchen, and devote her life to politics. But she can't seem to shake the feeling that something has gone wrong. Eleanor's father, a philosopher at heart, loves his wife, but is too detached from such passions to take them seriously. Or no, that's not right. It's just that he thinks the lingo, the dogmatic political lingo thrown around by everyone in her group, is a way of hiding. Hiding what they are really doing, what they really want. This is my main beef with political junkies and partisan fanatics: they use a shorthand, code words, and it's obvious what they mean ... but if you want to talk about the underlying substance, those code words will come up short. Eleanor's father cannot talk to Eleanor's mother anymore. The lingo has taken hold, the language has hardened ... and that, he, a man of questions and contemplation, cannot abide. But again: when Hitler takes power, all of this becomes academic.

It is also so important to remember (and learn, if you didn't know) the context of those times - in Germany and elsewhere - when communists were seen as the only way to defeat Hitler - and world decisions were made because of this - and of course Hitler then went about crushing the communists - but it's important to remember that in that particular moment, NOTHING was a done deal. Nobody could see the future. And Communism at that time did not equal Stalinism ... (the book addresses that - when Max travels to Russia to study for a semester, the year of the famine in the Ukraine ...) In Germany people were taking wheelbarrows of worthless money to buy a bottle of milk. Capitalism had seemed to have failed. And Hitler was a thug who needed to be crushed. They put up a damn good fight. In the post above about the Mitfords, someone showed up and made the following comment, about the ideological fight between Unity (the fascist MItford) and Decca (the communist Mitford):

The irony is that, at least in practice, that communism and facism aren't really that far apart (both are authoritarian and socialist in nature.). Unity and Decca weren't that far apart in their thinking (anymore than Stalin and Hitler were)....

My response to that comment was:

Of course - but you are saying that with the benefit of retrospect. We know this NOW. At the time, except to a few who remained above the fray, those similarities were not at all clear.

The Mitford parents were Hitler supporters because he had crushed the Communists in Germany - suppressed them and persecuted them - and the Mitfords were all for that. The Communists at that time were extremely attractive for those who wanted to fight against everything Hitler represented. Hitler was the enemy. The Communist Parties (at least those not in Russia - Russia who was experiencing Stalin's purges at that very moment and knew where all this communistic stuff led) were alternatives to what Anne Lindbergh called "the wave of the future" - which was fascism. The end result did end up being the same - but again - on the ground-level, in the middle of the whirlwind, as World War II approached, esPECIALLY for the British, this was not at all clear.

If the distinctions were oh-so-clear, then why did folks like Orwell and Arthur Koestler (post about him and his Darkness at Noon here) famously switch sides? You must incorporate history in, well, history - otherwise you are just another boring hack with an axe to grind.

Mosley writes about that particular moment in time - the convergence of ideologies and war and politics - the personal, the political, the scientific - the world of his actual father and his stepmother ... all seen through the eyes of a 9 year old girl.

Trying to talk about what this book is about is difficult ... and trying to list plot-points feels insane to me.

It is more like a wave, the tide rolling in, submerging you, and then rolling out, leaving the shore exposed, rolling back in, rolling back out. Max and Eleanor do not have different voices. Their lives are different - but they speak with one voice. And their paths converge - much later - and then separate - for many years - and then converge again ... endlessly ... and you know, as I grow older, and move further away from my past ... Hopeful Monsters is more and more how I experience life. The past is never really past. It flows alongside us, maybe an alternate universe (Eleanor and her father love sci-fi comic books, all about time travel, and wondrous monstrous other worlds - they imagine that the sofa they sit on is an "airship", and they can float above these other worlds, looking down, curious, on how other creatures live ...) ... we can dip into it, we can re-visit it ... or we can say, "You know what? No thanks." Either choice. It's up to us.

I will need to do a couple excerpts from this one.

When all is said and done, I think it might be the most important book I have ever read. It is always near me. It never makes it up onto the shelf, where it sits on its place for years before I pick it up again. It is always out, on a table, in my bag, on my dresser ... I see different things in it, every time I read it. Sometimes it is about the hopelessness of love. Yet the essential-ness of the experience. Sometimes it is about the clash between communism and capitalism, and what that meant for the individuals involved in the crucial years of th 1930s. Sometimes it is about scientific inquiry - as applied to love - which man, I relate to! It's always different. When that "what 5 books would you bring if you were stranded on a desert island" question comes up - sometimes I choose one book over another, sometimes I realize, "Oh no, I have to bring THIS book - how could I have forgotten it??" - but I NEVER forget Hopeful Monsters. It is always Numero Uno on the "desert island" question.

In Hopeful Monsters, Nicholas Mosley writes:

I thought - oh strange and terrible world, you should not be destroyed! There are people whom you can love and who love you - Just let us know, every now and then, what might be an ark.

To me, Hopeful Monsters is its own ark. It is my ark. It has everything in it that I need, and will ever need.

I was dreading writing about Hopeful Monsters, but I find it didn't come out so bad. Let's get to the excerpt. This is from Eleanor's first chapter - the "childhood in Berlin" chapter.


EXCERPT FROM Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley

It is relevant to put in here (relevant I mean in the way that this comes up in memory, relevant in the way that these occurrences were roughly coincidental in fact) what I remember of the conversations I used to have with my father when we were not reading stories: these conversations having begun around the time when the group with Rosa Luxemburg came looking for a hiding-place in our apartment; their subject also being to do with what my father talked to the young man and girl about at supper.

Sometimes when I sat with my father on the sofa in his study and he had been reading to me stories or articles about science from children's magazines, I would, at the end of whatever voyage of discovery or imagination we had been on (I was, I suppose, quite a precocious little girl) ask my father about the work he was doing at the university. He told me something of his regular work of lecturing and teaching, but I do not remember much about this. Then he told me of the work that really interested him at this time, which was outside his regular curriculum, and was to do with his efforts to understand, and to put into some intelligible language, the theories that were being propounded about physics at this time by one of his colleagues at the university - a Professor Einstein. I do not think that my father knew Einstein very well, but he venerated him, and he was enough of a mathematician to be able to try to grapple with some of his theories. I, of course, could have comprehended little of the substance of what my father said: but because of his enthusiasm it was as if, on some level, I was caught up in his efforts. I had a picture of Professor Einstein as some sort of magician: there was a photograph of him on the chimney-piece of my father's study which was a counter-balance to my mother's photograph of Karl Marx on the chimney-piece of the dining-room. Professor Einstein's head, set rather loosely on his shoulders, seemed to have a life of its own: Karl Marx's head seemed to have been jammed down on to his shoulders with a hammer. I would say to my father as we sat above the wonders of the world in our airship "What is it that is so special about the theories of Professor Einstein?"

My father said 'Shall I try to explain?'

I said 'I like hearing you talk. It doesn't matter if I don't understand.'

This was the time - the winter of 1918-19 - when Einstein had recently published his paper concerning the General Theory of Relativity (the papers concerning the Special Theory had been published some years previously), but the conjectures put forward in the General Theory had not yet been verified. Nothing in these theories had yet much caught the public imagination: people seemed not to be ready for such images as they might evoke. But my father had become obsessed with trying to make intelligible an interpretation of the General Theory: it was this, he said, that should alter people's ideas about the universe and about themselves.

My father said 'All right, I'll try to tell you. I'm not sure, anyway, just what it means to understand.'

I think my father had already tried to explain - usually more to himself in fact than to me - the Special Theory of Relativity. I remember the phrases about there being no absolute space nor absolute time: my space is my space; your time is yours; if I am travelling at a certain speed in relation to you it might as well be you who are travelling at a certain speed in relation to me; the only thing that is absolute is the speed of light. The speed of light is constant no matter if it arises from this or that travelling hither or thither: if there seem to be contradictions, these are because the measuring devices themselves get bigger or smaller and not the speed of light. I do not suppose I grasped the latter idea: but I do not think I found it difficult to see the idea of each person, each observer or group, having his or her or its own world: was not this, after all, what I had come to feel about the people in the streets, my mother's friends, her cousins in the country? I felt sometimes that I understood even about the absoluteness of the speed of light - was not this something that my father and I felt ourselves in touch with as we looked down on all these separate worlds from the superworld of our airship?

I said 'You are going to tell me about the new thing, the General Theory.'

My father said 'Ah!'

There are two or three particular and personalised images that stick in my mind from my father's efforts to explain to me, aged nine, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. These images arose from the conjecture that light itself had weight, so that it could be bent or pulled in the proximity of matter by what used to be called 'gravity': that if there is enough matter in the universe (which Einstein thought there was) then space itself would be bent or curved - and it would be just such curvature that could properly be called gravity. The particular images suggested by my father that have stuck in my mind are, firstly, of a small group of people standing back to back on a vast and lonely plain; they are looking outwards; they are trying to see something other than just their surroundings and themselves. But they can never by the nature of things see anything outside the curve of their own universe, since gravity pulls their vision back (my father drew a diagram of this) so that it comes on top of them again like falling arrows. The second image is that of a single person on this vast and lonely plain who has constructed an enormously powerful telescope; by this he hopes to be able to break at last out of the bonds of his own vision; he looks through it; he sees - what appears to be a new star! Then he realises that what he is looking at is the back of his own head - or the place where his head now is billions of years ago, or in the future, or whatever. Anyway, here he is now with the light from him or to him having gone right round the universe and himself never being able to see any further than the back of his own head. But then there was a third image that my father gave me, different in kind from the others: which is of gravity being like the effect of two people sitting side by side on an old sofa so that the springs sag and they are drawn together in the middle: and there were my father and I sitting side by side on the sofa in his study.

I would say to my father 'But is this true?'

My father said 'Mathematically, it seems to be true.'

'But is it really?'

'Ah, what is really!'

I would think - But together, might not my father and I get beyond the backs of our heads in our airship?

Sometimes when my father and I had our arms around one another sitting like this my mother would put her head round the door of his study and say 'Are you coming?'

My father would say 'Coming where?'

'To supper.'

"Ah yes, supper.'

Then my mother would perhaps advance into the room and say 'What have you two been doing?'

'Talking.'

'It didn't sound like talking to me!'

'Thinking then.'

'Do you have to sit like that when you think?'

And I would think - Oh do let us get through, yes, into some other dimension!

It was such conversations I had with my father that seemed relevant to the evening when the group of people round Rosa Luxemburg had been in our apartment (they being like the people on the vast and lonely plain) and when the young man and the girl stayed for supper.

My mother had gone to argue with Magda in the kitchen. Helga was banging plates down on the sideboard in the dining-room. My father had said to the girl, who was quite pretty, 'What is your subject?' The girl had said 'Physics.' My father had said 'Then we will have a lot to talk about!' And I wondered why my father was not talking more to me.

My father said to the young man 'What do you do?'

The young man said 'My subject is philosophy but at the moment I am occupied in politics.'

My father said, as he so often said 'Ah.'

During supper my father sat at the head of the table: I sat on one side of him and the young man on the other: the girl sat next to the young man. I remember the atmosphere, the style, of this supper quite well - perhaps because it was almost the first time I had been allowed up so late; out of deference, I suppose, to the tensions of the evening. Whoever remembers the exact words of conversations? but I imagine I can recreate the style, the attitudes of my father.

He said to the girl 'What do you know of the theories of Professor Einstein?'

The girl, who had a scraping voice that did not go with her soft squashed face, said 'I understand they have not been verified.'

My father said 'What do you think might count as verification?'

The girl said 'I understand verification is unlikely.'

My father turned to the young man who had small steel pince-nez from which a black ribbon hung down. My father said 'And what is the opinion of a philosopher or a politician on these matters?'

The young man said 'I think these are matters for scientists and mathematicians.'

My father said 'Should not a philosopher have ideas or opinions about what might be called reality?'

The young man said 'It is the job of philosophers to clarify concepts. IT is the job of scientists to uncover facts.'

My father said 'But are not concepts seen to be of the same nature as facts?'

The young man said 'And it is the job of politicians to separate practical sense from nonsense, which is the tool of exploitation.'

My father said 'I see.' He used to say 'I see' when he was disappointed; this was slightly different from when he said 'Ah!'

At some such moment in this conversation my mother came in; she banged plates about with Helga or Magda at the sideboard. She said 'It might make more sense to talk about the practical difficulties of getting the materials for this soup.'

The young man said 'Indeed.'

The girl said 'I'm sorry.'

My mother said 'It is not your fault.'

My father raised his eyebrows; he seemed to be hoping he might take off, as if he were a rocket.

My mother sat down at the other end of the table. Helga handed round the soup. After a time my mother said 'Some people do not seem to realise that even at this moment there are people being killed in the streets.'

My father picked up his napkin, put it down, looked at the girl, looked at the young man, looked at me. I thought - Well, you did not put your arms around me: what am I supposed to do alone in our airship?

Then my father said to my mother 'But haven't you been looking forward to the time when people would be killed in the streets? Haven't you said that the revolution could not come until there were people being killed in the streets?'

My mother said 'That is an insult!' She banged her knife and fork down on the table.

I thought I might now join in by saying - But didn't you want my father to protect this young man and the girl by saying that they were two of his students at the university?

My mother went out of the room. We could hear her talking, or crying, with Magda in the kitchen.

The girl said to my father 'Don't you care?'

My father raised his eyebrows; gazed at a corner of the ceiling.

The young man said 'In my opinion, the scientific reality is that there is this repression of the masses.'

My father said 'I see.'

After a time the girl said 'Excuse me, I will go and see if your wife is all right.' She left the room.

We sat at the table and drank our soup - my father, the young man with the pince-nez and myself. I thought - Oh yes, our various visions, like arrows, are going out and coming crashing round on to the backs of our own heads.

Then - But it is true that my mother must have had difficulty in getting the materials for the soup?

After a time the young man said 'But the masses have the real power according to the iron laws of history.'

My father said 'Then for God's sake join them.'

The young man stood up and bowed and went out - presumably to join my mother and the girl and Helga and Magda in the kitchen.

I thought - So now, yes, my father and I are alone in our airship.

My father sat staring at a corner of the ceiling. I thought - But it is all right, it is all right, even if there are things one does not understand and cannot say: is not this what you have taught me?

Eventually a bed was made for the young man in the drawing-room; the girl was to sleep on the floor of my room.

Sometimes during the night people did in fact come knocking at the door of our apartment; I heard my father going to answer the door; he was calm, authoritative; after a time the people who had knocked went away. What my father had said was that there was no one in the apartment except his family and servants; he could give his assurance on this point on the authority of his position at the university. I was in my bed with the girl beside me on a mattress on the floor. I was thinking - Well what does one understand? What is truth? What is authority? What is caring for others, in this lonely business of our airship?


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 4, 2008

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Terrific Mother' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

birds_of_america.jpgBirds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Terrific Mother' - the last story in the collection.

'Terrific Mother' opens with a scene of such horror that it is hard to believe the rest of the story is (at times) so HILARIOUS. Lorrie Moore has just the perfect touch here. We must somehow survive events ... or no, we don't HAVE to, we can always commit suicide ... and Adrienne, the main character, does not go the suicide route. But she is forever changed. She is beyond the pale. She is filled with a sense of wrongness, and persecution ... as though everyone knows what she did. And she has no right to expect happiness anymore, she has no right to look for a good life and satisfaction. She should be on the rack forever. At a garden party, a friend of hers asks her to hold her baby. Adrienne is 35, and single ... and has started to feel nervous and weird around babies, because she doesn't have one, and she doesn't think she will ever have one. Moore has a sharp pen, I tell ya - listen to this:

She had entered a puritanical decade, a demographic moment - whatever it was - when the best compliment you could get was, "You would make a terrific mother." The wolf whistle of the nineties.

This could not be more accurate. I've lived it. It's right on. Adrienne, in a moment of awkwardness while holding the baby, twists her ankle, loses her balance and drops the baby - whose head cracks open on the pavement. The baby eventually dies. And Adrienne cracks up, too. She will never forgive herself. Life, though, has moved on, with or without Adrienne. Again, the opening of the story is so horrifying that you almost want to put it down. I can't read any more! Adrienne shuts down, almost completely. Yet somehow, after a bunch of time, she meets (and eventually marries) a man named Martin - who knows what happened, and forgives her. But Adrienne knows she can't be forgiven. She does not accept forgiveness. Martin is a good man (I love him) - and he treats Adrienne with a rough honesty that she can hardly bear. She is not "fit" for normal life, after what she did. But Martin says stuff to her like, "I'm going to marry you. I'm going to marry you until you puke." He loves her. She is far far away, though. I can't even say that Adrienne is 'doing her best' because she really isn't. A huge part of her is deeply in hiding, cringing in the shadows of her unconscious, living that awful moment over and over and over and over ... It is always with her. Martin sometimes forgets that.

The two of them go to a conference in the Alps - for scholars, artists, etc. You can go, and you have your own cabin - and you also have your own workspace - to paint, or write your book, or work on your PhD or whatever. People from all over the world are in attendance. And you can bring your spouse. Martin is the one going to the conference - and Adrienne goes as "the spouse" -which becomes a joke later. It's almost like "the spouses" are second-class citizens in such a heady atmosphere ... people will look across the room at a woman and murmur, "She must be one of the spouses." Adrienne was a painter once. So she tries to work. Martin is consumed with his own work, and not really super-aware of what is going on with his wife. He has other things on his mind. This is all exacerbated by the fact (and it is used to SUCH comedic perfection) that every night at the communal dinner - the seating arrangment is different ... you are assigned seats, and every night you sit somewhere different, with different people on either side ... so Adrienne's various conversations with people at dinner are sprinkled throughout the story -and they are laugh out loud funny. Adrienne is not even trying to bond with these people. And no matter what she says to them, they reply in some bizarre way. And when she tries to assert herself, they will say, "You're one of the spouses, aren't you?"

Adrienne eventually goes into the nearby town and starts to get massages from a masseuse everyone recommends. Now it's not that "healing" begins for her ... you just know she's beyond considering that ... but somehow a space opens up inside her. Almost against her will. A space where she can actually live with what she did. I don't know how to write about it ... you just have to experience it in the story. Adrienne expects very little from life. Yet she has managed to snag this terrific guy, Martin - who is patient with her weirdness, loves her in spite of herself, and also leaves her alone when necessary. The masseuse is a major element of the story, and Adrienne at times feels like she is having an affair ... and when Martin goes to see the masseuse one day (secretly, he doesn't tell Adrienne - but when he returns she can smell the massage oil) - Adrienne feels almost jealous. LIke she is being cheated on.

I am not sure how Lorrie Moore has pulled this off - it's a hat-trick, this story ... but she does. It's my favorite in the collection.

It is not about something simplistic, like Adrienne being redeemed, or getting pregnant herself, or "healing", or forgiving herself. It's about her trying to get through this conference without biting someone's head off ... and by the end, we realize that the whole thing is really about Martin. Like - what's been going on with HIM through all of this?

And then there are hilarious moments like this one, Adrienne trying to make conversation with a new seatmate at dinner:

When she asked him how he liked it here so far, she received a fairly brief history of the Ottoman Empire.

Now come on. That's funny.


Here's an excerpt:


EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Terrific Mother'

They were met at Malpensa by a driver who spoke little English but who held up a sign that said VILLA HIRSCHBORN, and when Adrienne and Martin approached him, he nodded and said, "Hello, buongiorno. Signor Porter?" The drive to the villa took two hours, uphill and down, through the countryside and several small villages, but it wasn't until the driver pulled up to the precipitous hill he called "La Madre Vertiginoso," and the villa's iron gates somehow opened automatically, then closed behind them, it wasn't until then, winding up the drive past the spectacular gardens and the sunny vineyard and the terraces of stucco outbuildings, that it occurred to Adrienne that Martin being invited here was a great honor. He had won this thing, and he got to live her for a month.

"Does this feel like a honeymoon?" she asked him.

"A what? Oh, a honeymoon. Yes." He turned and patted her thigh indifferently.

He was jet-lagged. That was it. She smoothed her skirt, which was wrinkled and damp. "Yes, I can see us growing old together," she said, squeezing his hand. "In the next few weeks, in fact." If she ever got married again, she would do it right: the awkward ceremony, the embarrassing relatives, the cumbersome, ecologically unsound gifts. She and Martin had simply gone to city hall, and then asked their family and friends not to send presents but to donate money to Greenpeace. Now, however, as they slowed before the squashed-nosed stone lions at the entrance of the villa, its perfect border of forget-me-nots and yews, its sparkling glass door, Adrienne gasped. Whales, she thought quickly. Whales got my crystal.

The upstairs "Principessa" room, which they were ushered into by a graceful bilingual butler named Carlo, was elegant and huge - a piano, a large bed, dressers stenciled with festooning fruits. There was maid service twice a day, said Carlo. There were sugar wafers, towels, mineral water, and mints. There was dinner at eight, breakfast until nine. When Carlo bowed and departed, Martin kicked off his shoes and sank into the ancient tapestried chaise. "I've heard these 'fake' Quattrocentro paintings on the wall are fake for tax purposes only," he whispered. "If you know what I mean."

"Really," said Adrienne. She felt like one of the workers taking over the Winter Palace. Her own voice sounded booming. "You know, Mussolini was captured around here. Think about it."

Martin looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"That he was around here. That they captured him. I don't know. I was reading the little book on it. Leave me alone." She flopped down on the bed. Martin was changing already. He'd been better when they were just dating, with the pepper cheese. She let her face fall deep into the pillow, her mouth hanging open like a dog's, and then she slept until six, dreaming that a baby was in her arms but that it turned into a stack of plates, which she had to juggle, tossing them into the air.


A loud sound awoke her - a falling suitcase. Everyone had to dress for dinner, and Martin was yanking things out, groaning his way into a jacket and tie. Adrienne got up, bathed, and put on panty hose, which, because it had been months since she had done so, twisted around her leg like the stripe on a barber pole.

"You're walking as if you'd torn a ligament," said Martin, locking the door to their room as they were leaving.

Adrienne pulled at the knees of the hose but couldn't make them work. "Tell me you like my skirt, Martin, or I'm going to have to go back in and never come out again."

"I like your skirt. It's great. You're great. I'm great," he said, like a conjugation. He took her arm and they limped their way down the curved staircase - Was it sweeping? Yes! It was sweeping! - to the dining room, where Carlo ushered them in to find their places at the table. The seating arrangement at the tables would change nightly, Carlo said in a clipped Italian accent, "to assist the cross-pollination of ideas."

"Excuse me?" said Adrienne.

There were about thirty-five people, all of them middle-aged, with the academic's strange mixed expression of merriment and weariness. "A cross between flirtation and a fender bender," Martin had described it once. Adrienne's palce was at the opposite side of the room from him, between a historian writing a book on a monk named Jaocim de Flore and a musicologist who had devoted his life to a quest for "the earnest andante." Everyone sat in the elaborate wooden chairs, the backs of which were carved with gargoylish heads that poked up from behind either shoulder of the sitter, like a warning.

"De Flore," said Adrienne, at a loss, turning from her carpaccio to the monk man. "Doesn't that mean 'of the flower'?" She had recently learned that disaster meant "bad star", and she was looking for an opportunity to brandish and bronze this tidbit in conversation.

The monk man looked at her. "Are you one of the spouses?"

"Yes," she said. She looked down, then back up. "But then, so is my husband."

"You're not a screenwriter, are you?"

"No," she said. "I'm a painter. Actually, more of a printmaker. Actually, more of a - right now I'm in transition."

He nodded and dug back into his food. "I'm always afraid they're going to start letting screenwriters in here."

There was an arugula salad, and osso buco for the main course. She turned to the musicologist. "So you usually find them insincere? The andantes?" She looked quickly out over the other heads to give Martin a fake and girlish wave.

"It's the use of minor seventh," muttered the musicologist. "So fraudulent and replete."


"If the food wasn't so good, I'd leave now," she said to Martin. They were lying in bed, in their carpeted skating rink of a room. It could e weeks, she knew, before they'd have sex here. " 'So fraudulent and replete,'", she said in a high nasal voice, the likes of which Martin had heard only once before, in a departmental meeting chaired by an embittered interim chair who did imitations of colleagues not in the room. "Can you even use the word replete like that?"

"As soon as you get settled in your studio, you'll feel better," said Martin, beginning to fade. He groped under the covers to find her hand and clasp it.

"I want a divorce," whispered Adrienne.

"I'm not giving you one," he said, bringing her hand up to his chest and placing it there, like a medallion, like a necklace of sleep, and then he began softly to snore, the quietest of radiators.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 3, 2008

The Books: "Birds of America" - ''People Like That Are the Only People Here'' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

birds_of_america.jpgBirds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'People Like That Are the Only People Here'.

It's interesting that a story with a title suggesting huge generalizations ("people like that") is also a story where the main characters have no names. They are known by their roles in life: Mother. Husband. (Interesting that he is not known as "Father"??) Baby. Surgeon. Etc. A couple folks they meet later do have names - but they do not. It's a device, obviously - in a way, it's a distancing technique. You read something about "The Mother did this or that" ... and she has no defining characteristics, we don't know what she looks like ... we only know what she does. You can't really relate, and that is exactly Lorrie Moore's point. "People Like That Are the Only People Here". How can you relate to "people like that"? How can you see yourself in them? You can't! They're "people like that". This is a bone of contention between the Mother and the Husband ... the Husband has befriended many of the parents in the hospital, in similar situations - he knows their life story, he knows about their kids ... the Mother has no interest whatsoever in "commiserating" with others in her shoes ... "People like that"? No. She is too involved in surviving her own tragedy to try to relate to "people like that". The Mother does not recognize her own life. The horror is so huge she cannot even begin to comprehend it, or even be with it. Baby has cancer. He is in the hospital. Mother and Husband still have not been able to process the diagnosis before this all begins. They are disoriented, freaked out - the Husband tells the Mother to "take notes" (which becomes a running motif in the story - her notes) ... sometimes the Mother falls apart, sometimes the Husband does ... And, at the bottom of the whole thing, is the knowledge that words cannot even BEGIN to describe their experience. Of looking at their sick son in his crib. Of facing the loss of him. The story is a fantastic evocation, I think, of the kind of disorientation that you can feel when faced with a huge loss. Something that yes, may happen to others, may happen to "people like that", but when it happens to you ... all you can do is look around you, baffled, and say, "How on earth did I get here?" There's no weeping or wailing, nobody responds in a cliched manner ... It makes me think a bit of Joan Didion's unbelievable memoir about the year following her husband's death - The Year of Magical Thinking.

It is not so much a memoir of grief - but of disorientation. "Magical thinking". Things do not always hit us right away, or in the same manner. Didion finds herself staring around her, honestly believing that if she keeps thinking about the moment he fell over in their living room - if she keeps going over it - she could somehow reverse time. He can't be dead. Her mind refuses to accept it. And yet then she has moments of searing loss and grief, when the realization that he is gone burns through her. But what I admire so much about that book is her fearlessness in describing how confusing grief can be. How lost you can be in the wake of a tragedy. It's not what you think. It's not ever what you think it will be.

'People Like That Are the Only People Here' is a book about that kind of disorientation. The Mother obsesses about weird things. Like - why all the other mothers of sick boys wear sweat pants ... she doesn't even own a pair. Should she get a pair? The Husband throws the book What to Expect When You're Expecting across the room, shouting at the book - "Why isn't the word 'chemotherapy' in that book? Why didn't they write about THAT?" The Mother takes notes on everything the Surgeon says. The baby lies in his crib, covered in tubes, and he reaches up to his Mother - as if to say Take me! Take me!

The story is freakin' heartbreaking - BUT it is written in a light almost hilarious manner (as the excerpt below will show). Lorrie Moore knows that "hilarity" has its uses in life, and often it shows up at the most inopportune time (laughing in church, etc.) Also - we like to THINK we will be charitable to others, especially when we are in our lowest moments ... but of course we know that much of that is just a fantasy, how we would LIKE to be (I am thinking of Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte in Lorenzo's Oil - going to "support groups" and looking around them at all the other parents as though they are crazy ... who CARES if you're having problems in the bedroom since the diagnosis? Who cares if you yourself are feeling lonely or bad? What about the research? What about the new studies? Let's talk about THAT.) Lorrie Moore's "Mother" does not want to bond with the other parents. The horror goes too deep for that. Instead she wonders about sweat pants and she scribbles down meaningless notes in her notebook. Like - she's not just taking notes about what the doctor says. She's going off on linguistic tangents ... scattered, fragmentary, random questions that have nothing to do with her son's cancer ... her mind wandering. She does not know how to be like the other mothers. It's extrememly disorienting - to be so far outside your own life.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America by Lorrie Moore - excerpt from 'People Like That Are the Only People Here'

Take Notes.

Is fainthearted one word or two? Student prose has wrecked her spelling.

It's one word. Two words - Faint Hearted - what would that be? The name of a drag queen.


Take Notes. In the end, you suffer alone. But at the beginning you suffer with a whole lot of others. When your child has cancer, you are instantly whisked away to another planet: one of bald-headed little boys. Pediatric Oncology. Peed Onk. You wash your hands for thirty seconds in antibacterial soap before you are allowed to enter through the swinging doors. You put paper slippers on your shoes. You keep your voice down. A whole place has been designed and decorated for your nightmare. Here is where your nightmare will occur. We've got a room all ready for you. We have cots. We have refrigerators. "The children are almost entirely boys," says one of the nurses. "No one knows why. It's been documented, but a lot of people out there still don't realize it." The little boys are all from sweet-sounding places - Janesville and Appleton - little heartland towns with giant landfills, agricultural runoff, paper factories, Joe McCarthy's grave (Alone, a site of great toxicity, thinks the Mother. The soil should be tested).

All the bald little boys look like brothers. They wheel their IVs up and down the single corridor of Peed Onk. Some of the lively ones, feeling good for a day, ride the lower bars of the IV while their large, cheerful mothers whiz them along the halls. Wheee!


The Mother does not feel large and cheerful. In her mind, she is scathing, acid-tongued, wraith-thin, and chain-smoking out on a fire escape somewhere. Beneath her lie the gentle undulations of the Midwest, with all its aspirations to be - to be what? To be Long Island. How it has succeeded! Strip mall upon strip mall. Lurid water, poisoned potatoes. The Mother drags deeply, blowing clouds of smoke out over the disfigured cornfields. When a baby gets cancer, it seems stupid ever to have given up smoking. When a baby gets cancer, you think, Whom are we kidding? Let's all light up. When a baby gets cancer, you think, Who came up with this idea? What celestial abandon gave rise to this? Pour me a drink, so I can refuse to toast.

The Mother does not know how to be one of these other mothers, with their blond hair and sweatpants and sneakers and determined pleasantness. She does not think that she can be anything similar. She does not feel remotely like them. She knows, for instance, too many people in Greenwich Village. She mail-orders oysters and tiramisu from a shop in SoHo. She is close friends with four actual homosexuals. Her husband is asking her to Take Notes.

Where do these women get their sweatpants? She will find out.

She will start, perhaps, with the costume and work from there.

She will live according to the bromides. Take one day at a time. Take a positive attitude. Take a hike! She wishes that there were more interesting things that were useful and true, but it seems now that it's only the boring things that are useful and true. One day at a time. And at least we have our health. How ordinary. How obvious. One day at a time. You need a brain for that?

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 2, 2008

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Agnes of Iowa' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

birds_of_america.jpgBirds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Agnes of Iowa'. One of the most powerful stories of the collection. I'm not sure why it is so effective - there are the themes of loss, and letting go of youth, and accepting that life has not turned out the way you wanted it to ... there's that ... but then there are other elements that add to its power: the imagery, the characters (Agnes talking to her one black student - trying to convince her not to write about vampires anymore but to write about her own childhood - the black student is like, "Oh HELL to the No! I LIVED my childhood, I don't want to write about it! I want to write about vampires!) - Agnes' sad and vaguely grumpy husband Joe ... the visiting Afrikaner poet who comes to speak at the college - and Agnes is at first all pissed off that the college would be supporting someone who, in essence, was benefiting from apartheid - but her encounters with the poet show a different story. Agnes is another of those Lorrie Moore creations: the woman who is always trying to crack jokes, keep things light - but who also always manages to say the wrong thing. People get embarrassed for Agnes. Agnes had lived in New York for 10 years before she got married - she was a writer. It had been a crazy time, she had had no money, had gone to crazy parties - you know, lived the life of a young artist struggling in New York. And then, as so often happens, she had a crisis in her late 20s, early 30s - where she felt like time was suddenly running out on her, and she got nervous ... so she moved home to her native Iowa. She got a job teaching writing. She married Joe. And at first she doesn't experience her choice as some giant compromise that she will later regret. It was the right thing to do. She and Joe fell passionately in love/lust ... and they got married. After 6 years of trying to have a baby (where their relationship is basically ruined - all romance sucked out of it in the trying to make a baby thing) ... and now, realizing they will not have a baby ... and they are basically stuck with each other ... fills them with something like horror. Things have become awkward, strained. They don't know what to say, do, and the future yawns before them, empty and awful. But Agnes still is doing the best she can. Trying to teach, trying to ingratiate herself with the head of her department ... trying not to get lost. But she finds herself, suddenly, yearning for New York again ... looking back on her chaotic days there as something wonderful that is now lost forever. There is something terrible about realizing: wow, that was the best time of my life, and I didn't even know it then!

Agnes of Iowa is a masterpiece.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore - excerpt from the story 'Agnes of Iowa'

When Agnes first met Joe, they'd fallen madly upon each other. They'd kissed in restaurants; they'd groped, under coats, at the movies. At his little house, they'd made love on the porch, or the landing of the staircase, against the wall in the hall by the door to the attic, filled with too much desire to make their way to a real room.

Now they struggled self-consciously for atmosphere, something they'd never needed before. She prepared the bedroom carefully. She played quiet music and concentrated. She lit candles - as if she were in church, praying for the deceased. She donned a filmy gown. She took hot baths and entered the bedroom in nothing but a towel, a wild fishlike creature of moist, perfumed heat. In the nightstand drawer she still kept the charts a doctor once told her to keep, still placed an X on any date she and Joe actually had sex. But she could never show these to her doctor; not now. It pained Agnes to see them. She and Joe looked like worse than bad shots. She and Joe looked like idiots. She and Joe looked dead.

Frantic candlelight flickered on the ceiling like a puppet show. While she waited for Joe to come out of the bathroom, Agnes lay back on the bed and thought about her week, the bloody politics of it, how she was not very good at politics. Once, before he was elected, she had gone to a rally for Bill Clinton, but when he was late and had kept the crowd waiting for over an hour, and when the sun got hot and bees began landing on people's heads, when everyone's feet hurt and tiny children began to cry and a state assemblyman stepped forward to announce that Clinton had stopped at a Dairy Queen in Des Moines and that was why he was late - Dairy Queen! - she had grown angry and resentful and apolitical in her own sweet-starved thirst and she'd joined in with some other people who had started to chant, "Do us a favor, tell us the flavor."

Through college she had been a feminist - basically: she shaved her legs, but just not often enough, she liked to say. She signed day-care petitions, and petitions for Planned Parenthood. And although she had never been very aggressive with men, she felt strongly that she knew the difference between feminism and Sadie Hawkins Day - which some people, she believed, did not.

"Agnes, are we out of toothpaste or is this it - oh, okay, I see."

And once, in New York, she had quixotically organized the ladies' room line at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Because the play was going to start any minute and the line was still twenty women long, she had gotten six women to walk across the lobby with her to the men's room. "Everybody out of there?" she'd called in timidly, allowing the men to finish up first, which took awhile, especially with other men coming up impatiently and cutting ahead in line. Later, at intermission, she saw how it should have been done. Two elderly black women, with greater expertise in civil rights, stepped very confidently into the men's room and called out, "Don't mind us, boys. We're coming on in. Don't mind us."

"Are you okay?" asked Joe, smiling. He was already beside her. He smelled sweet, of soap and minty teeth, like a child.

"I think so," she said, and turned toward him in the bordello light of their room. He had never acquired the look of maturity anchored in sorrow that burnished so many men's faces. His own sadness in life - a childhood of beatings, a dying mother - was like quicksand, and he had to stay away from it entirely. He permitted no unhappy memories spoken aloud. He stuck with the same mild cheerfulness he'd honed successfully as a boy, and it made him seem fatuous - even, she knew, to himself. Probably it hurt his business a little.

"Your mind's wandering," he said, letting his own eyes close.

"I know." She yawned, moved her legs onto his for warmth, and in this way, with the candles burning into their tins, she and Joe fell asleep.





Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1)

April 1, 2008

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Community Life' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

birds_of_america.jpg Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Community Life'.


Lorrie Moore has a way of skewering certain pretensions ... she pulls no punches, and yet somehow it doesn't come across as vicious, or agenda-driven. It just seems amusing. The way you suddenly find yourself in the midst of a group of people who REALLY take themselves seriously ... and sure, sometimes it's enraging ... but most of the time (at least for someone like myself) - its more AMUSING than anything else. I suppose that's because I love the human animal, in all its bizarre forms - and everything is fodder. If you get into a constant state of rolling your eyes in contempt at your fellow man ... well, that might make YOU feel better, and superior - but then you become part of the problem. A bigger problem, in my opinion. I refer fondly to such types as "blights upon the earth", but let's move on. My point is: Lorrie Moore definitely does not sugarcoat these issues, and she doesn't hold back from making fun of people ... it's her touch that I appreciate. It's not what I would call a light touch ... but somehow it doesn't have that underlying viciousness that so turns me off. What happens in this story - 'Community Life' - is that Olena is a Romanian woman, who is now living in Vermont. She's not a recent immigrant, although she still speaks Romanian ... and doesn't quite understand what it is driving the people around her. She is dating a guy named Nick - who is an activist. Doesn't matter for what cause. He's a professional activist. He is on committees, and neighborhood boards, he goes to meetings, he talks about "issues" - it's all very Vermont-ish. Lorrie Moore obviously has opinions about people who spend all their time trying to make OTHER people's lives better ... she's one of the LEAST earnest writers I know. She's more selfish. Like most artists. She's interested in the subjective. And so she looks at people, the do-gooders, I guess you'd call them - and she doesn't despise them, or have contempt for them ... it's just that her characters don't "get" it. They aren't "on board". Olena goes to meetings with her boyfriend, and finds herself in the midst of all this busy-ness, this "activisim" - and feels like a total foreigner. She has other concerns. Like her problems with her boyfriend. Other things. This sense of "community life" - you know, that everything has to be put up for a vote, everything must be discussed and hashed over in an exhaustive manner ... Olena thinks everyone is nuts. She cracks jokes. Someone comes up to her and makes some earnest comment, and Olena responds with a stupid pun, or a corny joke. She is not accepted - because one of the primary concerns of this kind of "community" is that everyone take themselves seriously, and everyone must be serious about the "issues". Olena is a librarian. An intellectual. An introvert. Not really into sitting around in big groups, dealing with "community life" on a daily basis.

The following is an excerpt that perfectly shows Moore's "touch" here. Like I said, it's not a light touch - notice how she comments on what there is to eat at such meetings ... I mean, come ON!! - but somehow the overall effect is comedic. And I'm not quite on Olena's side, because I don't quite know her yet ... but I do know that I am interested in her response, her baffled response to the earnest community. Nothing worse than being earnest and having the feeling that someone might be making fun of you for it. Olena looks around at all this participatory democracy stuff, and feels exhausted by it. It's hysterical.


EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, from the story 'Community Life'.

The fund-raiser was in the upstairs room of a local restaurant called Dutch's. She paid ten dollars, went in, and ate a lot of raw cauliflower and hummus before she saw Nick back in a far corner, talking to a woman in jeans and a brown blazer. She was the sort of woman that Nick might twist around to look at in restaurants: fiery auburn hair cut bluntly in a pageboy. She had a pretty face, but the hair was too severe, too separate and tended to. Olena herself had long, disorganized hair, and she wore it pulled back messily in a clip. When she reached up to wave to Nick, and he looked away without acknowledging her, back toward the auburn pageboy, Olena kept her hand up and moved it back, to fuss with the clip. She would never fit in here, she thought. Not among these jolly, activist-clerk types. She preferred the quiet poet-clerks of the library. They were delicate and territorial, intellectual, and physically unwell. They sat around at work, thinking up Tom Swifties: I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly.

Would you like a soda? he asked spritely.

They spent weekends at the Mayo Clinic. "An amusement park for hypochondriacs," said a cataloger named Sarah. "A cross between Lourdes and The New Price Is Right," said someone else named George. These were the people she liked: the kind you couldn't really live with.

She turned to head toward the ladies' room and bumped into Ken. He gave her a hug hello, and then whispered in her ear, "You live with Nick. Help us think of an issue. I need another issue."

"I'll get you one at the issue store," she said, and pulled away as someone approached him with a heartily extended hand and a false, booming "Here's the man of the hour." In the bathroom, she stared at her own reflection: in an attempt at extroversion, she had worn a tunic with large slices of watermelon depicted on the front. What had she been thinking>

She went into the stall and slid the bolt shut. She read the graffiti on the back of the door. Anita loves David S. Or Christ + Diane W. It was good to see that even in a town like this, people could love one another.


"Who were you talking to?" she asked him later at home.

"Who? What do you mean?"

"The one with the plasticine hair."

"Oh, Erin? She does look like she does something to her hair. It looks like she hennas it."

"It looks like she tacks it against the wall and stands underneath it."

"She's head of the Bayre Corners Neighborhood Association. Come September, we're really going to need her endorsement."

Olena sighed, looked away.

"It's the democratic process," said Nick.

"I'd rather have a king and queen," she said.


The following Friday, the night of the Fish Fry Fund-raiser at the Labor Temple, was the night Nick slept with Erin of the Bayre Corners Neighborhood Association. He arrived back home at seven in the morning and confessed to Olena, who, when Nick hadn't come home, had downed half a packet of Dramamine to get to sleep.

"I'm sorry," he said, his head in his hands. "It's a sixties thing."

"A sixties thing?" She was fuzzy, zonked from the Dramamine.

"You get all involved in a political event, and you find yourself sleeping together. She's from that era, too. It's also that, I don't know, she just seems to really care about her community. She's got this reaching, expressive side to her. I got caught up in that." He was sitting down, leaning forward on his knees, talking to his shoes. The electric fan was blowing on him, moving his hair gently, like weeds in water.

"A sixties thing?" Olena repeated. "A sixties thing, what is that - like 'Easy To Be Hard'?" It was the song she remembered best. But now something switched off in her. The bones in her chest hurt. Even the room seemed changed - brighter and awful. Everything had fled, run away to become something else. She started to perspire under her arms and her face grew hot. "You're a murderer," she said. "That's finally what you are. That's finally what you'll always be." She began to weep so loudly that Nick got up, closed the windows. Then he sat down and held her - who else was there to hold her? - and she held him back.




Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

March 28, 2008

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Dance In America' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

birds_of_america.jpgBirds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Dance in America'. One of the quotes from a review on Amazon of Lorrie Moore's stuff says: that she has the "ability to catch the moment that flips someone from eccentric to unmoored", and I think that's exactly right. And usually it doesn't take much. Just a moment. Perhaps the pressure has been building. Lorrie Moore's main characters are usually single, but there the similarity ends. They are single girls, looking around at a world that either has passed them by or has openly rejected them. In contrast to the cliche, Lorrie Moore's "single girls" are not blue, or self-pitying, or bitter. They are busy, they have jobs, sometimes weird jobs ... they like to make puns, they crack stupid jokes, they drive around town obsessing about things, they want to get involved, they want to connect ... they don't sit around be-moaning their single state. They have other things on their mind. And so their loneliness ambushes them. In terrible form. In Dance In America, the main character is a dance instructor, and she travels to colleges, giving workshops. As she gives lectures and talks about dance, she thinks to herself what an asshole she sounds like. She's just making shit up. But hey, it's a living. She has had one major relationship, with a man named Patrick, who finally left her because he couldn't stand her selfishness. This seems to confuse her. She doesn't experience herself as selfish. She's just trying to get through the day. For most of the time, she seems too busy to dwell on the past. She goes to one college, in Pennsylvania Dutch country ... and contacts an old friend of hers from grad school, Cal - who is teaching at a nearby college. He offers to put her up. He lives with his wife Simone and their young son Eugene. They haven't seen each other in years. Cal takes the dog for a walk, and she goes with him and they catch up a bit.

I just love how Lorrie Moore describes characters and situations. It's so specific, so ... unlike anything else. In that way, it feels like life. Yes, there are "types" we encounter in life - and in Lorrie Moore's world it's no different ... but it's the words she chooses to boil down a situation or a person that is so breathtakingly specific.

Here's the excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Dance in America'.

But I haven't seen Cal in twelve years, not since he left for Belgium on a Fulbright, so I must be nice. He seems different to me: shorter, older, cleaner, despite the house. In a burst of candor, he has already confessed that those long years ago, out of friendship for me, he'd been exaggerating his interest in dance. "I didn't get it," he admitted. "I kept trying to figure out the story. I'd look at the purple guy who hadn't moved in awhile, and I'd think, So what's the issue with him?"

Now Chappers tugs at his leash. "Yeah, the house." Cal sighs. "We did once have a painter give us an estimate, but we were put off by the names of the paints: Myth, Vesper, Snickerdoodle. I didn't want anything called Snickerdoodle in my house."

"What is a Snickerdoodle?"

"I think they're hunted in Madagascar."

I leap to join him, to play. "Or eaten in Vienna," I say.

"Or worshiped in L.A." I laugh again for him, and then we watch as Chappers sniffs at the roots of an oak.

"But a myth or a vesper - they're always good," I add.

"Crucial," he says. "But we didn't need paint for that."

Cal's son, Eugene, is seven and has cystic fibrosis. Eugene's whole life is a race with medical research. "It's not that I'm not for the arts," says Cal. "You're here; money for the arts brought you here. That's wonderful. It's wonderful to see you after all these years. It's wonderful to fund the arts. It's wonderful, you're wonderful. The arts are so nice and wonderful. But really: I say, let's give all the money, every last fucking dime, to science."

Something chokes up in him. There can be optimism in the increments, the bits, the chapters; but I haven't seen him in twelve years and he has had to tell me the whole story, straight from the beginning, and it's the whole story that's just so sad.

"We both carried the gene but never knew," he said. "That's the way it works. The odds are one in twenty, times one in twenty, and then after that, still only one in four. One in sixteen hundred, total. Bingo! We should move to Vegas."

When I first knew Cal, we were in New York, just out of graduate school; he was single, and anxious, and struck me as someone who would never actually marry and have a family, or if he did, would marry someone decorative, someone slight. But now, twelve years later, his silver-haired wife, Simone, is nothing like that: she is big and fierce and original, joined with him in grief and courage. She storms out of PTA meetings. She glues little sequins to her shoes. English is her third language; she was once a French diplomat to Belgium and to Japan. "I miss the caviar" is all she'll say of it. "I miss the caviar so much." Now, in Pennsylvania Dutchland, she paints satirical oils of long-armed handless people. "The locals," she explains in her French accent, giggling. "But I can't paint hands." She and Eugene have made a studio from one of the wrecked rooms upstairs.

"How is Simone through all this?" I ask.

"She's better than I am," he says. "She had a sister who died young. She expects unhappiness."

"But isn't there hope?" I ask, stuck for words.

Already, Cal says, Eugene has degenerated, grown worse, too much liquid in his lungs. "Stickiness," he calls it. "If he were three, instead of seven, there'd be more hope. The researchers are making some strides; they really are."

"He's a great kid," I say. Across the street, there are old Colonial houses with candles lit in each window; it is a Pennsylvania Dutch custom, or left over from Desert Storm, depending on whom you ask.

Cal stops and turns toward me, and the dog comes up and nuzzles him. "It's not just that Eugene's great," he says. "It's not just the precocity or that he's the only child I'll ever have. It's also that he's such a good person. He accepts things. He's very good at understanding everything."

I cannot imagine anything in my life that contains such sorrow as this, such anticipation of missing someone. Cal falls silent, the dog trots before us, and I place my hand lightly in the middle of Cal's back as we walk like that through the cold, empty streets. Up in the sky, Venus and the thinnest paring of sickle moon, like a cup and saucer, like a nose and mouth, have made the Turkish flag in the sky. "Look at that," I say to Cal as we traipse after the dog, the leash taut as a stick.

"Wow," Cal says. "The Turkish flag."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

March 27, 2008

The Books: "Birds of America" - 'Willing' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

birds_of_america.jpg Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. With Birds of America, published in 1998, Lorrie Moore hit the jackpot. That book was everywhere you looked. It was on the NY Times bestseller list. Self-Help and Like Life were fine books - but in Birds of America, Lorrie Moore hit her stride. These stories are beyond compare. If you've read the book, you know what I mean. I don't read a ton of short stories - I have to really be into an author to pick up a book of short stories ... I like Joyce's short stories. I like Hemingway's. I like Annie Proulx's short stories, and I like Margaret Atwood's short stories. I love AS Byatt's short stories. And when I read Birds of America (the first of Moore's books I read), I realized I was reading something where I needed superlatives in order to describe it. It's HARD to be "good" at short stories. I mean, how many boring self-indulgent pretentious or kitchen-sink-to-the-point-of-apathy stories have we all read? There's a certain style in American short stories right now, and I can't stand it. I find many of them unreadable. It's not just that they're about minutia - that's fine, Lorrie Moore's stories in many ways are about the tiniest of moments ... it's that the writing itself is lackluster, and nothing pops off the page. Recently, the Willesden Herald famously held a short story contest - and then DIDN'T pick any of the entries and said, "Try again next year." So there will be no winner. It was a huge deal, and everyone was babbling about it. Zadie Smith was one of the judges. It was a huge deal. People went apeshit - but basically the Willesden Herald's point was: "None of the stories sent in were good enough. Sorry." One of the editors came out with a fantastic list called 27 reasons why short stories are rejected - a list I have printed out for future reference. I really recognized many of my own mistakes in that list - things I have either worked to improve, OR am not even aware that I do. But now I am. Anyway, all of this is to say: it's hard to write a good short story. If you're going to write short stories, KNOW that it's hard, and get to know your form. Learn it. Each story in Birds of America is not only a specific three-dimensional world - with food and music and drinks and weather - but an expansive look at a slice of human experience. And again, I am not quite sure how Lorrie Moore does it - but it seems to me (and I've said this before) that it has to do with courage. Lorrie Moore strikes me as a pretty fearless writer. She keeps you in the trivial, and then - with one fell swoop - pulls back the curtain and makes some grand statement that rips your heart out. I suppose, too, that there is something in her characters that really resonate with me. They are doing their best. But something, somewhere, went wrong along the way. And if they could only retrace their steps ... Lorrie Moore just knows how to write about experiences like that, without being maudlin, or dramatic. She just GETS it. Those moments at 3 am where you suddenly sit up in bed, look around, and wonder: "Where the hell am I? Whose life is this?" Horrible moments. Horrible bleak moments surrounded by the banal business of trying to survive, trying to keep your spirits up. Lorrie Moore's stories are always quite funny, even if they sucker-punch you from time to time.

In the first story in the collection - 'Willing' - we meet Sidra, who was once a vaguely famous movie star, who had been up for some kind of award once in her career. Sidra is from Chicago - but she has lived for years in LA. Her career was based on her looks - she had nude scenes, etc. - her father will never go see any of her movies because of that ... but now things have dried up for Sidra. She is 40. Work isn't coming anymore. Life is a howling wilderness. In desperation, she moves back to Chicago - and she stays in a Days Inn. For months. Sometimes she goes and visits her parents. Sometimes she goes to blues clubs with Charlotte, an old friend of hers from high school. Her best friend is a gay man named Tommy - who lives in Santa Monica - and screams at her over the phone, 'What are you DOING?? Come back to LA!" Sidra can't help but look at the big picture ... and that's what gets her, that's what keeps her up nights. She is alone. She has missed the opportunity, it seems, to mate up with someone and have kids. She always thought she would have had kids. So she is disoriented by the fact that she does not. She meets a man at a jazz club - and they start a relationship, sort of. He is not aware that she was once famous, at least not at first. Sidra, though, is weird now. She doesn't respect him, and wonders if that could change - if they could actually make a go of it. Is she still capable of having dreams like that? She's way out of practice.

The whole story is deeply depressing ... and I found myself almost looking away at certain points. Not because I was feeling bad for Sidra, but because I recognized myself in Sidra, and it makes me too sad to even get through the day. But the way Lorrie Moore writes about Sidra's struggles made me feel ... I don't know, it's one of those moments when a really private thought or feeling is expressed perfectly by an artist, someone you don't know - they just NAIL it, in a song, a poem, a book, whatever ... and you point at it and go, 'Yes! That is what it is like for me!"

Courage. Lorrie Moore says things that I might be too afraid to say. And so there's a weird comfort at times, reading a story like 'Willing' - even though it hits too close to home. i still read it and think, "Lorrie Moore knows. She knows what it's like."

Sidra, also, is doing her best. Life has not beaten her. Not yet, anyway. She still cracks stupid jokes, she makes dumb puns on words, she tries to make people laugh. She's still in the game. Life has moved on without her, certainly ... but she's not given up yet. That's the saddest part of all.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from story 'Willing'

He began to realize, soon, that she did not respect him. A bug could sense it. A doorknob could figure it out. She never quite took him seriously. She would talk about films and film directors, then look at him and say, "Oh, never mind." She was part of some other world. A world she no longer liked.

And now she was somewhere else. Another world she no longer liked.

But she was willing. Willing to give it a whirl. Once in a while, though she tried not to, she asked him about children, about having children, about turning kith to kin. How did he feel about all that? It seemed to her that if she were ever going to have a life of children and lawn mowers and grass clippings, it would be best to have it with someone who was not demeaned or trivialized by discussions of them. Did he like those big fertilized lawns? How about a nice rock garden? How did he feel deep down about those combination storm windows with the built-in screens?

"Yeah, I like them all right," he said, and she would nod slyly and drink a little too much. She would try then not to think too strenuously about her whole life. She would try to live life one day at a time, like an alcoholic - drink, don't drink, drink. Perhaps she should take drugs.

"I always thought someday I would have a little girl and name her after my grandmother." Sidra sighted, peered wistfully into her sherry.

"What was your grandmother's name?"

Sidra looked at his paisley mouth. "Grandma. Her name was Grandma." Walter laughed in a honking sort of way. "Oh, thank you," murmured Sidra. "Thank you for laughing."

Walter had a subscription to AutoWeek. He flipped through it in bed. He also liked to read repair manuals for new cars, particularly the Toyotas. He knew a lot about control panels, light-up panels, side panels.

"You're so obviously wrong for each other," said Charlotte over tapas at a tapas bar.

"Hey, please," said Sidra. "I think my taste's a little subtler than that." The thing with tapas bars was that you just kept stuffing things into your mouth. "Obviously wrong is just the beginning. That's where I always begin. At obviously wrong." In theory, she liked the idea of mismatched couples, the wrangling and retangling, like a comedy by Shakespeare.

"I can't imagine you with someone like him. He's just not special." Charlotte had met him only once. But she had heard of him from a girlfriend of hers. He had slept around, she'd said. "Into the pudding" is how she phrased it, and there were some boring stories. "Just don't let him humiliate you. Don't mistake a lack of sophistication for sweetness," she added.

"I'm supposed to wait around for someone special, while every other girl in this town gets to have a life?"

"I don't know, Sidra."

It was true. Men could be with whomever they pleased. But women had to date better, kinder, richer, and bright, bright, bright, or else people got embarrassed. It suggested sexual things. "I'm a very average person," she said desperately, somehow detecting that Charlotte already knew that, knew the deep, dark, wildly obvious secret of that, and how it made Sidra slightly pathetic, unseemly - inferior, when you got right down to it. Charlotte studied Sidra's face, headlights caught in the stare of a deer. Guns don't kill people, thought Sidra fizzily. Deer kill people.

"Maybe it's that we all used to envy you so much," Charlotte said a little bitterly. "You were so talented. You got all the lead parts in the plays. You were everyone's dream of what they wanted."

Sidra poked around at the appetizer in front of her, gardening it like a patch of land. She was unequal to anyone's wistfulness. She had made too little of her life. Its loneliness shamed her like a crime. "Envy," said Sidra. "That's a lot like hate, isn't it." But Charlotte didn't say anything. Probably she wanted Sidra to change the subject. Sidra stuffed her mouth full of feta cheese and onions, and looked up. "Well, all I can say is, I'm glad to be back." A piece of feta dropped from her lips.

Charlotte looked down at it and smiled. "I know what you mean," she said. She opened her mouth wide and let all the food inside fall out onto the table.

Charlotte could be funny like that. Sidra had forgotten that about her.




Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9)

March 26, 2008

The Books: "Like Life" - 'Joy' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

likelifei.jpeg Like Life, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Joy'.

Somehow Lorrie Moore manages to convey deep loneliness without going on and on about it in a relentless way. Her characters are not openly depressed - they strive, they crack jokes, they say inappropriate things that don't go over well, they obsess about OTHER thing - not their loneliness ... but the cumulative effect is that you ache for them. In 'Joy' we meet Jane, a woman who works in a cheese shop. Her cat has fleas, so much of the story involves her taking her cat back and forth to the vet. She also loves music and was in the choir in high school. During the course of the story, Bridey - a girl she went to high school with - comes into the shop - and they recognize one another and re-connect. Kind of. Bridey is married with kids. Jane is not married, and you can tell that she doesn't have much experience in the love arena. There was one guy ... but that didn't work out. Bridey was in choir with Jane and she actually has joined a local choir. There's undercurrents here, you can start to feel them. My experience as a reader is I hear about Jane going back and forth to the vet, and all I want her to do is drop everything and go try out for that choir, too - because she loves music and she should have a happier life! But that's not the way things go, sometimes. She ends up coming to a rehearsal of the choir with Bridey but just the way Moore writes about that - it's embarrassing. You're embarrassed for Jane. She's not supposed to be there. The choir director asks her to leave. Jane is not a mopey type of person, she's optimistic, in a weird way (the excerpt below shows that) ... but something's missing in her life. Something went wrong somewhere. Jane can't re-trace her steps to find out where she took the wrong path. So she goes back to the cheese shop. She does her job. She does the best she can. Tiny moments. Lorrie Moore writes about tiny moments that contain revelations. And sometimes even the characters themselves don't "get" the revelations. But we do.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Like Life, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Joy'.

This particular morning she had to bring her cat in before eight. The dogs came in at eight-o-five, and the vet liked the cats to get there earlier, so there would be no commotion. Jane's cat actually liked dogs, was curious about them, didn't mind at all observing them from the safety of someone's arms. So Jane didn't worry too much about the eight o'clock rule, and if she got there late, because of traffic or a delayed start on the coffee she needed two cups to simply get dressed in the morning, no one seemed to mind. They only commented on how well-behaved her cat was.

It usually took fifteen minutes to get to the west side, such was the sprawl of the town, and Jane played the radio loudly and sang along: "I've forgotten more than she'll ever know about you." At red lights she turned to reassure the cat, who lay chagrined and shedding in the passenger's seat. Ahead of them a station wagon moved slowly, and Jane noticed in the back of it a little girl waving and making faces out the rear window. Jane waved and made faces back, sticking out her tongue when the little girl did, pulling strands of hair into her face, and winking dramatically first on one side and then the other. After several blocks, Jane noticed, however, that the little girl was not really looking at her but just generally at the traffic. Jane re-collected her face, pulled in her tongue, straightened her hair. But the girl's father, at the wheel, had already spied Jane in his rearview mirror, and was staring, appalled. He slowed down to get a closer look, then picked up speed to get away.

Jane got in the other lane and switched stations on the radio, found a song she liked, something wistful but with a beat. She loved to sing. At home she had the speakers hooked up in the kitchen and would stand at the sink with a hollow-handled sponge filled with dish detergent and sing and wash, sing and rinse. She sang "If the Phone Don't Ring, I Know It's You" and "What Love Is to a Dove". She blasted her way through "Jump Start My Heart", humming on the verses she didn't know. She liked all kinds of music. When she was a teenager she had believed that what the Muzac station played on the radio was "classical music", and to this day here tastes were generous and unjudging - she just liked to get into the song. Most of the time she tried not to worry about whether people might hear her, though an embarrassing thing had happened recently when her landlord had walked into the house, thinking she wasn't home, and caught her sing-speaking in an English accent. "Excuse me," said the landlord. "I'm sorry."

"Oh," she said in reply. "I was just practicing for the - Are you here to check the fuse box?"

"Yes," said the landlord, wondering who it was these days he was renting his houses out to.

Jane had once, briefly, lived in western Oregon but had returned to the Midwest when she and her boyfriend out there had broken up. He was a German man who made rocking horses and jungle gyms and who had been, like her, new to the community. His English was at times halting and full of misheard vernacular, things like "get town" and "to each a zone". One time, when she'd gotten all dressed up to go to dinner, he told her she looked "hunky-dorky". He liked to live dangerously, always driving around town with his gas tank on E. "Pick a lane and do stay in it," he yelled at other drivers. He made the worst coffee Jane had ever tasted, muddy and burned, but she drank it, and stayed long hours in his bed on Sundays. But after a while he took to going out without her, not coming home until two a.m. She started calling him late at night, letting the phone ring, then driving around town looking for his car, which she usually found in front of a tavern somewhere. It had not been like her to do things like this, but knowing that the town was small enough for her to do it, she found it hard to resist. Once she had gotten into the car and started it up, it was as if she had crashed through a wall, gone from one room with rules to another room with no rules. When she found his car, she would go into the tavern, and if she discovered him at the bar with his arm flung loosely around some other woman, she would tap him on the shoulder and say, "Who's the go-go girl?" Then she'd pour beer onto his legs. She was no longer herself. She had become someone else, a wild West woman, bursting into saloons, the swinging doors flipping behind her. Soon, she thought, bartenders might fear her. Soon they might shout out warnings, like sailors facing a storm: Here she comes! And so, after a while, she left Oregon and came back here alone. She rented a house, got a job first at Karen's Stout Shoppe, which sold dresses to overweight women, then later at the cheese store in the Marshall Field's mall.

For a short time she mourned him, believing he had anchored her, had kept her from floating off into No Man's Land, that land of midnight cries and pets with too many little toys, but now she rarely thought of him. She knew there were only small joys in life - the big ones were too complicated to be joys when you got all through - and once you realized that, it took a lot of the pressure off. You could put the pressure aside, like a child's game, its box ripped to flaps at the corners. You could stick it in some old closet and forget about it.




Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

March 25, 2008

The Books: "Like Life" - 'Vissi D'Arte' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

likelifei.jpeg Like Life, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Vissi D'Arte'.

Poor Harry. Harry is a playwright who lives in New York City. He won a contest 4 years ago - something like "Three Playwrights Under Thirty" - playwrights to watch in the future. He had had his picture in The NY Times and it was a big deal. Since then, nothing really has happened for him. He lives in an apartment above a peep show - and he has been writing the same play for 4 years now. He thinks it will be his masterpiece. But everything has started to fall apart around him. His girlfriend Breckie is fed up with the aimless poor life they live - and moves to the Upper West Side, where she won't have to stroll through hookers and junkies to get into her own foyer. Harry keeps struggling, keeps writing. But his apartment now seems to take on a vaguely malevolent life of its own. Trucks line up below on the street at dawn, and rev their engines endlessly. Harry starts to lose sleep. The sink backs up and floods the room. And he also has plantar's warts. Things are not going well. Director-friends call him to have meetings, about what he might be working on ... but Harry is now so far removed from actual real-world productivity that he has a hard time even getting thru the meetings, and says things like, "I am primitively secret about what I'm working on." You really like Harry, even though the way I'm describing him makes him sound like a sad sack. He's certainly not someone I would want to date, for example ... but I like him. He has lost his way. He thinks back to that miraculous moment in his life when his picture - HIS picture - was in The NY Times and ... it seemed like something miraculous might happen! But now ... it's been 4 years ... he's no longer "under thirty" ... and nothing has happened. He writes, though - he writes his play all the time. It drives his friends and his now ex-girlfriend crazy. Any conversation they have with him loops back to the play, even if it is not explicitly mentioned. Harry is a one-note kind of guy. In the same way that he starts obsessing about the trucks outside his apartment (he calls the police multiple times, he shouts out the window, he wonders why they have showed up NOW ... what are those trucks doing there?) ... he obsesses about his plantar warts, he obsesses about his apartment ...Early on in the story he has a meeting with a director from LA. The director is fawning, kind of fake, but also really takes an interest in Harry. It seems like things might be about to shift, the ice might be about to break up.

I chose this excerpt because I absolutely love how Lorrie Moore writes about New York City. She articulates a certain energy the city has, a specific energy, perfectly. I just relish her words.

EXCERPT FROM Like Life, by Lorrie Moore. Excerpt from the story 'Vissi D'Arte'.

There is a way of walking in New York, midevening, in the big, blocky East Fifties, that causes the heart to open up and the entire city to rush in and make a small town there. The city stops its painful tantalizing then, its elusiveness and tease suspended, it takes off its clothes and nestles wakefully, generously, next to you. It is there, it is yours, no longer outwitting you. And it is not scary at all, because you love it very much.

"Ah," said Harry. He gave money to the madman who was always singing in front of Carnegie Hall, and not that badly either, but who for some reason was now on the East Side, in front of something called Carnegie Clothes. He dropped coins in the can of the ski-capped woman propped against the Fuller Building, the woman with the pet rabbit and potted plants and the sign saying, I HAVE JUST HAD BRAIN SURGERY, PLEASE HELP ME. "Thank you, dear," she said, glancing up, and Harry thought she looked, startlingly, sexy. "Have a nice day," she said, though it was night.

Harry descended into the subway, his usual lope invigorated to a skip. His play was racing through him: He had known it was good, but now he really knew. Glen Scarp had listened, amazed, and when he had laughed, Harry knew that all his instincts and choices in those lovely moments over the last four years, carefully mining and sculpting the play, had been right. His words could charm the jaded Hollywood likes of a Glen Scarp; soon those words, some lasting impression of them, might bring him a ten- or even twenty-thousand-dollar television episode to write, and after that he would never have to suffer again. It would just be him and Breckie and his play. A life that was real. They would go out and out and out to eat.

The E train rattled west, then stopped, the lights flickering. Harry looked at the Be a Stenographer ad across from him and felt the world was good, that despite the flickering lights, it basically, amazingly, worked. A man pushed into the car at the far end. "Can you help feed me and my hungry kids?" he shouted, holding out a paper cup, and moving slowly down Harry's side of the car. People placed quarters in the cup or else stared psychotically into the reading material on their laps and did not move or turn a page.

Suddenly a man came into the car from the opposite end. "Pay no attention to that man down there," he called to the riders. "I'm the needy one here!" Harry turned to look and saw a shabbily dressed man with a huge sombrero. He had electric Christmas tree lights strung all around the brim and just above it, like some chaotic hatband. He flicked a button and lit them up so that they flashed around his head, red, green, yellow. The train was still stopped, and the flickering overheads had died altogether, along with the sound of the engine. There was only the dull hum of the ventilating system and the light show from the sombrero. "I am the needy one here," he reiterated in the strangely warm dark. "My name is Lothar, and I have come from Venus to arrest Ronald Reagan. He is an intergalactic criminal and needs to be taken back to my planet and made to stand trial. I have come here to see that that is done, but my spaceship has broken down. I need your assistance so that I can get it done."

"Amen!" someone calleld out.

"Yahoo," shouted Henry.

"Can you help me, people, earthlings. I implore you. Anything you can spare will aid me in my goal." The Christmas tree lights zipped around his head, people started to applaud, and everyone dug into their wallets to give money. When the lights came on, and the train started to go again, even the man with the hungry kids was smiling reluctantly, though he did say to Lothar, "Man, I thought this was my car." When the train pulled into Forty-second Street, people got off humming, slapping high fives, low fives, though the station smelled of piss.

Harry's happiness lasted five days, Monday through Friday, like a job. On Saturday he awoke in a funk. The phone had not rung. The mail had brought him no letters. The apartment smelled faintly of truck and sewage. He went out to breakfast and ordered the rice pudding, but it came with a cherry.

"What is this?" he asked the waiter. "You didn't use to do this."

"Maraschino eyeballs." The waiter smiled. "We just started putting them on. You wanna whipped cream, too?"

When he went back home, not Deli but a homeless woman in a cloth coat and sneakers was sitting in his doorway. He reached into his pocket to give her some change, but she looked away.

"Excuse me," he said. "I just have to get by here." He took out his keys.

The woman stood up angrily, grabbing her shopping bags. "No, really, you can sit here," said Harry. "I just need to get by you to get in."

"Thanks a lot!" shouted the woman. Her teeth were gray in the grain, like old wood. "Thanks!"

"Come back!" he called. "It's perfectly OK!" But the woman staggered halfway down the block, turned, and started screaming at him. "Thanks for all you've done for me! I really appreciate it! I really appreciate everything you've done for me my whole life!"




Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 24, 2008

The Books: "Like Life" - 'Two Boys' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

likelifei.jpegLike Life by Lorrie Moore - another short story collection, her second, I believe. There are only eight stories here, but each one is a magnificently specific experience - nobody like Lorrie Moore. Her stories are always about the minutia (although sometimes there are big life-shaking moments) - and yet they add up to a much greater picture, an image of loss, love, the absurdity of being grown up, the necessity of putting-on-happy-face - and yet also the ridiculous-ness of the very same thing. I can't quite explain it - all I know is that nobody quite writes like her. I can say a similar thing about Annie Proulx, whose short stories are heads and shoulders above pretty much everyone else writing now - but there the similarities end. Proulx's stories are expansive, and filled with silence. Maybe there's some wind. Or thunder. But most of all there is the silence. Lorrie Moore's stories are filled with chatter. Inane, pretentious sometimes, heartbreaking, ridiculous - these people sound real to me. I have met them. And sometimes a nervous breakdown is NOT presaged with a long period of weeping and gloominess. Sometimes a nervous breakdown comes after a prolonged period of enforced cheer (sometimes self-enforced). Lorrie Moore writes about THAT.

The first story in this gorgeous collection is called 'Two Boys'. A serious and rather nervous woman named Mary is seeing two men at the same time. For the first time in her life. Neither of them have names in the story - they are referred to as Number One and Number Two. Number One is married, on the way to being separated from his wife. Number Two is a bit more adrift, maybe more centered - but also a bit of a loser. He has no car, for example. Mary is not a seductress. She sits in the park by herself reading religious poetry, and has semi-disturbing conversations with the same 11 year old girl who hangs out in the park. Those conversations drift alongside her two relationships. There seems to be no connection, but of course there is. Mary is realizing that having two men just makes you twice as lonely, as opposed to twice as fulfilled. Her friends are all jealous, and send her postcards with notes on it like, "You hog!" Mary is sweet. She is not a nag, or a needy person. Not openly needy anyway. To make real demands of either Number One or Number Two is totally outside her character. So for now, she drifts from one to the other. Trying to walk steady, trying to read her poetry in between times, trying to still have a life.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Like Life by Lorrie Moore - 'Two Boys'

IN THE PARK an eleven-year-old girl loped back and forth in front of her. Mary looked up. The girl was skinny, flat-chested, lipsticked. She wore a halter top that left her bare-backed, shoulder blades jutting like wings. She spat once, loud and fierce, and it landed by Mary's feet. "Message from outer space," said the girl, and then she strolled off, out of the park. Mary tried to keep reading, but it was hard after that. She grew distracted and uneasy, and she got up and went home, stepping through the blood water and ignoring the meat men, who, when they had them on, tipped their hair-netted caps. Everything came forward and back again, in a wobbly dance, and when she went upstairs she held on to the railing.


THIS WAS WHY she liked Boy Number Two: He was kind and quiet, like someone she'd known for a long time, like someone she'd sat next to at school. He looked down and told her he loved her, sweated all over her, and left his smell lingering around her room. Number One was not a sweater. He was compact and had no pores at all, the heat building up behind his skin. Nothing of him evaporated. He left no trail or scent, but when you were with him, the heat was there and you had to touch. You got close and lost your mind a little. You let it swim. Out in the middle of the sea on a raft. Nail parings and fish.

When he was over, Number Two liked to drink beer and go to bed early, whimpering into her, feet dangling over the bed. He gave her long back rubs, then collapsed on top of her in a moan. He was full of sounds. Words came few and slow. They were never what he meant, he said. He had a hard time explaining.

"I know," said Mary. She had learned to trust his eyes, the light in them, sapphirine and uxorious, though on occasion something drove through them in a scary flash.

"Kiss me," he would say. And she would close her eyes and kiss.


SOMETIMES in her mind she concocted a third one, Boy Number Three. He was composed of the best features of each. It was Boy Number Three, she realized, she desired. Alone, Number One was rich and mean. Number Two was sighing, repetitive, tall, going on forever; you just wanted him to sit down. It was inevitable that she splice and add. One plus two. Three was clever and true. He was better than everybody. Alone, Numbers One and Two were missing parts, gouged and menacing, roaming dangerously through the emerald parks of Cleveland, shaking hands with voters, or stooped moodily over a chili dog. Number Three always presented himself in her mind after a drink or two, like an escort, bearing gifts and wearing a nice suit. "Ah, Number Three," she would say, with her eyes closed.

"I love you," Mary said to Number One. They were being concupines together in his apartment bedroom, lit by streetlights, rescued from ordinary living.

"You're very special," he replied.

"You're very special, too," said Mary. "Though I suppose you'd be even more special if you were single."

"That would make me more than special," said Number One. "That would make me rare. We're talking unicorn."

"I love you," she said to Number Two. She was romantic that way. Her heart was big and bursting. Though her brain was dying and subdividing like a cauliflower. She called both boys "honey", and it shocked her a little. How many honeys could you have? Perhaps you could open your arms and have so many honeys you achieved a higher spiritual plane, like a shelf in a health food store, or a pine tree, mystically inert, life barking at the bottom like a dog.

"I love you, too," said Two, the hot lunch of him lifting off his skin in a steam, a slight choke in the voice, collared and sputtering.





Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 21, 2008

The Books: "Self-Help" - 'Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore - a short story collection. Excerpt from 'Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love'

51P7tPu16XL.jpgMany of the stories in Self Help are hard to excerpt - they are delicate, all of a piece - and if you pull one thread out the whole thing unravels. Many of them have a "gimmick", although I hesitate to call it that. Perhaps "device" would be better. One story (wrenching, I found it almost unreadable it was so sad) is told backwards, with years going down in number - what happend in 1980, 1979, 1978 - and each fragment has to do with the relationship the narrator has with her mother. So going backwards? You can imagine the nostalgia and pain ... because when you know the end, when you know how it ends ... it makes all the years of non-communication or petty fights or whatever seem so ridiculous. Like Emily at the end of Our Town. One story is called 'The Kids Guide to Divorce' - and it's told in the present tense, another "how to" story - like: "do this, do that ..." The stories are, like I said, delicate. Not fragile - just delicate.

'Amahl and the Night Visitors' is the story of a woman unraveling - during the Christmas season when her live-in boyfriend is playing Kaspar in a community theatre production of Amahl and the Night Visitors. Trudy narrates the story - and you can just tell - from her voice - that something is "off" with her. She is obsessed (literally) with her cat. It's a new cat. She is terrified to let the cat outside. She frets. She refuses to open the door. The cat takes up all her brain space. It's obvious that Trudy is afraid that Moss (her boyfriend, the "tenor of love" in the title) is having an affair with someone in the play ... she becomes obsessed with that, too. She is always saying the wrong thing. Moss has his community theatre friends over - and they all talk about the play - and Trudy tries to make jokes and contribute, but she's the kind of person who says something, and the entire room falls silent, everyone squirming with awkwardness. And Trudy doesn't know how to change that. What should she do? She has no sentimentality. It's not like she moons about the house, full of melancholy. Oh, no. Because then she wouldn't be a Lorrie Moore character. Trudy is, on the contrary, almost creepily cheerful. She decorates the house. She puts on a happy face. But then there's the ADD side of her personality. Trudy obsesses about her cat (and Moss, the boyfriend, has totally HAD it with the cat - he calls it names, he makes fun of it - he is so sick of Trudy's obsessive-ness) - she watches news programs and frets about nuclear winter - she becomes convinced that Bob (a lovely man, also in the opera) is in love with Moss ... she is just a MESS. And even though Moss can be cruel to Trudy, sometimes you think he has a point. No wonder why he sleeps over at Melchior's house (that's another funny thing - all of the cast members are referred to by their character names) ... he just needs to get away from Trudy's insistent WEIRD-ness which seems to obliquely have him as its focus at all times.

The story is from Trudy's point of view - but it's written in the "you" voice - which Moore uses a lot in the collection. "You walk down the street ..." So everything ends up sounding like bizarre instructions. It is an odd distancing device - which I really appreciate. It gives her stories clarity, focus. She's not too IN it ... she's outside it ... we are outside, too ... peeking in. This is not total immersion. Moore is about something else.

What I love most about Lorrie Moore's writing is her details. She just burrows right into somebody else's life ... and sees through that person's eyes. And not just sees - which is our most literal sense - but smells, remembers, touches, thinks ... Everyone is specific in a Lorrie Moore story. Her characters are not interchangeable. They are quirky - but not annoyingly so. Lorrie Moore is not "arch", she's not hip or clever - even though the way I am writing about her may give you that impression. She's fearless is what she is, and she writes how she wants to write. I read her stuff and it gives ME courage. I read her stuff and she inspires me to keep going, keep trying, keep honing in on my best way to write, to express. She holds a torch up for the rest of us.

Here's an excerpt. As you can see - each "entry" in the story takes place on a different day in December - so it ends up reading like a weird diary, or date-book.

EXCERPT FROM Self-Help by Lorrie Moore - a short story collection. Excerpt from 'Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love'

12/9 Two years ago when Moss first moved in, there was something exciting about getting up in the morning. You would rise, dress, and, knowing your lover was asleep in your bed, drive out into the early morning office and factory traffic, feeling that you possessed all things, Your Man, like a Patsy Cline song, at home beneath your covers, pumping blood through your day like a heart.

Now you have a morbid fascination with news shows. You get up, dress, flick on the TV, sit in front of it with a bowl of cereal in your lap, quietly curse all governments everywhere, get into your car, drive to work, wonder how the sun has the nerve to show its face, wonder why the world seems to be picking up speed, even old ladies pass you on the highway, why you don't have a single erotic fantasy that Moss isn't in, whether there really are such things as vitamins, and how would you rather die cancer or a car accident, the man you love, at home, asleep, like a heavy, heavy heart through your day.

"Goddamn slippers," says Morgan at work.


12/10 The cat now likes to climb into the bathtub and stand under the dripping faucet in order to clean herself. She lets the water bead up on her face, then wipes herself, neatly dislodging the gunk from her eyes.

"Isn't she wonderful?" you ask Moss.

"Yeah. Come here you little scumbucket," he says, slapping the cat on the haunches, as if she were a dog.

"She's not a dog, Moss. She's a cat."

"That's right. She's a cat. Remember that, Trudy."


12/11 The phone again. The ringing and hanging up.


12/12 Moss is still getting in very late. He goes about the business of fondling you, like someone very tired at night having to put out the trash and bolt-lock the door.

He sleeps with his arms folded behind his head, elbows protruding, treacherous as daggers, like the enemy chariot in Ben-Hur.


12/13 Buy a Christmas tree, decorations, a stand, and lug them home to assemble for Moss. Show him your surprise.

"Why are the lights all in a clump in the back?" he asks, closing the front door behind him.

Say: "I know. Aren't they great? Wait till you see me do the tinsel." Place handfuls of silver icicles, matted together like alfalfa sprouts, at the end of all the branches.

"Very cute," says Moss, kissing you, then letting go. Follow him into the bedroom. Ask how rehearsal went. He points to the kitty litter and sings: "'This is my box. I never travel without my box.' "

Say: "You are not a well man, Moss." Play with his belt loops.


12/14 The white fur around the cat's neck is growing and looks like a stiff Jacobean collar. "A rabato," says Moss, who suddenly seems to know these things. "When are we going to let her go outside?"

"Someday when she's older." The cat has lately taken to the front window the way a hypochondriac takes to a bed. When she's there she's more interested in the cars, the burled fingers of the trees, the occasional squirrel, the train tracks like long fallen ladders, than she is in you. Call her: "Here pootchy-kootchy-honey." Ply her, bribe her with food.


12/15 There are movies in town: one about Brazil, and one about sexual abandonment in upstate New York. "What do you say, Moss. Wanna go to the movies this weekend?"

"I can't," says Moss. "You know how busy I am."


12/16 The evening news is full of death: young marines, young mothers, young children. By comparison you have already lived forever. In a kind of heaven.




Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1)

March 20, 2008

The Books: "Self-Help" - 'What Is Seized' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore - a short story collection. Excerpt from the second story: 'What Is Seized'.

51P7tPu16XL.jpgA story told in fragments. It's very very sad. The character development that Lorrie Moore is able to accomplish in 10 pages is extraordinary. There is no straight narrative. The device is - a woman (the narrator) looks through the scrapbooks her mother kept, after her mother has died. She takes out pictures, and describes each one - the way she describes them tells everything you need to know. But they are just fragments. It is left to us to put it all together. Stories emerge, and then subside, to give way to other stories - it is just how it feels when you look thru an old photo album, and memories rush at you, clamoring for your attention. The parents did not have a happy marriage. The father (James) was a star in the local community theatre - and he always had affairs with his female co-star. The mother wanted to be a ballerina. She was eccentric - gentle, passive-aggressive, and very sensitive. Things hit her hard. She was convinced that her husband was "a cold man" - it was her never-ending theme, how cold he was. That was her experience of him. She talked about it a lot to her kids, who didn't experience him as cold - he was just Dad. But of course a wife will have a different perspective. I just think Lorrie Moore's writing is extraordinary. She's an object lesson - in how to do as little as possible, keep it bare bones, don't expound, don't talk too much - just say what you need to say in as few words as possible. I read stories like "What Was Seized" and it's almost like it provides guideposts for writers. She should be studied by anyone interested in writing fiction. She's that good.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Self-Help by Lorrie Moore - a short story collection. Excerpt from the second story: 'What Is Seized'.

In the wedding photos they wear white against the murky dark of trees. They are thin and elegant. They have placid smiles. The mouth of the father of the bride remains in a short, straight line. I don't know who took these pictures. I suppose they are lies of sorts, revealing by omission, by indirection, by clues such as shoes and clouds. But they tell a truth, the only way lies can. The way only lies can.


Another morning, I heard my parents up early in the bathroom, my dad shaving, getting ready to leave for school.

"Look," he said in a loud whisper. "I really can't say that I'll never leave you and the kids or that I'll never make love to another woman--"

"Why not?" asked my mother. "Why can't you say that?" Even her anger was gentle, ingenuous.

"Because I don't feel that way."

"But ... can't you just say it anyway?"

At this I like to imagine that my parents met each other's gaze in the medicine cabinet mirror, suddenly grinning. But later in the hospital bed, holding my hand and touching each of my nails slowly with her index finger, my mother said to me, "Your father. He was in a dance. And he just couldn't dance." Earlier that year she had written me: "That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist their every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery."

These are the things one takes from mothers. Once they die, of course, you get the strand of pearls, the blue quilt, some of the original wedding gifts - a tray shellacked with the invitation, an old rusted toaster - but the touches and the words and the moaning the night she dies, these are what you seize, save, carry around in little invisible envelopes, opening them up quickly, like a carnival huckster, giving the world a peek. They will not stay quiet. No matter how you try. No matter how you lick them. The envelopes will not stay glued.




Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 19, 2008

The Books: "Self-Help" - 'How to Be An Other Woman' (Lorrie Moore)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore - a short story collection (her first, I believe). I'll be excerpting from many of her stories - she's so damn good. One of my favorite writers writing today. I've written a bit about her before (a post here) - and I'm bummed - I know that Jon and I had an enormous conversation about Lorrie Moore in the comments section of one of my posts, but I can't find it. Granted, I haven't looked TOO hard because life is long and I have stuff to do tonight ... but the reason I read Lorrie Moore at all is because of Jon and Kate, telling me I HAD to read her. This was around the time when her collection Birds of America was pretty much everywhere you looked. It took me a while to get to her - but once I read, oh, about one page of one story of Birds of America, I was like: Put a fork in Sheila. She's done. She's the kind of short story writer - like Hemingway, or Joyce, or Mary Gaitskill - who make you realize, in one or two words, just how terrible most short stories are. I mean, honestly. I'd put Annie Proulx on that list, too. But Lorrie Moore! She has a couple novels out, too - but I haven't read them, although i do own them. I'll get to them! But if you want to encounter a truly awesome writer - I would beg you to pick up Lorrie Moore. She's not ponderous, or serious (although she touches on serious themes) - she's actually kind of wacky, in her style and in her outlook. There are times when you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. I love it how funny she is (so many short stories are humorless) - and I love how she describes things, the words she chooses - just perfection. I read it and wonder: could I write that way? Not only that, but could I SEE that way? Lorrie Moore seems to see things that others do not - and I cherish her for that reason. I read her stuff and small perfect weird little universes blossom right in front of my face - and I see things, details, silences, jokey awkwardness, the way the wind is on the grass - I see it all. She is an exquisite writer. I truly hope I have some Lorrie Moore fans among the folks who read me - I'd love to share thoughts about her. My only complaint about her is that she doesn't publish enough.

51P7tPu16XL.jpgSelf-Help was published in the mid 80s - about a decade before the magnificent Birds of America. The stories have serious themes (as you can tell by the title of the story I will be excerpting today) - but, as you can also tell by its sort of "How To" tone, that Moore will not be overly serious about it. It will not be an exquisite keen of grief and sadness. Self-deprecating perhaps. Nobody does self-deprecating like Lorrie Moore. And nobody describes acute loneliness in a way that makes me ache with recognition and also guffaw with laughter - like Lorrie Moore. She's just so good! In Self-Help, Moore has lots of experimental pieces - along the lines of this one - not too many straight narratives yet. There are lists, how-tos, fragments, To Do lists (that are hysterical) ... Birds of America is more of a classic short-story collection, along classic lines. But here we have goofy instructions with a sharp edge - ("How To Become A Writer" is one of my favorites in the collection) - and stories like this one, which reads like a How To pamphlet - but is really about the loneliness of being someone's mistress.

But even here - in her younger self- there are glimpses of the writer she will soon become, the writer she was already on her way to being. She is an acknowledged master of the short story form, her name is always at the top of the list of greatest American short story writers - and even here, you can start to see why. She is not afraid of writing about people making mistakes, or being jerks, or behaving incomprehensibly. Life is a great mystery. Often we do not know why we do what we do.

I love the bit about the New Year's party here - and how her lover doesn't really get it. But it's quite an image. And yet Lorrie Moore - NEVER turns on the maudlin stuff, she never goes for the tragedy - she skips around it, mentions it obliquely - her characters become eccentric, or flighty - rather than deal directly with tragedy. It's a total "style" - I"d recognize her stuff anywhere.

Can you tell I love her? Write more, Lorrie Moore, write more!

EXCERPT FROM Self-Help by Lorrie Moore - 'How To Be An Other Woman'

"Who is he?" says your mom, later, in the kitchen after you've washed the dishes.

"He's a systems analyst."

"What do they do?"

"Oh ... they get married a lot. They're usually always married."

"Charlene, are you having an affair with a married man?"

"Ma, do you have to put it that way?"

"You are asking for big trouble," she says, slowly, and resumes polishing silver with a vehement energy.

Wonder why she always polishes the silver after meals.

Lean against the refrigerator and play with the magnets.

Say, softly, carefully: "I know, Mother, it's not something you would do."

She looks up at you, her mouth trembling, pieces of her brown-gray hair dangling in her salty eyes, pink silverware cream caking onto her hands, onto her wedding ring. She stops, puts a spoon down, looks away and then hopelessly back at you, like a very young girl, and, shaking her head, bursts into tears.


"I missed you," he practically shouts, ebullient and adolescent, pacing about the living room with a sort of bounce, like a child who is up way past his bedtime and wants to ask a question. "What did you do at home?" He rubs your neck.

"Oh, the usual holiday stuff with my parents. On New Year's Eve I went to a disco in Morristown with my cousin Denise, but I dressed wrong. I wore the turtleneck and plaid skirt my mother gave me, because I wanted her to feel good, and my slip kept showing."

He grins and kisses your cheek, thinking this sweet.

Continue: "There were three guys, all in purple shirts and paper hats, who kept coming over and asking me to dance. I don't think they were together or brothers or anything. But I danced and on 'New York City Girl', that song about how jaded and competent urban women are, I went crazy dancing and my slip dropped to the floor. I tried to pick it up, but finally just had to step out of it and jam it in my purse. At the stroke of midnight, I cried."

"I'll bet you suffered terribly," he says, clasping you around the small of your back.

Say: "Yes, I did."

______________

"I'm thinking of telling Patricia about us."

Be skeptical. Ask: "What will you say?"

He proceeds confidently: "I'll go, 'Dear, there's something I have to tell you.'"

"And she'll look over at you from her briefcase full of memoranda and say: 'Hmmmmmm?'"

"And I'll say, 'Dear, I think I'm falling in love with another woman, and I know I'm having sex with her."

"And she'll say, 'Oh my god, what did you say?'"

"And I'll say: 'Sex.'"

"And she'll start weeping inconsolably and then what will you do?"

There is a silence, still as the moon. He shifts his legs, seems confused. "I'll ... tell her I was just kidding." He squeezes your hand.


Shave your legs in the bathroom sink. Philosophize: you are a mistress, part of a great hysterical you mean historical tradition. Wives are like cockroaches. Also part of a great historical tradition. They will survive you after a nuclear attack - they are tough and hardy and travel in packs - but right now they're not having any fun. And when you look in the bathroom mirror, you spot them scurrying, up out of reach behind you.


An hour of gimlets after work, a quick browse through Barnes and Noble, and he looks at his watch, gives you a peck, and says: "Good night. I'll call you soon."

Walk out with him. Stand there, shivering, but do not pout. Say: "Call you 'later' would sound better than 'soon'. 'Soon' always means just the opposite."

He smiles feebly. "I'll phone you in a few days."

And when he is off, hurrying up Third Avenue, look down at your feet, kick at a dirty cigarette butt, and in your best juvenile mumble, say: "Fuck you, jack."




Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

March 18, 2008

The Books: "Moby Dick" (Herman Melville)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville - fourth excerpt.

0679725253.jpgReading the chapter called "The Blanket" was one of the truly profound moments of my life. I'll never forget it. I put the book down after reading it, and lay on my bed, just thinking about my life, and my behavior, and my mistakes, and my character, and "The Blanket" just surged through me - almost showing me "the way" to live. I'll never forget it. I remember parts of that chapter by heart. I read it often. I take out Moby Dick and read just "The Blanket", in order to remind me, to get me back into that contemplative place of growth, and striving for self-knowledge. It also, to me, has a lot to do with forgiveness. Forgiveness of your own struggle - because we, as humans, of course, are NOT great white whales ... we do NOT have a "blanket" around us at all times ... but we must strive to create one. We must imitate the whale. The whale can teach us how to live, if we let it. Moby Dick is one of the few books I can think of that actually gave me some precepts on how to live. There are many books that accurately describe an experience - so much so that I forever refer back to that particular book in my mind, when such an experience comes up in my own life. The ending of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (excerpt here) has a sentence (and dammit, I can't find it right now - I was sure it was in the last Stone Henge chapter, but I can't find it) - and the jist of it is: that Tess has an experience of happiness and peace in that chapter, after all of her agonies - and now that she has been so beaten by life, so damaged - the happiness which comes is now so tainted with the pain that came before, that it is really the end of the road for her. My apologies to Hardy for my awkward rendering of his brilliant paragraph which I can't find! Anyway, I have had many moments in this last rough year where I have thought of Thomas Hardy's sentence ... and it has felt true to me. When I was 25, 26, I was fit for love - meaning: optimistic, vivacious, young, a bit fearless ... but I wasn't ready. And now that I'm ready, I feel like I am no longer fit. Life has done a number on me and made me cautious, self-conscious, depressive, and fearful. If happiness came now - would my experience of it be like Tess'? I don't know - it's a bleak thought, and I don't mean to get bleak before 8 in the morning ... it's just something I've been thinking about. How fit-ness and ready-ness often do not come at the same moment in time. And Hardy perfectly articulates that (and if I could only find the sentence ... bah!!) But with "The Blanket", Herman Melville does way way more than articulate an experience accurately: he describes to us the whale's skin - its "blanket" that basically allows the whale to swim in the Arctic Ocean as well as the tropics ... without freezing or boiling ... and Melville uses the blanket as a launching-off place for a philosophical, almost spiritual rumination - and he calls out, almost in desperation, in ecstasy, to those of us who might be reading - and begs something of us. He begs us to listen, to heed, to imitate, to, above all things, go deep. It is one of those chapters that you might easily miss if you were bored with the cetology sections. But it changed my life. Not the outer aspects of my life - but the inner. I reference "The Blanket" in my mind all the time - when I am in an unfamiliar situation, feeling insecure, and like I want to flee ... sometimes I'll remind myself: "Remember what Melville said in 'The Blanket'. Breathe ... breathe ..." It reminds me to keep a quiet still center for myself - even around hostile elements, or unfamiliar elements ... I know who Sheila is, right? No one can take that away from me, no one can tell me who I am ... but it takes work - it takes work to isolate that center, to keep it safe, to not let anyone in there who doesn't deserve to be in there. I must strive to always be "at home", wherever I am. Melville's chapter is a reminder, like I said. It's truly amazing. Soul-stirring. Reading that last paragraph of the excerpt below still has the power to bring me to tears.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Moby Dick by Herman Melville - fourth excerpt.


Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin.

In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs - I should say, that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in the large, full- grown bulls of the species.

A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the north, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies. How wonderful is it then - except after explanation - that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo negro in summer.

It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

March 15, 2008

The Books:"Moby Dick" (Herman Melville)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville - third excerpt.

0679725253.jpgWe're deep into the journey now. Ishmael has methodically taken us through a bazillion chapters - telling us about the ship, and fishing, and the crew. Ahab has made only a couple of appearances. He's not an omnipresent captain (like, say, Jack Aubrey seems to be) - he sits in his cabin, stewing over his charts, and even though he isn't seen often - his presence is felt at all times. There's something odd about this particular journey. It seems doomed. And sailors are some of the most superstitious people on earth. There's that great (and creepy) story about one of the crew members showing up for work on The Andrea Gail (the ship made famous by Sebastien Junger's The Perfect Storm) - and he gets out of the car, I think his girlfriend dropped him off at the dock - and he got out of the car, stared at the ship, got an incredibly bad feeling, and then said to himself, "Nope. I'm not doing THIS job" and drove away. He had no idea what the bad feeling was about - but, in general, sailors do trust those instincts. I've lived near fishing and fishermen all my life, and gut feelings like those are rarely ignored. So there's a gut feeling on The Pequod that this trip is not like other trips. And what does one do when one is trapped on a whaling ship with a captain who could be mad? A pretty scary thought. He will put their lives at risk for his own personal quest, which has nothing to do with dragging home cases of spermiceti. It's a personal thing. But none of this is spoken out loud. Because that, too, would be bad luck. It's just a feeling, at first.

Here's part of a haunting chapter called "The Spirit-Spout" - it's one of those examples of Ishmael somehow describing a private moment of Captain Ahab. The first-person narrator goes away - and Melville doesn't seem to worry too much about it. But there's no way that Ishmael could get into Ahab's brain like this - but again, those concerns are too small - for a book such as this one. It could be seen as a flaw, and I could go along with that - but sometimes it is the flaws that make a work truly great. Because art does not play by the rules. Human beings create it. It is not perfect. It lives and breathes (or at least, it should). Melville was not at all concerned with writing a 'well-made' novel (to paraphrase) - he was concerned with describing, in as obsessive a manner as possible, a spiritual experience, a poetic experience ... and in doing so, he needed a fluid narrator. So whatever, his narrator is fluid. Melville was not obedient to a rule that he found no use for. I love that about this book. It would drive me crazy with a lesser artist - it would seem gimmicky, or too clever, or like a cop-out. But with Melville, once you are deep into this thing, you barely notice. I don't "miss" Ishmael in chapters such as this one - it just seems that he has disappeared, momentarily - leaving us with another narrator. And that's fine by me.





Here's the excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Moby Dick by Herman Melville - third excerpt.


Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery locality, southerly from St. Helena.

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude: on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But when, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. "There she blows!" Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. for though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a lowering.

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her - one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.

This midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days after, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after night, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still further and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring us on.

Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same whale; and that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest and most savage seas.

These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.

Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.

Cape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called of yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had attended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and unvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be descried.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

March 14, 2008

The Books: "Moby Dick" (Herman Melville)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

Moby Dick by Herman Melville - second excerpt.

0679725253.jpgScrolling through the book, I find myself getting caught up in it again. Most of the chapters are short - 4 or 5 pages - so there's a fragmentary aspect to the novel. Like I said in my first post, there is no real plot - and the Ahab story takes a while to get going. For the first half of the novel, Melville immerses us in whaling - with extraordinarily poetic chapters on Nantucket, on the different members of the crew - Starbuck gets his own chapter, many of the crew people do - the parts of the ship (each getting its own chapter) - and of course - breaking down the whale into its many parts, the cetology chapters which are so daunting (and so boring) to many - including myself when I first read it. I changed my tune in the re-reading - and never wanted the book to end. Melville, you want to write 3 pages on a soup pot? Go for it? 4 pages on a pillow? I got your back, man. These are not just factual chapters, although there is a journalistic feel to much of it. "Here is what THIS part of the ship is for, and here is how it works ..." But then ... but then ... inevitably, he goes deeper, or higher - however you want to look at it. Everything is either a metaphor for something else - or a launching-pad for Melville's philosophical, spiritual, and emotional ruminations. I suppose if you found this kind of stuff tiresome, and just wanted the story to start, dammit - then all of this would be nearly unbearable. I know I did, in high school. It is one of the most obsessive books ever written. Maybe Finnegans Wake rivals it (excerpt here). But it really has no peers. Melville is obsessed with his topic. He doesn't want to leave anything out. So the book goes from here to there ... characters, events, to marine biology, to nautical explanations ... and behind all of it, is a deep flowing mystery - it haunts the reader. You ask yourself: Why? Why is he so obsessed? What will this add up to? And it is when you give up those questions, that the book really starts to come alive. EM Forster touched on this in the excerpt I gave in the first post. There are no answers, or easy solutions. A does not lead to B. Melville is doing something else, entirely - and I am not even going to try to articulate what it is. All I know is: he is obsessed. With the meaning BEHIND the meaning - and he goes at it in a fragmentary manner, not giving the reader a chance to ponder too much on the grander structure he might be going for ... No. Because if you look for the grander structure, the uber-story, the "why"s of the thing - you will miss the moment. In reading the Master & Commander books, which I am doing right now, there's quite a lot of talk about time - and how time is different when you are at sea, on a boat, far from land. The boat is the universe. Concerns for what's happening on land drift away. You lose perspective. Melville, in his creation of Ahab, is obviously interested in that aspect of nautical life - the almost disorienting feel of life at sea, and how whatever is going on with a human being either becomes amplified or disappears completely. Ahab has ZERO distractions. All he does is obsess over the whale. There is nothing else to take his focus - not a bit of land, nothing - just endless ocean. Melville also addresses this disorientation to a haunting degree with the chapter on Pip going mad - after his time alone in the ocean, before being picked up by the boat again. I can't remember right now how long Pip was in the water - but it wasn't long. And by the time the boat picked him up, poor Pip had snapped. Whatever it was he had seen, sensed, experienced - in the endless waves - had made him go mad. There is nothing to pull the eye, nothing to "ground" you (literally and metaphorically) - and Pip is "dazzled" into a state of silent madness. It's terrifying.

Here, in his chapter on The Mast-Head (which comes way before the Pip chapter) - Melville discusses the dangers of the sea - not the obvious dangers of storms, and big waves, and scurvy, and Leviathans ... but the danger of staring out into that endlessness for too long - and losing yourself entirely. Experienced sailors know to avoid such things, to keep busy, to lose oneself not in the ocean - but in the daily tasks of keeping the universe of the ship going. Don't get too reflective or introspective. Because there is nothing "out there" that will bring you back to earth. You are in a ship, on a heaving endless ocean. You're on your own.

Melville is a master. Watch how he starts with specifics here - how the mast-heads are manned, etc. - and by the end, he has launched off into another tone entirely - one almost of spiritual ecstasy and agony - a warning, to those on mast-head duty, the problems of the job - not just practical problems, but existential. The sea is not to be looked at head-on. It will shatter your sense of self. Be warned.

Such good writing.




EXCERPT FROM Moby Dick by Herman Melville - second excerpt.

The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun- set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner - for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

In one of those southern whalemen, on a long three or four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most usual point of perch is the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t' gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull's horns. To be sure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of its fleshly tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of your watch-coat.

Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or pulpits, called crow's-nests, in which the lookouts of a Greenland whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the fire-side narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A Voyage among the Icebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented crow's-nest of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet's good craft. He called it the Sleet's crow's-nest, in honor of himself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is furnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow's nest of his, he tells us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray Narwhales, or vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of his crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his learned "binnacle deviations," "azimuth compass observations," and "approximate errors," he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within three or four perches of the pole.

But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenland-men were; yet that disadvantage is greatly counterbalanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I - being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude, - how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time."

And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes !n asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent- minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates: - "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain." Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost to all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera-glasses at home.

"Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here." Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly- discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

March 13, 2008

The Books: "Moby Dick" (Herman Melville)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves: Oh, and a quick note: In my recent re-org, I decided to break up the Daily Book Excerpt archive into separate categories - because, after all, I have been doing this since 2004 - think about that, people!! - and the archive had become so huge that it was basically un-openable. It should be more easily search-able now, for you book-o-philes who want to find stuff.

Categories (so far):
Adult fiction
Non-fiction
Children's books
Cultural commentary
Political philosophy
Scripts
Books about Hollywood
Memoirs
Therapeutic
Religion
Science
US history
YA fiction

Anyway, that's THAT.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

0679725253.jpgI'm going to have to do a couple excerpts on this one.

The book is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for hi genius this book is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne". That moves me. They were dear friends and there were many dark years in Melville's life, when his work was either not being published or being published and ignored when Hawthorne was one of Melville's only champions. Melville opened his heart to Hawthorne, in letters - about what he was going through, what he was working on with Moby Dick - and, like a great artistic friend and mentor should, Hawthorne never said, "Don't you think you need to scale it down a bit?" or "Who will want to read 20 consecutive chapters about the etymology of blubber?" No. Hawthorne basically just kept saying to his friend, "Keep going. It's brilliant. Keep going."

Michael Dorda wrote, in 2005, about this extraordinary friendship: "In Melville's lifetime few recognized or even suspected the writer's exceptional genius -- but Nathaniel Hawthorne came close, and the two men established a long-lasting friendship. After their first encounters, the writer of Polynesian adventures went back to his romantic tale about "Whale Fishery" and, in Delbanco's words, "tore it up from within." Melville deepened and amplified his novel, enlarged it in every sense, with the obvious hope of joining what he called, in an essay on Hawthorne, that fraternity where "genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round." With wonderful appropriateness, then, the author of The Scarlet Letter -- which appeared in 1850 -- became the dedicatee of the following year's Moby-Dick."

After Hawthorne read the entirety of the book, in draft form, he let Melville know that he was finished - and not just that he was finished, but that he thought it was a work of genius - and Melville responded, "A sense of unspeakable security is in me at this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb."

Wicked? Why? Well, as EM Forster notes (in an excerpt below), the world of Moby Dick is a godless one. Even the sermons said on the ship have nothing to do with Christ. The God here is the sea. And - with Ahab - the God is his own mad ambition. That is all he worships. And yes, it warps his soul, makes him go crazy. There is no redemption possible. Only oblivion. Which, of course, is what happens.

In this biographical sketch of Melville it is said:

Moby-Dick was misunderstood by those who read and reviewed it and it sold only some 3,000 copies during Melville's lifetime. The book can be read as a thrilling sea story, an examination of the conflict between man and nature - the battle between Ahab and the whale is open to many interpretations. It is a pioneer novel but the prairie is now sea, or an allegory on the Gold Rush, but now the gold is a whale. Jorge Luis Borges has seen in the universe of Moby-Dick "a cosmos (a chaos) not only perceptibly malignant as the Gnostics had intuited, but also irrational, like the cosmos in the hexameters of Lucretius." (from The Total Library, 1999) Clare Spark has connected in Hunting Captain Ahab (2001) different interpretations with changing political atmosphere - depending on the point of view Ahab has been seen as a Promethean hero or a forefather of the twentieth-century totalitarian dictators. The director John Huston questions in his film version (1956) which one, Ahab or the whale, is the real Monster.

It is not a book that can be easily classified. It still stands alone, so many years after publication. It's an anomaly. It's not a regular novel. The point of view switches. The book starts with the famous line "Call me Ishmael" (which I'll get to in a minute) - which sets us up strongly in a first-person universe. But then there are events on the boat that Ishmael tells us of - that Ishmael was not a party to, was not present for - and then the long omniscent professor of marine-biology sections where the whale is broken down into its separate parts. There is no real plot, per se - although the over-riding thrust is, of course, Ahab's pursuit of the whale. But when you stand Moby Dick next to the other great sweeping novels of the 19th century - Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, all of Dickens, all of Hawthorne, all of Austen - you can see how different Moby Dick is ... it is almost like a voice directly from the future - from our post-modern future. Where the narrator is fluid, where the events are commented on - not only by the narrator but by an outside eye ... where things are broken down and taken apart to be examined - and then put back together again. I still don't think today's authors have caught up to Melville, though. He still stands alone in what he accomplished in Moby Dick. It is a singular event, this book. A comet across the sky - that appears only once in a millennia.

I read Moby Dick in high school and despised it. I thought it was one of the most boring pointless things I had ever read. It was on our summer reading list, and I clearly remember forcing myself to read the damn thing, during the dog days of August ... nearly crying from the psychological boredom. Whatever, man ... Moby Dick, Captain Ahab, endless discourses on blubber ... I was 16. I DIDN'T GET IT.

Cut to many many years later. 2001, to be exact. I read it in the spring of 2001. Around that time I decided to systematically go back and re-read all of the books I had been forced to read in high school (which, obviously, made me despise them at the time). I read The Scarlet Letter (excerpt here) and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (excerpt here) and many others. Moby Dick is such a massive book, and I had hated it so much when I first read it that I hesitated to put myself through it again.

And honestly - it blew the top of my head off. Every page. Every page.

I have rarely had such an exciting reading experience as that one. I didn't want it to end. I underlined passages feverishly. I put exclamations points in the margins next to particularly amazing sentences. Honestly. It blew me away.

Re-reading Scarlet Letter, et al, was also really fun - and yes, I renewed my appreciation for those old books, and realized: "Ohhh, okay, yup. THAT'S why the dern thing is a classic" ... but none of them flattened me as much as Moby Dick.

By a weird coincidence, my friend Kate was also re-reading Moby Dick at the same time - a fact we discovered during one of our phone conversations - and we both got SO excited - because, honestly, who in your real life wants to sit around talking about Moby Dick? Who will believe you unless they have read it themselves? So when she said, "I'm reading Moby Dick now ..." I FREAKED OUT. I remember I was living in our ridiculous apartment on Willow at the time - where my room was the size of a closet - and speaking of which, I had no closet - and I had a fold-up bed which HAD to be folded up every day in order for me to have the room to walk to my damn door. Mkay? And I remember I sat perched on my fold-up bed, talking with Kate for a couple of hours about Moby Dick. We both got our copies of the book out, and read passages to each other, and talked about them. The chapter that freaked me out the most (and yes, I mean freaked out) was one called "The Whiteness of the Whale" - which I'll get to later ... and I hadn't even mentioned it, and at one point Kate said, in a tone of hushed awe, "What about that chapter 'The Whiteness of the Whale'??" This is one of the MANY reasons why Kate and I are such good friends. (This is related. Even though it's fiction. Right? It's fiction, right??)

The book, in high school, seemed so far from relevant ... to my life ... and also: there was nothing even remotely recognizable. At least in Scarlet Letter you deal with social issues and sexual issues - stuff I could latch onto as an adolescent ... but Moby Dick? I'm supposed to give a hoo-hah about the spout-hole and what it means and why it's important?

Also, except for the blowsy woman who serves Ishmael chowder in the 2nd or 3rd chapter, and the brief mention of Ahab's new wife at home, there are NO women in this book. NONE. Now: I wasn't a big girlie girlie book reader - Huck Finn was one of my favorite books growing up ... but there are at least SOME girls in that book. Women are not completely banished to the sidelines. Not at all. But Moby Dick? This is a universe not just of men - but a conscious rejection of the female. If you look at the book in another light (as Camille Paglia does so brilliantly and so bizarrely in her chapter on it in Sexual Personae) - the whale could be seen as the "spirit" of female energy in the world. It is obvious that the great white whale is a male - but Paglia theorizes that something else might be going on there. Whaling boats were 100% male, they lived out on the ocean for 3 or 4 years at a time. There were no women. None. But nature? The earth? Aren't these things often referred to as "she"? Paglia thinks that although there are no actual women human beings in Moby Dick, the female is not just present, but omnipresent. She is the sea, the waves, the fish, the storms ... she is what cannot be controlled, no matter how hard the men try. This does make sense, in light of Melville's off-screen life, and his issues with women. It's a fascinating way to look at the book.

E.M. Forster said, in his wonderful published lecture, Aspects of the Novel:

"Moby Dick is an easy book, as long as we read it as a yarn or an account of whaling interspersed with snatches of poetry. But as soon as we catch the song in it, it grows difficult and immensely important. Narrowed and hardened into words the spiritual theme of Moby Dick is as follows: a battle against evil conducted too long or in the wrong way. The White Whale is evil, and Captain Ahab is warped by constant pursuit until his knight-errantry turns into revenge. These are words -- a symbol for the book if we want one -- but they do not carry us much further than the acceptance of the book as a yarn -- perhaps they carry us backwards, for they may mislead us into harmonizing the incidents, and so losing their roughness and richness. The idea of a contest we may retain: all action is a battle, the only happiness is peace. But contest between what? We get false if we say that it is between good and evil or between two unreconciled evils. The essential in Moby Dick, its prophetic song, flows athwart the action and the surface morality like an undercurrent. It lies outside words...we cannot catch the words of the song. There has been stress, with intervals: but no explicable solution, certainly no reaching back into universal pity and love; no 'Gentlemen, I've had a good dream.'

The extraordinary nature of the book appears in two of its early incidents -- the sermon about Jonah and the friendship with Queequeg.

The sermon has nothing to do with Christianity. It asks for endurance or loyalty without hope of reward. The preacher "kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea." Then he works up and up and concludes on a note of joy that is far more terrifying than a menace...

Immediately after the sermon, Ishmael makes a passionate alliance with the cannibal Queequeg, and it looks for a moment that the book is to be a saga of blood-brotherhood. But human relationships mean little to Melville, and after a grotesque and violent entry, Queequeg is almost forgotten. Almost -- not quite...

Moby Dick is full of meanings: its meaning is a different problem. It is wrong to turn the Delight or the coffin into symbols, because even if the symbolism is correct, it silences the book. Nothing can be stated about Moby Dick except that it is a contest. The rest is song."

Brilliant. "The rest is song". And yes, once you catch the tune of Moby Dick, once you stop looking for conventional pathways, and plot, the things we are used to ... all you can hear is the song. I love his point about how if you try to pin down the symbolism - you "silence" the book. I think that is right on.

I'll be doing a couple different excerpts - choosing them as I go. The book is so rich, so detailed, every page has a psychological gem on it ... It's an extraordinary accomplishment, and, like I mentioned before, still stands all by itself.

William Blake once wrote:

...and now we saw it, it was the head of Leviathan, his forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple like those on a tyger's forehead. Soon we saw his mouth and red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence.

Ahab would have totally understood that.

This excerpt is from the first chapter: "Loomings".

EXCERPT FROM Moby Dick by Herman Melville

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about - however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way - either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, - what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way - he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States

Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael

BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces - though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it - would they let me - since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack

March 12, 2008

The Books: "Billy Budd" (Herman Melville)

Next book in my on my adult fiction shelves:

Billy Budd by Herman Melville

519180RM8EL.jpgI've written before on here about my journey with Herman Melville: being forced to read him in high school - we read Billy Budd (which - oh my God - we hated it sooo much ... we found it nearly unreadable) and Moby Dick was on our summer reading list - and I remember me and all my friends, on the last week of summer, sitting on our towels at the beach, tearing through that stupid book, not giving a shit about ONE word of it ... too much! Too much!! We just didn't care. Cut to almost 20 years later. It's 2001, and I decided to methodically go back to every book I was made to read in high school - and read them again, as an adult. Many of them (like The Scarlet Letter - excerpt here) I hadn't read since high school English class! There were a couple of books from high school that I loved the first time I read them - Tale of Two Cities (excerpt here), The Great Gatsby (excerpt here), Catcher In the Rye - so those I didn't force myself to re-read, since I had already done so, willingly, over the years. It was the ones I flat out did not "get" in high school that I wanted to read again. I dreaded some of it - like: must I read Tess of the Stupid D'Urberviles again?? But man, what a cool thing it was to go back and discover Tess as the fraught observant tragic well-crafted page-turner that it is! (Excerpt here) That so far has happened with all of those old high school books. But there was something about Billy Budd, above all other books, that really struck a nerve with me in high school. I used to RAGE about the book. I mean, honestly - the book is, what, 90 pages long? It felt ENDLESS to me. I wrote about Billy Budd in my diary, that's how mad he made me! I know he shows up in one Diary Friday or another. Like: Sheila, stop ranting about books you hate in your diary! Get a life! I think what bothered me the most about the book was its allegorical style, which struck me as too obvious - and also I had a big problem with giving one tiny bit of a shit about the character of Billy Budd. He was too good. Too perfect. He wasn't a hero to me, or even an interesting character. Jay Gatsby was far more interesting because he was, oh, what's the word? Uhmmmmm .... HUMAN, that's the word. Now Melville was obviously not interested in writing realism, and certainly not in Billy Budd - and you can lecture me all you want about what I was "missing" in the book - Lord knows my teacher at the time did too! - but still, the fact remains: I hated the book, and I dislike flat-out allegories anyway, I find them tiresome. So no, I wasn't really "missing" anything at all. I just didn't like it. Billy Budd was too good to be interesting.

Funnily enough, in my Book Reading Project I just described - it was Billy Budd that I put off reading, even after I read Moby Dick and realized that not only was it one of the greatest books I had ever read, but now it was a personal favorite of mine - almost instantly ... but Billy Budd hovered like a grim spectre on the horizon. 90 pages! How can such a small book loom so large?

I finally forced myself to read it last year. And no, I didn't hate it with the passion of a thousand suns anymore, but I found that yes, the same things annoyed me about it that annoyed me in high school. The allegory is too obvious. The masts of the boat forming a cross. Billy Budd's fairness, like a cherub in a Renaissance painting. The malevolence of the master-at-arms - which, Melville makes clear in the excerpt below, is innate - something Claggart was born with. He's like Cathy in East of Eden - born bad. So again, that to me is just not all that interesting - or, no. It IS interesting: Cathy in East of Eden is a terrifying character, and she endlessly fascinates. I guess Billy Budd is all a bit too much on the nose for my taste. Moby Dick, by contrast, is a huge sweeping mess of a novel - ahead of its time back then, and I would say ahead of its time even now. There has not been another book like Moby Dick. And in that book - the allegory is so vast and interwoven - that it doesn't feel as obvious as it does in Billy Budd. The whale - as allegory - becomes one of those devices that helps the reader not only understand Ahab and the whaling industry and the entire world of the book, not to mention all of the deeper themes - but it helps the reader to better understand herself, and how she operates in this world, how she is or is not like the whale ... THAT is allegory at its very best. But I'll get to Moby Dick when I get to it.

Now, to be fair: I no longer hate Billy Budd. I actually enjoyed reading it again, and there is much to recommend it - especially the writing. Melville certainly has a way, don't he. So so good. My main response to it, though, was the unexpected: "Wow. This has to be one of the most homoerotic books I've ever read." There were times I wasn't sure if I was reading Billy Budd or flipping through an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. I can't even count the references to the Greeks. And Melville dwells, lovingly, upon the half-naked men all around the ship - describing their bodies and torsos and muscles in intimate detail - in a way he NEVER would do when describing the female form. It is surmised that Melville probably had many homosexual experiences in his years on ships - and he was known as a vicious misogynist when he was on land. His world was strictly male. So no, none of this surprises me - I was just amazed at how obvious it all was in the well-oiled half-naked prose of Billy Budd.

I think my observation upset a poor reader - who snipped at me: "What I find interesting about this is that you love your historical figures who stand up for what they believe and yet when you have a fictional character who does the same you think he is a goody two-shoes. After all what Billy does is stand up for himself and you dislike him for that. Strange!"

A couple things about this bitchy comment: I disagree with the characterization of Billy Budd as one who "stands up for himself". No, he doesn't. He is a complete victim, a lamb for the slaughter. He is martyred - with no heroics - he barely understands what is happening to him, and yet he submits - like a good martyr should. So no, he doesn't "stand up for himself". He is trying to catch up with the events of his life, trying to understand the forces around him - forces that are much more cunning than poor innocent Billy Budd.

Secondly: to read me and look for inconsistencies and try to catch me in them, or try to score points off of me - is one of the many ways that people MIS-read me. This is a personal website. If I were a political blogger, pontificating on my opinions, and making a nuisance of myself being all self-important and "ooh I'm gonna take down the MSM" then sure - try to call me out on inconsistencies - but again: this is NOT that kind of site. I don't know how many times I have to say it - and if you're the type of reader who literally cannot tell where you are, and you mistake my site for a political site - then I have to call you out on it. You must adjust HOW you read when you come to my site, or you will have a very rough time here. By trying to catch me in an inconsistency, that reader succeeded only in mis-reading me completely. It happens a lot and it bores me to tears. If I'm unclear, then I will certainly clarify myself - but a kneejerk defensive response to something I've written is usually just that: "kneejerk" - and usually there's something else going on, some underlying defensive attitude that, naturally, colors how I am read - and how I am mis-understood. If you go to any of the big book blogs, or movie blogs - this kind of crap does NOT go on. There are actually discussions possible about said book or said movie - because the majority of the readers actually know where they are - they are on a book blog! A movie blog! Disagreement is accepted, and discussion is welcomed. None of this kneejerk political posturing nonsense - where you can't even have a normal conversation! I guess that's mainly what I demand: when you're here, at the very least, please know where you are. Thanks! Thankfully, the majority of my readers are no longer confused about where they are - most of you all who show up now have no issue with knowing where you are when you read me (but that's only because I made a concerted effort to chase away the people who seemed to consistently mistake me for Little Green Footballs).

Lastly: I think all of this is beside the point - and it is my opinion that the commenter in question was actually upset that I called Billy Budd, a book he loves, a Big. Fat. Gay Gay Gay book. Like "It's fun to stay at the YMCA" gay. Funny thing is: I actually don't mean that as an insult. Maybe HE thinks it's an insult - but that's HIS problem, not mine. To me, it's actually a compliment - and also makes the book WAY more interesting to me than it otherwise would have been.

So my assessment from high school still stands: a bit boring, too on-the-nose, and Billy Budd is not an interesting fictional character. I am WAY more interested in Claggart - because he's bad, and something is twisted in him, something is not right. That's always more interesting to me than straight-out goodness.

But Melville as a writer? I am trying to figure out how to describe it. Again, Moby Dick stands alone - and I'm almost nervous to write about that one tomorrow ... but even here in Billy Budd - we get a type of writing that I would like to call ... Okay, thinking as I type ... I guess I would call his writing accurate. Psychologically accurate. There are times when his writing is like an excavation ... or an autopsy. There is something truly emotional in Melville, deeply emotional - and yet there is also a journalistic side to his self-expression - which he uses to great great effect in Moby Dick - but you can see it here in the excerpt too, when he discusses a man's character. He is describing - yes - but also excavating, digging deep. And it all just feels dead ON accurate to me. I find Melville almost compulsively readable. I love him. And let's not even talk about his letters! And his correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his kindred spirit - amazing!!

So yeah. I'm glad I finally re-read Billy Budd and put that ghost to rest!

Excerpt below. Watch how Melville almost acts like a journalist here - I love that about him. I love that kind of writing. Also, not to side with evil, but whatever: I'm a bit with Claggart here. Billy Budd is so damn good that I find him a bit disturbing too. Not saying I'm PROUD that that is my reaction, just telling the truth!

Melville understands human nature. He really does. He is not an idealist, strangely enough - even with all the allegorical themes here. He understands things - and he is sounding some great human truths here. Yet also, with that oddly detached journalistic tone - to me, it's classic Melville, and I'd recognize his writing style in a dark alley. To mix a metaphor. For all you Melville fans - here's a post about him - quotes, poems, fragments - some great stuff.

Okay, onward.


EXCERPT FROM Billy Budd by Herman Melville

What was the matter with the master-at-arms? And, be the matter what it might, how could it have direct relation to Billy Budd, with whom, prior to the affair of the spilled soup, he had never come into any special contact official or otherwise? What indeed could the trouble have to do with one so little inclined to give offense as the merchant ship's peacemaker, even him who in Claggart's own phrase was "the sweet and pleasant young fellow"? Yes, why should Jimmy Legs, to borrow the Dansker's expression, be down on the Handsome Sailor? But, at heart and not for nothing, as the late chance encounter may indicate to the discerning, down on him, secretly down on him, he assuredly was.

Now to invent something touching the more private career of Claggart, something involving Billy Budd, of which something the latter should be wholly ignorant, some romantic incident implying that Claggart's knowledge of the young bluejacket began at some period anterior to catching sight of him on board the seventy-four - all this, not so difficult to do, might avail in a way more or less interesting to account for whatever of enigma may appear to lurk in the case. But in fact there was nothing of the sort. And yet the cause, necessarily to be assumed as the sole one assignable, is in its very realism as much charged with that prime element of Radcliffian romance, the mysterious, as any that the ingenuity of the author of the Mysteries of Adolpho could devise. For what can more partake of the mysterious than an antipathy spontaneous and profound, such as is evoked in certain exceptional mortals by the mere aspect of some other mortal however harmless he may be, if not called forth by this very harmlessness itself?

Now there can exist no irritating juxtaposition of dissimilar personalities comparable to that which is possible aboard a great warship fully manned and at sea. There every day among all ranks, almost every man comes into more or less of contact with almost every other man. Wholly there to avoid even the sight of an aggravating object one must needs give it Jonah's toss or jump overboard himself. Imagine how all this might eventually operate on some peculari human creature the direct reverse of a saint.

But for the adequate comprehending of Claggart by a normal nature these hints are insufficient. To pass from a normal nature to him one must cross "the deadly space between." And this is best done by indirection.

Long ago an honest scholar my senior said to me in reference to one who like himself is now no more, a man so unimpeachably respectable that against him nothing was ever openly said though among the few something was whispered, "Yes, X----- is a nut not to be cracked by the tap of a lady's fan. You are aware that I am the adherent of no organized religion, much less of any philosophy built into a system. Well, for all that, I think that to try and get into X-----, enter his labyrinth and get out again, without a clue derived from some source other than what is known as knowledge of the world - that were hardly possible, at least for me."

"Why," said I, "X-----, however singular a study to some, is yet human, and knowledge of the world assuredly implies the knowledge of human nature, and in most of its varieties."

"Yes, but a superficial knowledge of it, serving ordinary purposes. But for anything deeper, I am not certain whether to know the world and to know human nature be not two distinct branches of knowledge, which, while they may coexist in the same heart, yet either may exist with little or nothing of the other. Nay, in an average man of the world, his constant rubbing with it blunts that fine spiritual insight indispensable to the understanding of the essential in certain exceptional characters, whether evil ones or good. In a matter of some importance I have seen a girl wind an old lawyer about her little finger. Nor was it the dotage of senile love. Nothing of the sort. But he knew law better than he knew the girl's heart. Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets. And who were they? Mostly recluses."

At the time my inexperience was such that I did not quite see the drift of all this. It may be that I see it now. And, indeed, if that lexicon which is based on Holy Writ were any longer popular, one might with less difficulty define and denominate certain phenomenal men. As it is, one must turn to some authority not liable to the charge of being tinctured with the Biblical element.

In a list of definitions included in the authentic translation of Plato, a list attributed to him, occurs this: "Natural Depravity: a depravity according to nature." A definition which, though savoring of Calvinism, by no means involves Calvin's dogmas as to total mankind. Evidently its intent makes it applicable but to individuals. Not many are the examples of this depravity, which the gallows and jail supply. At any rate, for notable instances, since these have no vulgar alloy of the brute in them but invariably are dominated by intellectuality, one must go elsewhere. Civilization, especially if of the austerer sort, is auspicious to it. It folds itself in the mantle of respectability. It has its certain negative virtues serving as silent auxiliaries. It never allows wine to get within its guard. It is not going too far to say that it is without vices or small sins. There is a phenomenal pride in it that excludes them from anything mercenary or avaricious. In short the depravity here meant partakes nothing of the sordid or sensual. It is serious, but free from acerbity. Though no flatterer of mankind it never speaks ill of it.

But the thing which in eminent instances signalizes so exceptional a nature is this: though the man's even temper and discreet bearing would seem to intimate a mind peculiarly subject to the law of reason, not the less in his heart he would seem to riot in complete exemption from that law, having apparently little to do with reason further than to employ it as an ambidexter implement for effecting the irrational. That is to say: Toward the accomplishment of an aim which in wantonness of malignity would seem to partake of the insane, he will direct a cool judgment sagacious and sound.

These men are true madmen, and of the most dangerous sort, for their lunacy is not continuous but occasional, evoked by some special object; it is probably secretive, which is as much to say it is self-contained, so that when, moreover, most active, it is to the average mind not distinguishable from sanity, and for the reason above suggested, that, whatever its aims may be - and the aim is never declared - the method and the outward proceeding are always perfectly rational.

Now something such as one was Claggart, in whom was the mania of an evil nature, not engendered by vicious training or corrupting books or licentious living but born with him and innate, in short "a depravity according to nature".

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack

March 11, 2008

The Books: "By The Lake" (John McGahern)

Next book in my on my adult fiction shelves:

By the Lake by John McGahern

0679744029.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpgI read By the Lake last year (here's my post on it) - John McGahern just passed away, and while his reputation was already stellar (although not perhaps internationally) - he was mainly known as an Irish writer, strictly local. His fame had not quite crossed over to the States - although since his passing I think that has changed a bit. (Interesting thoughts on McGahern from Anne Enright here.) His most famous book is Amongst Women (excerpt here - fantastic book) - and actually the title of By the Lake in England, Ireland, Europe is the far more evocative and moving That They May Face The Rising Sun. What were the publishers in America thinking? Would you pick up a book called By the Lake? Maybe you would if you were a huge fan of Nicholas Sparks' malarkey ... but it sounds like nothing to me, it has no resonance - it doesn't capture at ALL what this quiet deceptively monotonous book is about. It is the story of a community of people in rural Ireland who all live around a lake - they are all about at the age of retirement - children grown and gone (or, no children - whatever the case may be) - it's a slow-moving gentle book, following the seasons - small farms, selling the lambs, the local rake getting married again, worries about their children, etc. There is no plot. It is a portrait - a loving accurate portrait - of a group of people in an Ireland that may be changing in the big cities, but out in the country, things move along in the same slow pace, although the cars may be flashier, and some of them have freelance jobs out of London. But McGahern's original title: That They May Face The Rising Sun - digs deep into what he is really saying here, what the book is REALLY about ... and the title hovers over the entire book, reminding you constantly of the deeper themes. The local cemetery is set up so that the graves "may face the rising sun" ... and while these people are not ancient, death is coming ... it is the twilight of their lives. They are still vibrant, and involved in the every-day business of living ... but man, that title! So I hope the American publisher won't mind, but I completely ignored their bogus boring title (it's like they wanted to marginalize John McGahern!!) - and to me it will always be That They May Face The Rising Sun. Gorgeous! The politics of Ireland, always raucous and sometimes rancorous, are on the edges of life here ... there's one republican fellow who haunts the local pubs, who aggressively greets people in Irish, to make his point ... but he doesn't really have any effect. He's not well liked. Once people are settled into life, the strain and bump of politics loses its appeal. The characters leave indelible marks in the reader's head: there's the character who is known as "The Shah" - a single man, a devout Catholic, very wealthy - who is starting to think of retirement. He owns a business, and so he is looking to pass it off. There is much consternation about this in the community. What on earth will The Shah do without his work? Kate and Ruttledge are a married couple, with a nice easy air about them. Patrick Ryan is a local jagoff - oooh, I do not like him ... he's one of those cynical snarky types who always looks at you in an invasive manner, trying to get underneath your skin. John Quinn is a fascinating character - he marries a widow with 3 children (who are grown) - and the entire family of the woman he marries is against the wedding (we hear a bit about Quinn's character - he's an asshole). The wedding lasts less than 24 hours. His bride (a middle-aged woman) sits upstairs in her room after the ceremony and decides she has made a terrible mistake - and she basically flees into the night. It is a huge brou-haha in this small gossipy community. Bill Evans is a handyman at one of the farms - kind of a simple creature, who never got a break in life. Was an orphan, and has always worked for his living. Kind of a pathetic character - I felt protective of him.

But to describe "what happens" in the book is to miss the point. It is not about "what happens". It is about the writing, and the slow deep truths revealed over the course of the book. Nothing hits like a lightning-bolt, there are no huge revelatory moments ... just quiet drinks in the dusk, chatting about their lives, telling stories, gossiping, and then holing up in their own houses, closing down the barriers again. The rhythm of the book is what is so compelling to me. I read it late last fall, when things were starting to go really bad. There were times when I thought: "God, I wonder if anything is going to HAPPEN in this book" ... but as I succumbed to the slow rural rhythm of By the Lake, it became the absolute best book I could have read at that time. It felt like it made no demands on me - but that was actually an illusion. What happened is that the book worked on me in a subconscious way - deeps were stirred, and I found myself thinking about these people constantly, even when I wasn't reading. I was in that world - with the mist and the lake and the dusk and the dry grass ... McGahern can't be touched, in terms of his skills as a writer. And his vision of rural Ireland, and the church, and the Irish people itself ... is something you don't hear often - what with all the tormented (albeit eloquent) writhing of Irish literature in general (there's that great quote from Hemingway, in a letter he wrote after the publication of Ulysses: "Joyce has a most goddamn wonderful book. It'll probably reach you in time. Meantime the report is that he and all his family are starving but you can find the whole celtic crew of them every night in Michaud's where Binney and I can only afford to go about once a week...The damned Irish, they have to moan about something or other...") Ha! One of the things I so love about Joyce is that his books are really about joy and self-expression and domestic humor. They really are. They are not grim. Not in the slightest. For a man who lost the sight in one of his eyes, and lived in a near-state of poverty for his entire life, who was run out of his own country because of controversy and disagreement with the Church who ran things there - his books are joyful. They are deep, yes, and challenging ... but overwhelmingly what I get from Joyce is how much he ate up all that life had to offer. McGahern is not in any way, shape, or form a benign writer (see Anne Enright's comments above) - although it seems that with a title like By the Lake, certain elements in the literary world were trying to MAKE him benign.

You find yourself challenged after the fact, with By the Lake ... when not one of those characters will leave you alone in your psyche.

It works slowly, inevitably ... It took me a long time to read the book. I kept dipping into it in the free moments that I had, and yes - it became a wonderful escape for me in the darkness of last fall - I loved talking with my dad about it, he's the one who made me read McGahern in the first place - and while By the Lake did not have the same gut-wrenching effect on me as his Amongst Women did - it packed a huge punch. It works on you almost the way a dream works on you. You're not sure what has happened, but you know that things have changed. And they may change back, you can't tell, some things aren't permanent ... but you know that you will not forget any of those people. They live.

McGahern's writing is often so good that it is COMPLETELY INVISIBLE. I do not know how he does it.

I highly recommend By the Lake. (That They May Face The Rising Sun, I mean.)

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM By the Lake by John McGahern


There were many days of wind and rain. Uneasy gusts ruffled the surface of the lake, sending it running this way and that. Occasionally, a rainbow arched all the way across the lake. More often the rainbows were as broken as the weather, appearing here and there in streaks or brilliant patches of colour in the unsettled sky. When rain wasn't dripping from leaves or eaves, the air was so heavy it was like breathing rain. The hives were quiet. Only the midges swarmed.

The hard burnt colour of the freshly cut meadows softened and there was a blue tinge in the first growth of aftergrass that shone under the running winds. The bullfinch disappeared with the wild strawberries from the bank. The little vetches turned black. The berries on the rowans along the shore glowed with such redness it was clear why the rowan berry was used in ancient song to praise the lips of girls and women. The darting swifts and swallows hunted low above the fields and the halflight brought out the noisy blundering bats.

There was little outside work. The sheep and cattle were heavy and content on grass. Radish, lettuc, scallions, peas, broad beans were picked each day with the new potatoes. In the mornings Ruttledge worked at the few advertising commissions he had until they were all finished. Then he read or fished from the boat. Kate read or drew and sometimes walked or cycled round the shore to Mary and Jamesie.

Even more predictable than the rain, Bill Evans came every day. All his talk now was of the bus that would take him to the town. For some reason it had been postponed or delayed for a few weeks but each day he spoke of the imminent arrival of the bus. They were beginning to think of it as illusory as one of the small rainbows above the lake, when a squat, yellow minibus came slowly in around the shore early on Thursday morning and waited. In the evening the bus climbed past the alder tree and gate, and went all the way up the hill.

He had always been secretive about what happened in his house or on the farm unless there was some glory or success that he could bask in; it was no different with the welfare home.

What he was forthcoming about was the bus and the people on the bus and the bus driver, Michael Pat. Already, he had become Michael Pat's right-hand man: the two of them ran the bus together and he spoke of the other passengers with lordly condescension.

"I give Michael Pat great help getting them off the bus. Some of them aren't half there. They'd make you laugh. Michael Pat said he wouldn't have got on near as well without me and that I'm a gift. He's calling for me first thing next Thursday. I sit beside him in the front seat and keep a watch."

If a strange bird couldn't cross the fields without Jamesie knowing, a big yellow minibus coming in round the shore wasn't going to escape his notice, but he didn't want to seem too obviously curious. He took a couple of days before cycling in around the shore. The Ruttledges knew at once what brought him and told him what they knew. They were inclined to make light of Bill Evans's boasting.

He held up his hand in disagreement, knowing several people on the bus. "Take care. He may not be that far out. With people living longer there's a whole new class who are neither in the world or the graveyard. Once they were miles above poor Bill in life. Some of them would have tossed him cigarettes after Mass on a Sunday. Now they are in wheelchairs and hardly able to cope. The bus takes them into town. It's a great idea. They get washed and fed and attended to and it gives the relatives looking after them at home a break for the day. People fall very low through no fault of their own. Compared to some of the souls in that bus, Bill Evans is a millionaire."

The bus was a special bus, with safety belts and handrails and a ramp for wheelchairs. The following Thursday Bill Evans sat in the front seat beside Michael Pat and waved and laughed towards the Ruttledges as the bus went slowly down to the lake. Under the "No Smoking" sign he sat puffing away like an ocean-going liner. The faces that appeared at the other windows were strained with age and illness and looked out impassively. Many did not look out at all.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 29, 2008

The Books: "Amongst Women " (John McGahern)

Next book in my on my adult fiction shelves:

Amongst Women by John McGahern

amongst%2Bwomen.jpgThis book is all tied up with my father. I will never look at this book or think about this book without thinking about my father. I don't even know what else to say about it, really. John McGahern, who passed away in 2006 (I wrote about him here), is the greatest contemporary Irish writer. Or ... he was. Rest in peace. In a recent interview with Anne Enright (that I linked to a couple days ago) - she says about McGahern: "I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this. I can't think of anything you might say about Irish people that is absolutely true. [Irish writer John McGahern, who died in 2006] was an immensely angry, dangerous, and subversive writer. But he was domesticated by the Irish academy incredibly fast. There's the idea of the 'authentic Irish' that he keys into."

McGahern writes "quiet" books - domestic interior dramas - but I'm with Enright. The wellspring underneath his work is volcanic. He is in no way, shape, or form SAFE. As a matter of fact, Amongst Women was one of those books that made my heart hurt. Literally. You know how sometimes you feel like there is an actual bruise on your actual heart? That's what this book did. I almost couldn't finish it. McGahern's work cuts way close to the bone, for me. And sometimes life is easier if you just ignore certain realities, sometimes it gets too intense. McGahern, in Amongst Women, in his quiet specific way - opens up the psychologies of that whole family to me, the reader ... and I get it ... He makes me get it. But Enright's point is also well-taken. Ireland has a way of pillorying and then celebrating their famous artistic sons. Joyce could tell you a bit about that. McGahern had similar experiences. McGahern doesn't write political books, not necessarily - but I suppose most everything is political in Ireland. At least on some level. There was an article in the UK Times about McGahern a year or so ago (link no longer available). An excerpt:

He was recognised as a master craftsman: a succession of awards and prizes confirmed that. But McGahern also came to be seen as something he never was, nor tried to be: a chronicler of Ireland's journey from the past and an explorer of Irish identity.

As he tried to explain in interviews, this way of looking at things held no attraction for him. It was not interesting; there was something childish in questing after the machinery of identity. He disliked the notion of the writer as romantic artist, a courageous solo swimmer in a sea of archetypes.

He wrote about the world he knew and the world his people had known for generations in rural Ireland. He came from the Catholic middle classes, and although he had left the faith behind, he refused to condemn it. It was part of what he was.

It has always been too easy to stereotype McGahern. When his second novel, The Dark, was banned in Ireland, and he was forced by the Catholic church to resign from his teaching job in Dublin, some wanted to use him as a cause celebre, a literary crusader against the old repression.

McGahern rejected the role. He noted that Samuel Beckett was one of the few to inquire after his personal opinion before agreeing to join an anti-censorship campaign. To others, it seemed that McGahern must have been so deeply brainwashed by Irish Catholicism that he refused to denounce it.

But he was no campaigner. If there was any denouncing to be done, it could be undertaken by the reader after engaging with the truth of his fiction. He did not want to dignify the ban by openly opposing it. Readers of his work could see what had angered the hierarchy: not just the frank sexuality, but a portrait of a religious institution without spirituality, devoted to secular power.

See what I mean? His books rattled the status quo. And yet he also was not an "issue" writer. He didn't do "issue" books. And he refused to fit into the little box that some elements wanted him to be in. He left the faith - but in my opinion, nobody writes about Irish Catholicism like John McGahern. And his "refusal to condemn in" sufficiently left many very upset. You know. People wanted to 'own" him. He refused to be owned.

I'm making him sound rather ponderous, and he is just the opposite. He's just a damn fine writer and Amongst Women and That They May Face The Rising Sun (or By the Lake in the US) are routinely listed on any list of the greatest Irish novels. He is a master at prose. I don't know how he does it.

Amongst Women is about, mainly, Michael Moran - father of 5 - widower - married again ... an old Irish Republican, who now is left without a war. It's a present-day novel, so Moran is bitter = oh God is this man bitter - about where Ireland is going now, and the "gangsters" running things. There is no place for Michael Moran in the new order, and yet he was one of the ones who fought for the country. He's very similar to "The Citizen" in James Joyce's Cyclops episode in Ulysses (excerpt here). It's like he's not domesticated. And yet he lives in a house, and has to submit to normal life again. But he bucks against it. And he takes out his own misery on the family - who spend the entirety of their lives, tiptoeing around him, trying to guess his moods, adjusting, disappearing, submitting. This book has to be the best examination of that whole Irish father-daughter dynamic - which can be so baffling to outsiders. I'm talking about tribal loyalty here. It goes beyond love, loyalty, duty, familial responsibilities. It's about tribe. Maggie, Sheila, and Mona are the three grown daughters - trying to live their own lives, and yet - they will never ever truly cut the cord. After they get married or go to college, they still come home every weekend. They tiptoe around their father, and have whispered conversations behind his back. The entire house revolves around Michael Moran's moods. He has his old IRA buddies over, to relive past glories - and they are grim evenings, Moran needing to dominate - always.

But here's where McGahern is a genius, and I have no idea how he does it. Michael Moran is not a character on a page - he is a living breathing man ... and while you may be glad that he is not your father ... you love him so much that you get that bruise-thing on your heart I mentioned earlier. His pain, his loss, the horribleness of getting old ... becoming useless ... and a man who cannot express himself, a man who cannot say, "Hey, I'm in pain here ..." or "I'm scared of how lonely I am" or whatever ... a man like that is always alone. His daughters sense this, so they hover around him, making sure he will never be alone. They may have their own feelings about how he treats them, how he treats everyone - but if anyone ever says a word against him - they would be cut off forever. Even the daughters' husbands. It is FORBIDDEN to talk against Michael Moran. The daughters can do so amongst themselves ... but no one else - not even intimate in-laws - can enter that territory. This is what TRIBE means.

God, I so get that.

My family feeling is tribal as well.

Michael Moran is one of the great literary characters. I will never forget him. And what a confusing experience it is getting to know him. You hate him sometimes. You roll your eyes at his exaggerated sense of himself as an Irish warrior. You wish he would soften up. You ACHE for him. God, do you ache.

I have tears in my eyes. This book means a lot to me.

Here's an excerpt. Michael Moran has re-married - a woman in the town, Rose (another wonderful character). She did not know him well when she married him. She married an unknown. A widower with 5 children. So there is much about him that frightens her. His moods, his sudden viciousness ... She's on uncertain ground. She loves him. Loves him dearly. But God can this guy be a son-of-a-bitch. Wonderful character. This excerpt starts from Rose's point of view ... but as you'll see, it's a gentle omniscent narrator - we flow from one person's POV to another..


EXCERPT FROM Amongst Women by John McGahern

Often when talking with the girls she had noticed that whenever Moran entered the room silence and deadness would fall on them; and if he was eating alone or working in the room - setting the teeth of a saw, putting a handle in a broken spade on a wet day, taking apart the lighting plant that never seemed to run properly for long - they always tried to slip away. If they had to stay they moved about the place like shadows. Only when they dropped or rattled something, the startled way they would look towards Moran, did the nervous tension of what it took to glide about so silently show. Rose had noticed this and she had put it down to the awe and respect in which the man she so loved was held, and she was loath to see differently now. She had chosen Moran, had married him against convention and her family. All her vanity was in question. The violence Moran had turned on her she chose to ignore, to let her own resentment drop and to join the girls as they stole about so that their presences would never challenge his.

He came in late, wary, watchful. The cheerfulness with which Rose greeted him he met with a deep reserve. She was unprepared for it and her nervousness increased tenfold as she bustled about to get his tea. Sheila and Mona were writing at side tables; Michael was kneeling at the big armchair, a book between his elbows, as if in prayer, a position he sometimes used for studying. All three looked up gravely to acknowledge their father's presence; but, ssensing his mood at once, they buried themselves again in their schoolwork.

'Where's Maggie?' he demanded.

'She went to visit some friends in the village.'

'She seems always to be on the tramp these days.'

'Shes going around mostly saying goodbye to people.'

'I'm sure she'll be missed,' he said acidly.

Rose poured him his tea. The table was covered with a spotless cloth. As he ate and drank she found herself chattering away to him out of nervousness, a stream of things that went through her head, the small happenings of a day. She talked out of confusion: fear, insecurity, love. Her instinct told her that she should not be talking but she could not stop. He made several brusque, impatient movements at the table but still she could not stop. Then he turned round the chair in a fit of hatred. The children were listening though they kept their eyes intently fixed on their school books.

'Did you ever listen carefully to yourself, Rose?' he said. 'If you listened a bit more carefully to yourself I think you might talk a lot less.'

She looked like someone who had been struck without warning but she did not try to run or cry out. She stood still for a long moment that seemed to the others to grow into an age. Then, abjectly, as if engaged in reflection that gave back only its own dullness, she completed the tasks she had been doing and, without saying a word to the expectant children, left the room.

'Where are you going, Rose?' he asked in a tone that told her that he knew he had gone too far but she continued on her way.

It galled him to have to sit impotently in silence; worse still, that it had been witnessed. They kept their heads down in their books though they had long ceased to study, unwilling to catch his eye or even to breathe loudly. All they had ever been able to do in the face of violence was to bend to it.

Moran sat for a long time. When he could stand the silence no longer he went briskly into the other room. 'I'm sorry, Rose,' they heard him say. They were able to hear clearly though he had closed the door. 'I'm sorry, Rose,' he had to say again. 'I lost my temper.' After a pause they thought would never end they heard, 'I want to be alone,' clear as a single bell note, free of all self-assertiveness. He stayed on in the room but there was nothing he could do but withdraw.

When he came back he sat beside the litter of his meal on the table among the three children not quite knowing what to do with himself. Then he took a pencil and paper and started to tot up all the monies he presently held against the expenses he had. He spent a long time over these calculations and they appeared to soothe him.

'We might as well say the Rosary now,' he announced when he put pencil and paper away, taking out his beads and letting them dangle loudly. They put away their exercises and took out their beads.

'Leave the doors open in case Rose wants to hear,' he said to the boy. Michael opened both doors to the room. He paused at the bedroom door but the vague shape amid the bedclothes did not speak or stir.

At the Second Glorious Mystery Moran paused. Sometimes if there was an illness in the house the sick person would join in the prayers through the open doors but when the silence was not broken he nodded to Mona and she took up Rose's Decade. After the Rosary, Mona and Sheila made tea and they all slipped away early.

Moran sat on alone in the room. He was so engrossed in himself that he was startled by the sound of the back door opening just after midnight. Maggie was even more startled to find him alone when she came in and instantly relieved that she hadn't allowed the boy who had seen her home from the village further than the road gate.

'You're very late,' he said.

'The concert wasn't over till after eleven.'

'Did you say your prayers on the way home?'

'No, Daddy. I'll say them as soon as I go upstairs.'

'Be careful not to wake the crowd that has to go to school in the morning.'

'I'll be careful. Good night, Daddy.' As on every night, she went up to him and kissed him on the lips.

He sat on alone all until all unease was lost in a luxury of self-absorption. The fire had died. He felt stiff when he got up from the chair and turned out the light and groped his way through the still open doorway to the bed, shedding his clothes on to the floor. When he got into bed he turned his back energetically to Rose.

She rose even earlier than usual next morning. Usually she enjoyed the tasks of morning but this morning she was grateful above all mornings for the constancy of the small demanding chores: to shake out the fire, scatter the ashes on the grass outside, to feel the stoked fire warm the room. She set the table and began breakfast. When the three appeared for school they were wary of her at first but she was able to summon sufficient energy to disguise her lack of it and they were completely at ease before they left for school. When Moran eventually appeared he did not speak but fussed excessively as he put on socks and boots. She did not help him.

'I suppose I should be sorry,' he said at length.

'It was very hard what you said.'

'I was upset over that telegram my beloved son sent. It was as if I didn't even exist.'

'I know, but what you said was still hard.'

'Well then, I'm sorry.'

It was all she demanded and immediately she brightened. 'It's all right, Michael. I know it's not easy.' She looked at him with love. Though they were alone they did not embrace or kiss. That belonged to the darkness and the night.

'Do you know what I think, Rose? We get too cooped up in here sometimes. Why don't we just go away for the day?'

'Where would we go?'

'We can drive anywhere we want to drive to. That's the great thing about having a car. All we have to do is back it out of the shed and go."

"Do you think you can spare the day?' She was still careful.

'It's bad if we can't take one day off,' he said laughingly. He was happy now, relieved, pleased with himself, ready to be indulgent.

He backed the Ford out of the shed and faced it to the road. Maggie had risen and was taking breakfast when he came in.

'Is there anything you want, Daddy?'

'Not a thing in the wide world, thanks be to God.' She was relieved to hear the tone. 'You'll have the whole place to yourself today. Rose and myself are going away for the day.'

'When do you think you'll be back, Daddy?'

Rose had left out his brown suit and shirt and tie and socks and he had started to dress.

'We'll be back when you see us. We'll be back before night anyhow,' he said as he tucked his shirt into his trousers, hoisting them round his hips.

'I'm holding everybody up,' Rose fussed self-effacingly. She looked well, even stylish in a discreet way, in her tweed suit and white blouse.

'Daddy looks wonderful. I hope I'm not too much of a disgrace,' she laughed nervously, moving her hands and features in one clear plea to please.

'I'm bound to be taken for the chauffeur,' he laughed out, mispronouncing the word with relish but he was not corrected as he hoped.

'There'd never be a fear of that,' she said wtih feeling.

They set off together in the small car, Rose's girlish smiles and waves only accentuating the picture of the happy couple going on a whole day's outing alone together. Maggie watched the car turn carefully out into the main road and then she went and closed the gate under the big yew tree.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 28, 2008

The Books: "Atonement " (Ian McEwan)

Next book in my on my adult fiction shelves:

Excerpt from Atonement by Ian McEwan

atonement.gifIan McEwan is such a good writer that there were times, when reading this book, when I had to just put it down, and absorb it. I needed time to let it filter down. Not just the plot - which is devastating, inevitable, like a Greek freakin' tragedy - no way out ... but the writing itself. There were times when I was left almost baffled by how good he is. He's good in the big stuff, and he's also good in the minutia. Like, I know that I SEE things in this world, and I see things that are so specific, and so ... indicative of other things ... in the way that McEwan does ... but could I describe it?? I'm not being self-deprecating, I know I'm a good writer, but McEwan made me want to be better. But he's also so good that it seems daunting. For example (and this is just one of many in the book):

She should have changed her dress this morning. She thought how she should take more care of her appearance, like Lola. It was childish not to. But what an effort it was. The silence hissed in her ears and her vision was faintly distorted -- her hands in her lap appeared unusually large and at the same time remote, as though viewed across an immense distance. She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered, as she had sometimes before, how this thing, this machine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers, entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. She brought her forefinger closer to her face and stared at it, urging it to move. It remained still because she was pretending, she was not entirely serious, and because willing it to move, or being about to move it, was not the same as actually moving it. And when she did crook it finally, the action seemed to start in the finger itself, not in some part of her mind. When did it know to move, when did she know to move it? There was no catching herself out. It was either-or. There was no stitching, no seam, and yet she knew that behind the smooth continuous fabric was the real self -- was it her soul? -- which took the decision to cease pretending, and gave the final command.

I know exactly the experience he describes so perfectly there. I have done that. I have wondered those things. But to put it into words like that ... Atonement took my breath away on nearly every page.

But it was also one of the most wrenching reading experiences I have ever had. The only book I can think of that RUINED me at its end in the same way was Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn (post about the book here). I burst into sobs at the end of that book. That's never happened before. And I remember where I was when I finished Atonement. I was living with Jen in Hoboken, and I was sitting on the floor of my room. My door was closed. I came to the last sentence, and it was like there was a tiny hiccup deep inside of me - which let loose the flood gates. If you've read Atonement then you know that up until almost the very last sentence you think things are one way ... and then you realize that no, things are not that way at all. They are this way. And any germ of hope you might have been hanging onto is shattered. I started sobbing - and it immediately became about my own losses in life, my own disappointments, the things I have lost that I can never get back, the love I had that I lost and had to find a way to go on living ... I was a mess. Poor Jen was doing yoga in her room or something and heard me start howling, and a soft knock came on the door ... "Sheila? You okay?" "Yup! I'm fine!" I sobbed in response. "Just finished Atonement, that's all!"

The book upset me so much that last year I picked it up to read it again, got through one page and then thought: Nope. Cannot put myself through it. Nope.

Written from many different points of view - which is essential to the book's success, I think. Because the book is about, in so many ways, how trapped we are in our own skins - how we look out of our own eyes and see the world one way, and we can never enter another's experience. We see things happening, and we may mis-interpret - but to us, it is reality. There is no overlap. There is no possibility of connection. Briony, the 13-year-old girl who is really the key to the whole book, the linchpin, is a fantasist, it is true. She writes stories and plays, and is deathly serious about all of it. She doesn't make things up, that's not Briony's fatal flaw. It's that she dramatizes life, she makes up narratives - and I guess all little kids do that, but Briony does it in this particular situation - and two lives are ruined. Well. More. I would say her life was ruined as well. Although she does turn it to her advantage much later in her life - her way of "atonement" - but seen in that light, the "atonement" of the title is horrifically ironic. It becomes a ghastly joke. How do you atone for something like that?

I remember as I was reading the book (and I knew nothing about it, I did not know which way it would go, or what would happen - I had avoided reviews with spoilers) - things were going so badly, like - so unbelievably badly - that you can sense the ruin approaching. It's horrible. You want to leap in and intervene - which, in my opinion, would mean, saying, "Everybody: Don't listen to a word that Briony says. She's a little fantasist and she doesn't know what she's talking about." I'm still mad at her. But anyway, I remember saying to my dad something like, "Well, I'm halfway through ... and things are going really bad ... but I'm hoping that the title ... well, the title is Atonement ... so hopefully that will mean something." My dad (who hadn't read the book) said, "I don't think it's a happy ending." "No, I know. I can feel it." It's awful, because you know you're approaching the end ... and you have already been through so much with the rest of the book - the terrible events of that weekend party ... and then you skip ahead in time, a couple of years ... and WWII has started ... and now we're in London ... and you hope ... you just hope that maybe things worked out in that little blank interim we had. Maybe McEwan is holding something out on us. Well, he sure is. And he releases it at the end, and shatters all your hopes and dreams. Thanks, bro!

I'm writing about this book as though I am afraid of it. I actually did feel fear for almost the entirety of the book. It tapped into a deep well inside of me, from almost the first page ... and I guess there's nothing worse (on a small level, and on a large level) than being completely misunderstood. Or when you hurt someone by accident ... and you SO didn't mean to hurt them!! ... but it happened anyway ... and oh God, what an awful awful feeling that is. A sense of urgency comes over me when I am in that situation. I must fix this IMMEDIATELY. It's terrible. And misunderstanding is at the heart of so much of the world's tragedies - and the misunderstanding that happens in Atonement is devastating. It seems small, at first. Briony saw something, and misinterpreted what she saw. That happens a lot. Especially with little kids when they encounter something in the adult world that they do not understand. No biggie, right? But the way McEwan writes about it ... you just start feeling this overwhelming sensation of dread. Like: oh God. No, Briony, what you saw is what you THINK you saw, and because you make up little stories you're making this one up, too - what you saw is NOT what you think you saw. You have made the whole thing up! But Briony is not one to let things lie (witness her play rehearsals ... she's obsessive, serious, and ... there's something rigid about her that makes you know she is headed for a huge fall - I recognized myself in Briony, I really did - which is why I think I had such a violent reaction to her.) ... Briony becomes fired up with her interpretation of what she saw. She casts herself as the Rescuer, the Savior. She will "save" her sister. Then everyone will know how special Briony is! What a heroine she is!

And so. Briony makes an accusation. And then, just watch how the events unfold. Inevitably. Doors clanging shut behind everyone involved, no way back, no way out.

You could live until you were 110. You could never atone for something like that.

I won't say anything more about the book. Obviously it's one of the most powerful books I have ever read. So powerful that I'm not sure I can ever go through it again. In fact, I dreaded today's excerpt. The book gives off a malevolent glow on my bookshelf, full of its terrible truths, its bleak death-knell of hope. But still: McEwan's writing is something else, man. He has written many books, but this is his masterpiece.

Here's an excerpt. It's from early on in the book. Before the shit goes down. But it's building here. Briony intercepts the note. The note that has that word in it. "Cunt". But the context it is in (it's a love note) is beyond her understanding, and she already has misinterpreted the moment by the fountain ... she feels the danger in the air, she senses the threat (even though she is totally wrong). She's gathering her forces. I know she's just a little girl, but her desire to be admired, to have attention, to elevate herself into visibility - is not only her downfall, but the downfall of the other two parties involved.

It makes me want to scold her. "Now, Briony, this is grown-up stuff, and you are just a little bratty girl, don't flatter yourself that you understand anything. Run away and play now, and let the grown-ups carry on with their grown-up lives. You are not a part of it yet. Don't flatter yourself." I would like to condescend to her within an inch of her life, I would like to crush her spirit, to see her crumble into insecurity - to have her KNOW that she doesn't know anything ... That's what the book brings up in me. It's devastating.

But ... and this is the most difficult level ... it's also a book about writing. Briony is NOT just a silly little girl who makes up stories. She is a writer. And her later life will play that out. She knew who she was ... even back then. She is a writer. Everything that happens to her, even as a small child, is grist for the mill (you can see it in the excerpt). I was like that as a child. I am like that now. Sometimes "the urge to be writing [is] stronger than any notion of what [I] had of what [I] might write." It's totally true. The writing-urge is within her. She's playing God, in a sense - and isn't that what writers do? Play God? Moving the characters around, unleashing tragedies upon them, seeing how they react? Briony does it in her little plays as a girl, she does it in her life - with brutal consequences - and she does, indeed, become a writer of some renown.

I also don't think it's an accident that it's a WORD that starts Briony on her terrible journey. It's the WORD that confirms her fears of what she saw at the fountain. A writer. Responding to the call of the word, however mistaken.

But again. There is no atonement. There is no taking back that devastating moment when she made that choice.

Great book.

Excerpt from Atonement by Ian McEwan

The very complexity of her feelings confirmed Briony in her view that she was entering an arena of adult emotion and dissembling from which her writing was bound to benefit. What fairy tale ever held so much by way of contradiction? A savage and thoughtless curiosity prompted her to rip the letter from its envelope - she read it in the hall after Polly had let her in - and though the shock of the message vindicated her completely, that did not prevent her from feeling guilty. It was wrong to open people's letters, but it was right, it was essential, for her to know everything. She had been delighted to see her brother again, but that did not prevent her from exaggerating her feelings to avoid her sister's accusing question. And afterward she had only pretended to be eagerly obedient to her mother's command by running up to her room; as well as wanting to escape Cecilia, she needed to be alone to consider Robbie afresh, and to frame the opening paragraph of a story shot through with real life. No more princesses! The scene by the fountain, its air of ugly threat, and at the end, when both had gone their separate ways, the luminous absence shimmering above the wetness on the gravel - all this would have to be reconsidered. With the letter, something elemental, brutal, perhaps even criminal had been introduced, some principle of darkness, and even in her excitement over the possibilities, she did not doubt that her sister was in some way threatened and would need her help.

The word: she tried to prevent it sounding in her thoughts, and yet it danced through them obscenely, a typographical demon, juggling vague, insinuating anagrams - an uncle and a nut, the Latin for next, an Old English king attempting to turn back the tide. Rhyming words took their form from children's books - the smallest pig in the litter, the hounds pursuing the fox, the flat-bottomed boats on the Cam by Grantchester meadow. Naturally, she had never heard the word spoken, or seen it in print, or come across it in asterisks. No one in her presence had ever referred to the word's existence, and what was more, no one, not even her mother, had ever referred to the existence of that part of her to which - Briony was certain - the word referred. She had no doubt that that was what it was. The context helped, but more than that, the word was at one with its meaning, and was almost onomatopoeic. The smooth-hollowed, partly enclosed forms of its first three letters were as clear as a set of anatomical drawings. Three figures huddling at the foot of the cross. That the word had been written by a man confessing to an image in his mind, confiding a lonely preoccupation, disgusted her profoundly.

She had read the note standing shamelessly in the center of the entrance hall, immediately sensing the danger contained by such crudity. Something irreducibly human, or male, threatened the order of their household, and Briony knew that unless she helped her sister, they would all suffer. It was also clear that she would have to be helped in a delicate, tactful manner. Otherwise, as Briony knew from experience, Cecilia would turn on her.

These thoughts preoccupied her as she washed her hands and face and chose a clean dress. The socks she wanted to wear were not to be found, but she wasted no time in hunting. She put on some others, strapped on her shoes and sat at her desk. Downstairs, they were drinking cocktails and she would have at least twenty minutes to herself. She could brush her hair on the way out. Outside her open window a cricket was singing. A sheaf of foolscap from her father's office was before her, the desk light threw down its comforting yellow patch, the fountain pen was in her hand. The orderly troupe of farm animals lined along the windowsill and the straitlaced dolls poised in the various rooms of their open-sided mansion waited for the gem of her first sentence. At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write. What she wanted was to be lost to the unfolding of an irresistible idea, to see the black thread spooling out from the end of her scratchy silver nib and coiling into words. But how to do justice to the changes that had made her into a real writer at last, and to her chaotic swarm of impressions, and to the disgust and fascination she felt? Order must be imposed. She should begin, as she had decided earlier, with a simple account of what she had seen at the fountain. But that episode in the sunlight was not quite so interesting as the dusk, the idle minutes on the bridge lost to daydreaming, and then Robbie appearing in the semidarkness, calling to her, holding in his hand the little white square that contained the letter that contained the word. And what did the word contain?

She wrote, "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly."

Surely it was not too childish to say there had to be a story; and this was the story of a man whom everybody liked, but about whom the heroine always had her doubts, and finally she was able to reveal that he was the incarnation of evil. But wasn't she - that was, Briony the writer - supposed to be so worldly now as to be above such nursery-tale ideas as good and evil? There must be some lofty, godlike place from which all people could be judged alike, not pitted against each other, as in some lifelong hockey match, but seen noisily jostling together in all their glorious imperfection. If such a place existed, she was not worthy of it. She could never forgive Robbie his disgusting mind.

Trapped between the urge to write a simple diary account of her day's experiences and the ambition to make something greater of them that would be polished, self-contained and obscure, she sat for many minutes frowning at her sheet of paper and its infantile quotation and did not write another word. Actions she thought she could describe well enough, and she had the hang of dialogue. She could do the woods in winter, and the grimness of a castle wall. But how to do feelings? All very well to write, She felt sad, or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy? Even harder was the threat, or the confusion of feeling contradictory things. Pen in hand, she stared across the room toward her hard-faced dolls, the estranged companions of a childhood she considered closed. It was a chilly sensation, growing up. She would never sit on Emily's or Cecilia's lap again, or only as a joke. Two summers ago, on her eleventh birthday, her parents, brother and sister and a fifth person she could not remember had taken her out onto the lawn and tossed her in a blanket eleven times, and then once for luck. Could she trust it now, the hilarious freedom of the upward flight, the blind trust in the kindly grip of adult wrists, when the fifth person could so easily have been Robbie?

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBack

February 27, 2008

The Books: "Charming Billy " ( Alice McDermott)

Next book in my on my adult fiction shelves:

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

charmingbilly.jpgAlice McDermott writes about Irish-American life and the Irish-American experience (straddling Vatican II into now) - like nobody's business. Charming Billy is almost creepy to me, because she just gets it all so right. It sounds right, the houses are right, the masses are right - the family stuff is right ... and her writing is not flowery, or sentimental - in many ways, she reminds me of Dennis Lehane (excerpt of Mystic River here), although she doesn't write crime books. It's the STYLE. It's the TYPE of person she writes about. The Irish-Americans - the folks from Southie in Boston - the third-generation people, with grandmothers and great-grandmothers who speak in brogues - you know, my peeps. McDermott doesn't write about it in a precious way - or a fetishizing way. It's just real.

Charming Billy won the National Book Award the year it came out, and I think that's pretty cool - because Charming Billy doesn't have a lot of sturm und drang - it's not about a politically hot topic - it's not focusing on mental illness or depression - it's not "important" at all. But God spare us from only reading "important" books. Charming Billy is the story of a family who gathers in a bar in the Bronx - after the funeral mass of their family member Billy - he's an uncle, a cousin, whatever - and the family sits around and talks about him, telling stories. Billy had a long life. He was a big drinker. He had a great lost love - Eva, an Irish girl. He had a new wife - Maeve - and she's relatively new to the family (but again, with the whole Irish tendency of not accepting newbies - the family doesn't quite know how to deal with her - she's not really "one of them" yet) - and everyone tells stories, and sometimes the narrator (who is a member of the family - it's a first-person book, although often it doesn't feel that way, because she is telling the stories of Billy's life, not her own) - anyway, sometimes the narrator will go back into the past, and share her memories of Billy, and the memories will come to life on the page. The whole thing takes place in one day, sitting around the bar in the Bronx, shooting the shit about their dearly departed Billy.

And who can say why this was such a lovely read? Having described "what happens", I can imagine it doesn't sound all that compelling.

But it's what I call a "soft" read. You can just sink into it. You can lose yourself. The writing is not insistent, or clever. It's just GOOD. It's good story-telling. And it has the breath of reality in it. I have been to more Irish wakes than I can count. We have a big family and my childhood was punctuated by truly tragic deaths, out of the blue deaths, dear dear family members dying young, horrible. And to me, McDermott just captures the vibe at the after-gatherings of such funerals. I mean, Irish wakes are a cliche - but there's much truth in cliches. I recognize myself in this book. I see my family. Alice McDermott has perfect pitch.

And I love the title of the book.

Billy is not always a pleasant man to get to know. He had a drinking problem. He was old-school Catholic boy. But yes. He was "charming". That word can have snotty connotations - like it has lost its meaning. What does it mean when someone REALLY has "charm"? What is charm? Billy had it. There is much to mourn.

Lovely book. I have all of Alice McDermott's other books, based just on my love of Charming Billy - but I have yet to read any of them. I love her writing.

Here's an excerpt. I love love love the bit about the waiter placing the ice cream on the table. And how Alice McDermott describes it perfectly. That's good writing.

EXCERPT FROM Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

"Well, he always drank," Kate said. "But for a very long time it seemed he drank harmlessly. I remember him feeling no pain when he was on leave, before he went overseas, but that was understandable. I remember the night he came home and told us that Eva had passed away. He went straight to bed afterwards and I called Dennis to see if I could learn anything more and Dennis said they'd both had quite a lot to drink the night before, which was understandable, too. It was probably as hard for Dennis to tell him as it was for Billy to hear the news."

His sister Rosemary said, "I remember he had one too many at Jill's christening. I was worried about him riding the subway home."

"But for years he never missed a day of work," Kate told us. "And he was there to open the shoe store every Saturday morning from the time he started into the early sixties, when Mr. Holtzman finally sold the place to Baker's. I don't think Mr. Holtzman ever knew he drank. Certainly no one at Edison knew until near the end."

But Mickey Quinn held up his hand. "They knew," he said wisely.

"But not until fairly recently," Kate said. "Maybe when he went into the hospital in '73, the same year my Kevin graduated from Regis."

But Mickey Quinn frowned and shook his head slightly apologetically, as if over something that was only slightly askew. "They knew," he said again. "We all knew. I left Irving Place in '68 and the fellows in the office knew Billy was a drinker even then. They covered for him, mostly in the afternoon. He'd go out on a call after lunch and not come back to the office and they'd cover for him. Everyone liked him. They were glad to do it."

"I think Smitty might have covered for him, too," his sister Rosemary said. "In the shoe store. Do you remember Smitty? Mr. Holtzman's assistant - the little bald man?" He was remembered. "I went in there one Saturday, we were looking for Betty's First Communion shoes, and Billy was just coming in from lunch. I had the feeling he'd had a few. I mean, he was fine, and the kids were always happy to see him, but I noticed Smitty did all the measuring and got out all the shoes. Billy mostly sat. Which wasn't like him. He was sucking a peppermint."

"When was this?" Kate asked as her wealthy husband, trained at Fordham Law, might do.

Rosemary paused to calculate. "Betty was in second grade. 1962." Almost in apology: "He was drinking in '62."

Dan Lynch raised his hands. "Well, what does it mean? He was drinking before that, too. Down at Quinlan's. Saturdays after work. Sunday evenings. Hell, I was always there, too, and my liver's fine."

"So when did it become a problem?" cousin Rosemary asked.

"He started AA in the late sixties," Kate told her. "And then again around '71 or '2."

"He took the pledge on that Ireland trip. That was '75."

"What good did it do?"

"I thought it would stick. Maeve did, too."

Dan Lynch was chuckling, his hand around his small glass. "I remember Billy saying that AA was a Protestant thing, when you came right down to it. Started by a bunch of Protestants. He said he didn't like the chummy way some of them were always calling Our Lord by his first name. I drove him to the first meeting and waited to take him home, 'cause Maeve didn't want him driving, and when he came out he said you could tell who the Catholics were because they'd all been bowing their heads every ten seconds while the Protestants bantered on about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

(And sure enough, up and down our stretch of table, heads bobbed at the name.)

Sister Rosemary said, "He didn't like them calling God a Higher Power, either - which I guess was the official AA term. Nondenominational, you know. He said it only proved that none of them had a sense of humor. He said you'd have to be God Himself to get higher than most of these guys had been."

There was a bit of low laughter. "Billy had an irreverent streak," MIckey Quinn said. "I liked that about him."

"The way Father Joyce explained it to me," Dan Lynch went on, "the pledge was the Catholic take on AA. He said it was like Holy Orders itself - you signed on and there was no going back. An unbreakable oath never to take another drink. Billy thought it was the real thing."

"But he broke it."

"There's plenty of priests that break their Holy Orders, too," Dan Lynch told them.

"Well, it got him over to Ireland, anyway," cousin Rosemary said. "I tried to talk him and Maeve into going over any number of times, but I never could do it."

"Maeve isn't one to travel," sister Rosemary said. "She's a homebody. Always has been."

Kate leaned toward us all, folding her hands on the table: a tasteful ring of diamonds, a gold bracelet, a professional manicure. "I often wondered," she said slowly. "I never had the heart to ask him, but I wondered if Billy went to visit the town Eva came from. While he was there."

Her sister shook her head. "Billy would have said so if he had. He wasn't one to keep things to himself."

Kate paused only a moment to consider this. "But he might not have wanted it to get back to Maeve, you know," she said. "He might have thought she wouldn't want to hear about a pilgrimage like that."

"Who would?"

"She knew about Eva?" Bridie said, whispering too, adding, "Thank you," as the waiter took her empty plate.

"I'm sure," Kate said. "Thank you." And then: "Actually, I don't know. I'd imagine she knew something about her."

"He must have told her something."

"Dennis would know," Mickey Quinn said. "They were always real close."

But Dan Lynch objected. "I was the best man at Billy's wedding," he said. "We were pretty close, too."

"Well, did he tell Maeve about the Irish girl?"

Dan waved his hand impatiently. "I'm sure he told her something. You know, it's not the sort of thing men talk about. And I'll say this for Billy, you never heard him mention that girl again, once he married Maeve."

"Ask Dennis," cousin Rosemary whispered.

The selected dessert was brought in: two scoops of vanilla ice cream in cold stainless-steel bowls. Hands in lamps to make the poor man's job easier as he reached between their shoulders. Thank you.

"I remember watching Maeve come down the aisle," Dan Lynch said, lifting his spoon, holding it like a scepter. "She was on her old man's arm, but it was clear as you watched her that she was shoring him up, you know, keeping him straight. She was smiling as sweetly as any bride, but there was a determination in the way she walked, you know, the way she held her shoulder up against his, like it was a wall about to topple. She took hold of his arm when they got to the first pew, I mean a good grip, right here." He demonstrated, taking hold of his own forearm, spoon and all. "The old man banged his foot against the kneeling bench - you could hear it all over the church - and for a minute it looked like he'd go down headfirst. But she got him in there and got him seated. She maneuvered him. By sheer force of will, I'd say. And then she gave a little nod, as if to say, Well, that's done, and came up the steps to marry Billy." He sipped his beer. "Ready to take him on, is what I remember thinking. She was a plain girl, but determined."

"Very quiet," Mickey Quinn said. "Go over there for dinner and Billy would do most of the talking."

"He was lucky to find her," sister Rosemary said. "My mother always siad there's nothing more pathetic than an old bachelor who's not a priest. That's what she thought Billy would be, after the Irish girl. An old bachelor. No offense, Danny."

And Dan Lynch laughed, blushed a little across his bald dome. Sipping his beer and shrugged. None taken - the story here being that Danny Lunch was such a connoisseur of beauty and behavior that no flawed wife could have pleased him and no flawless one could have been found.

"Did you ever meet her?" Bridie from the old neighborhood whispered. "The Irish girl?"

The two sisters exchanged a look across the table - the kind of look they might have exchanged had they been eyeing the last bite of a shared piece of cake. "She came to the apartment," Kate said, scooping it up. "It was just before she went back home. Billy borrowed Mr. Holtzman's car to go into the city to get her."

"She was very pretty," Rosemary added, taking a crumb. "Like Susan Hayward."

"Oh, I didn't think so," Kate said. "But she had nice hair, dark auburn. And big brown eyes. She wasn't very tall, even a little chubby. Billy brought her for Sunday dinner and then couldn't eat a bite himself. He was so - I don't know what - so delicate with her. The way he spoke to her, and watched her and listened to her. She did have a nice voice, you know, the poor girl" (a reminder to us all that she had died young), "with her brogue and all. My mother's brogue got thicker just listening to her. They were good-looking together, Eva and Billy. A handsome pair. Better looking together than singly, somehow. He was lovestruck, that's for sure. We kidded him when he got home, after he'd taken her back to the city. We put his plate out on the dining-room table when we heard him coming up. We'd saved it. He'd hardly eaten a bite. We said, 'What was wrong with your dinner, Billy?'" She began to laugh. "We said, 'How are you going to marry this poor girl if her mere presence takes your appetite away? Billy,' we said, 'she'll be at your dinner table every day, breakfast too, when are you going to eat? You'll starve. You'll waste away to nothing. You'll have to sneak over here just to calm down enough to have your dinner.' We gave him such a hard time."

"And do you remember what Momma said?" sister Rosemary asked. Kate swallowed her smile, looked blank. Professional makeup, too. "No."

Well pleased, Rosemary said to my end of the table, "You know my mother thought herself a kind of psychic." She was getting her share of the story, after all. "She read cards and had dreams. And she said after Billy left that when she touched the girl's hand she felt four quick pulses in her own stomach, like baby kicks, which meant they'd have four children."

"Or that your mother had indigestion," Mickey Quinn said.

"More likely," Kate said. "You know how my mother cooked."

"She wasn't a much better prophet."

But Bridie shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "It might have been true. I mean, you could say if the girl had lived, that's how many children they might have had."

Dan Lynch said solemnly, "Which would have made this a different day."

"It would have been a different life."

Mickey Quinn shook his head and leaned back in his chair, as if to avoid all such speculation. "I'll have that cup of coffee now, please, when you get the chance," he said to the waiter's back.

"A different life," Dan Lynch repeated, and raised his beer.

The light through the window behind Maeve had begun to change now. A trace of shadow coming between the dark trunks of the trees, the clouds breaking up, perhaps.

"I don't agree with that," sister Rosemary said softly. "I've done a lot of reading in this regard, with Billy the way he was. Alcoholism isn't a decision, it's a disease, and Billy would have had the disease whether he married the Irish girl or Maeve, whether he'd had kids or not. It wouldn't have been such a different life, believe me. Every alcoholic's life is pretty much the same."

"Now I don't agree," Dan Lynch said under his breath, and Kate added, "It's not always fatal."

"I say it's a matter of will," Dan Lynch said, speaking up, keeping Kate from running away with the talk once again. "I drank side by side with Billy LYnch for nearly forty years. My liver's fine. Billy never had the will to stop."

Sister Rosemary frowned, shaking her head. "That's not fair. When he went to Ireland, when he took the pledge, he was truly determined. He told me so. You know what faith Billy had. And you know how seriously he took that trip. He was truly determined that time. But the disease had him in its grip." She raised a fist, showing them.

Dan Lynch poured himself and Mickey Quinn another beer. "Well, let me tell you what he told me," he said. "Down at Quinlan's, maybe a year or two after the Irish girl died. He told me," he said, lifting his glass, pointing around it, "that after year was a weight on his shoulders. Every hour was, he said." He pointed to Kate. "Remember when you said he was like a man waiting for a bus, when he was waiting to get her back here? Well, when you said that I thought: It never changed. He was still waiting, years after she'd died. But she was waiting to go to her now. Ever since the night Dennis told him the news, he was waiting to die. I'm sure of it."

"But there was Maeve," Bridie from the neighborhood cried.

"That's not fair to Maeve," sister Rosemary said.

Dan Lynch shook his head. "I'm not saying a word against Maeve. She had a lot to handle, that's for sure. But if you ask me, Billy had a foot in the hereafter even before he met Maeve." He glanced up the table and then leaned forward, lowering his voice because the guests were beginning to thin out, Billy's friends and relatives getting up to have a few more words with Maeve, to go to the bathroom, or to get another drink before departing.

"We went to Mass together once. Feast of the Assumption. August 15. We'd both stopped into Quinlan's after work, a blazing hot day if there ever was one, hot as Hades, and both of us realized at the same time what the date was. We hightailed it over to 6:30 Mass at St. Sebastian's and, I don't know, I glanced at Billy, just after Communion. It struck me that it wasn't any thought of Our Lord or the Blessed Mother that put that look on his face. It was the girl. The Irish girl. When he turned his eyes to heaven, that's who he saw."

"Oh, nonsense," sister Rosemary whispered.

Mickey Quinn studied the ceiling. Down the table, a few heads turned, perhaps sensing a fight.

Dan Lynch took a sip of his beer, pursed his lips around the taste. "What's nonsense is all this disease business," he said. "Maybe for some people it's a disease. But maybe for some there are things that happen in their lives that they just can't live with. Things that take the sweetness out of everything. Maybe for some it's a sadness they can't get rid of or a disappointment that won't go away. And you know what I say to those people? I say good luck to those people." He raised his glass, raised his chin. "I say maybe they're not as smart and sensible and accepting as every one of us," indicating every one of us with a sweep of his beer, "but they're loyal. They're loyal to their own feelings. They're loyal to the first plans they made - just like Billy was loyal to Holtzman and the job he gave him. And like he would have been loyal to her if she had lived and come back here and they'd gotten married. Just like he was loyal to Maeve. Billy never breathed another word about that girl after he married Maeve. But the girl was first, and for Billy she would always be first. That's the kind of guy he was. Maeve couldn't change him."

"I think he went to her grave when he was in Ireland," Kate said suddenly. "I just have the feeling that sometime while he was over there he went to the town she was from and visited her grave. I think it was the whole reason he made the trip."

Rosemary shook her head, appealed to Mickey Quinn, who was intent on dissolving the sugar in his coffee. "He went with Father Ryan to take the pledge," she said patiently. "To make the retreat. To quit drinking."

But Kate said, "Oh, Rose, think about it. Ireland's not the only place that has retreats for alcoholics. He could have made one over here. Maybe he thought if he went to her grave he could put something to rest, finally. Put his feelings for her to rest so then he could quit drinking."

"But he couldn't," Dan Lynch said sadly, and poured another little beer.

"He couldn't," Kate agreed. "Which is why it didn't stick, as determined as he was."

But Rosemary's mouth was set. "No," she said firmly. "Look, there are faster and more pleasant ways of killing yourself. I tell you, I've read everything there is about this. Alcoholism is a disease, it's genetic. Our own father ruined his liver as well and probably would have died the same way if he hadn't gotten cancer. And Uncle John in Philadlephia was an alcoholic. And two of his sons - Chuck and Peter - go to AA. And Ted. And Mary Casey and Helen Lynch. And Dennis's father was no teetotaler either."

"Uncle Daniel died of cancer," Dan Lynch said indignantly. "He was no drunk." He turned to Bridie and Mickey Quinn. "He brought his six brothers and a sister over here and God knows how many other friends and relations. All on a motorman's salary."

"He was a saint," Bridie from the neighborhood said, nodding. "My mother always said so."

"Okay," Rosemary said. "God bless Uncle Daniel, but my point is that our family has what they call a genetic predisposition to both cancer and alcoholism. Billy had it in his genes."

"When he came back from Ireland," Kate said softly, stroking the stem of her glass. "June of '75 - I remember because my Daniel had just graduated from Fordham - he went straight out to Long Island. Out to the little house. Dennis was there, it wasn't long after he'd lost Claire. Remember how he used to rent the place back from his mother's tenant so he could spend his vacation? Well, Billy wasn't home for more than a day when he took the train out - and he hadn't been there in years."

"Meaning?" Rosemary asked coolly.

"Meaning he went back to the place he first met her. Eva. He was trying to work something out."

"Oh, honestly," Rosemary said. "It had been nearly thirty years. What was there to work out? It was a shame that she died, but Billy had thirty years of living since then. I mean, come on, name me anything that's going to stay with you that strongly for thirty years."

Which seemed to silence our end of the table for a moment, as if the thing we would mention had only momentarily slipped our minds.

Cousin Rosemary poked her swizzle stick into the remaining ice in her glass. "It's all water under the bridge," she said, as if water from under the bridge was the very thing the tall glass contained. "What's the point of even discussing all this now? Billy was here and now he's gone, and I for one just can't believe it. Despite his troubles." Tears now. "I'll miss him. I'll miss his voice over the phone. I'll miss his smiling face."

"Hear, hear," Mickey Quinn said.

But Dan Lynch raised his beer again. He was whispering, his voice fierce. "I just don't think it credits a man's life to say he was in the clutches of a disease and that's what ruined him. Say he was too loyal. Say he was disappointed. Say he made way too much of the Irish girl and afterwards couldn't look life square in the face. But give him some credit for feeling, for having a hand in his own fate. Don't say it was a disease that blindsided him and wiped out everything he was." He bit off a drink, his face flushed. "Do the man that favor, please."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3)

February 26, 2008

The Books: "The Road" (Cormac McCarthy)

Next book in my on my adult fiction shelves:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

the_road.jpgKate and my sister Jean were the ones who made me read this book. This terrible terrifying haunting book. I read it in 2 days, I think - maybe less - not just because I couldn't put it down, but because I was afraid to put it down, because then I would be left alone with my thoughts, and oh no, we can't have THAT! I remember Kate saying to me, in this small scared voice over the phone, "Sheila ... do you know what a catamite is?" "No, I don't." "I didn't either. Now I do, and I wish I had never learned it." "What is it?" "Just read the book." The word "catamite" occurs once in the book, if I can recall - once. And there is no given definition - if you don't know what it is, you have to look it up. And yeah, I looked it up, and yeah, I wish I had never learned what that word means. It's kind of startling, because the book is written in the starkest prose possible. It's not like Richard Powers' books, where you need a dictionary nearby just to get through a page. So the word "catamite" pretty much SHRIEKS at you off the page - and to me, just the word itself is terrifying. The definition is terrifying, too - especially when you don't think of it in terms of ancient history, but when you think of it in terms of your own son - and what will be done to him if you get separated - but it's terrifying just in the context of the rest of the book, and how it is written. The word comes across like a screaming violin chord out of the silence.

If you haven't read the book, all I can do is say: read it. I can't say it's a good experience. It's a horrifying experience - but it's a helluva book. He's a helluva writer. (Congrats to Mr. McCarthy, by the way ... it was nice seeing him there at the Oscars. I love his face.)

I grew up in fear of nuclear winter. My childhood occurred at the ass-end of the Cold War. I remember watching The Day After on television and it just haunted my dreams, stalking me ... It was such a helpless feeling. To think of a nuclear bomb going off nearby - and the horror that would ensue. It all just seemed so unfair. Little children would burn up? What would we do Where would we go?

The Road takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. A father and son (who remain nameless) are traveling south through the ashy burnt-up landscape - trying to get to a warmer climate. They walk through what used to be the United States. The son is a young boy, 8 or 9. Tears streamed down my face as I read the book. McCarthy is (if you've read his other stuff) the opposite of a sentimental writer. The guy is brutal. But God, such a master. The relationship between the father and son is drawn starkly, there are long conversations - with short little sentences - the boy asking questions, the father answering. The struggle is to find canned food wherever they can. There are no other people. Or - for the most part, there are no other people. In the post-apocalypse - man has reverted to savagery. There are now clear 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The bad guys have become cannibals. A war has gone on - for food and survival. The father and son come across small towns - where there are heads on spikes on the outskirts. If you see another human being, you do not feel joy at the fact that there is another survivor - you feel terror that this person might be a bad guy. Not to mention the whole catamite situation. Women play no part in this new world. They are barely mentioned. The father and son have a gun - with a limited amount of bullets. The father and son have been abandoned by the wife/mother ... she couldn't take it. There are flashbacks to this. The father remembers calmer times, happier times ... from before the nuclear winter. But now it is just the two of them. Walking. There is snow. But everything is polluted. Nothing swims in the lakes. The water is ruined. Cormac McCarthy just creates this new world in such a nightmarish clarity - the fact that there are no colors ... you ACHE for a color to show up ... at least, I did. God, where is the green? Can't we see a patch of blue? You realize, as you read it, what a miraculously beautiful world we live in. Sunsets, stars, waves, flowers ... what glory it all is ... how much it all would be missed.

It's a wrenching book. It left me exhausted. There is a strange grain of hope at the very end ... actually, all the way through there is a strange grain of hope ... just because you love these two characters ... and if they survive, then maybe there would be hope for whatever civilization will arise in the aftermath. There's not much hope, because everything has been destroyed. Whatever will be built will take centuries ... it's all over. Mankind as we know it is over. But the father and son represent hope for humanity. Like the father says to the son, when they are shivering with cold at night, "We carry the fire with us." He means it literally - like: we do not have fire right now, but we will be warm because "we carry the fire with us". But he also means it in a more transcendent sense, as in - you. Me. We are the hope of the world. The fire of life, the fire of the human race, is within us. We carry it with us. No matter how bad things get.

I can't say I enjoyed The Road. It was too upsetting. But I'll sure never forget it. Highly recommended.

Here's an excerpt. Father and son are in the woods ... and a man comes upon them - terrifying - malevolent - and the father shoots him. The man's head explodes all over the son's face. The father picks up the son and they run off though the woods. The "this is my job" part below still brings me to tears.

EXCERPT FROM The Road by Cormac McCarthy

He made two more trips into the woods, dragging armloads of brush and limbs to the bridge and pushing them over the side. He could see the glow of the fire from some distance but he didn't think it could be seen from the other road. Below the bridge he could make out a dark pool of standing water among the rocks. A rim of shelving ice. He stood on the bridge and shoved the last pile of wood over, his breath white in the glow of the firelight.


He sat in the sand and inventoried the contents of the knapsack. The binoculars. A half pint bottle of gasoline almost full. The bottle of water. A pair of pliers. Two spoons. He set everything out in a row. There were five small tins of food and he chose a can of sausages and one of corn and he opened these with the little army can opener and set them at the edge of the fire and they sat watching the labels char and curl. When the corn began to steam he took the cans from the fire with the pliers and they sat bent over them with their spoons, eating slowly. The boy was nodding with sleep.


When they'd eaten he took the boy out on the gravelbar below the bridge and he pushed away the thin shore ice with a stick and they knelt there while he washed the boy's face and hair. The water was so cold the boy was crying. They moved down the gravel to find fresh water and he washed his hair again as well as he could and finally stopped because the boy was moaning with the cold of it. He dried him with the blanket, kneeling there in the glow of the light with the shadow of the bridge's understructure broken across the palisade of treetrunks beyond the creek. This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.


The boy sat tottering. The man watched him that he not topple into the flames. He kicked holes in the sand for the boy's hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it. All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

He woke in the night with the cold and rose and broke up more wood for the fire. The shapes of the small treelimbs burning incandescent orange in the coals. He blew the flames to life and piled on the wood and sat with his legs crossed, leaning against the stone pier of the bridge. Heavy limestone blocks laid up without mortar. Overhead the ironwork brown with rust, the hammered rivets, the wooden sleepers and crossplanks. The sand where he sat was warm to the touch but the night beyond the fire was sharp with the cold. He got up and dragged fresh wood in under the bridge. He stood listening. The boy didn't stir. He sat beside him and stroked his pale and tangled hair. Golden chalice, good to house a god. Please don't tell me how the story ends. When he looked out again at the darkness beyond the bridge it was snowing.


All the wood they had to burn was small wood and the fire was good for no more than an hour and perhaps a bit more. He dragged the rest of the brush in under the bridge and broke it up, standing on the limbs and cracking them to length. He thought the noise would wake the boy but it didn't. The wet wood hissed in the flames, the snow continued to fall. In the morning they would see if there were tracks in the road or not. This was the first human being other than the boy that he'd spoken to in more than a year. My brother at last. The reptilian calculations in those cold and shifting eyes. The gray and rotting teeth. Claggy with human flesh. Who has made of the world a lie every word. When he woke again the snow had stopped and the grainy dawn was shaping out the naked woodlands beyond the bridge, the trees black against the snow. He was lying curled up with his hands between his knees and he sat up and got the fire going and he set a can of beets in the embers. The boy lay huddled on the ground watching him.


The new snow lay in skifts all through the woods, along the limbs and cupped in the leaves, all of it already gray with ash. They hiked out to where they'd left the cart and he put the knapsack in and pushed it out to the road. No tracks. They stood listening in the utter silence. Then they set out along the road through the gray slush, the boy at his side with his hands in his pockets.


They trudged all day, the boy in silence. By afternoon the slush had melted off the road and by evening it was dry. They didn't stop. How many miles? Ten, twelve. They used to play quoits in the road with four big steel washers they'd found in a hardware store but these were gone with everything else. That night they camped in a ravine and built a fire against a small stone bluff and ate their last tin of food. He'd put it by because it was the boy's favorite, pork and beans. They watched it bubble slowly in the coals and he retrieved the tin with the pliers and they ate in silence. He rinsed the empty tin with water and gave it to the child to drink and that was that. I should have been more careful, he said.
The boy didn't answer.
You have to talk to me.
Okay.
You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?
Yes.
He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.
Yes. We're still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be.
Okay.


In the morning they came up out of the ravine and took to the road again. He'd carved the boy a flute from a piece of roadside cane and he took it from his coat and gave it to him. The boy took it wordlessly. After a while he fell back and after a while the man could hear him playing. A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin. The man turned and looked back at him. He was lost in concentration. The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack

February 25, 2008

The Books: "Shopgirl: A Novella" (Steve Martin)

Next book in my on my adult fiction shelves:

Shopgirl by Steve Martin

shopgirl.jpgI have great fondness for this lovely and piercing short book. Steve Martin, as a writer (his plays, his essays in The New Yorker, his stories) has always touched me. This is the dude who wore an arrow through his head and played the banjo? Yes, it is. That's one of the things that I have always loved about Steve Martin, and what set him apart, in my opinion, from other comedians. There was always something very "heady" about Steve Martin's comedy - even though it LOOKED crazy and chaotic and he roller-skated around on The Tonight Show dressed up as a pharaoah. There was still something extremely intellectual about it.

SteveMartin-L5.jpg

Last year I read his memoir about his stand-up years (Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life) and it was one of my favorite books from 2007. Just fantastic. The consciousness he had about what he was trying to do ... the different elements that converged (magic tricks, banjo, why he wore the white suit) - and also how PLANNED it all was. Much of it did come to him by accident, or were just evidence of his proclivities (he loved magic tricks, worked in a magic, shop as a teenager, etc.) - but how he put it all together, clipping, honing, deciding - was all a matter of conscious choice. This wasn't just a happy accident. It was Steve Martin's intellectual rigor - asking himself, "Does this work? Why does it not? Let me make it work. Okay, it doesn't work. Let me drop it then ..." It's a fascinating book, one of the best I have ever read about a particular artist's creative process - and one that is quite singular, I think. He walked away! After playing stadiums - he walked away. He wasn't an honest stand-up, meaning - he did not upend his personal life for the amusement of the crowds. Not that there's anything wrong with that, Jesus - don't take the comparison as me saying one is better than the other. There was a persona - the guy in the white suit, with the arrow thru his head ... He said he wanted to look like a refugee "from the straight world". Ironically, Steve Martin never did drugs. Or, he did drugs one night - had a horrifying experience where he thought he was going to die - and never did them again. Which is incredible when you think about the appeal of his stand-up and how so much of it was aimed at totally STONED people ... but Martin was never stoned. He is, in a way, a very straight-and-narrow guy. There's something very sympathetic about him. At least for someone like me, who often (99% of the time) leads with her brain. I am not an intuitive person. Or, i can be - but it's the brain that is always paramount. It causes a lot of problems. It makes me the rigid (ie: fragile) person that I am. But it also is what makes me interesting, creative, and voracious. It's a tough balance. It has given me a lot of grief. People see intellectual passion and assume all kinds of things about you ... and they are bound to be disappointed. At least that has been my experience. I could be a very loving open warm person, and to my friends I am that, etc. - but when I feel insecure, threatened, out of my depth, or just bored - I am armored up in the brainiac's defense. It is second nature. Steve Martin seems to have a similar thing going on - and maybe that's why I have always responded to him. I loved him when I was a kid, when half of his jokes went over my head ... and I'm not wacky about him when he tries to be "cuddly" and takes on "pater familias" roles - to me, he's not convincing in them.

But let me bring it back to Shopgirl and now mention the film that was made of his book: when Steve Martin plays someone isolated, and kind of cold - like the Ray Porter character - he is fantastic. I thought he was fantastic in the part. I don't know who Steve Martin is. I know (from his book) that he has a crowd of lifelong friends - people he feels in debt to ... he knows the help he has gotten to get to his position, and he is grateful, and still kind of in awe about how the whole thing happened. But when he steps into Ray Porter - the chilly 50-something bachelor - who sees "something" in Mirabelle, the young woman behind the glove counter - you can't imagine anyone else in the role. Steve Martin is, at heart, an isolated guy. Think of him all alone on those massive stadium stages, in his white suit, making balloon "animals". I am not convinced by him in ensemble pieces - but in Shopgirl he was wonderful - I think it's his best performance yet. Well worth seeing, if you haven't.

But now let me talk about his writing, because I don't want the movie to take away from the book. It's a slim novel, and the writing is spare, almost elegant. He does not go off into flights of description, he stays on point. There are three main characters: Mirabelle, a depressive artist who lives in LA, and works behind the glove counter at Sak's. Ray Porter, a successful businessman who shuttles between Seattle and LA, and who pursues Mirabelle. Jeremy - the young messy anarchic font-designer who also pursues Mirabelle. Mirabelle is a quiet serious woman, who lives a quiet lonely life (and Martin so GETS that kind of quietness - it is the type of quiet that could describe my life as well). I read the book and not only enjoyed it - but felt named by it. I felt recognized. Mirabelle is not 'swept away' by Ray Porter - he's in his 50s, totally inappropriate for her - but he, in all his chilly isolation, does "see" her. And it is a powerful experience, being seen. It can be dangerous. At least it can for me. Because "being seen" doesn't mean anything other than someone else really 'sees' you - for who you are, maybe even sees things you don't see. But to place an expectation of a specific RESULT on "being seen" - is what is dangerous. That is what has broken my heart time and time again. Being seen is so powerful that it seems like it MUST, it HAS TO, lead to something "more". It must, right? It can't be otherwise! And when you are lonely, it becomes even more acute. It seems like being seen will also SAVE you. This is what Mirabelle experiences when she is with Ray. They do have sex, and all that - but for Mirabelle, what is going on with him, is profound. It's profound for Ray, too - but he is in a different place, and in a way - he doesn't realize how dangerous the situation is. He thinks Mirabelle understands the situation, he thinks they have an understanding: of course the relationship won't "go" anywhere ... but for now, it is lovely, right? Ray is not a cad, though - he really isn't. He is a lonely intellectual-minded man, who flies around in private jets, eats in the kitchen standing up - and finds Mirabelle's innocence completely captivating. He feels guilty, though - she is a young woman, after all ... so he buys her expensive gifts - things that overwhelm her. Shoes, purses, etc. He has exquisite taste. Lonely quiet Mirabelle, on antidepressants, begins to blossom. Again, Ray doesn't realize how dangerous it is to be the agent of someone's blossoming - if you don't expect to stick around. On the flipside, there is Jeremy - a young guy, who can barely do his own laundry - who orates at Mirabelle about the nature of the music business, and fonts, and his ambition ... who struggles with condoms, who is, in general, a big man-boy. But again: he sees something in Mirabelle. Jeremy's journey in Shopgirl is almost my favorite of the whole book. I don't want to write more about it - because I'm making it sound conventional and maybe even a little bit preachy - and it is neither of those things. The way it is written is what is unconventional about it. The "voice" of the book (and that whole "voice" concept will come up again and again in the book - you'll even see it in the excerpt below) struck me right away. This is not a casual in-the-moment voice. Of course not. It's Steve Martin. Steve Martin's genius had to do with his distance from things - hard to explain (but he does a great job of it in his memoir). He is not in the thick-and-thin of life ... he stands slightly to the side. That's what the voice of this delicate little book sounds like. I loved the voice. It is (not to give anything more away) completely omniscent - which might seen a bit heavy-handed for such a tiny little love story. But Martin uses it very consciously. It is how the story NEEDS to be told. I love the sound of the book. There are times in the thick-and-thin of life, the unfairness of events, the up and down of fortune ... when I also yearn for an omniscent voice. It's just great how Martin sets it all up.

Here's an excerpt. It's one of those times in the book when I feel recognized by the prose. The beginning of it stays quite matter-of-fact ... the voice is calmly telling us what it is like for Mirabelle. But then at the end of the excerpt - watch how it shifts. Great stuff. Because when we are consumed with self, we often cannot see ourselves. And sometimes it takes an observer to tell us who we are. Kind of like Jack Nicholson does to Diane Keaton in the pancake-making scene in the middle of the night in Something's Gotta Give. They have known each other for 24 hours - and he says a couple of pointed things to her and she says, "I can't decide if you hate me ... or if you're the only person who's ever gotten me."

That's what is going on in this book. It's a lonely book. Loneliness can change your personality. It can warp (permanently) what once was straight and sure. Loneliness is a condition, and it has long-term effects. After a certain amount of time, being in relation with your fellow man begins to feel stressful, even though you desire it. Loneliness warps. Mirabelle is on that path.

EXCERPT FROM Shopgirl A Novella by Steve Martin

the weekend

It is 9 a.m., and for the second time that morning Mirabelle is awake. The first time was two hours earlier when Jeremy slipped out, giving her a kiss good-bye that was so formal it might as well have been wearing a tuxedo. She didn't take it badly because, well, she couldn't afford to. She also is glad he's gone, not looking forward to the awkward task of getting to know a man she's already slept with. A little eye of sunlight forms on her bed and inches its way across her bedspread. She gets up, mixes her Serzone into a glass of orange juice, and drinks it down as though it were a quick vodka tonic, fortifying herself for the weekend.

Weekends can be dangerous for someone of Mirabelle's fragility. One little slipup in scheduling and she can end up staring at eighteen hours of television. That's why she joined a volunteer organization that goes out and builds and repairs houses for the disadvantaged, a kind of community cleanup operation, called Habitat for Humanity. This takes care of the day. Saturday night usually offers a spontaneous get-together with the other Habitat workers in a nearby bar. If that doesn't happen, which this night it doesn't, Mirabelle is not afraid to go to a local bar alone, which this night she does, where she might run into someone she knows or nurse a drink and listen to the local band. As she sits in a booth and checks the amplifiers for Jeremy's signature stencil, it never occurs to Mirabelle to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a shy girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred. She never feels sorry for herself, except when the overpowering chemistry of depression inundates her and leaves her helpless. She moved from Vermont hoping to begin her life, and now she is stranded in the vast openness of L.A. She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is some omniscent voice to illuminate and spotlight her, and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one over here, the one sitting in the bar by herself, and then to find her counterpart and bring him to her.

But that night, the voice does not come, and she quietly folds herself up and leaves the bar.

The voice is to come on Tuesday.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack

February 24, 2008

The Books: "Life of Pi" (Yann Martel)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

0156027321.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgThere was a good year when you looked around at people on the subway, and you always knew that at least one of them would be reading Life of Pi. It was everywhere. My sister gave it to me for my birthday a couple years ago - she had loved it.

I finally picked it up in 2006 (I have to be in the mood for fiction - and I have also expressed before my natural - and sometimes unfair - antipathy to really popular books that "everyone" seems to be reading.) - but in 2006 I read a lot of new fiction, popular stuff - and Life of Pi was one of those books. I read it in 3 days. Couldn't put it down.

To me, the book was really about narrative - how we create our own stories, to survive this life. I wrote about that here. The entire book is a gripping shipwreck tale - a young Indian boy and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker (how much do we love Richard Parker??) - trapped in a lifeboat, hundreds, maybe thousands of miles from land ... but there is a twist at the end (I wouldn't dream of giving it away) that calls it all into question. But it's not a gimmick, of an M. Night Shamalamadingdong device - it struck me as totally plausible. Narrative is what we humans have. It is what we have always had. From the first caveman who came "home" and drew pictures on a wall to show his triumph over a woolly mammoth. We tell stories to each other. Some are true, some are lies, some are exaggerations. There are all kinds of reasons for stories. Some people are pathological with their stories, and you can't tell what is true. Some people THINK they don't tell stories - they think that there is such a thing as "the way it is", objectivity, etc. - so they tell their stories in a different manner than the person who tells the story about the biggest fish he caught - where exaggeration is understood, and accepted. But when you get right down to it, each of us are trapped in our own experience - there is only one me, there is only one you ... Nobody can tell me what it is like to be ME, and I cannot presume to know what it is like to be you. All we have, as in-roads into each other's lives, are the stories we tell one another. And each story is basically us saying, "This is who I am. This is what it is like for me."

Life of Pi, for the most part, didn't feel like a story, or a tall tale. It is written in unsentimental clear language, and much of it is structured in a "so this happened next", "and then this happened". manner, Much of it is nearly unbelievable. I mean, he is on a tiny lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. But the way Yann Martel writes Pi's experiences ... how he figures out how to survive - not just the lifeboat experience - but the lifeboat experience with a dangerous man-eating animal 2 feet away. It is one of the all-time great survival stories. He must figure out the food situation, the water situation - he must somehow feed Richard Parker - so that Richard Parker doesn't eat HIM - but he also must feed himself. Pi is not a super-human. He is a teenager. But in this particular situation, the life-force asserts himself, and he does what it takes. He has to be very creative. I read the book, and at one point I thought, "My God. What would I do in this situation? Would I give up?" It's relentless.

One of the things I really loved about the book was that Richard Parker was not anthropomorphized. He obviously had a personality - most animals do - he has reactions to things, he makes eye contact with Pi, he snarls, etc. - and Pi definitely forms a "relationship" to Richard Parker - but it is out of necessity. Or - partly necessity. The excerpt I chose to post today shows that there is a bit more going on there for Pi ... but it's not like Richard Parker is, at heart, a cuddly warm beast just DYING for the chance to "make friends" with an Indian boy. No. He is a ferocious animal. And he always seems dangerous. He always seems "other" - meaning: he does not seem like a human being in a tiger suit. Ever. He is always a tiger. Yann Martel really goes into all of this - what tigers are like, how they behave ... Richard Parker, as tiger, totally comes alive. If you've read the book, don't you think that is true? He just seems so alive to me. But still alien.

The "author's note" at the beginning of the book (which sets up the almost documentary feel to the whole thing ... it's written as though it is non-fiction, or as though it is a journalist's rendering of this amazing shipwreck story) contains the phrase: "I know a story that will make you believe in God."

That's quite a promise.

But it also goes back to what I was saying before - about narrative, and the different purposes of narrative in our lives. It has been with us from the beginning of consciousness. Why do we tell stories? To entertain, to explain, to deflect criticism, to puff ourselves up with importance ... there are a million reasons. Life of Pi, from the get-go, is set up as a "story" - many books are not, of course - even though they are, indeed, stories. But other books have a trompe l'oeil feel - it's a different kind of story. Life of Pi admits, at the beginning, that this is a "story". The story itself is so gripping that you lose yourself in it (or at least, I did) - and then - at the very end, you are reminded, once again, that this is a story. Story does not equal lie, by the way - although sometimes stories are lies. And sometimes a lie is just as good as the truth, or even better. A lie can help us survive this awful world, with its tragedies and unfairness. And so at the end of Life of Pi, the story re-asserts itself, as STORY - the reader must grapple with the implications of that. And we are faced with a choice: which story do we believe? One is "the better story". One is (or might be) the truth. We have to choose. Just like Pi had to choose.

If you haven't read Life of Pi, I highly recommend it.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Life of Pi by Yann Martel

It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.

He was looking at me intently. After a time I recognized the gaze. I had grown up with it. It was the gaze of a contented animal looking out from its cage or pit the way you or I would look out from a restaurant table after a good meal, when the time has come for conversation and people-watching. Clearly, Richard Parker had eaten his fill of hyena and drunk all the rainwater he wanted. No lips were rising and falling, no teeth were showing, no growling or snarling was coming from him. He was simply taking me in, observing me, in a manner that was sober but not menacing. He kept twitching his ears and varying the sideways turn of his head. It was all so, well, catlike. He looked like a nice, big, fat domestic cat, a 45-pound tabby.

He made a sound, a snort from his nostrils. I pricked up my ears. He did it a second time. I was astonished. Prusten?

Tigers make a variety of sounds. They include a number of roars and growls, the loudest of these being most likely the full-throated aaonh, usually made during the mating season by males and oestrous females. It's a cry that travels far and wide, and is absolutely petrifying when heard close up. Tigers go woof when they are caught unawares, a short, sharp detonation of fury that would instantly make your legs jump up and run away if they weren't frozen to the spot. When they charge, tigers put out throaty, coughing roars. The growl they use for purposes of threatening has yet another guttural quality. And tigers hiss and snarl, which, depending on the emotion behind it, sounds either like autumn leaves rustling on the ground, but a little more resonant, or, when it's an infuriated snarl, like a giant door with rusty hinges slowly opening - in both cases, utterly spine-chilling. Tigers make other sounds too. They grunt and they moan. They purr, though not as melodiously or as frequently as small cats, and only as they breathe out. (Only small cats purr breathing both ways. It is one of the characteristics that distinguishes big cats from small cats. Another is that only big cats can roar. A good thing that is. I'm afraid the popularity of the domestic cat would drop very quickly if little kitty could roar its displeasure.) Tigers even go meow, with an inflection similar to that of domestic cats, but louder and in a deeper range, not as encouraging as one to bend down and pick them up. And tigers can be utterly, majestically silent, that too.

I had heard all these sounds growing up. Except for prusten. If I knew of it, it was because Father had told me about it. He had read descriptions of it in the literature. But he had heard it only once, while on a working visit to the Mysore Zoo, in their animal hospital, from a young male being treated for pneumonia. Prusten is the quietest of tiger calls, a puff through the nose to express friendliness and harmless intentions.

Richard Parker did it again, this time with a rolling of the head. He looked exactly as if he were asking me a question.

I looked at him, full of fearful wonder. There being no immediate threat, my breath slowed down, my heart stopped knocking about in my chest, and I began to regain my senses.

I had to tame him. It was at that moment that I realized this necessity. It was not a question of him or me, but of him and me. We were, literally and figuratively, in the same boat. We would live - or we would die - together. He might be killed in an accident, or he could die shortly of natural causes, bt it would be foolish to count on such an eventuality. More likely the worst would happen: the simple passage of time, in which his animal toughness would easily outlast my human frailty. Only if I tamed him could I possibly trick him into dying first, if we had to come to that sorry business.

But there's more to it. I will come clean. I will tell you a secret: a part of me was glad about Richard Parker. A part of me did not want Richard Parker to die at all, because if he did I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger. If I still had the will to live, it was thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic circumstances. He pushed me to go on living. I hated him for it, yet at the same time I was grateful. I am grateful. It's the plain truth: without Richard Parker, I wouldn't be alive today to tell you my story.

I looked around at the horizon. Didn't I have here a perfect circus ring, inescapably round, without a single corner for him to hide in? I looked down at the sea. Wasn't this an ideal source of treats with which to condition him to obey? I noticed a whistle hanging from one of the life jackets. Wouldn't this make a good whip with which to keep him in line? What was missing here to tame Richard Parker? Time? It might be weeks before a ship sighted me. I had all the time in the world. Resolve? There's nothing like extreme need to give you resolve. Knowledge? Was I not a zookeeper's son? Reward? Was there any reward greater than life? Any punishment worse than death? I looked at Richard Parker. My panic was gone. My fear was dominated. Survival was at hand.

Let the trumpets blare. Let the drums roll. Let the show begin. I rose to my feet. Richard Parker noticed. The balance was not easy. I took a deep breath and shouted, "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, hurry to your seats! Hurry, hurry. You don't want to be late. Sit down, open your eyes, open your hearts and prepare to be amused. Here it is, for your enjoyment and instruction, for your gratification and edification, the show you've been waiting for all your life, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH! Are you ready for the miracle of it? Yes? Well then: they are amazingly adaptable. You've seen them in freezing, snow-covered temperate forests. You've seen them in dense, tropical monsoon jungles. You've seen them in sparse, semi-arid scrublands. You've seen them in brackish mangrove swamps. Truly, the would fit anywhere. But you've never seen them where you are about to see them now! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, without further ado, it is my pleasure and honour to present to you: THE PI PATEL, INDO-CANADIAN, TRANS-PACIFIC, FLOATING CIRCUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE!"

I had an effect on Richard Parker. At the very first blow of the whistle he cringed and he snarled. Ha! Let him jump into the water if he wanted to! Let him try!

"TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE!"

He roared and he clawed the air. But he did not jump. He might not be afraid of the sea when he was driven mad by hunger and thirst, but for the time being it was a fear I could rely on.

"TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE!"

He backed off and dropped to the bottom of the boat. The first training session was over. It was a resounding success. I stopped whistling and sat down heavily on the raft, out of breath and exhausted.

And so it came to be.

Plan Number Seven: Keep Him Alive.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack

February 23, 2008

The Books: "The Magic Mountain" (Thomas Mann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

513DR4AVEDL.jpgMethinks I need to read this mutha again. I read it 10 years ago and while much of it struck me as literally some of the most brilliant thought-provoking stuff I had ever read - and even now, flipping through the book - phrases leap out at me, and send shivers down my spine ... but even with all that, much of it washed right over me. I know it is partly a function of where I was at in my life when I read it, etc. etc. I was in grad school, which was already intellectually, physically, and emotionally challenging (as it is meant to be) - and not much space was left over for The Magic Mountain - which you can't just sit down and read, in a casual manner. It demands engagement. It demands a bit of WORK on the part of the reader. And normally I love that kind of work (uhm, as should be apparent) - when someone tells me a book is "easy" and they mean it as a compliment, normally I lose interest. Just my personal taste here. I read to lose myself completely. If a book is too obvious or too formulaic, I am pulled out of it - by my own boredom. I like a challenge. That's why I sit around reading Leviathan for fun. It's hard. I like that hard-ness. But The Magic Mountain needs to be read when you have a bit more space around you - or at least that's the case with me.

The Magic Mountain always makes me think of Mitchell. He moved to Chicago 8 or 9 months after I had moved there, and he moved in with me. I lived in one room. Let's be honest. It had a stove and a fridge against one wall, and a tiny bathroom, where your knees touched the opposite wall when you were on Ye Olde can. There was actually a long narrow corridor (sort of) which acted as a closet - but other than that - it was a ROOM. M., my main flame in Chicago, who spent much time in that ROOM with me, referred to it lovingly as "the box". His friends would try to be polite to me, and say, "So it's a studio? Or a one-bedroom?" I would open my mouth to reply and M. would roar in, saying loudly, "No. No. It is a BOX." I don't know why he was complaining - he was in his mid-20s and was still living at home with Mom and Dad! But "the box" was always a big joke. And there was also a caged elevator - where you had to yank the cage open to get into the rickety thing - and it always stalled between floors and you'd have to yell for help. It was hysterical. But it was my first apartment I ever had by myself - and I loved it. I had a single bed - or no, let's be honest. It was a mattress lying on the floor. I had zero money when I moved to Chicago - zero - it was a cliche: I moved with 2 suitcases and a head full of dreams. In a month I had temped enough (wearing my one skirt and my one blazer from the Salvation Army) to make enough for one month's rent and security deposit. The box cost 350 bucks a month.

So when Mitchell moved in with me - into that space- you can imagine the hilarity. We slept together on the single mattress on the floor. My cat Sammy crawled all over us. When I wanted to have M. over, Mitchell would go sleep over at Jackie's. It was perfect. Mitchell also arrived in Chicago with zero cash, but he got a job with a theatre company in about a week - so he started working immediately. And I will always remember that Mitchell was reading The Magic Mountain during his first months in Chicago. I still remember what the book looked like. It was a second-hand, third-hand paperback he had probably bought for 25 cents - it was falling apart when he got it. It had a bright yellow cover with bright blue writing. And it was an old translation. Meaning: there is a 15 page section of the book entirely in French. In MY translation of the book, that French is translated into English. In Mitchell's book, it remained in French. Mitchell could have skipped over that part. He knew enough French to say "aricoverts" and "Leslie Caron" with aplomb ... he also loved to muse ponderingly, "Ou sont les neiges d'antan" at a propos moments. You know, you'd say something like, "God, we had such a great time in college, didn't we? We didn't even know how good we had it." And Mitchell would stare off into the distance wistfully, and murmur, "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" hahahahaha How do you say "asshole" in French? Anyway, Mitchell was determined that the French section of the book would NOT defeat him. He would read every word. And he did. He got a French-English dictionary - and methodically went through every page, putting together what was being said. I was very impressed. It took him 2 weeks to read those pages. He would read sections out loud to me, in halting French, and tell me what it meant. When I wanted to go to sleep, he took a pillow and a blanket into the bathroom, and curled up on the bathmat, to read in French late into the night. That's what I'm talking about - when I say that difficulty has its own rewards, and often difficulty is the best gauge that you are actually engaged in the writing.

So I always associate The Magic Mountain with Mitchell, and the box. And also Mitchell's general intellectual curiosity - which always spurred me on in my own reading. It still does.

Thomas Mann's experience of the writing of The Magic Mountain is almost as interesting as the book itself. His wife had been in one of those Alpine sanatoriums - sort of like what Katherine Mansfield went through, and many other folks suffering from tuberculosis and other degenerative diseases ... and Mann's experiences visiting his wife gave him the idea for the book. But then WWI happened - and Mann stopped writing the book. The upheavals were such that Mann took another look at his book - and saw in it the germs (pun intended) of something much larger. He saw that European society itself was sick. That destruction was stronger than creation. That something rotten, so to speak, was in the state of Denmark. So he went back and re-wrote what he had already written. Is sickness a metaphor for something larger? Mann seemed to think so - and much of the book does take on the psychological affects of illness - and what that might say about the society at large. I'm thinking now of the brilliant movie Safe, where Julianne Moore's character basically becomes allergic not just to the environment, but to life itself. The world is what is ill - and if you respond to it by becoming sick yourself, then that is just further evidence. It's almost like Heller's Catch-22: It is an insane world, and if you respond to it in a sane way - then YOU will be seen as the insane one. Yossarian believes that people are trying to kill him. His commanding officers are exasperated and say, "Of course they're trying to kill you! This is war!" Yossarian doesn't see what difference THAT makes. So what that it's war? He still flies over the earth in his plane and knows that people below are shooting at him. He does not even accept the construct. And boy oh boy, does that make you insane to the rest of the world, who accepts the rules. And therein lies the Catch-22. If you are healthy in a sick sick world ... then perhaps it is YOU who are sick. So Hans Castorp - the lead character in The Magic Mountain - is sick, and goes to a sanatorium. While there, he meets all kinds of different people - and they are representative of many elements of European society - all of them hovering on the precipice of the cataclysm that will be WWI. Hans is a German. I don't think I'm reading into this when I say -Mann saw a corrupt depravity in German society at the time (well, he saw it everywhere - but being German, he saw it in Germany much more clearly) - something that if taken to heart could make you physically ill. But of course much of this takes place on another level, sub-conscious ... Who knows what it is that is making us sick? Hans ends up staying in the sanatorium for many years. You can even see it as proof that being institutionalized just makes one grow sicker. The rules of the sanatorium do reflect the rules of the outside world - but in many ways they are inverted. Life itself starts to seem dangerous. And sickness - actual sickness - becomes a shield, one's armor against the destructiveness of the world itself. When Hans leaves the sanatorium finally - WWI has broken out - and he is conscripted into the army. All hell is about to break loose. The infection is coming through the skin. Sickness can no longer be contained in the sanatorium. It's out. No more metaphors. Only reality. And God help us all.

There's so much more in this rigorous book that I am not remembering - but that is what I am left with. I read all of Katherine Mansfield's letters and diaries when I was in high school and college. She was very very ill. And by the end of her life, she had become desperate for a cure - any cure - racing all over Europe, taking quacks seriously, succumbing to what we now would call "new age" alternative medicine - anything that might stave off her death. I think it is surmised that her mad dash around Europe at the end probably hastened her death, increasing her panic and stress. She yearned for an icy blast of air to "clean" her diseased lungs. That was the cure at the time. Lie in a lawn chair in the middle of a snowfield, wrapped in blankets ... the cold will do the rest. This is the atmosphere to which Hans Castorp submits himself. And the longer he is there, the more incomprehensible it becomes to him that he will ever be "out", and healthy. The sickness takes hold while he is there - rather than lessening. Mann, of course, is making enormous points, like 20th-century life points - about who we are, as a human race, and what we are capable of - the horrors, the carnage. Sickness is a metaphor.

Even just flipping through this magnificent book right now makes me realize I need to read it again. It's an intellectual feast.

Here's an excerpt. I love the bit on "beware of irony" ... "beware of it in general". Oh, how I agree with that. And the bit about "paradoxes" gives me a chill of dread. The whole book gives me a chill of dread, actually. There's a fog in the sanatorium - it's an alternate universe with its own rules ... where 'checking out' of the travails of life is paramount. But Mann writes about it physically - the thick turgid beer, the anxiety of clear thinking (evident in the excerpt below), the clouds of cigar smoke ... just the way the dining room is set up, with thick white linen on the table, and thick muffled carpeting ... I don't know. As I recall, the point is not to get well. Not really. The point is to drown. To smooth soft edges. To submit. The main feeling up there is disorientation. Time begins to lose meaning. You begin to lose faith that you could EVER make it on the outside. It becomes easier and easier to just stay, to foster your own sickness - so that you never have to leave. You can see Hans Castorp go through such an experience in the excerpt below. The sickness re-trenches itself - with his explicit permission.

EXCERPT FROM The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

How did young Hans Castorp actually feel about all this? For instance, did the seven weeks he had demonstrably, indubitably spent with these people here feel like a mere seven days? Or did it seem to him just the opposite, that he had lived here now much, much lover than he really had? He asked himself those same questions, both privately of himself and formally of Joachim - but could not come to any decision. Probably both were true: looking back, the time he had spent here that far seemed unnaturally brief and at the same time unnaturally long. It seemed everything to him. in fact, except how it really was - always presuming, of course, that time is part of nature and that it is therefore permissible to see it in conjunction with reality.

In any case, October was close at hand, might arrive any day now. Hans Castorp had no trouble figuring out that much; and besides, he heard mention made of the fact in the conversations of his fellow patients. "Do you realize that it's only five days till the first of the month?" he heard Hermine Kleefeld say to two young men of her acquaintance, Rasmussen the student and the thick-lipped lad, whose name was Ganser. Dinner was just over, its odors still heavy in the air, and people were lingering among the tables, chatting and putting off their rest cure. "The first of October - I noticed it on the calendar in the management office. This will be the second one I've spent at this cozy resort. Well fine, summer, or what there was of it, is over - we've been cheated out of it, just as we're cheated out of everything else in life." And she sighed with her half a lung, shaking her head and directing her doltish, sleepy eyes at the ceiling. "Cheer up, Rasmussen," she then said, slapping her comrade on one drooping shoulder, "and tell us some jokes!"

"I know only a few," Rasmussen replied, his hands dangling chesthigh like fins. "But I don't tell them very well - I'm always too tired."

"Not even a dog," Ganser said between his teeth, "would want to go on living like this much longer." And they laughed and shrugged.

Settembrini had been standing close by, too, a toothpick between his lips, and as they were leaving he said to Hans Castorp, "Don't believe them, my good engineer, never believe them when they squawk - and there's not a one who doesn't, although they all feel very much at home here. Lead a free and easy life - and then demand you pity them. Think they have a right to bitterness, irony, cynicism. 'At this cozy resort!' Well, isn't it cozy? I would certainly say it is, and in the most dubious sense of the word. 'Cheated,' the little minx says - 'cheated out of everything in life at this cozy resort.' But send her back to the plains and her life down there would leave you in no doubt that her sole object was to get back up here as soon as possible. Ah yes, irony! Beware of the irony that flourishes here, my good engineer. Beware of it in general as an intellectual stance. When it is not employed as an honest device of classical rhetoric, the purpose of which no healthy mind can doubt for a moment, it becomes a source of depravity, a barrier to civilization, a squalid flirtation with inertia, nihilism and vice. And since the atmosphere in which we live provides very favorable conditions for this swamp plant to flourish, I may hope - or perhaps I must fear - that you do understand me."

The Italian's remarks were truly the sort that, if Hans Castorp had heard them down in the plains seven weeks before, would have been mere noise; but his stay up here had made his mind receptive for them - receptive in terms of intellectual understanding, though not necessarily in terms of sympathy, which perhaps is the most telling factor. For although in the depths of his soul he was glad that, despite everything that had happened, Settembrini continued to speak with him as he did, continued to teach, to warn, to try to influence him, his own perceptive powers had advanced to the point where he would criticize the remarks and withhold his agreement, at least to some extent. "How about that," he thought, "he talks about irony in almost the same way he talks about music. The only thing missing is for him to call it 'politically suspect' the moment it stops being an 'honest and classical means of instruction'. But if 'no healthy mind can for a moment doubt its purpose,' what sort of irony is that for heaven's sake, if I may ask? - assuming I am to have a say in any of this. That would just be dry pedantry!" (Such is the ingratitude of immature youth. It accepts the gift of learning, only to find fault with it.)

Nevertheless, he would have found it all too risky to put his insubordination into words. He limited himself to objecting to Herr Settembrini's critique of Hermine Kleefeld, which seemed unjust to him - or which, for other reasons, he wanted to see as unjust.

"But the girl is ill," he said. "She is truly, positively very ill and has every reason to be in despair. What do you want from her, really?"

"Illness and despair," Settembrini said, "are often only forms of depravity."

"And what about Leopardi," Hans Castorp thought, "who explicitly despaired of science and progress? Or what about our good schoolmaster himself? He's ill and keeps coming back up here. Carducci wouldn't have been all that happy with him, either." But aloud he said, "Fine fellow you are. The young lady may breathe her last any day now, and you call her depraved. You'll have to explain that for me. If you had said that illness is sometimes a result of depravity, taht would at least have been plausible, or -"

"Very plausible," Settembrini broke in. "My word! So you would have agreed had I left it at that?"

"Or if you had said that illness sometimes is made to serve as a pretext for depravity - I would have accepted that, too."

"Grazie tanto!"

"But illness as a form of depravity? Which means, not that it arises from depravity, but is itself depravity? Now that's a paradox."

"Oh, I beg you, my good engineer, do not lay that at my door. I despise paradoxes. I loathe them. You may assume that everything I said about irony also applies to paradoxes, and more besides. Paradox is the poison flower of quietism, the iridescent sheen of a putrefied mind, the greatest depravity of all. By the way, I also notice you are coming to the defense of illness yet again."

"No, what you say interests me. It reminds me of some of the things that Dr. Krokowski lectures about on Mondays. He, too, declares illness to be a secondary phenomenon."

"No pure idealist, he."

"What do you have against him?"

"Precisely that."

"Don't you approve of analysis?"

"Not every day. It's very bad and very good, by turns, my good engineer."

"How am I supposed to take that?"

"Analysis is good as a tool of enlightenment and civilization - to the extent that it shakes stupid preconceptions, quashes natural biases, and undermines authority. Good, in other words, to the extent that it liberates, refines, and humanizes - it makes slaves ripe for freedom. It is bad, very bad, to the extent that it prevents action, damages life at its roots, and is incapable of shaping it. Analysis can be very unappetizing, as unappetizing as death, to which it may very well be linked - a relative of the grave and its foul anatomy."

"Well roared, lion," Hans Castorp could not help thinking, as he usually did when Herr Settembrini uttered something pedagogic. But now he said, "We recently participated in some illuminated anatomy downstairs on the ground floor. That's what Behrens called it when he X-rayed us."

"Ah, so you've now scaled to that level, too. Well?"

"I saw the skeleton of my own hand," Hans Castorp said, trying to recall the emotions that had stirred in him at the sight of it. "Have you ever had him show you yours?"

"No, I'm not the least bit interested in my own skeleton. And what was the medical finding?"

"He saw strands, strands with nodules."

"The imp of Satan!"

"You called Director Behrens that once before. What do you mean by it?"

"You may be sure that I choose the term deliberately."

"No, you're not being fair, Herr Settembrini. I'll admit that the man has his weaknesses. After being here awhile, even I don't find the way he talks that congenial; there's something so fierce about it, especially when you think of the grief that he felt at losing his wife up here. But what an admirable, respectable man he is all in all, a benefactor to suffering humankind. I recently met him as he was coming from an operation, a rib resection, a matter of life or death. And to see him like that, coming from such a difficult, practical task, made a big impression on me. He was still flushed and had just lit a cigar to reward himself. I was envious of him."

"How very generous of you. And your sentence is?"

"He did not mention any definite length of time."

"Not bad, either. So let us go and lie down, my good engineer. Assume our positions."

They said good-bye outside room 34.

"Well, go on up to your roof, Herr Settembrini. It must be more amusing to lie there in the company of others than alone. Do you find it entertaining? Are they interesting people, the ones you take your rest cure with?"

"Oh, nothing but Parthians and Scythians."

"You mean Russians?"

"Russians, male and female," Herr Settembrini said, and a tightening was visible at the corner of his mouth. "Adieu, my good engineer."

No doubt about it, he had meant something by that. Hans Castorp entered his room in confusion. Did Settembrini know what was going on with him? Presumably he had been spying on him for educational reasons, taking careful note of where his eyes were directed. Hans Castorp was angry at the Italian, and at himself, too, because it was his own lack of self-control that had provoked the gibe. He gathered up some writing materials to take out with him for his rest cure - because there could be no more delays, a letter home, his third, would have to be written - and he went on being angry, muttering things about this windbag and quibbler, who was sticking his nose into things that were none of his business, but who hummed little songs at girls in public. By now, he no longer felt like taking up the task of writing. This organ-grinder and his insinuations had definitely spoiled the mood for it. But one way or the other, he had to have winter clothes, money, underwear, shoes - everything, in fact, that he would have brought with him had he known he would be here not for just three weeks at the height of summer, but ... but for a still-undetermined period, which, no matter what, was sure to last into some of winter, indeed, given assumptions and circumstances up here, would very probably include the whole season. And that, or at least the possibility of it, would have to be shared with his family. It would require real work this time - making a clean breast of things and no longer pretending otherwise to himself or them.

And it was in this spirit that he wrote, making use of a technique he had freqently seen Joachim employ - sitting in his lounge chair, with his fountain pen in hand and a writing case against his raised knees. He wrote on sanatorium stationery, taken from an ample supply in his table drawer, to James Tienappel, the uncle to whom he felt closest of the three, and asked him to inform the consul. He spoke of an unforeseen vexation, of misgivings that had proved justified, of the necessity, on good medical advice, of spending a part of the winter, and perhaps all of it, up here, since cases such as his own were often more stubborn than those that began more spectacularly and since the important thing, really, was to intervene decisively and so arrest his case's progress for good and all. Seen from this angle, he suggested, it was a stroke of fortune, a happy turn of fate, that he had chanced to come up here and had occasion to be examined; because otherwise he would probably have remained unaware of his condition much longer and perhaps have learned of it in a much more distressing fashion. As for the estimated time of his cure, one should not be surprised if he might have to make a winter of it and would be able to return to the plains hardly any earlier than Joachim. Notions of time here were different from those applicable to trips to the shore or stays at a spa. The month was, so to speak, the shortest unit of time, and a single month played no role at all.

It was cool; he was wearing his overcoat, had wrapped himself in a blanket, and his hands turned red as he wrote. At times he would look up from his paper, covered with reasonable and convincing phrases, and gaze out into the familiar landscape, which he hardly noticed anymore: the long valley, its exit blocked today by pale, glassy peaks; the bright pattern of settlement along its floor, glistening now and then in the sun; and the slopes, covered partly by rugged forests, partly by meadows, from which the sound of cowbells drifted. Writing came more easily as he went along, and he no longer understood how he could possibly have been afraid of this letter. As he wrote, he came to see that nothing could be more plausible than his explanations and that of course his family at home would be in perfect agreement with them. A young man of his social class and circumstances took care of himself when that proved advisable, he made use of facilities set aside expressly for him and people like him. That was only proper. Had he returned home, they would have sent him right back up here upon hearing his report. He now asked them to send the things he needed. And in conclusion he asked that necessary funds be sent regularly. Eight hundred marks a month would take care of everything.

He signed it. That was done. This third letter home was comprehensive, it did the job - not in terms of conceptions of time valid down below, but in terms of those prevailing up here. It established Hans Castorp's freedom. This was the word he used, not explicitly, not by forming the syllables in his mind, but as something he felt in its most comprehensive sense, in the sense in which he had learned to understand it during his stay here - though that was a sense that had little to do with the meaning Settembrini attached to the word. And as he heaved a sigh, his chest quivered as the wave of terror and excitement that he knew quite well by now swept over him.

Blood had rushed to his head as he wrote, his cheeks burned. He picked up Mercury from the nightstand and took his temperature, as if he could not let this opportunity pass. Mercury climbed to one hundred degrees

"You see?" Hans Castorp though. And he added a postscript: "This letter has been quite an effort. My temperature stands at a hundred degrees. I see that for the time being I shall have to keep very quiet. You will have to excuse me if I do not write more often." Then he lay back and lifted a hand to the sky, palm out, just as he had held it behind the fluorescent screen. But daylight had no effect on its living form, the stuff of it grew even darker and more opaque against the brightness and just its outer edge shone reddish. It was the living hand he was accustomed to seeing, washing, using - not the alien scaffold he had seen in the screen. The analytical pit he had seen open up before him that day had closed again.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBack

February 22, 2008

The Books: "The Call of the Wild" (Jack London)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

CallWild.jpgThis is one of those books I was forced to read in 8th grade (not even 10th or 11th grade - when I was a bit older - but 8th grade!) - and absolutely LOVED. I was also forced to read The Red Badge of Courage in 8th grade, which I decidedly did NOT love - but Call of the Wild captured my imagination. It scared me. I remember being afraid of the wildness of the wolves ... and wanting Buck to go back home where he could be safe and warm ... but then I also remember thinking: You know what? Running free through the snow and howling at the moon isn't too shabby either. But still: the transformation Buck has to go through, from a domestic pet to a wild pack-dog (and not just the wild pack-dog, but the leader of the pack) was FASCINATING to me. I kept thinking, as I read it - in junior high - as each chapter went on, "It's not too late for someone to save him ... someone needs to swoop down and save Buck ... he can still go back!" But eventually there comes a point - where no. Buck cannot go back. And he must get strong and alpha - or he will not survive. There are lessons in this for all of us. It's a brilliant book. It's about animals, but the entire time I read it - I kept inserting myself into Buck and wondering, "How would I do? How would I cope with that?" And you begin to realize that Buck is actually becoming himself, his true self ... that his domestic days were the unnatural respite ... and that being wild is who he really is. By the end of the book it is incomprehensible to imagine Buck lying curled up in front of a fire and playing fetch with a little boy. Buck has not "reverted". He has inhabited his true destiny. And it took a lot of pain and confusion and fighting. He is not a conscious animal, at least not in the way human beings are conscious. He does not reflect. But he knows that the sound of the pack - calls something up in him, something primal and OLDER than anything he has ever known. The destiny of his biology.

Over the years I have read the book more times. It's a favorite of mine. The story always gets me (and this particular excerpt I'm doing today really really resonates with me) - but also, let's just take a minute to acknowledge the magnificence of Jack London's writing. My God. I want to call his writing muscular. That's what comes to mind. It has oomph, it has no self-importance, and yet when it comes time to make his big point - Jack London holds nothing back (like in the excerpt below). I can't think of a writer writing today who uses words in the way London does. It's poetry - but it's also like a documentary film. It's BOTH.

Here's the excerpt - it's my favorite bit from the whole book. I mean, check out that last paragraph. Jesusmary and joseph, wish I could write like that.

EXCERPT FROM The Call of the Wild by Jack London

In the days that followed, as Dawson grew closer and closer, Buck still continued to interfere between Spitz and the culprits; but he did it craftily, when Francois was not around. With the covert mutiny of Buck, a general insubordination sprang up and increased. Dave and Sol-leks were unaffected, but the rest of the team went from bad to worse. Things no longer went right. There was continual bickering and jangling. Trouble was always afoot, and at the bottom of it was Buck. He kept Francois busy, for the dog-driver was in constant apprehension of the life-and-death struggle between the two which he knew must take place sooner or later; and on more than one night the sounds of quarrels and strife among the other dogs turned him out of his sleeping robe, fearful that Buck and Spitz were at it.

But the opportunity did not present itself, and they pulled into Dawson one dreary afternoon with the great fight still to come. Here were many men, and countless dogs, and Buck found them all at work. It seemed the ordained order of things that dogs should work. All day they swung up and down the main street in long teams, and in the night the jingling bells still went by. They hauled cabin logs and firewood, freighted up to the mines, and did all manner of work that horses did in the Santa Clara Valley. Here and there Buck met Southland dogs, but in the main they were the wild wolf husky breed. Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself - one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was so old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.

Seven days from the time they pulled into Dawson, they dropped down the steep bank by the Barracks to the Yukon Trail, and pulled for Dyea and Salt Waters. Perrault was carrying despatches if anything more urgent than those he had brought in; also, the travel pride had gripped him, and he purposed to make the record trip of the year. Several things favored him in this. The week's rest had recuperated the dogs and put them in thorough trim. The trail they had broken into the country was packed hard by later journeyers. And further, the police had arranged in two or three places deposits of grub for dog and man, and he was traveling light.

They made Sixty Miles, which is a fifty-mile run, on the first day; and the second day saw them booming up the Yukon well on their way to Pelly. But such splendid running was achieved not without great trouble and vexation on the part of Francois. The insidious revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team. It no longer was as one dog leaping in the traces. The encouragement Buck gave the rebels led them into all kinds of petty misdemeanors. No more was Spitz a leader greatly to be feared. The old awe departed, and they grew equal to challenging his authority. Pike robbed him of half a fish one night, and gulped it down under the protection of Buck. Another night Dub and Joe fought Spitz and made him forego the punishment they deserved. And even Billie, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whined not half so placatingly as in former days. Buck never came near Spitz without snarling and bristling menacingly. In fact, his conduct approached that of a bully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz's very nose.

The breaking down of discipline likewise affected the dogs in their relations with one another. They quarrelled and bickered more than ever among themselves, till at times the camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the unending squabbling. Francois swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always singing among the dogs, but it was of small avail. Directly his back was turned they were at it again. He backed up Spitz with his whip, while Buck backed up the remainder of the team. Francois knew he was behind all the trouble, and Buck knew he knew; but Buck was too clever ever again to be caught red-handed. He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly to precipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces.

At the mouth of the Tahkeena, one night after supper, Dub turned up a snowshoe rabbit, blundered it, and missed. In a second the whole team was in full cry. A hundred yards away was a camp of the Northwest Police, with fifty dogs, huskies all, who joined the chase. The rabbit sped down the river, turned off into a small creek, up the frozen bed of which it held steadily. It ran lightly on the surface of the snow, while the dogs ploughed through by main strength. Buck led the pack, sixty strong, around bend after bend, but he could not gain. He lay down low to the race, whining eagerly, his splendid body flashing forward, leap by leap, in the wan white moonlight. And leap by leap, like some pale frost wraith, the snowshoe rabbit flashed on ahead.

All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the bloodlust, the joy to kill - all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate. He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew and that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.

Posted by sheila Permalink

February 21, 2008

The Books: "The Pursuit of Alice Thrift" (Elinor Lipman)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman

alicethrift.jpgI read this wonderful book last year. Alice Thrift is a medical intern - in surgery - a rather macho field ... and she is having a tough tough time of it. She was an A student, but other than that - unremarkable. She finds the job stressful, she is condescended to by the head surgeon, and she also is kind of a humorless person - who is unable to look within herself and calm herself down. And yet even with all that - you just love this character. The whole "picking up on social clues" thing is WAY over poor Alice Thrift's head. She doesn't "get the joke". Ever. So life always seems to be going on outside her orbit. She looks around at her fellow interns, and doctors and nurses - and watches their rapport - and wonders how on earth they do it. Alice's mother - an invasive nosy woman - tells her daughter, blatantly, that she thinks she has Asperger's Syndrome. She leaves pamphlets about Asperger's lying around. Alice's mother had a VERY close relationship with her own mother - who dies during the course of the book - and wonders why she can't share that closeness with her own daughter. Closeness of the kind Alice's mother wants is horrifying to Alice. Like when Alice is sitting on the toilet and wants to close the bathroom door - her mother gets hurt. "Why can't we continue our conversation as you urinate? Why must you shut me out? My own mother never shut me out! Are you menstruating now, Alice? My mother always was aware of when I was menstruating. It is that kind of closeness I want us to have. I want us to talk intimately through the night about our FEELINGS." Alice couldn't imagine anything worse than staying up all night with ANYONE to talk about "feelings". She doesn't get the whole "feelings" thing, anyway.

The book opens with Alice getting married. She marries this obviously horrible playa type guy - who tells her he is a widower. She marries him for various reasons - he comes on hard, seems unfazed by her so-called Asperger's, and also - her family kind of pooh-poohs him because he's a traveling salesman. Through various twists and turns, she marries him. You know it's a horrible mistake.

And yet let us not forget that this book is a comedy. Lipman writes comedies. Before the marriage to this horrible guy, Alice lives with a guy who is a nurse at the hospital. They are just roommates. His name is Leo. Leo was looking for a roommate - who was NOT a nurse, because of the whole gossip grapevine thing - and if he had a "sleepover" with a lady-friend, he didn't want it to be all around the hospital. Alice wouldn't know how to gossip if you gave her a pamphlet ... so she fits the bill. Alice and Leo, in their own way, become friends. Leo is SUCH a great character. He is much beloved at the hospital - kind of a star - everyone likes him, he's good at what he does, and he actually likes his job - which Alice finds baffling. She can't stand her job - and the hours, and the stress. Leo kind of takes Alice on - not as a project, but just ... he tries to loosen her up. He's a GUY. Boston Irish. Comes from a huge Catholic family. He's handsome. He's funny. His mother is insane, and has religious iconography all over her house. You know. The usual. Totally not the kind of guy you would see with a plain Jane picked-last-for-kickball type like Alice. But Leo - Leo is kind. Leo treats her with humor. He also tells her the truth. About what she needs to work on, in her personality ... but he also backs off when she tells him to back off.

The story has many intersecting plot-lines ... Alice's courtship with Ray, the horrible widower ... Leo's responses to that ... Leo's girlfriend (a snotty midwife) ... Alice moving out on her own ... and befriending a girl down the hall named Sylvie - really, it's Alice's first friend. There are family issues, and job issues (Alice falls asleep during surgery while holding the retractor) ... but gradually, you begin to realize - and it's subtle at first, you can't tell which way the book will go - gradually, it becomes apparent that the book is going to be about Alice and Leo.

And it couldn't be more romantic. And humorous.

Alice, the humorless surgeon. Leo, the handsome masculine male nurse. She gets MARRIED to the other dude ... who is also an awesome character (in his horrible-ness - you know, he says stuff like, "Want to have a sleepover, Alice?" And when she wonders what that means - because she's Alice and she doesn't pick up on courtship cues - he says, "You know. Your snatch, my cock, we'll be up all night." !!!!! Even with my brief description of the book, you can probably tell that that kind of language will not go over well with Alice. )

Here's an excerpt. Leo, her roommate, is trying to get to know her better. I love Leo. Leo and Alice are going to throw a party ... this discussion ensues:

I love how Leo treats her. He's kind, but he also doesn't bullshit or condescend. He sees something in Alice.

EXCERPT FROM The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman

This is what we imagined: nurses and surgical residents conversing in civilian garb. RNs impressing MDs with their previously underappreciated level of science and scholarship. Exhausted doctors sipping beer while sympathetic nurses circulated with pinwheel sandwiches. Doctors asking nurses if they could compare schedules and find free Saturday nights in common.

When every nurse accepted our invitation and every resident declined, Leo and I had to scramble to provide something close to even numbers. I volunteered to call my medical school classmates who were interning in Boston - there were two at Children's, some half dozen at MGH, a couple more at Tufts, at BU.

"Friends?" he said.

"Classmates," I repeated.

I know what was on his mind: my unpopularity. That the words party and Alice Thrift were oxymoronic, and now Leo was experiencing it firsthand. I said, "Let's face it: I have no marquee value. My name on the invitation doesn't get one single warm body here, especially of the Y-chromosome variety."

"We're going to work on that," said Leo.

"On the other hand, since I'm not known as a party thrower, my invitees will expect a very low level of merriment."

Leo said, "Cut that out. It's not your fault. We're aiming too high. Interns are exhausted. If they have a night off, they want to sleep."

I said, "That's true of the average man, from what I'm read."

"And what is that?" Leo asked.

"I've heard that men will go forth into groups of women, even strangers, if they think there's a potential for sexual payoff."

"What planet are you living on?" Leo asked. "Why do you sound like an anthropologist when we're just bullshitting about how to balance our guest list?"

We were having this conversation in the cafeteria, Leo seated, me standing, since I usually grabbed a sandwich to go. He didn't think I ate properly, so after he'd rattled a chair a few times, I sat down on it.

"If I called my single brothers, not counting Peter," he said, "and they each brought two friends, that would be six more guys."

"Is Peter the priest?"

"No. Joseph's the priest. Peter doesn't like women."

"Okay. Six is a start."

I unwrapped my cheese sandwich, and squeezed open the spout on my milk carton. "I know someone," I finally said.

"Eligible?"

I nodded. So eligible, I thought, that he was pursuing Alice Thrift. "Not young, though. Forty-five. And widowed."

"Call him. Forty-five's not bad. Maybe he could bring some friends."

I said, "Actually, he's the one leaving those messages."

"He's been crooning Sinatra on the latest ones," said Leo. "What's that about?"

"Trying to get my attention." I took a bite of my sandwich.

Leo said, "No lettuce, no ham, no tomato?"

I pointed out that I never knew how long lunch would languish in my pocket before consumption, so this was the safest thing to take away.

Leo paused to consult our list of women. Finally he said, "I see a few of my colleagues who would be very happy with a forty-five-year-old guy. And even more who would pounce on the widower part. How long ago did he lose his wife?"

"A year and a day." I looked at my watch's date. "As of now, a year and two weeks."

"Call him. Tell him you and your roommate are putting together a soiree of hardworking primary-care nurses, who - studies have shown - sometimes go out on the town looking for a sexual payoff just like the males of the species."

I said, "I wasn't born yesterday. I know people have sexual relations on a casual basis."

Leo studied me for a few seconds, as if there was a social/epidemiological question he wanted to ask.

I said, "I've had relations, if that's what your retreat into deep thought is about."

"I see," said Leo.

"In college. Actually, the summer between my junior and senior years. I was a camp counselor and the boys' camp was across the lake."

"And he was a counselor, too?"

"An astronomy major at MIT, or so I believed. He knew all the constellations."

"Sounds romantic," said Leo.

I said, "Actually not. I had wondered what all the fuss was about, so I decided to experience it for myself."

"And?"

I swallowed a sip of milk and blotted my mouth. "Not worth the discomfort or the embarrassment or the trip into town for the prophylactics. And to make it worse, he expected follow-up."

"Meaning?"

"That we'd do it again."

"What a cad," said Leo.

"I found out later he wasn't an astronomy major at all, but studying aerospace engineering. And in a fraternity."

"Did you ever see him again?"

I said no, never.

"So that would be ... like five years ago?"

I shrugged. After a pause, I wrapped the remains of my sandwich in plastic and put it in my jacket pocket.

"Not that it's any of my business," said Leo.

I said I had to run. Would catch him later - I had the night off so I'd do some vacuuming.

"Alice?" he called when I was a few paces from him. I returned to the table.

"I want to say, just for the record, as a fellow clinician, that the fuss you've heard about? With respect to relations? The stuff that, according to movies and books, supposedly makes the earth move and the world go round? Well - and I say this as your friend - it does."

I didn't have an answer; wasn't sure whether his statement was confessional or prescriptive.

"What I'm getting at," he continued, "is that you might want to give it another shot someday."

Posted by sheila Permalink

February 20, 2008

The Books: "The Way Men Act" (Elinor Lipman)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

The Way Men Act by Elinor Lipman

41rihxtDmLL._OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpgMy book excerpt series keeps me focused - I don't know why. It's a habit. Like daily exercise, or a monthly massage. I need it. Probably more than the people who read me need it - although I always do love the comments on these posts - but why I continue has more to do with what it does for me mentally. It's methodical, I have very little choice in what to post (meaning: next book on the shelf is ... and whatever it is, I go with it.) There's comfort in that.

The Way Men Act is another favorite of mine, by Elinor Lipman. Again, the title (and the cover art) might put some readers off, but all I can say is: the book is lovely. Wonderful characters, funny funny funny - and with insights that could cut glass. Melinda has moved back to her home town after years away. She has opened a flower shop. She suddenly finds herself surrounded by all the people she went to high school with - only now they are married, have kids, and are unbelievably condescending to the sad single girl in their midst. Melinda is kind of used to that, though. A smart girl, but she didn't go to college. People find this difficult to grasp. She dated one guy (Seth) for a couple years who truly could not get his mind around this face - and kept trying to change her, make her more ambitious. Melinda knows she is not ambitious - but that doesn't really bother her. It's everybody else who seems to have a problem. Libby - another old classmate of Melinda's - has also recently moved home - and is working in a boutique in the shop right next to Melinda's. They become "friends". Sort of. It's more like commiserating in misery. Melinda - at 29 - still doesn't know "what shes doing" in her life - and it seems like by now she should know. She goes to dinner parties and answers questions from baffled couples about her dating life, or "what she wants" in life - she knows she should be more ambitious but she just can't seem to get anything going. (Lipman is a master at creating this kind of character. Although she doesn't really repeat herself in terms of characters - this KIND of character is classic Lipman.) Then - a new bookshop opens up on Main Street - and it's run by Dennis Vaughan - a gorgeous single black guy - who throws Libby and Melinda into a tailspin. And also poor Melinda's mother - who can't help but say, any time Melinda mentions the smallest bit of tension with Dennis, "Could it be a racial thing?" Melinda sighs. "No, mom. It's not a racial thing." Dennis is one of those characters in a romantic comic novel ... it's hard to pinpoint what it is that is so great about him. It's kind of like trying to figure out WHY someone is a palpably effective romantic leading man in film. Some guys can do it (Russell Crowe) - other guys cannot (Matthew McConaghey) ... McConaghey may have other gifts, and I believe he does - but the powers that be keep trying to make him a leading man, and sorry - it's just not convincing. If it were going to happen, it would have happened by now - because he keeps being put as a "leading man" (and I do not absolve him from responsibility here either - one of the greatest gifts an actor can have is "know thyself"). His best work was from his early career - when he was not well-known - Dazed and Confused being the best example. He's no leading man! Despite the golden abs and the pearly whites. He's a goofy weird character actor! He should be playing small parts in larger movies with bigger stars - he should play "cameos" - he really should.

Anyway. Back to my book. Dennis Vaughan is that rare rare thing: an effective and awesome leading man. He's complex, but he's also funny (it's great how Lipman can actually create a character about whom other people say, "He's so funny!" and then have him actually BE funny. Creating a character who is pro-actively funny is NOT an easy task ... but she does it here). Melinda and Libby kind of end up as rivals for Dennis. I can't remember much of the intricacies here - it's been years since I read it - but I do remember falling in love with Dennis. In all of his foibles, and weirdness (because he's not perfect - this isn't a bodice-ripping romance novel - this is a book about real people) - you just ache for Melinda to "get" him. But of course it won't be that easy.

Even just writing this much about it has made me want to read the book again.

Melinda works in a flower shop so she finds herself making flower arrangements for all her old high school pals, as they go off and get married. Libby had actually dated Dennis (in her mind) in high school - and she is still, at 29, all tormented and weird about it. Dennis informs Melinda that, uhm, no. They never dated. But Libby doesn't know that. More romances happen along the way - I suppose Dennis is seen as off-limits to Melinda, mainly because Libby is so weird about him, and their teenage so-called relationship ... so poor Melinda is having recreational non-committed sex all over town with various gentlemen ... and her married friends are snots about it, and murmur things like, "I hope you're being safe ..." ... and "Don't you ever want to get married?" etc. etc. But over the course of the book - in all its twists and turns - you begin to see that it is Dennis she wants ... and also ... it is Dennis - bachelor Dennis - who is right for her. And she for him.

It's kind of a beautiful book - funny memorable characters, great writing, vintage Lipman.

EXCERPT FROM The Way Men Act by Elinor Lipman

I had this boyfriend, Seth, for four years in California. He supposedly loved me, and his friends thought I was a breath of fresh air, which is what the graduate-level educated (cell biology, U.C. San Diego) say about the high-school educated if the latter is pretty and the former wish they were sleeping with her, too.

We met while I was waitressing at one of the ice cream parlors that had an extended menu of soups, sandwiches, and salads, and didn't mind its patrons sitting around for hours over four-dollar dinners, refilling their coffee cups, switching to decaf after 8 p.m. Seth left 50 percent tips: two bucks for a $3.98 chicken salad plate. Besides he was cute for a scientist: sandy hair and eyeglasses of a yellowish tortoiseshell. I made the first move: Where was he from originally? Connecticut! Holy shit - I was from Massachusetts ... Melinda LeBlank ... Harrow ... Just temporarily while I was earning some money for college ... Where have I applied? Nowhere, officially, until I establish residency. Maybe Santa Cruz? Maybe the moon?

Seth talked about this in subsequent conversations, which turned into dates, into making out on the beach, into me moving into his rented house on a flat street of boring basementless houses with carpets in otherwise gorgeous LaJolla. He loved to talk about my plans for college; he'd work it in to introductions when his lab friends met me for the first time. Lest you think she's a clerk in a flower-packing business; lest you can't judge her intelligence by yourself and need some credentials like "will be going to college next year"; "is thinking about applying to the enology program at Davis ..."

The fact is, I understood his apologies: I wouldn't live with someone who had my level of ambition, either. I wrote away for applications to San Diego, Santa Cruz, Davis, Santa Barbara, Sacramento State and MacMillan back home, where they were obliged to give me, as long as I claimed 114 Woodrow Avenue, Harrow, as my permanent address, free tuition.

Receiving the fat application forms was one thing; filling them out with no motivation behind it, and on the basis of someone else's ambitions, was practically impossible. Seth was baffled that I had taken the bare minimum of tests - only SATs but no Achievement Tests. What kind of high school was this? Now look what you'll have to do.

He brought home a Dictaphone from the lab: I could speak my essays into it; an oral first draft. Why not talk about growing flowers and how you've grown through that. They'll like that working with your hands/working with the earth stuff. Maybe tell that story about the guy who didn't speak English and you couldn't speak Spanish and didn't know anything about flowers at first so you called them all by their Spanish names; couldn't figure out the orders, never realizing -

"They're not looking for idiots," I said.

"That's not the point of that story. The point is something multicultural. It's saying that flowers transcend cultures and languages and that there's no absolutes with flowers. His 'lino' is your 'lily'. And you, the English-speaking American citizen, were the one who was at a disadvantage, as if the flowers were the great leveler. It's a good anecdote, and funny. They love when you use humor to make a point."

Years later, when I heard Dennis's radio commentaries, his life lessons drawn from fish and fake bugs, they reminded me of Seth's sappy idea for my college essay. I said no, forget it; I wasn't going to turn working alongside Carlos and identifying flowers by their Spanish names into a college essay which proved It's a Small World After All.

Seth hadn't known someone like me, since he grew up in Connecticut and went to prep school. Not that prep school underachievers all went to college; the few who didn't traveled around Europe with plans for deferring their education for one year. Nobody just moved away aimlessly. If they took dead-end jobs it was for Life Experience and tuition money. Nobody got sidetracked and kept the dead-end job for four years. "You would have known people like me if you'd gone to the public high school," I pointed out.

Seth conceded that I was probably right. There probably were smart kids who didn't automatically go to college - first-generation kinds of patterns, parents who hadn't gone either. Seth could imagine this world about as well as he could imagine there were families out there where fathers abandoned mothers, and mothers remarried traveling salesmen and handed out coupons in supermarkets. I was a refreshing change for Seth, a walk on the wild side - or at least on the working-class side - and I knew it would be my floundering around that got to him in the end. His class notes from Dartmouth didn't only say that somebody married this Liz or that Katherine, but identified them with "Williams '84" or "Yale '85" so the groom's classmates could approve, without picture or personal acquaintance, on the basis of one proper noun.

What could Seth have said about me: Part-time waitress? Flower picker? Future college freshman?

After enough time had passed to make me a California resident, after the dates passed when my applications were due, after I failed to write to Harrow High and ask Mr. Alberghini the list of questions I was supposed to ask him about references and transcripts, Seth said he didn't get it at all: Did I want to pick flowers in the hot California sun until I developed skin cancer? Had I been lying to him all along about my goals?

I said sure I wanted to have a degree and a profession, and God knows that was the only thing that counted in his book especially now that his sexual needs were under control. He'd realized that what you appreciated in a girlfriend wasn't necessarily what you wanted in the mother of your children.

And I knew he'd call it something else.

I got home from the fields, as I liked to call it, one night soon after that, and there he was wearing a dish towel tucked into his belt as a half-apron.

"Sit down," he said grandly. "I have a treat for you." I slid into the breakfast nook, quite enthralled with this gesture - Seth acting out the role of a television-commercial mate having dinner ready for his working woman. Then he put a dinner plate down in front of me. The meal was slime and mold, literally - the stuff I'd put in plastic containers weeks before and forgotten. There was something long and watery brown that might have been scallions - there was a small red rubber band at one end. Another lump on the plate might have been goulash - now completely penicillin. Something else was a furry gray: old canned fruit cocktail? And the remaining thing, now peachy-orange, was a mound of elbow macarony that had retained the shape of its home for the past few months: a margarine tub.

"A balanced meal from the four mold groups," Seth said.

"Very funny," I said.

"I was looking for the grated Parmesan and I found everything but."

"And you decided you'd teach me a lesson?"

"I can't live like this," he said.

"If you're home more than I am, why am I responsible for what grows in our refridgerator?"

"I'm not the one who saves a tablespoon of goulash. When do you think you're going to use one tablespoon of goulash? What are the odds?"

"You're exaggerating. I save portions."

"To what end?"

"All right," I said. "Enough. This is harassment. You've made your point."

"I threw out a garbage bag full of stuff that was inedible. There were a half-dozen bottles with a dribble of relish in each one. That's not me. You're the condiment queen."

I picked up my pocketbook and walked out. He asked where I was going and I said, "You're too chicken to admit what the real reason is, so this is how you're breaking up with me."

"I didn't say anything about us breaking up."

"Why? You can't live like this, remember? I'm a stupid, terrible person because I let mold grow in your refrigerator. If I'd gone to college this would never have happened. Isn't that what you're saying?"

I was out the door by now, and heading for the driveway, not running, not very fast at all. He had time to yell an apology; he even had time to stop me and throw his arms around me. But he didn't try. He had found a reason to send me back where I'd come from, something other than the Yankee warnings he'd been raised on about coming from different worlds. And in the version he told our mutual friends later, I was the unreasonable one, the one who couldn't take a joke. They probably all listened and nodded and agreed, "Melinda can't take a joke," then rushed to fix him up with graduate students they knew who they'd been keeping in the wings, women with degrees who kept boxes of baking soda in their refrigerators.

Posted by sheila Permalink

February 15, 2008

The Books: "Isabel's Bed" (Elinor Lipman)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Isabel's Bed by Elinor Lipman

isabels_bed_lg.jpgIsabel's Bed was a pretty major hit at the time - one of Lipman's biggest - and it's another book that makes me laugh out loud, but also become so engrossed that I miss appointments, and forget where I am. She's so good. On every level. Her books are not "mood" books - about weaving a web with her prose (like Nancy Lemann's books are). Her books have plot and structure. The dialogue is crisp and snappy. But it would be very wrong to think of Lipman as a utility writer, or a good craftsman. She is both of these things - but she's more than that. It's hard to be invisible as a writer. And it doesn't suit every writer to be so. Michael Chabon is never invisible. Some people hate him for that reason. I happen to love him, but there you have it. Elinor Lipman is so good that she is nearly invisible. Her writing does not call attention to itself, but when you look at it through a microscope, it is impeccable. And not just impeccable - but lovely, evocative, poetic. That's a true master.

Isabel's Bed is awesome - with its multilayered structure. First you have Harriet - a struggling writer in New York - whose live-in boyfriend of 12 years or something like that - breaks the news to her that he is going to marry someone else. HOLY SHIT. Can you imagine? You put in 12 years of your life ??? This tragic event throws Harriet into a panic about her life, her career - she is trying to sell a novel, she is having no luck ... so, out of desperation, she moves to Cape Cod, to try to finish her book. She is having no luck in writing it. It's a serious novel about her parents marriage - if I can recall correctly. You know, a serious book. Desperate, she answers an ad in some trade magazine - looking for a "ghost writer". Turns out that Isabel Krug - a notorious person, a tabloid favorite - is looking for someone to write her memoir for her. Isabel is famous because she was in bed with her millionaire lover - when the wife came in and shot her husband (Isabel's lover) through the heart. There was then a spectacular murder case - a tabloid frenzy - Isabel's face splashed everywhere - the "mistress of the murdered man" etc. It would be like if Amy Fisher was looking for a ghost writer. Although Joey is still alive. But you know - that's the level of tabloid notoriety that Isabel Krug has. Isabel lives on the Cape - in isolation - with her long-time butler/assistant - and Harriet, a serious writer, gets the job of ghost-writer to this woman. Who is nuts - a true Lipman character. Self-involved, she has ZERO boundaries, is completely honest to a fault, kind of coarse - and yet - gradually - you just fall in love with this crazy woman. Harriet moves in with Isabel. She interviews her over a series of weeks about what happened. The cold empty Cape is the background for all of this.

It's a wonderful book. So funny, and completely absorbing. Great characters, twists and turns - and also I love it because, in a way, it's about the writing process. I can't help but put myself in Harriet's shoes. How on earth would I deal with this woman??

Isabel expects the book to be flattering to herself. But Harriet wants to write the truth. This might get rocky! Of course it begins as strictly a professional relationship - but because Isabel has no boundaries - she can't help but start to get involved in Harriet's journey (you can even see it in the excerpt below - when you can sense that Isabel wants company for dinner). Harriet does not welcome this personal intrusion ... but naturally you cannot resist Isabel. Nobody ever could.

Pete - Isabel's assistant - becomes a very important character as well. You just love the guy. And yeah. Harriet eventually loves him, too.

Like I said - many layers here. Great stuff.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Isabel's Bed by Elinor Lipman

There weren't even bubbles in the bath to obscure her private parts from me, her acquaintance of less than twenty-four hours. It was not the lolling soak of Calgon commercials; this was Isabel soaping her wash cloth and scrubbing her armpits and crotch in a manner I hadn't done in front of Kenny after a decade of intimacy. I sat on a wrought iron stool at the foot of the black marble steps, which led to her elevated, sunken tub. She talked and soaked, talked and scrubbed, then talked and rinsed, while I tried to be as casual about her nudity as she was, and while many Isabels bounced off the mirrored walls.

And there was no getting around her breasts, especially i the context of Isabel as tabloid paramour, as the woman Guy VanVleet died for. They were big. Enormous. They drooped from their own weight below the bath water, then surfaced on display, areolas the size of coasters. I wanted to ask if they were real, but decided that no certified plastic surgeon would have built those. Ordinarily I'd feel sorry for a woman with water-balloon breasts, knowing the burdens they imposed, but I could see that Isabel prized them and regarded them as my first research project, as if seeing them would help me write between the lines.

I said, "Do we want to start with your life and proceed chronologically, or do we start with the night Guy was shot?"

" 'The Night Guy Was Shot,' " Isabel repeated. "Write that down. I like that." I made a note on my first blank page.

"Are you writing in shorthand?"

"Not lists you may be reading," I said.

"Good thinking."

"How are we going to approach it?" I asked again.

Isabel turned on the crystal faucet and ran more water into the black tub. "Approach what?" she asked, sinking deeper and closing her eyes.

"The narrative."

"I've been talking into tapes for months. You play them back and take it all down and that's where we get a book."

When I didn't answer, she said, "Don't get nervous. I know I'm not writer. I only meant, first you'll listen to the tapes, then you'll ask me questions to fill in the blanks. Then you'll make it into a book. I'll give you all the newspaper clippings I have and when you're done, we'll get started."

"Are you going to be the only source?"

She sat up a little straighter and said, "I don't understand your question."

"What if I want to interview some of the principals?"

"Like who?"

"Mrs. VanVleet?"

"Fat chance."

"You don't think she'd cooperate?"

"Why should she? As a favor to me, or as a good citizen?"

"Do you know where she is?"

"Pomfret, Connecticut. A cushy sanitarium for the rich and criminally insane."

"Wouldn't you cooperate if someone were writing a serious piece of journalism on the case?"

"Not with me, I wouldn't! She hates my guts."

I asked what Nan's sentence was.

"No sentence! She was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, which is what you plead if you'd rather be in a mental hospital than a prison. She's there until the shrinks give her a clean bill of health." She stood up and extended her hand, meaning towel.

"I'd love to talk to her," I said.

"It's my book. It's about me. Nan VanVleet can write her own book."

"Just for background? You want people to think it's balanced."

"I've got two years of clippings plus the transcripts, plus videotapes of my testimony. Examination, cross-examination, the works."

"Do you have her testimony on tape, too?"

She looked perplexed: What am I, a documentary filmmaker?

I didn't want to argue with my large, naked boss. I said I was going to find a nice sunny spot in my room and read as much as I could by Monday.

Isabel neither endorsed this plan nor objected to it, but I sensed a hesitation. "Is that okay with you?" I prompted.

"Fine. Pete Xeroxed about a million pages."

"I read pretty fast."

Still, she was quieter than she'd been all morning. I asked if talking about the case opened the old wounds. I mean, it wasn't all that long ago. Post-traumatic stress disorder and the like.

She shrugged: nah.

So I said I'd be breaking for meals, naturally. How many would we be for dinner?

Her face brightened and the brisk toweling resumed. "Just the three of us," she said.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 14, 2008

The Books: "Then She Found Me" (Elinor Lipman)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman

13987179.JPGWhat a wonderful writer Elinor Lipman is. She's hugely successful - her books sell - but I don't know if she gets the props she REALLY deserves. She tends to get lumped in with chick lit - you can see it in her cover designs - but seriously, she's not like that. She's way better. She's been publishing well-crafted hysterical insightful books for decades now - it's a rare writer who can make me laugh out loud. Lipman can. But she also has the gift of imagination: her characters live on in my memory - like Bernice, the biological mother who suddenly shows up in Then She Found Me. I remember her. She makes an impression. Her latest novel, My Grievance has garnered some of the best reviews of her career, and I was mostly interested in Fay Weldon's words on her in The Washington Post. I read them and felt a ferocious sense of vindication, almost like, "YES. YES." She SAID it. And she's RIGHT:

Elinor Lipman is a far more serious novelist than she pretends to be or is allowed to be by reviewers. (I learned a long time ago that to be taken seriously you need to cut back on the funny lines. I once all but won the Booker Prize for a novel from which, on Kingsley Amis's advice, I had removed anything remotely mirthful. Alas, it was still "all but," so I reverted to my old ways.) Lipman, declining to learn this worldly wisdom, goes on making jokes and therefore tends to get described with adjectives that are good for sales but bad for literary reputations: "oddball," "hilarious," "over-the-top," "quirky," "beguiling" or, worst of all, "summer reading." The prose slips down too easily and pleasantly to allow her to rise into the literary top division, where the adjectives become "piercing," "important," "profound," "significant," "lyrical," "innovative" and so on. Dull, in fact.

But up there at the top is where this enchanting, infinitely witty yet serious, exceptionally intelligent, wholly original and Austen-like stylist belongs. Delicately, she travels the line where reality and fiction meet. Reality being more oddball, quirky and chaotic than fiction can ever be, Lipman inures us to the truth about the way we live by making it up as she goes along, cracking jokes and pretending it's all fiction.

I agree with every word. "Enchanting" is right. "Exceptionally intelligent" is right. Reality is oddball. And you know, being "witty" is a dying art. Lipman keeps it alive. Her prose shimmers with wit. I am in love with her. If you have not discovered her novels, I tell you: do yourself a favor. Pick one up. Don't let the chick lit covers put you off. She is the real deal. My mother actually gave me Then She Found Me as a gift - I don't even think she had read it, but it looked like something I might like. I was so into Lipman's writing from that that I went out and bought every book I could find. THAT is the mark of a good writer. I'm a fan for life.

Then She Found Me is the story of April, a high school Latin teacher, who lives a quiet boring little life. She spends her weekends in her pajamas. She is a serious person. She was given up for adoption. And then one day - Bernice Graverman (a local celebrity - she has a talk-show) swoops back into April's life - saying, "Hi. I am your biological mother." Bernice is the quintessential celebrity. She cares about designer labels. She's always dressed to the nines, head to toe. Her earrings are like dinner platters. She wants to be congratulated for coming back ... but April is kind of like, "Uhm ... why can't you go away again?"

The book has many elements - but one of the things that happens is that Bernice INSISTS on being April's "mother" ... even though April lets her know that kind of intrusion isn't welcome. Bernice is horrified at her daughter's plain appearance ("did that plain girl come from MY loins??") - she can't believe April would rather sit home and READ than go out for cocktails ...

Now of course April resists this intrusion. But naturally, things start to shift anyway. Old patterns start to break up. And April can't help but find herself affected.

It's a wonderful book.

Here is an excerpt. Bernice loves to self-dramatize. She seems to have no concept that April might have some feelings about being abandoned back then ... Bernice is more interested in pumping up the drama of her own life, and making the story into some kind of dramatic monologue. Oh, and her story keeps changing. April wants to know who her real dad is. Bernice hints, deflects, lies, changes her story ...

Bernice sounds like a monster, and in many ways she is - but still, the way Lipman writes her, she is so so so funny. A whirlwind, of perfume and cleavage. Being all dramatic and self-involved. Completely oblivious to the fact that other people might not be so impressed. Obtuse.

This excerpt involves April and Bernice going out to lunch, and Bernice starting to do her monologue (the third or fourth version of it) about who April's real father is. Notice how Bernice treats April like a guest on her talk show.

EXCERPT FROM Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman


"I want to know everything about you," Bernice said, as we were being seated at Sally Ling's. "Start from your earliest memory. Or start with your life today and work backwards."

I shrugged out of my coat and draped it on the empty chair next to me. I told Bernice I had expected to talk about her first, at least the part about my father.

She pushed away her place setting and leaned forward, arms folded, elbows on the table. Without preamble or protest, she recited her story. "I met him when I was sixteen. I worked in Stockings on the street floor of Jordan Marsh, a buyer in training. It was a more personal department in those days with a great deal of customer contact. Stockings came in boxes, not on racks like greeting cards. I spent my days folding back tissue paper, carefully splaying my fingers inside nylons to demonstrate color and sheerness." She paused. "Am I going into too much detail for you at this juncture?"

"Go on," I said.

"I met Jack at my counter just before Mother's Day. I recognized him as an educated man and spoke accordingly --"

"Jack who?"

"I'm getting to that. 'Doesn't this Schiaparelli have a lovely diaphanous quality?' I asked. I saw the effect immediately. He started, then smiled his brilliant smile. For good measure, noticing his Harvard ring, I said, 'I can't wear my school ring because it snags the hosiery.'

"'Where did you go to school?' he asked.

"'Girls' Latin.' I lowered my voice so the other salesgirl wouldn't hear. 'I'm going to be a senior. They think I'm staying on here full-time.'

"'And where do you live?'

"'Brighton,' I told him. He grinned again and held out a tanned hand. 'I hope to be your next congressman.'

"I said something like, 'You do?'

"'I'm running in the Democratic primary. Maybe you could put in a good word for me with your neighbors.' That's exactly what he said.

"'With pleasure,' I said.

"He patted his pockets and found a parking ticket to write on. I offered him my Jordan Marsh ballpoint. He wrote my n ame and address . . . . Nothing!" Bernice smiled triumphantly.

"Nothing?" I repeated.

"No flinch at the 'Graverman', no reneging on what I sensed was sexual rapport between us out of anti-Semitism. Nothing! He asked if I'd like to help out in the campaign. 'Pretty girls are always needed,' I think is what he said. I blushed, of course. I was totally inexperienced and hadn't learned how to accept compliments graciously. 'If you think I can be of some help,' I said.

"He wrote a phone number on my sales pad. I said I'd call his headquarters that night. He was a beanpole then, and not terribly smooth, but I sensed his greatness. I should have kept that sales slip. It would be worth a lot of money today. And did I mention the stockings? A Mother's Day present for Rose."

Bernice ended her story with a quivering, pained smile.

I laughed. For the first time in her presence, I laughed.

"How dare you," she whispered.

"You're saying my father was Jack Kennedy?"

She stared for a long time, then said, "I know it's not what you were expecting to hear."

"Do you have proof?" I asked.

"He knew about you, if that's what you were wondering."

"John Kennedy got you pregnant?"

"We were deeply in love."

"Wasn't he married?"

"He hadn't even met her yet."

"Why didn't he marry you?"

She patted her stiff bangs. "I loved him too much for that."

"His career, you mean? You were being altruistic?"

"Of course. It would have been political suicide for him to marry me. He'd have been crucified because I was pregnant and it would have been worse that I was a Jew. Jack would have come to resent me, too. Ironically."

"Why 'ironically'?"

"Because if he had chosen me - us - he'd never have been elected. He'd be alive today."

I asked if she was mentioned in any of the Kennedy biographies.

She stared at me again - it was my own schoolmarm's stare, refusing to answer a question of such sass and ill will. "What sells books?" she asked finally. "You tell me. Bernice Graverman or Marilyn Monroe?"

I wanted to tell her that she was either cruel or crazy and in either case insulting my intelligence. I considered "You are a sick woman," or "You're lying." I settled on "I don't look like him at all."

"You don't," she agreed.

"Wasn't he tall?"

Bernice reached for the glass ashtray and placed it in front of her with a petulant clink.

"You're annoyed," I said.

She shrugged.

"Did you expect me to believe you?"

"When you're telling the truth, you don't worry about being taken for a liar."

"So you said to you yourself, I'll tell April I'm her mother and President Kennedy was her father, and then she'll know. Period. That'll impress the hell out of her. Something like that?"

Bernice poked a long red fingernail into an almost flat pack of cigarettes and found one more. She lit it with a silver lighter and exhaled gracefully toward the ceiling. "I'm not an analytic person," she said. "I act first and live with the consequences."

"How old was he?"

"Twenty-nine," said Bernice, "but he looked twenty-two."

"I can't believe someone twenty-nine years old, running for public office, would seduce a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer, practically on the spot."

"You're very naive. You don't understand the way it was. Politicians did whatever they felt like doing, especially bachelor politicians."

"Where did you go for your trysts?" I asked.

"Charlestown. An apartment of someone he trusted."

"Was he your first?"

"Of course!"

"How long did it last?"

"Weeks, months." Bernice looked away, then added: "For me, a lifetime."

I smiled, thinking that for all her drama she was a terrible actress. I asked if they had managed to be together often.

"Whenever we could. His schedule was impossible."

'Was he good?" I asked in a low voice.

Bernice smiled indulgently. "Terrible, by today's standards. All business. And his back always hurt."

"Was he right- or left-handed?"

"Right."

"Was he circumcised?" I asked.

"If you're trying to trip me up, you won't."

"Why weren't you angry? Didn't you want to ruin his career after he abandoned you?"

Bernice closed her eyes and shook her head, rattled her head vigorously. One toad-sized clip-on earring flew off her earlobe.

I thought: This person is my mother.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 13, 2008

The Books: "The Ritz Of The Bayou - The New Orleans Adventures Of A Young Novelist Covering The Trials Of The Governor Of Louisiana, with digressions on smoldering nightclubs, jazz-crazed bars, and other aspects of life in the tropic zone" (Nancy Lemann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves: (although this book is actually reportage - oh, well)

The Ritz Of The Bayou - The New Orleans Adventures Of A Young Novelist Covering The Trials Of The Governor Of Louisiana, with digressions on smoldering nightclubs, jazz-crazed bars, and other aspects of life in the tropic zone by Nancy Lemann

1272261-m.jpgThis hysterical book is very hard to find. I found my copy, randomly, at The Strand. It still has a dust jacket. I don't think it's even in print anymore. Nancy Lemann had come out with her first novel, Lives of the Saints (excerpt here). It wasn't a major hit, but it got some wonderful reviews - Lemann was compared to Eudora Welty, her book was reviewed in The New York Times - and so she got some cache. There was a trial going on in the mid 80s of the corrupt governor of Louisiana - and Vanity Fair sent Lemann to go report on it, and send back dispatches. A la Dominick Dunne's fun columns on various trials in that magazine. Lemann is from New Orleans. She writes as an insider of that particular town. She obviously loves it dearly. Her thing is comparison, meaning: New Orleans' vibe as opposed to, say, New York's vibe. Or other places. It is in the comparison that the truth can be experienced. At least that seems to be Lemann's view - all of her books have that geographical comparison thematic structure. In The Fiery Pantheon (excerpt here), Grace Stewart and her family go to Istanbul, and sight-see. Grace cannot but help compare the Bosphorus to other rivers she has known, and the weather to the tropic air she knows so well. It's all about comparison. She can't do it any other way. Many people can see things just as they are, in and of themselves. Lemann is not one of those people. Her writing always depends on the focal point of HOME - which, for her, is New Orleans - the green balmy tropics. Everything in the world must be compared to that. Not in a snotty way, she's not like: can anything ever measure up? She's not a regional snob. It's just that New Orleans has such a deep groove in her heart, that she sees it everywhere - in the spring air in New York, in the slow-moving Bosphorus, whatever.

Lemann reported on the trial of the Governor, but she also reported on all of the "offstage" shenanigans - politicos and journalists drinking themselves into a stupor every night, the humor in the courtroom, her human observations - all very Lemann-esque. She's one of THE writers of New Orleans - she just gets that town, and has made it her life's work (or so it seems) to put it and its ineffable qualities into writing. This book - with its hilarious title - is the story of that trial. Because it's Nancy Lemann, it's a small slice of humanity, with dudes in seersucker suits, and cocktails in seedy bars ... she notices everything, and reports it - in that very Lemann way. It is SO worth a read if you're interested. I am so glad I found it. (Now, of course, with the Internet - you can order it ... but back in the mid 90s, before I was online - you were shit out of luck with books like this. You could scour second-hand book stores, etc., - and that is what I did. I pounced on it when I found it like a tiger. I was thrilled!)

Here's an excerpt from early on in the book. It gives you a flavor of the whole thing. To me, it's hypnotic. Lemann actually does know quite a bit about the law - lawyers frequent her books more than any other profession. And so she does, indeed, report on the daily trial, what happens, who says what. But she also reports on the behavior - of the judges, the spectators, the other journalists, the Governor himself ... It's a wonderful little book.

EXCERPT FROM The Ritz Of The Bayou - The New Orleans Adventures Of A Young Novelist Covering The Trials Of The Governor Of Louisiana, with digressions on smoldering nightclubs, jazz-crazed bars, and other aspects of life in the tropic zone by Nancy Lemann

The thing I love about New Orleans is that it is always deserted. This especially after being in New York. If there's one thing we don't have in New Orleans, it's hubbub In New York you wait in long lines to go to a movie. In New Orleans you and your date are the only ones in the theater - except for one elderly couple from Metairie, maybe. The restaurant at the Lafayette Hotel - deserted. The post office - lines? are you kidding? - deserted. Julia Street - deserted. And when in New York you find yourself trapped on a Friday evening between five and seven wondering if the step should actually be taken of going over to Grand Central to wait in a huge mob to find a cab, in New Orleans at that hour there wouldn't be another person on the street, except for one fellow in a seersucker suit. He will be walking slowly down Gravier Street, smoking a cigar. This is peace. Slow time.

Peace is not a thing that can be easily found. I know a great man who says it is not to be found at all. It's just not in the bargain, he says. But I found it in brief terms, in my New Orleans, when it was balmy and eighty-two degrees and everything was green, among the eccentric palms. After these years in New York it was sweet to return, at the end of August, but I did not know that I would remain there, at the trial and in the legislature, for almost one whole year. You spend a year inside a court of law, and it has various effects, and is not easily forgotten.

The trial of the Governor, for racketeering, fraud, and bribery, was conducted in a New Orleans courtroom by a crowd of drawling white-haired gents. It was there that I obtained some education of the world, of politics and men and morals. One deception can be traded for another, greatness and betrayal lie beside each other closely intertwined. The truth, in the end, I think, is likely to be found in a courtroom, but so is a great deal of "human frailty". There is a lot of human frailty floating around.

There is so much human frailty floating around that it is a dramatic thing to see, for better and for worse, and I have to say that there, among the human frailty, I found something I had ceased to expect, and it was written in dramatic script, when otherwise, when it was over, life was written in small print. It is not that I advocate human frailty, but I had never seen so much of it, all at once, and it was a sort of breathtaking spectacle.

The law can be evaded; it is something some dance on the edge of. Some call it fraud, this long intricate equation which it took a year to tell, a case tried twice, and at great length. You would have great contempt for due process to argue that a question of law wasn't settled. As for human frailty, that is another matter.

***

But I went across the lake when it was balmy and eighty-two degrees and in the middle of a raging crisis, the eye of a storm, found this. My heart was back in business when I saw all that human frailty. Among the green palms on the raging lake. There were many actors on the stage, and for myself, I had hardly seen such characters as these, whose drama was conducted for one year.

***

Now if you want to go to the legislature, you have to see Rudy, in order to get in. Rudy does not have a title, but he has a function.

A political columnist first took me to the legislature; he took me to a room in the basement to obtain a press pass.

"Go to the dining room and ask Rudy. He's sitting just inside the door," said the Sergeant-at-Arms. So we went to the dining room, and just inside the door, four sleazeballs were sitting at a corner table smoking cigars.

"Rudy?" said the political columnist.

"Yeh," said one of them, and the political columnist lodged his request to obtain a press pass for me.

Rudy rolled his cigar around in his mouth. He gave me the once-over.

"Tell 'em Rudy says it's okay," he uttered, in his gravel voice.

Rudy sets the tone.

***

The Pope was scheduled to come to New Orleans, later in the year. A local columnist joked that in the morning the Pope would hear the Governor's confession; then he would go to a luncheon. Then he would hear the Governor's confession; then he would go to dinner. Then he would hear more of the Governor's confession; etc. No matter how long he listened, he could not hear the Governor's whole confession, as it would take too long.

Ordinarily I don't spend quite a lot of time looking at the dark side. Politics is not the place to look for saints. It's not exactly the blue vault of heaven there, in politics. But it holds a certain fascination. There is a connection, between the dark side and the light. One without the other could not cause a crisis to convene. It was bigger than I was, and it was bigger than those who conducted it. That was the interesting thing about it, the way I looked at it.

***

The lofty architecture of the capitol describes a megalomaniac grandeur not seen in most state legislatures. It is indeed the work of a megalomaniac, Huey Long. It is an atmosphere indeed that makes you want to idolize someone, presumably the Governor, as in the case of Huey Long, it speaks of his ambition, and lays that burden on his office.

The Senators were joshing in the hall, at the opening of a night session of the legislature, amid the glare of television cameras, against the handsome marble and ornate columns and engravings in the architecture. Fox McKeithen in the hall described how his daddy, a former governor, was Earl Long's protege.

A black Senator gave a convocation. "Just as the walls of Jerusalem fell down, the ways of this state are in need of repair."

A few more legislators made brief speeches. The arrival of the Governor was anticipated, to open the special session.

"Will the committee from the Senate please escort the Governor into the House of Representatives," said the Speaker.

There was a smattering of applause. Some time passed.

"Will the committee please escort the Governor--" said the Speaker -- but the Governor was joshing in the hall with Sixty Rayburn. Then the Governor emerged into the House and took his place and gave his speech, opening with several droll stories, which included a recap of his conversation in the hall with Sixty. The Governor seemed to be obsessed with the reporters, and quoted from many newspaper articles. He read some facts and figures, in his Cajun twang, from his proposal to solve the gigantic deficit. But he was in a contrite mode, as his trial was then behind him, and when you spend a year inside a court of law, as I have said, I do not think it leaves you quite the same.

The Governor recommended a lottery for the state, but everyone was against him. "It should not be an occasion for this anguish and wringing of hands," said the Governor, with a good deal of sangfroid. "Even that citadel of learning Harvard University," he advised, "was originally funded in part by the Massachusetts lottery." To pronounce the name of Harvard, he used a mock-pretentious accent, to indicate how hifalutin the Yankees are - which has long been a source of underdog defiance and anti-intellectual joshing. But among the palm trees and the heat, education of any kind takes on a somewhat different tone, and is a somewhat different thing. And there are many things to be learned there, of a different kind.

***

The Southerners are jaded and cynical, for this is a region accustomed to intrigue, and to an old defeat. A Washington columnist went to New Orleans and heard the Governor give a speech. He reported the many jokes that were told, concluding that here politics is still in business. The familiar theory is that the people of Louisiana would rather be entertained than served with ethics. As has been observed about our Governor, it isn't what he says that matters to the people, but the style in which he says it. And he said it with purple and gold dinner jackets, in a Cajun accent, with champagne corks popping. I think it is accurate to say that the people have a high tolerance for "human frailty", if not a special fondness for it, evidenced by the jurty, and the human frailty argument was often used by the defense lawyers in the case.

As with Earl and Huey Long, Louisiana governors have amassed an excess degree of power in their offices, unlike the governors of other states. As a political columnist has said, in Louisiana we elect our governors to be kings. The nuttier the better, that they should then turn into megalomaniacs, provide public entertainment, and have public breakdowns. One recent governor had been a decent, honest man; he was considered to be too dull. The people re-elected the present Governor instead.

The Prosecutor was not winning when he moralized about the Governor, who is known for gambling, womanizing, and risque bon mots, for people hold few things as dear as those.

***

The alleged crime was the Governor's making $10 million among himself and his cronies, the seven other defendants in the case, through influence and knowledge in state business and state programs - the hospital development business, to be exact; at least half of the deals were made while the Governor was out of office, between his second and third terms. Whether you see this as good or bad depends on your own moral vision. The jury thought it was only mildly bad; though to be more accurate about it, I think they thought it was good. The Governor was born on a sharecropper's farm in a humble Louisiana town, and ended up a millionaire in the opulent imitation antebellum plantation which is the Governor's Mansion on a verdant lawn in Baton Rouge, and this man's rise was a thing that the people respected. He who rises from a humble position to an exalted one is always a subject of drama. It was often said of the Governor during the trial that his was a misspent life - for he has the "political talent" and charisma to lead the people and the legislature, but he does not always use this to the best result. The spirit's willing but the flesh is weak.

***

Power affects all men holding it in a certain definite way. It is not saying that a man may not have the strength to fulfill a vision, if he had the genius to have the vision; or equally, that a man who has a great vision will have the strength to carry it out. It is also not saying that if you had palm fronds painted on the ceiling of your legislature, and Rudy for the Sergeant-at-Arms, it wouldn't drive you batty, too. I cannot give a picture that is black and white. "But I don't think politics is the answer," I said to the courtroom existentialist, "do you?"

"Well, I guess no one really has the answers," said the courtroom existentialist. I didn't really mean to get in such an existential mode, but that is the way with the courtroom existentialist, who then went across the street to grade the oysters at The Pearl. Why, you may ask, does he grade the oysters? Why, indeed. Because it is how he brings order out of chaos, which is why he loves the law, because it does the same.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 12, 2008

The Books: "Malaise" (Nancy Lemann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Malaise by Nancy Lemann

malaise.jpgMalaise is Lemann's fourth novel - and for the first time, in her writing, I found myself a wee bit bored. I am not sure why. I think this book, in some ways, lacks the "hilarity" of the others, although parts of it are quite funny. And Lemann's funniness is subtle - it's in her language, in the deadpan statements - it's something you either respond to or don't. I can't MAKE you think she's hysterical - some people are tone deaf to certain kinds of humor. There are certain comedians who are very successful and my response to them is: "That is just so not funny to me." So I get that humor is a very personal thing. Nancy Lemann's humor is, yes, in some of the situations people get themselves in ... but it's more in the language itself, and the outlook of the characters, how they see the world. It's very me, and that is a rare rare thing to find in a writer. The following excerpt shows, for me, Lemann's similarity to me - in terms of humor, language, and sort of deadpan outlook on the chaos of the world. It works for me. I was very interested to read the following review - posted on Amazon - and it refers to when Malaise came out in hard cover. Anyway, check this out - she describes the whole Nancy Lemann thing FAR better than I ever could:

People either get Nancy Lemann or they don't. Those who do practically worship her for her deeply elegant, eccentric, hilarious novels about displaced Southerners. Those who don't tend to complain that she's too repetitive. That she is, and a good thing, too. In her lovely and odd novel, Malaise, Lemann uses repetition as she does in all her books: as a wellspring for both humor and meaning. Her characters turn phrases over and over in their minds, as if trying to solve them. In Malaise, those phrases concern California, the death of the British Empire, old age, and graciousness. Fleming Ford is a New York journalist, born in Mississippi, whose husband's work takes the family to Esperanza, a San Diegoesque resort city not far from the Mexican border. As always, Lemann's writing wildly conflates the personal and the geographical. Fleming shuns Esperanza as the ends of the earth. At the same time, and not just coincidentally, she falls in love with Mr. Lieberman, an old Englishman who represents the decorousness that she has left behind. Along the way, we get some astonishing writing, like this aside about a visit to Death Valley: "It's so godforsaken, so historical, and so pure that you are curiously elated. It may be called Death Valley, but the minute you get there you are subsumed by a vast and incongruous gaiety." Addled by nostalgia and despair, Lemann's characters are forever bumping into a vast and incongruous gaiety, and telling us about it over and over and over. We wouldn't have it any other way. --Claire Dederer

"Lemann conflates the personal and the geographical". Totally. That is always her big thing. How places remind us of who we were, or who we want to be, or things we want to forget. How geography plays such a potent role in our destinies. The way she writes about Esperanza is new territory for Lemann - she normally writes about the South (ie: New Orleans) - or New York City. Here she goes to a town that sounds like San Diego (and, in fact, Lemann lives there now) - and Fleming, the main character, is gobsmacked by the sun and the desert. She can't get it off her mind. What it MEANS to live in the desert. Especially since her husband is "in water". She is obsessed with geography, and yet her heart yearns back for "suave" New York.

She has some similarity to Grace Stewart in The Fiery Pantheon in that her ideal involves rectitude, quiet dignity, kindness, stoicism - and, if possible, white hair and seersucker suits and bow ties. Fleming is obsessed with a newspaper mogul named Mr. Lieberman - a 70-something year old guy - who was her boss once. Fleming is married, pregnant with her third child ... and her heart yearns for Mr. Lieberman, even though they are on separate coasts - and, uhm, there's 35 years age difference. You get the sense, though, that Fleming would not have a sordid affair with this man. No. Loyalty is always very important to Nancy Lemann's character, and Fleming is loyal to her husband. It's just that Mr. Lieberman represents a world gone by ... a world she misses - one of men's clubs, and rectitude, and stoically bearing up under grief, and New York, etc.

Obviously, after all of these posts - it should be clear that I am one of those people who love Nancy Lemann, who find her repetitive language to be her greatest gift - and not annoying at all. You have to slow down to get into Lemann's books, most of which are pretty much plot-less. Just slow everything down, and get into the repetitive language, let it work on you ... give up expectations of anything happening, and let your mind off the hook. Start to think about places you have known and loved, how they affected you, where your heart's home is - regardless of where you live, etc. etc. Nancy Lemann can be quite hypnotic.

Malaise came out in 2003. It's 2008 now, dammit. That's a long long time to wait between books. But I'm patient. The second I hear a new one is out, I'll be the first in line to buy it.

EXCERPT FROM Malaise by Nancy Lemann

I have a certain amount of time on my hands due to my career slump and my stunning remove to the other side of the world at age forty in the middle of the journey of our life. I'm supposed to be working on Special Perspectives, which I attempt to dream up at my office in the garage overlooking a canyon. Canyons are weird. I saw a coyote once come up from the canyon: it looks like a rangy berserk sort of wolfhound. No telling what else is down there: foxes, monitors, hyenas going mad.

Special Perspectives - it sounds so official, like some sort of evil Soviet enterprise, some sort of daunting euphemistic committee to winnow out people who should be executed. Or at least who should be airbrushed out of existing photographs. It's like something out of the Politburo. My editor would soon create a new and even more euphemistic title for me: West Coast Special Perspectives Team Coordinator.

The insubstantial nature of the endeavor was betrayed by its vague and redundant title, which continued to go through various changes, in the end returning by a circuitous route to the blandly cheery New Perspectives, in the meanwhile persisting with the perhaps more nebulous Special ones.

In time I did come up with several thought-provoking Special Perspectives pieces on such vague subjects as Optimism, Pessimism, and Nostalgia. But then my Special Perspectives tended to get too apocalyptic. The universe being so vast, who planned it that our green earth and humanity should grow, why are we here, what is before and after, the span before and after life being so immeasurably longer than the span of life itself. I grew seedy hanging out in my pajamas all day trying to figure out the universe.

I kept thinking about atomic particles. Because we are made up of then. And consciousness resides in some of them, and they are never destroyed. And if you look at your television set when a channel is not operating properly and see little white things, those are photons left over from the big bang sixteen billion years ago. You may ask how I know all this. It is because there are a lot of nuclear physicists in Esperanza. There is an emphasis on science. Science nerds. That's quite distinct in this part of California. Most of the nuclear physicists are Russian, and are the parents of my daughter's friends. So at children's birthday parties I take them aside and interrogate them about our atomic particles.

Then I dutifully go to my office in the garage and wallow in nothingness, trying to figure out the central mystery of our finite existence.

I also spend a lot of time with a group of squirming three-year-olds dressed up as ladybugs in a series of incredibly long and complex rehearsals for my daughter's ballet recital. Intrigues ran high among the ladybugs. They formed cliques. They had tantrums. They were heartless. Their mothers snapped. I stayed backstage during the rehearsals marshaling kaleidoscopic varieties of ladybug trauma.

At the actual performance the audience was packed to bursting. The ladybugs were supposed to form a big ring on the stage holding hands, then skip around. Naturally they went too fast and one ladybug got caught in a spinning vortex causing the circle to snap like an electric cord pulled abruptly out of the socket. One ladybug ran to the edge of the stage all alone and started twirling around. Others were madly jumping up and down like human pogo sticks. One ladybug sobbed quietly and inconsolably in a corner - thank God not my daughter. Several ladybugs stared vacantly ahead, paralyzed.

My daughter was the last to leave the stage - trapped in the spotlight like a deer in the headlights. Finally, thank God, she turned a broad smile directly on the audience and scampered toward the wings with her awkward grace amid thunderous applause.

I was so relieved my daughter had not been scarred by the experience that I was walking on cloud nine. But I was crushed with guilt. For once they wheel you out of the delivery room, you carry out of it forever a mother's guilt, no matter how good a mother you are, or how many ladybug rehearsals you attend.


After soothing the frayed nerves of a fifty-year-old man dressed as a giant duck who arrived in a souped-up Corvette to perform at my son's birthday party, I realized I'm not the only one in a career slump.

Somehow when you hire a man over the phone to dress up as a giant duck at your son's birthday party, you expect him to be maybe an enthusiastic college kid or a wholesome young camp counselor. Seeing as he never took off his costume, you might wonder how I even knew that he wasn't a wholesome young camp counselor. It was the frail rasping voice and the delicate fumes of scotch that emboldened me to ask, in the course of making polite conversation, how old he was. Pretty soon the next thing I know he's telling me how his wife left him, he lost his job, he's broke, and if it weren't for the napalm factory in Chicata closing down, he wouldn't be dressed up like a children's fairty-tale character sweating his brains out because it was hotter than hell in there.

In the costume.

That's another thing about Esperanza. It's supposed to be idyllic avocado farms and Mexican-style villages and orange groves, and then suddenly you find out there's a napalm bomb factory just down the road with escaping napalm that they have to shut down. AVOCADO FESTIVAL NOT MARRED BY NAPALM LEAK the local headline will decry.

I guess it's the dark side of paradise.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 11, 2008

The Books: "The Fiery Pantheon" (Nancy Lemann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Fiery Pantheon by Nancy Lemann

FieryPantheon.jpgThe Fiery Pantheon is Nancy Lemann's third novel - which, once again, involves a hilarious (tragi-comic) extended family of wacky Southerners ... many of whom are transplanted to New York City. It also features a heroine -Grace Stewart - who yearns to idolize people. She looks for mentors. She searches for those who embody the qualities she thinks are paramount: stoicism, rectitude, kindness - old-school qualities. She's a young woman, but her heart cracks at the sight of a doddery old gentleman in a seersucker suit, being stoic and kind. She's young - and she's actually a gorgeous woman - but she's embarrassed by her looks, so she makes a huge effort to "be drab". It, of course, doesn't work. Although she is a flirt ("she would flirt at a building") ... she is, essentially, a serious person, looking for serious people to fill her life. If they're doddering old Southern lawyers, who wear seersucker suits, so much the better. She lives and works in New York - and is engaged to a man named Monroe - who is, while a nice person, not quite in that league. He's a simple Southern boy, who drives around on the weekends visiting his army of aged relatives. He waters his lawn in an undershirt. He is, indeed, kind (look at his treatment of his elderly relatives!) But something is missing. Maybe Grace doesn't want that kind of life, even though she's a New Orleans girl herself? Who knows. All we know is when we first meet Grace, she is on vacation with her extended family - and they're all staying at this old-time mansion in Virginia - where an orchestra plays, and you have to dress up for dinner. While they're there, they run into a guy named Walter - a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch in New York - who is also from New Orleans - and he's a young guy, completely mischievous, dissolute - he's always knocking back a cocktail and making inappropriate statements to the house maids. But he's an AWESOME character. So so funny. He notices Grace right away. He notices immediately her pathetic attempts to 'be drab". He sets out to 'get" her. It is then that he realizes that she keeps in her head a "fiery pantheon" of idols ... men she expects others to live up to. You know, people like freakin' Aristotle. Or Cicero. THAT is what she strives for. Walter finds out about Monroe, so he sulks about him - "what is it about this Monroe?". He also sets out to tease Grace mercilessly about "the fiery pantheon" - first of all, he knows he could NEVER get into such a group ... Also (the deeper level) - he senses, somehow, even through his cocktail-infused haze - that Grace is living in a dreamworld, and that's not good for her. She yearns for a "fiery pantheon" and she picks Monroe?? Is this girl out of her mind? She's going to get crushed by life!

The novel is (of course, because Nancy Lemann wrote it) - hilarious. There's a deadpan quality to the voice that totally offsets the wild flights of fancy (which you can see a bit of in the excerpt below). Grace's mother is an awesome character - and completely convinced that everyone on the planet would be better off if they were institutionalized. She can't go out for a family dinner without noticing all of the personality disorders in the restaurant. But the novel is chock-full of people like that - and Walter becomes, over the manic course of the book - where he is nearly driven insane by Grace pretending to be drab and mooning around about her "fiery pantheon" - a truly memorable romantic hero. Even with his dissolute habits.

The Fiery Pantheon has one of my favorite lines in a book ever: "She had a nostalgia for a life she never led."

God, I so understand that.

It's not that I yearn for my own past. It's not that I have an unbearable nostalgia for my own childhood. It is that I yearn for a life I have not lived. That yearning can keep me up nights. Lemann gets that.

Grace yearns for another kind of life than the one she has. Even down to her deliberate "drabbing"-up of her looks. She wants to be a calm quiet sensibile spinster. Full of rectitude and stoicism. Instead she's a flirty glamour girl who attracts every male in a 15 mile radius. And etc.

Love this book. Here's an excerpt.

The Fiery Pantheon by Nancy Lemann

She studied the last suave sight in New York, of the angels atop Grand Central. A policeman patrolled it on a horse from below, the second to last suave sight in New York.

She watched an old movie about W.C. Handy played by Nat "King" Cole. W.C. Handy kept staying in his hometown, Memphis. He kept writing songs of world renown, and poking down Beale Street every night. Once he got to Davenport, Iowa, apparently a jazz outpost of the time. Then he returned home in disgrace to his father. Then he got as far as Cincinnati. Pretty soon he was poking around the Mississippi Delta and made his way to Moorehead, where the Southern crossed the Yellow Dog, as he wrote a song about. Then he was back in Memphis. It reminded her of Monroe.

She kept wishing for a rooted life. Like the street Monroe lived on, where he knew all his neighbors and all their dogs, and they certainly knew him and his dog, considering he devoted his whole life to his dog.

A news program came on. There was a story about a little boy who was a hero for he caught a crook. While reporting the story they showed the nieghboorhood. It was a modest suburb - but there was something in the green, the lawns, the trees, the sidewalks, something indefinable, that reminded her of the South. Just when the children turned the corner, the way they rode their bikes, the way the trees looked - it was someplace very close to the most old and familiar and thus enchanted places of her heart. Why do they have those strange accents? she wondered. Yes, they're in an old familiar green place and they're speaking in a certain jucular and strange accent and locution. The pavements glistened. The sky was black. There were palms. She noticed it was sleazy. That was not a criticism. She would not criticize her region. It was an observation. It reminded her of Florida too. The Gulf South. She waited patiently for the dateline at the end of the story but none was given. But finally just at the last minute before they went to the next thing they blew up the item from a local newspaper that the story had come from and yes, it was The Times-Picayune.

Then she read about Nabokov's youth in Russia, at a ravishing estate outside of St. Petersburg with old parks and gardens, and upon the Revolution, his sudden departure on a throbbing boat across a hopeless sea, to Constantinope and beyond, consigned to exile, never to see his native land again.

She fell asleep and had the recurrent dream of a crushing azure beauty by the sea and she couldn't tell if it was somewhere in the North or if it was the Alabama coast. In this dream, which was disturbingly recurring to her in New York, she searched piteously for the location of the ravishing place, the pellucid green of the sea, the crushing, saving beauty of it, one place to take refuge in, to decide on, but when it came to remember how to find it, whether it was in the North or South confounded her.

Some people have a recurring dream in life, she knew. This was hers.

In the middle of the night she seemed to see a man standing in the room and to feel the touch of his hand, a luminous figure in a dark room. It was in her hotel room and it must have been around three in the morning. Your worst nightmare: to wake alone in the middle of the night with a strange man standing in your room. The apparition appeared to be wearing a seersucker suit and bow tie and tennis shoes. When this became apparent he seemed somewhat less threatening. His identity could then be perceived. When she saw it was Monroe she felt better. She felt she had an overwhelming love for him. This made her feel better, to have an overwhelming love for someone. He was a connection to the past. He was a connection to that spot of land on earth a person holds most dear. She had an uncomplicated love for him. This made her feel better, to have a simple, uncomplicated love for someone. Of all those who could be dear, he was dearest. Why? She felt remorse. Then he bent down and gave her a thick book with a blue cover. It was a book of etiquette. She opened it and there was a pressed flower inside. When she found it he looked away.

Then he said to her specifically, in a slightly pleading tone of criticism: "Grace, you always love the same few things, you always go back to them, you always cleave to them." He did not mean it as a compliment. He seemed to mean it as a criticism. Perhaps he only meant it as truth, which he seemed to disdain, he who above all should be considered guilty of it.

For their honeymoon Monroe planned a trip to the Louisiana countryside. For six days they would go to plantations and Southern gardens and the Gulf Coast. "I don't think I could be alone with you for six days in antebellum homes," said Walter when this was described to him. "Southern gardens and plantations - plus you - that would be a little excessive." That was sort of funny. It was crusty. He couldn't swallow all that plantation tour stuff. Monroe wasn't crusty. He could swallow all that plantation tour stuff. Not only could he swallow it, it was mother's milk to him. He came from one, he had lived on one - a plantation. His whole life was a fantastical and exaggerated portrayal of an old South impossible to exist. But it did exist. Its fantasticalness obsessed her.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

February 10, 2008

The Books: "Sportsman's Paradise" (Nancy Lemann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Sportsman's Paradise by Nancy Lemann

0807124176.jpgSecond novel by Nancy Lemann. Lemann does not drastically change her style from book to book - so if you find her monotonous then that would definitely be a problem. But for my taste, I LOVE every word she writes - and my only complaint is that she doesn't publish more. Lives of the Saints came out in 1985 - I think her fourth novel came out in 2003 or 4? I guess when you write it down like that it's not so long - but it feels that way! Again, in Sportsman's Paradise, Lemann uses the same almost repetitive style ... she keeps coming back to the same themes, and the same images (the white swans on the green pond, etc.) Images like that have meaning for her. Painful bittersweet yearning again is the main theme. The majority of the characters are Southerners (all from New Orleans - just like in Lives of the Saints) transplanted to New York. Some work in New York (like our lead) - others are up visiting. In the summers, this one group of Southerners rents what is basically a compound on the end of Long Island - all of these different cottages - and the men take the ferry into work in Manhattan, and the women stay home with all of the children (the children and their antics, and pyromania, and sweetness of character make up a huge part of the book: Lemann writes children very well). It is summer. Baseball season. Everyone is obsessed.

The lead character is a woman named Storey Collier. She is a cousin to the famous Claude Collier in Lives of the Saints. She has moved to New York because of the suggestion of a bigwig she met on the Gulf Coast - a certain Mr. Underwood - who is an absolutely HILARIOUS character. He acts like a "big cheese". He IS a big cheese. He is strangely emotional. He begins to shout at you for no reason. But he doesn't shout angry things, he shouts things like, "YOU ARE SUCH A WONDERFUL PERSON, GODDAMMIT." He gets her a job at a New York newspaper. He thinks she can go far. She lives in what sounds like Spanish Harlem - with salsa playing outside her window, etc. An "old flame" of hers also works at the paper - his name is Hobby Fox (love her names). He was a professional baseball player - and now is a sportswriter. He is laconic. He pretends to be a misanthrope. Yet Storey sees in him the goodness of the ages. He is not self-pitying, even though his career in baseball was short. Perhaps as a way to be closer to Hobby (she is obviously obsessed with him - they have some sort of "past" although it takes the whole book to figure out just what exactly happened between these two) - she becomes absolutely obsessed with baseball. She lies in bed listening to her transistor radio. She loses sleep on trade nights. She can't stand it. She is in it for the drama. You can tell she loves the sport as well, but she's in it for the psychological truths that baseball reveals. So you can imagine how much I love this book. The way she writes about sports nuts is so right on that it makes me laugh out loud. And also the downright MANIC tragedies that occur - people choking back tears in press conferences, all of the tabloid dramas - everyone in professional sports seems to be on the verge of some kind of mental breakdown. Storey loves it all.

She spends her weekends out on Long Island, in the compound of Southerners - all of whom are wacky, insane, and memorable. There's Margaret, a transplanted Southern belle, who wears leopard-skin bikinis and gets into all kinds of trouble. She has boating parties and gets into massive boating accidents and the Coast Guard has to be called. She adopts broken-down black jazz singers and let them stay in her house. There's the family of 6 children - the father of which seems baffled and dominated by his own life. The wife sits on the porch of their cottage, smoking cigarettes, trying to unwind. There's a lecherous guy named Cedric who shows up, and leers at all the women, and refuses to go home when it's time. Everyone dreads Cedric showing up. And Mr. Underwood (who also has a cottage out there) is the feared and beloved "star" - everyone wonders when he will show up, and everyone wonders what kind of things he will shout at them - "Is Mr. Underwood coming today?" "Mr. Underwood is coming today!" Hobby Fox also takes a cottage out there - so there is a convergence of lunatic comedy every weekend ... and Storey, with her vague streak of melancholy and nostalgia, tries to bear up under it all. She watches Hobby from afar. She plays with the children (you just love those kids). She gapes at Margaret and all of her debacles. She obsesses about baseball.

Anyway, here's an excerpt.

The book makes me laugh out loud. And Lemann, with her strangely repetitive style, almost incantatory, weaves a spell over me. She really does. I'd follow her anywhere. Her last book came out 5 years ago! I'm dying!!

The irony in this book is that Storey (as you will see below) loves to obsess about what is underneath everything. She looks around and see mental crackups everywhere, and obsesses over what it all means. And her love, Hobby Fox, is laconic, dry, and appears to want everyone to think he is a misanthrope. He gently makes fun of her tortured theories about everyone's nervous breakdowns ... and she observes that there is always more to Hobby Fox than meets the eye. But they had a past. They cannot be together now. And so there is a strange yearning between them - a kindness - and all of that thwarted feeling gets poured into baseball.

EXCERPT FROM Sportsman's Paradise by Nancy Lemann


Hobby always has the radio tuned in to baseball games, in a low masculine drone, redolent of Yankeefied spring and summer afternoons. Mr. Underwood too has a love of baseball and also keeps the games on in the office at night if he works late. Due to these influences I find that I myself am developing a growing obsession with baseball and the need to chronicle the progress of the New York team that I follow. Hobby taught me a lot about it. He doesn't follow his old team, in Atlanta. He follow the New York team, while here. His father loved the St. Louis Cardinals, because in his day, they were the team of the South. They were an all-black team who were all extremely cultivated and they had the most beloved manager in baseball. The manager of the New York team is completely listless. The personality of the New York team mystifies me. They have a certain elegance, I think because they are so stoic. If they get a home run or something good they try not to smile or act excited. If someone gets a home run, he comes out of the dugout and gives a curtain call - tipping his hat to the crowd - seeing rather quaint or courtly - and they only do this in New York, I'm told - but maintaining a gruff though courtly exterior. Equally if they lose or get slaughtered they betray no emotion other than seeming mildly dejected. It results in a certain elegance because the other teams are more volatile and make obnoxious displays at every sign of advancement.

Also the New York team is riddled with problems. If you like problems, you've come to the right place, with the New York team. Each player has a dazzling array of problems. Drug problems, drug rehabilitation, alcohol detox, injuries, marital problems, personality problems, nervous breakdowns, and psychological problems, also confidence problems.

Yet at the same time as they are afflicted with a ceaseless array of problems, it is the national pastime, plain American fun, heartwarming, wholesome, one thing that draws everyone together, the very young and the very old, and has an innocence, a certain basic innocence, good for the children, etc., a chance to go forth with the heroes, a good thing for the boys.

The other thing I like about the New York team is that they are underdogs. I love that. I would never root for the favorite. I like how they are always struggling, getting slaughtered twice in one night in double-headers, being exhausted in rain delays or playing extra innings until two in the morning, losing. Adversity becomes them, as adversity can be becoming if its object has character. There is poignance in their struggle. Plus, then if they suddenly win, it is all the more affecting. The New York team always loses and is stoic, elegant, dejected. But to the stars through adversity.


Then if they suddenly win I am suffused with a sense of well-being, and if they lose I feel doleful and listless. I have a ceaseless need to listen to every single game and keep up with everyone's problems. But my love for baseball is inexplicable - never before did I ever take the slightest interest in sports. Never was there one subject so boring to me as sports.

Now I even listen to the sports talk shows in the middle of the afternoon on the radio hosted by falling New York lunatics who remind me of Mr. Underwood, who sound off in deep Bronx and Queens accents about what burns them up. "I've had it," they passionately avow, referring to sports figures who irritate them or contracts negotiated that are too expensive. Often they slip into dreamy recollections of ball players from the thirties on the Yankees team or Brooklyn Dodgers, distracted by their memories, exhibiting a marked preference for the older teams of the American League, and if someone calls them up to ask a question about upstarts in the National League they say, "I've had it", etc. Sometimes they go berserk on the show and start insulting the callers and have complete breakdowns, ending up screaming out to the caller, "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" and then disconnect the phone line in a fury. "You're a schmuck. You're crazy. You're giving me a nervous breakdown. Shut up!" etc. Once I heard a nut call up who was equally as much of a lunatic as the announcer. The nut launched into a rambling unconnected story about a glamour girl who kissed him at a baseball game. Then he started swearing. "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain," said the announcer solemnly to the nut. "That is where I draw the line." It's a funny place to suddenly draw the line, considering that he spends the rest of the time raving like some insane maniac. Then the nut started sounding off about what burned him up in sports and the announcer lost his cool again and started screaming. "You need a brain transplant. You're driving me crazy. Shut up!" etc. etc. And these nuts got at it forty-eight hours a day. They spend forty-eight hours a day analyzing these subjects on the radio. Sports, baseball, contracts, they analyze it for forty-eight hours a day. I turn on the radio at two in the morning and there they are, talking in strange voices like they're mentally unbalanced, analyzing everything. "New York did not play Philadelphia tonight," the announcer will be saying in a ghostly strangled voice. "Tidewater played Philadelphia tonight. A minor-league team played Philadelphia tonight. Schmucks!" he screams in his New York parlance. This analysis had to do with one night when a lot of people on the New York team had injuries and they had to call up a lot of rookies from their farm team. I know about these things now. Suddenly I'm a sports fanatic, listening to sports talk shows twenty-four hours a day.

"Cincinnati is not going to make it. Cincinnati is through. Finished. It's over for Cincinnati!" Screaming. Long silences. Tortured strangled voices. Here they were referring to the pennant race, and who would be in the World Series.

In New York they had a romance with failure - uncharacteristic of the North. It began in the old days, at the Polo Grounds, with a series of eccentrics as managers, and a ball club that could never win.

Everyone was in tortures over it. That's what kills me about baseball, how everyone is in tortures over it as if it were the most serious thing that could ever be. Like the nuts who call up the sports channel on the radio all day to analyze everything. In the articles in the Tribune the Commissioner of Baseball would always have all these tortured quotes about integrity and self-delusions in long, tortured ponderings, when it is only about baseball. I mean you'd think they were talking about World War II. Like the most grave subject. The Baseball Commissioner agonizing over principles, integrity, abstractions as if he were Aristotle, not the Baseball Commissioner.

What I prefer is the team that had the romance with failure. They used to be "arrogant" and "cocky" and make obnoxious displays at every sign of advancement just like everyone else, and everyone hated them for it because they were so arrogant and cocky. Then the manager told them not to gloat or make such displays so now they all act like laconic Southern gentlemen. I personally like them better that way. But of course it's not a New York type of attitude and the New Yorkers hate them that way. They have articles in the newspapers interviewing the players about how they feel about this and their resultant tortured ponderings - like the Baseball Commissioner agonizing over sporting matters - as they ponder their broken dreams or fond hopes or failures, in sports.


Mr. Underwood had a box at the baseball games with other big cheeses, the Governor, millionaire racetrack owners, retired bandleaders, etc. Actually the retired bandleader in his entourage was a poignant figure, somehow out of place, being Southern. He could care less about baseball. He was used to seedy dives on Bourbon Street. Baseball just wasn't his thing. It was written on his face, in his countenance, everything about him did not say Baseball. Being from Bourbon Street, New Orleans, I can certainly understand why the Southern bandleader did not feel an affinity for baseball, as I never did before either until I realized how it has its dark side, or generally from spending five years in New York. But certainly on Bourbon Street the idea of baseball is but a remote image of a boy in the 1920s with a baseball cap in the sweet afternoon sun or sterling Northern twilight in some halcyon idea of America, from which New Orleans is indescribably remote. But Mr. Underwood loved it all - retired sports figures, troubled prizefighters, washed-up Southern bandleaders - in his box of big cheeses at the game.


Hobby had a more ambivalent attitude, having played in the Major Leagues himself, and there were times when I got the feeling that he had left his heart there. Being thirty-six and out of practice I doubt he could go back. Though I hear of players who are forty-two and forty-three, such as relief pitchers. I guess he did not play long enough or make enough of an impression to come back in a career in baseball as a coach or manager. He listened to the games but did not often speak of his past in it. Also he had been a newspaperman now for too many years to think of much else. But once I saw in his room in Orient the Louisville Slugger that he used in Atlanta, for it was inscribed with the team and had his name burned onto it. He kept it with him, then. Some reminder of an innocence, which baseball surely represents, although it certainly has its dark side, so it seems to me at least. As every time I ask him about one of the players he always launches into a long story about how the fellow was a drug addict, or on trial, or just got out of alcohol detox or jail. I had no idea that baseball had such a dark side, or was so riddled with problems, but, of course, that's what I like about it.

He was telling me about a pitcher who thought it was his day off and took LSD. He happened to hear on the radio that his team was playing that night in Chicago - which he had forgotten. So he hopped on a plane to Chicago tripping on LSD and pitched a no-hitter.

Later he was on trial and told the judge that when you're on LSD in a ball game, it makes the ball look like a grapefruit when it's coming at you so it's easier to hit.

Also Hobby told me that on his team in Atlanta it was one of the first years that they had a sports psychiatrist for the ball club. He went crazy at the end of the season.

The TV announcers discuss these problems during their ceaseless banter at the game even though they are so All-American it seems they wouldn't want to admit it, and were all players themselves before they became announcers. The other night New York was playing Philadelphia and the announcers were discussing the pitcher for Philadelphia before the game. One of the announcers is a kindly old man who seems at times virtually senile and can't seem to keep track of what is going on. You'd think that maybe baseball in his day had less problems to it, at least in terms of psychiatry. But they were talking about the pitcher and he said, "Frank is back on the mound right now but it seems last year he had some psychological problems," looking out at ten million viewers on TV. Then he chuckled fondly, after saying the word "psychological problems," shaking his head in bemusement, but at the same time with concern, and then got a sort of rueful, whimsical smile, looking at the other announcer to elaborate.

"I was talking to him and he explained, 'I was giving myself a nervous breakdown.' Ha ha. He went to Harvard but he just got out of alcohol detox. He's a great pitcher, Bob. The only question is, can he keep out of hootch."

Keep out of the hootch - I'm not sure whether that means stay out of the looney bin - or whether it means stay off the sauce.

Harvard, alcohol detox, baseball, and psychological problems - you have to admit that's a pretty weird mix-up.

There was a rain delay and they called in a sort of sports weatherman. He was a cornball. The announcers are always sentimental and enthusiastic.

"What about the weather, Jim? Do you think we'll play?"

"I know we will, Bob. In about forty-five minutes, you'll see this storm clear up and they will start the ball game."

"How can you be so sure?"

"This is my life, Bob. I'm obsessed with the weather. I love it. It's my life."

Then the announcers chuckle and shake their heads fondly in bemusement.

On certain Fridays since this April Hobby had been taking me to the baseball games, when he could get away from the office.

Friday night we went to a double-header. The stadium announcer keeps droning on throughout the game on a loudspeaker in a cheerful voice, "Alcoholic beverages ... Anti-social behavior ... People drinking ... Taking drugs ..." admonishing potential abusers of these vices. There are a lot of police. Sometimes horrifying brawls break out in the stands. "Here comes trouble," said a fan when a weirdo with a menacing expression came up to take his seat and the weirdo heard him and got mad. "Shut up! Who are you calling trouble, schmuck, shut up. Shut up!" etc. As everyone knows, the attitude of the New York fans is "What have you done for me lately?" Meaning if the team is losing the fans are filled with loathing and disgust - this is why they call the radio talk shows at two in the morning to ceaselessly analyze all the problems and complain about how disgusted they are and go berserk etc. The New York stadium is like a latent catastrophe waiting to happen. But it never really does, in baseball. An innocence is inexorably attached to the game no matter how many people go crazy or how many drug problems or etc. arise.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 8, 2008

The Books: "Lives of the Saints" - excerpt 2 (Nancy Lemann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann

livesofsaints.jpgI can't just do one excerpt of this book (first one here) - even though it's not even 150 pages long. I just love every page. I love every word. It's funny, whimsical, nostalgic, heartfelt, silly ... It's like a silly sweet Southern girl. You can't get enough. Nancy Lemann does not hold back when it comes to nostalgia - a theme that is intense for her. All of her books have to do with yearning - sometimes the yearning is vague (there's a great line in The Fiery Pantheon - her third book: "She had a nostalgia for a life she had never lived.") - sometimes the yearning is specific and is about one specific person ... but that yearning is what drives her on as an artist, obviously. Nostalgia. Sometimes you can wallow in nostalgia. Lemann does. Louise, the lead of Lives of the Saints has been away from her home, New Orleans, for 4 years while she went to college in the north. But now she is back. Having gone away, her appreciation of her home town is even more acute. She loves it so much that it almost hurts her - you can tell in how Lemann writes about New Orleans. But there's a deeper level to this nostalgia thing. It's almost like Lemann writes from the point of view that life is short, so so so short - even as we speak, right now, it's slipping away ... and if you are conscious of that, then how on earth do you bear it? Not the pain of it ... but the beauty of it? How can you live like that? 100% aware of the beauty of life? Can anyone manage it? Louise is in love with Claude Collier, a kind of dissipated goofball she has known for years. They are friends. Their romance doesn't begin until halfway through the book - but you can tell (from the first excerpt) her regard for him, despite all of his problems. The way Lemann writes about Claude Collier - he is just one of those indelible fictional characters. I remember him. He is a "type" - he LIVES.

The following excerpt comes early on, after the debached bacchanalian wedding that opens the book. It is the next morning. Everyone in the town appears to have to recover from the drinking binge the night before. Claude Collier comes over to Louise's apartment for breakfast.

They have known one another for years, since they were kids. But now they are adults (albeit young adults) - and Louise is the type of person who notices everything. Nothing skips past her.

I just think Lemann is SUCH a funny writer. I love writers who can make me cry - but writers who can make me laugh capture my heart forever. And watch how Lemann does both here ... we get the goofiness of Claude Collier, and it's so so specific - but then we also get the yearning, the nostalgia, of Louise, her regard for him, her love for him, will never fulfill her ... because life is like that. Especially if you are the kind of person who notices everything. Life becomes acutely clear, almost unbearable.

Wonderful stuff. Oh, and for me - the section below about "dark magic" is the most profound of the book. It seriously helped me put my life in Chicago into perspective - when everything had changed, upheaval abounded - and I had met M., who was distinctly insane in many ways - and yet somehow we were drawn to each other. Repeatedly. For many many years. What was that? How could it be? M. was not an appropriate mate for me.... like, we wouldn't become respectable or anything like that, he wouldn't be my boyfriend ... but at that time, in that place, he had the world's dark magic for me. Dark magic is not necessarily bad or malevolent. In my particular case, it was the opposite. It was healing. M. was a lunatic, a bartender, a brilliant comedian, a mess in many ways - how could hanging out with him be healing? Well, it was ... and since I had read Lives of the Saints, I thought: It's that world's dark magic Lemann was talking about. M. has the world's dark magic.

EXCERPT FROM Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann

The day after the wedding Claude came to my apartment. I was fixing breakfast - Carnation Instant Breakfast. He had on khaki pants several sizes too large and an overstarched blue-and-white striped shirt, the kind that looks like it came from one's father, or brothers in the dim, more endearing past. But his gentle fading blue eyes had the look of someone who is not afraid - and with his posture straighter than an arrow, Claude had that slightly stern bearing he got from his father.

He politely watched me while I read the newspaper, which he'd brought. He did not speak. He had an air of observant logic, just watching me read.

"My eyes are killing me," I said. "I read like a fiend."

"Well, read like an angel," he said mildly, not taking his eyes off my face. "You're too interested in glamour," he said suddenly. "You socialize too much. You go out too much. You stay out too late. You drink too much. You should just be a simple, regular person. You should go to bed at eleven every night. You should just come home from work and cook, do the dishes, and just be a regular person. You shouldn't eat Carnation Instant Breakfast."

I received these stunning recommendations in silence. Then I said, "You're the one who needs that advice."

"No, no, I'm just a regular, normal guy. Who leads a regular life."

"Oh, God."

"It's youth - it's just youth," he said, looking at me, mild and unintelligible.

"What is?"

"Your behavior."

"What behavior?"

"You're so young!" he raved. "You're so innocent," he said. "How have you really been? I haven't really known, these past few years, when you were away at school. I heard you had a breakdown," he added in a kind voice, solicitous but cheerful, as though it interested him especially. "Breakdowns?" he said. "Tell me about your breakdowns. That's what we're all about down here," he said. "Breakdowns."

He had dazzling blue eyes, which looked at me with that benevolence, or seemed to look down through many years, as though he had the wisdom of the old.

Breakdowns. That was Claude's theme.

"No, no, I haven't had a breakdown," I said. "But what about you?" I said. "I thought I heard you had to go to the hospital. I heard you stopped drinking there, a year ago. I mean, speaking of breakdowns. And what's this about you moving to New York?" I said.

"How's that?"

"You know, when Mr. Legendre said. When he said he heard you were planning to move to New York."

"Planning to move to New York. Not quite, dear. My brother needs me here. I have to look after him. I have to look after you. I have to look after things here. Maybe some time," Claude said.

"What was going on between you and Mary Grace at the wedding?" I said.

"How's that?"

"Before they left, when she said those things when she was drunk. You know."

But it was useless to think that he would tell me her secrets if they were not meant for me.

"What is it about Mary Grace?" I said. "I mean, what is she really, really like?"

"What is she really, really like?" Claude said. "Well, let me see now. What is she really, really like. That's a hard one." He shook his head. He gestured with his hand, as though trying to find the word. "Mary Grace --" He stopped again. "She was the wildest thing that existed," he concluded, and in the way he shook his head and gestured with his hand, I could tell that he had loved her once.

***

Claude reached into his pocket absently and handed me a pack of gum. It was a hot day. I got up and started scrambling eggs. He was standing a few feet away from me, tall and stark, looking at me through narrowed eyes, with a kind of stern, inscrutable affection.

"Are you by any chance scrambling eggs?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"You mean, you're just standing there scrambling eggs?"

"Yes. What is it, some kind of miracle?"

"What are you going to do next?" he asked as though it were intriguing.

"Take them out and put them on a plate. Do you want some?"

"Oh, no - but I mean, you, just scrambling eggs in the middle of the day, and here we are at your apartment, and everything is just normal, right?"

"Of course. It's normal. What do you mean?"

"I mean, you, just standing at the stove scrambling eggs, compared to what you will be doing two minutes from now, and what you feel like and what does it all mean."

He was shaking his head, bemused, at my scrambling-eggs capacity. Then he got up to go out on the gallery - except he tripped over a chair and tore his khaki pants from the ankle to the knee. Then his glass of gin and tonic slipped out of his hand and fell over the balcony and down to the bricks.

I just stood there at the stove, watching his catastrophes. These were Claude's normal catastrophes. Claude was accident-prone. He always had catastrophes. He also gave new meaning to the word absent-minded. Whenever he left on trips on airplanes, he would go off with other people's house keys and car keys in his pocket, causing huge Comedies of Error.

***

He was twenty-seven years old and currently was not working and was living off income from the invention, from betting at the racetrack, and from some investments he inherited, and everyone was always asking him what he was doing, to which he would answer, smiling brilliantly, "Oh, not too much," and start chewing a straw or tearing napkins into shreds.

***

I don't respect idleness in a man, of course. I don't just look up to someone who can get by without working. I respect a man who has accomplishments, and must therefore have worked hard to get them. A man should have a profession.

Claude was just Going Through A Phase. He just had not Found Himself yet.

St. Augustine had spent his youth in vice and dissipation, and look how he turned out.

But the idler's lot is a sad one, and this I do not deny.

***

There's a famous line in a story where there is a married couple and it is observed about them that she had none of the world's dark magic for him, but he couldn't live without her for six consecutive hours. My feeling for Claude was like the reverse: I could live without his presence - as I had just done, when I was away at college - for a whole duration of years between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. But he had the world's dark magic.

I don't expect him to be near, I mean. He can probably live without me for six consecutive hours. It would not matter to me if I only saw him three times in five years - and it would still be with the understanding that if there are people like that in the world, then there is honor, for here was a fellow whom you could depend on to be kind as a steadfast, incorruptible rule.

***

I only went to the racetrack with Claude once. We drove by the Quarter on Esplanade, everything green and curious in its tropical way, lush in the humidity, with steam rising up from the pavement in mists because of the heat. It did not seem like a normal American district; it never does, passing the Fifth African Baptist Church with the Gospel Soul Children practicing, the Crescent City Plantation Steak House with neon and white tile and green curtains in the private rooms, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club,, Majestic Mortuary with neon lights and jazz, Seafood City where the employees came to work in tuxedos, and then the racetrack bar, Comeaux's, Grits Comeaux, Prop., who had a dead mummy hanging from the ceiling.

We only saw three races, and it was so boring and decadent that I fell asleep from psychological pressure. It rained on and off. Claude won eighty dollars on a three-dollar bet in the Exacta. He stood in the stands in his trench coat, chewing a pencil, squinting, making notes on the forms. But he looked like such an old-fashioned character, in his trench coat - tall and dark-haired - like a husband.

I tried to ask him about what he was doing. But he would not talk about himself. He was always reluctant to talk about himself. He did not have one ounce of vanity - the worst of the vices, worse than any of his, in my opinion.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

February 7, 2008

The Books: "Lives of the Saints" (Nancy Lemann)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann

livesofsaints.jpgI almost get nervous when I come to a book on my shelf that I love beyond measure. I call them my "heart's books". There are only a couple - and each time they come up next on the shelf, I feel a bit of anxiety as to how to talk about it, how to even BEGIN. I experienced that with Possession, with Cat's Eye - with the Emily books ... and I definitely feel it now. Nancy Lemann has written four novels, and I have read them all - more times than I can count. Lives of the Saints is her first novel. I remember where I bought it - at a little bookshop over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Fran ... it's such a light-hearted comedic novel - at times it makes me laugh out loud ... and the time when I bought it was one of the darkest in my whole life. It's a slim novel, not even 150 pages long - and I read it, and it was one of those moments - when a book helps you leap-frog to the next stage in your life. I was gloomy, depressed, and hopeless. I was 23 years old. I moved to Chicago, and almost immediately began to have a wacky time of it. Beating men off with a stick, taking none of it seriously, meeting M. - a man whom I referred to, in my journal, as "Claude Collier" - the main love interest of Lives of the Saints, a character I absolutely ADORE. He's one of those fictional characters I would LOVE to meet. Lemann's language is very singular, very much her own - she writes in an old-school way, capitalizing certain words - like Society, or Chaos, or Gaffe ... And the cumulative effect of such a style is so so funny. You HEAR the voice of the narrator, Louise - a young disenchanted kind of aimless paralegal, who spends her nights cavorting with Claude Collier. It's a funny funny book. I made Mitchell read it, when he came to live in Chicago. I remember lying in bed (Mitchell and I shared a single bed - A SINGLE BED - for 8 months. What??) - and Mitchell was sitting on the couch, reading Lives of the Saints. First of all, I remember him bursting into laughter at certain points, and then reading the passage out to me. I loved re-living the book through him. And then, halfway through the book, something happens - something horrible. Nothing has prepared you for it. The tone of the book is light and lunatic, and suddenly: life intervenes in the worst way. I still don't think Mitchell has forgiven me for not warning him. I remember he called me at work, totally upset - and berated me. "How could you not tell me??" The book is wonderful. It's poetic - Lemann's writing has a stamp all her own ... my only complaint about her is that she doesn't write enough. But I love love love the books she has done so far. She uses repetition - she comes back to the same themes and words over and over again, so the books almost become incantatory. I love how she does that.

Lives of the Saints takes place in New Orleans - a town that Lemann obviously loves dearly. She is damn near rhapsodic about New Orleans. Louise Brown grew up in New Orleans, and went to college at Brown. She had an odd experience being among the Yankees - "not one of whom ever apologized to me about the war". After college - where she studied English literature - she returns home. She has no prospects. She gets a job in a local law firm (and the staff of lawyers are seriously some of the funniest characters I have ever encountered in literature) - she hates her job - and at a big society wedding, she runs into an old friend - Claude Collier. She obviously loves him. They begin to hang out. Claude Collier is a wreck. A dissipated wreck. But with an old-world type of elegance. He wears seersucker suits. He drinks too much. He is jolly. Everyone loves him. He is always getting into scrapes. He has an INSANE family (his mother is also one of the funniest characters I have ever met - harassed, convinced that her life is worse than everyone else's). Louise and Claude have a romance, yes. But Claude is in trouble. He has gotten involved with winos and race-track habitues. Louise watches as everything goes to shit. Nothing really happens - this is not a book about its plot. It's a book about mood, and atmosphere. Late nights in jazz clubs, and the funny conversations you have with your friends. This book works on me like a charm. It's "magic".

When I write, I have to be careful to not imitate her. Her style has had such an impact on me that I find myself appropriating stuff without really realizing it. I have to go back and edit, sometimes ... slashing out the "Lemann-speak". But it's become a part of who I am.

I'm going to do a couple of excerpts, because I just can't help myself. I am going to start with the opening of the book, a section I know almost by heart.

I love this woman's writing. Check her out, if you haven't already. She's totally a delight.

This is how the book starts.

EXCERPT FROM Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann

All in all, Henry Laines' wedding was one of the worst events in my experience, tragic in society. Everyone that I have ever known was there, plus a party of out-of-towners whose broad Memphis and Charleston accents shocked me, although we were the same, Americans far from the hub of the universe along the East Coast.

Everyone had breakdowns at this wedding. Including the bride and groom. Especially the bride and groom. Crowded parties like at the Stewarts' often can be known to Bring On Breakdowns. Especially if the Stewarts are the hosts.

I went into this wedding armed with a philosophical acquiescence I had learned from the poets, but I found in society their principles did not hold weight. Everyone was too drunk. Everyone was unglued.

It used to mean so much that the poets were a friend to man in other woe than ours, afar from the sphere of our sorrow - but my quotations are confused. I don't know them anymore. Henry Laines would remember them. He knew all about it. Henry Laines was much admired by some, a kind of local hero. By profession, he was a starving artist, and by temperament, a bachelor. By that I mean that his icebox always held just one item at a time, something rancid, like an old head of broccoli residing in the freezer, so that he could try to save it.

I couldn't talk to him anymore. I could only listen. Then he would look at me as though I had just fallen out of a tree. All those people, all those catastrophes, not to mention breakdowns, at the wedding, made me lose the words of the poets. It was a Very Long Party.

The orchestra was playing old-time jazz, scratchy and remote, with people screaming in the background, and screams of laughter. The party of out-of-towners from Charleston was collected in a corner of the dance floor, which otherwise was not crowded, as most people were out in the garden and in other anterooms inside, in separate, tired, exhausted groups.

Brows were being mopped with white handkerchiefs, among white summer suits and seersucker suits, against a profusion of green in the Stewarts' garden. Everything was green and sumptuous and still, with green-and-white striped tents set up and the principals wearing white tie and tails. There were deck chairs set up in the garden, with people reeling around among them. It was stiflingly hot. Elderly gentlemen in advanced stages of disrepair were sitting in a row of deck chairs at the far side of the garden, all in their white summer suits.

The wedding was at three, and the reception started shortly after, but showed no signs of abating, though it was almost ten.

Henry Laines was screaming my name at the top of his lungs on the dance floor, not unlike the way he used to scream for Mary Grace, his bride, in the garden of his house at night. No one thought it was unusual that Henry Laines should be screaming my name instead of hers at his wedding reception on the dance floor, because everyone was too drunk to care. That is what it is like at parties where everyone is too drunk.

It was like slow motion when Henry Laines began to scream my name; a certain hush came over the dance floor, and a few people, particularly Claude Collier, gave Henry Laines a funny, somewhat pitying look from across the room. I noticed that. Claude Collier stood with his hands in his pockets, calmly contemplating the scene. His brow was furrowed, and he was squinting slightly. He was chewing a straw.

The rest of the dance floor was populated by the party of out-of-towners from Charleston, who threw some inquiring looks in Henry's direction and then lapsed back into their oblivion.

"I think Henry is falling apart," Claude Collier said to me.

Henry Laines had already had two breakdowns since the ceremony.

"It's been a long day. He's tired. He's falling apart," said Claude mildly in a calm tone, slightly deadpan. Then Claude Collier looked at me intently. Claude Collier made the world seem kind.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

February 6, 2008

The Books: "Mystic River" (Dennis Lehane)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

16557549.JPGThere are many good books - there are many (although fewer) GREAT books - and there are only a handful of what I call "perfect" books. I can think of many GREAT books that are not "perfect". Doesn't take away from their greatness - as a matter of fact their blatant imperfections are part of their greatness, as far as I'm concerned. But a perfect book is rare, indeed. Mystic River is, in my estimation, a PERFECT book. It's not just the plot, and the way it flows, and moves on inevitably to its horrible conclusion - it's not just the characters, who are uniformly well-drawn, these people are alive - it's not the larger themes of redemption, suffering, and ambition - although those are rock-solid ... it's also the WRITING itself. My God, is Lehane good. He's a hugely popular writer - my dad loves him, and while Lehane has obviously had a fine writing career, Mystic River feels different. He's made a leap in his talent and the way it expresses itself. He's gone to another level. Read his other books, they're fine, read Mystic River, and it's like night and day.

Because the plot is really what people talk about when they talk about Mystic River, the elegance of his prose might go unnoticed.

Here is the first paragraph of the book. This is what I mean by "perfect":

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at the Coleman Candy plant and carried the stench of warm chocolate back home with them. It became a permanent character of their clothes, the beds they slept in, the vinyl backs of their car seats. Sean's kitchen smelled like a Fudgsicle, his bathroom like a Coleman Chew-Chew bar. By the time they were eleven, Sean and Jimmy had developed a hatred of sweets so total that they took their coffee black for the rest of their lives and never ate dessert.

That is MY kind of writing. Spare somehow, but also detailed and evocative. The men they will become already haunts the two young boys, it's in the writing. It's also noticeable that Dave Boyle is NOT included in the first paragraph, which I am sure is deliberate. And perfect. It has such detail - sensory detail ... I just think Lehane is a commanding writer, and a paragraph like that commands your attention. It is not a description - it feels like it's a whole WORLD being shown to you.

The whole book is full of writing like that.

And it is also is one of a handful of books that made me dissolve in tears at the very last paragraph. What a last paragraph. Terrible. But not bleak. The hope that peace will come in the next life. Not this life, certainly, it's far too late for that, but in the next.

I'm not going to post any of the more obvious excerpts (although the bit about the boys looking in the back of the car, and noticing it's dirty is magnificent) - but post an excerpt having to do with Annabeth, the wife of Jimmy, the ex-con. Too bad Laura Linney played her in the film. That wasn't right at ALL. You know who would have been spectacular? And I'm not just saying that cause she's my cousin. But Kerry O'Malley would be so so awesome as Annabeth. She would have knocked that part out of the park.

A woman who is not silly or warm in any way - and yet not uptight or prissy. She's all about family and tribe - but she's not innately hostile to outsiders. She also is the kind of women that men love. She's probably a tiger in the sack. She exudes sexual confidence, yet it is contained, fiercely, in monogamy and marriage. But she also inspires fear in men. Maybe they want to dissemble when they're around her, hide a bit ... they desperately need her approval, they wish she would be more WARM. Nope. Annabeth don't play that game. She respects strength. But she's not ever a ball-breaker. She makes men want to be honest. She thinks dishonesty and smallness is unforgivable. Or no - not unforgivable. It's just that she would grow bored with someone who was consistently small and petty, who refused to be honest not only with her but with himself. She wouldn't give a person like that the time of day. You gonna throw polite bullshit at me when I ask you a direct open question? You bore me. Next. You wouldn't get a second chance with Annabeth. She sizes you up, makes her assessment, and that'll be that. And she'll be right. So don't try to lie to her.

People could find that off-putting, scary. Watch how she deals with Sean in this scene! Watch how she talks to him, and how she sees. Not everybody can look at a near-stranger and see what is really going on with that person, and also want to talk about that subtext. Small talk is not in Annabeth's DNA.

And then, of course, there's Annabeth's Lady Macbeth moment at the end of the book (which completely did not work in the film, didn't work at all) but in the book it all makes sense. A terrible kind of sense.)

Listen to this dialogue here. It's damn good.

Sean, the cop, sits on the porch with Annabeth - wife of Jimmy, his childhood friend. He has moved away from the old' hood - so he doesn't really know Annabeth that well. He sits there, and this is his first real un-official encounter with her. She is formidable - but in a very specific Boston-type way - hard to explain. But she is a Boston woman, through and through. Yup. Lehane gets it so right.

If you haven't read Mystic River, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

EXCERPT FROM Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Sean sat on the back porch with Annabeth Marcus as she took tiny sips from a glass of white wine and smoked her cigarettes no more than halfway before she'd extinguish them, her face lit by the exposed bulb above them. It was a strong face, never pretty probably, but always striking. She was not unused to being stared at, Sean guessed, and yet she was probably oblivious as to way she was worth the trouble. She reminded Sean a bit of Jimmy's mother but without the air of resignation and defeat, and she reminded Sean of his own mother in her complete and effortless self-possession, reminded him of Jimmy, actually, in that way, as well. He could see Annabeth Marcus as being a fun woman, but never a frivolous one.

"So," she said to Sean as he lit a cigarette for her, "what are you doing with your evening after you're released from comforting me."

"I'm not-"

She waved it away. "I appreicate it. So what're you doing?"

"Going to see my mother."

"Really?"

He nodded. "It's her birthday. Go celebrate it with her and the old man."

"Uh-huh," she said. "And how long have you been divorced?"

"It shows?"

"You wear it like a suit."

"Ah. Separated, actually, for a bit over a year."

"She live here?"

"Not anymore. She travels."

"You said that with acid. 'Travels'."

"Did I?" He shrugged.

She held up a hand. "I hate to keep doing this to you - getting my mind off Katie at your expense. So you don't have to answer any of my questions. I'm just nosy, and you're an interesting guy."

He smiled. "No, I'm not. I'm actually very boring, Mrs. Marcus. You take away my job, and I disappear."

"Annabeth," she said. "Call me that, would you?"

"Sure."

"I find it hard to believe, Trooper Devine, that you're boring. You know what's odd, though?"

"What's that?"

She turned in her chair and looked at him. "You don't strike me as the kind of guy who'd give someone phantom tickets."

"Why's that?"

"It seems childish," she said. "You don't seem like a childish man."

Sean shrugged. In his experience, everyone was childish at one time or another. It's what you reverted to, particularly when the shit piled up.

In more than a year, he'd never spoken to anyone about Lauren - not his parents, his few stray friends, not even the police psychologist the commander had made a brief and pointed mention of once Lauren's moving out had become common knowledge around the barracks. But here was Annabeth, a stranger who'd suffered a loss, and he could feel her probing for his loss, needing to see it or share it or something along those lines, needing to know, Sean figured, that she wasn't being singled out.

"My wife's a stage manager," he said quietly. "For road shows, you know? Lord of the Dance toured the country last year - my wife stage-managed. That sort of thing. She's doing one now - Annie Get Your Gun, maybe. I'm not sure, to tell you the truth. Whatever they're recycling this year. We were a weird couple. I mean, our jobs, right, how further apart can you get?"

"But you loved her," Annabeth said.

He nodded. "Yeah. Still do." He took a breath, leaning back in his chair and sucking it down. "So the guy I gave the tickets to, he was ..." Sean's mouth went dry and he shook his head, had the sudden urge to just get the hell off this porch and out of this house.

"He was a rival?" Annabeth said, her voice delicate.

Sean took a cigarette from the pack and lit one, nodding. "That's a nice word for it. Yeah, we'll say that. A rival. And my wife and I, we were going through some shit for a while. Neither of us was around much, and so on. And this, uh, rival - he moved in on her."

"And you reacted badly," Annabeth said. A statement, not a question.

Sean rolled his eyes in her direction. "You know anyone who reacts well?"

Annabeth gave him a hard look, one that seemed to suggest that sarcasm was below him, or maybe just something she wasn't a fan of in general.

"You still love her, though."

"Sure. Hell, I think she still loves me." He stubbed out his cigarette. "She calls me all the time. Calls me and doesn't talk."

"Wait, she --"

"I know," he said.

"-- calls you up and doesn't say a word?"

"Yup. Been going on for about eight months now."

Annabeth laughed. "No offense, but that's the weirdest thing I've heard in a while."

"No argument." He watched a fly dart in and away from the bare lightbulb. "One of these days, I figure, she's gotta talk. That's what I'm holding out for."

He heard his half-assed chuckle die in the night and the echo of it embarrassed him. So they sat in silence for a bit, smoking, listening to the buzz of the fly as it made its crazy darts toward the light.

"What's her name?" Annabeth asked. "This whole time, you've never once said her name."

"Lauren," he said. "Her name's Lauren."

Her name hungi n the air for a bit like the loose strand of a cobweb.

"And you loved her since you were kids?"

"Freshman year of college," he said. "Yeah, I guess we were kids."

He could remember a November rainstorm, the two of them kissing for the first time in a doorway, the feel of goose bumps on her flesh, both of them shaking.

"Maybe that's the problem," Annabeth said.

Sean looked at her. "That we're not kids anymore?"

"One of you, at least," she said.

Sean didn't ask which one.

"Jimmy told me you said Katie was planning to elope with Brendan Harris."

Sean nodded.

"Well, that's just it, isn't it?"

He turned in his chair. "What?"

She blew a stream of smoke up at the empty clotheslines. "These silly dreams you have when you're young. I mean, what, Katie and Brendan Harris were going to make a life in Las Vegas? How long would that little Eden have lasted? Maybe they'd be on their second trailer park, second kid, but it would hit them sooner or later - life isn't happily ever after and golden sunsets and shit like that. It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves the burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But, shit, you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything - because that's what growing older is."

"Annabeth," Sean said, "anyone ever tell you that you're a hard woman?"

She turned her head to him, her eyes closed, a dreamy smile on her face. "All the time."


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack

February 5, 2008

The Books: "The Historian" (Elizabeth Kostova)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

0316011770.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpgThe story of the publishing of this book is almost as interesting as the book itself. It's a first novel. It's 5,000 pages long. It's a sweeping historian's look at Dracula - wrapped up in a personal story about a father and daughter. It's a murder-mystery. But it's also a grand tour through the old stomping grounds of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires in the dying days of the Cold War. It's almost like Elizabeth Kostova (the author) followed in the footsteps of the great Rebecca West, in her journey - going to Hungary, Romania, all those places - but not now, not after the breakup of Yugoslavia - but while they were still Communist countries, suffering behind a wall of misinformation. That's the main reason I read the book - because, as I've said many times, I'm not into popular fiction - it takes a lot for me to pick up a current bestseller - there has to be some "hook" for me, and that, for me, was the hook. Elizabeth Kostova got an eye-popping advance for this book - she was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan when all of this happened. It's the kind of thing that writers dream about. It's like what happened to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's script Good Will Hunting which is a good script - it's fine - but for various and sundry reasons - a bidding war commenced over the script, and the price went higher and higher - and Gus van Sant got involved - and then Robin Williams signed on - and suddenly it was the most high-profile project in Hollywood. That almost NEVER happens, and it was a series of events that brought it into that situation - not just one thing, but a convergence. You seriously cannot plan for something like that. If it happens to you? Just count your blessings and take FULL ADVANTAGE of the moment because it probably will not come again. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are, as far as I'm concerned, two of the smartest people in Hollywood - because of how they spun that situation, and used it to their advantage. They totally could have been a one-shot success. That could have been IT for them. And no, they did not go on to write more scripts - it was a means to an end for them ... but they USED that shining moment when everything went their way, and have obviously gone on to even greater success. That's what happened to Elizabeth Kostova - and whether or not she parlays that first extraordinary success (I mean, advance word of the book had reached my ears almost a year before it was even published - because the advance she got was so attention-getting) into a career as a writer has yet to be seen. It might be hard to top that first success. Who knows. The book is massive, exquisitely researched, and also a damn gripping melodrama about Count Dracula. I highly recommend it, if you're into that sort of thing. I posted about it here. I had a lot of fun reading the book - mainly because that whole era - from the breakup of the Ottoman empire after World War I to the crackup of Yugoslavia = is an ongoing fascination for me. The Balkans, all of that. Here's another post I wrote about The Historian - where I was able to utilize my extensive library to get a history of what she was talking about. The book was a lot of fun - if that kind of thing is "fun" for you.

I will say this: it's not as deep as I am normally used to. The main narrator remains a total nonentity to me. She is not a character, she does not LIVE - none of the people actually LIVE, as far as I'm concerned. It's a book about its story - more than the people in the story. And I know that's a type of writing, many books are written that way - it just isn't my thing, and normally books like that do not keep my interest. Once I stopped looking for a character, in the normal definition of the word, and succumbed to the PLOT, I enjoyed The Historian much more. And by the end, I actually found it quite moving. Because yeah, we all know about vampires, and Dracula - we all have the image in our head of such things. But to contemplate such a situation for real - and what agony it must be ... you go beyond the pale, you must live in darkness and silence, you are no longer human ... that's what this book ends up doing. And because it's about relationships - father/daughter, etc. - it's quite sad, by the end - because it's really all about loss. And walking away, and letting go.

The book peels itself back like an onion. Because the lead narrator is trying to put together a mystery - she is "the historian". The one going back into the past, looking for clues .. about Vlad Dracula ... it takes her on a journey through Europe and Turkey ... and there are times when it is QUITE terrifying. You seriously want to look over your shoulder as you are reading the book to make sure that a vampire is not standing there, waiting for you. Kostova's a very good writer.

Again, it's not really my TASTE - but her eye for details (you really feel like you are in those dusty Communist-era cafes in Budapest, etc.) is quite good. I can see why a bidding war would happen over this book.

Here's an excerpt. (The book is made up of long letters from the father to the daughter - the letters sometimes go on for entire chapters - and sometimes the father shares letters HE receives - so you lose track of the present, you just go deeper and deeper into this investigation. So this excerpt is from one of the letters that the father received.)


EXCERPT FROM The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

My dear friend,

My driver was indeed able to take us north to Targoviste today, after which he returned to his family in Bucarest, and we have settled for the night in an old inn. Georgescu is an excellent travelling companion; along the way he regaled me with the history of the countryside we were passing through. His knowledge is very broad and his interests extend to local architecture and botany, so that I was able to learn a tremendous amount today.

Targoviste is a beautiful town, mediaeval still in character and containing at least this one good inn where a traveller can wash his face in clean water. We are now in the heart of Wallachia, in a hilly country between mountains and plain. Vlad Dracula ruled Wallachia several times during the 1450s and '60s. Targoviste was his capital, and this afternoon we walked around the substantial ruins of his palace here, Georgescu pointing out to me the different chambers and describing their probable uses. Dracula was not born here but in Transylvania, in a town called Sighisoara. I won't have time to see it, but Georgescu has been there several times, and he told me that the house in which Dracula's father lived - Vlad's birthplace - still stands.

The most remarkable of many remarkable sights we saw here today, as we prowled the old streets and ruins, was Dracula's watchtower, or rather a handsome restoration of it done in the nineteenth century. Georgescu, like a good archaeologist, turns up his Scotch-Romany nose at restorations, explaining that in this case the crenellations around the top aren't quite right; but what can you expect, he asked me tartly, when historians begin using their imaginations? Whether or not the restoration is quite accurate, what Georgescu told me about that tower gave me a shiver. It was used by Vlad Dracula not only as a lookout in that era of frequent Turkish invasions but also as a vantage point from which to view the impalements that were carried out in the court below.

We took our evening meal in a little pub near the center of town. From there we could see the outer walls of the ruined palace, and as we ate our bread and stew, Georgescu told me that Targoviste is a most apt place from which to travel to Dracula's mountain fortress. "The second time he captured the Wallachian throne, in 1456," he explained, " he decided to build a castle above the Arges to which he could escape invasions from the plain. The mountains between Targoviste and Transylvania - and the wilds of Transylvania itself - have always been a place of escape for the Wallachians."

He broke a piece of bread for himself and mopped up his stew with it, smiling. "Dracula knew there were already a couple of ruined fortresses, dating at least as far back as the eleventh century, above the river. He decided to rebuild one of them, the ancient Castle Arges. He needed cheap labour - don't these things always come doon to having good help? So in his usual kindhearted way he invited all his boyars - his lairds, you know, to a little Easter celebration. They came in their best clothes to that big courtyard right here in Targoviste, and he gave them a great deal of food and drink. Then he killed off the ones he found most inconvenient, and marched the rest of them - and their wives and little ones - fifty kilometers up into the mountains to rebuild Castle Arges."

Georgescu hunted around the table, apparently for another piece of bread. "Well, it's moore complicated than that, actually - Roumanian history always is. Dracula's older brother Mircea had been murthered years before by their political enemies in Targoviste. When Dracula came to power he had his brother's coffin doog up and found that the pooor man had been buried alive. That was when he sent out his Easter invitation, and the results gave him revenge for his brother as well as cheap labour to build his castle in the mountains. He had brick kilns built up near the original fortress, and anyone who'd survived the journey was forced to work night and day, carrying bricks and building the walls and towers. The auld songs from this region say that the boyars' fine clothes fell off them in rags before they were down." Georgescu scraped at his bowl. "I've noticed Dracula was often as practical a fellow as he was a nasty one."

So tomorrow, my friend, we will set out on the trail of those unfortunate nobles, but by wagon, where they toiled into the mountains on foot.

It is remarkable to see the peasants walking around in their native costumes among the more modern dress of the townspeople. The men wear white shirts with dark vests and tremendous leather slippers laced up to the knee with leather thongs, for all the world like Roman shepherds come back to life. The women, who are mainly dark like the men and often quite handsome, wear heavy skirts and blouses with a vest tightly fastened over everything, and their clothing is embroidered with rich designs. They seem a lively folk, laughing and shouting over the business of bargaining in the marketplace, which I visited yesterday morning when I first arrived.

Less than ever do I have a way to mail this, so for now I shall keep it tucked safely in my bad.

Yours truly,
Bartholomew

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 3, 2008

The Books: "Darkness at Noon" (Arthur Koestler)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

41S8QJPJ7NL._AA240_.jpgDarkness at Noon is one of the most important books of the 20th century. I came to it late - and it was basically Emily who BEGGED me to read it. I don't know how I missed it, but that's neither here nor there. The book is, as the New Statesman aptly described it: "One of the few books written in this epoch which will survive it." Read it alongside Master and Margarita (post here). Follow it up with 1984. And keep The Gulag Archipelago (post here) and The Great Terror (post here) nearby, to cross-reference. That's its status, its importance. I would even argue that it would be difficult to understand the convulsions of the 20th century without reading this book. You want to understand a totalitarian society? You want to understand how the "show trials" in the USSR under Stalin's reign really worked? Well, you need to read Gulag Archipelago, you need to read The Great Terror - but you also need to read Darkness at Noon. It's an extraordinary document, a record not just of WHAT they did, but even more importantly, how. One of the reasons the West was so summarily duped in the 1930s by the show trials of big-wigs like Zinoviev and Kamenev, is that it is difficult to understand how such a thing could come to be. Why would these guys confess? If they were "innocent"? It makes no sense. And the parade of confessors in the block, excoriating themselves relentlessly for "incorrect" thinking and "sabotage" - it was quite convincing. In this case, of course, what you saw is NOT what you got. It was a performance. The verdicts drawn up beforehand - then it was just a matter of getting these people to confess. Now by the 30s, of course - there really weren't any more real enemies of the state. Stalin had taken care of that. So the people in the block were not "victims" - they were the stars of the revolution, the big-wigs who had made it all happen. It must have been fantastic! I don't mean that word like "great", I mean it like: beyond belief. The stories of those show trials (detailed step by step in Robert Conquest's great The Great Terror) are unreal. UNREAL. Darkness at Noon is about one of those show trials. Rubashov is an old revolutionary - maybe like a Bukharin type. He devoted his life to the party. And now the party is turning in on its own. He is jailed. The book details the series of interrogations he goes through, psychological torture and pressure ... and how disorienting that kind of thing is. You begin to doubt yourself. What is true? Am I guilty? Did I sabotage? Even just in my thoughts?? And this is how "the party' gets you, in the end. By getting inside your head. There IS no innocence inside your head. If you ever had even the slightest thought that things weren't going well, that maybe things should change ... then that constitutes guilt in such a society. Correctness must go down into your bone marrow. It is the party's way or no way. ("He loved Big Brother.") Bulgakov is so so brilliant about this in Master and Margarita (excerpt here). It's hard to picture HOW that happens if you have never been pressured to such a degree, or if you live in a society that is free - where all different sides can be heard. The disorientation of living in a one-party state doesn't just limit what men and women can DO, it has as its goal a limit on what you are allowed to THINK. And to a huge degree, it succeeded. It's thought control they are after. George Orwell really goes after that, with the whole "newspeak" thing ... how language is distorted, blunted. When you control what can be said, you can control what people think. It's that fucking simple.

Arthur Koestler was a really interesting guy. Born in Hungary, emigrated to England, was a devoted Communist - as were many folks in those days. At the time, the Communists were on the front-lines against Fascism (never mind that their results ended up being the same - that's another conversation - I'm talking about the early 30s - you have to get in the perspective of that time, and not do your "we know the end" judgment of this, because that's stupid, frankly.) Koestler, though, began to see the "great terror" happening in Russia - and it caused him to, famously, break with the Communist Party. Darkness at Noon is his book, basically, about WHY. It is a brave book. It was an unpopular statement at that time, where most intellectuals were apologists for Stalin, because they still believed in the Socialist dream. The roll-call of names of authors who saw what was really going on and then wrote about it - and were, consequently, pilloried - is long. And illustrious. Orwell. Robert Conquest. These people were not fooled by the show trials. They 'saw' - even though there was no information at the time. The full archives of the Politburo were not available until the early 1990s. Conquest realized, when he got to take a look at the archives finally, that he had underestimated the extent of the terror. Of course. Here's some interesting biographical information on Koestler. Fascinating guy. Here's the post I wrote after I finished the book. I read it in 2 days. Could not put it down. It's terrible. Terrible. One of the most enraging books I have ever read. And the scary thing is: it works on the reader in the same way that it works on Rubashov, our hero. You begin to doubt ... that what you know is true. You start to ask yourself: could I withstand that pressure? Could I tie myself in knots to justify my actions intellectually (which was what "the party" was all about)? What is true? How can we really know?


Here's an excerpt. Rubashov is being interrogated by Ivanov. The interrogation goes on for the entire book; it has different stages - but, essentially it's the same conversation. The point is to grind Rubashov down to powder. That is what totalitarian societies do. It is, in the end, their main goal. Oh, and Stalin is never named, although he is omnipresent. He is referred to as "No. 1".


Darkness at Noon is a must-read. In it lies the entire 20th century.

EXCERPT FROM Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Ivanov paused and poured himself another glass of brandy. Rubashov walked up and down in front of the window. After a while he said:

"Why did you execute Bogrov?"

"Why? Because of the submarine question," said Ivanov. "It concerned the problem of tonnage - an old quarrel, the beginnings of which must be familiar to you.

"Bogrov advocated the construction of submarines of large tonnage and a long range of action. The Party is in favour of small submarines with a short range. You can build three times as many small submarines for your money as big ones. Both parties had valid technical arguments. The experts made a big display of technical sketches and algebraic formulae; but the actual problem lay in quite a different sphere. Big submarines mean: a policy of aggression, to further world revolution. Small submarines mean: coastal defense - that is, self-defense and postponement of world revolution. The latter is the point of view of No. 1, and the Party.

"Bogrov had a strong following in the Admiralty and amongst the officers of the old guard. It would not have been enough to put him out of the way; he also had to be discredited. A trial was projected to unmask the partisans of big tonnage as saboteurs and traitors. We had already brought several little engineers to the point of being willing to confess publicly to whatever we liked. But Bogrov wouldn't play the game. He declaimed up to the very end of big tonnage and world revolution. He was two decades behind the times. He would not understand that the times are against us, that Europe is passing a wave and must wait until we are lifted by the next. In a public trial he would only have created confusion amongst the people. There was no other way possible than to liquidate him administratively. Would not you have done the same thing in our position?"

Rubashov did not answer. He stopped walking, and again remained leaning against the wall of No. 406, next to the bucket. A cloud of sickening stench rose from it. He took off his pince-nez and looked at Ivanov out of red-rimmed hunted eyes.

"You did not hear him whimpering," he said.

Ivanov lit a new cigarette on the stump of the old one; he too found the stench of the bucket rather overpowering.

"No," he said. "I did not hear it. But I have heard and seen similar things. What of it?"

Rubashov was silent. It was no use to try and explain it. The whimpering and the muffled drumming again penetrated his ears, like an echo. One could not express that. Nor the curve of Arlova's breast with its warm, steep point. One could express nothing. "Die in silence," had been written on the message given him by the barber.

"What of it?" repeated Ivanov. He stretched out his leg and waited. As no answer came, he went on speaking:

"If I had a spark of pity for you," he said, "I would now leave you alone. But I have not a spark of pity. I drink; for a time, as you know, I drugged myself; but the vice of pity I have up till now managed to avoid. The smallest dose of it, and you are lost. Weeping over humanity and bewailing oneself - you know our race's pathological leaning to it. Our greatest poets destroyed themselves by this poison. Up to forty, fifty, they were revolutionaries - then they became consumed by pity and the world pronounced them holy. You appear to have the same ambition, and to believe it to be an individual process, personal to you, something unprecedented ..." He spoke rather louder and puffed out a cloud of smoke. "Beware of these ecstasies," he said: "Every bottle of spirits contains a measurable amount of ecstasy. Unfortunately, only few people, particularly amongst our fellow countrymen, ever realize that the ecstasies of humility and suffering are as cheap as those induced chemically. The time when I woke from the anesthetic, and found that my body stopped at the left knee, I also experienced a kind of absolute ecstasy of unhappiness. Do you remember the lectures you gave me at the time?" He poured out another glass and emptied it.

"My point is this," he said; "one may not regard the world as a sort of metaphysical brothel for emotions. That is the first commandment for us. Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. To sit down and let oneself be hypnotized by one's own navel, to turn up one's eyes and humbly offer the back of one's neck to Gletkin's revolver - that is an easy solution. The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most great revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton to Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one's own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears ..."

He felt for the bottle behind him and poured out another glass. Rubashov noticed that the bottle was already half empty. You also could do with a little solace, he thought.

"The greatest criminals in history," Ivanov went on, "are not of the type Nero and Fouche, but of the type Gandhi and Tolstoy. Gandhi's inner voice has done more to prevent the liberation of India than the British guns. To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one's own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. To want to conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave everything as it is. You know that as well as I do. You know the stakes in this game, and here you come talking about Bogrov's whimpering ..."

He emptied his glass and added:

"Or with conscience pricks because of your fat Arlova."

Rubashov knew from before that Ivanov could hold a lot; one did not notice any change in his behaviour, beyond a slightly more emphatic way of speaking than usual. You do need consolation, thought Rubashov again, perhaps more than I do. He sat down on the narrow stool opposite Ivanov and listened. All this was not new to him; he had defended the same point of view for years, with the same or similar words. The difference was that at that time he had known those inner processes of which Ivanov spoke so contemptuously, merely as an abstraction; but since then he had experienced the "grammatical fiction" as a physical reality in his own body. But had these irrational processes become more admissible merely because he had a personal acquaintance with them now? Was it any the less necessary to fight the "mystical intoxication" merely because one had oneself become intoxicated by it? When a year ago he had sent Arlova to her death, he had not had enough imagination to picture the details of an execution. Would he now behave differently merely because he now knew some of its aspects? Either it was right - or it was wrong to sacrifice Richard, Arlova and Little Loewy. But what had Richard's stutter, the shape of Arlova's breast or Bogrov's whimpering to do with the objective rightness or wrongness of the measure itself?

Rubashov began again to walk up and down his cell. He felt that everything he had experienced since his imprisonment had been only a prelude; that his cogitations had led him to a dead end - on to the threshold of what Ivanov called the "metaphysical brothel" - and that he must begin again from the beginning. But how much time was there left? He stopped, took the glass out of Ivanov's hand and drained it. Ivanov watched him.

"That's better," he said with a fleeting smile. "Monologues in the form of a dialogue are a useful institution. I hope I reproduced the voice of the tempter effectively. A pity that the opposite party is not represented. But that is part of its tricks, that it never lets itself be drawn into a rational discussion. It always attacks a man in defenseless moments, when he is alone an din some effective mise en scene: from burning thorn-bushes or cloud-covered mountain tops - and with a special preference for a sleeping victim. The methods of the great moralist are pretty unfair and theatrical ..."

Rubashov was no longer listening. Walking up and down, he was wondering whether to-day, if Arlova was still alive he would sacrifice her again. This problem fascinated him; it seemed to contain the answer to all other questions ... He stopped in front of Ivanov and asked him:

"Do you remember 'Raskolnikov'?"

Ivanov smiled at him with irony. "It was to be expected that you would sooner or later come to that. Crime and Punishment ... You are really becoming childish or senile ..."

"Wait a bit. Wait a bit," said Rubashov, walking up and down agitatedly. "All this is just talk, but now we are getting nearer the point. As far as I remember, the problem is, whether the student Raskolnikov has the right to kill the old woman? He is young and talented; he has as it were an unredeemed pledge on life in his pocket; she is old and utterly useless to the world. But the equation does not stand. In the first place, circumstances oblige him to murder a second person; that is the unforeseeable and illogical consequence of an apparently simple and logical action. Secondly, the equation collapses in any case, because Raskolnikov discovers that twice two are not four when the mathematical units are human beings ..."

"Really," said Ivanov. "If you want to hear my opinion, every copy of the book should be burnt. Consider a moment what this humanitarian fog-philosophy would lead to, if we were to take it literally; if we were to stick to the precept that the individual is sacrosanct, and that we must not treat human lives according to the rules of arithmetic. That would mean that a battalion commander may not sacrifice a patrolling party to save the regiment. That we may not sacrifice fools like Bogrov, and must risk our coastal towns being shot to pieces in a couple of years ..."

Rubashov shook his head:

"Your examples are all drawn from war - that is, from abnormal circumstances."

"Since the invention of the steam engine," replied Ivanov, "the world has been permanently in an abnormal state; the wars and revolutions are just the visible expressions of this state. Your Raskolnikov is, however, a fool and a criminal; not because he behaves logically in killing the old woman, but because he is doing it in his personal interest. The principle that the end justifies the means is and remains only the rule of political ethics; anything else is just vague chatter and melts away between one's fingers... If Raskolnikov had bumped off the old woman at the command of the Party - for example, to increase strike funds or to instal an illegal Press - then the equation would stand, and the novel with its misleading problem would never have been written, and so much the better for humanity."

Rubashov did not answer. He was still fascinated by the problem as to whether to-day, after the experiences of the last few months and days, he would again send Arlova to her death. He did not know. Logically, Ivanov was right in everything he said; the invisible opponent was silent, and only indicated its existence by a dull feeling of uneasiness. And in that, too, Ivanov was right, that this behaviour of the "invisible opponent", in never exposing itself to argument and only attacking people in defenceless moments, showed it in a very dubious light ...

"I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued. "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community - which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions in practice, it is impossible. Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is fatally driven to the second alternative. Do you know, since the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? You can't point out one. In times of need - and politics are chronically in a time of need - the rulers were always able to evoke 'exceptional circumstances', which demanded exceptional measures of defence. Since the existence of nations and classes, they live in a permanent state of mutual self-defence, which forces them to defer to another time the putting into practice of humanism ..."

Rubashov looked through the window. The melted snow had again frozen and sparkled, an irregular surface of yellow-white crystals. The sentinel on the wall marched up and down with shouldered rifle. The sky was clear but moonless; above the machine-gun turret shimmered the Milky Way.

Rubashov shrugged his shoulders. "Admit," he said, "that humanism and politics, respect for the individual and social progress, are incompatible. Admit that Gandhi is a catastrophe for India; that chasteness in the choice of means leads to political impotence. In negatives we agree. But look where the other alternative has led us ..."

"Well," asked Ivanov. "Where?"

Rubashov rubbed his pince-nez on his sleeve, and looked at him shortsightedly. "What a mess," he said, "what a mess we have made of our golden age."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

February 2, 2008

The Books: "The Stand" (Stephen King)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

The Stand by Stephen King

TheStand.jpgI'll never forget my first experience with this book. I read it when it first came out (and that's the only time I read it - so the "uncut" version is still un-read by me - and frankly, I don't think you need an uncut version. The 'cut' version was plenty awesome, in my book.) Unforgettable experience reading that book. Another great American novel. I thought of it when I recently say I Am Legend, with its terrifying vision of an empty New York. A New York that still has cars in the streets, because the panic of the plague was so great, people were racing to get out, and they died en route. It's been years since I've read it - so a ton of the details are lost - but suffice it to say - it's about a plague, that "gets loose" - and kills the majority of the people on the planet. Quickly. A handful of people are left. They are all scattered, though - they do not know about each other. We get to know them, as the book progresses - we switch points of view repeatedly. Every story is a horror story. The Stand taps into the primal terror of biological warfare, of something "unbeatable" being loosed upon the land. We are, after all, just animals. Human animals. Our survival on this planet, as a species, is not at all a done deal. The Stand recognizes that. I recently read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy - and that bleak book has a similar outlook. Since I was a kid I have been drawn to and horrified by these kinds of books. Remember, I'm old. So I grew up being afraid of Russia, the bogey-man across the world ... and the possibility of nuclear warfare was far more vivid then than it is now (not that it is not still a threat - but anyone who remembers the Cold War will recognize the difference). I remember begging my parents to let me watch The Day After when it was on - and then lying in bed afterwards, praying to God, desperately, to save us from mutually assured destruction. It scared me SO much. War Games tapped into those fears as well. The Stand is, in its way, even more frightening - because it's NOT nuclear apocalypse (which The Road is) - it's a disease, morphed out of all recognition from its original state - now a monster on the loose, airborne - and it will wipe out EVERYONE. Disease does not discriminate, in the same way a nuclear blast does not discriminate. The thought of just living my life, and being "in the way" of something so destructive - was a real fear of mine growing up. Books like The Stand, and The Road really call up in me an anxious imaginative response, meaning: I am unable to separate myself from it, and I am constantly imagining myself into the action, asking nervous questions like, "How would I fare here? How would I handle that? Would I just crumple in fear? Or would I be up to the task at hand?" It really makes you ask: what are you MADE of? Could I figure out the food situation? The building a fire situation? Could I manage my fear to such a degree that I would be able to make it through the day? You wonder: who am I? How strong am I? How smart am I REALLY? I have never been tested like THAT. How would I do?

There's a higher level to the book - and that is reflected in its perfect title. It's not just a "stand" between the disease and remaining humanity. It's a "stand" between good and evil. Because naturally, since the disease does not discriminate and just kill "bad" people ... humanity will be tested, almost immediately - with what kind of new world they will want to build. And all of the scattered characters - making it thru a maze of horror to get out of their respective areas ... slowly converge (they don't know why) in the desert. Something draws them there. They do not know what it is. But it is obvious that something else might be propelling them, or pulling them through that maze. God and the devil. Life and the Grim Reaper. Time to battle it out, once and for all.

It's a fantastic book, another masterpiece. King is awe-inspiring.

I knew immediately the excerpt I wanted to do today. It's a scene that I will never forget (and I have actually forgotten much of the book - I should read it again). It has personal meaning for me, because I go through the Lincoln Tunnel on a daily basis and I would say that, oh, probably once a week - as my bus careens through the tunnel - I think of The Stand and the following scene ... and I wonder ... my God. How would I ever EVER get through it? I am sure I would ... but it is still horrifying to contemplate. It's my favorite "scene" in the whole book. King pulls out all the stops. His imagination is unbelievable.

EXCERPT FROM The Stand by Stephen King

By four o'clock dark clouds had begun to build over Manhattan and the sound of thunder rolled back and forth between the city's cliffs. Lightning forked down at the buildings. It was as if God were trying to frighten the few remaining people out of hiding. The light had become yellow and strange, and Larry didn't like it. His belly was cramped and when he lit a cigarette it trembled in his hand the way the coffee cup had trembled in Rita's this morning.

He was sitting at the street end of the access ramp, leaning his back against the lowest bar of the railing. His pack was on his lap, and the .30-.30 was leaning against the railing beside him. He had thought she would get scared and come back before long, but she hadn't. Fifteen minutes ago he had given up calling her name. The echoes freaked him out.

Thunder rolled again, close this time. A chilly breeze ran its hand over the back of his shirt, which was pasted to his skin with sweat. He was going to have to get inside somewhere or else stop shitting around and go through the tunnel. If he couldn't work up the guts to go through, he'd have to spend another night in the city and go over the George Washington Bridge in the morning, and that was 140 blocks north.

He tried to think rationally about the tunnel. There was nothing in there that was going to bite him. He'd forgotten to pick up a good big flashlight - Christ, you never remembered everything - but he did have his butanic Bic, and there was a guardrail between the catwalk and the road. Anything else ... thinking about all those dead people in their cars, for instance ... that was just panic talking, comic-book stuff about as sensible as worrying about the boogeyman in the closet. If that's all youc an think about, Larry [he lectured himself], then you're not going to get along in this brave new world. Not at all. You're -

A stroke of lightning split the sky almost directly overhead, making him wince. It was followed by a heavy caisson of thunder. He thought randomly, July 1, this is the day you're supposed to take your sweetie to Coney Island and eat hotdogs by the score. Knock down the three wooden milk-bottles with one ball and win the Kewpie doll. The fireworks at night -

A cold splash of rain struck the side of his face and then another hit the back of his neck and trickled inside the collar of his shirt. Dime-sized drops began to hit around him. He stood up, slung the pack over his shoulders, and hoisted the rifle. He was still not sure which way to go - back to Thirty-ninth or into the Lincoln Tunnel. But he had to get undercover somewhere because it was starting to pour.

Thunder broke overhead with a gigantic roar, making him squeal in terror - a sound no different than those made by Cro-Magnon men two million years before.

"You fucking coward," he said, and trotted down the ramp toward the maw of the tunnel, his head bent forward as the rain began to come harder. It dripped from his hair. He passed the woman with her nose against the El Dorado's passenger window, trying not to look but catching her out of the tail of his eye just the same. The rain drummed on the car roofs like jazz percussion. It was coming down so hard it bounced back up again, causing a light mist-haze.

Larry stopped for a moment just outside the tunnel, undecided and frightened again. Then it began to hail, and that decided him. The hailstones were big, stinging. Thunder bellowed again.

Okay, he thought. Okay, okay, okay, I'm convinced. He stepped into the Lincoln Tunnel.

__________

It was much blacker inside than he had imagined it would be. At first the opening behind him cast dim white light ahead and he could see yet more cars, jammed in bumper to bumper (it must have been bad, dying in here, he thought, as claustrophobia wrapped its stealthy banana fingers lovingly around his head and began to first caress and then to squeeze his temples, it must have been really bad, it must have been fucking horrible), and the greenish-white tiles that dressed the upward-curving walls. He could see the pedestrian railing to his right, stretching dimly ahead. On his left, at thirty- or forty-foot intervals, were big support pillars. A sign adviSed him DO NOT CHANGE LANES. There were dark flourescents embedded in the tunnel's roof, and the blank glass eyes of closed-circuit TV camera. And as he negotiated the first slow, banked curve, bearing gently to the right, the light grew dimmer until all he could see were muted flashes of chrome. After that the light simply ceased to exist, at all.

He fumbled out his Bic, held it up, and spun the wheel. The light it provided was pitifully small, feeding his unease rather than assuaging it. Even with the flame turned up all the way it only gave him a circle of visibility about six feet in diameter.

He put it back in his pocket, and kept walking, trailing his hand lightly along the railing. There was an echo in here, too, one he liked even less than the one outside. The echo made it sound like someone was behind him ... stalking him. He stopped several times, head cocked, eyes wide (but blind), listening until the echoes had died off. After a bit he began to shuffle along, not lifting his heels from the concrete, so the echo wouldn't recur.

Sometimes after that he stopped again and flicked the lighter close to his wristwatch. It was four-twenty, but he wasn't sure what to make of that. In this blackness time seemed to have no objective meaning. Neither did distance, for that matter; how long was the Lincoln Tunnel, anyway? A mile? Two? Surely it couldn't be two miles under the Hudson River. Let's say a mile. But if a mile was all it was, he should have been at the other end already. If the average man walks four miles an hour, he can walk one mile in fifteen minutes and he'd already been in this stinking hole five minutes longer than that.

"I'm walking a lot slower," he said, and jumped at the sound of his own voice. The lighter dropped from his hand and clicked onto the catwalk. The echo spoke bac, changed into the dangerously jocular voice of an approaching lunatic.

" ... lot slower ... lower ... lower ..."

"Jesus," Larry muttered, and the echo whispered back: "zuss ... zuss ... zuss ..."

He wiped a hand across his face, fighting panic and the urge to give up thought and just run blindly forward. Instead he knelt (his knees popped like pistol shots, frightening him again) and walked his fingers over the miniature topography of the pedestrian catwalk - the chipped valleys in the cement, the ridge of an old cigarette butt, the hill of a tiny tinfoil ball - until at last he happened on his Bic. With an inner sigh he squeezed it tightly in his hand, stood up, and walked on.

Larry was beginning to get himself under control again when his foot struck something stiff and barely yielding. He uttered an inhalatory sort of scream and took two staggering steps backward. He made himself hold steady as he pulled the Bic lighter from his pocket and flicked it. The flame wavered crazily in his trembling grasp.

He had stepped on a soldier's hand. He was sitting with his back against the tunnel wall, his legs splayed across the walkway, a horrible sentinel left here to bar passage. His glazed eyes stared up at Larry. His lips had fallen away from his teeth and he seemed to be grinning. A switchblade knife jutted jauntily from his throat.

The lighter was growing warm in his hand. Larry let it go out. Licking his lips, holding the railing in a deathgrip, he forced himself forward until the toe of his shoe struck the soldier's hand again. Then he stepped over, making a comically large stride, and a kind of nightmarish certainty came over him. He would hear the scrape of the soldier's boots as he shifted, and then the soldier would reach out and clasp his leg in a loose cold grip.

In a shuffling sort of run, Larry went another ten paces and then made himself stop, knowing that if he didn't stop, the panic would win and he would bolt blindly, chased by a terrible regiment of echoes.

When he felt he had himself under some sort of control, he began to walk again. But now it was worse; his toes shrank inside his shoes, afraid that at any second they might come in contact with another body sprawled on the catwalk ... and soon enough, it happened.

He groaned and fumbled the lighter out again. This time it was much worse. The body his foot had struck was that of an old man in a blue suit. A black silk skullcap had fallen from his balding head into his lap. There was a six-pointed star of beaten silver in his lapel. Beyond him were another half a dozen corpses: two women, a man of middle age, a woman who might have been in her late seventies, two teenage boys.

The lighter was growing too hot to hold any longer. He snapped it off and slipped it back into his pants pocket, where it glowed like a warm coal against his leg. Captain Trips hadn't taken this group off any more than it had taken the soldier back there. He had seen the blood, the torn clothes, the chipped tiles, the bullet holes. They had been gunned down. Larry remembered the rumors that soldiers had blocked off the points of exit from Island Manhattan. He hadn't known whether to believe them or not; he had heard so many rumors last week as things were breaking down.

The situation here was easy enough to reconstruct. They had been caught in the tunnel, but they hadn't been too sick to walk. They got out of their car and began to make their way toward the Jersey side, using the catwalk just as he was doing. There had been a command post, machine-gun emplacement, something.

Had been? Or was now?

Larry stood sweating, trying to make up his mind. The solid darkness provided the perfect theater screen on which the mind could play out its fantasies. He saw: grim-eyed soldiers in germproof suits crouched behind a machine gun equipped with an infrared peeper-scope, their job to cut down any stragglers who tried to come through the tunnel; one single soldier left behind, a suicide volunteer, wearing infrared goggles and creeping toward him with a knife in his teeth; two soldiers quietly loading a mortar with a single poison gas canister.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to go back. He was quite sure that these imaginings were only vapors, and the thought of retracing his steps was insupportable. Surely the soldiers were now gone. The dead one he'd stepped over seemed to support that. But ...

But what was really troubling him, he supposed, were the bodies directly ahead. They were sprawled all over each other for eight or nine feet. He couldn't just step over them as he had stepped over the soldier. And if he went off the catwalk to go around them, he risked breaking his leg or his ankle. If he was to go on, he would have to ... well ... he would have to walk over them.

Behind him, in the darkness, something moved.

Larry wheeled around, instantly engulfed with fear at that single gritting sound ... a footstep.

"Who's there?" he shouted, unslinging his rifle.

No answer but the echo. When it faded he heard - or thought he did - the quiet sound of breathing. He stood bug-eyed in the dark, the hairs along the nape of his neck turning into hackles. He held his breath. There was no sound. He was beginning to dismiss it as imagination when the sound came again ... a sliding, quiet footstep.

He fumbled madly for his lighter. The thought that it would make him a target never occurred to him. As he pulled it from his pocket the striker wheel caught on the lining momentarily and the lighter tumbled from his hand. He heard a clink as it struck the railing, and then there was a soft bonk as it struck the hood or trunk of a car below.

The sliding footstep came again, a little closer now, impossible to tell how close. Someone coming to kill him and his terror-locked mind gave him a picture of the soldier with the switchbalde in his neck, moving slowly toward him in the dark -

The soft, gritting step again.

Larry remembered the rifle. He threw the butt against his shoulder, and began to fire. The explosions were shatteringly loud in the closed space; he screamed at the sound of them but the scream was lost in the roar. Flashbulb images of tile and frozen lanes of traffic exploded one after another like a string of black and white snapshots as fire licked from the muzzle of the .30-.30. Ricochets whined like banshees. The gun whacked his shoulder again and again until it was numb, until he knew that the force of the recoils had turned him on his feet and he was shooting out over the roadway instead of back along the catwalk. He was still unable to stop. His finger had taken over the function of the brain, and it spasmed mindlessly until the hammer began to fall with a dry and impotent clicking sound.

The echoes rolled back. Bright afterimages hung before his eyes in triple exposures. He was faintly aware of the stench of cordite and of the whining sound he was making deep in his chest.

Still clutching the gun he whirled around again, and now it was not the soldiers in their sterile Andromeda Strain suits that he saw on the screen of his interior theater but the Morlocks from the Classic Comics version of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, humped and blind creatures coming out of their holes in the ground where engines ran on and on in the bowels of the earth.

He began to struggle across the soft yet stiff barricade of bodies, stumbling, almost falling, clutching the railing, going on. His foot punched through into some dreadful sliminess and there was a gassy, putrid smell that he barely noticed. He went on, gasping.

Then, from behind him, a scream rose in the darkness, freezing him on the spot. It was a desperate, wretched sound close to the limits of sanity: "Larry! Oh, Larry, for God's sake -"

It was Rita Blakemoor.

He turned around. There was sobbing now, wild sobbing that filled the place with fresh echoes. For one wild moment he decided to go on anyway, to leave her. She would find her way out eventually, why burden himself with her again? Then he got hold of himself and shouted, "Rita! Stay where you are! Do you hear me?"

The sobbing continued.

He stumbled back across the bodies, trying not to breathe, his face twisted in an expression of grimacing disgust. Then he ran toward her, not sure how far he had to go because of the distorting quality of the echo. In the end he almost fell over her.

"Larry -" She threw herself against him and clutched his neck with a strangler's force. He could feel her heart skidding along at a breakneck pace under her shirt. "Larry Larry don't leave me alone here don't leave me alone in the dark -"

"No." He held her tightly. "Did I hurt you? Are .. are you shot?"

"No ... I felt the wind ... one of them went by so close I felt the wind of it ... and chips ... tile-chips, I think ... on my face ... cut my face ..."

"Oh Jesus, Rita, I didn't know. I was freaking out in here. The dark. And I lost my lighter ... you should have called. I could have killed you." The truth of it came home to him. "I could have killed you," he repeated in stunned revelation.

"I wasn't sure it was you. I went into an apartment house when you went down the ramp. And you came back and called and I almost ... but I couldn't ... and then two men came after the rain started ... I think they were looking for us ... or for me. So I stayed where I was and when they were gone I thought, maybe they're not gone, maybe they're hiding and looking for me and I didn't dare go out until I started to think you'd get to the other side, and I'd never see you again ... so I ... I ... Larry, you won't leave me, will you? You won't go away?"

"No," he said.

"I was wrong, what I said, that was wrong, you were right, I should have told you about the sandals, I mean the shoes, I'll eat when you tell me to ... I ... I ... oooohhhowww-"

"Shh," he said, holding her. "It's all right now. All right." But in his mind he saw himself firing at her in a blind panic, and thought how easily one of those slugs could have smashed her arm or blown out her stomach. Suddenly he had to go to the bathroom very badly and his teeth wanted to chatter. "We'll go when you feel like you can walk. Take your time."

"There was a man ... I think it was a man ... I stepped on him, Larry." She swallowed and her throat clicked. "Oh, I almost screamed then, but I didn't because I thought it might be one of those men up ahead instead of you. And when you called out ... the echo ... I couldn't tell if it was you ... or ... or ..."

"There are more dead people up ahead. Can you stand that?"

"If you're with me. Please ... if you're with me."

"I will be."

"Let's go, then. I want to get out of her." She shuddered convulsively against him. "I never wanted anything so badly in my life."

He felt for her face and kissed her, first her nose, then each eye, then her mouth.

"Thank you," he said humbly, having not the slightest idea what he meant. "Thank you. Thank you."

"Thank you," she repeated. "Oh dear Larry. You won't leave me, will you?"

"No," he said. "I won't leave you. Just tell me when you feel like you can, Rita, and we'll go together."

When she felt she could, they did.

________

They got over the bodies, their arms slung about each other's necks like drunken chums coming home from a neighborhood tavern. Beyond that they came to a blockage of some sort. It was impossible to see, but after running her hands over it, Rita said it might be a bed standing on end. Together they managed to tip it over the catwalk railing. It crashed onto a car below with a loud, echoing bang that made them both jump and clutch each other. Behind where it had been there were more sprawled bodies, three of them, and Larry guessed that these were the soldiers that had shot down the Jewish family. They got over them and went on, holding hands.

A short time latter Rita stopped short.

"What's the matter?" Larry asked. "Is there something in the way?"

"No. I can see, Larry! It's the end of the tunnel!"

He blinked and realized that he could see, too. The glow was dim and it had come so gradually that he hadn't been aware of it until Rita had spoken. He could make out a faint shine on the tiles, and the pale blur of Rita's face closer by. Looking over to the left he could see the dead river of automobiles.

"Come on," he said, jubilant.

Sixty paces farther along there were more bodies sprawled on the walkway, all soldiers. They stepped over them.

"Why would they only close off New York?" she asked. "Unless maybe ... Larry, maybe it only happened in New York!"

"I don't think so," he said, but felt a touch of irrational hope anyway.

They walked faster. The mouth of the tunnel was ahead of them now. It was blocked by two huge army convoy trucks parked nose to nose. The trucks blotted out much of the daylight; if they hadn't been there, Larry and Rita would have had some light much farther back in the tunnel. There was another sprawl of bodies where the catwalk descended to join the ramp leading outside. They squeezed between the convoy trucks, scrambling over the locked bumpers. Rita didn't look inside, but Larry did. There was a half-assembled tripod machine gun, boxes of ammunition, and canisters of stuff that looked like teargas. Also, three dead men.

As they came outside, a rain-dampened breeze pressed against them, and its wonderfully fresh smell seemed to make it all worthwhile. He said so to Rita, and she nodded and put her head against his shoulder for a moment.

"I wouldn't go through there again for a million dollars, though," she said.

"In a few years you'll be using money for toilet paper," he said. "Please don't squeeze the greenbacks."

"But are you sure --"

"That it wasn't just New York?" He pointed. "Look."

The tollbooths were empty. The middle one stood in a heap of broken glass. Beyond them, the westbound lanes were empty for as far as they could see, but the eastbound lanes, the ones which fed into the tunnel and the city they had just left, were crowded with silent traffic. There was an untidy pile of bodies in the breakdown lane, and a number of seagulls stood watch over it.

"Oh dear God," she said weakly.

"There were as many people trying to get into New York as there were trying to get out of it. I don't know why they bothered blockading the tunnel on the Jersey end. Probably they didn't know why, either. Just somebody's bright idea, busywork -"

But she had sat down on the road and was crying.

"Don't," he said, kneeling beside her. The experience in the tunnel was still too fresh for him to feel angry with her. "It's all right, Rita."

"What is?" she sobbed. "What is? Just tell me one thing."

"We're out, anyway. That's something. And there's fresh air. In fact, New Jersey never smelled so good."

That earned him a wan smile. Larry looked at the scratches on her cheek and temple where the shards of tile had cut her.

"We ought to get you to a drugstore and put some peroxide on those cuts," he said. "Do you feel up to walking?"

"Yes." She was looking at him with a dumb gratitude that made him feel uneasy. "And I'll get some new shoes. Some sneakers. I'll do just what you tell me, Larry. I want to."

"I shouted at you because I was upset," he said quietly. He brushed her hair back and kissed one of the scratches over her right eye. "I'm not such a bad guy," he added quietly.

"Just don't leave me."

He helped her to her feet and slipped an arm around her waist. Then they walked slowly toward the tollbooths and slipped through them, New York behind them and across the river.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

February 1, 2008

The Books: "Misery" (Stephen King)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Misery by Stephen King

200px-Stephen_King_Misery_cover.jpgI love it when Stephen King writes about writers. It excites me. Sometimes when a writer writes about a writer - it's either self-congratulatory, or boring - the "stuff" of their life is not interesting enough to make a good book, but they cannot write about anything else. It's like a rock star who becomes so huge that eventually all he can do is write songs about being on a tour bus, and the cocaine and fast women fame brings him. I mean, that's fine - The Eagles have written a ton of good songs in that realm - so has Eminem - but you can tell that the scope of their lives has closed down a bit ... there is nothing to write about now but fame, and themselves as famous people. Sometimes books about writers have that feel. But to me, Stephen King never does. Maybe because he has been so successful in a certain "genre" (which will become very important in Misery - because Paul, too, has made his name in a genre of writing - romance novels) - but for whatever reason, his books where writing comes into play are among my favorites. I love it when he gets personal. Because I think King holds the key to a lot of the mystery of writing (something I am very interested in): how does a man produce so much?? How does he write so much? What is his discipline? How does he do it? Does he sit down every day? Does he have a specific writing time? I am amazed by his output and by, generally, how good much of it is. Yes, he could definitely be edited more - but I am not as much interested in the final product as I am interested in his process. Because it is no small thing, what he has accomplished. It is extraordinary. He IS a writer. He lives it. Misery, in that sense, is King's most personal novel.

Because so much of it is a battle not between Paul and Annie Wilkes (his lunatic biggest fan) - but a battle between Paul and the typewriter. Paul and his own imagination. Paul and writer's block. It's just GREAT. Anyone who has ever sat there, staring at a blank page, knowing you have to fill it up - even if you're a real writer and trying to write a novel, a screenplay, a poem ... or if you have to finish a paper in college, or grad school ... that feeling of terror, of having to create something out of nothing ... NO ONE will write it for you. It MUST come from your mind. But ... where does one start? How does one begin? Misery is about the terror Paul feels being trapped by Annie Wilkes, yes. But on a deeper level, it is about the terror of the blank page. I love that. That's why i chose the excerpt I did.

Paul is a famous romance-novel writer. His big success is the "Misery" series - a typical bodice-ripping melodrama, and the heroine, a fiery black-haired goddess, is named Misery. Paul, though, is sick of Misery. He is sick of the whole thing and feels he needs to end the series, and move on with his writing career. Do something new. Misery needs to die. Paul is in a horrible car accident on a snowy road in Maine - and his body is badly mangled up. He is "rescued" by a woman who finds him ... who turns out to be Annie Wilkes, a crazy lady who lives by herself - who is obsessed with the Misery books. And in her mind, Misery MUST NOT DIE. He needs to write another book, and it must be called "Misery's Return". Meanwhile, Paul is an invalid - his legs don't work - he has not been to the hospital at all - so he is in agony, and Annie, to put it mildly, is terrifying. It's the terror of being in the presence of someone who does not know the difference between reality and fiction. Misery is Annie's dearest love. She doesn't just read the books. She lives them. And yes, it's awesome to have fans who believe so deeply ... but it's best if you never meet these people - or if you do meet them, keep it confined to a book signing where you can skip around the crazies if need be. Annie Wilkes orders him to write another book. Meanwhile, it is obvious that Paul needs medical care. But she has set up a booby-trapped house - he can't get to the phone, he can't do anything ... It's one of the most infuriating books I have ever read. Like: Bitch, let me OUT of your house. That horrifying feeling of being helpless, trapped ... But she means business. Now that she has him, she will refuse to let him go.

If you remember the book, you know how bad things get. Annie Wilkes is not just crazy, but she's dangerous. Paul, to placate her, begins to write Misery's Return - but it goes so against his artistic sensibility - like: no, I am DONE with Misery. You can't write a book to-order. You have to move on when the "muse" tells you to move on. But here - Annie Wilkes becomes the muse. The demanding muse. Write THIS. So Paul, struggling with the agony in his legs, and his invalid state ... has to write the book that Annie wants, if he wants to have a shot at surviving. It's not easy. How do you write when you are SO not in the mood? I struggle with that myself. But I learned from Madeleine L'Engle that: if you wait for inspiration, you might never get started. The point is to write every day. That way you are preparing the ground, so to speak, for inspiration to land. It's quite prosaic. You are not in a high-flying state of imaginative creation ... you sit down, and you write. And maybe once in a while you write something that's good. It's like you don't have to be "in the mood" to have great sex. It's awesome if you are "in the mood" - nothing better - but sometimes, once you're THERE, even if you weren't originally "in the mood" - it becomes something even better.

Paul has to show Annie what he has written at the end of each day - and she is a harsh critic. She is every writer's worst nightmare (but - in a strange way, she's also someone you DREAM of attracting - someone who is THAT into what you have created?? It's a compliment, in a weird way). But it's not like she's a passive reader. Oh, no. She has opinions about everything. She runs Paul ragged. How do you write with that nagging voice in your ear at all times? Again, I think King is being very personal here. We all have our "Annie Wilkes'" - even if it's just a voice in our heads. The voice saying, in a neverending refrain, "That's not good enough." "You'll never be good enough." "Who do you think you are?" "You suck."

And it is THAT that artists have to grapple with. To me, the deeper analogy of the book is clear. Annie Wilkes is not a typical movie-monster, although she is terrifying. Madness un-medicated and un-diagnosed. But she is also the demon of self-hatred that stalks many of us - especially when we want to sit down and create something. Or when we want to CHANGE the pattern of our self-expression - as Paul is trying to do. King has obviously been enormously successful - and anything he writes will be published now - he is not so much "trapped" by the genre that made his name - although maybe that's not quite true. Maybe he does feel pigeon-holed unfairly, who knows. But when a writer (or a musician - uhm, Dylan going electric), or an actor - decides to change their persona, their expression - it is often greeted with howls of protest, and not just protest but rage: "Who does that person think he is?" That's what I think King is really expressing in Misery - and that's why I find it to be his most personal book.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Misery by Stephen King

Paul looked at the typewriter. The typewriter was there. N's! He had never realized how many n's there were in an average line of type.

I thought you were supposed to be good, the typewriter said - his mind had invested it with a sneering and yet callow voice: the voice of a teenage-gunslinger in a Hollywood western, a kid intent on making a fast reputation here in Deadwood. You're not so good. Hell, you can't even please one crazy overweight ex-nurse. Maybe you broke your writing bone in that crash, too ... only that bone isn't healing.

He leaned back as far as the wheelchair would allow and closed his eyes. Her rejection of what he had written would be easier to bear if he could blame it on the pain, but the truth was that the pain had finally begun to subside a little.

The stolen pills were safely tucked away between the mattress and the box spring. He had taken none of them - knowing he had them put aside, a form of Annie-insurance, was enough. She would find them if she took it into her head to turn the mattress, he supposed, but that was a chance he was prepared to take.

There had been no trouble between them since the blowup over the typewriter paper. His medication came regularly, and he took it. He wondered if she knew he was hooked on the stuff.

Hey, come on now, Paul, that's a bit of a dramatization, isn't it?

No, it wasn't. Three nights ago, when he was sure she was upstairs, he had sneaked one of the sample boxes out and had read everything on the label, although he supposed he had read everything he needed when he saw what Norvil's principal ingredient was. Maybe you spelled relief R-O-L-A-I-D-S, but you spelled Norvil C-O-D-E-I-N-E.

The fact is, you're healing up, Paul. Below the knees your legs look like a four-year-old's stick-drawing, but you are healing up. You could get by on aspirin or Empirin now. It's not you that needs the Norvil; you're feeding it to the monkey.

He would have to cut down, have to duck some of the caps. Until he could do that, she would have him on a chain as well as in a wheelchair - a chain of Norvil capsules.

Okay. I'll duck one of the two capsules she gives me every other time she brings them. I'll put it under my tongue when I swallow the other one, then stick it under my mattress with the other pills when she takes the drinking glass out. Only not today. I don't feel ready to start today. I'll start tomorrow.

Now in his mind he heard the voice of the Red Queen lecturing Alice: Down here we get our act clean yesterday, and we plan to start getting our act clean tomorrow, but we never clean up our act today.

Ho-ho, Paulie, you're a real riot, the typewriter said in the tough gunsel's voice he had made up for it.

"Us dirty birdies are never all that funny, but we never stop trying - you have to give us that," he muttered.

Well, you better start thinking about all the dope you are taking, Paul. You better start thinking about it very seriously.

He decided suddenly, on the spur of the moment, that he would start dodging some of the medication as soon as he got a first chapter that Annie liked on paper - a chapter which Annie decided wasn't a cheat.

Part of him - the part that listened to even the best, fairest editorial suggestions with ill-grace - protested that the woman was crazy, that there was no way to tell what she might or might not accept; that anything he tried would be only a crapshoot.

But another part - a far more sensible part - disagreed. He would know the real stuff when he found it. The real stuff would make the crap he had given Annie to read last night, the crap it had taken him three days and false starts without number to write, look like a dog turd sitting next to a silver dollar. Hadn't he known it was all wrong? It wasn't like him to labor so painfully, not to half-fill a wastebasket with random jottings or half-pages which ended with lines like 'Misery turned to him, eyes shining, lips murmuring the magic words Oh you numb shithead THIS ISN'T WORKING AT ALL!!!!" He had chalked it off to the pain and to being in a situation where he was not just writing for his supper but for his life. Those ideas had been nothing but plausible lies. The fact was, things had gone badly because he was cheating and he had known it himself.

Well, she saw through you, shit-for-brains, the typewriter said in its nasty, insolent voice. Didn't she? So what are you going to do now?

He didn't know, but he supposed he would have to something, and in a hurry. He hadn't cared for her mood this morning. He supposed he should count himself lucky that she hadn't re-broken his legs with a baseball bat or given him a battery-acid manicure or something similar to indicate her displeasure with the way he had begun her book - such critical responses were always possible, given Annie's unique view of the world. If he got out of this alive, he thought he might drop Christopher Hale a note. Hale reviewed books for the New York Times. The note would say: "Whenever my editor called me up and told me you were planning to review one of my books in the daily Times, my knees used to knock together - you gave me some good ones, Chris old buddy, but you also torpedoed me more than once, as you well know. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you to go ahead and do your worst - I've discovered a whole new critical mode, my friend. We might call it the Colorado Barbecue and Floor-Bucket school of thought. It makes the stuff you guys do look about as scary as a ride on the Central Park carousel."

This is all very amusing, Paul, writing critics little billet-doux in one's head is always good for a giggle, but you really ought to find yourself a pot and get it boiling, don't you think?

Yes. Yes indeed.

The typewriter sat there, smirking at him.

"I hate you," Paul said morosely, and looked out the window.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 31, 2008

The Books: "It" (Stephen King)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

It by Stephen King

4117PWF91KL._SS500_.jpgI consider It to be a masterpiece. Not just King's greatest book - but a great American novel, period. I've only read it once - it was such a workout that I feel I need to be ready to face it again. It was that powerful. The characters are emblazoned in my mind - and they live on - like all great fictional characters. You cannot tell me that Anne Shirley does not live, on some alternate plane. Or Jay Gatsby. Or Captain Ahab. These people have a life beyond the pages. They are larger than the authors who created them. I'm not putting It on the level of Moby Dick, but I am saying that those main characters - Beverly, Stanley, Richie, Bill, the others ... BREATHE. They do not feel like "creations". Many big important authors have beautiful writing - but cannot create people who LIVE. (To my mind, Don DeLillo is in this category. I think you would be hard pressed to find contemporary writing that is better than that in Underworld - excerpt here - but I can't remember one character from that book. I mean, I sort of can - but not in the same way as - the cousins in Kavalier and Clay, or the entire family in Geek Love. The specificity of personality - and the impression that these people are ALIVE - is very very difficult. And Stephen King, at his best, is better than almost anyone.)

The book is sweeping in its scope. Terrifying in its particulars. I actually read the main showdown in the sewer canals with a hand over my eyes, trying to block the pictures King was putting in my head. And I still can't block it. We all know the form that the monster takes, and frankly I do not want to discuss it any more. Not if I want to sleep tonight. It would test the strongest person to face something like that ... and the fact that it is these 6 misfit kids - and then later, these 6 misfit adults - who are "called" to conquer "It" ... it's a perfect scenario, a classic one from literature: the quest, the hero who is not "ready" - not prepared - and yet who must fight. King is not re-inventing the wheel here. He inhabits those ancient genres with a freshness and delight that makes them seem new. I love him for it. He's a hugely well-read man - at the end of his wonderful book On Writing, he lists books he thinks are essential - not just to writers, but to anyone. And the list runs the gamut. Sci-fi, classics, modern literature, noir-stuff ... It's a broad and beautiful look at the landscape of literature, its peaks and valleys, its many different forms. His understanding of what makes a good book is top-notch. In It he pulls out all the stops.

Why I love this book so much is that it works on every level it needs to work. There is no skimping. The horror is horrifying. It's one of the scariest books I've ever read. (Although I think "The Mist" is his scariest story of all). Pennywise the clown stalks my dreams. That kind of gleeful anarchist cruelty is what makes up totalitarian societies everywhere. There is not just a smile-less insistence on cruelty. There is a JOY in crushing your enemies. Pennywise, with his terrible puns, and his crooning focus on the children of Derry, is the worst possible enemy. Because he is inhuman. He does not "feel". There is no reasoning with such a monster. King gives "It" an eternal life. We see the land of the town, Derry - from a prehistoric standpoint - with pterodactyls flying, and ferns and bushes overrunning everything - and suddenly something plummets to the earth - from the atmosphere. It is "It". "It" has been there that long. Waiting, biding its time, gaining in strength ... and so King makes the case that the horrors of the world, the everyday horrors -murder, child abductions, racist persecution - come from "outside" us. "It" is behind it all.

But the book also works on the most personal human level. I wrote before in my post on "The Body" that King is a master at writing about childhood, and what it is LIKE, from that perspective. It is the ultimate in childhood-friendship novels. I mean, think of the last sentence of the book. Or - if you don't know it by heart, like I do - then go pick up your copy and look it up. I can barely think of it without getting a lump in my throat. It's a great great book - because of the friendships it describes, and how it (he) captures what it is like, to be 11 years old ... in the 1950s, hanging out with your friends ... and then, as so often happens ... losing touch ... not just with your friends, but losing touch with who you used to be - the best part of yourself ... What happens to us when our childhood friends disappear? Those friends we chose before we knew who we were. They're the ones who have the keys. They are the ones who really KNOW you. Your husband, wife, children ... know the adult you. They know you once life has gotten to you, beaten you down a bit, shaved off the rough edges, made you a bit more small. But those who knew you when you were 11 actually know YOU. This is the realm King is in here. And it's explicit. The horror these 6 faced when they were 11 has since subsided. They have moved on. They are all now adults. Many of them have blocked out completely what they experienced back then. They are married, some are famous, some are deeply unhappy ... the demons that haunted them as children (familial, and actual) have manifested itself in adult terms: addiction, spousal abuse, etc. And then one day. Mike - the only one who stayed behind in Derry - realizes that it's "starting up again". And so he starts to make some calls. To his old childhood friends. They must return, for the final battle. It is only THEY who can do it.

God, King is good here. Because he really captures what it is like to be unconscious - to be in a state of total forgetting - and then, in one fell swoop, to have all of the armor of oblivion ripped away ... leaving you standing cold and exposed, with no protective barrier between you and the past. Answering Mike's call will rock their worlds - affect their marriages, their careers ... they have no idea how long it will take. But they all (except one) answer the call.

It's a fucking great book.

And I agonized a bit over what to excerpt - there's so much that's good here. And decided, what the hell. Let's excerpt the beginning. Because I challenge anyone to read the following excerpt and NOT want to read on.

EXCERPT FROM It by Stephen King

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

The boat bobbed, listed, righted itself again, dived bravely through treacherous whirlpools, and continued on its way down Witcham Street toward the traffic light which marked the intersection of Witcham and Jackson. The three vertical lenses on all sides of the traffic light were dark this afternoon in the fall of 1957, and the houses were all dark, too. There had been steady rain for a week now, and two days ago the winds had come as well. Most sections of Derry had lost their power then, and it was not back on yet.

A small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. It tapped on the yellow hood of the boy's slicker, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof ... a comfortable, almost cozy sound. The boy in the yellow slicker was George Denbrough. He was six. His brother William, known to most of the kids at Derry Elementary School (and even to the teachers, who would never have used the nickname to his face) as Stuttering Bill, was at home, hacking out the last of a nasty case of influenza. In that autumn of 1957, eight months before the real horrors began, and twenty-eight years before the final showdown, Stuttering Bill was ten years old.

Bill had made the boat beside which George now ran. He had made it sitting up in bed, his back propped against a pile of pillows, while their mother played Fur Elise on the piano in the parlor and rain swept restlessly against his bedroom window.

About three-quarters of the way down the block as one headed toward the intersection and the dead traffic light, Witcham Street was blocked to motor traffic by smudgepots and four orange sawhorses. Stencilled across each of the horses was DERRY DEPT. OF PUBLIC WORKS. Beyond them, the rain had spilled out of gutters clogged with branches and rocks and big sticky piles of autumn leaves. The water had first pried fingerholds in the paving and then snatched whole greedy handfuls - all of this by the third day of the rains. By noon of the fourth day, big chunks of the street's surface were boating through the intersection of Jackson and Witcham like miniature white-water rafts. By that time, many people in Derry had begun to make nervous jokes about arks. The Public Works Department had managed to keep Jackson Street open, but Witcham was impassable from the sawhorses all the way to the center of town.

But everyone agreed, the worst was over. The Kenduskeag Stream had crested just below its banks in the Barrens and bare inches below the concrete sides of the Canal which channelled it tightly as it passed through downtown. Right now a gang of men - Zack Denbrough, George's and Bill's father, among them - were removing the sandbags they had thrown up the day before with such panicky haste. Yesterday overflow and expensive flood damage had seemed almost inevitable. God knew it had happened before - the flooding in 1931 had been a disaster which had cost millions of dollars and almost two dozen lives. That was a long time ago, but there were still enough people around who remembered it to scare the rest. One of the flood victims had been found twenty-five miles east, in Bucksport. The fish had eaten this unfortunate gentleman's eyes, three of his fingers, his penis, and most of his left foot. Clutched in what remained of his hands had been a Ford steering wheel.

Now, though, the river was receding, and when the new Bangor Hydro dam went in upstream, the river would cease to be a threat. Or so said Zack Denbrough, who worked for Bangor Hydroelectric. As for the rest - well, future floods could take care of themselves. The thing was to get through this one, to get the power back on, and then to forget it. In Derry such forgetting of tragedy and disaster was allmost an art, as Bill Denbrough would come to discover in the course of time.

George paused just beyond the sawhorses at the edge of a deep ravine that had been cut through the tar surface of Witcham Street. This ravine ran on an almost exact diagonal. It ended on the far side of the street, roughly forty feet farther down the hill from where he now stood, on the right. He laughed aloud - the sound of solitary, childish glee a bright runner in that gray afternoon - as a vagary of the flowing water took his paper boat into a scale-model rapids which had been formed by the break in the tar. The urgent water had cut a channel which ran along the diagonal, and so his boat travelled from one side of Witcham Street to the other, the current carrying it so fast that George had to sprint to keep up with it. Water sprayed out from beneath his galoshes in muddy sheets. Their buckles made a jolly jingling as George Denbrough ran toward his strange death. And the feeling which filled him at that moment was clear and simple love for his brother Bill ... love and a touch of regret that Bill couldn't be here to see this and be a part of it. Of course he would try to describe it to Bill when he got home, but he knew he wouldn't be able to make him see it, the way Bill would have been able to make him see it if their positions had been reversed. Bill was good at reading and writing, but even at his age George was wise enough to know that wasn't the only reason why Bill got all A's on his report cards, or why his teachers liked his compositions so well. Telling was only part of it. Bill was good at seeing.

The boat nearly whistled along the diagonal channel, just a page torn from the Classified section of the Derry News, but now George imagined it as a PT boat in a war movie, like the ones he sometimes saw down at the Derry Theater with Bill at Saturday matinees. A war picture with John Wayne fighting the Japs. The prow of the newspaper boat threw sprays of water to either side as it rushed along, and then it reached the gutter on the left side of Witcham Street. A fresh streamlet rushed over the break in the tar at this point, creating a fairly large whirlpool, and it seemed to him that the boat must be swamped and capsize. It leaned alarmingly, and then George cheered as it righted itself, turned, and went racing on down toward the intersection. George sprinted to catch up. Over his head, a grim gust of October wind rattled the trees, now almost completely unburdened of their freight of colored leaves by the storm, which had been this year a reaper of the most ruthless sort.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack

January 29, 2008

The Books: "Different Seasons" 'The Body' (Stephen King)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Different Seasons by Stephen King

differentseasonsking.jpg"The Body" is the third novella in King's collection and, of course, it was made into Stand By Me (God bless you, River Phoenix! How you are missed!! DAMMIT) If people stay away from King because "they don't like horror novels" - I think that is such a shame - and I say that as a person who doesn't read horror novels, generally. But I read Carrie in high school (after seeing the film) and I was hooked - and I am so grateful. Because he is a wonderful writer. I think he's almost (not quite) but almost on the level of Mark Twain - in terms of writing about children - from THEIR level. It's not an easy feat- but King shines in that regard, above many of his peers. The way he evokes the rules of children, and how intense the friendships can be (especially little boys - like in "The Body") is absolutely exquisite. And another thing that King does here - that he does also in It, which I consider a masterpiece - is he writes from the perspective of an adult, looking back on childhood ... and yeah, lots of writers do that ... but without putting a keen of sadness and nostalgia in my heart, like King does. I read "The Body" and my heart literally aches. For youth, for summer vacation, for playing outside in the twilight, for being 4 feet tall, for the intensity of those times. Children have a three-dimensional experience, even though they are not adults yet. They have tough times, they grapple with universal themes, they struggle, they have moments of calm, they have insight ... but they are also 11 years old. King, when he writes about looking back, lets that sadness and loss flow through his writing, and it's just absolutely gorgeous. It is unbearable at points, because of this. Yes, there are monsters, and danger, and terror ... but the real heart of the thing (and it's in the last sentence of It) is remembering, with love, the friends you had before you knew who you were, the friends you made before life got to you ... the people you CHOSE as your companions when you were a kid. Those are important choices. And sometimes we never make such friends again. That's what "The Body" is all about, too.

Beautiful story. Four little boys - all misfits, for different reasons - hang out in their treehouse, playing cards, smoking cigarettes, fighting, talking. They hear a rumor - that out in the woods - there is a dead body. Nobody has discovered it yet. So they make a plan - to lie to their parents (those who have parents who care) and trek out into the woods to see the body. They will have to sleep in the woods one night. It will be an adventure.

How much of an adventure they could not know when they set out.

The narrator is writing the story - it's first person - and he's looking back on it, as an adult. He is now a writer. So the story is interspersed with his published works - so we can see how he has used the stuff of his life (the pie-eating contest, etc.) to create a career as a fiction writer. But this ... this story of "The Body" ... he has never written before. So there are times when the prose palpitates with emotionality, you'll see what I mean in the excerpt below - which is, hands down, some of my favorite writing of King's ever, in all of his books.

If you don't know what happens ... I beg you to read "The Body". Even if you've already seen Stand By Me. It's something else - a really special piece of work.

Here's an excerpt. I chose it because it stands out for me - in the whole of the story - as something singular, unconnected to other events ... and also because I have had similar moments in my life, nearly identical as a matter of fact - and King, who is known for writing about big gestures - running, killing, screaming - is PERFECT here - in the tiniest of moments. King understands that all of life can be encapsulated in such a moment. That often it is not the BIG things that stay in our mind ... it's the small. Like the time on the L platform in Chicago, when a thunderstorm was brewing, and there was purple lightning, and I know I was really really sad about something - although I can't remember what - and there were 2 little kids blowing bubbles nearby and so the translucent bubbles filled the air, gyrating around my head because of the wind. I don't remember the BIG things surrounding that moment ... but the sensory details are intact. And that means something to me. I don't discount the importance of such moments, even though they do not change the world.

That's what King is describing here. LOVE it.

EXCERPT FROM Different Seasons by Stephen King - The Body

The others slept heavily through the rest of the night. I was in and out, dozing, waking, dozing again. The night was far from silent; I heard the triumphant screech-squawk of a pouncing owl, the tiny cry of some small animal perhaps about to be eaten, a larger something blundering wildly through the undergrowth. Under all of this, a steady tone, were the crickets. There were no more screams. I doze and woke, woke and dozed, and I suppose if I had been discovered standing such a slipshod watch in Le Dio, I probably would have been courtmartialed and shot.

I snapped more solidly out of my last doze and became aware that something was different It took a moment or two to figure it out: although the moon was down, I could see my hands resting on my jeans. My watch said quarter to five. It was dawn.

I stood, hearing my spine crackle, walked two dozen feet away from the limped-together bodies of my friends, and pissed into a clump of sumac. I was starting to shake the night-willies; I could feel them sliding away. It was a fine feeling.

I scrambled up the cinders to the railroad tracks and sat on one of the rails, idly chucking cinders between my feet, in no hurry to wake the others. At that precise moment the new day felt too good to share.

Morning came on apace. The noise of the crickets began to drop, and the shadows under the trees and bushes evaporated like puddles after a shower. The air had that peculiar lack of taste that presages the latest hot day in a famous series of hot days. Birds that had maybe cowered all night just as we had done now began to twitter self-importantly. A wren landed on top of the deadfall from which we had taken our firewood, preened itself, and then flew off.

I don't know how long I sat there on the rail, watching the purple steal out of the sky as noiselessly as it had stolen in the evening before. Long enough for my butt to start complaining anyway. I was about to get up when I looked to my right and saw a deer standing in the railroad bed not ten yards from me.

My heart went up into my throat so high that I think I could have put my hand in my mouth and touched it. My stomach and genitals filled with a hot dry excitement. I didn't move. I couldn't have moved if I had wanted to. Her eyes weren't brown, but a dark, dusty black - the kind of velvet you see backgrounding jewelry displays. Her small ears were scuffed suede. She looked serenely at me, head slightly lowered in what I took for curiosity, seeing a kid with his hair in a sleep-scarecrow of whirls and many-tined cowlicks, wearing jeans with cuff and a brown khaki shirt with the elbows mended and the collar turned up in the hoody tradition of the day. What I was seeing was some sort of gift, something given with a carelessness that was appalling.

We looked at each other for a long time ... I think it was a long time. Then she turned and walked off to the other side of the tracks, white bobtail flipping insouciantly. She found grass and began to crop. I couldn't believe it. She had begun to crop. She didn't look back at me and didn't need to; I was frozen solid.

Then the rail started to thrum under my ass and bare seconds later the doe's head came up, cocked back toward Castle Rock. She stood there, her branch-black nose working on the air, coaxing it a little. Then she was gone in three gangling leaps, vanishing into the woods with no sound but one rotted branch, which broke with a sound like a track ref's starter-gun.

I sat there, looking mesmerized at the spot where she had been, until the actual sound of the freight came up through the stillness. Then I skidded back down the bank to where the others were sleeping.

The freighter's slow, loud passage woke them up, yawning and scratching. There was some funny, nervous talk about "the case of the screaming ghost," as Chris called it, but not as much as you might imagine. In daylight it seemed more foolish than interesting - almost embarrassing. Best forgotten.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them about the deer, but I ended up not doing it. That was one thing I kept to myself. I've never spoken or written of it until just now, today. And I have to tell you that it seems a lesser thing written down, damn near inconsequential. But for me it was the best part of that trip, the cleanest part, and it was a moment I found myself returning to, almost helplessly, when there was trouble in my life - my first day in the bush in Vietnam, and this fellow walked into the clearing where we were with his hand over his nose and when he took his hand away there was no nose there because it had been shot off; the time the doctor told us our youngest son might be hydrocephalic (he turned out just to have an oversized head, thank God); the long, crazy weeks before my mother died. I would find my thoughts turning back to that morning, the scuffed suede of her ears, the white flash of her tail. But eight hundred million Red Chinese don't give a shit, right? The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

January 28, 2008

The Books: "Different Seasons" 'Apt Pupil' (Stephen King)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Different Seasons by Stephen King

differentseasonsking.jpgThe second novella in this collection is called "Apt Pupil" and it was also made into a film (rest in peace, Brad Renfro - always thought he was a nice young actor, sad). A young kid becomes overwhelmingly convinced that his elderly next-door neighbor is a Nazi war criminal in hiding. The kid has become obsessed with the Holocaust - it haunts his dreams, he can't stop thinking about it ... it grabs hold of him and never lets go. I remember my first encounter with the Holocaust - and how difficult it was to get my mind around it. The sheer numbers stun you - because you don't even know what "6 million" even looks like - it's hard to picture that many people all at once. The kid befriends his next-door neighbor - but it's more like he insinuates himself into his life, because he wants to get closer to the Holocaust, and he believes this man was one of the perpetrators against the crime of humanity. Some of the details of the story are lost to me, it's been a long time - but basically, the kid goes off the deep end. He becomes convinced that the homeless people lying around their city, under bridges, etc., - need to be killed. The riff-raff of the world ... the world needs a cleansing. So he begins his mission. Like a one-man wrecking ball. I can't remember much else about it ... but I remember being captivated by it when I first read it ... and King just has this way of describing the "series of events" that leads up to a catharsis/confrontation ... so that there is no doubt in your mind the horror that is underneath it all. He just takes you through it step by step (and yeah, sometimes his "steps" could be edited down - he takes 3 pages for what could be one paragraph) ... but I don't mind that so much. I definitely don't mind it if the person is a good writer - and King is great. To me, the best thing about him is (because I'm not into genre fiction, not in the slightest) - his interest is always in what happens to a person when he or she is confronted with horror. Whether it be a crazy clown in the sewer ... or the fact of the Holocaust ... King is interested primarily in the psychological. And so am I. That's why I find him not just fun to read ... but a bit addictive. I want to get inside other people's psychologies as well. And King is all about that.

I remember the following excerpt - parts of it almost word for word, it made that much of an impression on me when I first read it.

Watch how King powerfully sets up the kid's obsession. How the obsession leads to murder and madness will have to wait ... but here King is setting the stage. He's so so good that way.

EXCERPT FROM Different Seasons by Stephen King - Apt Pupil

He remembered in the fifth grade, before Careers Day, how Mrs. Anderson (all the kids called her Bugs because of her big front teeth) had talked to them about what she called finding YOUR GREAT INTEREST.

'It comes all at once," Bugs Anderson had rhapsodized. You see something for the first time, and right away you know you have found YOUR GREAT INTEREST. It's like a key turning in a lock. Or falling in love for the first time. That's why Careers Day is so important, children - it may be the day on which you find YOUR GREAT INTEREST." And she had gone on to tell them about her own GREAT INTEREST, which turned out not to be teaching fifth grade but collecting nineteenth-century postcards.

Todd had thought Mrs. Anderson was full of bullshit at the time, but that day in Foxy's garage, he remembered what she had said and wondered if maybe she hadn't been right after all.

The Santa Anas had been blowing that day, and to the east there were brush-fires. He remembered the smell of burning, hot and greasy. He remembered Foxy's crewcut, and the flakes of Butch Wax clinging to the front of it. He remembered everything.

"I know there's comics here someplace," Foxy had said. His mother had a hangover and had kicked them out of the house for making too much noise. "Neat ones. They're Westerns mostly, but there's some Turok, Son of Stone and --"

"What are those?" Todd asked, pointing at the bulging cardboard cartons under the stairs.

"Ah, they're no good," Foxy said. "True war stories, mostly. Boring."

"Can I look at some?"

"Sure. I'll find the comics."

But by the time fat Foxy Pegler found them, Todd no longer wanted to read comics. He was lost. Utterly lost.

It's like a key turning in a lock. Or falling in love for the first time.

It had been like that. He had known about the war, of course - not the stupid one going on now, where the Americans had gotten the shit kicked out of them by a bunch of gooks in black pajamas - but World War II. He knew that the Americans wore round helmets with net on them and the krauts wore sort of square ones. He knew that the Americans won most of the battles and that the Germans had invented rockets near the end and shot them from Germany onto London. He had even known something about the concentration camps.

The difference between all of that and what he found in the magazines under the stairs in Foxy's garage was like the difference between being told about germs and then actually seeing them in a microscope, squirming around and alive.

Here was Ilse Koch. Here were crematoriums with thick doors standing open on their soot-clotted hinges. Here were officers in SS uniforms and prisoners in striped uniforms. The smell of the old pulp magazines was like the smell of the brush-fires burning out of control on the east of Santa Donato, and he could feel the old paper crumbling against the pads of his fingers, and he turned the pages, no longer in Foxy's garage but caught somewhere crosswire in time, trying to cope with the idea that they had really done those things, that somebody had really done those things, and that somebody had let them do those things, and his hand began to ache with a mixture of revulsion and excitement, and his eyes were hot and strained, but he read on, and from a column of print beneath a picture of tangled bodies at a place called Dachau, this figure jumped out at him:

6,000,000.

And he thought: Somebody goofed there, somebody added a zero or two, that's twice as many people as there are in L.A.! But then, in another magazine (the cover of this one showed a woman chained to a wall while a guy in a Nazi uniform approached her with a poker in his hand and a grin on his face), he saw it again:

6,000,000.

His headache got worse. His mouth went dry. Dimly, from some distance, he heard Foxy saying he had to go in for supper. Todd asked Foxy if he could stay here in the garage and read while Foxy ate. Foxy gave him a look of mild puzzlement, shrugged, and said sure. And Todd read, hunched over the boxes of the old true war magazines, until his mother called and asked if he was ever going to go home.

Like a key turning in a lock.

All the magazines said it was bad, what had happened. But all the stories were continued at the back of the book, and when you turned to those pages, the words saying it was bad were surrounded by ads, and these ads sold German knives and belts and helmets as well as Magic Trusses and Guaranteed Hair Restorer. These ads sold German flags emblazoned with swastikas and Nazi Lugers and a game called Panzer Attack as well as correspondence lessons and offers to make you rich selling elevator shoes to short men. They said it was bad, but it seemed like a lot of people must not mind.

Like falling in love.

Oh yes, he remembered that day very well. He remembered everything about it - a yellowing pin-up calendar for a defunct year on the back wall, the oil-stain on the cement floor, the way the magazines had been tied together with orange twine. He remembered how his headache had gotten a little worse each time he thought of that incredible number,

6,000,000.

He remembered thinking: I want to know about everything that happened in those places. Everything. And I want to know which is more true - the words, or the ads they put beside the words.

He remembered Bugs Anderson as he at last pushed the boxes back under the stairs and thought: She was right. I've found my GREAT INTEREST.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 27, 2008

The Books: "Different Seasons" 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' (Stephen King)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Different Seasons by Stephen King

differentseasonsking.jpgA book of four novellas, Different Seasons contains some of my favorite of all of Stephen King's writing (and I'm a huge fan). Each novella represents a different season, and some of these stories pack such a huge punch. None of them are "horror" stories, although there is most certainly psychological horror at times. The first story in the collection comes under the heading "Hope Springs Eternal" - and that is, most definitely, the them of "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" - adapted into the film Shawshank Redemption, probably the most successful (in terms of long-lasting impact) of all of the adaptations of King's work. Shawshank Redemption will be watched by generations to come, long after the rest of us are dust. It's just that kind of movie. And not to be a snot, but whatever - wouldn't be the first time - I prefer the written story. It's just how King describes stuff ... it's the way he can rise goosebumps on my flesh without ever having a zombie emerge, or an evil dog, or monsters in the sewers. He's great there as well - but in my opinion, he is at the top of his game (and anyone else's game) with "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" - the now well-known (thanks for the movie) story of Andy Dufresne - wrongly accused murderer and accountant - who spends decades of his life in jail - decades - digging a secret tunnel out, using his Rita Hayworth poster as a cover-up. It's not just the story of "hope springs eternal" that is so moving - it's the characters King introduces to us ... the way he describes prison life, not just from a phyical standpoint but - way more important - from the psychological standpoint. What happens to hope when a man becomes an "institutional man". What happens to free will, and thinking for oneself? Andy Dufresne knows he cannot beat the system. It has already beaten him. But - unlike most of his counterparts - he never ever becomes "institutionalized" - and that, to me, is King's main interest in the story. King, even with all the horror and dark imaginings, is - at his very core- an optimist. He loves people. He loves the human race, and what it is capable of at its very best. Ultimately, he sees the good. But we are only at our very best when faced with extraordinary obstacles. Andy Dufresne is not a Rambo-type guy. He's an accountant. A quiet stealthy man, with a great poker face ... who never ever stops thinking, thinking, thinking ... and not just thinking ... but saving the very part of himself, the uninstitutionalized part, the part that has dreams and plans for the future - to himself. Nobody can get in there with him, and nobody - for the most part - even knows that it is there. Everyone can sense, from the warden on down, that Andy Dufresne is an interesting character. But nobody could ever have guessed that all those long years - from the 50s to the 70s - when he was in his cell, with his chess pieces, that he was not just planning his escape in his mind - but working on it practically, inch by inch. When he breaks out, everyone is blown away. Andy? That guy?? But when you look back on it - as our beautiful narrator does - it all makes sense. Of course someone like that - methodical, anal, quiet, cards held close to his chest - would construct the perfect escape. And never ever let on what he was up to. The man had nerves of steel. Ice water in his veins. And THATS what interests Stephen King: who IS that? What kind of guy could endure in such silence? Taking such enormous risks? Dufresne could have lost all. Many many times. But - and here a little bit of luck comes into play - his cell was never searched unexpectedly - he was never busted ... but besides the luck factor, Dufresne just kept going. And perhaps we will never know what it was like for him. Where his mind went, those long long nights, as he chipped away at the rock walls of the prison. Dufresne was in the zone. The practical zone. Not a pipe dream. No. But an actual plan. It's an awesome story, and I never get sick of it.

One of the best parts of the story is that it is NOT told by an omniscent narrator - who can tell us: "And here's how it REALLY went." And it is NOT told by Dufresne, who can inform us, "Here is what it was like for me." It's told by his fellow inmate - Red. Who cannot give us the whole story - much of it is only speculation: "here is what it must have been like ... I bet that THIS is how it happened ..." and it adds such a goosebump factor to the entire novella, because, in the end, we really can't know. All we know is: one day Andy Dufresne was in his cell, and the next day - he had vanished into thin air.

The uncertainty of Red's voice here, the way it sounds as though he is working it out for himself, pondering Andy's experience - without really knowing the answer ... is part of the success of the book. It's that tone - and if you've read it, you will know what I mean. Morgan Freeman embodied it perfectly (so much of the movie is in voiceover - and thank God. It's just right for that particular film) ... but here you can see how it is written. To my ear, it couldn't be better.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Different Seasons by Stephen King - 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

Then one day, very late in the spring - perhaps around October of 1987 - the long-time hobby suddenly turned into something else. One night while he was in the hole up to his waist with Raquel Welch hanging down over his ass, the pick end of his rock-hammer must have suddenly sunk into concrete past the hilt.

He would have dragged some chunks of concrete back, but maybe he heard others falling down into that shaft, bouncing back and forth, clinking off that standpipe. Did he know by then that he was going to come upon that shaft, or was he totally surprised? I don't know. He might have seen the prison blueprints by then or he might not have. If not, you can be damned sure he found a way to look at them not long after.

All at once he must have realized that, instead of just playing a game, he was playing for high stakes ... in terms of his own life and his own future, the highest. Even then he couldn't have known for sure, but he must have had a pretty good idea because it was right around then that he talked to me about Zihuatenejo for the first time. All of a sudden, instead of just being a toy, that stupid hole in the wall became his master - if he knew about the sewer-pipe at the bottom, and that it led under the outer wall, it did, anyway.

He'd had the key under the rock in Buxton to worry about for years. Bow he had to worry that some eager-beaver new guard would look behind his poster and expose the whole thing, or that he would get another cellmate, or that he would, after all those years, suddenly be transferred. He had all those things on his mind for the next eight years. All I can say is that he must have been one of the coolest men who ever lived. I would have gone completely nuts after a while, living with all that uncertainty. But Andy just went on playing the game.

He had to carry the probability of discovery for another eight years - the probability of it, you might say, because no matter how carefully he stacked the cards in his favor, as an inmate of a state prison, he just didn't have that many to stack ... and the gods had been kind of him for a very long time; some nineteen years.

The most ghostly irony I can think of would have been if he had been offered a parole. Can you imagine it? Three days before the parolee is actually released, he is transferred into the light security wing to undergo a complete physical and a battery of vocational tests. While he's there, his old cell is completely cleaned out. Instead of getting his parole, Andy would have gotten a long turn downstairs in solitary, followed by some more time upstairs ... but in a different cell.

If he broke into the shaft in 1967, how come he didn't escape until 1975?

I don't know for sure - but I can advance some pretty good guesses.

First, he would have become more careful than ever. He was too smart to just push ahead at flank speed and try to get out in eight months, or even in eighteen. He must have gone on widening the opening on the crawlspace a little at a time. A hole as big as a teacup by the time he took his New Year's Eve drink that year. A hole as big as a dinner-plate by the time he took his birthday drink in 1968. As big as a serving-tray by the time the 1969 baseball season opened.

For a time I thought it should have gone much faster than it apparently did - after he broke through, I mean. It seemed to me that, instead of having to pulverize the crap and take it out of his cell in the cheater gadgets I have described, he could simply let it drop down the shaft. The length of time he took makes me believe that he didn't dare do that. He might have decided that the noise would arouse someone's suspicions. Or, if he knew about the sewer-pipe, as I believe he must have, he would have been afraid that a falling chunk of concrete would break it before he was ready, screwing up the cellblock sewage system and leading to an investigation. And an investigation, needless to say, would lead to ruin.

Still and all, I'd guess that, by the time Nixon was sworn in for his second term, the hole would have been wide enough for him to wriggle through ... and probably sooner than that. Andy was a small guy.

Why didn't he go then?

That's where my educated guesses run out, folks; from this point they become progressively wilder. One possibility is that the crawlspace itself was clogged with crap and he had to clear it out. But that wouldn't account for all the time. So what was it?

I think that maybe Andy got scared.

I've told you as well as I can how it is to be an institutional man. At first you can't stand those four walls, then you get so you can abide them, then you get so you accept them ... and then, as your body and your mind and your spirit adjust to life on an HO scale, you get to love them. You are told when to eat, when you can write letters, when you can smoke. If you're at work in the laundry or the plate-shop, you're assigned five minutes of each hour when you can go to the bathroom. For thirty-five years, my time was twenty-five minutes after the hour, and after thirty-five years, that's the only time I ever felt the need to take a piss or have a crap: twenty-five minutes past the hour. And if for some reason I couldn't go, the need would pass at thirty after, and come back at twenty-five past the next hour.

I think Andy may have been wrestling with that tiger - that institutional syndrome - and also with the bulking fears that all of it might have been for nothing.

How many nights must he have lain awake under his poster, thinking about that sewer line, knowing that the one chance was all he'd ever get? The blueprints might have told him how big the pipe's bore was, but a blueprint couldn't tell him what it would be like inside that pipe - if he would be able to breathe without choking, if the rats were big enough and mean enough to fight instead of retreating ... and a blueprint couldn't've told him what he'd find at the end of the pipe, when and if he got there. Here's a joke even funnier than the parole would have been: Andy breaks into the sewer-line, crawls through five hundred yards of choking, shit-smelling darkness, and comes up against a heavy-gauge mesh screen at the end of it all. Ha, ha, very funny.

That would have been on his mind. And if the long shot actually came in and he was able to get out, would he be able to get some civilian clothes and get away from the vicinity of the prison undetected? Last of all, suppose he got out of the pipe, got away from Shawshank before the alarm was raised, got to Buxton, overturned the right rock ... and found nothing beneath? Not necessarily something so dramatic as arriving at the right field and discovering that a highrise apartment building had been erected on the spot, or that it had been turned into a supermarket parking lot. It could have been that some little kid who liked rocks noticed that piece of volcanic glass, turned it over, saw the deposit-box key, and took both it and the rock back to his room as souvenirs. Maybe a November hunter kicked the rock, left the key exposed, and a squirrel or a crow with a liking for bright shiny things had taken it away. Maybe there had been spring floods one year, breaching the wall, washing the key away. Maybe anything.

So I think - wild guess or not - that Andy just froze in place for a while. After all, you can't lose if you don't bet. What did he have to lose, you ask? His library, for one thing. The poison peace of institutional life, for another. Any future chance to grab his safe identity.

But he finally did it, just as I have told you. He tried ... and, my! Didn't he succeed in spectacular fashion? You tell me.


But did he get away, you ask? What happened after? What happened when he got to that meadow and turned over that rock ... always assuming the rock was still there?

I can't describe that scene for you, because this institutional man is still in this institution, and expects to be for years to come.

But I'll tell you this. Very late in the summer of 1975, on September 15th, to be exact, I got a postcard which had been mailed from the tiny town of McNary, texas. That town is on the American side of the border, directly across from El Porvenir. The message side of the card was totally blank. But I know. I know it in my heart as surely as I know that we're all going to die somebody.

McNary was where he crossed. McNary, Texas.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

January 26, 2008

The Books: "Up the Down Staircase" (Bel Kaufman)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman.

200px-BelKaufman_UpTheDownStaircase.jpgI read this laugh-out-loud funny book about a woman who goes to teach in an inner city school when I was a kid. I read it because my cousin Susan, who was a year older than myself, and basically the coolest and most admirable person alive to me was reading it (and yes, if she had jumped off a bridge, I would have too) - her guffaws of laughter made me intrigued. She had to be about 13, so I was 12. I remember reading it and there was one section, in particular, which made me laugh so hard that I still remember it, years later, almost word for word. The book is not written with a narrative. There are series of conversations with her students, where she tries to get them under control (no small feat) - they refer to her as 'teach', they speak many languages, none of them very well, they are ghetto kids, and full of mischief and bullshit. The book also shows, beautifully, the overwhelming bureaucracy of high schools - all of the inter-office memos are printed (some of them are hilarious) - and the notes passed back and forth between teachers - Sylvia Barrett (our lead character's name) trying to get her sea legs in this new environment, which feels more like a correctional facility than a high school. We get to know the students through their compositions that they write for her (and one of these was the thing that made me laugh so loud I had to stop reading the book, just to give myself a break). There's a side plot where a young girl student falls in love with a male teacher - and writes him a passionate badly-spelled illiterate love letter. He doesn't know what to do, so he gives it back to her - with all of her mistakes corrected, as though it's just a regular paper. She responds by throwing herself out the window. She doesn't die, but much brou-haha ensues. I love the structure of the book - it almost feels like you are rifling through a teacher's desk drawers, at the end of a school year. Baffled notes go out by Sylvia ... who is trying to learn the system, as well as teach these kids (and you just fall in love with these kids, even the criminals-in-the-making - they're just all awesome) ... and you watch (through these "found objects") how Sylvia, over the course of the year, with much hard work, gains the kids' respect ... and figures out how to teach them.

An awesome book - if you haven't read it, all I can say is - do yourself a favor. It's got it all. Oh, and if you're a teacher - you REALLY have to read it!! You seriously will snort with laughter, and there are moments that are so poignant (I love teacher stories anyway) where you feel like you might cry. The breakthroughs are small ... it's not like Sylvia discovers a Dominican Einstein in her rowdy class ... but she does figure out how not just to talk to them on their level, but to raise them up as well. To hear their responses to, say, Huck Finn, in their essays - seriously, you have to read it. You will CRY with laughter.

Wonderful book.

Here are some of the students essays, from early on in the year. She has an anonymous drop-box in her room ... and she will assign the kids a question to be answered ... sometimes it's general, like, "How do you like my teaching? What can I do to improve?" to more specific, like the following excerpt. I chose this excerpt because I think it's a nice segue from all of the Ulysses posts I've been doing. (And the comment involving "the round person" makes me laugh out loud)

EXCERPT FROM Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman

ENGLISH 33 SS
ANSWER BRIEFLY:
WHY DO WE STUDY THE MYTHS AND THE ODYSSEY?

Because we want to talk like cultured people. At a party would you like it if some one mentioned a Greek God and you didn't know him. You would be embarrased.

_______________________________

We study myths like Orpheum & his girl friend because it takes place in the Greek Underground. We want to know how our civilization got that way.

_______________________________

Myths are everywhere. Many everyday things like thunder are based on myths. It helps increase our vocabulery in words like Volcanno and By Jove! and to gain experience for future behavior.

_______________________________

The reason we study it is because it shows the kind of writing they went in for in days of Yore. If this isn't the right answer well I don't know.

_______________________________

The Odessye I've just read helped me an awful lot in my life.

_______________________________

We study myths to learn what it was like to live in the golden age with all the killings.

_______________________________

I'm sure there are many reasons why we study these things but I missed it due to absence. I brought a note.

_______________________________

We study myths so we may comprehend in a superior fashion the origines of many idiocyncracies of our language throughout the decades, constant references to mythologic occurances have spawned such sparking gems as Jumping Jupiter. By acquaintance with sundry gods and their female counterparts one might discover the birthplaces of such phrases of which we speak.

_______________________________

Diana ruled the moon and fell in love once with a mortal and because of its outcome she never again did so.

_______________________________

If it wasnt for Myths where would Shakesper be today?

_______________________________

Well, for students going to colledge even if they don't go to colledge everybody needs a certain amount of literature in their background.

_______________________________

To me the "Odyssey" was just another Ethan Frome or Silas Marner.

_______________________________

It's hard to avoid reading because every wheres we go reading is there.

_______________________________

My own opinion is that I hated the Odessey.

_______________________________

I dont know why we read them but I can tell about it. Pyramid and Thisbe are next door neighbors who like Romeo and Juliette were caused to die by their parents. They saw each other thru a hole in the wall. After a while they couldnt stand it and decided not to meet by the hole any more. So they met by a tree. Thisbe runs away at the sight of a lady lion who's mouth is dripping blood. She dropped a clothe which the lady liion only picked up and thats all. Pyramid walks over and sees the clothe full of blood. He became agrieved and slewed himself. She then walks over and seeing her lover laying on the ground she couldnt stand the sight of him and likewise slewed herself. The blood of them both joined and changed the white flower to purple. How beautiful is love.

_______________________________

It develops our
(not finished)

_______________________________

We dove deeply into the Odessey to get what we can out of it. I think it's valuable to us. It's very difficult to understand the English of before.

_______________________________

Mythology is studied in the school system because most of us come from it.

_______________________________

My opinion about the Oddysey is ridiculous. I don't want to hear about some one's troubles.

_______________________________

The reason we study mythology is to gain tolerance for others even if they don't deserve it.

_______________________________

I didn't know we'd have a quizz on it so didn't study for it, but I imagine we read it to be a round person.

_______________________________

What you may call it felt that the people of the earth should have fire and he stole it from Olympus and took it to earth. He was then punished by being tied to a mountain top and have his liver eaten out every day by a Vultur.

_______________________________

Once a person studies myth's they look on life a little different. I know I do.

_______________________________

Why do we study the Odyssy? Because everybody in high school at one time or another read it and now we have to read it because it's our turn.

_______________________________

The Trojan horse was used as a spy of today. Gods were used as dictators and Penelpe still walks the streets of modern society.

_______________________________

If the odessy is of no value to me its probably because I didnt put myself into it to begin with.

_______________________________

Just about all myths are based on Love and that is why.

_______________________________

We read myths for learning about the gods and godesses and their affairs.

_______________________________

We read it because it's a classicle.



Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

January 25, 2008

The Books: "Finnegans Wake" (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

finnegans%20wake.jpgJoseph Campbell wrote, in regards to Finnegans Wake, "If our society should go to smash tomorrow (which, as Joyce implies, it may) one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake." James Joyce worked on this, his last book, for 17 years. For many years during that time it was just known as Work in Progress. Because of the atomic bomb of Ulysses, people were, naturally, anxious to the point of apoplexy to see what Joyce would come up with next. The book cannot be said to be written in English - not strictly - although it's amazing how much sense it does make, if you surrender to it. The entire book is made up of puns, word association games, interweaving webs of connections - He said that since Ulysses, except for that last episode, was a "daytime" book, this one was going to be "nocturnal". It takes on the qualities of a dream. Where things can be nonsensical and yet logical at the same time. The entire thing is, apparently, a dream of our lead - if you can call him that - Earwicker. Joyce incorporated over 70 languages into the book - and, naturally, there are great "keys" out there, that track down all of Joyce's influences. There are sections in Polynesian, Dutch, Lithuanian - and many many more. Joyce's interest (obsession) in language was the main driving force here. I'm not sure that he felt this, specifically, but to me, one of the feelings I get from this extraordinary book (that starts mid-sentence, and also ends mid-sentence) is that we are all one. All languages come from the same pot. We all influence one another. There are no barriers. They may seem real (the barriers) ... but if you poke holes in them, you'll start to see the back and forth flow. This also goes along wtih the river imagery that makes up such a huge part of the book. The book is not strictly about anything - in the same way that you can't really point to the "plot" of Ulysses. Joyce was never into the usual structures. He wrote the book from 1922 to 1939 - a very rough patch in his life. His eyesight got worse, he had numerous operations - and there were times when he lost his sight completely. Hard to imagine. But I think it makes so much sense that his books, his mature books anyway - have so much to do with the SOUND of things, rather than the LOOK. Finnegans Wake is musical. It's actually a lot of fun, once you let go of your normal expectations. And that's what Joyce requires. It's like a big puzzle ... you feel like a rock star when you understand a paragraph, and can recognize 2 or 3 of the references. There's a little something for everyone here: ancient history, modern literature, psychoanalysis, Irish politics - it is truly a "catholic" book, in many respects.

I can't remember where I found this, I think it was on the auction block last year - Thornton Wilder's personal copy of Finnegans Wake - here is just one of the pages:

thorntonfinnegans2.jpg


Joyce corresponded with Swiss writer Jacques Mercanton during the writing of the book and in one of his letters he says:

You are not Irish ... and the meaning of some passages will perhaps escape you. But you are Catholic, so you will recognize this or that allusion. You don't play cricket; this word may mean nothing to you. But you are a musician, so you will feel at ease in this passage. When my Irish friends come to visit me in Paris, it is not the philosophical subtleties of the book that amuse them, but my recollection of O'Connell's top hat.

Finnegans Wake is definitely the most consciously crafted book of the 20th century. There are stories of final drafts being sent back to Joyce from the printer, and him huddling over them, marking them up. Someone asked him, "What are you doing??" Joyce answered, "Removing commas."

The thing about a genius - like Van Gogh or Mozart - is that they must do what they must do. They must follow their genius - IT leads THEM. For the most part, it is not comprehensible to us mere mortals why they do what they must do. We reap the rewards in the results they come up with - although often we are still faced with incomprehension: like; WHY? Joyce himself said, mid-way through the writing of Finnegans Wake, "I confess that it is an extremely tiresome book but it is the only book which I am able to write at present." I am in awe of such certainty. Nora, his wife, looking at the gibberish pages, the ciphers, the codes, said, "Why don't you write books people can read?"

Now this type of work may not seem to be for everybody - although Joyce felt it was his most accessible work. Of course the general public was better educated back then - and you could assume certain things about what people knew. People knew about Waterloo, people knew about Brutus and Caesar - etc. That's not so much the case now. But still: Finnegans Wake is actually a lot of fun, even though it's a challenge. I read much of it out loud when I first read it - and that definitely helps. Again, nothing happens - although characters, of a sort, do emerge. Anna Livia Plurabelle, Earwicker - their sons. But the point is not literal. It is a dream-space, and Joyce was interested in re-creating a dream-space. Associations flowing, the mind let off the hook of consciousness. The characters do not remain static - they morph, transform, become animals, parabolae, rivers, whatever ... like Ovid's Metamorphosis. Nothing is stuck. Everything flows into everything else. A truly Joycean point of view.

The flipside to Nora's humorous comment I mentioned earlier is that years later, after Joyce's death, Nora was often interviewed about her famous husband, and all of the questions were usually about Ulysses. Nora was not a big reader, she liked romance novels, basically - which is so perfect that she would be married to Jimmy. Not a literary woman, at all. But one of her comments in these interviews shows that there was a deeply insightful person in there - someone who knew her husband was up to something that nobody else was. She said, "What's all this talk about Ulysses? Finnegans Wake is the important book."

I think the rough Galway girl might be onto something.

My favorite comment about Finnegans Wake comes from Samuel Beckett:

You cannot complain that this stuff is not written in English. It is not written at all. It is not to be read. It is to be looked at and listened to. His writing is not about something. It is that something itself.

Here's an excerpt from the 8th chapter - the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" chapter - which is woven through with the names of almost every river on the planet (sometimes written in such puns that you have to untwist the language to see what he means).

EXCERPT FROM Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.


Well, you know or don’t you kennet or haven’t I told you every telling has a taling and that’s the he and the she of it. Look, look, the dusk is growing! My branches lofty are taking root. And my cold cher’s gone ashley. Fieluhr? Filou! What age is at? It saon is late. ’Tis endless now senne eye or erewone last saw Waterhouse’s clogh. They took it asunder, I hurd thum sigh. When will they reassemble it? O, my back, my back, my bach! I’d want to go to Aches-les-Pains. Pingpong! There’s the Belle for Sexaloitez! And Concepta de Send-us-pray! Pang! Wring out the clothes! Wring in the dew! Godavari, vert the showers! And grant thaya grace! Aman. Will we spread them here now? Ay, we will. Flip! Spread on your bank and I’ll spread mine on mine. Flep! It’s what I’m doing. Spread! It’s churning chill. Der went is rising. I’ll lay a few stones on the hostel sheets. A man and his bride embraced between them. Else I’d have sprinkled and folded them only. And I’ll tie my butcher’s apron here. It’s suety yet. The strollers will pass it by. Six shifts, ten kerchiefs, nine to hold to the fire and this for the code, the convent napkins, twelve, one baby’s shawl. Good mother Jossiph knows, she said. Whose head? Mutter snores? Deataceas! Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? Allalivial, allalluvial! Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger. I’ve heard tell that same brooch of the Shannons was married into a family in Spain. And all the Dunders de Dunnes in Markland’s Vineland beyond Brendan’s herring pool takes number nine in yangsee’s hats. And one of Biddy’s beads went bobbing till she rounded up lost histereve with a marigold and a cobbler’s candle in a side strain of a main drain of a manzinahurries off Bachelor’s Walk. But all that’s left to the last of the Meaghers in the loup of the years prefixed and between is one kneebuckle and two hooks in the front. Do you tell me. that now? I do in troth. Orara por Orbe and poor Las Animas! Ussa, Ulla, we’re umbas all! Mezha, didn’t you hear it a deluge of times, ufer and ufer, respund to spond? You deed, you deed! I need, I need! It’s that irrawaddyng I’ve stoke in my aars. It all but husheth the lethest zswound. Oronoko! What’s your trouble? Is that the great Finnleader himself in his joakimono on his statue riding the high hone there forehengist? Father of Otters, it is himself! Yonne there! Isset that? On Fallareen Common? You’re thinking of Astley’s Amphitheayter where the bobby restrained you making sugarstuck pouts to the ghostwhite horse of the Peppers. Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper! It’s well I know your sort of slop. Flap! Ireland sober is Ireland stiff Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me! Your prayers. I sonht zo! Madammangut! Were you lifting your elbow, tell us, glazy cheeks, in Conway’s Carrigacurra canteen? Was I what, hobbledyhips? Flop! Your rere gait’s creakorheuman bitts your butts disagrees. Amn’t I up since the damp tawn, marthared mary allacook, with Corrigan’s pulse and varicoarse veins, my pramaxle smashed, Alice Jane in decline and my oneeyed mongrel twice run over, soaking and bleaching boiler rags, and sweating cold, a widow like me, for to deck my tennis champion son, the laundryman with the lavandier flannels? You won your limpopo limp fron the husky hussars when Collars and Cuffs was heir to the town and your slur gave the stink to Carlow. Holy Scamander, I sar it again! Near the golden falls. Icis on us! Seints of light! Zezere! Subdue your noise, you hamble creature! What is it but a blackburry growth or the dwyergray ass them four old codgers owns. Are you meanam Tarpey and Lyons and Gregory? I meyne now, thank all, the four of them, and the roar of them, that draves that stray in the mist and old Johnny MacDougal along with them. Is that the Poolbeg flasher beyant, pharphar, or a fireboat coasting nyar the Kishtna or a glow I behold within a hedge or my Garry come back from the Indes? Wait till the honeying of the lune, love! Die eve, little eve, die! We see that wonder in your eye. We’ll meet again, we’ll part once more. The spot I’ll seek if the hour you’ll find. My chart shines high where the blue milk’s upset. Forgivemequick, I’m going! Bubye! And you, pluck your watch, forgetmenot. Your evenlode. So save to jurna’s end! My sights are swimming thicker on me by the shadows to this place. I sow home slowly now by own way, moyvalley way. Towy I too, rathmine.

Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes! And sure he was the quare old buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls and dotthergills. Gammer and gaffer we’re all their gangsters. Hadn’t he seven dams to wive him? And every dam had her seven crutches. And every crutch had its seven hues. And each hue had a differing cry. Sudds for me and supper for you and the doctor’s bill for Joe John. Befor! Bifur! He married his markets, cheap by foul, I know, like any Etrurian Catholic Heathen, in their pinky limony creamy birnies and their turkiss indienne mauves. But at milkidmass who was the spouse? Then all that was was fair. Tys Elvenland! Teems of times and happy returns. The seim anew. Ordovico or viricordo. Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle’s to be. Northmen’s thing made southfolk’s place but howmulty plurators made eachone in person? Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure sanscreed into oure eryan! Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! Twins of his bosom. Lord save us! And ho! Hey? What all men. Hot? His tittering daughters of. Whawk?

Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 24, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Penelope episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (THE ODYSSEY)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode
Episode 11: The Sirens Episode
Episode 12: The Cyclops Episode
Episode 13: The Nausicaa Episode
Episode 14: The Oxen of the Sun Episode
Episode 15: The Circe Episode

3. (THE NOSTOS)
Episode 16: The Eumaeus Episode
Episode 17: The Ithaca Episode

TS Eliot wrote, of Ulysses, and this episode (the last in the book) in particular: "How could anyone write again after achieving the immense prodigy of the last chapter?"

I want to take a second to talk about Joyce's impetus for writing the book, not to mention the fact that he chose to place the events of the one day in the book on June 16, 1904. Richard Ellmann in his biography of James Joyce describes what happened to Joyce himself on June 16, 1904:

The experience of love was almost new to him in fact, though he had often considered it in imagination. A transitory interest in his cousin Katsy Murray had been followed by the stronger, but unexpressed and unrequited, interest in Mary Sheehy. He shocked Stanlislaus [Joyce's brother] a little by quoting with approval a remark of a Dublin wit, 'Woman is an animal that micturates once a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a month and parturiates once a year.' Yet tenderness was as natural to him as coarseness, and secretly he dreamed of falling in love with someone he did not know, a gentle lady, the flower of many generations, to whom he should speak in the ceremonious accents of Chamber Music.

Instead, on June 10, 1904, Joyce was walking down Nassau Street in Dublin when he caught sight of a tall, good-looking young woman, auburn-haired, walking with a proud stride. When he spoke to her she answered pertly enough to allow the conversation to continue. She took him, with his yachting cap, for a sailor, and from his blue eyes thought for a moment he might be Swedish.

Joyce found she was employed at Finn's Hotel, a slightly exalted rooming house, and her lilting speech confessed that she was from Galway City. She had been born there, to parents who lived in Sullivan's Lane, on March 21, 1884. Her name was a little comic, Nora Barnacle, but this too might be an omen of felicitous adhesion. (As Joyce's father was to say when he heard much later her last name was Barnacle, 'She'll never leave him.') After some talk it was agreed they should meet in front of Sir William Wilde's house at the turning of Merrion Square on June 14. But Nora Barnacle failed to appear, and Joyce sent her a note in some dejection:

60 Shelbourne Road

I may be blind. I looked for a long time at a head of reddish-brown hair and decided it was not yours. I went home quite dejected. I would like to make an appointment but it might not suit you. I hope you will be kind enough to make one with me -- if you have not forgotten me!

James A. Joyce 15 June 1904

The appointment was made, and for the evening of June 16, when they went walking at Ringsend, and then arranged to meet again.

To set Ulysses on this date was Joyce's most eloquent if indirect tribute to Nora, a recognition of the determining effect upon his life of his attachment to her. On June 16, as he would afterwards realize, he entered into relation with the world around him and left behind him the loneliness he had felt since his mother's death. He would tell her later, "You made me a man." June 16 was the sacred day that divided Stephen Dedalus, the insurgent youth, from Leopold Bloom, the complaisant husband.

Many many years later, after Joyce's death, Nora - his wife and partner since that day in 1904, was asked by a reporter what other writers she thought were good. Her reply: "Sure, if you've been married to the greatest writer in the world, you don't remember all the little fellows."

Joyce and Nora had their first "date" on June 16, 1904 - a date which consisted of walking around Dublin (it wasn't a time when men and women really dated - certainly not in Ireland) - and there was probably some kind of sexual encounter between them (Joyce references it obliquely, from time to time.) A couple of months passed, the relationship intensifying - and Joyce began to grow desperate to leave Ireland. He applied for a job in Europe -with the Berlitz school - and began to be convinced that Nora had to come with him. They had to be together. They could not live freely in Ireland. On September 16, 1904 - shortly before his departure date, he wrote a letter to Nora which still, for me, trembles with passion as I read it:

"When I was waiting for you last night I was even more restless. It seemed to me that I was fighting a battle with every religious and social force in Ireland for you and that I had nothing to rely on but myself. There is no life here -- no naturalness or honesty. People live together in the same houses all their lives and at the end they are as far apart as ever ... The fact that you can choose to stand beside me in this way in my hazardous life fills me with great pride and joy ... Allow me, dearest Nora, to tell you how much I desire that you should share any happiness that may be mine and to assure you of my great respect for that love of yours which it is my wish to deserve and to answer."

When it came time for him to leave, she jumped ship with him. They left a wake of scandal and debt behind them - Yeats bailed him out financially, Joyce's brother was trying to sell his books for more cash ... and of course, he and Nora did not get married ... so it was an unbelievable scandal. James and Nora did eventually get married - in 1930 - and that was long after they had had two kids, and had spent almost 20 years together as a couple. It's a great love story. Chaotic, and very much their own. Joyce was a jealous man ... and jealous of Nora's affections for other men. He wondered if he were distinct to her. One of the things that really bothered him was her use of pronouns. She would say "he" and that "he" could mean anyone - him, another man, her father, a man from her past ... It made him feel like men all blended together into one being, for her ... that nobody "stood out", nobody was "named". Joyce uses this in Molly's monologue in this last episode - where sometimes it is a struggle to figure out which person she is talking about. She refers to her husband, Leopold, as "Poldy" - but more often than not, he's just "he". And Blazes Boylan is also just "he". She does not distinguish. She does in her heart - she's comparing and contrasting the two constantly ... but her language remains opaque. Joyce found this fascinating, infuriating, and very very female. So he used it. After the book came out, Nora was asked if she were the model for Molly Bloom. Her answer was blunt: "I'm not -- she was much fatter."

How much do I love Nora Joyce.

The Penelope episode is 40 pages long, and I think it only has 5 sentences in it. I actually went through once, trying to locate the periods. For the most part, it is a run-on sentence. Molly lies in bed, Leopold lies next to her - and she thinks out loud. About her life, her men, her rendesvous with her lover, her dead son ... but more than that: it is the ruminations of an insomniac, frayed by sleep, letting her mind off the hook that it needs to be on during the conscious daytime ... and going from topic to topic ... memories coming up, receding ... Molly is hugely witty. She has a healthy contempt for people ... she's not at all a romantic. She thinks men are rather silly. She thinks women are silly, too - but the silliness of men affects her more personally. She compares Boylan's fucking to Bloom's fucking ... you know, Joyce's worst nightmare (many men's worst nightmare) ... but she's not a vicious person. She's just truthful. The chapter is the only time in the book when a character is alone ... with herself ... and the darkness. The rest of the book is highly social - interactions with the human race left and right. But here, now, 3 a.m. ... it is dark, and Molly lies in the dark, unselfconsciously being with herself and her thoughts. It's a shockingly open look at womanhood - taking it off its pedestal, certainly. She muses in an annoyed way about how chamber pots are obviously created with men in mind ... because they're not convenient for women. She muses about her period (which has at that moment). The cramps, etc. You know ... this kind of stuff was just not talked about back then! And Joyce isn't talking about it in a grossed-out way, or anything ... It's just simple and truthful. In the same way that a man, lying in a tub, looks down at his penis, and contemplates it ... and other men would understand that, and know they have done such things ... the mystique of the genitalia does not exist in such casual moments. We deal with our private parts on a daily basis, it's not big deal. It's a big deal when we want to SHARE ye olde private parts ... but when you're taking a bath, or strolling around naked in a non-sexual context ... it's just another body part. Well, the same is true for women as well - and Joyce shows that, by putting us inside Molly's head. This is rather revolutionary, if you look at the literature of the time. And because there is no narrator in the Penelope episode - we are 100% inside Molly's head - Joyce makes a demand on us, the reader: If you judge Molly, or if you say "Ewwww", even to yourself, at some of the things she thinks about - then you are missing so much. You are missing not just her humanity, but your own.

Joyce said he wanted to end the book with the most positive word in the English language - which gives you some idea of his thoughts on the book as a whole. It's a comedy.

And Molly - who has been unseen and yet omnipresent thru the entire book - suddenly takes center stage. We have been totally on Bloom's side throughout ... why is she cheating on him? Why is she making him a cuckold? She is shaming him! Is she a whore? I don't LIKE her.

But then. She takes over the book. Joyce lets HER end the book - which seriously, is so amazing when you think about it. The ascendancy of the female ... the real female: not the whore of The Circe episode, not the sweet virgin of The Nausicaa episode ... but the wife. The human being. The flawed human being ... who loves Leopold Bloom, and whose heart has broken since he distanced himself from her following the death of their son. She is a vibrant funny philosophical woman, with much forgiveness towards menfolk (even with her sharp observations about how unfair much of life is for women) - she lies in bed, and aches for her marriage. Aches for the Bloom who had made love to her on the hills at Howth (a memory that he has already shared with us, the reader) ... She remembers how his mouth felt, and her breasts, and the way the rhododendrons were ... It is the sweetest most loving memory she has.

I don't want to really say anymore - because the episode is, in a weird way, even with all its bathroom humor, bodily functions, casual marriage-bed behavior ... it's quite delicate. It's a run-on sentence. You have to work hard to make sense of it and find the punctuation on your own. I've read it out loud ... and it's much much easier when you read it aloud. The sentences, even without periods and commas, just fall into place.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus has returned home and has killed all of Penelope's suitors. And at first, Penelope does not even recognize her husband. She only believes it is him when he describes their bed to her.

The voice of Molly, in this chapter, is not rambling, or incoherent. But it has something in it of a doubling-back, a word-assocation - puns leading to other thoughts, jokes made to herself ... sudden swoops of romanticism, punctuated by menstrual cramps. So: she is everything. She becomes - oddly enough - the entire human race, in all its messiness, beauty, pettiness, and physical limitations. But her voice itself is hypnotic, almost scary at first ... we are so deeply inside her, and up until this point in the book we have only heard things about her, and judged her behavior ... and Joyce does not prepare us for what happens in the last episode. He does not set us up carefully so we will be 'ready'. He throws us in. here: swim.

Joyce felt that women were, essentially, wild. Their bodies were wild ... way more out of control than men's - they bled, they had babies, their bellies swelled and fell ... Men were much more static, linear. Women ebbed and flowed. That was why 'they" could not use proper punctuation. Their thoughts did not line up neatly, into grammatical structures.

Molly is most commonly compared to Chaucer's Wife of Bath, with her great mix of sadness and laughter. Joyce, by letting her end the book, gives the Blooms, in a way, their only shot at saving their marriage. Bloom, with his idiosyncrasies, his insecurities, is a tough man to live with. Molly knows that well. But she accepts them, even if she makes fun behind his back or to herself - because that's what marriage is all about. He sleeps with his head at the foot of the bed, so his feet are beisde her face. That's weird. But that's what he likes. He's almost kicked her teeth out in his sleep ... but she accepts it, even though he's a weirdo. There are numerous examples in her long speech, of moments like that ... where we see Bloom in a completely different light ... because it's her perspective. She reminsices about making love with him - and thru the book we have just read, he's seemed so passive, and ... impotent, basically. So to have her raving in her memory about their great fucking in the past ... redeems Bloom so much. We realize (and it's one of the most important realizations a human being can ever have) that we have under-estimated Bloom. We have judged him on too little information. In the same way that Molly now needs to be taken into consideration in a differnt way. We have had all kinds of opinions about her, and about women who cheat on their husbands. This needs to be re-examined.

But Joyce doesn't stop to intellectualize any of this - mainly because Molly never would.

We just lie there, in bed with her, and follow the torrent of her thoughts.

I just can't bring myself to excerpt the final and famous last paragraph ... it really needs to be saved, for when it is in context with the whole.

But here's an excerpt from earlier in her monologue.

James Joyce wrote, in a letter to his brother Stanislaus:

Don't you think there is a certain resemblance betwen the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do? I mean that I am trying ... to give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own ... for their mental, moral, and spiritual uplift.

And so you have, Jimmy. And thanks. Thanks to everyone who has read these excerpts, and commented and emailed me about them.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Penelope episode


yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do it somewhere and the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night Boylan gave my hand a great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May Moon shes beaming love because he has an idea about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going to the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the satisfaction in any case God knows hes change in a way not to be always and ever wearing the same old hat unless] paid some nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young boy would like me Id confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my garters the new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I know what boys feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging drawing out the thing by the hour question and answer would you do this that and the other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would because I told him about some Dean or Bishop was sitting beside me in the jews Temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and he tired me out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he is who is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who is it tell me his name who tell me who the German Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him can you feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it pretending to like it till ( he comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it makes your lips pale anyhow its done now once and for all with all the talk of the world about it people make its only the first time after that its just the ordinary do it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father and I always think of the real father what did he want to know for when I already confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did he know me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never turn or let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost for a woman of course must be terrible when a man cries let alone them Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of incense off him like the pope besides theres no danger with a priest if youre married hes too careful about himself then give something to H H the pope for a penance I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he was thinking of his father I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I in it who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their bills up with some liquor Id like to sip those richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I tasted one with my finger dipped out of that American that had the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time we took the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me up as if the world was coming to an end God be merciful to us I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar and they come and tell you theres no God what could you do if it was running and rushing about nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May see it brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting he says your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp yes because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose is not so big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up he must have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making us like that with a big hole in the middle of us like a Stallion driving it up into you because thats all they want out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye I had to halfshut my eyes still he hasnt such a tremendous amount of spunk in him when I made him pull it out and do it on me considering how big it is so much the better in case any of it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in me nice invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it themselves theyd know what I went through with Milly nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up with a child or twins once a year as regular as the clock always with a smell of children off her the one they called budgers or something like a nigger with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the last time I was there a squad of them falling over one another and bawling you couldnt hear your ear supposed to be healthy not satisfied till they have us swollen out like elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked having another not off him though still if he was married I m sure hed have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 23, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Ithaca episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (THE ODYSSEY)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode
Episode 11: The Sirens Episode
Episode 12: The Cyclops Episode
Episode 13: The Nausicaa Episode
Episode 14: The Oxen of the Sun Episode
Episode 15: The Circe Episode
Episode 16: The Eumaeus Episode

This episode, the Ithaca episode, was Joyce's favorite in the whole book - and I find that very illuminating. Kinda like how "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" was his favorite story in Dubliners. Not the obvious one ... but the one that many people, to this day, find confusing, difficult ... and yet ultimately so rewarding once you crack the code. The Ithaca episode is as though we, the reader, are suddenly circling the earth - in a satellite - listening in on a conversation from thousands and thousands of miles below. It's omniscent. Or kind of like an inter-galactic lecture hour. At first it's tough-going, reading the episode ... but once I got the hang of it, it became one of my favorites in the book, too. One of the things that is often missed about Joyce, because of his reputation as the most important author of the 20th century, is how funny and ultimately silly he is. He's not interested in big world-shaking moments. There's not a ONE in any of his books. He's not interested in making a statement about "How We Live Now". He couldn't be less interested in the generalized "we" of the human race. He's more microscopic than that. There is great wit in Joyce. Great silliness. And it can be seen most clearly in this chapter, where we are catapulted out into space, staring down, way way down, on Bloom and Dedalus, stumbling home to Bloom's house at 2 in the morning. Because wouldn't any conversation seem a bit silly if you were out in the cold reaches of space, listening in on it?

What is happening here is that Joyce is cataloging what is said - in an omniscent professor-ish tone ... and cataloging the similiarities and differences between Bloom and Dedalus, our two heroes. Or anti-heroes, as the case may be.

And the omniscent voice asks questions. And another omniscent voice answers. And it's as detailed as it can be - as minute as it can be ... and yet we never stop having the sense that we're on a space station, or on a far-away star ... staring down at earth, at the puny humans doing their thing, wandering, drinking, eating, talking ... what on EARTH are those pipsqueaks going on about? You'll see what I mean when you read the excerpt.

Bloom takes him inside and makes him a cup of cocoa. They sit in the kitchen talking about ... God, every topic in the book.

It's hypnotic, the language ... and extremely technical, almost like you're in a physics lecture, or a biology lecture ... something scientific. Yet what is being discussed is the human animal and the ups and downs on a specific conversation taking place at 2 a.m. on June 17, 1904. The omniscent lecturing voice - cataloging all of the topics covered, summing up the relationship being formed down on earth - gives us an odd sense of how important we are. It's that thing that you can get when you try to contemplate the vastness of space. Sometimes it makes you feel infinitesimally small. And sometimes it can make you feel transcendent, and miraculous ... that life has even formed, and flourished. Jodie Foster, in her monologue at the end of Contact expresses that perfectly:

I had an experience. I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision ... of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how ... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater then ourselves, that we are *not*, that none of us are alone! I wish... I could share that... I wish, that everybody, if only for one... moment, could feel... that awe, and humility, and hope. But... That continues to be my wish.

Tiny and insignificant and also rare and precious.

That's the realm we are in in the Ithaca episode.

The Ithaca episode in The Odyssey involves Odysseus' return home to Ithaca - where he slays all of Penelope's suitors. Hmmm. So Bloom has returned. After a long day. Molly has had a rendesvous with a lover. But we are no longer back in ancient Greece, where the rules are clear. Bloom does not kill Blazes Boylan. He passively thinks about divorce, maybe he'll have to go that route ... we're in the 20th century now. The rules are different. Bloom also is the kind of guy who can't help but see the other side of things. And so, in a weird way, he even understands why Molly has strayed. He sees her point. Bloom is (and has been) passive. He is sad, yes, he loves Molly ... but no suitors will be slayed. He will figure out what to do later. In the meantime, there is Dedalus to consider. Maybe he could sleep on the couch ... would Molly mind?

But it's not to be. Dedalus, after his cocoa, does end up leaving, and making his way home ... and Bloom reluctantly crawls upstairs and gets into bed with Molly. There is an imprint of a man;s body in the sheets - showing where Blazes Boyland had lain that day. Bloom and Molly sleep head to feet ... Bloom puts his head at the foot of the bed, next to Molly's feet (in the next chapter, Molly ruminates ruefully about how he has almost kicked her teeth out on occasion, in his sleep).

A couple of more notes on the language:

Not only is it like a question and answer session - but it's even more reminiscent (to Catholics, anyway) of the catechism - and Joyce loads the episode with religious language. It's just a conversation between two drunk men. But in Joyce's world view - even with his contempt of organized religion - it is THERE that God can be seen, felt, experienced. Joyce was a humanist. A Renaissance man. Man is the center. God is in man. Anyone who looks elsewhere is just an ignorant sheep.

There's another level here, too: Of all the episodes in the book, this is the one that could be called "objective". We're looking thru a telescope AND a microscope - at the same time. Bloom is about to face the pain of getting in bed with his wife, whom he fears he has lost (we realize in the next episode that all is NOT lost - but Bloom doesn't know that). So the objective language reminds me of the painful scene in Taxi Driver when Travis Bickle (Robert Deniro) calls up Cybill Shepherd and asks her out on another date, after their tragic one - where he takes her to a porno movie. She obviously doesn't want anything to do with him anymore, so in this phone conversation - and we only hear his side of it - she turns him down. But Scorsese does an interesting thing with his camera as Travis hears the news that she has said "No". He slowly pulls back, down the corridor, away from Travis, at the pay phone ... until Travis is quite small ... and then Scorsese pulls his camera around a corner, so we can't even see Travis anymore. We hear his voice, soft and solemn, but we no longer see him. The effect on me, the audience member, is even more acute than if we were in deep closeup seeing Travis' rejected face. It's almost like the pain Travis feels is so deep that Scorsese needs to give him privacy ... let him be, let him be. So the objective voice in Ithaca, is almost a protective measure against Bloom's devastation. It is the only way he (and we) can face the pain of the destruction of his marriage. Bloom is so upset that Joyce gives him his privacy, and pulls his "camera" way way way back ... to make him small, to leave him alone ... It's a fascinating device and works extremely well, I think. We have Bloom's memories of the death of his son here as well - a tragedy. But the quiet omniscent voice just keeps asking questions: "What was his first response to the death of Rudolph Bloom?" The equally omniscent voice answers - in a cataloging scientific way ... which is a shield against the devastation. Don't we do that sometimes when we are truly grieving? Joan Didion, in her marvelous book The Year of Magical Thinking, about her year following the death of her husband, is all about that sort of nonsensical cataloging and overly rational thinking that can follow in the wake of true and eternal loss. I have to do this, this, this and this ... and I will be safe. Well, no you won't. We are never safe. But grief is not rational. It is, in a horrible way, "magical".

Joyce even goes intergalactic - at the point that Dedalus departs. Dedalus leaves and there are stars above - 'celestial signs' - it is almost as though Stephen leaves, via a pathway of stars. As he departs, the church bells ring - another indication of Joyce's religious outlook. The entire episode has the feeling of a Latin mass. The intoned questions, the intoned answering of the flock ... only here we are with just two men, on Eccles Street in Dublin, talking about food, and drink, and life ... urinating together in the garden ... a sort of communion.

It is only now that Bloom is really ready to be home. To go upstairs to his Penelope (Molly), and let the day - the long long day he has just had - recede.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Here's an excerpt. Have fun with it. It's not normal language, but what he describes is quite prosaic, as you will see. But to Joyce, nothing was prosaic. That is one of the reasons why I love him so much, why he is such (to me) an emotional writer, passionate and beautiful, with a love of his fellow man that is unparalleled in modern literature.

Just so you can decipher what is going on here: Bloom takes Dedalus into his kitchen. He lights a candle (like the beginning of a mass). He fills the kettle with water, and puts it on to boil. It is 2, 3 in the morning.

And not to sway you one way or another, but I think Joyce's long description of water in the following excerpt is one of the most brilliant passages in the whole book. And the last line of the excerpt I have chosen shows Bloom's ultimate humanism, something that is difficult for many of us to LIVE, let alone comprehend. To not live in bitterness, to not hold grudges, to "be the better person" - and for REAL - without looking for anything in return ... Perhaps Bloom, earlier in the day, would not have perceived this in himself. But now he does, ministering to Stephen. He does, because it's so late, and he's near-sleep - and certain things, certain uglinesses fall away, when we are so close to unconsciousness. The Ithaca episode could only happen in the middle of the night.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Ithaca episode

Did the man reappear elsewhere?
Alter a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle.

Did Stephen obey his sign?
Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's house.

What did Bloom do?
He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary, knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and M'Donald of 14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.

Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?
Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two, had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher's Island: of his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis-Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of university College, 16 Stephen's green, north: of his sister Dilly (Delia) in his father's house in Cabra.

What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the fire towards the opposite wall?
Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope, stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies' grey hose with lisle suspendertops and feet in their habitual position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the third at their point of junction.

What did Bloom see on the range?
On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left (larger) hob a black iron kettle.

What did Bloom do at the range?
He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it flow.

Did it flow?
Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of 2,400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of #5 per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge, upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C.E., on the instructions of the waterworks committee, had prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of recourse being had to the importable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound.

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier returning to the range, admire?
Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its umplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: Its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including billions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents: gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs, and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe) numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90% of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.

Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he return to the stillflowing tap?
To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of Barrington's lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered (bought thirteen hours previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh cold neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in a long redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller.

What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom's offer?
That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by submersion in cold water (his last bath having taken place in the month of October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous substances of glass and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language.

What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a preliminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with rapid splashing of the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region in case of sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most sensitive to cold being the nape, stomach, and thenar or sole of foot?
The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.

What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress?
Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.

Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?
Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and recuperation.

What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the agency of fire?
The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses of bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the foliated fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn derived their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat (radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous ether. Heat (convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion, was constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated through the uneven unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in part reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually raising the temperature of the water from normal to boiling point, a rise in temperature expressible as the result of an expenditure of 72 thermal units needed to raise I pound of water from 50° to 212° Fahrenheit.

What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?
A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at both sides simultaneously.

For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled?
To shave himself.

What advantages attended shaving by night?
A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut and humected and applied adhered which was to be done.

Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noises?
Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine feminine passive active hand.

What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting influence?
The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human blood even when the end justified the means, preferring in their natural order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery.

What lay under exposure on the lower middle and upper shelves of the kitchen dresser opened by Bloom?
On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white goldrimmed eggcups, and open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly copper, and a phial of aromatic violet comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree's potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co's white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps's soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne Lynch's choice tea at 2/- per lb. in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one the larger, Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented surface and more redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy's cream, a jug of brown crockery containing a noggin and a quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted by heat into water, acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added to the quantity subtracted for Mr Bloom's and Mrs Fleming's breakfasts made one imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered, two cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of jamjars of various sizes and proveniences.

What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?
Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets, numbered 887, 886.

What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?
Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, preindicative of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and definitive result of which he had read in the Evening Telegraph, late pink edition, in the cabman's shelter, at Butt bridge.

Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected, been received by him?
In Bernard Kiernan's licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street: in David Byrne's licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O'Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon's when a dark man had placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and Co (Limited) dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the Freeman's Journal and National Press which he had been about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street, with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.

What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?
The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding originally from a successful interpretation.

His mood?
He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he was satisfied.

What satisfied him?
To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to others. Light to the gentiles.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 21, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Eumaeus episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (THE ODYSSEY)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode
Episode 11: The Sirens Episode
Episode 12: The Cyclops Episode
Episode 13: The Nausicaa Episode
Episode 14: The Oxen of the Sun Episode
Episode 15: The Circe Episode


As I mentioned in the last post - Circe is the final episode of the "Odyssey" section of the book. Its hallucinogenic Jean Genet-esque style - of role-playing, transformation, descendence into bestiality, sexual fantasy, unsure of what is real and what is not - is where the Odyssey itself ends. Bloom and Dedalus must go through that - in order to be allowed to return. Because, of course, in Homer's epic - the "odyssey" is just a series of challenges, thrown into the path of Odysseus ... on his way home. Whirlpools, monsters, shipwrecks ... It is the ultimate story of eternal return. What is one thing we all, as a human race, have in common? Well, we're all human, of course - and that is no small thing. It may SEEM like other people are from a different species altogether, due to cultural differences, language differences - but that is just a problem of perception on our end, a fear of what is different or strange. We are all human. So there's that. And then: what is one of the driving forces of humanity - a force that expresses itself sometimes in great horrors like war, genocide, refugee camps? The need for a HOME. Fighting for your home, trying to get home, trying to clear an entire country of people so you can make it home ... whatever. Great tragedies and great triumphs are all under this umbrella. Homer's epic expresses this human drive, and taps into what is most ... uhm ... human. About all of us. Times change, eras move on, progress occurs ... but throughout history, people have loved, and strived, and missed their loved ones, and yearned for the quiet home surrounded by family. Even the galloping Mongol hordes probably had a nice matted-haired wife at home, in an animal-skin yurt, keeping the goat milk warm. And men (because historically, it's the men who go off, and the women who stay) need to either earn the right to go home, or fight for their lives in order to remove obstacles to home. It's never easy. We all have our "whirlpools" to struggle against, on whatever journey we are on. Even if we already live at home, and do not gallop with a Mongol horde ... we have these obstacles to ease, comfort, a feeling of belonging. The journey does not have to be far. The journey can be internal as well.

No wonder Joyce - with his themes of exile, and separation - was so obsessed with The Odyssey. It was his life. He had to leave Ireland in order to live the kind of life he wanted. But his gaze was always turned back to the homeland. He was a "continental", through and through. He spoke many languages, he lived in Trieste, Paris, elsewhere ... moving his family from place to place. He only returned to Ireland once or twice after the original departure. Amazing. But it wasn't like he left and never looked back. All he did was look back. Not one of his stories or novels takes place in any other nation than Ireland. He did not write of the ex-pat community on the Left Bank, or the multi-lingual world he lived in in Trieste. It was Ireland. And only Ireland.

All of this is to say: The final section of Ulysses is a three-episode section - a mirror-image of The Telemachia - the 3-section part that opens the book. In The Telemachia, we follow Stephen Dedalus through his morning ... from home to the beach ... getting ready to begin the journey of the day. And now, in The Nostos (or "return") - the final 3-part section - Bloom and Dedalus are now together, it is 1, 2 o'clock in the morning ... and it is time to slowly make their way home. Bloom to his sleeping wife - and Dedalus to the tower on the outskirts of London where he lives with his dissipated buddies.

The Eumaeus episode, which we are now in, takes place after the psychedelic visit to the brothel, described in the encyclopedic Circe episode. Bloom has rescued Dedalus from the whores, Dedalus has cut his hand - and he had a freak-out at the brothel, where he saw his dead mother's face in the ceiling, and tried to crash down the chandelier. Bloom intervened on his behalf. All of Dedalus' friends have disappeared ... so now Bloom and Dedalus are together. It's late late at night - 1 a.m. Instead of going straight home - or saying goodbye to one another and separating ... they decide to go take the edge off of their drunken states of mind - and get a cup of coffee, a bite to eat. They go to a cabman's shelter in Dublin - which also doubles as a coffeehouse, an all-night venue (which, even today, is rare in Dublin. It's not a 24-hour kind of town). The coffeehouse is full of "cabmen" off-duty. Bloom and Dedalus sit there, amongst the cabmen, and talk. For the first time, really.

One thing to make clear: Joyce, in a funny way, is not a romantic. Even though he was obviously a positive person. For example, in regards to Molly's famous run-on sentence that ends the book -he said, "I wanted to end the book on the positive word in the English language." ("Yes.") But the meeting of Bloom and Dedalus is NOT about kindred spirits, or finally finding someone who understands ... it is pretty clear that after this particular day, Bloom and Dedalus will go their separate ways. They will not become lifelong friends. There is too much of a gap between them. Joyce does not make them merge. Which is fascinating - because, in a way, that is what we, the readers, are looking for. After all that, after that whole day ... shouldn't they have a sense of recognition towards one another? Like: "you are what I have been searching for"? Joyce does not go that way, at least not explicitly. The Eumaeus episode is NOT about "mutual understanding" - as a matter of fact, it is just the opposite. It is about MISunderstanding. The language of the episode is fractured, fragmentary, lots of run-on sentences that trail off with no resolution. This is a brilliant mode for this episode which happens at 1 in the morning, when everyone is exhausted, still drunk, and yet unwilling to go home yet. The sharpness of thought in, say, the Scylla and Charybdis episode, is not in evidence at all here. Bloom and Dedalus talk, but exhaustion threatens to fog up the clarity. They discuss religion, different languages ... and in each case, Bloom and Dedalus are not on the same page. Ironically, Bloom sees Dedalus as an orthodox Catholic, whether he believes in the dogma of the church or not. We have seen Dedalus' disdain for organized religion - but regardless: Bloom's perception is that Dedalus is devout. Dedalus tries to talk about his ideas of God and simplicity to Bloom - but Bloom is not an intellectual. He is also not an artist. He just can't understand what Dedalus is talking about. And that would be a huge gulf between the two men. Bloom deals much more with reality - and what is right in front of his nose. Dedalus, with his broken glasses, and his bad eyesight - cannot, physically, even SEE what is right in front of his nose. So his mind is unleashed, far-flying, Icarus with his wings. Bloom is earthbound. It's a gulf that will not be crossed.

Bloom and Dedalus talk about politics and Ireland. Bloom is a socialist, and dreams of an Ireland where the workers are paramount. He does not realize that in saying so he is excluding the intellectual non-worker Dedalus from the new world order. Or at least he doesn't realize it immediately. Bloom (as we have seen in other episodes - primarily The Cyclops episode) can be a bit of a know-it-all. He pontificates on the way things should be, he knows the answers ... he lectures others, without realizing that blanket statements are fine if they remain ideas - but when you try to put them into practice, you'll run into trouble, like despotism, dictatorship, bigotry. Bloom realizes his mistake and tries to reassure Dedalus that "poets" would also be considered workers in his dream Socialist state. But it's too late. Again, that is a gulf between them that cannot be crossed. Dedalus doesn't care about politics - at least not in a practical way - and he doesn't care about the fate of Ireland. Or, let's say: he is not personally invested in Ireland - since he feels that Ireland is not personally invested in him.

At the start of the episode, as Bloom and Dedalus approach the coffeehouse, they run into Corley - a drunken mess of a man (who is one of the "stars" in Joyce's story "Two Gallants" from Dubliners - that's another thing: Ulysses is full of the same characters we met in Dubliners and Portrait - which is indicative of how claustrophobic Joyce found Irish society - where everyone knows everyone. You can't get away with ANYthing in Ireland. Reinvention is impossible). Anyway, they run into Corley - and chat with him - and Dedalus mentions to him that there is a position open at Deasy's school - and maybe Corley would like the job. We realize, even though he did not give notice in The Nestor episode - that Stephen will be leaving that job. He has already decided to decamp. He's done. Again, we don't know at one point during the day Dedalus made that decision - but by 1 a.m., it's final.

Bloom, meanwhile, has no idea of this - and begins to almost fantasize about how Dedalus will fit into his life. It's a bit self-serving (but that's okay - we're all self-serving). He thinks that maybe Dedalus could help him get published. Dedalus is also a tenor (just like Joyce was) - and Bloom has a dream of starting an opera company in Dublin (perhaps to impress Molly, perhaps to stick it to Molly's lover Blazes Boylan) - and perhaps Dedalus could be of help in that venture.

So again: misunderstanding is the key to the Eumaeus episode. And not bitter misunderstanding, as we saw in the Cyclops episode - it's more of a common human failing. We see what we want to see. We assume that other human beings will be on the same page as us ... and when they behave in ways that do not "fit" with our preconceptions - we are baffled. But that is OUR failing, not the other person's. Bloom thinks the friendship with Stephen will continue past June 16-17. It obviously will not.

In the meantime, though, they are together. Bloom thinks he will take Stephen home with him, at least just for the night. It's so late, and Bloom is concerned at the thought of drunken cut-hand Stephen trying to make his way back out to Sandymount, where he lives. Bloom worries that maybe Molly will not like having a houseguest. Bloom feels protective of Stephen - at the same time that he feels Stephen will be of use to him. Again, very human.

The connection with The Odyssey is: Odysseus meets Eumaeus, a swineherd - in his return to Ithaca. And then, first order of the day, Odysseus joins up with Telemachus to kill all of Penelope's suitors - who have clustered around her during his absence. An obvious parallel with Bloom's anxiety about Molly's unfaithfulness. Can he slay Blazes Boylan?

Oh, another really really interesting thing they talk about in this episode is Parnell - the man who haunts Ireland (almost to this day). The great hope ... who was murdered ... and discredited because of an extramarital affair. For years, the rumor was that Parnell had NOT died and that the coffin said to be carrying him was full of rocks. This goes along with the Christ-like feeling that you get when Parnell is discussed. Will Parnell "return"? Ireland waits. The void left by Parnell was never filled. They are still waiting for him, for a savior. Now we know, from the first chapter of Portrait how Parnell's death affected Stephen. We also remember Joyce's story "Ivy Day in the Committee Room", from Dubliners - a vision of post-Parnell Irish politics, and their hollow cynical quality. Parnell is the key to so much. He's not only one of the keys to understanding Dedalus, but he's also crucial to our understanding of Bloom. Bloom, as we know, feels impotent when it comes to his wife. It wasn't always that way, and he has wonderful memories of their intimacy in their early courtship and marriage. But that has long since passed. Parnell, who risked all to have an affair with the married Kitty O'Shea (wife of a Captain) - is seen as a virile reckless sexual hero. Kinda akin to Alexander Hamilton, who had the same risk-taking masculine energy, when it came to politics and when it came to sex. So Bloom, in talking of Parnell, has an uneasy feeling ... as though Parnell somehow threatens him ... who could resist a Parnell? What woman would turn that down? Blazes Boylan, her lover, is also seen as a virile stallion. Bloom cannot compete. Captain O'Shea decided to ignore his wife's infidelity - and stay with her ... and Kitty O'Shea agreed to denounce Parnell ... leaving Parnell undefended. The parallels are clear. Bloom, as much as he wishes to be a sexual athlete, is not. He is Captain O'Shea, a man willing to look the other way as his wife screws someone else.

The cabman's shelter is full of noise and talk ... the kind of conversations you hear between drunk men (no women) at around 1 a.m. They argue, but they are too tired to fight. So the arguments are fine, because it will never go too far. But there's a leftover hallucinatory feel here - the kind of surreal vision you get when you are over-tired. Another important character here is the sailor in the shelter - who has not been home in 7 years, I think - and he is nervous that his wife will not recognize him, or that she will have completely moved on in his absence.

Dublin, in the Eumaeus episode, seems frayed, unconnected to reality, and intensely depressing.

It's time for Bloom and Dedalus to move on, to the final leg of their journey.

Here's an excerpt from the Eumaeus episode. The sailor is pontificating on the glory of Ireland, and how Irish men should stay home and develop their country. Stephen, naturally, has his own feelings about that. It is as though his consciousness has already departed. Anyway, watch how the episode meanders ... it's intellectually rigorous, but everyone's exhausted, and nerves are frayed. (Just had to get that in there ... because the Eumaeus episode is the "nervous system", in Joyce's iconography. We have been moving throughout the body, for the entire novel - each episode representing another function, or system - and now, at the very end of the day ... we are in the nerves themselves. It's not relaxing. Synapses fire - sometimes misfire ... it's all connected.)

The excerpt ends with one of my favorite lines in the whole book.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - The Eumaeus episode

Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland, or something of that sort, which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six million pounds' worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between butter and eggs, and all the riches drained out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always, and gobbling up the best meat in the market, and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was Colonel Everard down there in Cavan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated crescendo with no uncertain voice - thoroughly monopolising all the conversation - was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero - a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.

Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings undismayed.

-- Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.

To which cold douche, referring to downfall and so on, the keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.

-- Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and generals we've got? Tell me that.

-- The Irish for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes apart.

-- That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?

While allowing him his individual opinions, as every man, the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words, when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.

From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went On, that turned Out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both countries, even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of the place, rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged, as the lookeron, a student of the human soul, if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (Bloom) couldn't help feeling, and most properly, it was better to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence - or king's now - like Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that, he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel, and no denying it (while inwardly remaining what he was), a certain kind of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing, off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south - have her or swing for her - when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (the man having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell - positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a fault, of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some #. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the others, he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo, as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender.

He took umbrage at something or other, that much injured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew, and in a heated fashion, offensively. So I, without deviating from plain facts in the least, told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too, and all his family, like me, though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right?

He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment, with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly .

-- Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is, or, after all, any other, secundum carnem.

-- Of course, Mr Bloom proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality? I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak.

-- Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.

-- Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was overwhelmingly right and the whole world was overwhelmingly full of that sort of thing.

-- You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely.

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood - bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag - were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.

-- They accuse - remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others, who probably... and spoke nearer to, so as the others... in case they...

-- Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History - would you be surprised to learn? - proves up to' the hilt Spain decayed when the Inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian, who, in other respects, has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any... because you know the standard works on the subject, and then, orthodox as you are... But in the economic, not touching religion, domain, the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead America. Turks, it's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better - at least, so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p.'s raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed, with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of #300 per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a small smattering of in our classical day in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work.

Over his untasteable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the morning, burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the words the voice he heard said - if you work.

-- Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning to work.

The eyes were surprised at this observation, because as he, the person who owned them pro. tem. observed, or rather, his voice speaking did: All must work, have to, together.

-- I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest possible sense. Also literary labour, not merely for the kudos of the thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important.

-- You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be important because I belong to the faubourg Saint Patrice called Ireland for short.

-- I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.

-- But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me.

-- What belongs? queried Mr Bloom, bending, fancying he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately I didn't catch the latter portion. What was it you?...

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee, Or whatever you like to call it, none too politely, adding:

-- We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 19, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Circe episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (THE ODYSSEY)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode
Episode 11: The Sirens Episode
Episode 12: The Cyclops Episode
Episode 13: The Nausicaa Episode
Episode 14: The Oxen of the Sun Episode

Circe casts a spell over Odyseeus' crew and turns them all into pigs (Odysseus is not there - the crew have been invited to her home for dinner, and she poisons their meal and then waves her magic wand: Oink Oink). Circe's dad is Helios, the son god (which is obviously connected to the Oxen of the Sun episode) ... she lives on the island of Aeaea. Her home is surrounded by lions and other fierce animals, and she has the ability to turn her enemies into something else. She's also an expert on herbs, drugs of every kind (which could possibly explain the acid-trip energy of the Circe chapter!) One of the men had escaped, because he suspected all was not right in the state of Denmark - and ran off to tell Odysseus what had happened. Hermes gives Odysseus some advice before he tries to charge the castle to rescue his men: he gave him an herb to help him resist the potion Circe had given all the other men. He also told him to draw his sword as though he wanted to fight Circe. Circe would then want to sleep with him - because she was just that kinda gal. Hermes told Odysseus to always be wary of her, even if they did become lovers (which they did) - and to always be on his guard - because she could take his manhood away, she was that potentially awful. But Circe ends up, after a year of them living together as lovers, helping him on his journey home.

You can KIND of see the connection with the Circe episode - there's one point (if I recall correctly) that Bloom is tranformed into a pig, and I am sure there are many others. The episode begins after the men's time at the maternity hospital - and they all head over to "Nighttown", the red-light district. They go to Bella's brothel, on Tyrone Street, en masse. Dedalus, at this point, is not strictly aware of the fact that Bloom is now following him, to keep an eye on him.

But before I go further, I have to just mention the style of this particular episode, because it can't be denied - and it's hard to talk about the writing without acknowledging the extraordinary crazy style it's written in. It's written like a play. We get stage directions in italics (sometimes the stage directions go on for over a page) - and we get dialogue. Nothing internal. Because the form is in a play, a performance of some kind - all kinds of supposedly unreal things can (and do) happen. Kisses take the form of birds. Clocks actually talk and have lines. People from the past appear as literal apparitions. Paddy Dignam (dead, as we know) has a role. The climax of the episode is when Stephen's dead mother appears to him in the ceiling - and he goes batshit crazy, swinging his walking stick at the chandelier, trying to banish the image. It is not clear what is real, what is unreal. It's all one. It's like a drug trip. If you do hallucinogenic drugs, it's not LIKE the walls are breathing in and out. The walls are ACTUALLY breathing in and out. That's the world we are in here. Bloom is on a mission to save Stephen. He can sense Stephen's pain - and he also knows Stephen is wasted, so therefore he is vulnerable to the treachery of the whores, who could steal his money, etc. Bloom tries to make it clear that he is not there for himself. But it ends up not mattering. Bella (or Bello - as she is also called) is the mistress of the house, the main whore. It's her joint. So she emerges ... and hones in on Bloom (when you read the book, look for all the references to pigs and hogs. They're everywhere). She begins to break Bloom down - psychologically, bringing forth all of his sexual fantasies. They become real. It is all about debasement, Bloom groveling on the floor before the female, licking her boots, etc. It's shocking, all of it. Bloom has been so (pun intended) buttoned up for the whole book - except for his confrontation with the Citizen ... so to see him completely undone and transformed into a sniveling masochistic slave-boy - is totally disorienting, and it's meant to be so.

The connection with the Circe episode in The Odyssey seems clear - although perhaps once removed. There is a fear that un-leashed sexuality will turn us into animals. Literally. Not metaphorically. And so the human race has a great investment in limiting the expression of sex, so that it never goes as far as that. Keep it domesticated, keep it in marriage, keep it safe. We are NOT animals. We are above them. Joyce, in the Circe episode, shows the foolishness of such thinking, however understandable. Sex is, by definition, animalistic. And fantasies shows us who we are. Dreams show us who we are. Joyce needed to show Bloom's inner life - in a way that Bloom could never do himself. So he placed Bloom in this phantasmagorical brothel, where he's under a spell, where inanimate objects have voices, where nymphs sing in a chorus, etc. - so that we can see his inner life, his deepest desires. Masochistic, he yearns for a sadist. He has a vague sense of guilt about everything (perhaps dating back to the death of his son) - and so sexually, he wants to grovel, and beg and plead for forgiveness. Bella, like all good whores, knows how to bring it out of him. She sees it, senses it, and goes for it. There is a catharsis in being debased - and again, if you don't have that sexual proclivity you might find this utterly baffling. And maybe even threatening or gross. Perhaps in Bloom's conscious mind, he is grossed out by himself, that he wants these things, that debasement brings sexual satisfaction. That is certainly not a socially acceptable position to take, and the powers-that-be who want to domesticate sex - will never ever go for such a thing. So the Circe episode (which, I think, might be the longest in the entire book) - brings that which is socially feared - out into the open. It's almost scary, because nothing here is really real. For example, at one point - one of the whores refers to Mr. Bloom as "ma'amsir". A blend of the two sexes. I don't even have to tell you the response many have to such "blending". (I'm sure Alex could fill you in! Ironically, and perfectly - Alex played Bella in a production of Ulysses in Chicago - and our very first conversation - outside of our blogs, I mean - was a phone converstaion where she grilled me about Ulysses, in preparation for playing her role. It's one of my sadnesses that I did not get to see that production!! I'm sure she was brilliant!) But Joyce, in his imagination, and his heart - feels that we are all a bit of both sexes. The fear of merging is intense with some people ... they assert "this is what woman is", "this is what man is" ... and sadly (for them, I mean - since they;'re the ones who seem tormented by the thought that people are having sex in ways which they do not approve) many of us do not live by those rules.

And so we think we know Bloom. But then we realize: Wow. We don't know him at all. (This is a great point to make, though. The judgmental attitude towards other people's sex lives and what form it takes- needs to always be confronted, and at least questioned. Because we all do it - judge, I mean. Much of it comes from fear. Some of it comes from blatant incomprehension, like: 'Wow. You're into that?? That doesn't appeal to me at ALL.' And that's cool - as long as you have the humility to realize that your way is not the only way ... But at some point, on our journey thru life - as we grow older, and gain experience - we realize that you just never know what goes on behind closed doors ...you realize that those two 50 year old prim and proper American Gothic-looking people may have the hottest most subversive sex behind closed doors ... and you just never know. So lose the superior attitude. Lose the judgment. Lose all of it.)

We know Bloom's thoughts, his dietary likes and dislikes, the way he kisses, the way he walks, we know his speech patterns now, we know he's a bit clumsy ... we know he has hidden depths of strength and anger ... but we don't know everything. We realize in this chapter how important fantasy is ... and how human beings are made of their fantasies, wishes, desires, unfulfilled longings, haunting memories ... all of those ephemeral things that can take on a reality even more solid than that which is actually real. The last moment of the Circe episode is horrifying, since we have already been prepared for it. Bloom, after his catharsis of sexual debasement with Bella, gets a vision of his dead son Rudy. Is that a dagger I see before me. It is a hallucination, but it is, at the same time, completely real.

It's devastating. It echoes Stephen's devastation at seeing his mother's face in the ceiling of the brothel. That which remains unresolved in our psyches, will come back to haunt us, in greater and more hallucinatory forms. Man, I've experienced that in my own life, with various things. Things I have not dealt with, or healed (however uncompletely) will morph into ... almost a movie-monster in my head, something to be battled, or just flat out feared. Run!! Run!!

The Circe episode - which is a romp and a half, I tell you ... ends with a fight out on the sidewalk. Bloom has rescued Stephen from the clutches of the whores, and has also rescued him from the damage he did to the chandelier. Bloom has also exorcised a couple of demons - which is not a pleasant experience, all in all ... but groveling around in front of Bella for nigh on 15 pages. You feel like you need to take a break after the Circe episode, with its acid-trip images, its fantastical settings, its insistence that nothing is real. You yearn for something solid, something known and set in stone ... it's disorienting. Sex, I suppose, is also disorienting. Or has the potential to be so. Especially if, like Bloom, the main fantasies are never expressed. I'm not just talking about sexual fantasies - although Joyce was big on that ... but the grief over his son's death, the horror of guilt he feels ... all of that has been pushed so far down that when it emerges, here, it takes on dreadful proportions.

Circe is also a very funny chapter, even with its dark underbelly. The language reminds me a bit of Jean Genet's plays - with their violent imagery, the precise articulation of horrors and desire, the feeling of explosiveness running thru everything ... and also just a general subversive milieu. People in Genet's plays are the so-called freaks of the world: the sadists, the masochists, the sex slaves, the dominatrix-es, the whipping boys, the drug addicts and street urchins. There is a level of society where fantasies are meant to be acted out. There are a bazillion websites devoted to such things. But then when you read, oh, Glamour magazine, or some un-subversive magazine - the emotionally tortured questions like, "My husband wants me to dress up as a French maid ... Is that okay? Or is it weird that he would want that? What's the matter with me as myself?" Now, I am NOT making fun of people who find fantasies threatening or scary. They ARE threatening and scary. Because they require of us a dissolution of our everyday and well-known public personality. And that is, in general, terrifying. A common question in women's magazines is: "I have a fantasy of being raped. I'm really disturbed by that ... does it mean I want to be raped?" There is a discomfort with blending the fantasy world with the real world. And rightly so - because those who cannot disconnect the fantasy from the real are called mentally ill. HOWEVER. "Acting out" fantasies can be quite cathartic and awesome. And yes, scary, at the same time. So - there are those who want to delve into that stuff, and act stuff out, and dress up, and whatever ... this kind of lifestyle will probably never be socially acceptable to what is known as the "vanilla" crowd (and that's okay by me. What's the fun of being subversive if the mainstream gives its stamp of approval?) ... So Bloom, who is full of sexual anxiety about his wife - can he satisfy her, can he live up to Blazes Boylan ... wants to give up all of that power, wants to surrender completely to the female ... that is his how his sexuality truly expresses itself (but it can only come out under the influence of the whorehouse. What Bloom goes through in the Circe episode is probably 100% new to him. Which is why it's so disorienting and potentially terrifying.)

Joyce was not at all a libertine. He was a one-woman man, and stayed with the same woman for, what, 40 years or something like that. He was quite conservative in many ways, and was a family man. Granted, an insane-genius family man perpetually in mounds of debt ... but you know, there are stories of all the ex-pats in Paris, whooping it up at some table - drinking, going nuts, having affairs, etc. ... and over in the corner sat the Joyce family - mom, dad, 2 little kids - having dinner (that they couldn't afford), and drinking white wine. In a funny way, Joyce - who was the biggest rebel of them all, to the point that he couldn't even live in Ireland - was more conventional than all the other writers living in Europe at that time. BUT. And this is important. Because we know of James' and Nora's "dirty letters" (as they are referred to) - we know the vibrancy and activity of their sex life - as well as Joyce's fantasies, and what was desirable to him, etc. I'm not saying this to gross out the TMI set (although, Jesus, anyone who chirps "TMI" at the least provocation is going to have a helluva time with Joyce, who didn't have a TMI bone in his body) ... But anyway, I'm only referring to the "dirty letters" to point out that James and Nora were quite domesticated (in their ex-pat living-on-nothing way) - they were a pair, they traveled together, they had 2 kids, they were messy housekeepers. All relatively normal compared to the experiences of other writers living abroad at that time. James and Nora weren't rolling around in a garret, having 20 lovers and menage a trois experiences every other weekend. But behind closed doors? James and Nora were filthy!! They were open, sexy, dirty, sharing fantasies, Nora sent him her underwear thru the mail - you know, your basic stuff. But to look at them? You'd never guess. Joyce could never have been a husband to a woman who judged that side of him, the dirty-minded side. And who knows, maybe Nora did find him nuts on some level ... and found his fantasies boring or tiresome. But she played along. She did not get snippety, prissy, or judge-y about what he wanted in the sack. I can't imagine Joyce being able to deal with a neat ladylike little lady, domesticated in her DNA. Nope. Nora was a bit wild. And really, you never can guess about another human being. You would probably be wrong. In the same way we have been wrong about Bloom.

Joyce is the ultimate humanist.

Here's an excerpt. This is from the beginning of the incredibly long encounter between Bloom and Bella (or Bello - she is known as both). Bella sets out to dominate him, break him down. He transforms from male to female, from human to animal ... Under her spell. Bloom - Leopold Bloom - the man we feel we know - is suddenly female, and submissive - like he's the narrator in Story of O or something. Or he's Sleeping Beauty in Anne Rice's erotic trilogy - a slave on display, sexually, in the middle of the market square. It's wild! Also: there's the sense that he - Bloom - is on trial (Bello says to him, at one point, referencing Blazes Boylan: "He's no eunuch." Ouch!). This is an ongoing theme through the chapter: Bloom's guilt and shame about all kinds of things - coming to the surface - and being put before the world in a court of law. So human, I have felt that way myself. Oh, and look for the pig references.

Oh and notice the random reference to the "secondbest bed" - a wonderful looping back to the theme of Shakespeare, Hamlet, and fatherlessness - which is, in reality, the TRUE driving force of this scene. Bloom has come to the brothel to save Stephen from being taken advantage of. And Bloom gets caught in Circe's (Bella's) spell ... and his catharsis is enormous, the debasement and humiliation he has felt all day pouring forth in a sexual fantasy which is really quite gross ... but it's his ... and it serves his purpose ... And Stephen, drunk, is confronted by the ghost of his mother ... and goes so apeshit that he is thrown out of the brothel. Bloom follows. He is a guardian angel. He is the father to the son. He assumes that role - as he becomes fully Man again.

Wild stuff.

Ack, sorry - one last thing: The Circe episode - which is almost 200 pages long - is the last episode in the Odyssey section of the book (see breakdown above). After this, we are in the Nostos ("return") section - the mirror-image of the Telemachia at the beginning ... The Nostos is also 3 episodes long, and involves Bloom's return home. Finally.

But it isn't until Bloom has turned himself inside out in the hallucinatory world of the brothel ... that he is ready to head home to his wife, to his life, to himself. He must "go there" first, before he can return.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Circe episode


(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged ageing, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)

BLOOM
(Murmurs lovingly.) To be a shoefitter in Mansfield's was my love's young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.
THE HOOF
Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.
BLOOM
(Crosslacing.) Too tight?
THE HOOF
If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.
BLOOM
Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad luck. Nook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That night she met... Now!
(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in mid-brow. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)
BLOOM
(Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen.
BELLO
(With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of dishonour!
BLOOM
(Infatuated.) Empress!
BELLO
(His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump!
BLOOM
(Plaintively.) Hugeness!
BELLO
Dungdevourer!
BLOOM
(With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence.
BELLO
Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down!
BLOOM
(Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles!
(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.)
BELLO
(With bobbed hair purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moor cock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels, so glistening in their proud erectness.
BLOOM
(Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey.
BELLO
(Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.
(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)
ZOE
(Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here.
BLOOM
(Closing her eyes.) She's not here.
FLORRY
(Hiding her with her gown.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good, sir.
KITTY
Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.
BELLO
(Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear. I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.
BLOOM
(Fainting.) Don't tear my.
BELLO
(Savagely.) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You're in for it this time. I'll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face congested.) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat ham rashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter. (He belches.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice Of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you.
(He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.)
BLOOM
Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!
BELLO
(Twisting.) Another!
BLOOM
(Screams.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!
BELLO
(Shouts.) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you. (He slaps her face.)
BLOOM
(Whimpers.) You're after hitting me. I'll tell...
BELLO
Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE
Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY
I will. Don't be greedy.
KITTY
No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, flour-smeared, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH
(Ferociously.) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO
(Squats, with a grunt, on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigar-smoke, nursing a fat leg.) I see Keating Clay is elected chairman of the Richmond Asylum and bytheby Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that I didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM
(Goaded, buttocksmothered.) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO
Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg, pray for it as you never prayed before. (He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (He throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard voice.) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting.) Ho! off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper fashion. (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle.) The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
FLORRY
(Pulls at Bello.) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.
ZOE
(Pulling at Florry.) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM
(Stifling.) Can't.
BELLO
Well, I'm not. Wait. (He holds in his breath.) Curse it. Here. This bung's about burst. (He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts loudly.) Take that! (He recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters.
BLOOM
(A sweat breaking out over him.) Not man. (He sniffs.) Woman.
BELLO
(Stands up.) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders and quickly too.
BLOOM
(Shrinks.) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tip-touch it with my nails?
BELLO
(Points to his whores.) As they are now, so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille, with whalebone busk, to the diamond trimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind you...
BLOOM
(A chafing soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and lace male hands and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only once, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hardup I washed them to save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO
(Jeers.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh! and showed off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind close-drawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders, in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! Ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunk leg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne Hotel, eh?
BLOOM
Miriam, Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO
(Guffaws.) Christ Almighty, it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade, about to be violated by Lieutenant Smythe Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell, M.P., Signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henry Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Cr&Aelig;sus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws again.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM
(Her hands and features working.) It was Gerald converted me to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.
BELLO
(With wicked glee.) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne.
BLOOM
Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly.) And really it's better the position... because often I used to wet.
BELLO
(Sternly.) No insubordination. The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.
THE SINS OF THE PAST
(In a medley of voices.) He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black Church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in d'Olier Street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order?
BELLO
(Whistles loudly.) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out. Be candid for once.
(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Eooloohoom. Poldy Hock, Bootlaces a penny, cassidy's hag, blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other the... )
BLOOM
Don't ask me. Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath...
BELLO
(Peremptorily.) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good-ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr... !
BLOOM
(Docile, gurgles.) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant...
BELLO
(Imperiously.) O get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when you're spoken to.
BLOOM
(Bows.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!
(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)
BELLO
(Satirically.) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes, also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (He places a ruby ring on her finger.) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.
BLOOM
Thank you, mistress.
BELLO
You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! you will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush. You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed braceleted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. (He chuckles.) My boys will be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all. When they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First, I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (He points.) For that lot trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (He bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva.) There's fine depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (He shoves his arm in a bidder's face.) Here, wet the deck and wipe it round!
A BIDDER
A florin!
(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)
A VOICE
One and eightpence too much.
THE LACQUEY
Barang!
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH
Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO
(Gives a rap with his gavel.) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stock getter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! (He brands his initial Con Bloom's croup.) So! Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A DARKVISAGED MAN
(In disguised accent.) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES
(Subdued.) For the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO
(Gaily.) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blasé man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis XV heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your power of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM
(Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth.) O, I know what you're hinting at now.
BELLO
What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (He stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suetfolds of Bloom's haunches.) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. (Loudly.) Can you do a man's job?
BLOOM
Eccles Street.
BELLO
(Sarcastically.) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (He spits in contempt.) Spittoon!
BLOOM
I was indecently treated, I... inform the police. Hundred pounds. Unmentionable. I.
BELLO
Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want, not your drizzle.
BLOOM
To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll!... We... Still...
BELLO
(Ruthlessly.) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and see.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW
Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!
BLOOM
(In tattered moccasins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tip toeing, fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries out.) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he.
BELLO
(Laughs mockingly.) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her bluescab in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)
MILLY
My! It's Papli! But. O Papli, how old you've grown!
BELLO
Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table where we never wrote, Aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his men friends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How many women had you, say? Following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts. What, you male prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander, O.
BLOOM
They... I...
BELLO
(Cuttingly.) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art's sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's.
BLOOM
Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will prove...
A VOICE
Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowie knife between his teeth.)
BELLO
As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM
Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody... ?
(He bites his thumb.)
BELLO
Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have. If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, what ever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the one cess pool. (He explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh.) We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (He pipes scoffingly.) Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!
BLOOM
(Clasps his head.) My will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff...
(He weeps tearlessly.)
BELLO
(Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, 0. Mastiansky, the Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMCISED
(In a dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES
(Sighing.) So he's gone. Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oak frame a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown art colours, descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews, stands over Bloom.)
THE YEWS
(Their leaves whispering.) Sister. Our sister. Ssh.
THE NYMPH
(Softly.) Mortal! (Kindly.) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM
(Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with dignity.) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 18, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Oxen of the Sun episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode
Episode 11: The Sirens Episode
Episode 12: The Cyclops Episode
Episode 13: The Nausicaa Episode

Gotta be honest. The Oxen of the Sun episode is the only episode in the chapter that I actually don't feel qualified to read. It seems beyond me. Like much of Finnegans Wake is beyond me, just because I am not a (cunning) linguist - and I do not know the derivations of words (or, not ALL of them anyway!) ... and I feel like if I DID, maybe I would "see" more. The Oxen of the Sun is tough. It is hard. I had to force myself to keep going. Eventually, a vague "plot" emerged - but the language itself was such a barrier, for me ... to even see what was going on on the simplest level. (Naturally, that is Joyce's whole point - which I'll get to in a minute) Very early on in Oxen of the Sun, I realized: Nope. 98% of this is going over my head. No idea. My dad gave me some clues as to what Joyce was up to (which, again, I'll talk about it a minute) ... and, to me, knowing what Joyce was up to has NEVER been more crucial than with Oxen of the Sun. But still: I still didn't feel "qualified" ... I knew that most of Joyce's cleverness was way over my head on this one.

I'll just tell the bare bones of the plot of this chapter - because seriously, the plot is the least important thing going on in Oxen of the Sun.

Leopold Bloom has thought, a couple times through his day, about Mina Purefoy - the wife of a friend, who has been in labor at the National Maternity Hospital for three days. Bloom is concerned about her, wonders how on earth she is bearing it, amazed at the ferocity and animal-like endurance of women. It's now about 10 o'clock at night ... Bloom has finished his walk on the beach, and now heads back to the center of town. He plans on stopping by the hospital - where he knows his friend will be - to see how he (and she, of course) are doing. When he arrives, he sees that he was not the only one with that idea, and the waiting room is full of many of the characters we have seen throughout the day. And: Stephen Dedalus is one of them. At last: the two are in the same space. Dedalus has been out drinking with his buddies, and they are all rowdy, and loud - making jokes about everything, puns, whatever - being kind of annoying, actually. Bloom realizes, somehow, that Dedalus is a bit lost - there's a recognition thing that goes on for Bloom here, even though he does not really know Stephen (his eavesdropping on Stephen's "lecture" about Shakespeare in the library notwithstanding). He thinks Stephen's hanging out with the wrong crowd, basically - and needs some guidance. He decides to join Stephen's group - in order to keep an eye on him. A very fatherly thing to do. And Bloom would know, since he knows Simon Dedalus (Stephen's father) - as well as having overheard Stephen's discourse on Hamlet, the fatherless prince of Denmark - that Stephen really needs a father. Mulligan and Stephen get into some kind of scuffle - and Stephen hurts his hand. The baby is born. All is well. Bloom and Dedalus walk out onto the street (all of Stephen's friends have headed off to "Nighttown" - the red light district of Dublin ... and there's a thunderstorm. Stephen literally cowers in fear. (Joyce was immobilized by thunderstorms, hiding, trembling - they completely undid him.) Stephen, who made a big show of not believing in God earlier in the book - seems to suddenly fear the wrath of God (Stephen, too, throughout the book, is haunted by the fact that he refused to pray at his dying mother's bedside. He would not get on his knees before a God he did not believe. But that choice haunts him. Mulligan teases him about it. It's obviously something Stephen cannot forgive himself for.)

Okay. So that's what happens. But man, the FORM Joyce chooses is the most challenging in the book. More than any other episode, it predicts where he will go in Finnegans Wake.

Let's look at it.

Because it takes place in a maternity hospital (and Dublin, at that time, had awesome facilities for women giving birth ... for such a poor country, their maternity hospitals were excellent): we can probably guess what bodily function correlates to this episode. So because of that: he has structured the episode in nine sections. You can feel how the language changes from section to section. The nine months of gestation for a human baby. The development of the fetus into a baby. Things fusing, merging, separating ... that whole speeded-up film you saw in Health class of development: that's what Joyce is doing in the language here. It begins on the simplest level and grows more and more complex (naturally. This makes sense.) So keep that in mind when you read the episode. Even if you're like: "DUDE. This is gibberish!" It's actually not.

But the OTHER thing Joyce is doing ... (since the development of the baby moves it from unthinking tiny amoeba to a being with consciousness and the potential for great complex thinking ... ) is - along with the 9 months of human pregnancy - moving us through the 9 phases/developments of the English language. Another kind of gestation. Joyce was obsessed with language (obviously). You have to be able to make it through the kind of Beowulf-ish sections ... and then suddenly segue into a Gothic melodrama language ... It's tough going. Just saying. And because I am not familiar with how the English language developed - I mean, I basically know: Chaucer! Shakespeare! ... I could only guess at what he was doing half the time. The beginning of the episode is written in what almost sounds like Latin. It's English, but it doesn't sound like English. Then there's Old English. And language imitating John Bunyan. Language imitating Charles Lamb (who wrote essays about childhood: so Joyce uses him as the model for Bloom's going back into the past, thinking about his childhood, and other things). Again, you'd have to even know who the hell Charles Lamb WAS to get what Joyce is up to. (I looked all this up as I read the chapter. And thankfully, my own personal library is extensive enough - with poetry going back to medieval times, that I could look stuff up if I needed to. And, uhm, yeah. I did.) And then ... moving on thru the episode ... we go through an Arthurian section, a sort of Guinevere and Lancelot-type language - courtly, formal, we see knights and forests, etc. (But we're always still in the Maternity hospital - let's not forget that. Joyce turns Bloom into a knight, basically ... showing up on a courtly visit. Etc.) Once the baby is born, we move into sentimental cooing language, reminiscent of some of Dickens. The mother and babe, idealized, perfect, happy (unrealistic), etc. So we're getting at least closer to our own age, the language is getting a bit more recognizable. No more of this Beowulf Everyman shit!! Joyce is making fun of the idealized view of women and childbirth - he knew it was a lot of work, and blood, and howling, and sometimes horror. So the "oh, the baby coos at the mother's breast" language of the 1800s is his way of making fun of it. Then, later, we move into the 19th century Gothic melodrama style - Mulligan telling the story of Haines and the black panther (which will be a recurring image for Joyce - it shows up again in Finnegans Wake. As Mulligan talks - listen to the language: "Which of us did not feel his flesh creep?" "In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope ... Ah! Destruction! The black panther!" Melodrama. Late 19th century - moving towards the 20th century now. And the episode ends - with all the men heading off to Nighttown - and the language at the end of the episode is all Dublin slang, nearly incomprehensible. Like Cockney slang. It is English, but it is another language entirely. The modern day: with its fracturing, its messiness ... the grand sweep of the history of the English language being lost in the shuffle. Joyce was obsessed with derivations. Tracing puns/jokes/words back into antiquity - trying to dig deeper meaning out of everything. You know ... when you know that the word "disaster" has, as its Latin derivation, the two words: "dis" meaning "separation from" and "aster" meaning "stars" ... it gives you a whole new understanding of what disaster really means. Joyce took stuff like that to a whole other level, twisting and turning himself down into the ground, looking for more, grubbing around for more meaning, tracing slang back to Beowulf. What is this English language? What is it? The slang at the end of Oxen of the Sun, in a way, is prophetic. The breakdown of culture and language that has continued apace through the 20th century. The connection to the past severed, leaving the Dublin youths rambling around, talking in ugly slang.

Anyway, it's a rigorous episode. Don't give up.

Just know that Joyce is doing three things:
1. Describing Bloom and Dedalus' meeting, at last.
2. Taking us thru the 9 months of pregnancy
3. Taking us thru the 9 phases of development in the English language - past to present

Oh, and actually: he's doing 4 things. Because he's also making connections, of course, with The Odyssey. In The Oxen of the Sun episode in The Odyssey - Odysseus' men kill the cattle of the sun god Helios. (The first couple paragraphs of "Oxen of the Sun" calls upon the sun god, in numerous puns. Look for them.) Helios is pissed and kills them all, except for Odysseus. In Ulysses we know (because lots of people have been talking about it all day) - that the cattle in Ireland are suffering from foot and mouth disease. The cows are going to be slaughtered in England. Lots of brou-haha about this.

On even another level (sorry, it's just endless): Joyce uses this episode to contemplate life and death. Birth. The process of birth. The forming of life. The episode takes place in a hospital, a sterile environment. Dedalus and his buddies make ribald jokes about sex, which Bloom does not appreciate. Buck Mulligan, especially, seems to trumpet the joys of sex without love, or commitment. Casual sex, I guess you'd say. Joyce didn't "believe" in birth control - he didn't think you should get in the way of life. So Mulligan's joking is seen as in poor taste (Joyce has been gunning for Mulligan from the beginning) - and there are tons of jokes/puns about condoms (look for all of them! Even in the Beowulf sections! Condoms are everywhere in this chapter about birth. And let's not forget: Ireland is a Catholic country. Birth control is a huge hot-topic there - and continues to be so.) Preventing life was against nature, Joyce thought. He had complex feelings about masturbation, too - which we saw in the last episode - and it comes up again here. Bloom "wasted" his seed on himself ... seen as (also) a big no-no. Jesus, you can't please any of these people, can you.

Nobody's the lead in Oxen of the Sun. There is no "point of view" - we aren't with Bloom, or with Stephen. We are somewhere else. We follow the development in the womb, and we also follow the development of the English language - from something simple and rough to something overwrought and complex - to something fracturing apart into slang.

And that's what's happening here. It's rigorous, make no mistake. And most of it, like I said, I wasn't even qualified to understand. Brilliant, though - you can feel the brilliance. Joyce is so far beyond any of his contemporaries in what he is attempting here ... it is not wholly successful, but that matters not at all. Because the attempt is STILL so far beyond what anyone has ever accomplished before or since. It's breathtaking. It's like listening to The Goldberg Variations. At first the theme is clear, you can hear it. Then it disappears ... but no, it doesn't. It is still there. Just in reverse. Or a third down. Or in the left hand. Until finally ... it re-emerges as what we recognize from the start. It has gone through a morphing process - and only a very very good ear (one who knows what to look for) could hear it, as it changes. "Oh ... that's the theme ... there it is. It sounds nothing like it did in the beginning ... but that's it."

Joyce is on that level here.

Okay, so here's an excerpt. I'm gonna choose an excerpt that starts in Joyce's Old English - and we can watch as it morphs into the chivalrous medieval English.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Oxen of the Sun episode

Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended with wholesome food reposeful cleanest swaddles as though forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct females is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term up.

Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's oncoming. Of Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house.

Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers they there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts they still sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding wariest ward.

In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mild-hearted eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin! Full she dread that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house.

Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land and seafloor nine year had long outwandered. Once her in townhithe meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning.

As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. Glad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that O'Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death through God His goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men's oil to his limbs. The man then right earnest asked the nun of which death the dead man was died and the nun answered him and said that he was died in Mona island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she prayed to God the Allruthful to have his dear soul in his undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in held hat sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope, sorrowing one with other.

Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked forth from his mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to go as he came.

The man that was come into the house then spoke to the nursingwoman and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there in childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman was in throes now full three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth to bear but that now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she had seen many births of women but never was none so hard as was that woman's birth. Then she set it forth all to him that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to her words for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that they have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a young face for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless.

And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there came against the place as they stood a young learning knight yclept Dixon. And the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed that they had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where this learning knight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that he should go into that castle for to make merry with them that were there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and a subtle. Also the lady was of his avis and reproved the learning knight though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learning knight would not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to his list and he said how it was a marvellous castle. And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometimes venery.

And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move for enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath that he blares into them like to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olive press. And also it was marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a compost out of fecund wheat kidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain angry spirits that they do into it swells up wondrously like to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead.

And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and his neighbour wist not of his wile. And he sat down in that castle with them for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God.

This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at the reverence of Jesu our alther liege lord to leave their wassailing for there was above one quick with child a gentle dame, whose time hied fast. Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it be not come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table that was older than any of the tother and for that they both were knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently. But, said he, or it be long too she will bring forth by God His bounty and have joy of her childing for she hath waited marvellous long. And the franklin that had drunken said, Expecting each moment to be her next. Also he took the cup that stood tofore him for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him to drink and, Now drink, said he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far as he might to their both's health for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And sir Leopold that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and that was the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly hand under hen and that was the very truest knight of the world one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the cup. Woman's woe with wonder pondering.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 17, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Nausicaa episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode
Episode 11: The Sirens Episode
Episode 12: The Cyclops Episode

It's now a couple of hours after the Cyclops episode. Mr. Bloom has gone to dinner with the Dignam family (who are grieving the loss of Paddy, buried just that day), and afterwards he goes for a walk on the beach. To clear his mind, to shake off the gloom of the Dignams as well as the bad memory of the run-in with The Citizen (the Cyclops). Not to mention the fact that he still is hesitant to go home to his wife. Molly had her rendesvous with Blazes Boylan a couple hours earlier ... and Bloom just can't face it, the obvious-ness of the adultery ... He wanders around, avoiding the return home. He is on the same beach where Stephen went for a walk in The Proteus Episode. So there's a mirror-image thing going on here ... Bloom walking in Stephen's footprints, basically. Which I think is important because it will be in the next episode - the encyclopedic and sometimes very confusing Oxen of the Sun episode - that Stephen and Bloom finally meet, and merge. After Oxen of the Sun, Bloom and Stephen are together for the rest of the night. But in this episode, the Nausicaa episode, Bloom is still isolated, alone.

As he walks on the beach, he sees a couple of young women - who have younger siblings with them, babies and toddlers. One of the women (she's really just a girl - in her late teens) in particular catches his eye. Her name is Gerty. It's now almost dusk, and Roman candles are fizzing through the air (kind of an orgasmic type of motion ... which goes with the theme of the chapter - as a matter of fact, there's all kinds of big arcs that show up in Nausicaa ... meaning: the actual shape of arcs - have fun finding them all! There are a ton - those arcs are there to reflect what is going on physiologically with Bloom). So anyway, Bloom hangs back, and observes Gerty, drinking her in with his eyes. Gerty eventually realizes she is being watched, and begins to toy with him. Pulling her skirt up a bit to reveal her stocking, etc. She is an innocent Irish woman, a good girl ... but wise in the ways of men. Up until now, Molly (unseen, and feared, and gossiped about everywhere) is really the only female of any import in the book. And we haven't met her yet. But we judge her, we have feelings about her, we have preconceived notions, etc. Gerty, in her way, predicts the last episode - with Molly's run-on sentence, as she lies in bed, thinking and waiting for her husband to return. We have been wrong, oh so wrong, about Molly ... even though she is no saint. Joyce was not a typical madonna/whore type guy ... and certainly quite untraditional in his relationship with Nora (his wife). His understanding of women came from Nora, and Nora alone (he admitted this himself). And Nora, like all women, like all people really - but we're concerned with women here - is a mixed bag: sinner, saint, fallible, human. Not an IMAGE in a NICHE in a church - but a living breathing person with a will of her own. In Ulysses women are the unknowable "Other" - almost like a foreign race of beings to the men who want to fuck them ... they are not real, they are not three-dimensional, they do not have thoughts and logic and reality - in the way men do. They are images. Let's not forget that Ireland is a Catholic country, where Mary is revered often more than Christ is. All women become versions of the Virgin Mary (which happens at the end of the 4th chapter in Portrait as well). Joyce was very well aware of the contradictions women faced, which was one of the reasons why he couldn't live in Ireland with Nora, where the rules were too strict. He didn't care about housekeeping, gentility, the way things "should" be, traditional gender roles - any of that. But they couldn't live that way in Ireland. After all, they lived together without getting married for - what - 20 years? They had 2 kids together. They eventually got married - but that was in the 1930s - long after the beginning of their relationship, in 1904. He could not accept the rules of the game, and Nora was a willing partner in this. A rough Galway girl, she said later in her life, "You can't imagine what it was like for me to be thrown into the life of this man." I want to be clear: Joyce was not particularly more enlightened than anybody else, and Nora - throughout their lives together - still remained a kind of mystery to him. There was something about women he could never understand, or get inside ... who WAS Nora? He wrote a letter to her early on, something like, "I want to know your most secret thoughts ..." He wanted to inhabit her. Not just because he loved her, which he obviously did - but because it was good for his art. He stole from her, repeatedly. She was the only woman he ever could write about. And because he did not keep her at arms length - because they did not have a "traditional" relationship (read their sexy letters and you'll see what I mean. It's an early 20th century version of phone sex) - Joyce had no illusions about women being a different species than men. He knew Nora masturbated, he knew she had times of the month when she was "in heat", etc. etc. Women were still entirely mysterious ... and Joyce was all about getting inside of other people's heads, and experiences. But women were not on a pedestal ... he did not judge their sex drives, their desires ... It sometimes might have intimidated him ... but he was more curious about it, than threatened.

So Gerty's purity (represented by the church bells ringing, and the almost spiritual nature of her beauty), on the one hand, is real. It's not a put-on, or an act. But - and this is very important - Gerty's wise-woman showing-her-stockings-to-Bloom is ALSO real. Both things - the madonna and the whore - can exist in the same person. Gerty pre-figures Molly, Gerty prepares us for Molly. There are men, to this day, who must separate out the madonna and the whore. Life can be a torment for them (and Joyce shows the torment of the men in his books who suffer from such a thing). Bloom does, in a way. Dedalus certainly does. In a country where a VIRGIN is the most revered woman in the land ... you're gonna have those problems.

The Nausicaa episode is in two parts, basically. The first part is Gerty's alone. We are not even aware that Bloom is hiding behind a rock, spying on her. But we learn, later, that what we see - is Bloom's perception of her. The first part is written in the florid over-emotional almost trembling on the verge of parody - prose of a sentimental novel. Maybe Bloom had peeked into Sweets of Sin, the book he was bringing home to Molly ... and that was what inspired him. It's a worked-up prose, it over-explains everything: the colors, Gerty's outfit, the sights and sounds of the dusk .. all of it in an overwrought kind of writing. It's hysterical - to see Joyce, big serious writer man, parody that type of fiction. Harlequin Romance stuff. But, as always, Joyce is onto something. When we are "in love" - or struck dumb by someone's beauty ... often our experience is exactly like a Harlequin. Bloom sees Gerty as a vision (again: the female is not quite real) ... and when she lifts up her stocking? That is the equivalent of a girl showing her breasts to the crowd at Mardi Gras. It is shocking, and completely overt ... takes Bloom totally by surprise (because we slowly become aware of him ... as Gerty realizes she is being watched). Gerty sees a man over there ... watching her ... and he has his hands in his pockets, and she knows why. Instead of tittering with fright and coy pleasure, the way a female stereotype would - she instead, slowly lifts up her skirt to the knee ... to show him her translucent calf. She knows what will happen next, and she stands there - like a statue - holding up her skirt, watching the Roman candles go off (I mean, come on, that's as obvious as the train careening into the tunnel at the end of North by Northwest). What all of this signifies is that Bloom, peeking out from behind the dunes or whereever he is hiding - masturbates, finally. He had been holding it in all day, a day full of anxiety, and sexual worry. He stares at Gerty's calf and masturbates. Gerty knows that that is what he is doing, even though she is a virgin, like all good Irish girls should be ... and she is not grossed out, or freaked out. She stands there, in the pose, until she senses he is done. And then she - and her sister - and her younger siblings - move on. And out of our story forever.

Pretty extraordinary.

Joyce thought Irish women were the most beautiful fascinating women in the world. He did not like sophistication, he did not like intellectuals (especially women) ... he liked girls like Gerty. Like Nora. Like Molly. (all the same person, basically). He had many "dirty" thoughts, which - being who he was - tormented him. The old Catholic upbringing won't disappear overnight. He had gone to prostitutes. He was disturbed, in general, by masturbation. He did it, but he didn't feel GOOD about it. And he needed a woman who could understand that about him. Who could be kind and forgiving about his "dirtiness". And, boy, did he find it in Nora, huh??

Second part of the episode has Mr. Bloom, post-orgasm, sitting in the sand on the beach, and we are inside his head ... and follow his thoughts, here and there. He's tired, spent ... there's obviously a correlation between "spilling his seed" and the fact that his son had died ... should that seed be saved to perpetuate his race? Isn't it a crime, then, to masturbate? A selfish act? Bloom finds his mind wandering. He thinks of women he has known ... he remembers, yet again, making love to Molly on the hills at Howth, with the rhododendrons ... he remembers the beauty of love fulfilled. Of man and woman together. But now, of course, his memories are tinged with sadness because all of that has changed, and it seems like he has lost it forever.

The episode ends with the church bell ringing across the water. The bell goes "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" A mocking reminder of Bloom's cuckolded state.

Oh, and parallels to The Odyssey: Odysseus's ship is washed ashore in the kingdom of the Phaeacians - and Princess Nausicaa comes down to the shore with a gaggle of girlfriends, to wash their clothes - and comes across Odysseus sleeping there. She throws a ball at him, to wake him up. Nausicaa is a dream-type of woman: obviously domestic, because she's a princess, but she's doing her own laundry, basically ... and she also treats Odysseus, who is naked, with kindness and friendliness - bringing him up to the palace (or whatever) to get food, clothes, etc. She's HELPFUL.

Just like Gerty ... is HELPFUL to Bloom in this episode.

It's all wonderfully naughty. This chapter was probably one of the reasons why the book was banned for years. It's fine if we see men being naughty. But to have a woman - who is, at times, compared to the Virgin Mary - be naughty ... and be un-conflicted about it, un-worried ... to show her understanding of sex, and how okay she is with it ... Oh no no no, that totally breaks the rules. It's always when we get to the topic of Womanhood that things get tricky. So thank you, Joyce. For shattering some of that nonsense. It is the WORLD who has put women in the position of Madonna or whore ... and Joyce lets women be both. At the same time. Revolutionary.

Here's an excerpt. This is when Gerty becomes aware that Bloom is staring at her. Notice the lush language, the over-explanation of everything ... and also the mix of the sensual and the religious - they are side by side. Oh, and if you feel like it: look for the arc-shape. It shows up here, repeatedly.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Nausicaa episode

Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense was wafted and with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived without stain of original sin, spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable vessel, pray for us, vessel of singular devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And careworn hearts were there and toilers for their daily bread and many who had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with contrition but for all that bright with hope for the reverend father Hughes had told them what the great saint Bernard said in his famous prayer of Mary, the most pious Virgin's intercessory power that it was not recorded in any age that those who implored her powerful protection were ever abandoned by her.

The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles of childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy played with baby Boardman till he crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air. Peep she cried behind the hood of the pushcar and Edy asked where was Cissy gone and then Cissy popped up her head and cried ah! and, my word, didn't the little chap enjoy that! And then she told him to say papa.

-- Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa.

And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out to be something great, they said.

-- Hajajajahaja.

Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted him to sit up properly, and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried out, holy saint Denis, that he was possing wet and to double the half blanket the other way under him. Of course his infant majesty was most obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he let everyone know it:

-- Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa.

And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. It was all no use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling him about the geegee and where was the puffpuff but Ciss, always readywitted, gave him in his mouth the teat of the suckingbottle and the young heathen was quickly appeased.

Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out of that and not get on her nerves no hour to be out and the little brats of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense they burned in the church like a kind of waft. And while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at and there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would search her through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you trust them? People were so queer. She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Martin Harvey, the matinée idol, only for the moustache which she preferred because she wasn't stagestruck like Winny Rippingham that wanted they two to always dress the same on account of a play but she could not see whether he had an aquiline nose or a slightly retroussé from where he was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would have given worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently, so still and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel buckles of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down. She was glad that something told her to put on the transparent stockings thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but that was far away. Here was that of which she had so often dreamed. It was he who mattered and there was joy on her face because she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else. The very heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could convert him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm. She was a womanly woman not like other flighty girls, unfeminine, he had known, those cyclists showing off what they hadn't got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a real man, crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his ownest girlie, for herself alone.

Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. Ora pro nobis. Well has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fitly is she too a haven of refuge for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her own heart. Gerty could picture the whole scene in the church, the stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue banners of the blessed Virgin's sodality and Father Conroy was helping Canon O'Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes cast down. He looked almost a saint and his confession-box was so quiet and clean and dark and his hands were just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican nun in their white habit perhaps he might come to the convent for the novena of Saint Dominic. He told her that time when she told him about that in confession crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled because that was only the voice of nature and we were all subject to nature s laws, he said, in this life and that that was no sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done unto me according to Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and often and often she thought and thought could she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the mantelpiece white and gold with a canary bird that came out of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the forty hours' adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or some place.

The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their places, the both of them. And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to come back because they were afraid the tide might come in on them and be drowned.

-- Jacky! Tommy!

Not they! What a great notion they had! So Cissy said it was the very last time she'd ever bring them out. She jumped up and called them and she ran down the slope past him, tossing her hair behind her which had a good enough colour if there had been more of it but with all the thingamerry she was always rubbing into it she couldn't get it to grow long because it wasn't natural so she could just go and throw her hat at it. She ran with long gandery strides it was a wonder she didn't rip up her skirt at the side that was too tight on her because there was a lot of the tomboy about Cissy Caffrey and she was a forward piece whenever she thought she had a good opportunity to show off and just because she was a good runner she ran like that so that he could see all the end of her petticoat running and her skinny shanks up as far as possible. It would have served her just right if she had tripped up over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked French heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. Tableau! That would have been a very charming exposé for a gentleman like that to witness.

Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints, they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy handed the thurible to Canon O'Hanlon and he put in the incense and censed the Blessed Sacrament and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins and she was itching to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she didn't because she thought he might be watching but she never made a bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see without looking that he never took his eyes off of her and then Canon O'Hanlon handed the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the Blessed Sacrament and the choir began to sing Tantum ergo and she just swung her foot in and out in time as the music rose and fell to the Tantumer gosa cramen tum. Three and eleven she paid for those stockings in Sparrow's of George's street on the Tuesday, no the Monday before Easter and there wasn't a brack on them and that was what he was looking at, transparent, and not at her insignificant ones that had neither shape nor form (the cheek of her!) because he had eyes in his head to see the difference for himself.

Cissy came up along the strand with the two twins and their ball with her hat anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did look a streel tugging the two kids along with the flimsy blouse she bought only a fortnight before like a rag on her back and bit of her petticoat hanging like a caricature. Gerty just took off her hat for a moment to settle her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown tresses was never seen on a girl's shoulders, a radiant little vision, in sooth, almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have to travel many a long mile before you found a head of hair the like of that. She could almost see the swift answering flush of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every nerve. She put on her hat so that she could see from underneath the brim and swung her buckled shoe faster for her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes. He was eyeing her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman's instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour of her face became a glorious rose.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 16, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Cyclops episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode
Episode 11: The Sirens Episode

The action moves now to a tavern - it's around 5 p.m. I found this entire chapter opaque, until - again - my dad came to the rescue.

Suddenly, we have a brand-new narrator - and he is speaking in the first-person - and he is not Leopold Bloom, and he is not Stephen Dedalus - and he appears to be regaling a group of his friends with a tale of what had happened in the Tavern earlier that day. Totally confusing - who is this new speaker? He's telling a story about a man referred to as "The Citizen", an angry loquacious bombastic Irish patriot. Our brand-new chatty Kathy narrator tells his friends the story about a run-in between The Citizen and Leopold Bloom, who has stopped by for a drink. Things get ugly. It's anti-Semitic. Openly so - that which has been beneath the surface in many of the episodes is now out in the open. Not to mention the fact, that Bloom knows that everyone knows he is a cuckold. That knowledge is out in the open, too. So he is scorned and ridiculed - and The Citizen tells him he doesn't think he's Irish at all (even though Bloom was born in Ireland, and is also a 'citizen'). This is a highly political chapter.

However: the whole thing is told in the voice of someone else - saying to his friends at the pub later that night: "So let me told you what I saw today!!" He has a very distinctive voice, too - one of his phrases is "says I" - whenever he has spoken. Because he was part of the conversation with The Citizen and Bloom, he uses "says I" in almost every line of his story.

The writing of this episode is actually totally clear - it's in a slang vernacular, Irish, but also very everyday language - not "literary". So it wasn't that I didn't understand what was happening ... it's that I didn't know what Joyce was DOING. Why the new voice? What was its purpose?

I didn't get it at ALL. So I held the book out to my dad and said, "What the HELL is going on here?"

He took one look at the page and said, "It's the Cyclops episode."

Er ... my dad didn't even have a chance to read any of it - he didn't have time, he just glanced at the page. So I said, "How do you know that?" (Or perhaps I should say, "says I")

Dad held the book out to me and said, "Look at how many times the word 'I' appears on every page."

I looked at the page - and suddenly all I saw was the letter "I". Little vertical slash marks all across the pages ... I I I I I I I I I (eye eye eye eye eye eye eye eye) Cyclops' eye is built into the text itself. (And remember: it is not labeled in the actual book as "Cyclops episode". You know it's a new section because of how the text breaks up, and the change in style ... but you have to figure out where you are in Homer's epic - and there are guides and "keys" you can use ... which could be quite helpful. Or you could just call my dad. Or me, now, too.) But when I saw the plethora of "I"s across the page, I got goosebumps.

It all unfolded before me. Sense came. I got the music, I got the sense of it.

The episode is the parallel to the monstrous CYCLOPS episode. And so - the episode in Joyce's book is filled with 'I'. Also: that's the reason it's written in the first-person.

"says I, says I, says I..."

And it is true: once you know the sense, the reasoning - you can tell just by looking at the page which episode you are in.

There are also, interspersed with our first-person tale, long discourses on old medieval and earlier knights, warriors, gladiators ... an obvious connection between the patriots of old, and the patriots of today.

The Citizen - old windbag - hostile - is the Cyclops. He's a broken old patriot, living on the glories from the past - No one can tell him anything, he brooks no opposition, he is always right. Out of this Irish patriotic vibe comes his sudden verbal attack on Leopold Bloom, sitting nearby. Bloom insists that although he is a Jew, his country is Ireland, because he was born here. The Citizen is based upon Michael Cusack, an Irish nationalist who was behind the big Gaelic sports movement in Ireland during the Irish Revival - as a way to separate itself from England. We already know how Joyce feels about such things, and he pours all of that into the characterization of The Citizen (as seen through our new narrator's eyes). In The Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are trapped in a cave by the Cyclops - a giant cannibal from Greek myth. The pub in this episode becomes the cave. And Bloom (who is there with a bunch of other characters from earlier - at the funeral - Martin Cunningham and others) becomes Odysseus - trapped in the evil gaze of this Irish patriot who refuses to believe that this Jew is also Irish. What does a JEW know about nationhood? In The Odyssey - Odysseus and the men escape. Odysseus got the Cyclops drunk - and then blinded him by shoving a hot stake through the Cyclops' one eye. The long hot stake is important to remember (and also it might be helpful to read Ulysses with a Cliff Notes version of The Odyssey nearby - or hell, the whole damn thing if you can deal with it ... but I sat there with the Cliff Notes version. As I moved through Ulysses, and would get to a new episode - I'd go to my Cliff Notes, and see what the next episode in Homer's epic was. I'd read the brief description of the events - and then read the brief listing of all the themes and leitmotifs and symbols in each episode ... and then keep all that in mind when I went back to Ulysses. There are so many connections to be made that I am sure I only got one or two levels - and Greek scholars would obviously see so much more. But still: it is helpful. Because - if you read the Cyclops episode - you will see the overwhelming number of references to long thin objects (which, obviously, is the stake Odysseus used against the Cyclops). Joyce, naturally, is not LITERALLY putting Bloom with a LITERAL Cyclops. No. But he weaves it into the writing. We hear of telescopes, and cigars, and erections - a ton more ... If you haven't read the book, and you want to - have fun with finding all of the connections, because there are a million. The stake used to blind the Cyclops is in the text, hidden - but there. Marvelous. And at the end of the episode in The Odyssey - the Cyclops, enraged, throws a boulder after Odysseus and his men as they run away. At the end of the episode in Ulysses, the Patriot, enraged at Bloom having the gall to just get up and walk away - who does he think he is?? - throws a biscuit tin after him, narrowly missing him.

Joyce is a genius. I love his genius - because he seemed to have a lot of fun with it. He's not a morbid guy, or a self-involved guy - not a navel-gazer at all - even though he is one of the most personal writers who has ever lived. He has FUN with his own talent for writing. You can really see that in the Cyclops episode. The long thin hard objects which make up the bulk of the chapter are also, of course, phallic ... because Bloom's cuckolded state is well-known ... and very much on his mind.

Now to the levels of the Cyclops himself: It is no accident that Joyce has made the Cyclops a raging Fenian. Such people, such politicized people, have blinders on - and can only see, so to speak, with one eye. There is ONE way, ONE way to think ... The Citizen is "blind" to any other opinions. He also hates England so much that it blinds him to his own hypocrisy. The Citizen is intellectually and spiritually blind. Joyce hated people like that. The Citizen's response to Leopold Bloom is grotesque. It's blatant bigotry. It is as though if you only have one eye ... all you can see is the stereotype. I'm reading a book about Stalin now - and the "Kulaks" were Enemy #1 for a while - they must be destroyed (even though economically - there really were no such thing as "kulaks".) The kulaks were so demonized that they were not even thought of as people. Even the children. They were referred to as "vermin". To have the potential to see other human beings in such a distorted light is one of the ugliest parts of human nature. I see it with many people in politics - example is those who refer to "the left" with contempt and disgust ... their rhetoric is full of strawmen and dehumanizing generalizations - that I honestly don't know WHO these people are referring to. It's identity politics at its worst: a group made to seem not human. Enemies. And it doesn't have to be acted upon - that's the thing with dehumanization. It's in the language itself. So The Citizen cannot even see, first of all, that Leopold Bloom is a human being. He is just a stereotype - in The Citizen's one-eye. Bloom: a Jew. The Jews piggyback on other nations ... they wander and have no home of their own. They push in where they are not wanted. The Irish are a homogenous people. What the hell is HE doing here? Bloom, at first, tries to be polite and ignore the attack - but eventually, he cannot. And he asserts himself in the argument, standing up to The Citizen, who - in the end - even with all his big rhetoric about Irish Renaissances - is just a bigot. That's all. (Reminds me of the guy who wrote to me so amazed that I was a woman - since I wrote so well!! He couldn't believe it! As far as he was concerned, all women writers were shit. He used the phrase "Fried Green Tomatoes" a lot, as though that is the book all women writers should be judged by. Not Jane Eyre. Not Middlemarch. Not Wuthering Heights. Not Pride and Prejudice. Fried Green Tomatoes. He said to me, and it was amazing - because he was so OPENLY a douche-bag, which was awesome - since he walked right into my trap: "You must think I'm a Neanderthal! haha" I wrote back, "Nah. Just a good old-fashioned bigot." Then I gave him a reading list. Funny: I never heard from him again. But that guy had dehumanized women to such a degree that he couldn't even SEE how wrong he was, on every count, how his own bigotry kept him from living in the light of truth ... women were THIS, he had decided.)

The Cyclops episode has a feeling of gloom and violence in it. It takes place in a bar - just like the Sirens episode - but the Sirens episode, with its airy language, and its 'bronzegold' imagery ... makes the bar seem like a sunny lively place - quite a different environment from the dark cave-like pub of The Cyclops episode, where it is clear that people are, basically, raging alcoholics, first of all ... People are not just drinking and singing in a jolly manner. They are on a binge. Bloom walks into this atmosphere, mild-mannered Bloom - and the contrast is great between him and the others. Bloom tries to temper some of the conversation - with his more humanistic outlook. Like The Citizen going off on the English treatment of her sailors, and how cruel it all is. Bloom says that navy discipline is the same everywhere. Ahhhh, it reminds me of comments I used to make on blogs - before I got the rules of the game. There was one time on one particular site when everyone was going OFF on The Vagina Monologues - just ranting and raving about the downfall of society, and blah blah-dee-blah. I'm not into the downfall of society viewpoint anyway, I think it's deeply stupid and ahistorical. I'm also not wacky about The Vagina Monologues myself, but I know they have helped a lot of people (I read one of Eve Ensler's books) - so I made the huge mistake of saying (in a totally polite way - not an attack): "I read this one anecdote from a woman who saw the Vagina Monologues ... and her life had changed ... " or whatever. Not trying to be contrary - but it's a blog I read regularly (or, I don't anymore, not after the treatment I got on that day) - and the response was VICIOUS, almost animalistic: as in: that which is different must not just be shunned, but killed. Especially from this one fucking bitch - who made her comment into a personal attack on me and any sexuality that wasn't identical to hers. No compassion with those who have struggled in ways that she has not. Zero. It's pathetic, when you think about it - her response to a different opinion was an attack of that nature? What a weird little world she lives in! Fragile, actually. A house of cards. Especially because this was about sexuality. I have my opinions on politics, but when it comes to sex? I know in my heart it is all personal, and I can only speak for myself. I know that her behavior is typical (at least I know it now) - and most blogs have a homogenous readership, and everyone complains about the same things, in the same tone ... and they are all "safe" from outside opinion that might not be in lockstep with theirs. And I made my comment in a really moderate tone. Just a, "Yeah, what you say might be true ... but there is another side to it ..." I was a semi-regular on that blog. It wasn't a 'driveby' comment. What I did not realize was that to these people there is only ONE side. Cyclops-es, every last one of them.

So Bloom's mild-mannered comment about discipline being the same everywhere, and England being no worse than other nations in that regard - is seen as treachery, plain and simple. Especially since it's from the JEW. But Bloom - when attacked (the Cyclops starts grilling him about "nationhood" - "Do you know what a nation is?", etc.) finally fights back. He is Irish AND he is Jewish. He stands his ground. You want to cheer for him (especially because he has seemed so passive thru the other chapters). The issue of "race" is involved - as it usually is in Europe (especially) - when speaking of nationhood. And Bloom, for really the first time, trumpets his Jewishness, and the persecution of the Jews thru the centuries - and yes, he is a part of that race. And, as is obvious, from the exchange he is having at "this very instant" - the persecution continues.

Go, Bloom!!!

Here's an excerpt.

Oh, and The Cyclops episode is also famous for its almost two-page list of names ... every Bloomsday celebration I've ever gone to has had SOMEONE read that out ... and it is surprising how hilarious it is, when you hear it all together. I describe one such Bloomsday celebration here.

The episode is hard to excerpt - since it's so much of a whole ... but I'll start with when we first meet the citizen. Notice how he is rubbing his eye in our first glimpse of him. And also, look for all the "I"s.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Cyclops episode

So we turned into Barney Kiernan's and there sure enough was the citizen up in the corner having a great confab with himself and that bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would drop in the way of drink.

There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his load of papers, working for the cause.

The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the creeps. Be a corporal work of mercy if someone would take the life of that bloody dog. I'm told for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off a constabulary man in Santry that came round one time with a blue paper about a licence.

-- Stand and deliver, says he.

-- That's all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here.

-- Pass, friends, says he.

Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:

-- What's your opinion of the times?

Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Joe was equal to the occasion.

-- I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his fork.

So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says:

-- Foreign wars is the cause of it.

And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket:

-- It's the Russians wish to tyrannise.

-- Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I, I've a thirst on me I wouldn't sell for half a crown.

-- Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.

-- Wine of the country, says he.

-- What's yours? says Joe.

-- Ditto MacAnaspey, says I...

-- Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how's the old heart, citizen? says he.

-- Never better, a chara, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh?

And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.

The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freely freckled shaggybearded wide-mouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the field-lark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble.

He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a girdle of plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. His nether extremities were encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of seastones which dangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the Ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal Mac-Mahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castille, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo, Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker, Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time to time by tranquillising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.

So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid. O, as true as I'm telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.

-- And there's more where that came from, says he.

-- Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.

-- Sweat of my brow, says Joe. 'Twas the prudent member gave me the wheeze.

-- I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and Greek street with his cod's eye counting up all the guts of the fish.

Who comes through Michan's land, bedight in sable armour? O'Bloom, the son of Rory: it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory's son: he of the prudent soul.

-- For the old woman of Prince's street, says the citizen, the subsidised organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look at this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. The Irish Independent, if you please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman's friend. Listen to the births and deaths in the Irish all for Ireland Independent and I'll thank you and the marriages.

And he starts reading them out:

-- Gordon, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne's on Sea, the wife of William T. Redmayne, of a son. How's that, eh? Wright and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham Road, Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude's Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, Dean of Worcester, eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow.

-- I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.

-- Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of Davie Dimsey, late of the admiralty: Miller, Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning Street, Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How's that for a national press, eh, my brown son? How's that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?

-- Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they had the start of us. Drink that, citizen.

-- I will, says he, honourable person.

-- Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.

Ah! Owl! Don't be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

January 15, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Sirens episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode
Episode 10: The Wandering Rocks Episode

Awesome chapter - one of my favorites to read (once I figured out what was going on. Of course.)

So now we're at about 3:30 pm on June 16, 1904 ... each episode represents (roughly) an hour of time. At 3:30 the Ormond Hotel bar opens (which is where much of the action takes place). This is the hour of Blazes Boylans' rendesvous with Molly Bloom. Leopold, tormented by this thought, walks through Dublin, carrying the smutty book Sweets of Sin that he bought in the last chapter - to bring home to his wife - an irony that is too painful to even acknowledge. As an act of defiance, perhaps, Bloom stops off at a stationary store and buys a card - he plans on writing to Martha (the woman he is considering having an affair with).

First of all: there is the obvious connection with the Homeric epic: the sirens, as most people know, were mermaids - whose beautiful alluring songs would drive sailors to smash their ships onto the rocks ... in order to get closer to the music. The sirens: beautiful. Deadly. Odysseus makes his men put wax in their ears, but he feels he must hear the song. So he has his men tie him up and order them to totally ignore anything he says as he listens to the music.

There are multiple connections with this in Joyce's chapter - and I'm sure I'm only getting one or two levels. But here's my take: First of all: this is the hour of Blazes Boylans' rendesvous with Molly Bloom - a siren herself, luring not only Boylan but also Bloom, into danger. The danger and threat of sex and females, in general (which is so interesting to me - considering how the book ends ... with Molly, and Molly alone). We have heard so much about her, she has grown in stature and grotesquerie in our minds ... and then, we get to hang out with her ... alone, and private ... and who she is is not at all who she is thought to be. But I am getting ahead of myself.

But there are more sirens in this chapter. Bloom walks by the Ormond Hotel - a place with a bar and a singing room (like most Irish establishments in those days). The two barmaids chatter away, and call out to Bloom as he walks by. They are sirens, too. Bloom, after going to the stationary store, sees a poster of a mermaid (duh) and then catches a glimpse of Blazes Boylan ... and decides to follow him. Boylan goes into the Ormond Hotel, his love-hour with Molly Bloom completed. Bloom follows him inside. Bloom sits in the dining room area, and listens to the singing and joking going on at the bar - and he is acutely isolated from all of that. People sing - Bloom hears snippets of the lyrics - which all, of course, correspond to what is happening in his life. Joyce is never explicit - you have to figure it out - but the songs sung in that bar are VERY interesting, in terms of their history and meaning in Irish life. And how they connect to Joyce's book. I'll get to that in a minute. Simon Dedalus, Stephen's father, is there - drunk, and singing.

One of the things I think it is important to interject here, which I realize I haven't said yet: all of this, the way I am describing it, perhaps makes Bloom sound like a wet noodle type of guy. A self-pitying passive drip. There is that element to him - he feels impotent, and helpless, indeed. He doesn't know what to do. But he also balances that out (or Joyce does) with Bloom's decency as a human being, his common sense approach to things (we see this in many of his encounters) - and also his utter lack of black-and-white thinking. Which is partly why he got into this mess. A black-and-white fellow would NEVER go through what Bloom went through on June 16 ... he wouldn't allow it. His idea of how life should go would NEVER include grappling with the issues Bloom grapples with on that day: what it means to be a father, a husband, a lover ... what it means to be a Jew ... etc. Bloom, though, cannot help but see the other side of every argument. This is his main appeal as a human being, and also his main "flaw" (although it's not a flaw - it's just that many of his problems arise from his balanced way of looking at things). This becomes totally clear in the scary Cyclops chapter, when Bloom has the run-in with "The Citizen" - an Irish type which is totally familiar to anyone who knows anything about Ireland: the loud "patriot", unwilling to compromise, a social bore, who lives in a world where there is only ONE way to look at things, and anyone who deviates is to be crushed. Bloom avoids that kind of thing like the plague. Irish politics are vicious, in general (I guess like politics most everywhere) - and the hot-button issues require complete agreement or disagreement. So. I'm just saying that all of the episodes - with Bloom walking around, basically waiting for his wife to sleep with Blazes Boylan so that he can eventually go home ... may give the impression that Bloom is not a sympathetic character, that he is weak. But that's not right. He is certainly troubled. He has lost his son. His father committed suicide. He is losing his wife. He is trying to stay afloat financially (the whole "Keyes" advertisement thing shows that). He is doing the best he can with the cards he has been dealt. You kind of love him, even though there are times when you want him to challenge Blazes Boylan to a duel or something. But Bloom is under no obligation to behave in the way we want him to behave. If we judge him, then perhaps - like Shaw said - we should look in the mirror, rather than pointing the finger at Bloom's inadequacies. Often, strong anti-reactions like that come from recognition, and a refusal to even admit that it is recognition, and there is no place for such thought processes while reading Ulysses. Now, that is a very human thing - we all do it. We all want to be thought well of, we all want to be perceived that we are good, and moral and whatever. So to have that threatened, or to have someone (Joyce) suggest that possibly we are not looking deeply enough ... that possibly there is more of Bloom in us than we want to admit ... can be quite disorienting. If you're willing to let that stuff duke it out inside of you as you read the book, then I can guarantee you will get more out of it. That was my experience anyway. I kept getting frustrated with Bloom, as I read the book the first time. Like: DUDE. Just TELL Molly you love her - punch Boylan in the nose - and go home and fuck Molly like you've never fucked her before - she's DYING for it - what is your problem??? But as the book went on, I realized what I was reacting to - was my own proclivity for passivity, or fatalistic thinking ... my own feelings of defeat in the face of emotional challenges ... my own desire to avoid a big fat fight and also - my almost pathological need to never be hurt again. No. I will NEVER be hurt again. (I know this is illogical - But humans aren't always logical. The book brought all of that to the forefront for me, as I wandered around with Bloom ... he was pushing these buttons, and at first I blamed HIM - but slowly - since the book is so long - I started to recognize myself more and more, the parts of myself I do not love, the parts of myself I am ashamed of - and do not like to share ... They're ALL there in Bloom. And once I made that kind of uncomfortable adjustment ... the book was so much more rewarding, and also extremely redemptive. Almost spiritual in nature - because it connects all of us - in our shared humanity. Nobody is exempt. Nobody.)

Back to the episode. Bloom has a bit of dinner - as the rowdy singing continues in the other room - and he tries to write a letter to Martha ... but he doesn't sign it. As the lyrics of the songs emanate out towards him, he goes into a trance almost (sirens) ... and begins to realize that Molly is the only woman he will ever love. Come hell or high water, Blazes Boylan or no.

The episode ends with Bloom taking a walk and he passes by an antique store - where the words of the martyred Irish patriot Robert Emmet are seen in the window. Bloom reads the words, and as he reads them, he farts. Satisfyingly. That is the end of the episode. Hysterical. But of course Joyce was working on multiple levels here. The glorious Irish martyrs are for the idealistic, the black-and-white people of the world. Bloom cannot "go there" - and because of that, because he farts as he reads the martyred man's words, he is basically the hope for all of humanity. hahaha But seriously. Joyce was highly suspicious of political rhetoric - it seemed to him quite empty ... and a symbol of all that was dangerous and stuck in Ireland national life. Those who resist the call of martyrdom, who do not swoon into a daze at the thought of Irish blood being shed for the cause ... represent hope for ALL of us.

Now let me talk a bit about the style of the chapter. Because we're in the 'sirens' episode - there is music mixed with speech - and it's seamless. Joyce does not narrate anything here ... it is a completely aural chapter. That's why it seems daunting at first, because it doesn't even seem to be written in English. And, strictly, it's not. It's written in SOUND ... the way music seems when it is heard from another room - the way the chattering barmaids' conversation ebbs and flows in your (Bloom's) consciousness ... There is a blind beggar who shows up, and the tapping of his cane is omnipresent through the entire chapter. Tap. Tap. Tap. The episode reads like a musical score. It is how sounds ACTUALLY occur to us when we are in a busy social environment ... The music heard is woven into the other sounds ... and all blend together into a whole, a symphony, with many instruments. Joyce treats the entire episode like a piece of music, introducing a ton of aural themes in the first two pages ... themes which recur throughout the episode, sometimes the tap - tap- tapping takes precedence over other sounds - sometimes Simon Dedalus singing surges into the foreground - sometimes the barmaids chattering are the main theme ... So it's best to read this episode as though it is a piece of music.

Oh, and it's worth mentioning - that one of the songs sung by Simon Dedalus is "Tis the Last Rose of Summer" - a song I grew up with myself. One of those sad "four green fields" type of songs - so typical to the Irish. The tragic tales of domination, war, martyrdom, romantic yearning for the past, etc. Another song sung is "The Croppy Boy" - an Irish ballad commemorating the 1798 rebellion against the British. Joyce doesn't ever hit the nail on the head - and I suppose you would have to know the history of these songs - to get Joyce's deeper meaning, but that's part of the fun of it. Joyce is, in a way, setting the stage for the Cyclops episode - when Irish politics move fiercely to the forefront, in a most terrifying way. But here he does it subtly - and breaks it up into fragments ... so the songs just seem to be sounds, fragments of sounds Bloom hears from the other room ... sounds he takes personally (for various reasons) - since he is in that contemplative state when the entire world seems to be reflecting your own personal experience. But on a higher level, yet again Joyce is making his points about the STUCK nature of Irish cultural life, the always looking backwards (1798? Come on now ... let's look forwards, please), and the glorification of death and martyrdom ... something which Joyce, with his fierce love of life, could never get behind.

I think that's enough. That's mainly the chapter. Which, as you will see below, is written in a language that is not entirely English. This is the opening of the excerpt. And believe it or not, once you succumb to the style, it becomes quite easy actually (it's easier to read and comprehend than the Scylla and Charybdis episode - and also some of the later episodes) ... watch how the aural themes are introduced here - all at once. Then, once Joyce has established them, he pulls back - and lets the actual TUNE begin. Peppering the rest of the episode with the themes he has already set up.

Brilliant.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Sirens episode


Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyrining imperthnthn thnthnthn.

Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more.

A husky fifenote blew.

Blew. Blue bloom is on the

Gold pinnacled hair.

A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille.

Trilling, trilling: I dolores.

Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold?

Tink cried to bronze in pity.

And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.

Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose! Notes chirruping answer. Castille. The morn is breaking.

Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.

Coin rang. Clock clacked.

Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!

Jingle. Bloo.

Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.

A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.

Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.

Horn. Hawhorn.

When first he saw. Alas!

Full tup. Full throb.

Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.

Martha! Come!

Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap.

Goodgod henev erheard inall.

Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up.

A moonlight nightcall: far: far.

I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming.

Listen!

The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each and for other plash and silent roar.

Pearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss.

You don't?

Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra.

Black.

Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do.

Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee.

But wait!

Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore.

Naminedamine. All gone. All fallen.

Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair.

Amen! He gnashed in fury.

Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding.

Bronzelydia by Minagold.

By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom.

One rapped, one tapped with a carra, with a cock.

Pray for him! Pray, good people!

His gouty fingers nakkering.

Big Benaben. Big Benben.

Last rose Castille of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone. Pwee! Little wind piped wee.

True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk.

Fff! Oo!

Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs?

Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.

Then, not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.

Done.

Begin!

Bronze by gold, Miss Douce's head by Miss Kennedy's head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel.

-- Is that her? asked Miss Kennedy.

Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau de Nil.

-- Exquisite contrast, Miss Kennedy said.

When all agog Miss Douce said eagerly:

-- Look at the fellow in the tall silk.

-- Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly.

-- In the second carriage, Miss Douce's wet lips said, laughing in the sun. He's looking. Mind till I see.

She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face against the pane in a halo of hurried breath.

Her wet lips tittered:

-- He's killed looking back.

She laughed:

-- O wept! Aren't men frightful idiots?

With sadness.

Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.

-- It's them has the fine times, sadly then she said.

A man.

Bloowho went by by Moulang's pipes, bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by Wine's antiques in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky battered plate, for Raoul.

The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china. And

-- There's your teas, he said.

Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low.

-- What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked.

-- Find out, Miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint.

-- Your beau, is it?

A haughty bronze replied:

-- I'll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your impertinent insolence.

-- I mperthnthn thnthnthn, bootsnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come.

Bloom.

On her flower frowning Miss Douce said:

-- Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn't conduct himself I'll wring his ear for him a yard long.

Ladylike in exquisite contrast.

-- Take no notice, Miss Kennedy rejoined.

She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and two and seven.

Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear, hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel.

-- Am I awfully sunburnt?

Miss Bronze unbloused her neck.

-- No, said Miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with the cherry laurel water?

Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst a shell.

-- And leave it to my hands, she said.

-- Try it with the glycerine, Miss Kennedy advised.

Bidding her neck and hands adieu Miss Douce

-- Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that old fogey in Boyd's for something for my skin.

Miss Kennedy, pouring now fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed:

-- O, don't remind me of him for mercy'sake!

-- But wait till I tell you, Miss Douce entreated.

Sweet tea Miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two ears with little fingers.

-- No, don't, she cried.

-- I won't listen, she cried.

But Bloom?

Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey's tone:

-- For your what? says he.

Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but prayed again:

-- Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch! That night in the Antient Concert Rooms.

She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped sweet tea.

-- Here he was, Miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three quarters, ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa!

Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from Miss Kennedy's throat. Miss Douce huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like a shout in quest.

-- O! shrieking, Miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget bis goggle eye?

Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting:

-- And your other eye!

Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner's name. Why do I always think Figather? Gathering figs I think. And Prosper Loré's huguenot name. By Bassi's blessed virgins Bloom's dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white under, come to me. God they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After with Dedalus' son. He might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows in: her white.

By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets.

Of sin.

In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each Other, high piercing notes.

Ah, panting, sighing. Sighing, ah, fordone their mirth died down.

Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and giggle-giggled. Miss Douce, bending again over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with choking, crying:

-- O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that, she cried. With his bit of beard!

Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy, indignation.

-- Married to the greasy nose! she yelled.

Shrill, with deep laughter, after bronze in gold, they urged each other to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold goldbronze, shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter: And then laughed more. Greasy I knows. Exhausted, breathless their shaken heads they laid, braided and pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless.

Married to Bloom, to greaseaseabloom.

-- O saints above! Miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet.

-- O, Miss Douce! Miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing!

And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly.

Posted by sheila Permalink

January 14, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Wandering Rocks episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode
Episode 9: The Scylla and Charybdis Episode

This one, again, was a tough one to get into ... until I figured out what Joyce is doing. The Wandering Rocks episode is Joyce at his "trickiest". We have just passed "Scylla and Charybdis" - which is the halfway mark of the book (see the tricky structure there, too? Scylla and Charybdis is one of the most challenging episodes in Ulysses - which reflects the challenge that Odysseus himself must face - in order to continue on his journey. So the structure of the book actually reflects the phases of the journey itself.) So now that we have passed the halfway mark (there are 18 episodes in the book - we are now on episode 10) ... Joyce employs all the tricks in the book, to keep us uneasy, to make us feel that we actually DON'T know what's going on ... even though we, the reader, may be so proud of ourselves for having "made it" through Scylla and Charybdis. Joyce is like: "Not so fast."

Wandering Rocks is like a panorama shot of Dublin. We do a slow pan through the streets. We follow the paths of many different Dubliners - and it may be confusing at first, because the episode opens with the meanderings of a certain Father Conmee - he suddenly seems like he's the "star" - who the hell is he? But after 2 pages - his episode stops (for the time being) - and someone else comes to the forefront. There are people we have met before: Buck Mulligan, the Dedalus family - but there are others: a one-legged sailor, Blazes Boylan, Patrick Dignam (the son of the deceased Paddy Dignam) ... and way more. It appears that all of the denizens of Dublin are out and about ... and Joyce swoops in with his camera onto one group, follows them for a bit, pulls back and then hones in on another group. It's a panorama AND a montage. It is also one of the chapters which obsessively details the streets of Dublin. Joyce wrote this chapter with a map of Dublin before him. You can tell. I read in some online critical essay that one especially insane Bloomsday celebrator - followed the path of the one-legged sailor in the episode - and he even gave himself a limp, so it would be realistic - and apparently, the timing of the sailor's episode (when he reached the corner, when he got to the shop, how long it took to cross the street) was spot-on. Joyce was autistic that way.

Characters we met before in Portrait of the Artist as well as Dubliners show up in this episode. Father Conmee was a priest at Clongowes, where Dedalus went to school as a young boy. He is now, if not defrocked - then definitely out of the priesthood.

I remember first reading this chapter and feeling like it was an enormous puzzle. Or some kind of tricky word game that I was trying to figure out. It feels like Joyce is throwing down clues ... but more often than not, he leads you in the wrong direction on purpose (an obvious comment on his feelings about life in Ireland). For example, we keep running into the same guys - who are wearing "sandwich boards", advertising a pub or something like that. And just the way Joyce writes about them - make them seem mysterious, and like the letters on the sandwich board mean something else ... there are clues to be had there. I'm not remembering exactly what it all MEANS ... but the feeling of the chapter is one of movement (which makes sense - given the title of the episode) and unfinished events. We don't stay long enough with one person to get any resolution.

And Bloom and Dedalus are omnipresent. We see members of Dedalus' family - his sister, I think ... trying to sell Stephen's books to a pawn shop, because the family is in such dire straits. The mother is dead, the father is a drunk. We also see Blazes Boylan - Molly Bloom's lover - he is getting ready for his rendesvous with Molly. There are solicitors, blind people, secretaries ... Bloom himself is in the episode, and he is going to "rent" a book to bring home to Molly - it's called Sweets of Sin - it's obviously a steamy romance novel (this becomes important later - in The Nausikaa episode and elsewhere) ... but the implications are clear (at least we think they are). Bloom, being cuckolded almost as we speak, is getting a book called Sweets of Sin for his adulterous wife ... meanwhile, we get to know Blazes Boylan a bit in this chapter, as he banters with his secretary. Like I said, the episode is, uhm, episodic ... and yet the over-arching feel of it is a panorama: DUBLIN.

There are many more enigmas here I'm probably not getting ... some of the clues are in the source-material, The Odyssey: Odysseus was told that in order to get home he either had to navigate through "the wandering rocks" (especially treacherous - and thought, as well, to be an optical illusion) - or navigate between Scylla and Charybdis. Odysseus, as we remember, chooses Scylla and Charybdis (the episode we just passed through). So ... what are we doing in The Wandering Rocks then?? It is as though Joyce is laughing at us, because he knows what he is doing - and we are trying to guess. The "whirlpool" of the former chapter - with its complex navigations through Stephen's thoughts about Hamlet - has now been passed. The Wandering Rocks, with its placement in the book, is a "pause" - an interlude ... before plunging into the last 9 episodes. It's fractured: we don't follow just Bloom anymore ... we, at alternate moments, are inside everyone in Dublin. And Joyce, being the great humanist that he was, judges no one - although many of the people he writes about are buffoons, or egomaniacs ... But he seems to accept them as they are. There is no "ideal world" for Joyce, no utopia. Dublin is what it is. Here it is.

By starting the episode with the wanderings of Father Conmee - Joyce is obviously bookending the episode with his feeling that the Roman Catholic Church is everything that is wrong with Dublin. It has held its citizens in thrall, keeping them in place, like good passive little sheep. And the episode ends (brilliantly) with the Earl of Dudley driving through Dublin in his carriage, passing by everyone we just saw - only now they come to him, in a blur ... because he is moving faster. So Joyce's other bookend is the English. Ireland has two problems: the church and the English.

Navigating through Dublin is no easy matter - like navigating through the Wandering Rocks themselves. Joyce appears to topload this episode with false leads, incorrect information, fragmentary clues that we think we understand - only to realize we have been wrong. It's all part of the journey. If one becomes over-confident in a journey, then we know that things will not go well for them. Time and time again, through history, we have seen this. Legends, myths ... about hubris, etc. So yay, we have made it halfway through the book. We even made it through the long long Scylla and Charybdis chapter - which challenged our minds, made us squint with thought, made us pick up Shakespeare alongside Ulysses to double-check some of Stephen's theories ... we have worked HARD. In "The Wandering Rocks", Joyce tells us: Good for you. But don't be over-confident. You still have a long way to go.

Joyce fractures his narrative - and now shares it with all of Dublin. We follow one path, we join another, sometimes the paths merge for a bit, before separating, we look up at windows, then we are inside the room, then we are down on the street again, navigating, cruising this way, that way ... meeting (and getting inside) every person we meet.

Here's an excerpt. Oh, and even this clunky description I've just written could probably give you a good idea about what part/function of the human body we are now "in".

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Wandering Rocks episode

Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then of Aristotle's Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates: infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.

He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: Tales of the Ghetto by Leopold von Sacher Masoch.

-- That I had, he said, pushing it by.

The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.

-- Them are two good ones, he said.

Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bent to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain.

On O'Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay apparel of Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing &c.

Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes.

He opened it. Thought so.

A woman's voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: The man.

No: she wouldn't like that much. Got her it once.

He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see.

He read where his finger opened.

-- All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!

Yes. This. Here. Try.

-- Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the opulent curves inside her déshabillé.

Yes. Take this. The end.

-- You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eyeing her with a suspicious glare. The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played round her perfect lips as she turned to him calmly.

Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman.

Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amid rumpled clothes. Whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments (for him! For Raoul!). Armpits' oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint!). Feel! Press! Crushed! Sulphur dung of lions!

Young! Young!

An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of chancery, king's bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the lord chancellor's court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation.

Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy curtains. The shopman's uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely, spat phlegm on the floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.

Mr Bloom beheld it.

Mastering his troubled breath, he said:

-- I'll take this one.

The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum.

-- Sweets of Sin, he said, tapping on it. That's a good one.

**

The lacquey by the door of Dillon's auctionrooms shook his handbell twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet.

Dilly Dedalus, listening by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell, the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely curtains. Five shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas. Any advance on five shillings? Going for five shillings.

The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it:

-- Barang!

Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint. J. A. Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched necks wagging, negotiated the curve by the College Library.

Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams's row. He halted near his daughter.

-- It's time for you, she said.

-- Stand up straight for the love of the Lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus said. Are you trying to imitate your uncle John the cornetplayer, head upon shoulders? Melancholy God!

Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on them and held them back.

-- Stand up straight, girl, he said. You'll get curvature of the spine. Do you know what you look like?

He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his shoulders and dropping his underjaw.

-- Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you.

Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache.

-- Did you get any money? Dilly asked.

-- Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is no-one in Dublin would lend me fourpence.

-- You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes.

-- How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek.

Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly along James's street.

-- I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now?

-- I was not then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the little nuns taught you to be so saucy? Here.

He handed her a shilling.

-- See if you can do anything with that, he said.

-- I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that.

-- Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You're like the rest of them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother died. But wait awhile. You'll all get a short shrift and a long day from me. Low blackguardism! I'm going to get rid of you. Wouldn't care if I was stretched out stiff. He's dead. The man upstairs is dead.

He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his coat.

-- Well, what is it? he said, stopping.

The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs.

-- Barang!

-- Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on him.

The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell but feebly:

-- Bang!

Mr Dedalus stared at him.

-- Watch him, he said. It's instructive. I wonder will he allow us to talk.

-- You got more than that, father, Dilly said.

-- I'm going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. I'll leave you all where Jesus left the jews. Look, that's all I have. I got two shillings from Jack Power and I spent twopence for a shave for the funeral.

He drew forth a handful of copper coins nervously.

-- Can't you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said.

Mr Dedalus thought and nodded.

-- I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O'Connell street. I'll try this one now.

-- You're very funny, Dilly said, grinning.

-- Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk for yourself and a bun or a something. I'll be home shortly.

He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on.

The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out of Parkgate.

-- I'm sure you have another shilling, Dilly said.

The lacquey banged loudly.

Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a pursing mincing mouth:

-- The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn't do anything! O, sure they wouldn't really! Is it little sister Monica!

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 13, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Scylla and Charybdis episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode
Episode 8: The Lestrygonians Episode

I'm scared to talk about this episode. I don't feel learned enough. All I can say is: it is a FEAST for the mind. Not so much the soul ... but the mind. It is a rigorous intellectual chapter - with theoretical arguments about aesthetics, Shakespeare, the Irish Literary Revival, poetry, and on and on. I can't even begin to scratch the surface of what is going on here - I've read it once, and I still feel like I barely got it - although this chapter, above all chapters, is COVERED in my notes and underlines. It's barely readable anymore.

Here are some of my notes in the margins, maybe they'll interest you:

-- John Eglinton, AE: experts, pundits
-- rock: stable life in Stratford
-- whirlpool: Plato, mysticism, London
-- Shakespeare lost his 11 year old son Hamnet. Bloom's son Rudy died at 11 days.
-- Stephen is the spiritual son of Bloom and Shakespeare
-- Stephen looking for an older woman - like Anne H. - to initiate him. "And my turn? When? Come!"
-- Stephen not included in list of Irish literary hopefuls. Usurped by others.
-- Entelechy (Aristotle) - "having the end within itself" - like Ellen Burstyn: "The entelechy of an acorn is a giant oak"
-- Stephen tries to show them he's an intellectual. He is obviously insecure. They are all easily distracted.

I think if a reader did not know any of Shakespeare's plays - then this chapter would feel as though it were written in Sanskrit or something. You really do need to get the references to Hamlet, Richard III, King Lear ... and at least be able to call up some image of what those plays were about. It seems like none of this would be at ALL clear without a rudimentary grasp of all of that.

It's a long chapter, and it took me a while to get what was going on. I mean, I knew what was going on: Stephen Dedalus sits in the National Library with a bunch of his friends, and they argue about Shakespeare, and Stephen puts forth his theory of Hamlet, and also Shakespeare himself. That's the "plot". Leopold Bloom makes an appearance - he has come to the Library to look up the image of the two crossed keys, mentioned in the Aeolus Episode. This is the first time Bloom and Dedalus are in the same space. At first, Bloom is just referred to ... he was seen looking at a statue in the lobby, and peeking to see if it had an anus. Poor Bloom. He's a local clown (at least that's how he is treated). And then, at the end of the chapter - as Dedalus leaves the library - he realizes someone is behind him, and it is Bloom. They still do not meet. But Stephen's discourses on Shakespeare and Hamlet throughout the chapter - and that he feels that one of Shakespeare's main themes is "fatherlessness" ... clues us in to what is really going on here. Stephen's real father is no father. Stephen has left the church - so that spiritual father is no more for him, either. He reflects upon his name - Dedalus (just like he does in Portrait of the Artist) ... and he even uses the words "fabulous artificer" - like he does in Portrait. Dedalus and Icarus, father and son ... should he take his father's wings and fly? That means he risks burning up, falling to his death. The father stays behind. But it is the father who is the artist.

Anyway, I'm writing about all of this in a clunky way which does NOT do the genius of this chapter justice. This is our first glimpse of Stephen since early in the day (the three episodes that make up the Telemachia, the beginning of the book). Since then, we have been strictly in Bloom's world, although there is some overlap (not coincidentally - with Stephen's father Simon). It is now that Stephen truly ENTERS. He makes an impression - and that is his whole point. He sees his discourse on Shakespeare as a performance. He sits with 5 contemporaries - including Buck Mulligan (from the first chapter) - 5 men who are writers, critics, librarians - people with whom Stephen, as a budding artist, is in competition. But they don't even consider him a worthy competitor - they do not consider him at all. For example, there's going to be a gathering that night - of many of the new poets. Stephen is not even invited.

The early years of the 20th century in Ireland - the years of Yeats and Synge and Lady Gregory and others - were a time of great upheaval and growth in Irish literature. It was a "revival". Perhaps Ireland, at least in its literature, was removing the yoke of English dominance. This is why folks like Yeats and Synge focused on the 'west' of Ireland (I go into that a bit in my post on 'The Dead'). Yeats advised Synge, a young playwright, to go out to the Aran Islands, in the Atlantic - off the west coast of Ireland - to see the 'real' Irish. Not the city people, but the rough peasants who still spoke Irish, and who were (presumably) "untouched". It was a romantic movement - like most such movements are. And many people in Ireland were uninterested in the West - they wanted to be modern, to join the damn world ... and they did not buy the whole movement. The response to Synge's play Playboy of the Western World shows that clearly. The audience rioted. It's now known as "The Playboy Riots" (wrote about it here). Joyce didn't go for all that stuff, and although Yeats had been an important patron of Joyce's early on (very important) ... it was "continental" folks and ex-pats - like Ezra Pound - who really became his champion, when it mattered. He thought the Irish Revival was hogwash. I don't want to put words in his mouth - but the fact that he left Ireland, and never returned ... and wrote his books in "exile" ... shows his feelings about the possibility of creating great literature in Ireland. Now of course, Joyce did not go live on the continent - and write books about Paris, and Berlin, and Rome. He wrote about Ireland. It was his obsession. He could write of nothing else. But he was decidedly NOT part of the "Irish Revival" which, in 1904 - the year that Ulysses takes place - was in full swing.

All of this is discussed in the Scylla and Charybdis episode - who are the poets who matter, who is the "voice" of the Irish. John Eglinton (a real person in real life) is one of the people talking with Stephen and he says, in regards to Irish literature (this is early on in the episode):

-- Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.

This is on the 2nd page of the episode. So Shakespeare makes his entrance early in the episode. (And in the first episode of the Telemachia, Buck Mulligan says something to Stephen like: "I know you've been working a lot on Shakespeare - you'll have to tell me your theories on him someday." So it is in this chapter that Dedalus takes up that challenge.)

And then there is a long conversation between the 5 men (Stephen doesn't contribute) about the future of Irish poetry. Now, it is so obvious that Stephen - known to be a writer already - is not included in the list. He's not even invited to the gathering that night. He is, just like Bloom, an outsider. An exile in his own country. It is not that his friends are mean to him. It is just that he is not considered a "playa". For example, the conversation about Irish poets goes like this:

Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming important, it seems.

Stephen, who already considers himself an artist, is noticeably left out of all of this. Nobody turns to him and says, "You - Dedalus - are a contender to write 'our national epic'." So his impromptu lecture in this chapter is one way that he asserts himself, sets himself apart from the pack, and makes his voice heard. I'm not even sure he believes all that he says - it is a performance-art piece, basically. He has their attention - even though much of the commentary thrown back at him is either joking, mocking, or argumentative.

Oh, and to the Odyssey correlation: It's probably the most famous episode of Homer's epic, and "Scylla and Charybdis" has entered the layman's lexicon. Between a rock and a hard place, etc. Scylla is a 6-headed monster (quick note: Stephen and his 5 friends in the Library ... they make up the hydra??) and Charybdis is a whirlpool. Odysseus must pass between the two. Not an easy task. The connections are apparent, once you look at the chapter in light of Homer's episode: Stephen is against the grain of the "whirlpool" of Irish literary thought. It is a vast sucking space, and all must participate in it - or be forever thought of as an outsider. A.E. (one of the guys in the library) is the main advocate of the other position - he IS the whirlpool. His real-life counterpart (and most of Joyce's characters have real-life counterparts - the guy names names - he's the Eminem of his day. ha) is George Russell - a poet who was into the mystical Irish thing, which translated into nationalism. That was the whole thing. Succumbing to the poetry of the west, and its untouched peasantry, their language, their ways ... was the way to "be Irish". Joyce thought that was bollocks, obviously. Why romanticize that which is backwards? Let's look forwards: to the new. Let's look beyond nationalism, for God's sake. The irony, of course, is that Joyce is now so associated with Irish-ness that he's on their currency. I wonder how he would feel about that. It's not that he hated Ireland. Oh, no. It's all he wrote about. It had broken his heart. It was his home. He thought much of the culture was backwards, rigid, and anti-human. He hated the dominance of the priests. But in a way ... his pleas for the future, and for progress, predicts the Ireland of today. Anyway, back to the episode. A.E. is a Platonist, as well. Stephen resists the pull of that, and thinks Aristotle is the way to go. The sharp intellectual mind, the argumentative reasoning, the way he deals with his opponents.

The main thrust of the chapter, however, is Stephen's theories on Shakespeare. Anyone trying to plumb the depths of Shakespeare would do well to read this chapter. It's a goldmine. A.E. objects to any biographical questioning of Shakespeare - his private life should remain private - and only his plays should be considered. Stephen disagrees. Shakespeare had a son who died. His name was Hamnet. In the first production of Hamlet, Shakespeare, an actor as well, played the ghost of Hamlet's father. And famous actor Richard Burbage played Hamlet, to Shakespeare's ghost. So ... in a twisted Freudian sense ... Shakespeare played himself. The father speaking to his dead son ... speaking of his wife's faithlessness (Stephen takes this idea and runs with it). If Shakespeare was Hamlet's father (and Stephen believes he was - with the Hamnet/Hamlet connection) ... then Gertrude, and her treachery, must be Anne Hathaway. It's a leap - but no worse than other leaps made by other scholars (and it is definitely borne out in the plot of Hamlet. It makes sense.) The fatherlessness of Hamlet is the main drive of the play. He must have revenge. Stephen looks into this, considering the question of Anne - Shakespeare's mysterious wife - to whom Shakespeare famously left his "second-best bed" in his will. Why his "second-best bed"? Books have been written about it. Scholars have spent their entire lives trying to figure that out. Was it some kind of dis? An insult from beyond the grave? Especially since it was a "bed" - where sex and marriage take place. Stephen thinks it was a "dis" - as many other scholars do (although Emily Byrd Starr, in Lucy Maud Montgomery's "Emily series" takes a more optimistic view: Perhaps that was the bed that Anne liked best). Stephen thinks Anne, an older woman, had betrayed Shakespeare ... or cheated on him ... in their long separations, while Shakespeare was in London and she back in Stratford. This is not idle sallacious thinking: many others have trod that path. This idea of woman's treachery loops us back to Leopold Bloom, and his fear that his wife Molly is being unfaithful. In fact, someone snickers, "Cuckold! Cuckold!" in this chapter - which Bloom, hiding behind a column eavesdropping, might take personally. We don't know if he takes it personally, but given the fact that he thinks all of Dublin is laughing at him behind his back - it's not a stretch. Shakespeare is a mystery, very little is known of his life ... we are left with bare bones ... and so we project onto him, we read into things, we are tormented by what we do NOT know ... even though, my God, do we even need to know? After all, look at the plays - not to mention the sonnets! That is the point of one of Stephen's adversaries: who CARES about Anne Hathaway? Knowing the truth about Shakespeare's life does nothing towards analysis. Stephen, at least in his performance in the episode, disagrees. Stephen's theories are borne up in the texts of the plays (of course, opposing theories are as well - that's what's so brilliant about Shakespeare. Ultimately, he resists being nailed down.)

Stephen sets up his thesis in typical Jesuit manner (described by St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits). Loyola thought that novices to the faith should be required to "picture" the actual physical reality of the famous spiritual scenes - what the Virgin Mary was wearing, etc. He makes you enter that world ... there is no other way to look at it. All else is just fantasy, ego, theory. Faith must be grounded in what is real. Stephen uses this form of lecture in his discourse on Shakespeare. It is one of the most living-breathing analyses of the man that I have ever read (and I'm not alone. Stephen Greenblatt, in his marvelous book Will in the World says, of this chapter: "Women he won to him," says Stephen Dedalus, James Joyce's alter ego in Ulysses, in one of the greatest meditations on Shakespeare's marriage, "tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justice, bully tapsters' wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frightened of the narrow grave and unforgiven.") Holy shite, is all I have to say. And this goes on for pages on end.

It will make you want to pick up Hamlet immediately, and read it with "Scylla and Charybdis" in mind.

Someone in the crowd mentions a mistake Shakespeare made in one of his plays.

Stephen responds with one of the most famous lines in the entirety of Ulysses:

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

I am not saying I am a genius ... but I will say that often in my life, when I have been "stuck", especially artistically ... I have thought of that line. To be a perfectionist is detrimental to the pursuit of art, in many ways. To be so afraid to make a mistake can paralyze one. If I can see my "mistakes" as not mistakes at all ... but possible "portals of discovery" ... God, what freedom there is in that!

As usual, I haven't even scratched the surface of all of the connections here. The chapter, as far as I'm concerned, is a mini-masterpiece. It can stand alone, while many of the other chapters cannot.

Joyce saw Ulysses as the story of two men, yes - Bloom and Dedalus. And, through them, it was also the story of two races: Jewish and Irish.

But he also saw the movement of the book as a journey through the human body. Each episode has its parallel in human physiology. It's not all that difficult to figure out: Joyce leaves tons of clues. (SPOILER ALERT: If you are planning on reading Ulysses, and you would prefer to figure the structure and physiological symbols out on your own - like I did - then skip this next paragraph. But if you want a mini-guide through the dark forest, and are okay with knowing some of the secrets, feel free to read on - It won't ruin the fun, there are still clues I haven't found ... it's a deep complex book, and there is always more to discover about it ... So, it's up to you:) The Calypso Episode is the kidneys. All you need to do is look at the breakfast Bloom eats, and it's right there in front of you. The first paragraph ends with the line: "Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine." Mmkay. Sentences like that are why Virginia Woolf was grossed out by him. HOWEVER. If you get past the grossness: the function of the kidneys, of course, is to reprocess stuff ... which eventually becomes urine. I'm not a doctor, but I know that that's basically what they do. So the "urine" reference there is quite deliberate. On a deeper analogical level, the "reprocessing" that has to occur in order to keep the body balanced ... is reflected in much of the action of Joyce's episode. Bloom has a long day ahead of him. And he is clogged up with worry about his wife. A good breakfast must be had. And a nice bowel movement as well. Ready to meet the day. The Lotus Eaters episode is obviously the genitals - the last image of the chapter has Bloom submerged in a bath, staring down at his limp penis: "the limp father of thousands". It is here that we get to understand Bloom's sexual anxiety about his wife. In The Hades episode - we move to the heart. The carriages move through Dublin to the graveyard -- crossing over 4 rivers (which have their counterparts in The Odyssey as well) - but it's also the 4 atriums/ventricles of the heart. The carriages - with all the men inside... travel through "the heart" of Dublin. And etc. You see what's going on. And Hades is the chapter about death. The heart stops when you die. So the heart is the main indicator of life itself. The Aeolus episode - with its connection in The Odyssey to the bag of winds ... is the lungs. Wheezing, pumping (like the printing presses in the newspaper office) ... the lungs, with their power of breath, allow us to speak. Therefore everyone in that episode is a big ol' windbag. The Lestrygonians episode is obvious (well, all of them are - if you know what you're looking for - it's actually kind of fun to find all the bread crumbs he leaves for us, the reader, through the forest). It's a chapter full of swallowing. Everyone is eating, sucking, swallowing, chewing ... so we have moved into the esophagus in Lestrygonians. Bloom is disgusted by all that he sees - the chewing, swallowing, gulping, of the Dublin masses. And then there's a line (but all the chapters are full of tricky little puns like these - the connections go to the core): "Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it all however." The clues are all there. It's fun to find them. And if you THINK it's a pun, it probably is. And if you think it's NOT a pun, then it means you haven't worked it out yet. I had a great Shakespeare acting teacher, who said the same thing to the class, about Shakespeare's bawdiness: "If you think a line isn't bawdy - it's because you haven't worked it out yet." So now we come to Scylla and Charybdis: with its long intellectual discussion. It is, obviously, the brain (which is why it is so potentially ridiculous that poor Bloom was seen peeking at the anus of a statue - as Stephen intellectually whips his opponents) Stephen is the brainiac. Bloom is earth-bound completely. How will these two connect? It seems they would be in total opposition. Bloom is concerned by earthly things. He would never enter into a discussion on Shakespeare and the Irish literary revival. He is too worried about his wife cheating on him.

But the "fatherlessness" that Stephen harps on - when it comes to Shakespeare and Hamnet/Hamlet ... is the deepest theme of the entire book.

Wow. I'm going to stop writing now.

Here's an excerpt. Buck Mulligan is a late arrival to the group. He sees Bloom lurking the Library. The conversation about Shakespeare is already in full swing. So he has to get caught up. But as is obvious, he really doesn't take much seriously. There is a question, too, about his sexuality - which is rather intriguing. Again, papers have been written on such things. So I won't cover that here.

Naturally, because it's a discussion of Shakespeare's plays - parts of the episode are written like a script.

And I love the jujitsu move of Dedalus at the very end of his lengthy discourse.

It's classic Joyce.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Scylla and Charybdis episode


-- Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.

-- Which Will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed.

-- The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's widow, is the will to die.

-- Requiescat! Stephen prayed.

What of all the will to do?
It has vanished long ago...

-- She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motor car is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed at New Place and drank a quart of sack the town paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches and The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Venus had twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.

-- History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos. The ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell is right. What do we care for his wife and father? I should say that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.

Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see you. Me? Says he's your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.

Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.

Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.

-- A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father's death. If you hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and last man who felt himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son?

What the hell are you driving at?

I know. Shut up. Blast you! I have reasons.

Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea.

Are you condemned to do this?

-- They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The sun unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a male: his growth is his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's enemy.

In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.

-- What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut. Am I father? If I were?

Shrunken uncertain hand.

-- Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same token, never was born for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection.

Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.

Flatter. Rarely. But Flatter.

-- Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play's the thing! Let me parturiate!

He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.

-- As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the forest of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus. His boyson's death is the deathscene of young Arthur in King John. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in The Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter's Tale are we know. Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is another member of his family who is recorded.

-- The plot thickens, John Eglinton said.

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste, quake, quack.

Door closed. Cell. Day.

They list. Three. They.

I you he they.

Come, mess.

STEPHEN
He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded in the works of sweet William.
MAGEEGLINJOHN
Names! What's in a name?
BEST
That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to say a good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake.

(Laughter.)

BUCK MULLIGAN
(Piano, diminuendo.)
Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy...
STEPHEN
In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles' names. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark.
BEST
I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Richard, my name.

(Laughter.)

QUAKERLYSTER
(A tempo.) But he that filches from me my good name...
STEPHEN
(Stringendo.) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John O'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat of arms he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight, returning from Shottery and from her arms.

Both satisfied. I too.

Don't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.

And from her arms.

Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?

Read the skies. Autontimerumenos. Bonus Stephanoumenos. Where's your configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D.: sua donna. Già: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amar. S. D.

-- What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial phenomenon?

-- A star by night, Stephen said, a pillar of the cloud by day.

What more's to speak?

Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.

Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.

-- You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.

Me, Magee and Mulligan.

Fabulous artificer, the hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing he.

Mr Best's eagerquietly lifted his book to say:

-- That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know, we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third brother that marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.

Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.

The quaker librarian springhalted near.

-- I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand you to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps I am anticipating?

He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.

An attendant from the doorway called:

-- Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants...

-- O! Father Dineen! Directly.

Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.

John Eglinton touched the foil.

-- Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn't you?

-- In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.

Lapwing.

Where is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.

Lapwing.

I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.

On.

-- You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others? Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann (what's in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. Richard the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered. The other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his kings Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare's reverence, the angel of the world. Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures lifted out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history?

-- That was Will's way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith. Que voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and makes Ulysses quote Aristotle.

-- Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare, what the poor is not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops of Maynooth: an original sin and, like original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he has created, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As you like It, in The Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure, and in all the other plays which I have not read.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage. Judge Eglinton summed up.

-- The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is all in all.

-- He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five. All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like José he kills the real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the moor in him shall suffer.

-- Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear!

Dark dome received, reverbed.

-- And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed. When all is said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas père?) is right. After God Shakespeare has created most.

-- Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet pére and Hamlet fils. A king and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.

-- Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!

Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton's desk.

-- May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.

He began to scribble on a slip of paper.

Take some slips from the counter going out.

-- Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.

He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.

Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.

-- You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your own theory?

-- No, Stephen said promptly.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 12, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Lestrygonians episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode
Episode 7: The Aeolus Episode

In The Odyssey the Lestrygonians are a tribe of cannibals who gobble up many of Odysseus' crew. Joyce (as I mentioned somewhere before) had concentric circles of meaning woven into his book - each "episode" is completely different in style, tone, structure - than the others. The content fits the form, and vice versa. Each episode has a corresponding color, body part, and other elements ... you can find these "keys" online if you're interested in reading the book that way. You don't NEED them, but sometimes it does help. I think I said this before - but the thing about Ulysses is this: Yes. Its reputation precedes it. It is daunting. You even look at the pages and it seems incomprehensible. You don't see normal sentences and paragraph breaks. It seems like a big cloudy mystery and only YEARS of study will help you enjoy it. This is one of the problems with being a "big important book". Other huge important authors suffer from the same thing, only never so much as Joyce. People feel they need to be "ready" to tackle Ulysses. I know I felt that way.

But then one day, I just picked it up and started. I did no research beforehand (although I'd read Dubliners, Portrait - and had also read Ellmann's biography of Joyce - but I didn't go online and read essays about the book, and how to read it, and what it "means") ... I just struggled through, and occasionally called my dad for some enlightenment. "What the HELL is he talking about here??" I'd read him a passage. The book is 800 pages long. My dad would immediately recognize the passage and say, "Oh. Okay. You're in the Hades episode. Everything is about death." The light would break over me. "Ohhh. Okay. Got it." The book does not reveal itself in one reading, obviously - I have only read it once, and I do want to read it again, because I am sure I will be much more relaxed the second time ... not so concerned about what it "means". But again, I did no research, or preliminary studying - I just started. There were times when Joyce's intent was opaque to me - I couldn't get to it ... but I knew that it was ME that was the problem, not him. I mean, you can just sense that. It reminds me of Faulkner's quote about Ulysses - and how you should approach it as an illiterate Baptist minister approaches the Old Testament - with faith. Now lots of people have resentment about this kind of thing, and get all uppity and defensive about Joyce, and other "hard" authors. Those people used to show up on my site all the time, and make whiny defensive comments ... It's almost like they resented that someone else had decided that this book was "great" - and NO they weren't going to read it, and WHY does a book have to be so hard? A book doesn't have to be HARD to be GOOD ... and this is just another example of the snotty Northeast elite telling the rest of us what we SHOULD do ...(you see how those conversations always went. I can't believe I had so many regulars who would show up and say shit like that - like: dude, do you realize what blog you're reading? Don't bring your "ain't much for fancy book-learning'" resentment on this site! Look at what I write about! And I'm not writing about it because The New Yorker tells me that this book is good. Don't insult me. I'm writing about Joyce because I love him. Go away.) Joyce can, indeed, be rather annoying - and many of his contemporaries were like: Bro. We're all writers. Chillax with your OCD self. Katherine Mansfield was baffled by him - by all of his symbols and meanings and secret stuff ... She didn't like that. Virginia Woolf was very unimpressed. She was grossed out by him, too. Joyce is not an "intellectual' writer, believe it or not, although he was a genius. He was obsessed with the body. Nothing should be left out. Woolf was disgusted. George Bernard Shaw was disgusted ... and yet he also felt that maybe he was disgusted because he felt recognized. Perhaps he shouldn't judge Joyce. Perhaps he should look in the mirror. Henry Miller, believe it or not, with his books full of "cunts" and "pricks", was grossed out and called the book "masturbation". But then Hemingway wrote, "Joyce has written a goddamn wonderful book." The responses to it goes across the board.

So Joyce has always prompted fierce debates. The early 20th century was a great time for literature - the old forms breaking apart, new forms arising - many people were already moving away from the typical 19th century structure of novels ... it's just that Joyce went so much further, and his results were so much better that all the other writers around him were gobsmacked. He, Mr. Blind Irishman, was working on THAT? Gertrude Stein was openly envious, and announced that SHE had done what Joyce did - only twenty years before. Yeah but Gertie, if nobody READ the thing, then it doesn't matter! Anyway, the debates themselves are fascinating - and I love them. It's like Joyce threw down the gauntlet. So whatever happened afterwards HAD to include him. Ulysses was that kind of book.

So all of this surrounds the book to this day, and can make you afraid to pick it up. If I don't know all that ... will I be totally confused??

One of the things I think is important is to remember Joyce's funny comment: "on my honour as a gentleman, there is not one serious word in it."

I think he was exaggerating just a bit - but there is a lot of truth to what he says.

I think it would be wonderful if someone reading my blog decided to pick up Ulysses because of these posts. That's one of the reasons I'm spending so much time on it. Not to be evangelical about it ... but it's obviously a book I love very much ... and I was also afraid of it, and intimidated ... but once I started it was a romp like no other.

Let's go back to Lestrygonians. A complex chapter. There's a lot going on here - and a lot of information is imparted that will be quite important later on. The writing itself, though, is ... impressionistic, almost. There is no outside eye, it is Bloom's detailing of his moment-to-moment experience ... It is how the world seems to him. So thoughts are fragmented, there are very few full sentences ... snatches of conversation are overheard ... and they obviously mean much to Bloom ... but can we decipher it? Can we successfully enter into Bloom's mind so that we know what is happening with him? Joyce doesn't ever write about big dramatic cathartic moments ... I can't think of one in any of his books. Catharsis, yes - or, shall we say, realizations ... gaining deeper understandings ... or losing faith entirely. Those moments, yes. But Joyce was way more fascinated by the everyday. You can look at a bar of soap and remember your entire life. You can hear snippets of conversation all around you on a busy street - and if you're in a certain mood - it can seem like it is all about you. Joyce wrote in a letter to his brother Stanislaus:

Do you see that man who has just skipped out of the way of the tram? Consider, if he had been run over, how significant every act of his would at once become. I don't mean for the police inspector. I mean for anybody who knew him. And his thoughts, for anybody that could know them. It is my idea of the significance of trivial things that I want to give the two or three unfortunate wretches who may eventually read me.

"The significance of trivial things."

That is what Joyce is ALL ABOUT.

Bare bones of this episode: It's around 1 p.m. (remember - the whole book takes place in one 24-hour period). Bloom has finished up at the newspaper offices. It's time for some lunch (remember: cannibals). Because the "Lestrygonians episode" in The Odyssey is so disgusting ... so, too, is this episode. It's all about consumption, digestion, bodily functions, chewing, dribbling, masticating, swallowing ... etc. Bloom refuses to go into one pub because he glances in and everyone there seems so slobbish and gross, they are chowing down, and they look disgusting to Bloom. He then finds a quiet "moral pub" where he can have a glass of wine and a cheese sandwich in peace. But Bloom gets no peace at all on this particular day. Mainly because he is haunted by the thought that his wife Molly is cheating on him ... and the hour of her suspected rendesvous with Blazes Boylan, her lover, is approaching. Bloom tries not to think about it. But he can't help it.

We get more information about their marriage in this chapter. 10 years before, their son Rudy had died. And since then the marriage has not been the same. They have not had sex (at least not completely) since Rudy died. Bloom has been pulling out - which kind of torments him. He knows he has not been satisfying Molly ... but the fear of childbirth is also there (another element in this chapter is that a friend's wife has been in labor for 3 days ... this will come up later...) So ... there's an interrupted-intimacy thing going on between Bloom and his wife ... he feels like they have totally lost touch with one another. And he doesn't know what to do about it. In this chapter, he does reminisce about the good and beautiful times they once had (which will then be echoed in the famous final passage of the book, Molly's "yes I said yes I will yes", etc.) Bloom knew that Molly had had lovers before him. And that was never really an issue (another example of Bloom's humanistic approach to life, his decency) - but now it is an issue - because they have grown apart, and he really fears losing her. But he feels impotent and helpless. This is why he imagines that everyone on the street is talking about him. He hears some priest talking about "Blood of the Lamb" - and at the first syllable: "Bloo ...." Bloom assumes that HE is being discussed. Bloom is paranoid and miserable, aware of his outsider status, and watching the clock compulsively, imagining what is going on with his wife in that moment.

There's a lot more in the chapter - a ton more - but that's the gist of it. The main images are one of digestion and swallowing. The disgusting nature of the human body. Flesh un-redeemed.

Here's an excerpt. Just go with it. Maybe read it out loud - sometimes that helped me. The sense is often in the SOUND. A strange concept, but that's what Joyce was all about. This chapter predicts the entirety of Finnegans Wake, in its language. Oh, and notice how - as Bloom has his glass of wine ... it mellows him out, softens him ... gives him that particular wine-buzz that can be so wonderful if you don't overdo it. Joyce reflects that experience (he was a wine-drinker) in his writing. He never spells it out. You get it thru the sound, the images, the sensory elements. And this episode has, for me, the saddest line in the book:

Me. And me now.

Ouch.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Lestrygonians Episode

Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty. Bath of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can. Six, six. Time will be gone then. She...

Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins, sardines, gaudy lobsters' claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters? Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red bank this morning. Was he oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh in bed. No. June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it? No. Yes, or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course, aristocrats. Then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up the price. Cheap. No one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite. Crème de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they're. Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal sturgeon. High sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls' kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la duchesse de Parme. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you've eaten too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards' desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive: Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney I remember. Du, de la, French. Still it's the same fish, perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of making money, hand over fist, finger in fishes' gills, can't write his name on a cheque, think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha. Ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds.

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs In the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky grumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman s breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.

Me. And me now.

Stuck, the flies buzzed.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

January 11, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Aeolus episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode
Episode 6: The Hades Episode

A complicated (on its surface) chapter. Thank God I had my dad as a tutor. I said, "Okay, so what is going on here?" He looked at the page - and could tell, just by the LOOK of it - what chapter I was in (Joyce is one of the few writers you can do that with). He said, "Okay, so that's the Aeolus chapter. It's in the newspaper office - and that's why the text is full of headlines. It's also about wind. So everyone's a windbag." The Aeolus episode in The Odyssey involves Odysseus being given a bag full of any wind that might push him in the wrong direction. He is in sight of his home ... so the danger of returning is great. But his men (of course) are curious and open up the bag. Winds burst forth and they are blown off course. So once you know that, and once you know that Joyce is writing the entire chapter in the style of a newspaper - then you can settle in, and just enjoy. But before then? What the heck?? But like I keep quoting, Joyce said, "With me, the thought is always simple." I have read all of Joyce's stuff, even Finnegans Wake, and I can say that he is right on the money. The structure is complex, the analogies and layers and connections go deep into the core - some of which you, the reader, will NEVER get (this is why people spend their lives studying this writer) ... but the thought itself is always simple. So once you "find your way in" - (and, from my experience, each episode in Ulysses requires a bit of work from me - as a reader - to do that) it's not just easy-going, but fun, and interesting.

The Aeolus episode is all talk talk talk talk talk ... to embody all of that wind in The Odyssey. Much of this has to do with very specific moments in Irish history - so you might have to do a bit of Wikipedia-ing, just to know what they're talking about. Because even though Joyce changes some of the names, all of these are real people. The Italian who was on the city council - like Bloom, an outsider ... yet he had assimilated to a degree that he was politically powerful. Joyce calls the Italian "Nanetti" - but his real name was Joseph Patrick. There is also much talk about the famous Phoenix Park murders - as well as a speech given the night before about Ireland - a speech that all the men mock. This is all based on real events.

But let me just talk about the plot of the episode. It's about noon. Dignam's funeral, from the last episode, is over. All of the men are dropped off in the heart of Dublin. Bloom has an errand to run. He sells advertisements, for a living - so he stops off at the offices of The Weekly Freeman and National Press . The Evening Telegraph is in the same building - so we have to wonder if this is the episode where Stephen and Leopold will finally meet - because, if we remember, in the Nestor episode - Mr. Deasy, the headmaster of the school where Stephen works, asks Stephen if he could drop off some of his writing at the newspaper when he goes into Dublin. And Stephen mentions The Evening Telegraph. But this episode is not where they meet. Bloom stands in the newspaper office - and over the course of the chapter - the overwhelming feeling we get is his isolation from the others. Joyce pulls no punches about his countrymen in this chapter. Everyone is living in the past, first of all - obsessing about the Phoenix Park murders which had happened 20 years before - and also getting all the facts wrong (this, again, you'd have to know the facts to get the misinformation that everyone is spreading) - and those who "run" the country are gasbags, plain and simple. Gasbags who live in the past. Bloom, a decent man, trying to do his best - is seen as the only person in the room with any integrity - yet he is roundly ignored, and also mocked. When he leaves, a couple kids follow him, imitating his walk - and one of the dudes in the newspaper office pretends to play a mazurka as Bloom exits. He is a total outsider. He is not treated with respect. The entire chapter involves a controversy with the ad he is trying to place, the "Keyes advertisment". Nanetti says fine, cool - but it has to run for 3 months. Bloom mentions that Keyes wants the image changed - to two crossed-keys - an image that Keyes had seen in a Kilkenny paper or something. Bloom says he will go to the National Library to track the image down (this will be the famous Scylla and Charybdis character - when Stephen and Leopold are finally in the same place at the same time - although they still do not meet). Bloom tries to call Keyes from the telegraph office, to see if the 3-month run would be okay by him. The guys from the funeral (Simon Dedalus, Lenehan, and all the others) are there - and it's crowded - and Bloom gets pushed around, hit by the door, etc. It is as though he is not actually there. The men do not perceive him as taking up space (the ultimate in disrespect). Again, there seems to be a joshing mocking hard-edged tone to the banter of the Irish (which is certainly true) - and Bloom doesn't have that sensibility at all. He is much more literal. And also - I don't know - sensitive. We never get inside Bloom's head here - when you read the excerpt below - you'll see how it is written - it's all huge newspaper headlines, and the constant chatter in the offices. You have to really listen carefully to see what is going on.

But Joyce's deeper point is made. Bloom (or Odysseus) is in sight of his home, obviously - but he cannot go back ... his wife is having a rendesvous with her lover Blazes Boylan ... at least this is what he suspects ... and so he must stay away. But the winds have been let out of the bag. All the guys in the office - talking, talking, talking ... act as a windy force, pushing Bloom backwards.

There are two separate and complete parts of this chapter (perhaps like our two lungs?): Bloom in the newspaper office - and then all of the gentlemen from the funeral, sitting in a pub, talking. The two parts are irrevocably connected - one informs the other, one contradicts the other ... we go back and forth, back and forth, and everyone's talking, fast and furious, and we just have to keep up.

Bloom is treated like a buffoon (even though, as we get to know him, we realize he is anything but). He gets Keyes on the phone. Keyes says he will renew for 2 months, not 3. The editor treats Bloom like shit. To his face. The gloves coming off - the hostility underneath the Irish hospitality coming out.

The speech all the Irishmen reference - was one given by John Taylor - and it was about the revival of the Irish language. The Irish men mock the speech, with its romanticizing of Ireland ... not realizing that they are part of the problem. They are just as caught in the past as Taylor is. Joyce, naturally, is making larger points throughout all of this. Ireland is not a free country. It is oppressed by England - and most of its problems can be traced back to that. The Irish language issue - which is such a hot topic (to some people to this day) was one that Joyce was interested in - and he wrote a lot about it. His obsession with language was such that he ended up creating his own - in Finnegans Wake. Some of the men say that Ireland needs a Messiah - someone to lead them to the Promised Land (a reference to the exodus, which is totally ironic - since they are dissing the one Jew in their midst) ... Bloom, a true hope for the future of the nation (in his decency, his detachment from the past, his intelligence) ... is completely ignored and mocked. The Irish wouldn't know the Messiah if it came up and bit them on the arse. This is Joyce's view.

Okay, so I think I've talked enough. I'm a windy gasbag myself! There's a ton in this chapter I still do not understand - you feel like you need an encylopedia right by you, or a volume of Irish history - in order to get all the references, but that's part of the fun.

Oh, and a bit of symbolism: Bloom is trying to get an advertisement placed for "Keyes", a tea merchant. Keyes wants to have an image of two crossed keys on his ad - this is what Bloom goes off to the National Library later, to find. The two crossed keys: Stephen and Leopold? Crossing paths? Also, the symbolism itself of a key: it will open locked doors, it will let you in ... Stephen (we know this from the Telemachia) and Bloom are both outside the regular grind and bustle of Irish life. They do not fit. They are exiled - internally. What is the "key", for both of them? Is it each other?

Now remember: the episode takes place in a newspaper office. And it's about wind (talk). So that's the style in which Joyce wrote it. Are you ready? Here we go!

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Aeolus episode


WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS

Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping thump. This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in.

HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT

Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown.

Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth. It's the ads ad side features sell a weekly not the stale news in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnachinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle' Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note M.A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish.

The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thurap. Now if he got paralysed there and no one knew how to stop them they'd clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head.

-- Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.

Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him they say.

The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty glass screen.

-- Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.

Mr Bloom stood in his way.

-- If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing backward with his thumb.

-- Did you? Hynes asked.

-- Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him.

-- Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too.

He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's Journal.

Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint.

WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK

Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti's desk.

-- Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember.

Mr Nannetti considered the cutting a while and nodded.

-- He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.

He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves.

The foreman moved his pencil towards it.

-- But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants two keys at the top.

Hell of a racket they make. Maybe he understands what I.

The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.

-- Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.

Let him take that in first.

Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one things.

Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on the scarred-woodwork.

HOUSE OF KEY(E)S

-- Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.

Better not teach him his own business.

-- You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea?

The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched there quietly.

-- The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?

I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not.

-- We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?

-- I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house there too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little par calling attention. You know the usual. High class licensed premises. Longfelt want. So on.

The foreman thought for an instant.

-- We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal.

A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent typesetters at their cases.

ORTHOGRAPHICAL

Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry.

I could have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to have said something about an old hat or something. No, I could have said. Looks as good as new now. See his phizthen.

Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forwards its flyboard with slit the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too slit creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 10, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Hades episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode
Episode 5: The Lotus Eaters Episode

It's around 11 a.m. Local Dublin men gather in carriages, to go to Paddy Dignam's funeral. They go to mass, and then to the gravesite. Or, in Odyssey terms: they enter Hades, and then leave it again. The stink of death permeates the entire chapter (so even if you DIDN'T know it was 'the Hades episode' - and none of the episodes are labeled) you probably would be able to figure it out. There's so much going on here that I can't even begin to break it all down - but here, off the top of my head - are some of the major themes and concepts:

-- Bloom travels in a carriage with a group of other men - one of whom is Simon Dedalus (Stephen's father). So the paths of Stephen and Leopold are ALMOST meeting here. Dedalus seems like a rather dry and ... uninspiring sort of person.

-- Joyce begins to really pound home Bloom's isolation from the others here. Is it because he is a Jew? That's part of it. It's not so much open anti-Semitism that keeps the men from dealing with him as an equal. It's more that ... the entire culture and mindset is different ... there is a gap that cannot be crossed. They make blunder after blunder - because they do not take him into consideration. LIke one of the guys makes a statement about suicide and how it is the worst thing to have in a family. It is only later that the guy realizes what a faux pas that was - Bloom's father committed suicide. Bloom is, indeed, kind of a nonentity here (to the men, and also - we think - to his wife). He is ANTI-matter. It is easy to forget he is there. There are jokes made about Blazes Boylan - the guy Bloom suspects is having an affair with his wife. The Jewish thing is definitely a barrier - but there's more going on than that. Joyce always felt that the culture/emotional makeup of the Jewish people and the Irish people were similar, nearly identical. But here - in this scene - it's like they are different species.

-- Bloom's view of death is different from theirs. He makes a comment that Dignam's type of death (sudden) can be seen as a blessing. All the other men - Catholics - are horrified, and barely understand what he's saying. To die suddenly, if you are a Roman Catholic, when you do not have a chance to make your last confession - is the WORST possible kind of death. You could die in a state of unforgiven mortal sin!! What the hell is Bloom talking about??

-- But let me also say: the men do not treat Bloom with suspicion, or anti-Semitism (like "the Citizen" does in the later Cyclops chapter - who makes no bones about it: You - JEW - do not belong here.) The men are kind, good-natured - they don't MEAN to make blunders around Bloom ... it's just that it's easy to forget he's there, and it's easy to forget that he is not, actually, one of them. Identity politics, and all that. They mutter to each other behind his back, "How could I have said that thing about suicide? I didn't mean it!" They mean well. Ireland is (or was) a homogenous society. So stuff like that is bound to happen.

-- Connections with Hades are everywhere. The carriages cross 4 rivers to get to the graveyard (Dodder, Grand Canal, Liffey, Royal Canal). A direct parallel to the four rivers of the Greek Hades. Oh, and the priest who does the funeral mass is compared to a dog - so, you know, Cerberus. I am sure there are more. Greek scholars would pick up on a reference every other sentence, I am sure - but I'm no expert. Those are just the major things that pop out. And when they leave the graveyard, in their carriages, the line is:

The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again. Enough of this place.

Time to return from the underworld.

There's lots of conversation in this episode - the men in the carriage, chatting, on the trip to the graveyard. At the same time, we are also inside of Leopold Bloom, staring out the window ... taking note of all the things he sees as they pass by. Like I said earlier, images of death abound in this chapter. Gloom, decay, etc. It's death without resurrection, I can tell you that! Bloom thinks of the body as a series of organs. He references the heart as a "pump", I think - somewhere in this chapter. He is part of the group - because he lives in Ireland and always has. But his sort of secular humanist mindset is something they do not understand. They treat him kindly, like I said ... but he is definitely a different sort of animal, as far as they are concerned.

Here's an excerpt. Watch how we're inside Bloom here, taking note of everything that passes by.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Hades episode

-- Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.

Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up drowning their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.

But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.

In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.

Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.

Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping barge between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a slacktethered horse. Aboard of the Bugabu.

Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mud-choked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down, lock by lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown strawhat, saluting Paddy Dignam.

They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.

-- I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said.

-- Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.

-- How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping I suppose.

-- Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear.

The carriage steered left for Finglas road.

The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.

Passed.

On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary the sexton's an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. After life's journey.

Gloomy gardens then went by, one by one: gloomy houses.

Mr Power pointed.

-- That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.

-- So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off. Murdered his brother. Or so they said.

-- The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.

-- Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham said. That's the maxim of the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be wrongfully condemned.

They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered. They love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed. Murder will out.

Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.

The high railings of Prospects rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 8, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Lotus Eaters episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

1. (TELEMACHIA)
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

2. (The Odyssey)
Episode 4: The Calypso Episode

We are now at Episode 4 (the Lotus-eaters episode). In The Odyssey Homer and his men come to the land of the lotus-eaters. The lotus-eaters offer the men food (flowers) that somehow causes them to forget the journey they are on. Kinda like the poppy field in Wizard of Oz. Some of the men do eat the flowers and have to be dragged off by Odysseus and others who resist. It's like you eat the flower and boom - you are deep in a dream-state, stoned out of your mind, no ambition or drive or direction left.

So it's interesting that here - in this chapter - we first see (at least in this book, it shows up quite a bit in Dubliners) Joyce's obsessive chronicling of the streets of Dublin. He walked here, took a left, went in the store there, walked across the street to THAT store ... all totally accurate, a map of Dublin encapsulated in his words. This is why on Bloomsday people can wander around Dublin, holding copies of Ulysses in their hands, following in Leopold Bloom's footsteps. Anyway, it's interesting that the thrust of the chapter is ... movement, direction, a journey ... because the lotus-eaters, in their kindness and helpfulness, try to stop the journey of the men. Not out of any malevolent impulse - but because they have these awesome flowers, they taste good, they make you feel good ... try them, try them!! The journey Leopold Bloom takes, in this chapter, has a circuitous feel to it. He is, actually, going somewhere - but it feels like he is on a treadmill. He has some errands to do - he is going to go to the public baths - and eventually he is going to Dignam's funeral. But Joyce, obviously, felt like Ireland was a trap ... Ireland itself was the land of the lotus-eaters. If you have a journey to go on, Ireland will make it her business to keep you at home. By any means necessary. Guilt, or ... by hospitality - which Ireland has in spades. It's known for its hospitality (that becomes a big thing in "The Dead"). The lotus-eaters, to Joyce, were the Catholic Church - which had basically put the entire nation under a spell. And of course - sex ... which could not be expressed in an open or a natural way in such a rigid country. So Irish people are slaves to sex, and the repression thereof ... and all of that makes them go into a collective coma. Not trained (by their church, by education) to question things, or rebel ... they circle the streets of Dublin in a trance.

Hence - the dreamy clip-clop almost surreal prose of this particular chapter. It's dizzying. You can't keep track of where Leopold Bloom is going ... you hear what he hears - snippets, fragments of conversation on the street - which, taken out of context, lose their meaning ... You get fragments of his thought process - he is worried about his wife, and jealous ... he thinks about their daughter Milly - but at the same time, he can't complete a thought. It's all broken up. This is what Ireland (land of the lotus-eaters) does to its sons.

The last image in the episode is of Leopold Bloom submerging himself under the water in the public baths:

his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.

As always, in this book, there are multiple levels of meaning here. Obviously, he's staring down at his "limp" penis - and that gives an image of impotence, passivity. He's fearful of his wife cuckolding him. He feels like he cannot satisfy her. (None of this in the text explicitly - it's all in the image - that image at the end of the chapter tells us all we need to know). Also, his penis being "the limp father of thousands" calls up the ancient history of the Jews, the chosen people, the exodus ... additionally, the "flower" itself has multiple meanings, and I'm only scratching the surface here. Most obviously, is the lotus-eaters who try to offer Odysseus and his men flowers that will make them forget their journey. In the chapter he goes to a chemist's to pick up some lotion for Molly and is bewildered and bedazzled by the array of products (most of which have flower-like components, or began as some sort of plant form). He is dazed. This is Bloom's version of the Lotus-eaters episode ... the soap he sniffs, the chloroform he looks at ... these are all the lotus-eater flowers being offered to him.

The chapter is so deep and detailed I know I'm not getting most of it - and some of it isn't coming back to me. Bloom also references (in his head) Hamlet - which prefigures Stephen's long discourse on Hamlet in the Scylla and Charybdis Episode - far in the future. Bloom already has Hamlet (with his themes of passivity, frustration, impotence, powerlessness, and fatherlessness) on his brain. Bloom's father committed suicide.

Bloom's main wish is to escape. Escape the responsibilities of being a husband ... he is considering having an affair himself (with a woman named Martha - Biblical connotations up the wazoo there, figure it out for yourself) - but that, too, is too much responsibility. He wants oblivion. The fact that he contemplates the gelded horses in the streets - and wonders if perhaps they are not happier that way ... his ruminations on Hamlet (that Hamlet might have been a woman) ... his thoughts about eunuchs in the Catholic Church ...

All roads lead to sex.

Sometimes it's best not to talk about Joyce too much. It all starts to sound academic and pretentious. When the reading itself could not be further from that! The reading launches you into the REAL world ... of smells, and impulses, and fragments of thoughts, and what we overheard, what we see, our sex drive, our losses ... life, basically.

Here's an excerpt. There's no narrator here. We clip-clop along inside Bloom's head, the world jostling before us through his eyeballs. We see what he sees, hear what he hears - nothing less, nothing more.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Lotus-eaters Episode

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then, walking slowly forward, he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.

Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did she write it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of-words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.

Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it. Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere: pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without thorns.

Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in the Coombe, linked together in the rain.

O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers.
She didn't know what to do
To keep it up
To keep it up.


It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife use? Now could you make out a thing like that?

To keep it up.

Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the two sluts in the Coombe would listen.

To keep it up.

Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there: quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of the well stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.

Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter then all sank.

Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.

What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same.

An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach. Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.

He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy for a pass to Mullingar.

Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J. on saint Peter Claver and the African mission. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants the same. Convert Dr. William J. Walsh D. D. to the true religion. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguished looking. Sorry I didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.

The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.


Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 7, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Calypso episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

So here's where we are at so far:

TELEMACHIA
Episode 1: The Telemachus Episode
Episode 2: The Nestor Episode
Episode 3: The Proteus episode

Those three episodes make up the "telemachia", or Part 1 or Ulysses. It is our introduction to Stephen Dedalus, on June 16, 1904. It takes him from around 8 a.m. to around 11 a.m. on that fateful day.

Now we move into Part 2 of the book - which is the "odyssey" itself. And we now switch main characters. Now Leopold Bloom is our guide. Stephen Dedalus will disappear for chapters on end, seen only in glimpses at times, or overheard talking from behind a column ... it is not until much later that these two actually meet.

The episode here, the Calypso episode, also takes place at 8 a.m. on that day - at the same moment that Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan chat in their round tower outside Dublin. The episode is beyond simple: Leopold Bloom has breakfast (which is now famous, and which is re-created by Joycean freaks every Bloomsday). He has a busy day ahead of him. After breakfast, he takes a dump. Which Joyce describes. Way to launch us right into the tale, Jimmy. But, naturally, that was what Joyce was after. The baseness of humanity - not to mention the fact that we ALL do that. Even Anna Karenina does that. It's perhaps a very immature attitude (you know: "Does the Queen of England fart too?" "Napoleon had a crack in his ass too! tee hee") But Joyce was pretty immature, when it came to bathroom humor - he was obsessed with it (read some of his sexy letters to his wife and you'll know what I mean). But more than just shock value, Joyce is obviously up to something more here, when he takes us into Bloom's bathroom with him. It's an attention-getter, sure, but you get a couple of clues that more is going on here than meets the eye. He's worried that Molly (his wife) is cheating on him. The thought torments him. He goes upstairs - and she's lying in bed. We don't quite meet her yet - she grunts from the bed - they have a brief exchange, but she is never fully revealed. It is not time for Molly yet. We won't be ready for her until the end of the book. Bloom gets ready to go to a funeral of a friend. Molly is waiting for him to leave, basically, so that she can go meet up with her lover (whose name is, famously, Blazes Boylan. He's a tenor.) This is a strange chapter - new characters, completely new prose style from the stream-of-conscious dream-prose of the chapter before. It's pragmatic, gross, base, and it leaves nothing out. It's all about the innards of things. What people eat, what people excrete ... it's body without any redeeming soul.

Here are some of the notes I wrote in the margins, I don't know - I find them kind of interesting:

-- Calypso (kidney, economics, orange, nymph, narrative)
-- Contrast with Stephen's metaphors. Bloom only sees what is there. Also sees he is not a tower (giant)
-- Orange clues. Orange = Protestant. Home Rule for Ireland.
-- metempsychosis = "met him pike hoses" (rendesvous with Blazes)
-- Bloom may have Masonic connections (has an edge over other Jews in Ireland) - parallel for Athena's protection of Ulysses.

Yeah. Whatever that means. But it also does bring a lot back. As I've mentioned in other posts, Joyce worked a system of symbols into the book which is there - but not there. As in, it's not obvious - and if you DON'T pick up on it, much will be lost ... it's almost like you read certain sections squinting at them, as though the meaning is hidden on the actual page, and if you just looked hard enough, you could see it. You can FEEL the greatness of it all ... but something eludes. I guess this is why people (ahem, me) become obsessed with the book. The system of symbols has been talked about ad nauseum and much of it really does help.

For example: every episode has a color woven through it. It may be so subtle at times that you would not even notice it. Joyce thought a lot about colors - they had much meaning for him (I imagine part of that had to do with his terrible eyesight ... what did colors actually LOOK like to someone who really couldn't see?) And so knowing Joyce's "key", so to speak, is quite helpful. You see brown? Even if it's just a character's raincoat? That's death. NOTHING is accidental in this book. NOTHING. "Orange" is the color of the Calypso episode - which, of course, in Ireland, what with the flag, and the Orangemen in the North, and all kinds of things ... has negative connotations. Violent. Political. It's exclusionary. Leopold Bloom is a Jew in Ireland. Even the Irish feel, at times, outside of their own country ... but Bloom is even more of an outsider.

Anyway, here's an excerpt.

Notice the voice - which is a voice we have not heard. It's not first-person, but it's something even closer. We get the running stream of Bloom's thoughts - but you'll see, again, how distinct it sounds from the same type of thing in the Proteus episode. Bloom is not searching, striving, looking for beauty, he does not see the world in terms of aesthetics. He is worried. He feels he is losing his wife. He likes his cat. He likes his breakfast. He is troubled. We move with him through all of these shifts.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Calypso Episode

He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white. Fifty multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links packed with forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pig's blood.

A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the items from a slip in her hand. Chapped: washing soda. And a pound and a half of Denny's sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldfish. New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack.

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there like a stallfed heifer.

He took up a page from the pile of cut sheets. The model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging whack by whack by whack.

The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace.

-- Now, my miss, he said.

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.

-- Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you, please?

Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For another a constable off duty cuddled her in Eccles Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I'm lost in the wood.

-- Threepence, please.

His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket. Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the till.

-- Thank you, sir. Another time.

A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze after an instant. No: better not: another time.

-- Good morning, he said, moving away.

-- Good morning, sir.

No sign. Gone. What matter?

He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim: planter's company. To purchase vast sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eight marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silvered powdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still alive in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron's basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices too Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them in soiled dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today. Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.

A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far.

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's clutching a noggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.

Desolation.

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into Eccles Street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.

Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley Road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 6, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Proteus episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

Oh, I forgot to mention in my other two posts about Ulysses (here and here):is that the first four books of the Odyssey (called "The Telemachia") have been debated over for centuries. Same author? Artistic merit? Should it be included in the whole? WTF?

Joyce has broken his book up into 3 title-less parts - and within each part are numerous chapters, etc. And the first three "chapters" or "episodes", which are included in part 1, are his version of the Telemachia - which is meant to establish Odysseus as a character (his role, his importance,) - BEFORE he sets out on his journey. This is what we're doing now - because we're about to leave Stephen Dedalus and join Leopold Bloom. Dedalus is about to go on his long "odyssey" through one day (June 16, 1904) ... but before he sets out, we need to get to know his status, his thoughts, his life, etc. That's what these first three chapters are about. Then we get into Part II - which is the "Odyssey" section of the book - and there, we are mainly with Leopold Bloom - through chapter after chapter - although Stephen's path intersects with him on occasion. Then comes part III of Joyce's book - which has as its correspondence in The Odyssey "The Nostos" - or "the return". Odysseus has been on his journey ... and now it is time to come home to Penelope. The final three chapters of Joyce's Ulysses brings Leopold Bloom back to his house after his wandering, ready to join Molly - his wife - in bed.

So just wanted to make clear that with these first three chapters, we aren't in The Odyssey proper yet - we are still in the Telemachia.

Chapter III is known as The Proteus episode (but again, none of this is labeled in the book itself - it's not even numbered as a chapter - you can just tell, by the spacing, that a new section has begun. So Joyce makes you figure it all out on your own.) It's 11 am. Stephen goes for a walk on the beach. He is blind, his glasses have broken. The style makes a radical shift in this section and it may be completely baffling if you don't let go - and just go with it. If you also don't understand what Joyce is doing. Let's remember: Stephen has broken his glasses. We are now completely inside his head, inside his experience ... And so, because he can't see, all impressions come to him through sounds, all colors blur together ... which is a perfect reflection of his own state of mind. He has not yet broken free yet, he has not yet separated himself from his inspirations, his tradition, his world. It's very Hamlet-esque - which makes sense, because Stephen (and Joyce) were obsessed with Hamlet.

In the Odyssey, Ulysses must leave Calypso - the female, the nymph. He travels, he visits with the Phaenicians - he tells them all the long tale of his travels, his misfortunes, etc. They transport him back to Ithaca. Back home. That's the arc of the book (so simplistic!!) But simplicity is good. It helped me out, in reading Ulysses to remember that fact: It's just a journey. It's the journey of two men through one day.

Their paths start out as separate. And eventually they converge.

The Proteus episode is an inner monologue.

It is also very interesting because it is from the point of view of Stephen, who, Joyce tells us ONCE in the 800 page book, has broken his glasses. Joyce doesn't remind us: "Stephen broke his glasses". The clues are all there in the language - but it's not literal language, because when we are inside our own minds, we are not literal to ourselves. What does life FEEL like? That's what Joyce is after.

So from inside Stephen's world, everything is blurry and introspective, because he cannot see clearly. God forbid that Joyce would ever remind us of this or give us clues, or just flat out say, "What with having a pair of broken glasses, Stephen squints down the shoreline". Of course, if he gave us bone-headed clues like that, it wouldn't be considered a great book in the first place.

And so -- You are left in this blurry subjective world. You don't know why it's blurry - or, if you miss the clue that Stephen's glasses are broken - you have no idea why the entire thing is written overwhelmingly using SOUND cues. There are no visibles. It's all about the SOUND. Of course. Because if you can't SEE, then the sense of hearing will take over. For example, there's one sentence in this section:

The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back again.

Sound approaches him and then recedes. It is the dog's BARK that is active ... not the dog itself ... because Stephen cannot SEE the dog.

This is what people mean when they call Joyce a "genius".

The first paragraph of the Proteus section is rightfully famous. I will lead off with it below. And if you read carefully: Joyce is telling us what to expect in the chapter - "modality of the visible" ... "thought through my eyes" ... What does that mean? Stephen struggles. He feels very passive here to me (I mean, the dog's bark runs towards him and then recedes ... Stephen passively receives sensations) ... In order to become active, something must happen, shift. We end up (much later) realizing that it is the meeting of Leopold Bloom, with all its connotations of father-figure, and eternal return ... that makes Stephen become, at last, ACTIVE. A participant in his own life.

But here he is not there yet.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - the Proteus episode


Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.

Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: deline the mare.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.

They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long on the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch. In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

Airs romped around him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.

I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile. Yes, I must.

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to Aunt Sara's or not? My consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us Stephen, how is uncle Si? O weeping God, the things I married into. De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers. And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less. Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 5, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" - the Nestor episode (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

2nd episode in the book. Its equivalent in The Odyssey is the "Nestor" episode. The episode itself is quite simple: Stephen teaches in a school. After class, he has a long conversation with Mr. Deasy, the headmaster - who is, basically, the wise Nestor in "The Odyssey". Their conversation is about history. Irish history. Deasy asks Dedalus if he could drop off a couple of things he had written at 2 Irish newspapers. They walk and talk.

Here are some of the notes I scribbled in my margins during this episode:

-- NESTOR (history, brown, horse, catechism)
-- predicts the chaos of Circe
-- Mr Deasy - a wise Nestor and a prattling Polonius

Which brings us to yet another level of correspondence within the book - and that is to Hamlet. Joyce doesn't do a "reveal" until the Scylla and Charybdis chapter - which takes place in the National Library - where Stephen regales his friends with his theory of Hamlet. Needless to say, Hamlet is a fatherless tormented soul. He has been robbed of guidance by an older man. He seeks revenge. Dedalus' fatherless state is similar - although Simon Dedalus (the father) is still very much alive. But he's useless as a "father figure". Dedalus needs to look elsewhere. Leopold Bloom, hiding behind a column in the library, overhearing Stephen's impromptu lecture on Hamlet, doesn't respond or reveal himself. The father figure remains hidden.

The Nestor "chapter" contains perhaps the most famous line in all the book:

-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Mr Deasy has the silly pomposity of Polonius - yet he also makes a great deal of sense. It's just that Stephen does not agree. Mr Deasy represents the "old". The old Ireland. "I remember the famine" he says. Stephen doesn't care about the blasted famine. We must not live in the past. History is a nightmare from which he is trying to awake. Look to the future. Look to the new. In a conformist society such as Ireland at that time, this was seen as incredibly threatening- shades of Stephen Dedalus refusing to get involved in Irish politics in Portrait. Who is HE to go against the grain?? In Ireland if you go against the grain, you pay. And big. This is Stephen's dilemma. How can he not be Irish? How can you change what you are? All he knows is: he will NOT be like Mr Deasy.

Because this is Joyce we're talking about though - all of this is implied. Never stated outright. In order to get all the levels, we need to understand that they are even THERE ... like Faulkner said, we must treat Ulysses like an itinerant illiterate Baptist preacher treats the Old Testament: with faith. Joyce, through all of his books so far, has used the color "brown" as a signifier of decay and death. I wrote about it before in my posts on Dubliners. Any brown anywhere should give you a clue. Joyce's colors of hope and life are blue, green ... but brown? Death. The Nestor chapter is full of brown. If you did not know what that signalled, you would miss the clue (and again, there are tons of websites and a couple of books out there that can give you guideposts such as this one - you are not alone!!) The brown here is indicating the utter decay of the society in which Dedalus lives. A society where the "new" is run out of town on a rail. Where history weighs on its people like a 1000-ton weight. It is a society of death. It has no hope. Of course Joyce never WRITES this clearly and unambiguously. But he fills the chapter with the color brown, and that is all we need to know.

We must never forget that we are inside Stephen Dedalus. He is our guide - and sometimes he is unreliable, and sometimes he doesn't let us in on what he is thinking ... because, in general, we as human beings, do not explain ourselves to ourselves. This is why Ulysses is a challenge to read. But like i said in an earlier post, if you just give up on YOUR wishes for a reliable narrator who interjects himself into the action in an explanatory way ... then Ullysses makes more sense than any other book you've ever read in your life.

Oh, and the anti-Semitism that will become important later rears its head here.

We haven't even met Leopold Bloom yet, the Jew in Ireland, but the ground is already being set for his appearance.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce - from the Nestor episode


-- Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.

-- I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter.

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue.

-- I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Mürzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair trial, Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns.

-- I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with the department. Now I'm going to try publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, by... intrigues, by... backstairs influence, by...

He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

-- Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen it Coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is dying.

He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.

-- Dying, he said, if not dead by now.

The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.


His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he halted.

-- A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not?

-- They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this day.

On the steps of the Paris Stock Exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabbles of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew the years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.

-- Who has not? Stephen said.

-- What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.

-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

-- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

-- That is God.

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

-- What? Mr Deasy asked.

-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Mr Deasy looked down and held for a while the wings of his nose tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.

-- I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end.

For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right.


Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.

-- Well, sir, he began.

-- I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.

-- A learner rather, Stephen said.

And here what will you learn more?

Mr Deasy shook his head.

-- Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.

Stephen rustled the sheets again.

-- As regards these, he began.

-- Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them published at once.

Telegraph. Irish Homestead.

-- I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors slightly.

That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms Hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they?

-- The Evening Telegraph...

-- That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to answer that letter from my cousin.

-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank you.

-- Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to break a lance with you, old as I am.

-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 4, 2008

The Books: "Ulysses" (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ulysses67.bmpUlysses - by James Joyce.

"[Ulysses] is the epic of two races (Israel - Ireland) and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life). The character of Ulysses always fascinated me ever since boyhood. I started writing it as a short story for Dubliners, fifteen years ago but gave it up. For seven years I have been working at this book - blast it!"

So said James Joyce of his massive book which - according to TS Eliot - effectively "killed the 19th century."

Edmund Wilson had this to say about the book:

The more we read Ulysses, the more we are convinced of its psychological truth, and the more we are amazed at Joyce's genius in mastering and in presenting, not through analysis or generalization, but by the complete recreation of life in the process of being lived, the relations of human beings to their environment and to each other; the nature of their perception of what goes on about them and of what goes on within themselves; and the interdependence of their intellectual, their physical, their professional and their emotional lives. To have traced all these interdependences, to have given each of these elements its value, yet never to have lost sight of the moral through preoccuptation with the physical, nor to have forgotten the general in the particular; to have exhibited ordinary humanity without either satirizing it or sentimentalizing it - this would already have been sufficiently remarkable; but to have subdued all this material to the uses of a supremely finished and disciplined work of art is a feat which has hardly been equalled in the literature of our time ... Yet for all its appalling longeurs, "Ulysses" is a work of high genius. Its importance seems to me to lie, not so much in its opening new doors to knowledge -- unless in setting an example to Anglo-Saxon writers of putting down everything without compunction -- or in inventing new literary forms -- Joyce's formula is really, as I have indicated, nearly seventy-five years old -- as in its once more setting the standard of the novel so high that it need not be ashamed to take its place beside poetry and drama. "Ulysses" has the effect at once of making everything else look brassy.

Carl Jung was so worked up and disturbed by the book that he wrote Joyce a long letter (wonderful to read) - and he said, in part: "It's a miserable ritual, a magical procedure. . . a homunculus of the consciousness of the new world -- our world passed away and a new world has arisen."

Nora Tully wrote, "The response to Ulysses was immediate and extreme. Writer and literary critic Malcolm Cowley described it using the metaphor of a stone dropped into water: there was a moment of silence, the stone was dropped, 'then all the frogs who inhabited the pool began to talk at once.'"

And they're still chattering away today.

The story of the publication of Ulysses is almost as interesting as the book itself. It was banned everywhere. You couldn't get a copy of it. People all over the world were sending orders to the small bookshop in Paris where it had been published - I've seen some of the orders - the panicked plea from Peggy Guggenheim to PLEASE send her one copy, etc. Ulysses had arrived. But it could not be read. You could be arrested if you brought it into the country. It pushed the boundaries of decency - and what it was felt you "could" say ... It was one of those landmark moments in literature that come along once or twice a century. A book that made writers question their own talent (poor TS Eliot couldn't get over the book, Faulkner bowed before it, Yeats hated it at first and then a week later realized: Holy shit, that book is going to change everything ... The responses of writers to Ulysses are awesome, I love to hear about them). Finally - over 10 years after its original publication - Judge Woolsey, a judge in the US District Court, ruled on the "obscenity" of the book - a groundbreaking ruling, we are much in his debt. Read the entirety of the decision here. Not only is it a landmark court ruling, but it's an insightful analysis of the book itself. My favorite sentence of the ruling is: " In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring."

The funniest thing about all this brou-haha is Joyce's comment which seems, to me, quintessentially Irish:

"The pity is, the public will demand and find a moral in my book -- or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it."

hahahaha But he also made that famous remark: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."

Which was quite prophetic. However, I think the first remark is also getting at the heart of the thing. Joyce never felt he was writing about "the extraordiary" - he didn't believe writers/novelists should focus on that - "that is for the journalist". He wanted to focus on "the significance of trivial things" - thoughts, stream-of-consciousness, sensory reality, dream-spaces, the way the world looks through a particular set of eyeballs ... to be INSIDE the character rather than outside. This is why much of Ulysses can be quite challenging to read. There is no narrator. No one interjects himself and tells you, "Here is what is happening here." It is a purely subjective book - and we are inside Stephen Dedalus and we are inside Leopold Bloom. We see and hear only what they see and hear.

But once you get that, once you stop looking for an objective voice ... the whole thing is not only quite easy, but a ton of fun. To treat it like a big serious tome is to completely miss the point of the book - which is rather silly, most of the time ... and has to do with what people eat, and how they chew, and what it's like in a brothel, and the people you meet on any given day: windbags, sirens, patriotic nimrods, pious righteous folks, old tired teachers ... whatever. It's a cornucopia of personality. And I think Joyce was onto something when he said there's not a serious line in it. I didn't experience the book as a serious book at ALL. It's an important book - yes. Its place in literary history and the history of the 20th century is pre-eminent. Nobody tops him. But the book itself is a rollicking jaunt through one day - June 16, 1904 - Joyce wrote it as a tribute to his wife Nora. They had gone on their first "date" (a walk thru Dublin - with probably a sexual encounter in a back alley) on June 16, 1904. He wrote to her later that on that day she "made him a man". And so Ulysses was a tribute to her. And to that first day they shared together. Damn. Imagine someone writing a tribute to you and then having it turn out to be the greatest book of the 20th century. The funniest thing of all is that Nora said she never read it. hahahahaha Anyway. Like I said, the story of the book Ulysses is almost as fascinating as the book itself.

But now let's get to the book. I'm going to excerpt a bit from each "chapter" - even though they are not labeled as chapters - which is another challenge. You have to figure it out. It helps if you have The Iliad and the Odyssey nearby. And there are also books that help you know the structure Joyce was working on ... so you know the "episodes". There are sites out there that give you that. There are so many levels of meaning in Joyce (each chapter has a color, a body part, and other elements that correspond to it ...) The structure goes down to its very core, and then emanates up in concentric circles. You don't need to know all that stuff, but it sure helps. For example, in the "lungs" chapter - which also takes place at the newspaper office - everyone chatters like a bunch of windbags ... lungs ... and it's such a drastic difference from the chapter before that it might seem confusing until you know what Joyce is doing. In his journey through the human body, we are now at the "lungs" - so the printing presses wheeze, and it's all talk talk talk - because of the air being drawn into the lungs ... etc. Each chapter has a correspondence like that.

However, let's not forget. The story of Ulysses could not be simpler. Stephen Dedalus, our hero from Portrait is now a college student. His father is kind of useless. So he, unconsciously, is looking for a father figure. Leopold Bloom, a Jew in Ireland, married to Molly - who is having an affair - is at a loss how to keep his wife happy. He feels Irish, but he's also Jewish ... which makes things complicated. Through the long meandering course of one day - Dedalus and Bloom keep missing each other through the streets of Ireland ... but you get the sense that they need to meet. Leopold Bloom will be the father figure for Stephen. Finally, near the end of the day, they meet. They go to a brothel. They go out for a meal late at night. They walk home to Bloom's house. They talk. Dedalus staggers home. Bloom wonders if his wife upstairs is awake. The book ends (of course) with the 40 page run-on sentence of Molly Bloom, lying in bed. All roads lead to the female. The female ends the book.

What I just described in that paragraph can barely be called a "plot" - and Joyce obviously wasn't interested in plot at all.

Keep in mind that the book is simple - and Joyce said, "With me, the thought is always simple." The structure is complex, but the thought behind it is simple.

Here's an excerpt from the first "episode". The "Telemachus" episode ... it is early morning, June 16, 8 am.

We start off with the character of Stephen Dedalus - who was also the lead character in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Ulysses doesn't quite pick up the strand from where that book left off - but it's close enough.

Stephen is rooming with a couple of friends in an old round square tower ("stately plump Buck Mulligan, et al). He awakens. He has broken his glasses. It is June 16. He starts off for work.

This is the opening of the book. One other clue as to what Joyce is doing: Buck Mulligan, his roommate, is shaving. He picks up the razor, stares at himself in the mirror, and says something in Latin. Those words are said at the beginning of the Catholic mass. Mass has begun. Joyce had turned his back on religion, and worshiped art. To him, "the mass" = "the book you are about to read". Joyce didn't really have a small ego, as should be obvious - although his last words before he died always tear at my heart: "Does nobody understand?"


EXCERPT FROM Ulysses - by James Joyce.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

-- Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

-- Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.

-- Back to barracks, he said sternly.

He added in a preacher's tone:

-- For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.

-- Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

-- The mockery of it, he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek.

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily half way and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.

Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on.

-- My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?

He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:

-- Will he come? The jejune jesuit.

Ceasing, he began to shave with care.

-- Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.

-- Yes, my love?

-- How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.

-- God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English. Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus; you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.

He shaved warily over his chin.

-- He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his guncase?

-- A woful lunatic, Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?

-- I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.

-- Scutter, he cried thickly.

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper pocket, said:

-- Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

-- The bard's noserag. A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you?

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.

-- God, he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.

Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbour mouth of Kingstown.

-- Our mighty mother, Buck Mulligan said.

He turned abruptly his great searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's face.

-- The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you.

-- Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.

-- You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you.

He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.

-- But a lovely mummer, he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all.

He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown grave-clothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the well-fed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.

-- Ah, poor dogsbody, he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?

-- They fit well enough, Stephen answered.

Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.

-- The mockery of it, he said contentedly, secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you're dressed.

-- Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey.

-- He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.

He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin.

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.

-- That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane.

He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.

-- Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard.

Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.

-- I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plain-looking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes.

-- The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you.

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:

-- It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.

-- It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them.

Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 3, 2008

The Books: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

PortraitArtist.jpgA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce. Now I'll excerpt from Chapter 5 - the last chapter.

Stephen is at university now. His family is poverty-struck and really struggling. Life is squalid and bleak. But Stephen's life of the mind is now taking off (taking flight). Fascinating stuff - there are long sections of this chapter that are conversation - a dialogue ... between Stephen and various others ... this is also something new, in terms of the style of the book. Stephen has been a child, and then a young man - mainly concerned with his interior life ... but now in Chapter 5, we start to see him emerge as a social being. Someone separated from the pack, yet of the pack. It is no mistake that Joyce brings in Irish politics in the last chapter. Stephen has successfully disengaged from religion, from familiy - in order to follow his own star. Now comes the biggie - separation from country. The university is in a fever of Irish politics, his Irish friends (and even the faculty) trying to get everyone involved in the cause. Stephen resists. He gets a lot of flak for this. Is he not Irish? Why does he not join up? In a final break, Stephen drops out of his Irish language class. Now because this is Joyce we're talking about, things are not quite that simple. The chapter is a swirl of activity and conversation. Stephen, having left the religious discipline he had set for himself, now turns his mind to thoughts of beauty and art. He talks with a friend about Aristotle and Aquinas - one of the longest sections of the chapter. What did both of these men have to say about aesthetics. It is Stephen's version of a sermon - the mirror-image of the sermon in Chapter 3. And on the flipside of Stephen's disenchantment with Irish nationalism (and nationalism in general) and anything political - anything that requires you to sign a petition, and join the ranks ... on the flipside of all of that is Stephen's realization that English, the language, is a borrowed speech for him ... Irish is not his speech either, regardless of the fact that his ancestors spoke it. But English is not "his". This is shown in the most famous episode of the book, that I have referenced before - I call it "the tundish scene" - and that will be my excerpt - although all of Stephen's thoughts on Aristotle and Aquinas are so awesome that I yearned to post that one as well. But you'll just have to read the book to see the whole thing put together.

In this, the last chapter, Stephen begins to separate himself from the pack, in every way possible. He thinks poets - because that is what he now believes he is - should not be of this world. They certainly can't waste their time taking Irish language classes and signing petitions. They need to turn their attention to other things, like aesthetics, what is truth, beauty ... In order to do that, the ties that bind them - language, culture, religion, family - must be sundered. However (and I think this is important) - you never get the sense that Stephen Dedalus is a loner. Or a gloomy weirdo. His conversations with his friends here are lively, topic-driven ... Socratic in nature. His friends treat him with fondness, as though he is a little bit wacko, but they certainly want to know his thoughts on things. Dedalus IS a part of the community - at the university, in his family, in Dublin - and we get that sense in Chapter 5 more so than in any other chapter. It's alive with dialogue, conversation, back and forth. But Stephen's thought process becomes more and more introspective - he is truly wrestling with himself, here. And other things - the pull of conformity, the pull of meaningless pursuits (Irish language) ... Stephen tells a friend that he feels his new motto might have to be "I will not serve". He will not serve anything that is imposed on him from the outside. Irish politics, Irish language, Catholic Church, even now his education (especially with the scene below, where the dean of students reveals his lack of knowledge about something that is pretty much self-evident) - Stephen will not serve. He begins to realize that he is going to have to drop out of the university, in order to pursue his art. He's really breaking free (Joyce's relentless picture of how conformist and rigid Dublin is is really important to remember any time you read Joyce). A friend teases him about his lack of religious faith. Stephen doesn't want to go to Easter mass, and his mother is all upset about it. Stephen doesn't believe anymore. He's done with all that. And yet having broken free from that leaves him with a sense of emptiness, and loneliness that is quite profound.

By the end of the chapter - the writing changes completely - and we get a series of Stephen's journal entries. No more outside narrator. We now hear Stephen's voice. He's spent the entire chapter pondering other voices: Aristotle, Aquinas - there's a lot of Yeats too - he's searching for something, looking for himself in their words ... as all artists do ... but by the end of the book, he is now ready to write in his own voice. It's clunky. The journal entries are kind of jagged, unfinished, you're not sure what's going on ... it's a TOTAL BREAK with the feeling of the rest of the ENTIRE BOOK ... it feels amateurish ... and it is. But that's Joyce's point. We all have to start somewhere. And Stephen is starting. He, like his namesake, is building his wings to get out. It is through language - borrowed or not - that he will get out. And it is all well and good to while away the days pondering Aquinas and aesthetics ... but the point really is to just START. And so he does.

The book ends in an unfinished manner ... we don't know what will happen ... we know Stephen is gearing up for exile, he mentions it ... but the journal entries now stand for an entire life. The narrator is gone. We are now inside a human being.

The perfect launching-pad for Ulysses which takes, as its main journey, what it is actually like, moment to moment to moment, to be alive ... how the soul looks out through the eyes, and what it sees, and what it experiences.

But first: below is "the tundish scene". Stephen keeps trying to talk to the dean in a larger context, metaphorical. But the dean is earthbound ... and stays connected to material things - a disappointment, because he is a Jesuit. Stephen basically here begins to 'coach' the dean in how to think, and how to talk about esthetics. The dean isn't really getting it, though - Stephen has to chide him. "I'm talking about another kind of lamp, sir." Could it be that he had ever looked to the priesthood as a vocation? How could he have? There is no glory to God here. Stephen is still enough of a Catholic (you never really leave that church) to be upset about that. He truly does try to engage the dean in a spiritual conversation - only not about God, but about art and beauty. The dean is not up to it.

And then comes "the tundish" moment. The dean is an "English convert". He has never heard the word "tundish". He acts astonished by the word. Stephen, an Irishman - even though he has refused to sign the petitions, and refuses to get all heated up in politics - is filled with a revelation. He thinks: "-- The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language."

Ouch. But what a revelation to make.

It's really "the tundish" that starts it all. Not the event of the conversation with the priest - but the word itself.

EXCERPT FROM A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce - Chapter 5

It was too late to go upstairs to the French class. He crossed the hall and took the corridor to the left which led to the physics theatre. The corridor was dark and silent but not unwatchful. Why did he feel that it was not unwatchful? Was it because he had heard that in Buck Whaley's time there was a secret staircase there? Or was the jesuit house extra-territorial and was he walking among aliens? The Ireland of Tone and of Parnell seemed to have receded in space.

He opened the door of the theatre and halted in the chilly grey light that struggled through the dusty windows. A figure was crouching before the large grate and by its leanness and greyness he knew that it was the dean of studies lighting the fire. Stephen closed the door quietly and approached the fireplace.

-- Good morning, sir! Can I help you?

The priest looked up quickly and said:

-- One moment now, Mr Dedalus, and you will see. There is an art in lighting a fire. We have the liberal arts and we have the useful arts. This is one of the useful arts.

-- I will try to learn it, said Stephen.

-- Not too much coal, said the dean, working briskly at his task, that is one of the secrets.

He produced four candle-butts from the side-pockets of his soutane and placed them deftly among the coals and twisted papers. Stephen watched him in silence. Kneeling thus on the flagstone to kindle the fire and busied with the disposition of his wisps of paper and candle-butts he seemed more than ever a humble server making ready the place of sacrifice in an empty temple, a levite of the Lord. Like a levite's robe of plain linen the faded worn soutane draped the kneeling figure of one whom the canonicals or the bell-bordered ephod would irk and trouble. His very body had waxed old in lowly service of the Lord - in tending the fire upon the altar, in bearing tidings secretly, in waiting upon worldlings, in striking swiftly when bidden - and yet had remained ungraced by aught of saintly or of prelatic beauty. Nay, his very soul had waxed old in that service without growing towards light and beauty or spreading abroad a sweet odour of her sanctity - a mortified will no more responsive to the thrill of its obedience than was to the thrill of love or combat his ageing body, spare and sinewy, greyed with a silver-pointed down.

The dean rested back on his hunkers and watched the sticks catch. Stephen, to fill the silence, said:

-- I am sure I could not light a fire.

-- You are an artist, are you not, Mr Dedalus? said the dean, glancing up and blinking his pale eyes. The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.

He rubbed his hands slowly and drily over the difficulty.

-- Can you solve that question now? he asked.

-- Aquinas, answered Stephen, says pulcra sunt quae visa placent.

-- This fire before us, said the dean, will be pleasing to the eye. Will it therefore be beautiful?

-- In so far as it is apprehended by the sight, which I suppose means here esthetic intellection, it will be beautiful. But Aquinas also says Bonum est in quod tendit appetitus. In so far as it satisfies the animal craving for warmth fire is a good. In hell, however, it is an evil.

-- Quite so, said the dean, you have certainly hit the nail on the head.

He rose nimbly and went towards the door, set it ajar and said:

-- A draught is said to be a help in these matters.

As he came back to the hearth, limping slightly but with a brisk step, Stephen saw the silent soul of a jesuit look out at him from the pale loveless eyes. Like Ignatius he was lame but in his eyes burned no spark of Ignatius's enthusiasm. Even the legendary craft of the company, a craft subtler and more secret than its fabled books of secret subtle wisdom, had not fired his soul with the energy of apostleship. It seemed as if he used the shifts and lore and cunning of the world, as bidden to do, for the greater glory of God, without joy in their handling or hatred of that in them which was evil but turning them, with a firm gesture of obedience back upon themselves and for all this silent service it seemed as if he loved not at all the master and little, if at all, the ends he served. Similiter atque senis baculus, he was, as the founder would have had him, like a staff in an old man's hand, to be leaned on in the road at nightfall or in stress of weather, to lie with a lady's nosegay on a garden seat, to be raised in menace.

The dean returned to the hearth and began to stroke his chin.

-- When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question? he asked.

-- From me! said Stephen in astonishment. I stumble on an idea once a fortnight if I am lucky.

-- These questions are very profound, Mr Dedalus, said the dean. It is like looking down from the cliffs of Moher into the depths. Many go down into the depths and never come up. Only the trained diver can go down into those depths and explore them and come to the surface again.

-- If you mean speculation, sir, said Stephen, I also am sure that there is no such thing as free thinking inasmuch as all thinking must be bound by its own laws.

-- Ha!

-- For my purpose I can work on at present by the light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and Aquinas.

-- I see. I quite see your point.

-- I need them only for my own use and guidance until I have done something for myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or smells I shall try to trim it. If it does not give light enough I shall sell it and buy another.

-- Epictetus also had a lamp, said the dean, which was sold for a fancy price after his death. It was the lamp he wrote his philosophical dissertations by. You know Epictetus?

-- An old gentleman, said Stephen coarsely, who said that the soul is very like a bucketful of water.

-- He tells us in his homely way, the dean went on, that he put an iron lamp before a statue of one of the gods and that a thief stole the lamp. What did the philosopher do? He reflected that it was in the character of a thief to steal and determined to buy an earthen lamp next day instead of the iron lamp.

A smell of molten tallow came up from the dean's candle butts and fused itself in Stephen's consciousness with the jingle of the words, bucket and lamp and lamp and bucket. The priest's voice, too, had a hard jingling tone. Stephen's mind halted by instinct, checked by the strange tone and the imagery and by the priest's face which seemed like an unlit lamp or a reflector hung in a false focus. What lay behind it or within it? A dull torpor of the soul or the dullness of the thundercloud, charged with intellection and capable of the gloom of God?

-- I meant a different kind of lamp, sir, said Stephen.

-- Undoubtedly, said the dean.

-- One difficulty, said Stephen, in esthetic discussion is to know whether words are being used according to the literary tradition or according to the tradition of the marketplace. I remember a sentence of Newman's in which he says of the Blessed Virgin that she was detained in the full company of the saints. The use of the word in the marketplace is quite different. I hope I am not detaining you.

-- Not in the least, said the dean politely.

-- No, no, said Stephen, smiling, I mean --

-- Yes, yes; I see, said the dean quickly, I quite catch the point: detain.

He thrust forward his under jaw and uttered a dry short cough.

-- To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must choose the pure oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the funnel can hold.

-- What funnel? asked Stephen.

-- The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.

-- That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?

-- What is a tundish?

-- That. Thefunnel.

-- Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.

-- It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the best English.

-- A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must.

His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at the English convert with the same eyes as the elder brother in the parable may have turned on the prodigal. A humble follower in the wake of clamorous conversions, a poor Englishman in Ireland, he seemed to have entered on the stage of jesuit history when that strange play of intrigue and suffering and envy and struggle and indignity had been all but given through - a late-comer, a tardy spirit. From what had he set out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in Jesus only and abhorring the vain pomps of the establishment. Had he felt the need of an implicit faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men, peculiar people, seed and snake baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who had sat at the receipt of custom, as he sat by the door of some zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church pence?

The dean repeated the word yet again.

-- Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!

-- The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more interesting. What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps of earth, said Stephen coldly.

The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his sensitiveness against this courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with a smart of dejection that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Jonson. He thought:

-- The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language.

-- And to distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime, the dean added, to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty. And to inquire what kind of beauty is proper to each of the various arts. These are some interesting points we might take up.

Stephen, disheartened suddenly by the dean's firm, dry tone, was silent; and through the silence a distant noise of many boots and confused voices came up the staircase.

-- In pursuing these speculations, said the dean conclusively, there is, however, the danger of perishing of inanition. First you must take your degree. Set that before you as your first aim. Then, little by little, you will see your way. I mean in every sense, your way in life and in thinking. It may be uphill pedalling at first. Take Mr Moonan. He was a long time before he got to the top. But he got there.

-- I may not have his talent, said Stephen quietly.

-- You never know, said the dean brightly. We never can say what is in us. I most certainly should not be despondent. Per aspera ad astra.

He left the hearth quickly and went towards the landing to oversee the arrival of the first arts' class.

Leaning against the fireplace Stephen heard him greet briskly and impartially every Student of the class and could almost see the frank smiles of the coarser students. A desolating pity began to fall like dew upon his easily embittered heart for this faithful serving-man of the knightly Loyola, for this half-brother of the clergy, more venal than they in speech, more steadfast of soul than they, one whom he would never call his ghostly father; and he thought how this man and his companions had earned the name of worldlings at the hands not of the unworldly only but of the worldly also for having pleaded, during all their history, at the bar of God's justice for the souls of the lax and the lukewarm and the prudent.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

January 2, 2008

The Books: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

PortraitArtist.jpgA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce. Now I'll excerpt from Chapter 4.

I'm making this book seem episodic - with the way I'm excerpting - and it's totally not. Oh, well. Stephen, in Chapter 4, imposes on himself a rigorous religious discipline to atone for all his sins. He devotes every day to prayer, he carries rosary beads, he avoids women, he is disgusted by anything bodily - and yet he's very big on mortification, in the true sense of the word - so he smells things that are disgusting, as penance. He struggles. It's hard to be a teenage boy and be a puritanical priest-like personality - but he tries.

But now let's talk about Joyce. Through the early chapters, true childhood, Joyce's writing is lush, sensual, it's all colors and sounds and sensations. In Chapter 3, when Stephen goes on the retreat which gives him the revelation that he is in a state of sin - all of that changes. Chapter 3 is mainly just the priest talking - with no narrative response from Stephen - until the end when he is in a panic at night, and goes to confession. But most of Chapter 3 is a monologue. In Chapter 4 everything has changed. We are now back in Stephen's psyche, but the lush prose of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 is totally gone. Things are dry - and almost spare. We hear what Stephen DOES, long lists of his actions. Joyce is moving us here out of the body and into the spirit - but not true spirit yet, which can also be lush and sensual ... It's more intellectual. A self-willed growth spurt. Stephen is conscious now - but let's say he's not AWARE. The writing reflects that. This is one of the reasons why the book is such a tour de force, despite its coming-of-age plot which has been done to death. The writing itself morphs, as Stephen develops. And here: Stephen tries to become a saint. His sins are so beyond the pale that nothing less than absolute perfection will wipe the slate clean. And so the writing is now abstract, as Stephen abstracts himself out of all recognition. A priest at his school says he thinks the priesthood would be good for Stephen. We begin to realize, though, that the religious ecstacy and agony Stephen puts himself through ... it's not that it's fake, it's not at all - it's totally real ... but has it helped Stephen? What does the soul need? What is Stephen's "calling"? Now we're getting to it, the real heart of the matter: we all have a calling. Or maybe Joyce doesn't feel we all have a calling ... but Stephen does. And what is it? The priesthood sounds attractive ... but is it the right thing? Who am I? What am I here for? "I have amended my life, have I not?" Stephen asks himself at one point - but you can hear the uncertainty even in that sentence. He's not sure. And: is he waiting for a reward? You amend your life and then you get a cookie? What is the cookie? The priesthood? Stephen is attracted to the priesthood because of the images it puts into his mind - the rituals, being in charge of them, being seen as the holiest of men. It's a strangely distant image - he sees himself from the outside (always a clue that something is not quite right). After the conversation with the priest, he walks home, deep in thought - and he passes a statue of the Virgin Mary and is almost cold to her. Something is definitely not quite right.

As always, lots is going on here. Joyce saw his art as a calling akin to the priesthood. It required sacrifice, devotion, and an almost religious sense of HAVING to do it. But it also required discipline and work. It was not an emotional thing, not only anyway. It had to do with the mind, and what the mind can do. An artistic calling also gives the promise of eternal life - with the art that one creates. This is the birth of Stephen as an artist. Or at least his consciousness that this is what he must do. I mention this because it's important. A priest, who has followed his true calling, blends soul and spirit and mind in a way that seems organic and right. Stephen Dedalus is having a hard time with the whole blending thing. He can put himself through his paces, he can set religious tasks for himself every day ... and he does ... but does that make him a better person? Or closer to a state of grace? Joyce never asks these questions, at least not directly - but this is what Stephen struggles with, and you can see - or infer - that he is definitely not in a state of grace. More like an anxious OCD episode. But I judge. The point here is not to judge. The point is to follow Stephen's development.

Eventually, Stephen does realize that the priesthood is not for him. But that he, like a priest, must dedicate himself to gaining wisdom - but not in a cloister, and not separated from the world. He must be out in the world, with all the "snares" it implies.

An important thing to mention, something I haven't even touched on, is Stephen's name. Stephen Dedalus. Dedalus was the dude who built the wings for his son Icarus. Dedalus and Icarus are imprisoned. Dedalus is a renowned artisan, and so he thinks he can find them a way out. Icarus, naturally, fucks that all up when he flies too high ... but Stephen is not named Stephen ICARUS. Stephen is named Stephen DEDALUS. The last sentence of the book, with its fabulous phrase, "old artificer", references Dedalus, the "artificer" who built the wings. Stephen has never considered his name before - but his friends, in this chapter, tease him, and call him by the Greek version of his name. Okay. So, as always with Joyce, more is going on here than meets the eye. Stephen has been on a religious journey, looking for what he needs in the Catholic Church. As he slowly realizes that the priesthood is not for him, and that he needs to be in the world ... he stops looking to the Church as the be-all and end-all of existence - and begins to hearken back to mythology, pre-Christian times, for inspiration. Again, this doesn't happen in as obvious or episodic way as I'm making it seem here. It's slower, more contemplative. Greek mythology was obviously hugely important to Joyce (uhm, Ulysses) - eclipsing the Catholic Church's influence on his psyche. This, to Joyce, was the hugest break of all. The most necessary. Stephen HAD to be in thrall to the Church, it was an important part of his development - but he also HAD to break free, in order to truly become. Chapter 4 is about that break. Dedalus is an artist. So, too, then, will Stephen become an artist. He has no choice. It takes on the feeling of a prophecy.

I'm going to excerpt the end of the chapter - where Stephen makes his realization. Because nobody does "realization" like Joyce.

Watch how - when Stephen's buddies start to call out his name in ever-more-ridiculous Greek-sounding words - everything changes. It is as though they are keys - to another level, another plane. Out of the priest-ridden present into the mythological past. They act as passwords for Stephen's soul, which is waiting to break free from the ties that bind. Wings that the artificer have made for him. His true calling.

Soul separated from body is a dry ascetic thing. But to merge the two? How glorious, how truly holy that could be ... And watch for a couple of things in this excerpt: watch how the prose shifts, again, into something more far-flung and transcendent. The senses are back - only this time not to degrade him and mortify him - but to glorify his spirit. Also, he catches sight of a girl on the beach. She is a picture of beauty - from out of a book almost. Venus on the halfshell. Something symbolic and to yearn for. His disgust for women has dissolved. He is about to join the human race. But more than that, more than that: he is about to transcend. Being an artist is not about "joining" anything - Stephen's isolation here from his peers shows that. There will always be those who want you to conform, be more like them, just knock it off with all that stuff - and be like us! To be an artist, you must be the essence of nonconformity. You must follow your own path.

it's amazing to me, in reading this, how clear Joyce is. He tells us in no uncertain terms what is happening. Courage. To write like that.

EXCERPT FROM A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce.- Chapter 4.

-- Stephanos Dedalos! Bous Stephenoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos!

Their banter was not new to him and now it flattered his mild proud sovereignty. Now, as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy. So timeless seemed the grey warm air, so fluid and impersonal his own mood, that all ages were as one to him. A moment before the ghost of the ancient kingdom of the Danes had looked forth through the vesture of the hazewrapped City. Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and symbols, a hawk-like man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being?

His heart trembled; his breath came faster and a wild spirit passed over his limbs as though he was soaring sunward. His heart trembled in an ecstasy of fear and his soul was in flight. His soul was soaring in an air beyond the world and the body he knew was purified in a breath and delivered of incertitude and made radiant and commingled with the element of the spirit. An ecstasy of flight made radiant his eyes and wild his breath and tremulous and wild and radiant his windswept limbs.

—One! Two! Look out!

—Oh, Cripes, I'm drownded!

—One! Two! Three and away!

—The next! The next!

—One! UK!

—Stephaneforos!

His throat ached with a desire to cry aloud, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds. This was the call of life to his soul not the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of the altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered him and the cry of triumph which his lips withheld cleft his brain.

—Stephaneforos!

What were they now but cerements shaken from the body of death—the fear he had walked in night and day, the incertitude that had ringed him round, the shame that had abased him within and without—cerements, the linens of the grave?

His soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her grave-clothes. Yes! Yes! Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.

He started up nervously from the stone-block for he could no longer quench the flame in his blood. He felt his cheeks aflame and his throat throbbing with song. There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where?

He looked northward towards Howth. The sea had fallen below the line of seawrack on the shallow side of the breakwater and already the tide was running out fast along the foreshore. Already one long oval bank of sand lay warm and dry amid the wavelets. Here and there warm isles of sand gleamed above the shallow tide and about the isles and around the long bank and amid the shallow currents of the beach were lightclad figures, wading and delving.

Inca few moments he was barefoot, his stockings folded in his pockets and his canvas shoes dangling by their knotted laces over his shoulders and, picking a pointed salt-eaten stick out of the jetsam among the rocks, he clambered down the slope of the breakwater.

There was a long rivulet in the strand and, as he waded slowly up its course, he wondered at the endless drift of seaweed. Emerald and black and russet and olive, it moved beneath the current, swaying and turning. The water of the rivulet was dark with endless drift and mirrored the high-drifting clouds. The clouds were drifting above him silently and silently the seatangle was drifting below him and the grey warm air was still and a new wild life was singing in his veins.

Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he?

He was alone. He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.

A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark-plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.

She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

—Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.

He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the advent of the life that had cried to him.

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!

He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How far had he walked? What hour was it?

There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne to him over the air. But the tide was near the turn and already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy nook amid a ring of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood.

He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.

He closed his eyes in the languor of sleep. His eyelids trembled as if they felt the vast cyclic movement of the earth and her watchers, trembled as if they felt the strange light of some new world. His soul was swooning into some new world, fantastic, dim, uncertain as under sea, traversed by cloudy shapes and beings. A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other.

Evening had fallen when he woke and the sand and arid grasses of his bed glowed no longer. He rose slowly and, recalling the rapture of his sleep, sighed at its joy.

He climbed to the crest of the sandhill and gazed about him. Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of skyline, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

December 30, 2007

The Books: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

PortraitArtist.jpg A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce. Now I'll excerpt from Chapter 3.

Chapter 3 was tough to get through my first time reading it. It felt endless. But in my re-readings, it was not so tough - and it's actually one of my favorite chapters. The linchpin of the novel. It's also the mid-point. We have two chapters to go after this - so Stephen Dedalus (and his soul and his conscience - which is the main focus of this chapter) hangs in the balance. Chapter 2 ends with the kiss from the prostitute. We can only assume (and we learn later) that the kiss leads to other things eventually. Joyce frequented prostitutes in Dublin as a young man, before he met Nora. And he was wracked with guilt about it, and also furious that he should feel any guilt at all. Was not lust a bodily function? Why should shame be attached to it? But there was shame, and so he led that dual life for a while - forced upon many young men of that time, who had no possibility for any other outlets. Stephen Dedalus, in Chapter 3, is in high school. Chapter 2 was the development of the body, the "lower" self - and in Chapter 3, he deals with the repercussions. A weekend retreat is announced at the school. The majority of the chapter is the priest's sermon at the retreat. That's what feels endless. You get none of what Stephen is thinking, sitting in the pew - at least not at first - you just get the sermon. It is a frightful sermon, eloquent and terrifying. It is about hell. And the mortal sins we must be aware of. The priest knows he is talking to a bunch of teenage boys, so his focus is on lust. How there is nothing worse than a lost soul. How far away from God, from redemption. The sermon goes on for 20 pages at least. Once I got into the rhythm of the thing, and stopped looking for narration or plot (that's one of the main struggles with reading Joyce ... you just have to keep giving UP ... surrender, surrender ... stop waiting for him to go where YOU want him to go ... go where HE wants you to go ...) the whole thing becomes hypnotic. I've been on weekend retreats. Post-Vatican II weekend retreats, it is true ... but there are similarities between my experience and Stephen's. It is a time when all you are required to do is pay attention to your soul. And to the afterlife, and to what God has in store for you. It's not a particularly angry fiery sermon - he's not an evangelistic Bible-thumper - it has a definite Catholic vibe to it, intellectual, and rigorous. Jesuit in nature. He pleads with the boys to think about what they are doing. To resist temptation, etc. etc. Stephen is finally allowed to go home, and the horror awakens in him. It is the birth of his conscience - one of the most essential parts of being a human being, not to mention an artist. Conscience equals consciousness in this case. Once you become conscious of what you are doing, conscience is not long to follow. Stephen is, of course, afraid of hell. The Church still holds great sway over him. It is not until a later chapter - when Stephen gives his own sermon, of a sorts, about "beauty" - that he really escapes the ties that bind. "Beauty" is his religion. Beauty. Art. Aesthetics. It is a great shift in thinking, and to Joyce - getting out from under the shadow of the Church was as important a step as being born. It is hard to understand how oppressive religion can be here in this country, which is (thankfully) secular. There is no state religion. In Ireland that was not the case. I can't remember who used the term "priest-ridden" in regards to Ireland - it might have been Joyce himself - but it's definitely true. It was one of the reasons Joyce felt like he could not breathe in Ireland. His relationship to Catholicism was always a complex one - I suppose that's true of most thinking Catholics - and while there was great rage, there was also great love and respect. Both things going on at the same time. He writes about being a Catholic in a way that I completely understand. He was a true believer. Only a former true believer, who has since strayed from the faith, can write the way he does. True believers are usually terrible advocates for their own faith. They're dogmatic, certain, completely unquestioning, close-minded, unambiguous, and in general - if you DON'T believe what they believe - they come off looking like lunatics who have checked their brain at the door. But those who have questioned, grappled, wrestled, left the faith - for good reasons ... often are the best expressers of what the faith is really all about. Nobody writes about a Catholic mass like Joyce. That's what the excerpt below is about. After the retreat, Stephen comes home, in what can be only described as a state of hysteria. He has sinned. He has slept with prostitutes. He masturbates. He cannot live with himself. His soul is on the rack. And that's what confession is for, mate.

Stephen is developing. The fluidity of the earlier chapters does not exist here. The main thrust of the entire chapter is somebody else's words - the priest. The body, slowly, is being left behind. At one point, he loses awareness of where he even is - in space and place. He is going into the realms of the mind. Not an altogether pleasant sensation, especially when one is convinced one is in a state of mortal sin.


EXCERPT FROM A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce - Chapter 3.

When evening had fallen he left the house and the first touch of the damp dark air and the noise of the door as it closed behind him made ache again his conscience, lulled by prayer and tears. Confess! Confess! It was not enough to lull the conscience with a tear and a prayer. He had to kneel before the minister of the Holy Ghost and tell over his hidden sins truly and repentantly. Before he heard again the footboard of the housedoor trail over the threshold as it opened to let him in, before he saw again the table in the kitchen set for supper he would have knelt and confessed. It was quite simple.

The ache of conscience ceased and he walked onward swiftly through the dark streets. There were so many flagstones on the footpath of that street and so many streets in that city and so many cities in the world. Yet eternity had no end. He was in mortal sin. Even once was a mortal sin. It could happen in an instant. But how so quickly? By seeing or by thinking of seeing. The eyes see the thing, without having wished first to see. Then in an instant it happens. But does that part of the body understand or what? The serpent, the most subtle beast of the field. It must understand when it desires in one instant and then prolongs its own desire instant after instant, sinfully. It feels and understands and desires. What a horrible thing! Who made it to be like that, a bestial part of the body able to understand bestially and desire bestially? Was that then he or an inhuman thing moved by a lower soul than his soul? His soul sickened at the thought of a torpid snaky life feeding itself out of the tender marrow of his life and fattening upon the slime of lust. O why was that so? O why?

He cowered in the shadow of the thought, abashing himself in the awe of God Who had made all things and all men. Madness. Who could think such a thought? And, cowering in darkness and abject, he prayed mutely to his angel guardian to drive away with his sword the demon that was whispering to his brain.

The whisper ceased and he knew then clearly that his own soul had sinned in thought and word and deed wilfully through his own body. Confess! He had to confess every sin. How could he utter in words to the priest what he had done? Must, must. Or how could he explain without dying of shame? Or how could he have done such things without shame? A madman, a loathsome madman! Confess! O he would indeed to be free and sinless again! Perhaps the priest would know. O dear God!

He walked on and on through illlit streets, fearing to stand still for a moment lest it might seem that he held back from what awaited him, fearing to arrive at that towards which he still turned with longing. How beautiful must be a soul in the state of grace when God looked upon it with love!

Frowsy girls sat along the curbstones before their baskets. Their dark hair hung trailed over their brows. They were not beautiful to see as they crouched in the mire. But their souls were seen by God; and if their souls were in a state of grace they were radiant to see: and God loved them, seeing them.

A wasting breath of humiliation blew bleakly over his soul to think of how he had fallen, to feel that those souls were dearer to God than his. The wind blew over him and passed on to the myriads and myriads of other souls on whom God's favour shone now more and now less, stars now brighter and now dimmer, sustained and failing. And the glimmering souls passed away, sustained and failing, merged in a moving breath. One soul was lost; a tiny soul: his. It flickered once and went out, forgotten, lost. The end: black cold void waste.

Consciousness of place came ebbing back to him slowly over a vast tract of time unlit, unfelt, unlived. The squalid scene composed itself around him; the common accents, the burning gasjets in the shops, odours of fish and spirits and wet sawdust, moving men and women. An old woman was about to cross the street, an oilcan in her hand. He bent down and asked her was there a chapel near.

-- A chapel, sir? Yes, sir. Church Street chapel.

-- Church?

She shifted the can to her other hand and directed him: and, as she held out her reeking withered right hand under its fringe of shawl, he bent lower towards her, saddened and soothed by her voice.

-- Thank you.

-- You are quite welcome, sir.

The candles on the high altar had been extinguished but the fragrance of incense still floated down the dim nave. Bearded workmen with pious faces were guiding a canopy out through a sidedoor, the sacristan aiding them with quiet gestures and words. A few of the faithful still lingered, praying before one of the sidealtars or kneeling in the benches near the confessionals. He approached timidly and knelt at the last bench in the body, thankful for the peace and silence and fragrant shadow of the church. The board on which he knelt was narrow and worn and those who knelt near him were humble followers of Jesus. Jesus too had been born in poverty and had worked in the shop of a carpenter, cutting boards and planing them, and had first spoken of the kingdom of God to poor fishermen, teaching all men to be meek and humble of heart.

He bowed his head upon his hands, bidding his heart to be meek and humble that he might be like those who knelt beside him and his prayer as acceptable as theirs. He prayed beside them but it was hard. His soul was foul with sin and he dared not ask forgiveness with the simple trust of those whom Jesus, in the mysterious ways of God, had called first to His side, the carpenters, the fishermen, poor and simple people following a lowly trade, handling and shaping the wood of trees, mending their nets with patience.

A tall figure came down the aisle and the penitents stirred: and at the last moment, glancing up swiftly, he saw a long grey beard and the brown habit of a capuchin. The priest entered the box and was hidden. Two penitents rose and entered the confessional at either side. The wooden slide was drawn back and the faint murmur of a voice troubled the silence.

His blood began to murmur in his veins, murmuring like a sinful city summoned from its sleep to hear its doom. Little flakes of fire fell and powdery ashes fell softly, alighting on the houses of men. They stirred, waking from sleep, troubled by the heated air.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 29, 2007

The Books: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

PortraitArtist.jpgA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce. Now I'll excerpt from Chapter 2.

The movement of Chapter 2 is one of upheaval, change. Young boyhood is now a distant memory - Stephen is in his early teens. He is no longer at Clongowes. His family has sold their property - and have moved to Dublin. Stephen is dismayed at Dublin. He finds it gloomy, and a restlessness overcomes him. He takes long walks ("wanderings") - where he tries to either shake off his uneasiness, or try to get to the heart of what is wrong. The unconsciousness of being a child is gone. Stephen looks back on his life, and feels the gap between then and now. He is in another school - a much more rowdy school than Clongowes, although still Jesuit-run. He has a group of friends and rivals. Girls suddenly come into the picture. Stephen becomes obsessed with one girl. This is the awakening of the "beast" - meaning: lust.

Joyce was tormented by lust, and he writes about it with feverish accuracy. The other boys tease him about his crush, and Stephen is baffled by this. He doesn't find there to be anything funny at all about girls, and the feelings they arouse in him. The chapter ends with him, on one of his wanderings, encountering a prostitute, who comes over to him and kisses him on the cheek. It seems almost like Ireland is hellbent on separating its citizens from their natural impulses. Perhaps civilization in general is hellbent on such a thing - but Joyce has a big problem with that. He doesn't like hypocrisy, and he hates piety and self-righteousness. He wants to be able to just BE with other people. Stephen does, too. Dublin alienates him completely.

Stephen has moments during his walks when he looks back over his life ... seeing it as a whole ... the years at Clongowes, the death of Parnell, the geometry lessons ... and now that he has made the break with boyhood, he trembles on the edge of a precipice.

There's a marvelous scene with his father - the two of them have taken a trip back out into the country, not sure why - but it's just the two of them, Simon and Stephen Dedalus. Simon reminisces about something to Stephen, telling him a long story - and he almost begins to weep at the end of it. Stephen, listening to his dad, suddenly has an eerie detached sensation - like he has pulled back from everything, and is looking DOWN - on himself, on life, on all of humanity. It is the birth of awareness. It's a profound moment. Stephen keeps saying to himself: "I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking with my father Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork." Just listing of facts. "Names". It is like the very prosaic nature of life suddenly seems distinct, amazing, singular. Stephen is becoming himself.

The amniotic-fluid prose of the first chapter is no more. But we are still in a vast stream-of-consciousness narrative.

Stephen is involved in a school play - and during the play he begins to go back over some memories - and we are catapulted back in time, to his first year at the new school - and then brought back to the present - and then back into memories ... It's how life is, sometimes. You can be walking down the street, but your mind is back in the 2nd grade. Stephen is starting to be able to connect the dots of his life. He still is under the power of his parents and the church and his teachers - but he is beginning to disengage. This is the birth of the artist.

I chose the excerpt below because it has to do with writing. Stephen writes an essay for school, which causes a great controversy. Joyce said, much later in his life, something along the lines of, "I have discovered that I cannot write without offending people." Joyce was a controversial man from the very beginning. He had unorthodox ideas. He had unorthodox literary idols. He broke from the pack. Ireland is a very conformist country - perhaps something about being an island nation ... but also because of its very culture - the Catholic Church and the manner of education ... Joyce never fit in with all of that. I'm not sure he even tried. Stephen worked hard on his essay. It meant a lot to him. And suddenly, he is put in the position of having to defend it - to the teachers as well as to his fellow classmates, who sniff out the difference in Dedalus, and try to crush it. It reminds me a bit of the character of Edmund in Long Day's Journey, who spends all his time reading modern authors, mostly French - people his father degrades as atheists and terrible poets. According to James Tyrone, Shakespeare is the only true author. He truly fears for his son's soul, that it will be corrupted by reading such "filth". The same vibe is true here in Portrait, when the literary canon was much more set than it is now. There is an orthodoxy. Stephen bucks up against it. He loses some of the battles - because he doesn't realize the rules yet ... but this sort of assertion of self, of opinion, of TASTE ... is one of the most important developments of any serious artist. What you LIKE reveals who you ARE. And if someone tries to take that away from you, that person is attacking your identity, your very self. These are not "just" books and authors to Joyce. They are the breath of life. Stephen has found himself connected, emotionally, to Byron - he writes poems for his crush in the style of Byron ... To Stephen, Byron is a genius. Byron, however, was not "approved" of in the canon. So you'll see what happens below.

Like I said in my other post: Joyce is not re-inventing the wheel with this book. It is a coming-of-age story. I Am the Cheese, Catcher in the Rye, The Pigman - all of these books are in the Portrait of the Artist continuum. But it is in the manner of the writing that Joyce makes his mark. And not just the writing ... he's not just a beautiful prose writer ... it's the IDEAS he makes the reader confront that truly elevates him. He's an intellectual novelist. We'll get to that later in Ulysses - one of my favorite chapters in Ulysses is the long "Scylla and Charybdis" chapter - when Stephen Dedalus and his friends sit in the National Library, talking about Shakespeare, arguing about Hamlet and Prospero. When I recently read Will of the World, the author references this chapter in Ulysses repeatedly. It makes you take another look at Shakespeare, it really does. And any author who can do that - without ruining his story, or turning it into a pamphlet, or somehow academic - has my highest regard!

We are back in a memory here. Stephen is thinking back on his "heretical" essay and the argument with his friends. So at the end, we come back to the present.

Okay - so here's the excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce.

It was towards the close of his first term in the college when he was in number six. His sensitive nature was still smarting under the lashes of an undivined and squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had emerged from a two years' spell of revery to find himself in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him was passed in the company of subversive writers whose gibes and violence of speech set up a ferment in his brain before they passed out of it into his crude writings.

The essay was for him the chief labour of his week and every Tuesday, as he marched home to the school, he read his fate in the incidents of the way, pitting himself against some figure ahead of him and quickening his pace to outstrip it before a certain goal was reached or planting his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork of the footpath and telling himself that he would be first and not first in the weekly essay.

On a certain Tuesday the course of his triumphs was rudely broken. Mr Tate, the English master, pointed his finger at him and said bluntly:

-- This fellow has heresy in his essay.

A hush fell on the class. Mr Tate did not break it but dug with his hand between his crossed thighs while his heavily starched linen creaked about his neck and wrists. Stephen did not look up. It was a raw spring morning and his eyes were still smarting and weak. He was conscious of failure and of detection, of the squalor of his own mind and home, and felt against his neck the raw edge of his turned and jagged collar.

A short loud laugh from Mr Tate set the class more at ease.

-- Perhaps you didn't know that, he said.

-- Where? asked Stephen.

Mr Tate withdrew his delving hand and spread out the essay.

-- Here. It's about the Creator and the soul. Rrm ... rrm ... rrm ... Ah! without a possibility of ever approaching nearer. That's heresy.

Stephen murmured:

-- I meant without a possibility of ever reaching.

It was a submission and Mr Tate, appeased, folded up the essay and passed it across to him, saying:

-- O ... Ah! ever reaching. That's another story.

But the class was not so soon appeased. Though nobody spoke to him of the affair after class he could feel about him a vague general malignant joy.

A few nights after this public chiding he was walking with a letter along the Drumcondra Road when he heard a voice cry:

-- Halt!

He turned and saw three boys of his own class coming towards him in the dusk. It was Heron who had called out and, as he marched forward between his two attendants, he cleft the air before him with a thin cane, in time to their steps. Boland, his friend, marched beside him, a large grin on his face, while Nash came on a few steps behind, blowing from the pace and wagging his great red head.

As soon as the boys had turned into Clonliffe Road together they began to speak about books and writers, saying what books they were reading and how many books there were in their fathers' bookcases at home. Stephen listened to them in some wonderment for Boland was the dunce and Nash the idler of the class. In fact after some talk about their favourite writers Nash declared for Captain Marryat who, he said, was the greatest writer.

-- Fudge! said Heron. Ask Dedlaus. Who is the greatest writer, Dedalus.

Stephen noted the mockery in the question and said:

-- Of prose do you mean?

-- Yes.

-- Newman, I think.

-- Is it Cardinal Newman? asked Boland.

-- Yes, answered Stephen.

The grin broadened on Nash's freckled face as he turned to Stephen and said:

-- And do you like Cardinal Newman, Dedalus?

-- O, many say that Newman has the best prose style, Heron said to the other two in explanation. Of course he's not a poet.

-- And who is the best poet, Heron? asked Boland.

-- Lord Tennyson, of course, answered Heron.

-- O, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash. We have all his poetry at home in a book.

At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been making and burst out:

-- Tennyson a poet! Why, he's only a rhymester!

-- O, get out! said Heron. Everyone knows that Tennyson is the greatest poet.

-- And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Boland, nudging his neighbour.

-- Byron, of course, answered Stephen.

Heron gave the lead and all three joined in a scornful laugh.

-- What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.

-- You, said Heron. Byron the greatest poet! He's only a poet for uneducated people.

-- He must be a fine poet! said Boland.

-- You may keep your mouth shut, said Stephen, turning on him boldly. All you know about poetry is what you wrote up on the slates in the yard and were going to be sent to the loft for.

Boland, in fact, was said to have written on the slates in the yard a couplet about a classmate of his who often rode home from the college on a pony:

As Tyson was riding into Jerusalem
He fell and hurt his Alex Kafoozelum.

This thrust put the two lieutenants to silence but Heron went on:

-- In any cae Byron was a heretic and immoral too.

-- I don't care what he was, cried Stephen hotly.

-- You don't care whether he was a heretic or not? said Nash.

-- What do you know about it? shouted Stephen. You never read a line of anything in your life except a trans or Boland either.

-- I know that Byron was a bad man, said Boland.

-- Here, catch hold of this heretic, Heron called out.

In a moment Stephen was a prisoner.

-- Tate made you buck up the other day, Heron went on, about the heresy in your essay.

-- I'll tell him tomorrow, said Boland.

-- Will you? said Stephen. You'd be afraid to open your lips.

-- Afraid?

-- Ay. Afraid of your life.

-- Behave yourself! cried Heron, cutting at Stephen's legs with his cane.

It was the signal for their onset. Nash pinioned his arms behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump which was lying in the gutter. Struggling and kicking under the cuts of the cane and the blows of the knotty stump Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire fence.

-- Admit that Byron was no good.

-- No.

-- Admit.

-- No.

-- Admit.

-- No. No.

At last after a fury of plunges he wrenched himself free. His tormentors set off towards Jones's Road, laughing and jeering at him, while he, torn and flushed and panting, stumbled after them half blinded with tears, clenching his fists madly and sobbing.

While he was still repeating the Confiteor amid the indulgent laughter of his hearers and while the scenes of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and swiftly before his mind he wondered why he bore no malice now to those who had tormented him. All the memory of it called forth no anger from him. All the descriptions of fierce love and hatred which he had met in books had seemed to him therefore unreal. Even that night as he stumbled homewards along Jones's Road he had felt that some power was divesting him of that suddenwoven anger as easily as a fruit is divested of its soft ripe peel.

Posted by sheila Permalink

December 28, 2007

The Books: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

PortraitArtist.jpgA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce

Joyce's first novel. A book in 5 chapters. I'll excerpt from each of the chapters - since the parts are all so important to the whole. It's interesting that he called this "Portrait" - when it seems like "Journey" would be more applicable - there is a very clear sense of movement in the book, even in the long so-called stagnant sections, like the Jesuit retreat. What Joyce is showing is how one becomes an artist. Where it comes from. What steps along the way have brought Stephen Dedalus to the incredible last sentence: "Old father, old artificer, stand me now and in ever good stead"? Stephen Dedalus is headed for exile. He is obviously James Joyce's alter ego. And he is also the "star" of Ulysses which takes up (give or take a couple months) where Portrait left off. Stephen Dedalus is a young Irish boy, and the "portrait" we get of him is multi-faceted, and subjective. There is no one way to become an artist. This is what happened to Stephen, this is HIS way.

One of the things that was so arresting about this book when it first came out was its stream-of-conscious narration, and its faithful rendering of what the world seems like from the inside. Meaning: from the inside of Stephen Dedalus. It is not so much his literal experience that we are getting. It is his experience, and experience mainly comes to us through the five senses. Marcel Proust also went at his narration in this manner. It is not literal. The point is not to describe. The point is to render into words life's subjective journey, from the perspective of one particular individual. We are not outside of Stephen Dedalus looking in. Joyce is behind the eyeballs of his narrator. What he gets, we get. If it's beyond comprehension to Dedalus, then it is beyond comprehension to us.

The first chapter is Dedalus' journey as a young boy, a small child. So the language is simple and kind of incantatory ... not an adult's perspective at all. Things happen that are beyond his comprehension, things in the adult world. We see them, but we only get snippets - we don't get the whole picture. If it were a film, it would be filmed from Dedalus' perspective as a 3 foot tall child, staring at the knees of the adults, overhearing fragments, going off into his dream world, trying to understand. The first sentence of the book launches us into Dedalus' childhood mind:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo ...

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

Blunt language, things seen not literally but figuratively. Or perhaps that's wrong. Perhaps what Joyce is getting at is just how literal chidren are. They do not interpret. They do not deal in subtleties. His father "looked at him through a glass" - glasses? Yes, but Stephen does not have a word for glasses. He just has the sensation, the image of his father looking "at him through a glass".

The thing about Joyce is: he is so imitated now, he is such a reference point - that sometimes it is difficult to see just how influential all of this really was. Stream-of-conscious stuff is almost cliche now. It's funny, though: you read his imitators, even the good ones - and then you go back and read Portrait and you once again realize that nobody can touch Joyce. Still.

Joyce said (and I think this quote is awesome, and goes a long way towards explaining Joyce's attitude, and his "way in" to writing): "Why all this fuss and bother about the mystery of the unconscious? What about the mystery of the conscious? What do they know about that?"

His work does not delve into the unconscious. He is interested in "the mystery of the conscious" - what it is like, what it is actually like, to be alive.

Samuel Beckett said, of Joyce: "Joyce's work is not about the thing, it is the thing itself."

The majority of writers write "about the thing". No slam on them. Writing that is "about the thing" is very often fantastic, and it is what we are accustomed to. But to read Joyce is to burrow down into the very heart of what language actually is. And you no longer feel that a book has to be ABOUT anything ... Joyce's books ARE "the thing itself". He was always a nutcase about language anyway - I suppose anyone who lives in a country whose language was stomped out of existence by an outside force has that relationship to language. (Derek Walcott, West Indian poet, is eloquent on this matter ... but there are countless examples). Joyce said, "I'd like a language which is above all languages, a language to which all will do service. I cannot express myself in English without enclosing myself in a tradition."

These are explosive issues.

Language becomes a political tool, language becomes a weapon, a symbol ... all of that postmodern Edward Said stuff ... Why can't you just write in English, bub? Isn't English good enough for you? There were morons who took that approach to him then, and there are morons who look at him in that way now, too. Well, no, English was NOT good enough for Joyce - and that attitude eventually brought him to Finnegans Wake, a book that took him 17 years to write, a book written in ... well, it's certainly not English (although if you read it out loud, it's amazing how much sense it really makes). Joyce created his own language, one that was more appropriate to what he wanted to express. English had been imposed on him (or - on Ireland), let's not forget. It was not HIS. If the Irish had been left alone, who knows what their language would have developed into. These are issues that make up academia today, the voices of those who had been colonized - even if it had been generations before. What was done to language - especially languages that had been wiped out - affects not just how we speak, but how we see things. It is difficult for an English-speaker, one who grew up in, say, England, to understand the issues here. When Joyce writes in English, he is writing in "the language of the oppressor" (it is hard to write about all of this without using the obnoxious lingo. Joyce could do it - but I can't!!) It happens whether he is conscious of it or not. He cannot write in English without "enclosing" himself "in a tradition". Is this the tradition of his choice? Nope. It was imposed from the outside. Long before Joyce was born, but obviously - he has inherited those battles. Joyce was not really a political kind of guy, but in this case, he was as political as they come. He wrote, "To me, an Irish safety pin is more important than an English epic." Can't get more unambiguous than that.

The scene in Portrait where Stephen talks to the English professor about the word "tundish" lays it all out. It may be invisible to modern-day eyes and ears, or maybe it's just invisible (at first) to those of us who speak English as a native, and never have had to grapple with nationalistic cultural issues merely from the language we have grown up with. The "tundish" scene, taken in and of itself, and seen in the right context, can explain the terrorism of the North. It's that big a deal. (And please don't misunderstand: I did not say "EXCUSE" the terrorism of the North. I said "explain". Thanks for working on your reading comprehension.) What happens to a people when their language is destroyed. Systematically.

Like I said before, Joyce didn't write pamphlets and his books are not propaganda. He is writing from within. If you're not looking for the clues, then the subtlety of the "tundish" scene might go over your head. But it is very very important: not just to Ireland as a whole, but (more essentially) to Stephen Dedalus' development as an artist. - Joyce is doing two things at once there. In order to be an artist, you must speak with your own voice. Everybody knows that. But if the language you speak was imposed on you, and not just imposed - but if there is a history of violence and death behind that imposed language - then where does that leave you as an artist? Seamus Heaney writes about this, lots of people write about this.

The "tundish" scene is, rightly, the most famous of all of the famous parts of this story. It is where Joyce (without really indicating that that is what he is doing) takes the gloves off. But his interest in it is personal, and that is what elevates it from propaganda, or a Joycean version of "Brits go home". Joyce said: "Ireland remains the brain of the United Kingdom. The British, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish the over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget -- the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature." Ouch. Joyce said it himself ... that he would like a language that is above all languages. He dreamt of it. He worked on it. He filled notebooks with symbols and so-called gibberish. He was trying to imagine his way into the most proper expression of his thoughts, his soul, his experience. And in order to do so, he had to shed his mind of English. English was not HIS language.

An example of this is the following anecdote: Joyce tutored two young women in English, while living in Zurich. He read to them from Ulysses. He did this to demonstrate to the girls that English was also inadequate at times.

The girls asked him: "Aren't there enough words in English?"

Joyce replied: "Yes, there are enough, but they aren't the right ones."

So basically, Joyce was a genius. I mean, that's obvious. But within the man were multiple contradictions, and it is this that elevates his art to something transcendent, consistently mysterious and challenging. Frank McCourt wrote:

Joyce's work has liberated many an artist while his life stands as a lesson for all of us. He suffered greatly: the growing failure of his eyes, the growing madness of his daughter. All his days he skirmished for pennies and fought pitched battles for his art. He was a family man, fiercely tribal, and we must not forget he was driven by love.

Did he love Ireland? As the squirrel loves the nut.

Did he love Catholicism? Imagine his work without it.

"We must not forget he was driven by love." Amen.

Okay, so let's get back to Portrait.

In the book it is clear that in order to become an artist, Stephen Dedalus must shed the influences of family, religion, and culture (in this case, Irish-ness). There's an episodic feel to the book - because life often feels that way. We don't look back over our life's journey and see a linear narrative. We jump around in time. Events rise up from the depths, fully three-dimensional - only to be submerged again. We are 6 years old, and then next thing we know we are 9 years old. This is the structure of the book. Joyce is interested in the development of Stephen Dedalus' soul.

Stephen, at the beginning of the book, is a small child - at the mercy of adult events. There is a sense of victimization almost - how things happen that a child cannot comprehend. How a child has no power. Suddenly, you find yourself in a boarding school. Because the adults in your life have chosen that school, and so that is where you must go. But the memory of being in the bosom of your family is still warm and fresh. Where did that go? Oh well, it's gone now ... here I am, in the present moment, dealing with the sensations and experiences of my new environs ... A child doesn't often stop to question these things. Perhaps they throw tantrums, a true sign that they are aware of their own powerlessness, aware of the fact that they have NO agency ... choices are made FOR them.

In the beginning of the book - Stephen Dedalus is still in thrall to his family. To Ireland. To the Catholic Church. He has inherited his tradition, without choosing it or questioning it. As the book moves on, and as Dedalus grows up, he begins to question things, and examine the influences that have made up his life. Is the Catholic Church the one true religion? How do I feel about my family? How do I feel about Ireland? How do I feel about the way I am educated? Who am I REALLY? Joyce is not inventing the wheel, in terms of plot. It's a typical coming-of-age story. Nothing new there. But it is in the manner of expression that Joyce breaks all the rules, and makes other books and writers seem pale, insubstantial.

Another thing that is so amazing about this book is its autobiographical thrust. Joyce was not "creating" anything. He was expressing what it was like for him. He was imagining himself back into his past selves, on a journey of discovery. So Joyce, although a master already, was also learning. It was always about process for Joyce, which is why his publishers and powerful writer friends were often driven to distraction - by the delays, and how long it took for him to write anything. He was not on a schedule. Finnegans Wake took him 17 years and he was still working on it right up to publication (the poor publishers. They'd send him a draft copy and it would come back covered in corrections. MINUTE corrections. A comma could change everything.) To someone who is not a genius, this kind of meticulous insanity looked, well, insane and annoying. Why do you agonize over commas, Jimmy? Well, because he was James Joyce, that's why, and not some run-of-the-mill writer who was a good boy and played by the rules, played well with others. He followed his own star. Such people are often misunderstood by those who are not geniuses.

There is nothing about Joyce's work that is not deeply personal. Every sentence that is in each book needs to be there. He worked and worked and worked at these things. He didn't go off into a Kerouac-ian trance, spouting out gibberish that he felt came from the music of the spheres, or whatever. He wasn't spontaneous at all. He was a craftsman. He was OCD probably. He was obsessive. Everything he did was pored over, agonized about - worked on. The fact that the books are so damn powerful is a testament to his gift as a writer.

You definitely feel the artist at work - Joyce himself never takes a back seat. He's a showoff, a showman. He glories in language, in the fact that he can do this. But all of it has a purpose. All of it is intentional.

The scope and impact of the books are astonishing, to this day. T.S. Eliot, after reading Ulysses, stated, "He has killed the 19th century." Indeed he did. He didn't do so out of a contempt for all those who went before. He wasn't like that. It was just that he was trying to encompass ALL of experience into his work, and he did so in a way that was new, and startling. He is still new and startling. I'll never be done with him. Never.

Richard Ellmann, in his magesterial biography of James Joyce, writes about Portrait:

The book begins with Stephen's father and, just before the ending, it depicts the hero's severance from his mother. From the start the soul is surrounded by liquids, urine, slime, seawater, amniotic tides, "drops of water" (as Joyce says at the end of the first chapter) "falling softly in the brimming bowl." The atmosphere of biological struggle is necessarily dark and melancholy until the light of life is glimpsed. In the first chapter the foetal soul is for a few pages only slightly individualized, the organism responds only to the most primitive sensory impressions, then the heart forms and musters its affections, the being struggles towards some unspecified, uncomprehended culmination, it is flooded in ways it cannot understand or control, it gropes wordlessly toward sexual differentiation. In the third chapter shame floods Stephen's whole body as conscience develops; the lower bestial nature is put by. Then at the end of the fourth chapter the soul discovers the goal towards which it has been mysteriously proceeding - the goal of life. It must swim no more but emerge into air, the new metaphor being flight. The final chapter shows the soul, already fully developed, fattening itself for its journey until at last it is ready to leave. In the last few pages of the book, Stephen's diary, the soul is released from its confinement, its individuality is complete, and the style shifts with savage abruptness.

As always, Joyce works on multiple interwoven levels - the metaphoric, the literal events that change the course, the imagery changes - the beginning of the book is all dark and liquidy - with dark greens and reds, the water of Ireland, a womblike place. Stephen is not developed. And by the end - we no longer have an outside narratory - we just read Stephen's diary, and he is preparing his exile. He is Icarus. Putting on his wings. He has shed the ties that bind - the ties of family, Ireland, and Catholicism. He is now free. Free to create. To write. The ending of the book is a launch-pad. Stephen propelling himself up, up, up ... into Ulysses, the next book. Stephen (Joyce) could never have written Ulysses if he had not openly grappled with who he was, his soul's journey and structure, and how such immutable things as family/God/education/culture ... have limited him, defined him. Gone, gone, gone, begone ... Stephen has become an artist.

Ellmann writes:

The book moves from rudimentary meanings to more complex ones, as in the conception of the call and the fall. Stephen, in the first chapter fascinated by unformed images, is next summoned by the flesh and then by the church, the second chapter ending with a prostitute's lingual kiss, the third with his reception of the Host upon his tongue. The soul that has been enraptured by body in the second chapter and by spirit in the third (both depicted in sensory images) then hears the call of art and life, which encompass both without bowing before either, in the fourth chapter; the process is virtually complete. Similarly the fall into sin, at first a terror, gradually becomes an essential part of the discovery of self and life.

Now Stephen, his character still recomposing the same elements, leaves the Catholic priesthood behind him to become "a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everlasting life." Having listened to sermons on ugliness in the third chapter, he makes his own sermons on beauty in the last. The Virgin is transformed into the girl waiting on the strand, symbolizing a more tangible reality. In the last two chapters, to suit his new structure, Joyce minimizes Stephen's physical life to show the dominance of his mind, which has accepted but subordinated physical things. The soul is ready now, it throws off its sense of imprisonment, its melancholy, its no longer tolerable conditions of lowr existence, to be born.

So here's an excerpt from the first chapter of Portrait. Stephen is away at Clongowes, a Jesuit-run boarding school. He cannot really understand what is happening to him. He is a small child. He becomes sick and goes to the infirmary. And it is there that he hears the sudden wails outside. Parnell is dead. As a child, Stephen cannot understand the implications - although he knows the name Parnell - having heard it round the supper table. But the vision he gets - of overwhelming grief and loss - is precocious. The sensitivity of children to outside events. Parnell comes up later (as he always does in Joyce's work - excerpt here) - and a huge argument about him takes place at the supper table - with pros and cons, and patriots and skeptics - accusations, loyalty questioned, etc ... Joyce lays it all out. The issues of the Irish people. Marvelous. If you want to understand the history of Ireland, you cannot leave Joyce out of the picture. You would do well to read history books, too, but Joyce writes about history from the inside.

Here's the excerpt. The reference to "Dante" is interesting: "Dante" is the name of Stephen's aunt - who becomes important later, in reference to Parnell. The associations here are primitive - Parnell = Dante, in Stephen's childlike mind. I also find it interesting that names like "Dedalus" and "Dante" abound here. They are not "Fitzpatrick" and "O'Flaherty". Joyce is reaching back - to antiquity, to the middle ages ... for his important names ... resisting enclosing himself in that "tradition" that is meaningless to him. The names are always clues with Joyce. Also: look for the clue of impending exile - it's already there - the desire to leave, to get away, to travel ... even though the boy does not yet understand his own soul's wishes.

Needless to say, since Stephen Dedalus here is feverish and sick - the prose is feverish and sick as well. Weak impressions, the mind unhinged - wandering from place to place - the way things ARE when you have a fever. Again: Joyce does not describe. He inhabits.

His writing is not "about the thing" - it is the thing itself.

EXCERPT FROM A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - by James Joyce

That was the infirmary. He was sick then. Had they written home to tell his mother and father? But it would be quicker for one of the priests to go himself to tell them. Or he would write a letter for the priest to bring.

Dear Mother
I am sick. I want to go home. Please come and take me home. I am in the infirmary.
Your fond son,
Stephen

How far away they were! There was cold sunlight outside the window. He wondered if he would die. You could die just the same on a sunny day. He might die before his mother came. Then he would have a dead mass in the chapel like the way the fellows had told him it was when Little had died. All the fellows would be at the mass, dressed in black, all with sad faces. Wells too would be there but no fellow would look at him. The rector would be there in a cope of black and gold and there would be tall yellow candles on the altar and round the catafalque. And they would carry the coffin out of the chapel slowly and he would be buried in the little graveyard of the community off the main avenue of limes. And Wells would be sorry then for what he had done. And the bell would toll slowly.

He could hear the tolling. He said over to himself the song that Brigid had taught him.

Dingdong! The castle bell!
Farewell, my mother!
Bury me in the old churchyard
Beside my eldest brother.
My coffin shall be black,
Six angels at my back,
Two to sing and two to pray
And two to carry my soul away.

How beautiful and sad that was! How beautiful the words were where they said Bury me in the old churchyard! A tremor passed over his body. How sad and how beautiful! He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music. The bell! The bell! Farewell! O farewell!

The cold sunlight was weaker and Brother Michael was standing at his bedside with a bowl of beeftea. He was glad for his mouth was hot and dry. He could hear them playing on the playgrounds. And the day was going on in the college just as if he were there.

Then Brother Michael was going away and the fellow out of third of grammar told him to be sure and come back and tell him all the news in the paper. He told Stephen that his name was Athy and that his father kept a lot of racehorses that were spiffing jumpers and that his father would give a good tip to Brother Michael any time he wanted it because Brother Michael was very decent and always told him the news out of the paper they got every day up in the castle. There was every kind of news in the paper: accidents, shipwrecks, sports and politics.

-- Now it is all about politics in the paper, he said. Do your people talk about that too?

-- Yes, Stephen said.

-- Mine too, he said.

Then he thought for a moment and said:

-- You have a queer name, Dedalus, and I have a queer name too, Athy. My name is the name of a town. Your name is like Latin.

Then he asked:

-- Are you good at riddles?

Stephen answered:

-- Not very good.

Then he said:

-- Can you answer me this one? Why is the county Kildare like the leg of a fellow's breeches?

Stephen thought what could be the answer and then said:

-- I give it up.

-- Because there is a thigh in it, he said. Do you see the joke? Athy is the town in the county Kildare and a thigh is the other thigh.

-- O, I see, Stephen said.

-- That's an old riddle, he said.

After a moment he said:

-- I say!

-- What? asked Stephen.

-- You know, he said, you can ask that riddle another way?

-- Can you? said Stephen.

-- The same riddle, he said. Do you know the other way to ask it?

-- No, said Stephen.

-- Can you not think of the other way? he said.

He looked at Stephen over the bedclothes as he spoke. Then he lay back on the pillow and said:

-- There is another way but I won't tell you what it is.

Why did he not tell it? His father, who kept the racehorses, must be a magistrate too like Saurin's father and Nasty Roche's father. He thought of his own father, of how he sang songs while his mother played and of how he always gave him a shilling when he asked for sixpence and he felt sorry for him that he was not a magistrate like the other boys' fathers. Then why was he sent to that place with them? But his father had told him that he would be no stranger there because his granduncle had presented an address to the liberator there fifty years before. You could know the people of that time by their old dress. It seemed to him a solemn time: and he wondered if that was the time when the fellows in Clowngoes wore blue coats with brass buttons and yellow waistcoats and caps of rabbit-skin and drank beer like grownup people and kept greyhounds of their own to course the hares with.

He looked at the window and saw that the daylight had grown weaker. There would be cloudy grey light over the playgrounds. There was no noise on the playgrounds. The class must be doing the themes or perhaps Father Arnall was reading a legend out of the book.

It was queer that they had not given him any medicine. Perhaps Brother Michael would bring it back when he came. They said you got stinking stuff to drink when you were in the infirmary. But he felt better now than before. It would be nice getting better slowly. You could get a book then. There was a book in the library about Holland. There were lovely foreign names in it and pictures of strangelooking cities and ships. It made you feel so happy.

How pale the light was at the window! But that was nice. The fire rose and fell on the wall. It was like waves. Someone had put coal on and he heard voices. They were talking. It was the noise of the waves. Or the waves were talking among themselves as they rose and fell.

He saw the sea of waves, long dark waves rising and falling, dark under the moonless night. A tiny light twinkled at the pierhead where the ship was entering: and he saw a multitude of people gathered by the waters' edge to see the ship that was entering the harbour. A tall man stood on the deck, looking out towards the flat dark land: and by the light at the pierhead he saw his face, the sorrowful face of Brother Michael.

He saw him lift his hand towards the people and heard him say in a loud voice of sorrow over the waters:

-- He is dead. We saw him lying upon the catalfaque.

A wail of sorrow went up from the people.

-- Parnell! Parnell! He is dead!

They fell upon their knees, moaning in sorrow.

And he saw Dante in a maroon velvet dress and with a green velvet mantle hanging from her shoulders walking proudly and silently past the people who knelt by the water's edge.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 21, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'The Dead' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the final story in the collection: "The Dead".

TheDead.jpg

Still from John Huston's film adaptation of "The Dead", the snow is general all over Ireland

The story never loses its power. To describe the plot of it doesn't do it justice, and I also agonized over an excerpt - because it's the ENDING that packs the punch - but the punch wouldn't exist without all that came before. It's important, too, to look at "The Dead" in context of the rest of the collection - which is also marvelous - but "The Dead" feels like a symphony and makes the other stories seem like practice runs, a pianist doing scales. "The Dead" can also be seen (since it is the last story) as the launching pad into the novels. Joyce wrote 3 novels: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake - and while Dubliners is marvelous, it doesn't prepare you at all for the ground-breaking quality of the novels - except for "The Dead". "The Dead" is where you know, okay - this Joyce fellow is somethin' ELSE. The fact that he was so young when he wrote the thing is astonishing in and of itself - and that's another part of "The Dead" that interests me: where Joyce was at in his development when he wrote it. He wanted to stick it to Ireland, that is true. He wanted to rub his fellow countrymen's noses in it. "The Dead" is different, though. It's like he draws back the veil over his own heart, and love pours out of it. It's not a pleasant process, because along with that love comes grief, and loss ... but the collection would not have the same power if "The Dead" were not in it. Bitchy gossipy observations are all well and good, and many a novelist has made use of such things to great success. Joyce could have been one of them. But no, he had other things in mind. It's like a quick-flash jujitsu move at the end of the book. It's like Bob Dylan going electric. If you think you know him, if you think you have him pinned down, if you think you have classified and labeled him correctly: you are wrong wrong wrong. Because look at THIS. Joyce was conscious of this, highly conscious. At some point, during the writing of the collection, he felt that maybe he was being too harsh on Ireland - that maybe the harshness, taken as a whole, did not serve the book - and also did not truly express what was in his heart. He wrote, in a letter:

I have often confessed to you surprise that there should be anything exceptional in my writing and it is only at moments when I leave down somebody else's book that it seems to me not so unlikely after all. Sometimes thinking of Ireland it seems to me that I have been unnecessarily harsh. I have reproduced (in Dubliners at least) none of the attraction of the city for I have never felt at my ease in any city since I left it except in Paris. I have not reproduced its ingenuous insularity and its hospitality. The latter 'virtue' so far as I can see does not exist elsewhere in Europe. I have not been just to its beauty: for it is more beautiful naturally in my opinion than what I have seen of England, Switzerland, France, Austria, or Italy. And yet I know how useless these reflections are. For were I to rewrite the book as G.R. suggests 'in another sense' (where the hell does he get the meaningless phrases he uses) I am sure I should find again what you call the Holy Ghost sitting in the ink-bottle and the perverse devil of my literary conscience sitting on the hump of my pen. And after all Two Gallants - with the Sunday crowds and the harp in Kildare Street and Lenehan - is an Irish landscape.

Another element of "The Dead" is Joyce's relationship to his wife, Nora. Nora was a Galway girl (just like Mrs Conroy in "The Dead") - and had had a love affair back in her youth - where a young man stood outside her window in the rain, and then died of pneumonia later. Joyce knew about this event - and it always kind of haunted him, because it somehow made it seem like he, Joyce, was indistinct to Nora. It made him jealous to think that Nora could still be moved by what had happened in her past, with another man. Richard Ellmann, in his biography of Joyce, devotes an entire chapter to "The Dead" - and the background thereof, how all of these different strands came together to make Joyce write it the way he did. Joyce said, much later in life, that every woman in his stories was Nora - he didn't know any other women, basically - and could only write about her. She fascinated him, and he stole from her, her lack of punctuation in her letters (think of Molly's run-on sentence - 40 pages worth - at the end of Ulysses) - her Galways roughness, her tone of voice, how she was ... all of that was pilfered from his wife, and you see it come up time and time again. James and Nora were in Rome for about 6 months - in 1906, 1907 .. and Joyce's experience of Rome - with its ancient ruins abutting up against modern buildings - also became another strand that would make up "The Dead" - how one can be dead at the same time that one is alive. How consciousness of mortality can change what it feels to actually be alive: it is possible to be in both states at once (as Gabriel experiences so devastatingly at the end of "The Dead"). Gabriel, up until the revelatory last 2 pages of the story, has been - for all intents and purposes - a good man, a good husband - a bit stuffy, perhaps - self-conscious - but he tries to do the right thing. He carves the goose gallantly, he dances with Miss Ivors - he works hard on his speech that he wants to give at the party ... he's not a buffoon or an idiot. We don't get the sense that something is MISSING in Gabriel Conroy - until the end. Then we realize that what he was missing was consciousness. Now he has it. The story of his wife's failed love back in Galway (same story as Nora's) - has launched him into life. And at the very same moment he is acutely aware of his own life, he becomes even more aware of how death approaches - as death approaches us all. We are all becoming "shades". His consciousness becomes telescopic - and moves over the snowy Irish landscape - moving 'westward' - he sees the fields, he sees the "mutinous Shannon waves" (meaning: west) - he sees the country cemetery where his wife's lover is buried ... Gabriel, in his sense of loss in regards to his wife, has - for the first time - become connected to all of mankind. He is now in connection with others. What we all share is that we will all die. And for the first time Gabriel really feels the pain of that. He feels the pain of his wife, lying asleep in bed - tears in his eyes - for the love that she once lost.

One of the other things going on in this story - which may be a bit too local for American readers (or anyone not Irish, I suppose): the feeling of west vs. east in that country, which still exists, on some level, today. The west represents rural life, the east is the rush and bustle of Dublin. At the time of Joyce's writing of the story, the Irish Revival was in full swing - and the Irish began to look "west" to see who they really were. It seemed that the rural folk had been lost in the shuffle, the rural folk still spoke Irish - they were untouched by British oppression, there was something that still survived out there in the west that those in Dublin have lost. So people like Yeats and Synge wrote about the west. It was almost political in nature. A reverting to a time before the British. Irish language schools started popping up, and people started traveling out to the Aran Islands, and Galway, etc. - as a way to reclaim a bit of their lost history. Synge - the playwright - took Yeats's advice to "go west, young man" - and lived out on the Aran Islands (wrote a wonderful memoir about it too) - and from that experience of the untouched peasantry of Ireland - began to write his plays that would make his name. And cause riots in Dublin. Story here.

So what does that have to do with "The Dead". Joyce was never big on the Irish Revival. He didn't go for that stuff. His whole thing was to get AWAY from Ireland. (Gabriel, in the story, has that, too - instead of vacationing in Ireland, he takes cycling tours through Germany, etc. He has no interest in exploring his own country. Which is amazing, later - when Gabriel's imagination breaks free and begins to float over Ireland - seeing the snow falling on hill, dale, monuments, cemeteries, waves ... Internally, he is now "visiting" his country - for the very first time.) Joyce places a character at the party - a Miss Ivors. She represent the Irish nationalists. She chides Conroy for publishing his book reviews in a non-Irish magazine. He thinks literature should not be political. She couldn't disagree more, and calls him a "West Briton". This discombobbles him completely. She asks him if he wants to come out to Aran with a group of friends ... he says no, he prefers to vacation "on the continent". Miss Ivors can't let it go. "What - your own country isn't good enough for you?" She's rude. Gabriel has a hard time dealing with her - he feels attacked and humiliated ... like no matter what he says she will never accept it. She leaves the party early - and says goodbye to the crowd in Irish ... Beannacht libh! she cries, and then she's off. The Irish language, in that context, is a weapon. A way to shame the others. Miss Ivors is basically saying, I am more Irish than any of you ... why aren't YOU all speaking in Irish??

Joyce had contempt for such provincial issues - and felt that Irish people's dedication to their own country was just another way to keep themselves down. The point was not to go west, and romanticize their own peasantry - who lived in poverty - and spoke a dead language ... The point was to get the hell OUT so you could have a chance.

But! But. Joyce never stops there. In "The Dead" he presents all of those issues - it's all there - Gabriel feels a bit superior to the rest of the party, and wonders if he should re-word his speech so that everyone will 'get' it. He chooses a Robert Browning quote to start it all off and questions this choice. He wonders if he should choose another quote. (Notice that he doesn't choose an Irish poet to start things off. Gabriel sees himself as continental - he takes pride in that - which is what Miss Ivors senses, and sets about to pierce through that pride) Despite the fact that his wife is actually FROM the "west" of Ireland - they have never gone back to visit Galway together. Gabriel just has no interest in 'seeing' the countryside, and having some Irish Renaissance experience out there. It seems silly to him.

But by the end of the story, what has happened to Gabriel is nothing short of a complete transformation. In a matter of moments, he sees it all. He sees that his wife never really loved him. He sees that he has never loved anyone as much as Michael Furey loved his wife when she was a young girl - Michael Furey who died for love of her by standing out in the rain all night beneath her window. Gabriel sees his own pomposity, and silliness - and avoids looking at himself in the mirror, for shame. He realizes that his tenderness and lust towards his wife, through the end of the party - was misguided. He felt that her attitude and soft manner were to do with him - when what it really was was that she was catapulted back into the past, with Michael Furey. He, for the first time, feels his own isolation from his fellow man. But again, Joyce does not stop there. In the last 3 or 4 paragraphs of the story, Gabriel - by realizing his own alone-ness, his own failures as a man - joins the human race for the first time. He is connected to all. To Michael Furey, to his sweet Aunt Julia, to his sleeping wife - Instead of feeling jealous about her old affair, he looks down on her sleeping form, and finds himself in tears - imagining what it must have been like for her. But again, Joyce does not stop there. He then launches us up - up - into the atmosphere - and Gabriel looks down on all. As though he is already a 'shade'. And where does Gabriel go? Where does he HAVE to go? "Westward". There is no other direction. "The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward." What a sentence. What a mysterious sentence. It is as though Gabriel had had this date from the beginning - only he had no awareness of it. But now he knows. It is "westward" he must go. And so, in the truly stunning last paragraph of the story, he floats out west - through the snow - which is "general all over Ireland" - looking down on the landscape - the fields and waves and dales of the west he had always scorned. And what does he feel? But love. A "swoon" of it.

For me, that last paragraph feels like a swoon - with its uncanny repetition of words ("falling") - it takes on the tone of a prayer, a mantra.


Ellmann writes in his biography of Joyce:

In its lyrical, melancholy acceptance of all that life and death offer, 'The Dead' is a linchpin in Joyce's work. There is that basic situation of cuckoldry, real or putative, which is to be found throughout. There is the special Joycean collation of specific detail raised to rhythmical intensity. The final purport of the story, the mutual dependency of living and dead, is something that he meditated a good deal from his early youth. He had expressed it first in his essay on Mangan in 1902, when he spoke already of the union in the great memory of death along with life; even then he had begun to learn like Gabriel that we are all Romes, our new edifices reared beside, and even joined with, ancient monuments. In Dubliners he developed this idea. The interrelationship of dead and living is the theme of the first story in Dubliners [excerpt here] as well as of the last; it is also the theme of 'A Painful Case' [excerpt here], but an even closer parallel to 'The Dead' is the story, 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room' [excerpt here]. This was in one sense an answer to his university friends who mocked his remark that death is the most beautiful form of life by saying that absence is the highest form of presence. Joyce did not think either idea absurd. What binds 'Ivy Day' to 'The Dead' is that in both stories the central agitation derives from a character who never appears, who is dead, absence. Joyce wrote Stanislaus that Anatole France had given the idea for both stories. There may be other sources in France's works, but a possible one is 'The Procurator of Judaea'. In it Pontius Pilate reminisces with a friend about the days when he was procurator in Judaea, and describes the events of his time with Roman reason, calm, and elegance. Never once does he, or his friend, mention the person we expect him to discuss, the founder of Christianity, until at the end the friend asks if Pontius Pilate happens to remember someone of the name of Jesus, from Nazareth, and the veteran administrator replies, "Jesus? Jesus of Nazareth? I cannot call him to mind." The story is overshadowed by the person whom Pilate does not recall; without him the story would not exist. Joyce uses a similar method in 'Ivy Day' with Parnell and in 'The Dead' with Michael Furey.

...

That Joyce at the age of twenty-five and -six should have written this story ought not to seem odd. Young writers reach their greatest eloquence in dwelling upon the horror of middle age and what follows it. But beyond this proclivity which he shared with others, Joyce had a special reason for writing the story of 'The Dead' in 1906 and 1907. In his own mind he had thoroughly justified his flight from Ireland; but he had not decided the question of where he would fly to. In Trieste and Rome he had learned what he had unlearned in Dublin, to be a Dubliner. As he had written his brother from Rome with some astonishment, he felt humiliated when anyone attacked his "impoverished country". 'The Dead' is his first song of exile.

I agonized over what to excerpt. I feel the ending of the story is somewhat sacred - and although very famous I didn't feel right in excerpting it separated from the whole. I thought then that I would excerpt the moment when the party starts to break up. It's gone well. Gabriel puts on his overcoat. He and his wife are staying in a nearby hotel. Snow is falling - "newspapers say snow is general all over Ireland". Which is already odd, somewhat uncanny. Ireland is not known as a snow-bound nation. It brings a feeling of cold and paralysis to the scene. Gabriel looks up the stairs and sees his wife standing there, in silhouette. She appears frozen. She is listening to something. Someone is playing the piano in an upper room and it has caught her attention. Gabriel is suddenly struck by the vision of his wife. They have two kids together, they've been married a long time ... and suddenly: he SEES her. The devastation that comes later, when he realizes that what she was thinking about in that moment had nothing to do with him ... has not arisen yet. Gabriel stares up at his wife. Watch, too, how Gabriel - an intellectual, a book-reviewer, turns his wife into an inanimate object - he immediately begins to see her as a work of art - and wishes he could paint her - capture her. Meanwhile (we find this out later) - Gabriel's wife is struck dumb by the playing of an old Irish song ... which reminds her of her dead lover. She stands, frozen ... and from that moment on, the past has got her. Gabriel does not perceive this. He feels that she is suddenly in the present. He cannot wait to be alone with her, to touch her, make love. It is Gabriel's tragedy that they have actually never been further apart than in that moment when he sees her at the top of the stairs.

And that's the end of my posts on Dubliners. I will be sorry to move on.

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "The Dead".

Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terracotta and salmonpink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised at her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a man's voice singing.

He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hir against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter.

The hall-door was closed, and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane came down the hall, still laughing.

-- Well, isn't Freddy terrible? said Mary Jane. He's really terrible.

Gabriel said nothing but pointed up the stairs to where his wife was standing. Now that the hall-door was closed the voice and the piano could be heard more clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them to be silent. The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer seemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice. The voice, made plaintive by distance and by the singer's hoarseness, faintly illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief:

O, the rain falls on my heavy locks
And the dew wets my skin,
My babe lies cold ...

-- O, exclaimed Mary Jane. It's Bartell D'Arcy singing and he wouldn't sing all the night. O, I'll get him to sing a song before he goes.

-- O do, Mary Jane, said Aunt Kate.

Mary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase but before she reached it the singing stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.

-- O, what a pity! she cried. Is he coming down, Gretta?

Gabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw her come down towards them. A few steps behind her were Mr Bartell D'Arcy and Miss O'Callaghan.

-- O, Mr D'Arcy, cried Mary Jane, it's downright mean of you to break off like that when we were all in raptures listening to you.

-- I have been at him all the evening, said Miss O'Callaghan, and Mrs Conroy too and he told us he had a dreadful cold and couldn't sing.

-- O, Mr D'Arcy, said Aunt Kate, now that was a great fib to tell.

-- Can't you see that I'm as hoarse as a crow? said Mr D'Arcy roughly.

He went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others, taken aback by his rude speech, could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate wrinkled her brows and made signs to the others to drop the subject. Mr D'Arcy stood swathing his neck carefully and frowning.

-- It's the weather, said Aunt Julia, after a pause.

-- Yes, everybody has colds, said Aunt Kate readily, everybody.

-- They say, said Mary Jane, we haven't had snow like it for thirty years; and I read this morning in the newspapers that the snow is general all over Ireland.

-- I love the look of snow, said Aunt Julia sadly.

-- So do I, said Miss O'Callaghan. I think Christmas is never really Christmas unless we have the snow on the ground.

-- But poor Mr D'Arcy doesn't like the snow, said Aunt Kate, smiling.

Mr D'Arcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in a repentant tone told them the history of his cold. Everyone gave him advice and said it was a great pity and urged him to be very careful of his throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his wife who did not join in the conversation. She was standing right under the dusty fanlight and the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair which he had seen her drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same attitude and seemed unaware of the talk about her. At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart.

-- Mr D'Arcy, she said, what is the name of that song you were singing?

-- It's called The Lass of Aughrim, said Mr D'Arcy, but I couldn't remember it properly. Why? Do you know it?

-- The Lass of Aughrim, she repeated. I couldn't think of the name.



EXCERPTS FROM 'DUBLINERS'

The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After the Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay
A Painful Case
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
A Mother
Grace

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack

December 20, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'Grace' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the second to last story in the collection: "Grace".

"Grace" ends with the words: "I will set right my accounts". And that launches us into the majestic last story of the collection - a true setting-right of accounts - "The Dead". "Grace" is (except for "The Dead") the longest story in Dubliners - and it feels like the most complex (but again, we haven't gotten to "The Dead" yet.) Once you realize what Joyce is doing in "Grace", the title of the story becomes of highest importance. Grace? You have got to be kidding me. With these idiots? They mean well, but they're ignorant. Joyce's anger at the Catholic Church is behind all of this - but, like the master he already is (at 23 years of age) - he doesn't ever state his anger outright. It's implied. In some sense, you would need to know Catholic dogma to get some of the points made in this story - it certainly would help. Again, there are online glossaries that could help anyone make his way through the story. Misinformation passed on, things misquoted, totally untrue stories passed on as true ... The thing with Joyce is, and this is key: take NOTHING at face value. You'll miss the whole point. Not only will you miss the whole point, but you might even be lulled into making the mistake of thinking: "There's nothing going on in this story at all." I had a Shakespeare teacher say to the class once, "If you think a line isn't bawdy, it's because you haven't worked it out yet." Same with Joyce.

In "Grace" - a drunk man falls down the stairs outside a pub. He cuts his mouth open, and a big brou-haha ensues. A constable is called. Who is this man? Who is he with? Eventually, a gentleman appears who knows the man - and he escorts the man home. The man is Mr. Kernan - he's a salesman who truly believes in the dignity of his profession. (The fact that he is such a true believer in business - and not in the Catholic creed - says it all). He has a wife and kids. He was a Protestant but he converted to Catholicism at his marriage. His wife is long-suffering. He is a drinker. He spends no time at home. He wastes all their money. And at this point, he's been drinking non-stop for 3 or 4 days.

A group of Mr. Kernan's colleagues - who want to help him out - come up with a little plan ... and they spring it on him one day, when they all visit his sick-room, where he is recovering from his fall down the stairs. There's going to be a Catholic retreat for businessmen - how to live in the world, but not be worldly ... and they're all going to go ... Mr. Kernan should come too! They know his skepticism and his anger towards the church (totally justified, in Joyce's mind) - but they think it would be good for him. Mrs. Kernan is in on this little intervention. She's not hugely religious - but she certainly believes. The main part of "Grace" takes place around Mr. Kernan's sick-bed. The men sit, and drink whiskey, and chat ... the talk turns to religion. They try to convince Mr. Kernan that he should come to the retreat - they're all going - he should come too! But they all tread carefully - not wanting to scare him away or make it seem like an intervention. Mr. Kernan is scornful.

But eventually he agrees to come to the retreat. He likes the priest - a big red-faced man who is "worldly". He relates. The story ends with all of the men in the church, Mr. Kernan included, listening to Father Purdon give a sermon on how Jesus must have felt about businessmen, and how to live your life out in the corrupt world - and what Jesus would have wanted.

You don't have to be a Catholic to see what a bastardization of Scriptures this is - and that Father Purdon is "worldly" indeed. The flock sits there, passive and submissive, listening to the dreck from the pulpit -

Joyce is doing mutiple things at once here. It's a complicated story - and I was quite edified by the end-notes I have in my copy, and also reading some online analyses of the story. According to Joyce, the Catholic Church in Ireland is the root of all the problems that country has (well, that and the British - and the little problem of the Irish language). The Catholic Church places submission at a premium (the men sitting Mr. Kernan's room discuss the tale of the two bishops who went against "papal infallibility" - one of them was an Irishman - who refused to believe in the infallibility of the pope - and then, at the last minute, stood up and shouted "Credo!") Okay. So. The men in the story relate this as a GOOD story, a story of how wonderful the Irish bishop was - to submit so readily and so suddenly - it was a mark of his great faith. And the greatness of the Irish priesthood in general. Joyce does not slide any snark into this - you don't feel his editorial hand at all, you just need to get the symbolism behind all of this, and know that Joyce thinks all of this is BOLLOCKS. The Irish priest who resisted papal infallibility was RIGHT - and everything that is wrong in Ireland can be traced back to an entire populace forced to say "Credo!" over and over. That's how bitter Joyce is. Joyce had great respect for the Jesuits (as becomes apparent even more in Portrait) - and knew the creed inside and out. It was what it did to people he did not like. The hypocrisy. The priests talking-down to the populace - the priests "dumbing down" Jesus in order to make him seem relevant to a bunch of worldly businessmen ... Joyce has nothing but contempt for all of that.

And his contempt is in the story - it's just hidden so well. His contempt is in the title. Grace. To be found at such a cynical retreat as that one? Not likely.

There's more going on here than I am even discussing - and probably a ton that I can't even see, because I don't have the right context. But "Grace" is a mini-novel. It does not have just one thruline - we get multiple perspectives - it's intellectual, emotional, spiritual - and it poses questions - like all great books do. Joyce has his opinions on the answers ... but he just poses the question. If you are seeking "grace", the last place you will find it is in the Catholic Church. Ireland hated him for this. He was not forgiven.

It is time to "set right" his accounts. This is the deep breath before we go into "The Dead"

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "Grace".

The gentlemen drank from their glasses, set the glasses again on the table and paused. Then Mr Cunningham turned towards Mr Power and said casually:

-- On Thursday night, you said, Jack?

-- Thursday, yes, said Mr Power.

-- Righto! said Mr Cunningham promptly.

-- We can meet in M'Auley's, said Mr M'Coy. That'll be the most convenient place.

-- But we mustn't be late, said Mr Power earnestly, because it is sure to be crammed to the doors.

-- We can meet at half-seven, said Mr M'Coy.

-- Righto! said Mr Cunningham.

-- Half-seven at M'Auley's be it!

There was a short silence. Mr Kernan waited to see whether he would be taken into his friends' confidence. Then he asked:

-- What's in the wind?

-- O, it's nothing, said Mr Cunningham. It's only a little matter that we're arranging about for Thursday.

-- The opera, is it? said Mr Kernan.

-- No, no, said Mr Cunningham in an evasive tone, it's just a little ... spiritual matter.

-- O, said Mr Kernan.

There was silence again. Then Mr Power said, pointblank:

-- To tell you the truth, Tom, we're going to make a retreat.

-- Yes, that's it, said Mr Cunningham. Jack and I and M'Coy here - we're all going to wash the pot.

He uttered the metaphor with a certain homely energy and, encouraged by his own voice, proceeded:

-- You see, we may as well all admit we're a nice collection of scoundrels, one and all. I say, one and all, he added with gruff charity and turning to Mr Power, Own up now!

-- I own up, said Mr Power.

-- And I own up, said Mr M'Coy.

-- So we're going to wash the pot together, said Mr Cunningham.

A thought seemed to strike him. He turned suddenly to the invalid and said:

-- Do you know what, Tom, has just occurred to me? You might join in and we'd have a four-handed reel.

-- Good idea, said Mr Power. The four of us together.

Mr Kernan was silent. The proposal conveyed very little meaning in his mind but, understanding that some spiritual agencies were about to concern themselves on his behalf, he thought he owed it to his dignity to show a stiff neck. He took no part in the conversation for a long while but listened, with an air of calm enmity, while his friends discussed the Jesuits.

-- I haven't such a bad opinion of the Jesuits, he said, intervening at length. They're an educated order. I believe they mean well too.

-- They're the grandest order in the Church, Tom, said Mr Cunningham, with enthusiasm. The General of the Jesuits stands next to the Pope.

-- There's no mistake about it, said Mr M'Coy, if you want a thing well done and no flies about it you go to a Jesuit. They're the boyos have influence. I'll tell you a case in point ...

-- The Jesuits are a fine body of men, said Mr Power.

-- It's a curious thing, said Mr Cunningham, about the Jesuit Order. Every other order of the Church had to be reformed at some time or other but the Jesuit Order was never once reformed. It never fell away.

-- Is that so? asked Mr M'Coy.

-- That's a fact, said Mr Cunningham. That's history.

-- Look at their church, too, said Mr Power. Look at the congregation they have.

-- The Jesuits cater for the upper classes, said Mr M'Coy.

-- Of course, said Mr Power.

-- Yes, said Mr Kernan. That's why I have a feeling for them. It's some of those secular priests, ignorant, bumptious -

-- They're all good men, said Mr Cunningham, each in his own way. The Irish priesthood is honoured all the world over.

-- O yes, said Mr Power.

-- Not like some of the other priesthoods on the continent, said Mr M'Coy, unworthy of the name.

-- Perhaps you're right, said Mr Kernan, relenting.

-- Of course I'm right, said Mr Cunningham. I haven't been in the world all this time and seen most sides of it without being a judge of character.

The gentlemen drank again, one following another's example. Mr Kernan seemed to be weighing something in his mind. He was impressed. He had a high opinion of Mr Cunningham as a judge of character and as a reader of faces. He asked for particulars.

-- O, it's just a retreat, you know, said Mr Cunningham. Father Purdon is giving it. It's for business men, you know.

-- He won't be too hard on us, Tom, said Mr Power persuasively.

-- Father Purdon? Father Purdon? said the invalid.

-- O, you must know him, Tom, said Mr Cunningham, stoutly. Fine jolly fellow! He's a man of the world like ourselves.

-- Ah ... yes. I think I know him. Rather red face; tall.

-- That's the man.

-- And tell me, Martin ... is he a good preacher?

-- Mmmno ... It's not exactly a sermon, you know. It's just a kind of a friendly talk, you know, in a common-sense way.

Mr Kernan deliberated. Mr M'Coy said:

-- Father Tom Burke, that was the boy!

-- O, Father Tom Burke, said Mr Cunningham, that was a born orator. Did you ever hear him, Tom?

-- Did I ever hear him! said the invalid, nettled. Rather! I heard him ....

-- And yet they say he wasn't much of a theologian, said Mr Cunningham.

-- Is that so? said Mr M'Coy.

-- O, of course, nothing wrong, you know. Only sometimes, they say, he didn't preach what was quite orthodox.

-- Ah! ... he was a splendid man, said Mr M'Coy.

-- I heard him once, Mr Kernan continued. I forget the subject of his discourse now. Crofton and I were in the back of the ... pit, you know ... the -

-- The body, said Mr Cunningham.

-- Yes, in the back near the door. I forget now what ... O yes, it was on the Pope, the late Pope. I remember it well. Upon my word it was magnificent, the style of the oratory. And his voice! God! hadn't he a voice! The Prisoner of the Vatican, he called him. I remember Crofton saying to me when we came out -

-- But he's an Orangeman, Crofton, isn't he? said Mr Power.

-- 'Course he is, said Mr Kernan, and a damned decent Orangeman too. We went into Butler's in Moore Street - faith, I was genuinely moved, tell you the God's truth - and I remember well his very words. Kernan, he said, we worship at different altars, he said, but our belief is the same. Struck me as very well put.

-- There's a good deal in that, said Mr Power. There used always be crowds of Protestants in the chapel when Father Tom was preaching.

-- There's not much difference between us, said Mr M'Coy. We both believe in -

He hesitated for a moment.

-- ... in the Redeemer. Only they don't believe in the Pope and in the mother of God.

-- But, of course, said Mr Cunningham quietly and effectively, our religion is the religion, the old, original faith.

-- Not a doubt of it, said Mr Kernan warmly.


Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 19, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'A Mother' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the thirteenth story in the collection: "A Mother". I have heard this story referred to as "comic relief" - there are two stories left to go in Dubliners - after this one - as serious as they come - so perhaps to balance it out, Joyce put in "A Mother", a domestic on-the-surface tale of a woman pushed to the edges of rage at being treated unfairly. I don't know if I would call "A Mother" "comic relief" - but it certainly does act like a breather, a bit of a break, shall we say - in the tragedy - before plunging into the depths in the last two stories. "A Mother" can be read without any glossary nearby. You need no perspective, no context in order to understand it. It could be published in The New Yorker today, no problem. What you see is what you get in this particular case - and that's rarely true with Joyce.

Mrs. Kearney is a woman of great accomplishments (for a woman of her day and age, I mean - and for a woman in Ireland). She makes things happen. She heads up committees, she knows how to get people to do things for her, to get things done. She was an excellent student as a young girl - kind of icy in her manners - so it was thought that she would never get married. But she did - to a man older than she - and from the way Joyce paints the picture, it is a good match. She is a good wife. They have a daughter, Kathleen - who, at the time of the story, is 18 years old. Mrs. Kearney makes sure her daughter has a good education, and music lessons ... and also (and this is interesting) the Irish Revival is going on (the first time Joyce mentions such a thing) - and Irish language classes start popping up, Irish cultural festivals - people start to put Irish words into their speech - In its way, it is a small (and probably meaningless) act of rebellion. The Irish language had been destroyed (Ahem) - and so the Irish Revival movement (which went on when Joyce was a young man), even though it was cultural in nature - had political overtones. Language is ALWAYS political - and Joyce understood that better than anyone. The most famous scene in Portait is Stephen's encounter with the professor in the empty classroom - where they discuss the word "tundish". I'll get to that later. But language is political. By saying goodbye to one another in Irish, by peppering Irish words into their speech - the Irish were asserting the freedom of their souls, their own culture ... Whether or not it had any effect is not the realm of "A Mother". Mrs. Kearney is wrapped up in the Irish Revival. Kathleen, her daughter, is made to take Irish language classes, as well as all of her other classes. You get the sense that Mrs. Kearney - an obviously intelligent woman of great organizational skills - could have been a Chairperson of the Board in another time, a CEO, a headmistress - something. But in her time, in her place ... those skills are kind of at odds with what is expected of her. So she is an organizational fiend in the Irish Revival movement. There's a lot of thwarted energy in Mrs. Kearney.

Things come to a head when a series of four concerts is planned, and she engages her daughter Kathleen to be the accompanist. Joyce was a tenor - and he performed in many of these concerts in Dublin before de-camping to Europe. He apparently had a beautiful voice. The scenes in the concert hall ring so true because Joyce had lived them. Kathleen Kearney is a nonentity in this story - her mother completely runs her life - and she signs a contract with the organizer of the concerts, that Kathleen will be paid such and such a fee for the four concerts. Mrs. Kearney helps organize the whole thing - she helps put together the programs, she helps with the order of each night - who sings first, who recites next ... she understands that such nights need a balance. She is highly involved.

I'm not sure if Joyce was, in his way, criticizing the Irish Revival movement, but he certainly is saying something here about it. The concerts do not go well. Nobody shows up the first night. Mrs. Kearney, hovering backstage, begins to feel uneasy. It is not going to be the glittering night of success she had imagined. Things are dingy. The few audience members are unruly, grubby. The organizers of the concert decide to cancel the next night - and move all of the performers to the big Saturday night concert. This is when Mrs. Kearney goes over the edge. Her daughter had signed a contract for four concerts. She will be paid for four concerts - even if only two concerts occur.

She begins to lose her shit. She tries to track down who is in charge of payment. But she gets the run-around. People do not treat her well. She feels she should be given more consideration, seeing as she was so helpful in organizing everything. Where would they be without her?? But she cannot get a straight answer out of anyone, in regards to her daughter's contract.

You suddenly realize that Dublin is an amateur town. In Berlin, her daughter would be paid properly! Do you think London would treat their artistes in such a horrible way? Nobody else seems to care ... Mrs. Kearney is blazingly alone in her disappointment and rage. Everyone around her seems apathetic.

Things come to a climax at the Saturday night performance. The first act happens. There's a packed house. Finally, one of the organizers comes up to Mrs. Kearney backstage and hands her some money for her daughter - telling her she will be paid the rest after the show. But it's already short. They are short-changing her daughter. Mrs. Kearney, who has been slowly building up to a huge rage (you really feel for this woman, even though she is kind of silly and you want to shout at her, "CHILLAX!") suddenly pulls her daughter from the second act. Her daughter will not play for the artistes in the second act until she is paid in full. This causes an enormous embarrassing brou-haha - the audience gets restless, the singers stand around backstage, waiting ... and you get the sense that Mrs. Kearney, in one night, loses her social standing in Dublin. For good. You get her point - she is being treated unfairly - but she is also over-reacting, to some degree. This goes back to the whole "Dublin is a town of amateurs" critique. Mrs. Kearney, to truly be who she is, needs to not be in Dublin, where her great powers of organization cannot be appreciated. Instead, she is suddenly seen as a loony-tunes. Kathleen is mortified. The organizer of the concert has finally had it with Mrs. Kearney and says, "Fine - Kathleen will NOT play for the second act - we consider her contract broken - and we have someone else who can play for the second act ..." A second accompanist goes onstage, and Mrs. Kearney hears the piano start up - and that is the end for her. She has been replaced. Her daughter is dispensable. The way Joyce describes Mrs. Kearney's disintegration over the course of the story is devastating. She begins it as a calm cool collected woman, sure of her place in the world, confident. At the end, she is a ragged mess, full of such rage that other people become afraid of her.

Although I have just described the plot, there is another level to all of this. Joyce felt that Dublin paralyzed its occupants. There is no room to maneuver. Anyone who has any excellence, or eccentricities ... is doomed. One becomes paralyzed. Joyce felt that he couldn't love Nora properly - in Ireland. They had to leave. He felt that people couldn't "touch each other" in Ireland. Not just sexually, although that was a huge issue for him. He meant souls touching ... he meant communion of souls. Mrs. Kearney had thought all along that she was fine, that her world suited her ... and in a matter of 4 days everything falls apart for her. The lie she has been living is revealed.

Here's an excerpt. (Interesting coincidence that Mrs Kearney respects her husband "as she respected the General Post Office" - considering what was to come in 1916.)

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "A Mother".

The concert on Thursday night was better attended but Mrs Kearney saw at once that the house was filled with paper. The audience behaved indecorously as if the concert were an informal dress rehearsal. Mr Fitzpatrick seemed to enjoy himself; he was quite unconscious that Mrs Kearney was taking angry note of his conduct. He stood at the edge of the screen, from time to time jutting out his head and exchanging a laugh with two friends in the corner of the balcony. In the course of the evening Mrs Kearney learned that the Friday concert was to be abandoned and that the Committee was going to move heaven and earth to secure a bumper house on Saturday night. When she heard this she sought out Mr Holohan. She buttonholed him as he was limping out quickly with a glass of lemonade for a young lady and asked him was it true. Yes, it was true.

-- But, of course, that doesn't alter the contract, she said. The contract was for four concerts.

Mr Holohan seemed to be in a hurry; he advised her to speak to Mr Fitzpatrick. Mrs Kearney was now beginning to be alarmed. She called Mr Fitzpatrick away from his screen and told him that her daughter had signed for four concerts and that, of course, according to the terms of the contract, she should receive the sum originally stipulated for whether the society gave the four concerts or not. Mr Fitzpatrick, who did not catch the point at issue very quickly, seemed unable to resolve the difficulty and said that he would bring the matter before the Committee. Mrs Kearney's anger began to flutter in her cheek and she had all she could do to keep from asking:

-- And who is the Cometty, pray?

But she knew that it would not be ladylike to do that: so she was silent.

Little boys were sent out into the principal streets of Dublin early on Friday morning with bundles of handbills. Special puffs appeared in all the evening papers reminding the music-loving public of the treat which was in store for it on the following evening. Mrs Kearney was somewhat reassured but she thought well to tell her husband part of her suspicions. He listened carefully and said that perhaps it would be better if he went with her on Saturday night. She agreed. She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male. She was glad that he had suggested coming with her. She thought her plans over.

The night of the grand concert came. Mrs Kearney, with her husband and daughter, arrived at the Antient Concert Rooms three-quarters of an hour before the time at which the concert was to begin. By ill luck it was a rainy evening. Mrs Kearney placed her daughter's clothes and music in charge of her husband and went all over the building looking for Mr Holohan or Mr Fitzpatrick. She could find neither. She asked the stewards was any member of the Committee in the hall and, after a great deal of trouble, a steward brought out a little woman named Miss Beirne to whom Mrs Kearney explained that she wanted to see one of the secretaries. Miss Beirne expected them any minute and asked could she do anything. Mrs Kearney looked searchingly at the oldish face which was screwed into an expression of trustfulness and enthusiasm and answered:

-- No, thank you!

The little woman hoped they would have a good house. She looked out at the rain until the melancholy of the wet street effaced all the trustfulness and enthusiasm from her twisted features. Then she gave a little sigh and said:

-- Ah, well! We did our best, the dear knows.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

December 18, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'Ivy Day In the Committee Room' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the twelfth story in the collection: "Ivy Day In the Committee Room".

A story made up almost entirely of dialogue, this one is a toughie. Just go with it. Assume that you don't need to know everything ... you'll get enough of it to understand it. It's about local Irish politics - and because we are dependent on the characters for explication, much of it is in shorthand - and you can easily get lost. A glossary does help - and you can find such things online on insane Joyce sites.

A couple things are clear: a group of men gather in "The Committee Room" on a rainy day. Municipal elections are coming up. A couple of them are canvassing for votes for Richard Tierney (an odd coincidence: he is referred to as "Tricky Dick" throughout). You don't get the sense that the canvassers are totally in love with what they are doing - they are not true believers for Tierney. A couple guys show up who are not enamored at all with Tierney - and it is suspected that they might be spies for the other side - a guy named Crogan. The conversation comes fast and furious - lots of Irish slang. People are called "shoneens", "Mushas", "Wishas" - you get the idea of such terms, but it does help to know what they are. Again, if you google "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" you will find more information than you probably ever wanted. Discussions occur. Arguments. Should they be gratified or not that Edward ("the German monarch" of England) plans on coming to Ireland? When Queen Victoria never set foot on the place? Or should they take an attitude like, "Feck HIM."? What does Tierney say about it? Doesn't he run on a nationalist campaign? One of the things about Joyce that I love is that here we are - with, at times, a 6-way conversation - many of times you don't get the information of who said what ... but if you pay attention, you know who is speaking. They all have different voices. You also can get the speaker due to their political views - their impatience with certain ideals, etc. But make no mistake: this is a rigorous read. It demands a lot. Probably not from Irish people, since all of this is an intimate part of their own history - but for Americans certainly. It's a local political skirmish. With no narrative, no narrator. We are eavesdropping. These guys are gossips. You get the sense of the small-mindedness and almost boredom in the room ... even though politics are important and who is in charge is important. The second someone leaves the room, everybody starts to talk about him - and it's never flattering. Father Keon shows up - a kind of sad sack of a guy, whose priestly collar is hidden under the collar of his coat ... he's gossiped about - is he a real priest? Nobody thinks so. They think he just walks around wearing the outfit.

To add to all of this - it is Ivy Day. Which, again, might not mean anything to us. It probably doesn't. But all of the men, regardless of political affiliation or attitude, is wearing a little ivy-leaf pin on their lapel. It's mentioned again and again. "Ivy Day" is the day commemorating Charles Stewart Parnell's death. People apparently flocked to Parnell's funeral, wearing sprigs of ivy on their lapels. Parnell: the great martyred hero to the Irish (or, one of the many great martyred heroes). A very important man to Joyce - you will see this come up in Portrait of the Artist very clearly. Parnell was the head of the Irish Nationalists, and became, himself, a symbol of the need and desire for Irish independence. He fought for Home Rule. He lost power, though, because of a sex scandal - he was having an affair with a married woman. And so Parnell - the great white hope of Irish independence - was driven out of office on a rail, basically. Joyce never forgave his countrymen for that. And with Parnell's absence, Irish independence was pushed back decades. At least that's how many people saw it. Parnell is still a compelling and contradictory character to the Irish - he haunts the imagination still. He is a symbol of all of the "what ifs" in the Irish national conversation. He is idealized, for sure - but that's part of the point of "Ivy Day in the Committee Room". Here are all of these guys, gossiping and bitching about the upcoming election - with two uninspiring characters running for office ... and they're all wearing ivy-pins on their lapels ... a memory of days gone by when leaders were exciting, inspiring, important. (Again: NONE of this is said in the narrative - it's all implied.) The canvassers hide out from the rain in the Committee Room, and basically bitch about when they are going to get paid for their work for the election. Would they have worked for Parnell for free? You get the sense that something died in Ireland when Parnell died. (That's what comes up again in Portrait.) Parnell, and the loss of him, was a national tragedy. And now all they had were mediocrities running for office - guys who are excited to GREET the stupid English king when he comes ... kow-towing to the British ... would Parnell have done such a thing? These are unanswerable questions, and you can see folks still arguing about it in the excerpt below - Parnell was not, in any way shape or form , universally loved. But he dominated the landscape. He was a true "leader" in that respect. You had to set yourself up either in opposition or align yourself with him ... because he controlled the conversation. In "Ivy Day" you can see how the nationalists and conservatives are far more willing to compromise their beliefs - because they would rather win than not win. The definition of mediocrity. I suppose the point is we just don't know what Parnell "would have done" had he lived on. But the spectre of him looms over any Irish political conversation. He haunts this story.

The real fight here seems to be between the nationalists (those interested in Irish independence) and the conservatives (those in favor of maintaining connections with the British) ... but none of the men seem to have energy for it. They talk about the working man, and fenians - arguing over this and that, the Irish talking-points ... showing apathy more than anything else ... but the gleaming ivy-leaf pins they all wear tells a different story.

To understand Joyce, you must understand Parnell. The story ends with one of the men reciting a poem he had written for Parnell. He recites it in honor of Ivy Day. The irony is probably not lost on any of the men present: the leaders of days gone by had a greatness that Tricky Dick can't even aspire to. It was a question of character, of hope, of moral fiber. Where has all that gone in Ireland? The men sit and listen to the poem - and many of them are much moved.

A story written in the true vernacular of Dublin, Joyce catapults us into the middle of the action. He keeps it local, provincial. But it makes me think of Thomas Hardy's wonderful comment (and he, too, often had critics who said he was "provincial" or too local): "A certain provincialism is invaluable. It is the essence of individuality, and is largely made up on that crude enthusiams without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done."

This was Joyce's own favorite story in the collection (which is telling).

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "Ivy Day In the Committee Room".

-- Hello, Crofton! said Mr Henchy to the fat man. Talk of the devil ...

-- Where did the boose come from? asked the young man. Did the cows calve?

-- O, of course, Lyons spots the drink first thing! said Mr O'Connor, laughing.

-- Is that that way you chaps canvass, said Mr Lyons, and Crofton and I out in the cold and rain looking for votes?

-- Why, blast your soul, said Mr Henchy, I'd get more votes in five minutes than you two'd get in a week.

-- Open two bottles of stout, Jack, said Mr O'Connor.

-- How can I? said the old man, when there's no corkscrew?

-- Wait now, wait now! said Mr Henchy, getting up quickly. Did you ever see this little trick?

He took two bottles from the table and, carrying them to the fire, put them on the hob. Then he sat down again by the fire and took another drink from his bottle. Mr Lyons sat on the edge of the table, pushed his hat towards the nape of his neck and began to swing his legs.

-- Which is my bottle? he asked.

-- This lad, said Mr Henchy.

Mr Crofton sat down on a box and looked fixedly at the other bottle on the hob. He was silent for two reasons. The first reason, sufficient in itself, was that he had nothing to say; the second reason was that he considered his companions beneath him. He had been a canvasser for Wilkins, the Conservative, but when the Conservatives had withdrawn their man and, choosing the lesser of two evils, given their support to the Nationalist candidate, he had been engaged to work for Mr Tierney.

In a few minutes an apologetic Pok! was heard as the cork flew out of Mr Lyons' bottle. Mr Lyons jumped off the table, went to the fire, took his bottle and carried it back to the table.

-- I was just telling them, Crofton, said Mr Henchy, that we got a good few votes to-day.

-- Who did you get? asked Mr Lyons.

-- Well, I got Parkes for one, and I got Atkinson for two, and I got Ward of Dawson Street. Fine old chap he is, too - regular old toff, old Conservative. But isn't your candidate a Nationalist? said he. He's a respectable man, said I. He's in favour of whatever will benefit this country. He's a big ratepayer, I said. He has extensive house property in the city and three places of business and isn't it to his own advantage to keep down the rates? He's a prominent and respected citizen, said I, and a Poor Law Guardian, and he doesn't belong to any party, good, bad, or indifferent. That's the way to talk to 'em.

-- And what about the address to the King? said Mr Lyons, after drinking and smacking his lips.

-- Listen to me, said Mr Henchy. What we want in this country, as I said to old Ward, is capital. The King's coming here will mean an influx of money into this country. The citizens of Dublin will benefit by it. Look at all the factories down by the quays there, idle! Look at all the money there is in the country if we only worked the old industries, the mills, the shipbuilding yards and factories. It's capital we want.

-- But look here, John, said Mr O'Connor. Why should we welcome the King of England? Didn't Parnell himself ...

-- Parnell, said Mr Henchy, is dead. Now, here's the way I look at it. here's this chap come to the throne after his old mother keeping him out of it till the man was grey. He's a man of the world, and he means well by us. He's a jolly fine decent fellow, if you ask me, and no damn nonsense about him. He just says to himself: The old one never went to see these wild Irish. By Christ, I'll go myself and see what they're like. And are we going to insult the man when he comes over here on a friendly visit? Eh? Isn't that right, Crofton?

Mr Crofton nodded his head.

-- But after all now, said Mr Lyons argumentatively, King Edward's life, you know, is not the very ...

-- Let bygones be bygones, said Mr Henchy. I admire the man personally. He's just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He's fond of his glass of grog and he's a bit of a rake, perhaps, and he's a good sportsman. Damn it, can't we Irish play fair?

-- That's all very fine, said Mr Lyons. But look at the case of Parnell now.

-- In the name of God, said Mr Henchy, where's the analogy between the two cases?

-- What I mean, said Mr Lyons, is we have our ideals. Why, now, would we welcome a man like that? Do you think now after what he did Parnell was a fit man to lead us? And why, then, would we do it for Edward the Seventh?

-- This is Parnell's anniversary, said Mr O'Connor, and don't let us stir up any bad blood. We all respect him, now that he's dead and gone - even the Conservatives, he added, turning to Mr Crofton.

Pok! The tardy cork flew out of Mr Crofton's bottle. Mr Crofton got up from his box and went to the fire. As he returned with his capture he said in a deep voice:

-- Our side of the house respects him because he was a gentleman.

-- Right you are, Crofton! said Mr Henchy fiercely. He was the only man that could keep that bag of cats in order. Down, ye dogs! Lie down, ye curs! That's the way he treated them. Come in, Joe! Come in! he called out, catching sight of Mr Hynes in the doorway.

Mr Hynes came in slowly.

-- Open another bottle of stout, Jack, said Mr Henchy. O, I forgot, there's no corkscrew! Here, show me one here and I'll put it at the fire.

The old man handed him another bottle and he placed it on the hob.

-- Sit down, Joe, said Mr O'Connor, we're just talking about the Chief.

-- Ay, ay! said Mr Henchy.

Mr Hynes sat on the side of the table near Mr Lyons but said nothing.

-- There's one of them, anyhow, said Mr Henchy, that didn't renege him. By God, I'll say for you, Joe! No, by God, you stuck to him like a man!

EXCERPTS FROM 'DUBLINERS'
The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After the Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay
A Painful Case

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 17, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'A Painful Case' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the eleventh story in the collection: "A Painful Case".

We're more than halfway through Dubliners now, and in this story - In reading "A Painful Case", I can feel the approach of "The Dead" for the first time, from the other end of the collection. We're moving towards it. The stories get more and more sophisticated - as we get deeper in. "A Painful Case" is just that - painful - to me, it's the most painful so far of the collection. (But again, we haven't gotten to The Dead yet - but it's like Joyce is working up to it. I can feel it.) The spectre of loneliness that becomes so acute, so transcendent and universal in "The Dead" is begun here. Well, it was begun earlier in the collection too - I'm thinking of "Eveline", in particular - maybe "Araby". These are also stories of isolation, thwarted desire ... but again, with "A Painful Case", Joyce slices deeper, he opens his meaning wider - to a more universal place. He's beginning to make himself clear (actually, he's been clear all along ... it's just that he has concealed it from us, luring us into the maze of Dublin further and further - until he thinks we're ready for what will be revealed in "The Dead"). That's the seductive thing about Dubliners - and why it's important (for the first time) to read the stories in order. You read "Eveline" (excerpt here), and it's a story of a girl who has a chance to get out of Ireland, to be married, to grow up, to be free. To see the world, see new things, strike out on an adventure ... never to return. And she refuses the opportunity. You get the sense (in a muted way - Joyce doesn't hit the nail right on the head like he does in "A Painful Case") that in turning her back on this particular love - Frank - who wants her to marry him and move to Argentina- in saying "No" to him - she is choosing the course of the rest of her life. There will not be 100 other opportunities to get married. Hope is low. She knows she is choosing alone-ness by refusing him. The story would be quite different if you felt that, oh well - that one didn't work out - but surely she'll be a happily married woman sooner rather than later! Joyce doesn't let us off the hook. In "A Painful Case", he is even more overt than in "Eveline".

Mr. James Duffy is a clerk in a bank. He lives in a suburb of Dublin - one he has chosen on purpose because it is not as grubby and mean as other suburbs. He lives an orderly life of solitude. Joyce goes to great pains to tell us how his room is set up - its neatness, its spareness. He has a bookshelf where the books are organized by weight (I would have such a hard time with that, seeing as I have 5000 books - how would I find anything??) He has a full collection of Wordsworth's poems on the bottom shelf (heaviest book) - and he has the Maynooth Catechism on the top shelf (lightest book). I can't back up my theory but, hmmm, literature is the heaviest (meaning: most substantial) and the catechism is so light it has to be on the top shelf? Joyce is tricky. In 2 pages, Joyce sets up Mr. Duffy's life - so that the transformation by the end is devastating. He, like Stephen Dedalus in Portrait of the Artist moves out of unknowingness, unconsciousness - into consciousness - and it is not always a pleasant rite of passage. It is like, in the tragedy, Mr. Duffy becomes alive - for the first time - but being alive means being aware of your own loneliness. If only one could stay unconscious! Joyce doesn't just indict Ireland here - but the whole human race. The lives of quiet desperation. Why must life be so damn sad. (It's quite Irish of him to think that way.)

Mr. Duffy does the same thing every day. Goes to work. Has lunch at a pub. Comes home. Goes for long walks on the outskirts of the city (he seems to think Dublin is a pit of vice ... wants to avoid temptation.) He has no friends. His family lives a ways out of Dublin, and he visits them on holidays or when one of them dies. Occasionally he goes to the opera - and that is his only "vice". You don't get the sense (like in 'A Little Cloud' - excerpt here) that Mr. Duffy pulses with unhappiness of thwarted longings. You don't feel like Mr. Duffy aches to escape, like so many of the other Dubliners Joyce has introduced us to. Mr. Duffy moves through life, doing what is most comfortable - living life on a narrow path, never questioning or yearning for more.

Then he meets Mrs. Sinico. She is a married woman with a nearly grown daughter. Her husband is a sea captain who is never home. They meet at the Rotunda - and Mrs. Sinico strikes up a conversation with Mr. Duffy, spontaneously. Duffy finds himself chatting with her, and noticing, in particular, her eyes - how the iris is, their color, the movement of them, the expression. Joyce never says "He is attracted to Mrs. Sinico" (yeah, because he's a good writer, Sheila, okay??) - but he doesn't have to spell it out. He is drawn to this woman. He runs into her again. He asks if she would like to go for a walk. They start to meet up, on occasion, and go for long walks together. Her husband doesn't mind - in fact he endorses these meetings, thinking that Mr. Duffy is interested in asking his daughter's hand for marriage. The long walks which stand in for dates is reminiscent of Joyce's own courtship of Nora Barnacle in 1904. Dublin back then was similar to, oh, Saudi Arabia. Men and women did not meet out. There was no culture of dating. In order to be alone with Nora, Joyce had to walk with her - and so that's what they did. For 4 months until, one day, they decided to run away together. Which they did, to Europe ... and they were pretty much (with only a couple months here and there) never apart from one another ever again. But it all began with long meandering (mostly silent) walks through Dublin.

One day, Mrs. Sinico invites him to her house. Her husband is off on one of his frequent journeys. They sit by the fire. Mr. Duffy begins to feel things bubbling up ... not just lust, but a sense that he is with a kindred spirit. A woman he could share himself with, a woman who would admire him, revere him ... someone he could read to, share intellectual things with ... a whole soul-connection thing happens as they sit there together. Joyce is brilliant here - he tells us just what we need to know - while leaving much unsaid). Like "Clay" (excerpt here), the narration is from Mr. Duffy's point of view - we only know what he knows ... yet Joyce also employs some distance from Mr. Duffy - it's third-person, but limited. We do not know what Mrs. Sinico thinks or feels. She is a married woman. What is she doing? Who is she? We don't know because Mr. Duffy does not know. But suddenly, as they sit there by the fire, she impulsively reaches out, grabs his hand, and presses it against her cheek.

This is such an openly passionate gesture that Mr. Duffy is shocked, and recoils. Is this a Madonna/Whore thing? Maybe partly. As long as she can be his fantasy companion, the perfect listener and partner ... he can love her. But the second she becomes a real woman with real needs, he shies away. Mr. Duffy escapes - and avoids her for a week. He is disturbed. Finally, he asks to meet with her - and he breaks things off. She seems to take it fine - but then when he walks her to the train she starts trembling so violently that he thinks she might pass out. He sees her off.

Then come the chilling words: 'Four years passed.'

Joyce is making sure of things here. He is digging the grave. Mr. Duffy's life is changeless - there is something in him that cannot be touched (at least not at this point). We're moving towards an image of death here ... and once mortality enters the picture - hers and his - everything changes. This story is not so much about Ireland - as about all of us. There have been times of my life when - if a biographer was writing a book about me - he would have to say, "Two years passed." Times when nothing of any importance happens. But ... if we were always aware of the approach of death ... wouldn't we behave differently? Wouldn't we NEVER give a biographer an opportunity to write, "Four years passed"?? That is the human dilemma. The human condition.

Oh, and just a bit of Joycean internal symbolism here: colors are very important to Joyce. They mean everything. He brings this to full fruition in Ulysses - where every section can be categorized according to color (if you know what you're looking for). To Joyce, green always means one thing. Blue always has the same meaning. And to Joyce - brown is the color of death. Decay. Any time anything is brown in Joyce - prick up your ears. Look for death. It's THERE. For example, in 'Clay' - where Maria unknowingly picks clay during a Halloween game, signifying her impending death - Maria goes out to the party - and her raincoat is brown. She is happy for it, because the rain is coming down ... but the fact that it is brown should be important to any serious reader. If it were a green raincoat, there would be some hope perhaps. Or a blue one. But brown? No way. Anyway, 'A Painful Case' is full of brown. Brown is everywhere. In his room - his beer he drinks - his face is even brown.

So. 4 years pass. And one day, during his lunch, Mr. Duffy is reading the newspaper and he comes across an article about an inquest that just went on at the coroner's office in Dublin. A woman had been hit and killed by a train. Had she jumped in front of it on purpose? Was the train at fault? How fast was the train going? Etc. Joyce employs a brilliant device - harking back to the letter-writing novels of the 19th century ... and also predicting the post-modern style of books: we read the whole newspaper article. We don't get Mr. Duffy's response to it - not at first ... we know he has read something upsetting, we can tell in his behavior ... and then we read the whole article. An investigation has gone on about the woman who died. She is, of course, Mrs. Sinico. It is apparent, although no ruling was made, that it was a suicide. In the last 2 years, her behavior had become "intemperate", causing much concern to her family. She would go out at night in search of drink. Her daughter was much worried about her, and what would happen to her.

Mr. Duffy reads this sad sad tale - and basically his whole life falls apart. He goes through every response imaginable. He is stunned. Then comes anger and disgust - that he had considered giving his heart to such a ridiculous woman, a drunkard, a loser. Had he thought she worthy of him? Thank GOD he had the presence of mind to turn her away! But then, of course, other things start to happen to him. He begins to feel sad for her, how sad she must have been, how difficult her life must have been - long separations from her husband ... Once he realizes how lonely SHE must have been - he, for the first time, realizes his own loneliness. His suffering is acute. Because he knows, now, he will be alone forever. That was his chance. For human connection, for souls meeting. It's over. It will never return.

It's a devastating story, truly sophisticated in its structure - a mini-masterpiece.

Here's an excerpt. Normally I avoid posting an excerpt which is either the climax or the ending of a story/book. But in this case, I'm going to make an exception - because it's so important to understand the development of Joyce as a writer and creator. What he is doing here - as he describes Mr. Duffy's thought process in the wake of reading the newspaper article - is predicting the genius sweep of Ulysses. The germ of it is here. The sureness of his prose, the freedom with which he follows Mr. Duffy's ups and downs, the precise observations about the human soul ... it's all here. Joyce was 23, 24 years old when he wrote this. How is that possible?

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "A Painful Case".

Mr. Duffy raised his eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on the cheerless evening landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty distillery and from time to time a light appeared in some house on the Lucan road. What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him and it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he held sacred. The threadbare phrases, the inane expressions of sympathy, the cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal the details of a commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had she degraded herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her vice, miserable and malodorous. His soul's companion! He thought of the hobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying cans and bottles to be filled by the barman. Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been unfit to live, without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits, one of the wrecks on which civilisation has been reared. But that she could have sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself so utterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night and interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.

As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand touched his. The shock which had first attacked his stomach was now attacking his nerves. He put on his overcoat and hat quickly and went out. The cold air met him on the threshold; it crept into the sleeves of his coat. When he came to the public-house at Chapelizod Bridge he went in and ordered a hot punch.

The proprietor served him obsequiously but did not venture to talk. There were five or six working-men in the shop discussing the value of a gentleman's estate in County Kildare. They drank at intervals from their huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting often on the floor and sometimes dragging the sawdust over their spits with their heavy boots. Mr. Duffy sat on his stool and gazed at them, without seeing or hearing them. After a while they went out and he called for another punch. He sat a long time over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor sprawled on the counter reading the Herald and yawning. Now and again a tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.

As he sat there, living over his life with her and evoking alternately the two images in which he now conceived her, he realised that she was dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. his life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory - if anyone remembered him.

It was after nine o'clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and gloomy. He entered the Park by the first gate and walked along under the gaunt trees. He walked through the bleak alleys where they had walked four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his. he stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.

When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked along the river towards Dublin, the lights of which burned redly and hospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from love's feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along towards Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name.

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.




EXCERPTS FROM 'DUBLINERS'
The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After the Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

December 16, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'Clay' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the tenth story in the collection: "Clay".

A wee story, 5 pages long - deceptively simple and light. I remember not getting it at all the first time I read it. It's called "Clay". Where's the clay?? Well, the clay is there all right - but in typical Joycean style, he doesn't name it, and - because he doesn't name it - it becomes omnipresent. At least it did for me - once I knew what Joyce was up to. It's not even that opaque - but the story does require work from the reader - in the way that the other stories, up until this part in the collection, do not. It's like Ulysses. Once you know his structure, once you know what Joyce is DOING ... the book is perfectly clear. And not only clear, but fun!

On the surface, 'Clay' is the story of a woman who goes to a party on Halloween. She seems like a lovely woman, with a great spirit - although life is difficult for her. She laughs a lot - and Joyce continuously mentions that the tip of her nose almost touches the tip of her chin when she laughs. It's a bit heartbreaking, that image. She is excited for the party. She has a hard life - she was a nursemaid, and now she works in a laundry in Dublin. Most of the other women who work at the laundry are alcoholics and prostitutes. Maria (our heroine) is very religious - and was at first frightened to work in the laundry because it's a Protestant-run establishment ... but it turns out that the Protestants aren't so bad after all. Maria has no family. But she has kept in touch with Joe - a man whom she took care of when he was a little boy. Joe invites her out to his house for special occasions - he has kids, a nice wife ... and Maria loves to be included in the family circle. It makes her feel sad that Joe is no longer on speaking terms with Alphy - his brother, whom Maria also took care of. But life is not perfect. On this particular Halloween Eve, Maria finishes up her work at the laundry - she got the night off, so she can go spend it with Joe and his family. She is so excited she almost forgets that there is an early mass the next morning. She goes out shopping to buy nuts and plum-cake for the kids. She gets on the tram, and has an interaction with a "colonel-looking gentleman" (again, with the British presence in these stories) - which baffles her so much that she leaves the plum-cake on the train. It's not that anything weird happens - it's that he's so nice to her, gives up his seat, chats with her - that she gets disoriented. She arrives at Joe's. It's a nice warm family scene. Maria is included. She is very upset about losing the cake on the train - but Joe assures her it's all right. They have some wine. They play Irish games with the kids, for Halloween. One of the games involves someone being blindfolded and brought up to a table where she has to choose an object blindly - and each object has significance, in traditional Irish games. There's water, a ring, a prayer-book ... and then a lump of clay (but again: the clay is never named, or even mentioned). I imagine if you choose the ring then that means you will be married soon, if you choose the prayer-book it means you will enter the priesthood/convent within the year ... choosing water means long life, and choosing clay means impending death. (I only know all this because I Googled traditional Halloween games in Ireland, mkay? If you DON'T know these things, you could probably guess - but Joyce does, indeed, make you guess. There's an internal symbolism going on here that does not reach the surface).

Maria, though, does not seem to get it. She doesn't understand the game. She reaches out, blindfolded, and feels her fingers touch something wet. She doesn't know what it is - and Joyce doesn't help us out by saying, "she touched something ... it was clay ... but Maria didn't realize it ..." or some other such narrative aid. The narration of this story is totally Maria's - we only know what she knows. It's not first-person - it's third-person - but with no omniscence. So if Maria doesn't know it, we don't either. Joyce, in showing Maria's lack of knowledge of things, is criticizing the education system in Ireland - which seemed to have a vested interest in keeping the populace ignorant. He was big on that. Maria is a Catholic, of course - and the church runs her life - another thing that Joyce despised about his home country. Everything is about mass, and Protestants vs. Catholics - and setting the alarm for the Holy Day of Obligation the next day - Joyce doesn't overtly judge - because, of course, the story is from Maria's point of view. But that's part of his strategy. Once you see what he is doing, it's ALL you can see. Maria, on the tram, is intimidated by the "colonel-looking gentleman" who is kind to her - she is so discombobbled by it that she leaves a package behind on the train. This is what the oppressor does to the oppressed ... and the oppressor, in this case, has Maria's consent! Maria doesn't even KNOW she is oppressed - and to Joyce, that is the worst thing about it.

Maria chooses clay during the game. She is blindfolded. Nobody says anything when she touches the clay. She wonders what it is. Joe's wife says something to the young girls - like "get rid of that - put it back in the garden ..." She's "cross". It's like Death has just entered. A breath of mortality. The clay (which is never named) is taken away - and Maria is given the prayer-book instead. Maria doesn't seem to realize what has happened. Death is imminent. She clings to the prayer-book instead.

A vicious story, when you get the symbolism.

Oh yes - and the story ends with Joe asking Maria to sing a song, just like she used to do when he was little. She does. She is so nervous she sings the first verse twice - but nobody seems to mind. The song she sings is an aria from Bohemian Girl - an opera - popular at the time ... and back in the story 'Eveline' (excerpt here) - it is mentioned that Frank, Eveline's lover, takes her to see Bohemian Girl on a date. Nothing is accidental with Joyce - there are no coincidences. If you think there is a connection - there probably is. And there are probably way more levels of connection than you can even discern. He's not a "to the naked eye" kind of writer. The first thing I see is that the very title of the opera - Bohemian Girl - is a comment on the dead-end life Ireland offers its young people. Not just men (although Joyce is primarily concerned with men) but women. You couldn't be a Bohemian Girl in Ireland. There are no options for freedom, or an unconventional life. It is a church-bound priest-ridden nation, supersititious and small-minded ... and in order to escape the ties that bind, you must leave. Joyce makes it seem impossible to even live freely within your OWN mind ... People like Little Chandler, in 'A Little Cloud' (excerpt here) - tries to escape through poetry ... but it's not good enough. Reality is too stifling. So Eveline, in 'Eveline', dreams of Argentina - and being a free and married woman there, away from the ties of family and culture. But at the last minute, she can't leave. She can't. It has too great a hold on her. So now - some stories later - we encounter Maria, a woman who works in a laundry, is unmarried, and dependent on kindly friends to open their homes to her on holidays. Is Joyce perhaps saying (by connecting the two stories with "Bohemian Girl") that Eveline - a young vibrant person at the time of the story - in choosing to stay in Ireland - eventually will become Maria? That that will be her only option? I wouldn't put it past Joyce to make such a comparison.

Why does Maria sing an aria from "Bohemian Girl" and not a hymn or something religious? Joyce is suggesting something deeper here, something more haunting and terrible.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "Clay".

But wasn't Maria glad when the women had finished their tea and the cook and the dummy had begun to clear away the tea-things! She went into her little bedroom and, remembering that the next morning was a mass morning, changed the hand of the alarm from seven to six. Then she took off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt out on the bed and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She changed her blouse too and, as she stood before the mirror, she thought of how she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning when she was a young girl; and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body which she had so often adorned. In spite of its years she found it a nice tidy little body.

When she got outside the streets were shining with rain and she was glad of her old brown raincloak. The tram was full and she had to sit on the little stool at the end of the car, facing all the people, with her toes barely touching the floor. She arranged in her mind all she was going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent and to have your own money in your pocket. She hoped they would have a nice evening. She was sure they would but she could not help thinking what a pity it was Alphy and Joe were not speaking. They were always falling out now but when they were boys together they used to be the best of friends: but such was life.

She got out of her tram at the Pillar and ferreted her way quickly among the crowds. She went into Downes's cakeshop but the shop was so full of people that it was a long time before she could get herself attended to. She bought a dozen of mixed penny cakes, and at last came out of the shop laden with a big bag. Then she thought what else she would buy: she wanted to buy something really nice. They would be sure to have plenty of apples and nuts. It was hard to know what to buy and all she could think of was cake. She decided to buy some plumcake but Downes's plumcake had not enough almond icing on top of it so she went over to a shop in Henry Street. Here she was a long time in suiting herself and the stylish young lady behind the counter, who was evidently a little annoyed by her, asked her was it wedding-cake she wanted to buy. That made Maria blush and smile at the young lady, but the young lady took it all very seriously and finally cut a thick slice of plumcake, parcelled it up and said:

-- Two-and-four, please.

She thought she would have to stand in the Drumcondra tram because none of the young men seemed to notice her but an elderly gentleman made room for her. He was a stout gentleman and he wore a brown hard hat; he had a square red face and a greyish moustache. Maria thought he was a colonel-looking gentleman and she reflected how much more polite he was than the young men who simply stared straight before them. The gentleman began to chat with her about Hallow Eve and the rainy weather. He supposed the bag was full of good things for the little ones and said it was only right that the youngsters should enjoy themselves while they were young. Maria agreed with him and favoured him with demure nods and hems. He was very nice with her, and when she was getting out at the Canal Bridge she thanked him and bowed, and he bowed to her and raised his hat and smiled agreeably; and while she was going up along the terrace, bending her tiny head under the rain, she thought how easy it was to know a gentleman even when he has a drop taken.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

December 14, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'Counterparts' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the ninth story in the collection: "Counterparts".

Wow, this story makes me uncomfortable to read. The part of me that hates the thought that I am in "trouble", that I have made a mistake, that someone doesn't like me ... all of that is stirred up when I read "Counterparts". Farrington, the lead character, is not at all sympathetic - and the story ends with him beating his child, who screams in fear - so no, I don't like Farrington ... but still, his predicament, his problem is one that is quite human, one we all share. He has been blunted down by the disappointmens of life - which put him into a state of nearly-constant smouldering rage ... and also, there's the drink. Joyce is sooooo good at suggesting Farrington's need for alcohol. Farrington's "thirst". It's not just something Farrington likes to do, or wants to do. It's something he cannot resist. And things go wrong because of it ... he is messing up ROYALLY because of his "thirst" ... but still, the thirst remains. Also where Joyce is wonderful is in suggesting that Farrington has turned drinking into this romantic undertaking - that has very little to do with reality. It's like Farrington thinks of a drink - and he sees a warm pub, and loud voices, the clink of glasses, camaraderie ... THAT is what he yearns for the most. Perhaps we could call it connection with his fellow man. But every time he does go and get an ACTUAL drink in the story - it is never like what he sees in his imagination. He has no money. He has already tapped out the bartenders, who have very little patience for him. And so he is perpetually disappointed in his search. He keeps looking for something ... that glow, that warm glow he remembers ... not realizing that it's already gone too far for him to find that glow ever again.

Farrington works as a clerk, copying out documents. He is bad at his job. The story opens with him being in trouble with the boss. Farrington cannot set his nose to any task ... because the spectre of that night's drinking binge looms in his head, a fantastic and beckoning castle ... and so he can never concentrate properly. You can tell that this is a theme, because everyone is already angry with him when the story begins.

He has to finish a certain document by 5. He only has an hour until 5 ... but the need for a drink becomes so acute that he pops out of the office to the pub and has a quick drink. Which, naturally, doesn't help at all - and only makes him even more behind in his work.

He goes out with a bunch of men after work - they drink - Farrington has money issues - he pawned his watch in order to have enough for drinks that night ... there's drunkenness ... there's an arm-wrestling match that Farrington loses, and he can't let it go ...

Farrington is a beaten dog. A growling beaten dog. He goes home to an empty cold house. Where is his wife? She stepped out to church. His son goes to warm up some dinner for him - and Farrington - already in a rage about EVERYTHING - goes after his son with his belt. The story ends with the son pleading with his father not to beat him, and that he will say a "Hail Mary" if only his father won't beat him ...

A violent and bleak story. Unlike the other stories leading up to this one, there is no possibility of escape for Farrington. He doesn't dream of Argentina or America or London. He can't. He can barely get through the day. His escape is in the bottle.

One other thing I noticed: All of the names of the people in the office - Farrington's boss and higher-ups - Crosby, Higgins, Miss Parker - are all distinctly British. Farrington goes out to a pub, and a very fashionable lady whom he had been admiring from afar, brushes by his chair, and says "Pardon" in a noticeably "London" accent. Farrington's drinking buddies - O'Halloran, Nosey Flynn, etc. - are almost caricatures of Irish names. As Farrington staggers drunkenly through Dublin, he passes by the British army barracks in the middle of the city. Joyce does not pull his punches - although the clues may be subtle, and noticeable only to those who are looking for them. Ireland, in this story, feels like an occupied country. Farrington's boss is British. The lady he admires in the pub is British. The British are everywhere. Again, Joyce doesn't ever made a big obvious deal over this. It's all in the NAMES. Joyce puts the blame firmly on the shoulders of the British - of what has happened to Ireland and Irish men.

And let's not forget the Catholic Church either which certainly does not escape the condemnation of James Joyce. Farrington comes home, drunk, angry. His wife is out at church. He beats his son, who offers up a Hail Mary in order to get the beating to stop. Joyce sure isn't parroting the line, "Oh, look what a solace our faith is to us." Faith is useless to that little boy. The church is useless to its people, who suffer under occupation, and have no way out. Joyce left the faith, obviously (and one of the ways Nora threatened him - when it seemed like he would never return to her in Trieste - was to tell him she was going to baptise their son Giorgio. Joyce came home right-quick. Don't you DARE baptise our son!) - and Portrait of the Artist goes into this in a much more detailed manner - where Stephen Dedalus must shed the influences of country, religion, language, family - in order to become an artist. The whole Catholic chapter is one of my favorites in that extraordinary book, but I'll get to that later.

Here's an excerpt. I wanted to choose an excerpt that showed Farrington's yearning for a drink and how Joyce writes about that. Here it is.

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "Counterparts".

The man returned to the lower office and sat down again at his desk. He stared intently at the incomplete phrase: In no case shall the said Bernard Bodley be ... and thought how strange it was that the last three words began with the same letter. The chief clerk began to hurry Miss Parker, saying she would never have the letters typed in time for post. The man listened to the clicking of the machine for a few minutes and then set to work to finish his copy. But his head was not clear and his mind wandered away to the glare and rattle of the public-house. It was a night for hot punches. He struggled on with his copy, but when the clock struck five he had still fourteen pages to write. Blast it! He couldn't finish it in time. He longed to execrate aloud, to bring his fist down on something violently. He was so enraged that he wrote Bernard Bernard instead of Bernard Bodley and had to begin again on a clean sheet.

He felt strong enough to clear out the whole office singlehanded. His body ached to do something, to rush out and revel in violence. All the indignities of his life enraged him ... Could he ask the cashier privately for an advance? No, the cashier was no good, no damn good: he wouldn't give an advance ... He knew where he would meet the boys: Leonard and O'Halloran and Nosey Flynn. The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot.

His imagination had so abstracted him that his name was called twice before he answered Mr. Alleyn and Miss Delacour were standing outside the counter and all the clerks had turned round in anticipation of something. The man got up from his desk. Mr. Alleyne began a tirade of abuse, saying that two letters were missing. The man answered that he knew nothing about them, that he had made a faithful copy. The tirade continued.. It was so bitter and violent that the man could hardly restrain his fist from descending upon the head of the manikin before him.

-- I know nothing about any other two letters, he said stupidly.

-- You -- know -- nothing. Of course you know nothing, said Mr. Alleyne. Tell me, he added, glancing first for approval to the lady beside him, do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?

The man glanced from the lady's face to the little egg-shaped head and back again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found a felicitous moment:

-- I don't think, sir, he said, that that's a fair question to put to me.

There was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. Everyone was astounded (the author of the witticism no less than his neighbours) and Miss Delacour, who was a stout amiable person, began to smile broadly. Mr. Alleyne flushed to the hue of a wild rose and his mouth twitched with a dwarf's passion. He shook his fist in the man's face till it seemed to vibrate like the knob of some electric machine:

-- You impertinent ruffian! You impertinent ruffian! I'll make short work of you! Wait till you see! You'll apologise to me for your impertinence or you'll quit the office instanter! You'll quit this, I'm telling you, or you'll apologise to me!

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 13, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'A Little Cloud' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the eighth story in the collection: "A Little Cloud".

One of the most suffocating and overtly miserable stories in the collection. Even I, the reader, feels suffocated - because Little Chandler, the "hero" of this story is kind of a pathetic chap, you can immediately see he's full of illusions (delusions) that have no basis in reality - and it's hard to get behind him, and root for him. Because you know it's hopeless. Not just because Dublin offers nothing to its people - and Chandler can't have the life he wants THERE, he would have to leave. But because Little Chandler himself is a timid unimaginative kind of silly man ... and having a life of greatness and interest and romance is not in the cards for him. Even if he lived in Paris and went to the Moulin Rouge every night. His constitution, his emotional makeup - is that of a deeply conventional fearful cautious person. That's the deal, Chandler. You are never going to frolic with dancers in Berlin, you are never going to publish a book of poetry that will get mild critical acclaim. Nope. Not because you are not worthy ... but because you don't have it in you. You just don't.

So reading the story is kind of unpleasant. It has some of my favorite writing in it, in the collection.

Little Chandler is 32. He lives in Dublin with his wife and baby. He is an uptight rigid conservative guy - who also has a dreamy streak, or maybe it would be best to call it a rebellious streak. He bucks against the limitations of his life and wonders if there is anything more. Who is he? Does he have anything to offer the world? He loves poetry. His wife doesn't like it. So he reads poetry by himself. He wonders if he could ever write a poem? But he's so bound by convention he can't see himself out of the dead end.

An old friend, Gallaher, had gone to London 8 years before - had fled Ireland under shady monetary circumstances. But now he has returned for a visit, all flushed with success. He's a journalist, and comes back - all BMOC. Little Chandler meets up with him at a bar - the kind of bar frequented by the elite of Dublin, a place Little Chandler feels intimidated. Chandler is a bit of a priss, much is made (by Joyce) about his neatness, his little teeth, his neat fingernails, his combed mustache ... He doesn't drink all that much. He is easily shocked by things. He meets up with Gallaher - who is doing a big show of how great it is to be back, but also bragging about the fleshpots of Europe, and bragging about Paris, etc. He seems to echo Little Chandler's nagging suspicion that in order to do anything with your life you must leave Ireland.

However - in this story - unlike the stories preceding it, where leaving Ireland is seen in a purely romantic (and also necessary) way - 'A Little Cloud', for the first time in the collection, raises the possibility that maybe leaving Ireland is NOT the only answer. Or - maybe when you leave Ireland, life is NOT automatically better and happier and more successful. Because Gallaher does seem happier and freer - but he's also rude, and braggadocious, and ... completely unlikable. So ... leaving Ireland did not transform him into some elegant gentleman - the way Chandler would imagine ... The bad qualities of Gallaher which were already apparent 8 years before have just intensified in his exile. Joyce is starting to move away from the earlier stories of the collection - where the outlook is mainly from a child/adolescent narrator - who looks at the ships in the quays and automatically assumes that everyone on them is happier than those in Ireland - because they don't live there, they get to leave. Places like America and Norway are suffused with romance and glow in the earlier stories ... but now, here, in 'A Little Cloud' - we are in adulthood, we are now faced with the fact that having such illusions (delusions) about leaving Ireland is babyish. What seems to matter, in the end, for all of us - is character. Do you have it, or do you not? What do you want? How do you make something of your life, regardless of where you live?

Chandler leaves his encounter with Gallaher, all worked up and nervous. He feels trapped. He goes home, and takes care of his crying baby while his wife steps out - and he's all twisted up in his head. He tries to recite some Byron, but the wailing baby interrupts his mood. Then, for the first time, we feel rage coming up in Chandler. He wonders why he married his wife - a prim little prissy woman (very much like himself). He thinks about the slutty women Gallaher bragged about - the German women, Jewish women - and wonders why he chose such a rigid little lady. (Dude, you couldn't handle a free-spirited woman if you tried!) His wife comes home, and sees the crying baby - and immediately blames her husband for it. "What did you do?" She scoops up the baby - completely cutting him out of the picture ... and Chandler is perceptive enough to have seen the hatred in her eyes, in that small moment. He is ashamed, remorseful, full of longing, sadness ... and that is how the story ends.

Good times, good times.

There's an echo here of what happened in 'After the Race' (excerpt here - where Jimmy gets swindled at a card game by a bunch of sophisticated Europeans. Jimmy is out of his league. He wants to be sophisticated, he feels better about himself because he is hanging out with Europeans as opposed to Irishmen - he thinks that makes him better than others. But we can see, as readers, that just because these folks are European - they aren't necessarily "better". They're more jaded, perhaps more carefree ... but not being from Ireland is not necessarily the be-all end-all of existence. Joyce begins to hint in that story that the problem might NOT be Ireland itself, but something else - something more individual, personal.

He brings that to fruition in 'A Little Cloud'. Gallaher is an asshole. It doesn't matter that he's lived abroad. And Little Chandler is a prude who has to walk the straight and narrow, and sadly - dreams of being a poetic romantic soul. Never gonna happen, Chandler. Doesn't matter if you change your geographical setting. You're still gonna be a little bore. It ain't IRELAND holding you down, bub.

Oh, and naturally: Joyce writes about Chandler with insight and compassion. He doesn't have contempt for him. He SEES him.

Here's an excerpt. Chandler is walking thru Dublin to meet Gallaher. Thoughts begin to emerge ... things bubbling up.

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "A Little Cloud".

Little Chandler quickened his pace. For the first time in his life he felt himself superior to the people he passed. For the first time his soul revolted against the dull inelegance of Capel Street. There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin. As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses. They seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the river-banks, their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama of sunset and waiting for the first chill of night to bid them arise, shake themselves and begone. He wondered whether he could write a poem to express his idea. Perhaps Gallaher might be able to get it into some London paper for him. Could he write something original? He was not sure what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic moment had touched him took life within him like an infant hope. He stepped onward bravely.

Every step brought him nearer to London, farther from his own sober inartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was not so old - thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just at the point of maturity. There were so many different moods and impressions that he wished to express in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He could not sway the crowd but he might appeal to a little circle of kindred minds. The English critics, perhaps, would recognise him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems; besides that, he would put in allusions. He began to invent sentences and phrases from the notices which his book would get. Mr Chandler has the gift of easy and graceful verse ... A wistful sadness pervades these poems ... The Celtic note. It was a pity his name was not more Irish-looking. Perhaps it would be better to insert his mother's name before the surname: Thomas Malone Chandler, or better still. T. Malone Chandler. He would speak to Gallaher about it.

He pursued his revery so ardently that he passed his street and had to turn back. As he came near Corless's his former agitation began to overmaster him and he halted before the door in indecision. Finally he opened the door and entered.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 11, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'The Boarding House' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the seventh story in the collection: "The Boarding House". Another story that highlights the suffocation of Dublin, the rigid morality that Joyce found so oppressive, the gossip, the hypocrisy. A simple tale: Mrs. Mooney runs a boarding house in Dublin. She had been married to a guy who basically went to the dogs the minute Mrs. Mooney's father died. He took to drink, and one night he got violent with her. So Mrs. Mooney left, got permission from her priest to get a separation - and custody of the kids -and set herself up in business. She's a practical woman. Joyce describes her face as "florid" which has all kinds of connotations, none of them good. Being practical is fine - but in the context of this story it is not. She runs a boarding house - and you can tell it's kind of a free and easy place, filled with bachelors and artists. She has two children - one of whom is a daughter, about 17 years of age. It's not really an appropriate atmosphere for children - but somehow Joyce suggests that Mrs. Mooney doesn't mind that, and she also - let's just say this: Polly, her daughter, hangs out with the men who live there - and Mrs. Mooney looks the other way, thinking that maybe one of them will step up to the plate, and take Polly off her hands. So ... morality is a relative concept to Mrs. Mooney. Her daughter begins an affair with Mr. Dolan, one of the men in the house. Everyone knows about it. Dublin is a small gossipy place, you can't hide anything. Mrs. Mooney, who sees all, does not intervene. At least not at first. She is setting a trap for Mr. Dolan. Mrs. Mooney knows that Mr. Dolan has no intention of marrying her daughter (the Mooneys don't have the best reputation - due to the drunkard of a father, etc.) - but she waits, waits ... until she senses that the affair between the two has grown physical. She doesn't intervene BEFORE then, with her teenaged daughter - as you might think she would ... she waits until it has already happened. And THEN makes her move. Reparations must be made. Mr. Dolan must marry Polly. He has sullied Polly's honor, and he must marry her.

Mrs. Mooney scares me. She's written in almost a grotesque way. Mrs. Mooney SELLS Polly to Mr. Dolan - who really doesn't want her, although he has enjoyed their affair. But he, on some level, is embarrassed by Polly - her bad grammar, and also her kind of shady family. What will his friends say? His family?

Mr. Dolan is no match for Mrs. Mooney.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Dubliners - by James Joyce - "The Boarding House".

It was not altogether his fault that it had happened. He remembered well, with the curious patient memory of the celibate, the first casual caresses her dress, her breath, her fingers had given him. Then late one night as he was undressing for bed she had tapped at his door, timidly. She wanted to relight her candle at his for hers had been blown out by a gust. It was her bath night. She wore a loose open combing-jacket of printed flannel. Her white instep shone in the opening of her furry slippers and the blood glowed warmly behind her perfumed skin. From her hands and wrists too as she lit and steadied her candle a faint perfume arose.

On nights when he came in very late it was she who warmed up his dinner. He scarcely knew what he was eating, feeling her beside him alone, at night, in the sleeping house. And her thoughtfulness! If the night was anyway cold or wet or windy there was sure to be a little tumbler of punch ready for him. Perhaps they could be happy together ...

They used to go upstairs together on tiptoe, each with a candle, and on the third landing exchange reluctant good-nights. They used to kiss. He remembered well her eyes, the touch of her hand and his delirium ...

But delirium passes. He echoed her phrase, applying it to himself: What am I to do? The instinct of the celibate warned him to hold back. But the sin was there; even his sense of honour told him that reparation must be made for such a sin.

While he was sitting with her on the side of the bed Mary came to the door a nd said that the missus wanted to see him in the parlour. He stood up to put on his coat and waistcoat, more helpless than ever. When he was dressed he went over to her to comfort her. It would be all right, never fear. He left her crying on the bed and moaning softly: O my God!

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

December 6, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'Two Gallants' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the sixth story in the collection: "Two Gallants". Another story where nothing much really happens ... yet worlds are suggested within worlds. It's a bit dizzying, too - in true Joyce fashion - a style he will use again and again, most notably in Ulysses - where characters wander the streets of Dublin, and the place names and streets come at you fast and furious - you could seriously track every character's progress, you could walk through Dublin, with the book open - and follow it like a road map. Dubliners is full of place names and streets - never more so than in "Two Gallants". He walked down the block, took a left, crossed Grafton Street, etc. etc. It's obsessive. It calls attention to itself. What is Joyce doing here? Why is he so insistent on that level of specificity? Of something so mundane? It seems to me that it was one of the ways he tried to make his stories seem real. It also was, in a twisted way, an homage to Dublin - there was that one comment he made, I think about Ulysses, that if Dublin burned to the ground, he would hope it could be resurrected exactly as it was - merely from the information in his books. Something like that. Well, you sure could do that with "Two Gallants" - a 6 page story with a circuitous route in it. You notice that Lenehan - the moocher, the guy with nowhere to go - pretty much ends up where he started. If you know Dublin (even a bit, like i do - I can picture a lot of these places in my head - the corner of St. Stephen's Green, etc.) - then you can get a sense of where he's going - and it's a big circle. Lenehan ain't going nowhere. But that's the structure of a lot of these stories - "After the Race", "Eveline" ... it appears that a journey is being taken, and ground is being covered, but the characters always end up where they started. Dublin as maze? Dublin as dead end.

I wonder if "gallants" is ironic. To me, "gallant" connotes a kind of grace, and social ease. But these two guys do not have that. So I wonder if "gallant" had a different connotation back then, or if Joyce is joking about it ... like: this is the best that Ireland can produce, in the way of "gallants". It seems rather Joycean to have a bit of wordplay, even in the title, but I'm not sure. Corley and Lenehan - two "gallants" - stroll around Dublin on a Sunday twilight. Corley is in the midst of telling a story to Lenehan - about how he picked up this girl, and he's been "seeing" her. It's clear, though, from the details given - that she is a prostitute - who also works as a housekeeper (a "slavey"). There are even discussions of birth control - Corley was afraid "she'd get in the family way" - but apparently there are no worries on that score - "she's up to the dodge." Pretty bold stuff for early 1900s Catholic Ireland. Corley bitches about other girls he's seen - and how he has to take them out, and buy them chocolates, and what does he get for it? Nothing! Might as well just pay for sex, because you'd be paying women ANYway, might as well get something out of it. Corley talks about some of those other girls - how only got "something" out of one of them! Lenehan refuses to believe this - Corley says casually that there had been other men before him, he wasn't her first. Lenehan now knows Corley is lying! Etc. Etc. The two gallants wander a circular path, talking in this manner - I can't believe it's a coincidence either that all of this is taking place on a Sunday. Knowing Joyce's feelings about the Catholic Church, it would be like him to make this lecherous sexual conversation occur on a holy day.

Corley is going to meet his girl. It becomes clear that he is up to something - and Lenehan is in on it. Some kind of scam - Lenehan wonders if the girl is up for it? I remember thinking, when I first read the story, that it seemed like Corley was going to "share" his girl with Lenehan - and all it would take would be for Corley to arrange it. That's what I thought was going on. Lenehan - kind of a bum, a wanderer, a mooch - has lonely visions in his head of one day having a home, and a fire to sit by, and maybe a woman there, too. He's 31 years old. Will that ever happen? From what we see of his personality, the odds of that are pretty slim.

Corley meets up with his girl, outside the house where she is a servant. Lenehan watches from across the street, and then follows them, shadily, as they walk away. Corley and Lenehan have a plan to meet up at 10 on a certain street corner. Lenehan, once he loses track of the two, is on his own. You can feel how adrift he is. He stops by a shop and has some peas and a ginger beer. He wanders, this way, that - until the appointed meeting time. (The street where they have chosen to meet up, by the way, is a dead end. Ha ha. Joyce knew what he was doing.)

Corley appears again, with the girl - he drops her off at the house where she works. She goes inside via the basement door - and reappears at the front door a bit later, and hands something to Corley - before going back inside. Corley goes to meet Lenehan with a weird little smile on his face, Lenehan eagerly asks if it all came off, their little plot - and Corley opens his hand, to show a gleaming gold coin. She obviously had stolen it from the house where she works.

Kind of a depressing little story, and all the people are rather nasty. There's a beautiful moment, during their wanderings, where they pass by a harp player - on the street, playing an Irish tune. The harp - a symbol of Ireland - it's on their 5 cent coins - it's everywhere. And most of the places Corley and Lenehan pass by (except for the harpist) are symbols of Protestant Dublin - like Trinity College, and other places. Bastions of the ruling power. This is all done really subtly - and you'd have to know the symbolism to get that level of the story, you'd have to know what Trinity College means and has meant to Ireland - its huge walls, sitting smack in the middle of the city - filled with Protestants. Anyway, it seems to me that Joyce here is being bitchy and QUITE clear about what he thinks has gone wrong, and what IS wrong. The harp player, lonely, begging for money on the street, etc.

Corley is the son of a police chief. Yet here he is canoodling with prostitutes, and engaging in petty crime. And why? It seems just for the hell of it. Corley isn't really wanting for money.

Dublin: nowhere to go, nowhere to be ... young men, "gallants", just wandering around, on a Sunday evening ... with nothing to do but get in trouble. The women are up to no good either.

"Two Gallants", seen in the day and age in which it was written, is a shocking story. And the obsessive naming of streets and corners and landmarks adds to what was probably shocking about it. It feels like it could be from a newspaper story. It's giving details, evidence ... saying: "This really happened". Joyce doesn't let anyone off the hook.

Here's an excerpt from the conversation between the "two gallants".

Excerpt from Dubliners - by James Joyce - "Two Gallants"

Lenehan offered his friend a cigarette. As the two young men walked on through the crowd Corley occasionally turned to smile at some of the passing girls but Lenehan's gaze was fixed on the large faint moon circled with a double halo. He watched earnestly the passing of the grey web of twilight across its face. At length he said:

-- Well ... tell me, Corley, I suppose you'll be able to pull it off all right, eh?

Corley closed one eye expressively as an answer.

-- Is she game for that? asked Lenehan dubiously. You can never know women.

-- She's all right, said Corley. I know the way to get around her, man. She's a bit gone on me.

-- You're what I call a gay Lothario, said Lenehan. And the proper kind of a Lothario, too!

A shade of mockery relieved the servility of his manner. To save himself he had the habit of leaving his flattery open to the interpretation of raillery. But Corley had not a subtle mind.

-- There's nothing to touch a good slavey, he affirmed. Take my tip for it.

-- By one who has tried them all, said Lenehan.

-- First I tried to go with girls, you know, said Corley, unbosoming; girls off the South Circular. I used to take them out, man, on the tram somewhere and pay the tram or take them to a band or a play at the theatre or buy them chocolates and sweets or something that way. I used to spend money on them right enough, he added, in a convincing tone, as if he were conscious of being disbelieved.

But Lenehan could well believe it; he nodded gravely.

-- I know that game, he said, and it's a mug's game.

-- And damn the thing I ever got out of it, said Corley.

-- Ditto here, said Lenehan.

-- Only off of one of them, said Corley.

He moistened his upper lip by running his tongue along it. The recollection brightened his eyes. He too gazed at the pale disc of the moon, now nearly veiled, and seemed to meditate.

-- She was ... a bit of all right, he said regretfully.

He was silent again. Then he added:

-- She's on the turf now. I saw her driving down Earl Street one night with two fellows with her on a car.

-- I suppose that's your doing, said Lenehan.

-- There was others at her before me, said Corley philosophically.

This time Lenehan was inclined to disbelieve. He shook his head to and fro and smiled.

-- You know you can't kid me, Corley, he said.

-- Honest to God! said Corley. Didn't she tell me herself?

Lenehan made a tragic gesture.

-- Base betrayer! he said.

As they passed along the railings of Trinity College, Lenehan skipped out into the road and peered up at the clock.

-- Twenty after, he said.

-- Time enough, said Corley. She'll be there all right. I always let her wait a bit.

Lenehan laughed quietly.

-- Ecod! Corley, you know how to take them, he said.

-- I'm up to all their little tricks, Corley confessed.

-- But tell me, said Lenehan again, are you sure you can bring it off all right? You know it's a ticklish job. They're damn close on that point. Eh? ... What?

His bright, small eyes searched his companion's face for reassurance. Corley swung his head to and fro as if to toss aside an insistent insect, and his brows gathered.

-- I'll put it off, he said. Leave it to me, can't you?

Lenehan said no more. He did not wish to ruffle his friend's temper, to be sent to the devil and told that his advice was not wanted. A little tact was necessary. But Corley's brow was soon smooth again. His thoughts were running another way.

-- She's a fine decent tart, he said, with appreciation; that's what she is.

Posted by sheila Permalink

December 4, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'After the Race' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the fifth story in the collection: "After the Race". With this story, Joyce moves the collection out of the realm of childhood and adolescence - and moves into young adulthood. If I'm not mistaken, there is an unbroken progression in this manner right up to the elegiac last story, with the wings of death beating over it. I would imagine that it is this type of story ("After the Race", I mean) that would have so disturbed George Bernard Shaw when he read it. The picture of what Ireland has to offer its young men is not a pretty one. And Shaw knew, personally, the aimlessness of most young men in Dublin - nothing to do but get into trouble, pretty much. And this in a Catholic country! It would be hard to look at "After the Race" now and be truly shocked by it, so much has changed - adolescence lasts longer, we expect young people to make mistakes now - etc. etc. But back then, it was as though James Joyce was telling a family secret, with stories such as this one. How dare he?? He didn't go along with the Irish Renaissance of the time, either - which romanticized certain aspects of Irish life, the whole Celtic twilight thing. Joyce was like fuck THAT. But then - of course - with 'The Dead' - the last story in the collection - he turns all of this around, a mirror image of all the rest. With its closing telescopic vision of the snow falling over the countryside ... and its haunting never really explained line "The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward." Multiple layers of meaning there. Moving towards death, sure - but there was also, at the time, a romanticization of the west of Ireland, its supposedly untouched peasantry, the Irish language, the purity of the life out there (Synge went out to live on the Aran Islands, to get closer to the "real" Irish) - and to some degree that romanticization still exists today, although I would say that most Irish folks nowadays don't worry about it too much or think about it too much. You know, they're a modern country, they have other issues, whatever - like all nations. But in Joyce's time, in Irish literature - it was allll about "the west". Look to "the west" to see who we REALLY are. If you want to write authentically about Ireland, you have to write about "the west", etc. etc. Joyce never wrote about "the west" - and this book is obviously called "The Dubliners" for a reason. He's a city boy. He writes about the meanderings of urban people, not peasants or country folk. In "The Dead" - something else starts to happen. Gabriel's wife (based on Joyce's own love - Nora Barnacle, from Galway - a Western Irish girl if ever there was one) is from the "west" - she had fled to Dublin to get away from the memories, etc. But the end of the story reverses time a bit ... and it is as though we are high above the land, looking down upon it, the snow covering the fields ... and we are moving west ... at last. Ah, it's glorious. Such a glorious story.

In "After the Race" - we see what sorts of entertainment are available to young men in Dublin. There's a motor-car race - that starts in the country and comes into Dublin. One of the cars - owned by a couple of Frenchmen - is the one we are concerned with. There are 4 passengers in this motorcar - the 2 Frenchmen (and because they come from Europe - or, let's just say - NOT Ireland) - are suffused with mystic importance, as though they know something that the ordinary Irishman can never know. There's a serious inferiority complex at work here, that makes my heart ache. I want to tell Jimmy to not do that to himself, or his countrymen ... to not feel LESS THAN just because he's Irish ... but he can't help it. For generations, Irish people looked at their homeland as something they needed to get away from. For opportunities, etc. If you were from somewhere ELSE, you obviously had a leg-up on the regular old Irishman. Okay, and then there are 2 other people in the car - a Hungarian (great character, hysterical) - and Jimmy, the lone Irishman. These four have become connected through various channels - they're friends, of a sort - and about to become business partners. Jimmy's father is proud of Jimmy, and they have invested in the motor-car business of the Frenchmen ... But somehow the effect of reading the story is that all of this is rather tenuous. Jimmy isn't confident of himself - he's all puffed up with vanity because he's seen hanging around with the Frenchmen - he enjoys the envious (so he thinks) gazes of his fellow Dubliners ... The whole point for him is to elevate himself above the masses. Since there's a drunken conversation about politics at the end of the story - I imagine that there are nationalistic issues at play here as well. It's not just that Jimmy is insecure and wants his new friends to like him. It's that he's IRISH, and he feels better about himself when he's hanging out with "continentals" than with his own peeps. This is not a stretch, I don't think - I think that's part of what Joyce is writing about here, and why the story is a mini-tragedy. Not a sweeping elegiac tragedy - like "The Dead" - but a small portrait of a nation's inferiority complex ... and how Jimmy, in trying to keep up with his European friends, loses big.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Dubliners - by James Joyce - "After the Race".

Rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the possession of money. These were three good reasons for Jimmy's excitement. He had been seen by many of his friends that day in the company of these Continentals. At the control Segouin had presented him to one of the French competitors and, in answer to his confused murmur of compliment, the swarthy face of the driver had disclosed a line of shining white teeth. It was pleasant after that honour to return to the profane world of spectators amid nudges and significant looks. Then as to money - he really had a great sum under his control. Segouin, perhaps, would not think it a great sum but Jimmy who, in spite of temporary errors, was at heart the inheritor of solid instincts knew well with what difficulty it had been got together. This knowledge had previously kept his bills within the limits of reasonable recklessness and, if he had been so conscious of the labour latent in money when there had been question merely of some freak of the higher intelligence, how much more so now when he was about to stake the greater part of his substance! It was a serious thing for him.

Of course, the investment was a good one and Segouin had managed to give the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of Irish money was to be included in the capital of the concern. Jimmy had a respect for his father's shrewdness in business matters and in this case it had been his father who had first suggested the investment; money to be made in the motor business, pots of money. Moreover Segouin had the unmistakeable air of wealth. Jimmy set out to translate into days' work that lordly car in which he sat. How smoothly it ran. In what style they had come careering along the country roads! The journey laid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the machinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the swift blue animal.

They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual traffic, loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient tram-drivers. Near the Bank Segouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend alighted. A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay homage to the snorting motor. The party was to dine together that evening in Segouin's hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend, who was staying with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered out slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way through the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious feeling of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale globes of light above them in a haze of summer evening.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 2, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'Eveline' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the fourth story in the collection: "Eveline".

Another story in the collection that has exile as its theme. The only way to be happy, apparently, and free - is to leave Ireland. But as is apparent in "Eveline" - leaving is not an easy choice. As Eveline is a young woman - who is planning to run off to Buenos Aires with a young man, a sailor - whose name is Frank. There is nothing really keeping her in Ireland - except the ties of family and culture - her mother is dead (and on her deathbed she said to Eveline: "Keep the family together ...") - her two brothers are grown-up and gone - and her father ... well. She's kind of afraid of her father. She's too old now to be beaten by him, and he never did hit her that much - he saved THAT brand of love for his sons ... but she is still afraid of him. He dominates her choices, tells her to never see that Frank sailor person again, etc. She sits at her window - for the majority of the story (which is only 4 pages long) .... and the boat is sailing that afternoon ... and she goes over her choices, her mind going this way, that way ... On the brink of leaving Ireland, she suddenly sees her life in a different light, a more forgiving light ... her life isn't THAT bad here, etc. It's not that she's waffling. It is that this is truly a difficult choice. At that time, if you move to Argentina from Ireland - you'll probably never go home again. You can't leap on a flight and go home once a year, visit the old soil, etc. It's over. Say goodbye. You will never see this place again. Eveline grapples. It also doesn't sound like her love for Frank is of the sweeping soulmate variety. He represents escape and adult womanhood ... it's not like she's so in love with him it hurts, or that she loves him so much she MUST be with him ... It's that her life in Ireland is made up of doing for others, and drudgery, and dull colors, and "odour of ashpits" - and for her whole life she's been dying for a way out. Frank represents that. Joyce makes Ireland seem pretty bleak ... that's one of the reasons why Irish publishers and Irish people in general balked at the book. They got their backs up. Joyce's reply to all that was: "It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass."

Until the last moment of the story, you think she will get on that boat with Frank. But she can't. She just can't. Ties of home and Ireland are too strong.

And - as with all of these stories - the last sentence packs a huge punch. Frank stands calling to her from the ship, devastated that she won't come. She stares up at him and her face "gave no sign of love or farewell or recognition."

Shivers. That's some cold shite right there. It's almost like once she decides to stay (even though it feels like the decision is made FOR her, it comes from a primal place - not in the intellect) - it's apparent that she never meant to leave anyway. The whole Frank thing, the whole grappling thing ... it's as though it never happened. Snap. Done.

Here's an excerpt - the opening of the story. You can feel the sense of impending change from the very beginning: new houses going up at the end of the street, where she used to play ... brick houses ... different ...

Excerpt from Dubliners - by James Joyce - "Eveline".

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.

Few people passed. The man out of the last home passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it - not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field - the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grownup. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

-- He is in Melbourne now.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

December 1, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'Araby' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the third story in the collection: "Araby". I read this story in high school - and I remember (weird what sticks in your brain) that during my first semester in college I had to write a paper for English about a short story I had already read - and I chose 'Araby' - Not sure why, but I did. And I also remember (I'm sure because I wrote about it in my journal at the time - that's the only way I remember things) staying up all night in the fluorescent-lit common room of my horrible all-girls dorm and writing my paper. I remember it was one of the first times in my academic paper-writing experience where I felt that I actually had an IDEA, my own idea about the story - and I could back it up with textual proof. And the idea itself actually interested me - and so I felt that I could write about it interestingly. You know how so often in college you're writing papers about something just because you have to? And there's a kind of drudgery to that kind of writing - but I had some kind of breakthrough with my 'Araby' paper. It's not that it wrote itself - but I felt like I was articulating something about the story that meant something to me ... and I was able to do so without just rambling on aimlessly - because Mr. Crothers, my 10th grade English teacher, had taught me how to write a paper. I knew how to set it up. Anyway, I got an A on the paper - my first "A" in a college setting, and I remember being really proud of that.

My idea was all about blindness, and light and dark - as I recall - the main symbolic themes of the story. The theme of blindness comes up again and again - it's even in the first sentence: "North Richmond Street, being blind ..." But of course Joyce is referring to another kind of blindness.

One of my things with Araby, though, is that I so FEEL for that little kid (I was just talking with my dad about this yesterday) - you WANT him to succeed, and get to the fair, and buy a gift for the girl and all to be well. You don't get the sense that he's a little puff-puff snot, or an obnoxious vain personality ... He seems kind of sweet and sensitive. So the last sentence of the story - with its rage and self-hatred - is almost painful for me to read. Like; no no no don't feel bad about YOURSELF because you couldn't get to the fair on time! I want to save that little boy from years of trouble!! No need to hate yourSELF! Maybe I'm thinking about Cashel hating himself, seeing Cashel in that setting - I don't know - it's just painful to think of that little kid in Araby turning his sights on himself with such contempt.

But I know I did such things as a child myself.

And events in childhood do have an effect, and sometimes leaves a groove that lasts forever. We are forever marked. It may not make much sense to the adult world ... what we see as little problems, or things that should pass ... are tremendously important to children. Like this story. I have to say - when I look back on that event, one of the things I remember is "white-hot shame" coursing through my veins. I felt duped, I felt that I had been stupid and naive. I was 9 years old. I did not forgive myself for being duped. I stuffed that shame far far down and pretended everything was okay - and I never looked back (until deciding to write about it a bazillion years later). I blamed mySELF for that failed "flying up" ceremony. I didn't sit there philosophically and think, "Well, nobody told me we wouldn't get real wings ... it's an honest mistake ... no need to freak ..." I internalized it ALL, and I looked around - and saw that nobody ELSE was disappointed, nobody else had thought the wings would be real - only I did - stupid little dope Sheila. Childhood is intense, man. Woah.

'Araby' is another 5 page story - simple, direct, powerful. A little boy lives with his aunt and uncle in Dublin. He has a good friend - another little boy - who has an older sister. She's probably 15, 16 - and our narrator is always SUPER aware of her. Perhaps he's not a little boy, maybe he's on the verge of adolescence himself ... it's not made clear. Anyway, she walks by his house - and he goes to the window to watch (and enjoy) her movements. Does he have a crush? Maybe. It's not made clear. It's all in the senses - nothing intellectual or cerebral. Like he has an encounter with her on the stairway at the friend's house - and all he is aware of is her bracelets, and her ankles, and the softness of her - She seems like the most beautiful creature who has ever lived.

There's a fair in Dublin - or maybe it's more a bazaar - it's made to sound rather mystical and mysterious - it's referred to as "Araby" - and narrator says to girl, casually, "I'll bring you something from Araby."

The casual tone he takes belies the fact that this is not an empty promise to him - it is his entire reason for living. It is the most important thing ever, like a sacrament. He will bring her something from Araby. I am just seeing, in my head right now, someone Cashel's age making such a promise - and how important promises are to children. Adults promise things all the time, and never follow through. Children learn NOT to believe when someone says "I promise ..." So it's intense, it's meaningful.

Then - through a series of mishaps and ... well, basically realizing that his uncle didn't MEAN it when he said, "I promise I'll take you down to Araby after such and such ..." and it gets too late, and his uncle hasn't shown up - and there's a quiet desperation here ... He SAID he would bring her something from Araby! What if he doesnt succeed??

I'm writing about this haunting story very badly (where is that A paper from college??) - all I can say is, it's amazing - one of the best parts of the collection. Painful. Symbolically rich. Gives the reader a feeling of being a helpless observer.

Oh, a funny thing from my conversation with my dad about Dubliners - we were chatting about the different stories (dad just re-read it last year) - and talking about how good it all is, how precise, and perfect each story is - the order of the stories, how one goes to the other, etc. How good Joyce is. But then, as dad said, you get to 'The Dead' - the last story in the collection - and it makes all the rest seem almost like bad stories. Like: where the hell did THAT come from?

That's why I say: read the collection in order, if you want to pick it up and haven't encountered it yet.

Okay, so here's an excerpt from the painful perfect little story 'Araby':

Excerpt from Dubliners - by James Joyce - "Araby".

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gantlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan's sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung and she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Doovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

November 29, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'An Encounter' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DublinersJoyce.jpg Dubliners - by James Joyce - excerpt from the second story in the collection: "An Encounter".

A creepy little story that follows on the heels of the death-theme in 'The Sisters', the story before it. Only this one has to do with spiritual death. Although I suppose you can say that the priest in 'The Sisters' - who loses it (mentally) after breaking a chalice - also has to do with spiritual death. In 'An Encounter', we start to see Joyce's feelings about Ireland - and what it has to offer to its young sons. The only opportunities are outside of Ireland. There's that one letter Joyce wrote to Nora - before they de-camped forever - something about "nobody can touch each other here" ... He didn't just mean sexually, although that was part of his meaning. He felt that the rigidity of the morality in Ireland caused love and intimacy to become twisted and sick. And I suppose if you look at 'An Encounter' in that light (which I couldn't help but doing - that letter Joyce wrote to Nora came into my mind immediately when I re-read the story last night) - it's quite a tragic story. Because what are we here for, on this planet, except to love one another? The encounter that the two young boys playing hookie have in this story is incredibly creepy, and I suppose acts as some kind of warning to our young narrator. The man they meet in the field, his yellow teeth, his creepy monotonous voice, his twisted sexuality ... perhaps it says to the young narrator: "One day, this could be you!"

The story begins with a game of wild Indians. Our narrator, a schoolboy, loves these games, but more than that - he loves what they signify. (Excerpt below).

But there's a vague dissatisfaction in all of this - because he knows he will never have such adventures at home. You can feel the stifling atmosphere in the story. Not just of his house, or of Dublin - but of the whole damn country. He and a friend end up playing hookey one day - they want to cross the Liffey in a ferryboat, and go off to some destination where they can have an Indian war, and be completely wild. So. They meet up one morning and off they go. Along the quays, the narrator is struck by the boats lined up ... one is a Norwegian vessel, which really strikes his fancy. (Let's remember Joyce's obsession with Ibsen.) He stares at the markings on the ship, and also scans the faces of all the sailors - looking for blue eyes, which somehow seems to mean something to him. However, he doesn't see any blue eyes. Perhaps because the sailors, as is true with most ships, were of a multicultural variety ... but our narrator doesn't know that. He's looking for true-blood "Norwegians" ... who knows what they might have to tell him? Even just getting a glimpse of someone who came from so far away seems like it might be good luck ... or it might change HIS life somehow.

The boys never reach their planned destination - and lie in a field, just lolling about. A man walks by. Then he turns, and walks by again. Finally, the man sits down with them. He starts to talk to them. The boys don't really like him - he's quizzing them about what books they have read - Have you read Thomas Moore? Lord Lytton? He tells them about his book collection (like the boys care) - and then starts to ask them if they have "sweethearts". Our narrator says no - kind of surprised by the "liberalism" of the question - and the man says it is very important for boys to have at least one sweetheart. He then launches into a monologue about women, and their soft hair and skin - and how lovely they are - and blah blah - the way Joyce describes his voice and his manner of speaking makes you think that maybe he is trying to hypnotize the boys, lull them into a sleepy sort of state. He uses repetition, keeps saying the word "soft", keeps circling back to the same images ... Reading it, I want to say to him, "Get LOST, perv!" The man then says something about needing to be excused for a minute - and he walks off a little ways away. They're in a field - where is the man going? Narrator's friend Mahony exclaims, "Look what he's doing!" We never see what "he's doing" - but I assume he's masturbating. The man comes back, sits down, and then starts to talk about how boys should be whipped - and he goes off rhapsodically into a monologue about the importance of whipping boys if they are bad ... and you get the sense that he is more aroused by the thought of whipping little boys than he is by the thought of women's soft hair and skin.

Thankfully, narrator and Mahony escape - without anything terrible happening ... and they go off towards home again. Never having had their Indian war.

I don't think it's accidental, too, that Joyce makes a big deal about how the man has these green eyes - eyes that make you want to look away. Unlike the "blue eyes" of the Norwegian sailors that the narrator dreams about. Green to me signifies Ireland, emerald isle ... so there's an indictment of his country and its ignorant rigidity and superstition in the man they encounter in the field.

In order to live a full and free life, one MUST leave Ireland. That seems to be what the story is saying. I'll excerpt from the beginning of the story - where the themes are set up. It's almost like this predicts the ending of Portrait of the Artist ... with the eventual exile, the necessary exile.

'An Encounter' is another step on the journey to maturity and adulthood - which is the trajectory of The Dubliners. The narrator in 'The Sisters' was a young boy, still suffocated by the world of adults around him. Here, we begin to see him (although he is a different boy) breaking away. Looking forward, outward. Also inward, too, I guess - since this IS Joyce we're talking about!

Excerpt from Dubliners - by James Joyce "An Encounter".

It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo the idler held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm; or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe Dillon's war dance of victory. His parents went to eight o'clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs. Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a tin with his fist and yelling:

-- Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!

Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.

A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they were circulated secretly at school. Oe day when Father Butler was hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.

-- This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! Hardly had the day ... Go on! What day? Hardly had the day dawned ... Have you studied it? What have you there in your pocket?

Everyone's heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and everyone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages, frowning.

-- What is this rubbish? he said. The Apache Chief? Is this what you read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched scribbler that writes these things for a drink. I'm surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could understand it if you were ... National School boys. Now, Dillon, I advise you strongly, get at your work or ...

This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened one of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

November 28, 2007

The Books: "Dubliners" - 'The Sisters' (James Joyce)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Dubliners - by James Joyce

James Joyce said: "When you remember that Dublin has been a capital for thousands of years, that it is the 'second' city of the British Empire, that it is nearly three times as big as Venice it seems strange that no artist has given it to the world."

DublinersJoyce.jpgDubliners is James Joyce's first book - a collection of short stories. It was finally published (after much brou-haha) in 1914. Publishers balked (especially in Ireland) at the frank portrait of Dublin - with its prostitutes, its fake piety, its aimless wandering young men ... I mean, all of that, yes - was very shocking at the time. But I think there was more to the reaction than just rigidity and prudery. Obviously, Joyce touched a nerve. Joyce was telling the truth, as he saw it, about his own country. I think it might have been seen as a betrayal in some circles. Not like he was LYING, no - quite the opposite. They were mad at him for telling the truth. It made them look bad. It was not, shall we say, a flattering portrait. Of course I have my own opinion about that. James Joyce's feelings about Ireland were complex and contradictory. He loved it, it was his homeland - he could never write about anything else - even when he had been living in exile for 20 years - it was to Ireland his mind constantly went in his work. But he could never live there. It was the most suffocating place for him imaginable. So he was not forgiven for choosing to de-camp. Not at that time. I love that Joyce is so honored now, and that Ireland has decided to be proud of their wayward son - but they ran him out of town on a rail back in the early years of the 20th century. He aired the dirty laundry of the "family" out in public. They hated him for it. It's like the reaction today when any African American dares to say that maybe (just maybe) the problems of their community SOMETIMES start from WITHIN the community. Maybe not EVERYTHING can be blamed on slavery. Maybe they need to look WITHIN. Now a white person can never say these things - but watch the reaction when a black person says something like that. These people are pilloried. Shrieking ravens of outrage fly up into the air, blacking out the sun. I see it as a similar reaction to Joyce's writing from the Irish back then, it's not a: "Hey you, stop LYING" reaction. It's a "Hey you, stop telling the TRUTH and making us look bad to outsiders!" reaction. It's understandable, I'm not sayiing I don't understand the reaction. There's a sense that a persecuted group needs to stick together, remain united You can see it in the gay community too sometimes - a need for uniformity. Women, too. Etc. There is nothing new under the sun. There have been identity politics at every time in history - it's just now that we have more official names for it. Groups need to stick together, the rank and file all must agree on the rules, and nobody can break the rules. Well, James Joyce broke the rules. He aired the Irish dirty laundry (literally) in public. George Bernard Shaw said, after reading Ulysses - which shocked and disgusted him, "If a man holds up a mirror to your nature and shows you that it needs washing -- not whitewashing -- it is no use breaking the mirror. Go for soap and water."

Well. Obviously that is a rare response. Most people - when shown a mirror and told, "You suck" - will fight back. And that's what happened to Joyce. He told the truth, and, as per usual with truthtellers, was not congratulated for it.

He left Ireland in 1904 - fleeing with his lover, Nora - leaving scandal and debt behind him. They settled down eventually in Trieste. Joyce had been publishing things here and there, he already had powerful allies like Yeats - who helped him out, thought there really was something special in his writing. But publishers still balked. If you read Dubliners all the way through - and try to put yourself back in 1908, 1909 - and imagine reading it then - put it in the context of its time - you can see what a shocking book it must have been. I have more to say about that, but I'll do it later. Anyway, Dubliners finally was published in 1914.

Harry Levin, the editor of my Portable James Joyce, writes in his introduction:

He left too early for the Revolution; he arrived too late for the Renaissance. His undergraduate idol, the subject of his first published article, was not Yeats but Ibsen. He greeted the Irish Literary Theatre with a polemic against folksy estheticism. He outraged his college debating society by expounding the iconoclasms of European drama. On several visits home from the Continent, between the ages of twenty and thirty, he considered whether some journalistic or pedagogical niche existed for him in the cultural life of his native city. In his single play, Exiles, as in actuality, he pushed this problem toward a negative conclusion. In his short stories, Dubliners, the recurrent situation is entrapment. Their timid protagonists are trapped into marriage ("The Boarding House"), kept from eloping ("Eveline"), wistfully envious of colleagues who get away ("A Little Cloud"). In "Counterparts" a father makes his son the victim of his own frustrations. The plight suggested in "The Dead" is that of a mill-horse harnessed to a carriage, pulling it round and round a public statue.

Escaping from the treadmill of Dublin, Joyce spent the rest of his life brooding upon it and writing about it. His insistence on calling its denizens by their names, and pointing out its local landmarks, held up the publication of Dubliners for several years.

It was too private. Too spot-on. It revealed too much. It felt like an accusation - which, indeed, it was. Who is HE to accuse US? Ireland, at that time, was a deeply conventional society (in many ways, it still is). Joyce bucked convention. He looked towards Europe for inspiration. And yet (as I said before) - his creative consciousness always went back to Ireland. In all his stories and books, it is Ireland that comes to life. An incredible thing. I find it very moving. People, in general, do not like complexity. They find it threatening, and somehow hostile. They want things to be either or or. Not both at the same time. They cannot hold two opposing thoughts in their head at the same time, they always feel the need to make a choice. And so. It is very difficult for such people to understand that Joyce hated Ireland, and Joyce would kill for Ireland. Joyce could never live in Ireland, but Joyce yearned for it in his heart, in his words, every day of his life. He was Irish. He loved his country. Only something you love can break your heart. Ireland broke Joyce's heart. But simplistic folks only hear the criticism. They are not careful readers. They set themselves up in opposition. They come to it with their biases hard and firm, nothing can get through. You can't read Joyce that way. He demands engagement, he demands that you look within, that your SOUL is with him - not just your intellect.

Here's Levin again, in his introduction:

Those who confuse a writer with his material find it all too easy to make a scapegoat out of Joyce. They make Proust responsible for the collapse of France because he prophesied it so acutely; and, because Joyce sensed the contemporary need to create a conscience, they accuse him of lacking any sense of values. Of course it is he who should be accusing them. His work, though far from didactic, is full of moral implications; his example of esthetic idealism, set by abnegation and artistry, is a standing rebuke to facility and venality, callousness and obtuseness. Less peculiarly Joycean, and therefore even more usable in the long run, is his masterly control of social realism, which ingeniously springs the varied traps of Dublin and patiently suffers rebuffs with Mr. Bloom. The heroine of Stephen Hero, who has almost disappeared from the Portrait, says farewell after "an instant of all but union." By dwelling upon that interrupted nuance, that unconsummated moment, that unrealized possibility, Joyce renews our apprehension of reality, strengthens our sympathy with our fellow creatures, and leaves us in awe before the mystery of created things.

Amen. That's what I meant earlier when I said that if you only see the criticism - then you are only going halfway there. If your sense of threat is so strong that you must fight back without letting anything in, if you are closed to the possibility of being changed ... then you will miss that part of Joyce. You will miss the love.Dubliners is a very insightful book, very revealing - and most of the stories are, to use a terrible word, bitchy. He is gossiping, passing on dirty stories, revealing truths beneath the convention. He does not pull his punches. But ... but ... the collection ends with 'The Dead'. And in 'The Dead' - Joyce pulls his vision back - goes from microscopic to telescopic - and reveals a world of love and loss and grief and humanity ... that only come from the deepest places in his heart.

That is why I say to people who have not read Joyce and who want to know where to start (because, yes, he can be daunting) - I tell them to read Dubliners. Each story is about 5 or 6 pages long - on average (except for "The Dead") - so you can take it in small chunks - easily digestible - and I also tell them, and I tell you now: to read the stories in order. Read them in order! At least your first time through. I dip in and out Dubliners all the time now, picking up this or that story ... but my first time through, I read them in order, first to last. Joyce was very careful about where each story went in the collection - there was, as always, a method to his madness - and so much of his genius (not yet in full flower) is there, in the slow methodical progression - from 'The Sisters' - the first story in the collection - to 'The Dead' - the majestic last story in the collection, and the greatest short story ever written. In 'The Sisters' - a priest is dead, and he lies in a coffin in an upstairs room, and everyone (all women, except for our narrator - obviously a young boy, unused to death) sits in the sitting room downstairs and chats and gossips about the priest upstairs. Death hovers over 'The Sisters'. And so 'The Dead', the last story - in all its tragedy and scope - is a bookend, a counterpart to 'The Sisters'. Joyce did this deliberately. So I'm just saying this as a suggestion to those who want to give Joyce a try. Read Dubliners story by story, going in order. You'll start to see what Joyce was about then. Because in most of these stories, not much happens. There are no big revealing endings - nothing BIG happens - and so the book is all about the cumulative effect. I won't speak about 'The Dead' yet, and its place in the collection - I'll save that for when I get to it. Suffice it to say, that I don't believe that Dubliners would have HALF the reputation it has now if 'The Dead' were not included. It is 'The Dead' that elevates the book into something divine (I mean that quite literally), something transcendent and universal. But again, I'll get to that later.

'The Sisters', the first story in Dubliners is a simple gossipy little story. It feels like you are eavesdropping, your ear pressed up to the door. Many of the stories in Dubliners have that feel. The narrator of the story is a young boy - young enough to still get angry when he is referred to as a child. He appears to live with his aunt and uncle, no parents are mentioned. And Father Flynn - a pretty much fallen priest (he appears to have gone mad) who was his good friend - has had a stroke, and after a couple of days of vigil he passes away. This sparks in the narrator an unfurling stream of memories about Father Flynn, and who he was to him, etc.

That's the excerpt below.

Oh, and one last quote from Harry Levin, who has a way of saying things that I can't - so I'll just pass the mike to him. He's talking at first about the challenges of getting the collection published, and what the official problem with the book was. But then he goes on to talk about what Joyce was DOING in these stories, and why they were so amazing at the time ... something that you might miss today. It's almost like the influence of Marlon Brando in the late 40s and early 50s. What he did was so completely revolutionary - he changed our expectations of actors with one performance ... and now, everyone lives in the wake of his influence. That's just the fact. Of course it was in the zeitgeist of the time, Laurette Taylor, Montgomery Clift, the Group Theatre - the way playwrights were writing changed - opening a way for this new kind of acting, etc. It's just that Marlon Brando, with Stanley Kowalski, gets the credit. It's hard to remember how influential he was - since he changed things so completely that young actors today STILL want to be Marlon Brando. But to go back and see him in Streetcar - to watch that original performance ... it's like trying to get at the source of it. It was so influential. It remains influential today. But sometimes it's hard to remember that since now everyone "acts" like that. The old style of acting is gone forever. So there is no comparison.

So. Back to Joyce. The reason I want to post this next quote from Harry Levin is because - I was rereading 'The Sisters' last night, in preparation for today - and it occurred to me that the semi-stream-of-conscious voice is the voice of most short stories today. We follow an internal journey, we go with the narrator up, down, around ... we understand that events have internal causes as well as external. Remember, Joyce was living in the beginning of the "Freudian century" Freud was, naturally, already at work - and the debate on whether or not Freud was correct on this or that topic, or the question whether or not Freud has had TOO much influence (an opinion with which I wholeheartedly agree) - is irrelevant to this discussion right now. The revolution at the time was: there are things within our hearts and minds that cannot be seen in broad daylight. Childhood contains sparks of events, seen mainly through the 5 senses, that continue to influence us in adulthood. The surface is NOT everything. Joyce was trying to not just write ABOUT that, but to reflect that knowledge IN his writing. That's his whole thing - to get INSIDE that experience.

Now, of course, today, that is how short stories are written, that is the accepted style, no one finds it odd or intrusive to move so closely with another soul, to succumb to a subconscious rendering of events. That's how it's done now, shall we say. But back then it was a revelation. The Russians were doing it ... but the Irish most certainly were not.

Okay, I'll finally let Harry Levin take over now:

Most of Dubliners was written, from earlier notes jotted down on the spot, during Joyce's first year in Trieste, 1905. The manuscript was accepted the following year by the English publisher, Grant Richards, but was not brought out until 1914 because of objections raised by his printers. Meanwhile Joyce had added three more stories to the original twelve and sent them all to the Dublin firm of Maunsel and Company, which printed them, then changed its mind, and destroyed the sheets. When Joyce's insistence finally triumphed over the long delay, the published text included the exceptionable matter; the repetition of "bloody," the innuendo against Edward VII, and - what was most offensive to the Irish publisher and most intrinsic to Joyce's method - the specific mention of local establishments and personalities. The book is not a systematic canvass like Ulysses; nor is it integrated, like the Portrait, by one intense point of view; but it comprises, as Joyce explained, a series of chapters in the moral history of his community; and the episodes are arranged in careful progression from childhood to maturity, broadening from private to public scope. The older technique of short-story writing, with Maupassant and O. Henry, attempted to make daily life more eventful by unscrupulous manipulation of surprises and coincidences. Joyce - with Chekhov - discarded such contrivances, introducing a genre which has been so widely imitated that nowadays its originality is not readily detected. The open structure, which casually adapts itself to the flow of experience, and the close texture, which gives precise notation to sensitive observation, are characteristic of Joycean narrative. The fact that so little happens, apart from expected routines, connects form with theme: the paralyzed uneventfulness to which the modern city reduces the lives of its citizens.

Now. Onto the excerpt from 'The Sisters' - the first story in the collection.

Excerpt from Dubliners - by James Joyce: 'The Sisters'


The next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little house in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered under the vague name of Drapery. The drapery consisted mainly of children's bootees and umbrellas; and on ordinary days a notice used to hang in the window, saying: Umbrellas Re-covered. No notice was visible now for the shutters were up. A crape bouquet was tied to the door-knocker with ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were reading the card pinned on the crape. I also approached and read:

July 1st, 1895
The Rev. James Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine's Church, Meath Street), aged sixty-five years,
R.I.P.

The reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was disturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in his arm-chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his great-coat. Perhaps my aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him and this present would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I who emptied the packet into his black snuff-box for his hands trembled too much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about the floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose little clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of his coat. It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient priestly garments their green faded look for the red handkerchief, blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of a week, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quiet inefficacious.

I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it strange that neither I or nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as my uncle said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting difficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain circumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Directory and as closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating all these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make no answer or only a very foolish and halting one upon which he used to smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me through the responses of the Mass which he had made me learn by heart; and, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately. When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip - a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 27, 2007

The Books: "A Very Long Engagement" (Sebastien Japrisot)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

VeryLongEngagement.jpgExcerpt from A Very Long Engagement - by Sebastien Japrisot

Ted gave me this wonderful, haunting (and, in a weird way, fun) book as a gift years ago. I highly recommend it - to anyone who is looking for a good book. I still remember my pleasure of first reading it. It's a war novel - it takes place during WWI, in France - but it's also a love story. A young girl - Mathilde - waits for her lover (Jean - whose many nicknames include Manech and Cornflower) to come home to her. Is he dead? Alive? There is something mysterious at work. He was court-martialed for injuring himself on purpose. But then what? Where did he go? Mathilde, only a teenager, can't get any straight answers. She's a great character, by the way. Wonderful. Physically handicapped (she can't walk), open-hearted, courageous, determined. The book is mostly her story. Her lover never returned from the war (like millions of others who never returned). But there is no death notice, nothing official ... it seems that something else must have happened, something shameful, something that is being hidden. The book opens with 5 soldiers being walked through the mud to an uncertain fate. They are shackled. They tell each other to look out for trip wires. These 5 soldiers (we get to know them very well) all never return ... and Mathilde begins to piece together what happened to them. This is a jigsaw puzzle of a book - with clues dropped, and letters written in code - fragments of notes - mysterious messages ... Mathilde begins to seek out the loved ones (anyone!!) of the other 4 soldiers - to see if they know anything of the fates of their men. Did they say anything? Her search takes her far and wide. She is so young, but - like the title of the book says - she is willing to wait. This boy was her lover, her intended, he was everything to her. If she cannot have him in person, then she will put together how he died. It will not be easy, but she cannot just say to herself, "Oh well, that's it - I'll never know if he's alive or dead ..." That would be so wrong. A betrayal of the highest order.

What happened to those 5 French men, buried in mud on the front line? Shackled each to the other? Why does the trail go so cold at a certain point? What happened? And why will no one speak of it?

That's the trajectory of the book. Because I read it in translation from the French, I can only say that the translation is wonderful. I'm sure it would be best in the original language - but to my ears, this translation flows, it has a poetry to it, a wit, an intelligence - it doesn't feel stilted at all like some translations. The book is about the horror of war, certainly - the chaos of it, the gore, man's inhumanity to man. But it's also about a very smart very determined young lady, putting together as much information as she can - re-reading all of her lover's letters to her (we read the letters - the book is full of fragments of text like that) - trying to figure out if he knew anything more than he was telling. We get to know each of the soldiers - their lives, their significant others - they're all so different, although they are all French - but the only connecting link between them is that they all disappeared off the face of the earth one muddy night - and nobody knows where they are. Mathilde takes it as her mission to put together the story. It takes a long time. We only get glimpses - out-of-sequence glimpses - we are involved in her "detective work" - she breaks the code of one of the soldier's letters - and is able to read the hidden message within the text ... It's all great great stuff.

Very moving, too. What we do for love. And how soldiers depend on that love still being there when they return home. It is everything.

If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it!! Mathilde is a heroine for the ages, she really is. I still think about her sometimes, and wonder what became of her, and how she fared in the rest of her life. She made that much of an impression on me.

Here's an excerpt from the haunting first chapter:


Excerpt from A Very Long Engagement - by Sebastien Japrisot

When suffering becomes simply too great to bear, it sometimes precedes its victims to the grave. After the staggering blow of his conviction, something inside Cornflower had quietly broken, like a monstrous abscess, as he lay in the darkness of the cattle truck bearing him and fourteen others to their unknown destination. From that moment on he was unconscious, save for brief spells of bewilderment, of what he had just lived through, the war, his missing hand, the silence of the mudmen lined up as he passed by and who averted their gaze from his, for the look in his eyes was docile, trusting, unbearable, and his fixed smile was the grimace of a demented child.

He walked along smiling so strangely, the last of these five soldiers who had to be punished; he had blue eyes and black hair, his cheeks were dirty but almost beardless, and now at last his youth gave him an advantage, for he had an easier time of it than his companions in the flooded trenches. In face, he had an animal sense of well-being at plowing through the mud, with the cold wind in his face, listening to the shouts and laughter of evenings gone by: he was coming home from school, along the path through the dunes, between the ocean and the lake, and it was that curious winter when there was snow everywhere, he knew his dog Kiki was coming to meet him in the gleaming sunset, he was hungry, he longed for some bread and honey and a big cup of hot chocolate.

Someone, somewhere, said to watch out for the wire.

Mathilde doesn't know if Manech heard this, through all the commotion of his childhood memories, through the crash of the great waves that broke over them as she clung to him at the age of twelve, fifteen ... She was sixteen when they first made love, one April afternoon, and swore to marry as soon as he came back from the war. She was seventeen when they told her he was lost. She cried a great deal, because women take such things hard, but she did not overdo it, because women don't give up easily, either.

There was still that wire, mended whenever it broke with whatever came to hand, a wire that snaked its way through all the trenches, through all the winters, now up at the top, now down at the bottom, across all the lines, until it reached the obscure bunker of an obscure captain to deliver criminal orders. Mathilde had seized hold of it. She holds it still. It guides her into the labyrinth from which Manech has not returned. When it breaks, she ties the frayed ends together. She never loses heart. The more time passes, the greater her confidence grows, and her determination as well.

And Mathilde has a cheerful disposition, too. She tells herself that if this wire doesn't lead her back to her lover, that's all right, she can always use it to hang herself.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8)

November 25, 2007

The Books: "The Portrait of a Lady" (Henry James)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

PortraitOfALady.jpgExcerpt from The Portrait of a Lady - by Henry James

I'm not really a big Henry James fan (I love this quote from TS Eliot which says it way better than I ever could) - and there have been times when I have felt rather, uhm, defensive about this (just a bit) - because people seem shocked and bothered by my opinion. Same thing when I say I'm not too wacky about Edith Wharton. I mean, I recognize the skill of the writing - in both cases - and there are some passages in Ethan Frome that are as good as it gets ... but the books themselves leave me cold. I have to force myself to pay attention. I never get lost in the narrative. I read Portrait of a Lady years ago, and I barely remember any of it. Unlike, say, Tess of the D'Urbervilles or Tale of 2 Cities - classic books which I first read a bazillion years ago, and certain scenes remain etched in my mind forever, and also: I can remember the plot-lines, the cliffhangers, what happens when, the thrust of the book. Portrait of a Lady remains very vague to me, and I'm not sure why. I do remember really liking the long long stretches of dialogue in the book - the conversations themselves were wonderfully portrayed. It reminded me a bit of the pages-long dialogues in Jane Austen's books. Where it's just people talking, with very little editorial interruption ... and you can HEAR the voices, and man, you wish you spoke like that!! The story of James' writing of Portrait of a Lady is well-known. He started out with no plot, no story-line. He wanted to write a character portrait of a young American heiress, meeting her destiny. Whatever that destiny was, James found out through the writing. Pretty interesting! Even more interesting when you reflect on what the plot of the book ended up being. Isabel Archer, a woman committed to her independence (only - in a strangely artificial way ... you get the sense that all of this is just an IDEA to her, not a reality - she likes the IDEA of being independent, and she likes the IDEA of the mobility that sudden wealth will give her ... but she honestly doesn't have enough character or personality to truly make something of herself.) She's another version of Dorothea Brooke, although a bit more cosmopolitan. Dorothea Brooke has a vague idea that her life should be interesting ... only to find out that she is, after all, not a very interesting person - and she has made completely conventional choices which have broken her heart in 2, for good. TRULY interesting people avoid such humdrum fates. Same goes with Isabel. She is the classic Jamesian heroine: an American, confronted by the cynicism of Europe - and that cynicism is her undoing. She does not have the tools to deal with the machinations of the wealthy in Europe. She is too forthright, too idealistic. It crushes her. In the end, it is a man who is her undoing. How terribly mundane. Isabel assumed her life would be glorious, she assumed that she was a superior type of person ... that regular everyday misery would not be for her. She falls in love with Gilbert Osmond - a horrible man - and he ruins her life. Slowly but surely.

It's interesting - in looking through the book again, to get ready for today's excerpt - I was struck by the many long long passages of character description - which border on brilliant psychology. (I can give James the props when he deserves them!) He dissects people. He describes them, yes, but he describes their souls, their motivations, their outlooks - in a way that can only be termed "Jamesian". He has been called a "first-class documentarian" and it's passages like the following excerpt that show why (in my opinion). George Eliot was better. What she didn't know about the human race probably isn't worth knowing. (Here's just one example) She is a psychologist of the highest order. She's like Shakespeare, in her insights into human beings - her sense of truth and reality. But James here, is pretty darned good. I'm still not a fan, and I still think he's over-rated - but there is much to be praised here. No baby out with the bathwater. (Here's an excerpt I posted from an EF Forster lecture on Henry James which also describes what is missing in James - for me.)

Excerpt from The Portrait of a Lady - by Henry James

It may be affirmed without delay that Isabel was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; she treated herself to occasions of homage. Meanwhile her errors and delusions were frequently such as a biographer interested in preserving the dignity of his subject must shrink from specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines which had never been corrected by the judgement of people speaking with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her own way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. At moments she discovered she was grotesquely wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that it was only under this provision life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organisation (she couldn't help knowing her organisation was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's self as to cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be one's own best friend and to give one's self, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action: she held it must be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always made her tremble as if she had escaped from a trap which might have caught her and smothered her) that the chance of inflicting a sensible injury upon another person, presented only as a contingency, caused her at moments to hold her breath. That always struck her as the worst thing that could happen to her. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about the things that were wrong. She had no love of their look, but when she fixed them hard she recognised them. It was wrong to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel; she had seen very little of the evil of the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each other. Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed indecent not to scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit was the danger of inconsistency - the danger of keeping up the flag after the place has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so crooked as to be almost a dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew little of the sorts of artillery to which young women are exposed, flattered herself that such contradictions would never be noted in her own conduct. Her life should always be in harmony with the most pleasing impression she could produce; she would be what she appeared, and she would appear what she was. Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she might find herself some day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look very well and to be if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant.

It was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortunate in being independent, and that she ought to make some very enlightened use of that state. She never called it the state of solitude, much less of singleness; she thought such descriptions weak, and, besides, her sister Lily constantly urged her to come and abide. She had a friend whose acquaintance she had made shortly before her father's death, who offered so high an example of useful activity that Isabel always thought of her as a model. Henrietta Stackpole had the advantage of an admired ability; she was thoroughly launched in journalism, and her letters to the Interviewer, from Washington, Newport, the White Mountains and other places, were universally quoted. Isabel pronounced them with confidence "ephemeral", but she esteemed the courage, energy and good-humour of the writer, who, without parents and without property, had adopted three of the children of an infirm and widowed sister and was paying their school-bills out of the proceeds of her literary labour. Henrietta was in the van of progress and had clear-cut views on most subjects; her cherished desire had long been to come to Europe and write a series of letters to the Interviewer from the radical point of view - an enterprise the less difficult as she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions would be and to how many objections most European institutions lay open. When she heard that Isabel was coming she wished to start at once; thinking, natrually, that it would be delightful the two should travel together. She had been obliged, however, to postpone this enterprise. She thought Isabel a glorious creature, and had spoken of her covertly in some of her letters, though she never mentioned the fact to her friend, who would not have taken pleasure in it and was not a regular student of the Interviewer: Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proof that a woman might suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources were of the obvious kind; but even if one had not the journalistic talent and a genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the public was going to want, one was not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and resign one's self to being frivolous and hollow. Isabel was stoutly determined not to be hollow. If one should wait with the right patience one would find some happy work to one's hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was not without a collection of views on the subject of marriage. The first on the list was a conviction of the vulgarity of thinking too much of it. From lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she might be delivered; she held that a woman ought to be able to live to herself, in the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and that it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of another sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered; something pure and proud that there was in her - something cold and dry an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have called it - had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on the article of possible husbands. Few of the men she saw seemed worth a ruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of them sholud present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience. Deep in her soul - it was the deepest thing there - lay a belief that if a certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; but this image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive. Isabel's thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after a little it ended in alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself; you could have made her colour, any day in the year, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out her development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her nature had, in her conceit, a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one's spirit was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses. But she was often reminded that there were other gardens in the world than those of her remarkable soul, and that there were moreover a great many places which were not gardens at all - only dusky pestiferous tracts, planted thick with ugliness and misery. In the current of that repaid curiosity on which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to this beautiful old England and might carry her much further still, she often checked herself with the thought of the thousands of people who were less happy than herself - a thought which for the moment made her fine, full consciousness appear a kind of immodesty. What should one do with the misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self? It must be confessed that this question never held her long. She was too young, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She always returned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every one thought clever should begin by getting a general impression of life. This impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subject of special attention.

England was a revelation to her; and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime. In her infantine excursions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery window; Paris, not London, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there his children had naturally not entered. The images of that time moreover had grown faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle's house seemed a picture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon Isabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need. The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished panels, the deep greenness otuside, that seemed always peeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a "property" - a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, where the tread was muffled by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all friction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk - these things were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions. She formed a fast friendship with her uncle, and often sat by his chair when he had had it moved out to the lawn. He passed hours in the open air, sitting with folded hands like a placid, homely household god, a god of service, who had done his work and received his wages and was trying to grow used to weeks and months made up only of off-days. Isabel amused him more than she suspected - the effect she produced upon people was often different from what she supposed - and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of making her chatter. It was by this term that he qualified her conversation, which had much of the "point" observable in that of the young ladies of her country, to whom the ear of the world is more directly presented than to their sisters in other lands. Like the mass of American girls Isabel had been encouraged to express herself; her remarks had been attended to; she had been expected to have emotions and opinoins. Many of her opinions had doubtless but a slender value, many of her emotions passed away in the utterance; but they had left a trace in giving her the habit of seeming at least to feel and think, and in imparting moreover to her words when she was really moved that prompt vividness which so many people had regarded as a sign of superiority.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 21, 2007

The Books: "Never Let Me Go" (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

NeverLetMeGo.jpgExcerpt from Never Let Me Go - by Kazuo Ishiguro

I read Never Let Me Go this year - posted about it here. I hesitate to even say anything about it, for fear of giving stuff away. It is the kind of book that is dependent on the reader NOT knowing anything going in. I went into it pure. I had somehow managed to avoid all spoilers - not even a HINT of anything made it to my ears (which is kind of extraordinary, considering how much I read book reviews, etc.) But I read one post about Never let Me Go in June (I link to it above) - went out, bought the book, and read it immediately. I was that curious about it. I am very glad I knew nothing, I didn't know the secret of the book, I didn't know the plot even! It's a terrible story, it really made me sick - and then suddenly, with a whoosh, on the last page - I found myself weeping. But up until that point, I was frozen in horror and disgust. It's the strangest sensation, reading that book - I know I'm not writing about it very well, but oh well. You can't win them all. Ishiguro, again, amazes me with his talent. He launches into the story, it's a first-person narration - our narrator is a woman named Kathy, and she's looking back on her childhood at a boarding school. All very normal and British. But she uses certain words in a context that makes me confused. I don't know what she means. What does she mean, she's a "carer"? That's in the first sentence. She doesn't bother to explain it to us, not for a long while - because she assumes we know. But there are other words, too. Not sci-fi outer space words - but words that you think you know what they mean, but they just sound ODD in her context. You start to piece together the world she inhabits. And piece by piece, the picture becomes clearer and clearer. By the end you're like: Okay, thanks, never want to live THERE, thank you very much. You're haunted by the book. It stays with you for a couple of days after you put it down.

I really don't want to say much more if you haven't read it. All I can do is say it was one of the most powerful books I've read in the last couple of years. It made me think, it made me question some of my unexamined beliefs, it made me scared, it made me ponder some big issues - but it also just reverberated around me with its implications. It's HORRIBLE. A great great read - I highly recommend it.

Ishiguro unfolds his world slowly. Kathy is not an introspective narrator. She does seem to obsess about emotional accuracy - to a point where you want to go, "Okay, Kathy, we get it, we get it." But that's part of the point. Kathy goes on and on about her high school years, her friends, her teachers, her classes, the intricacies of the social world at school, etc ... and yet somehow you get the sense that we do not know the whole story, that there is an entire world just around the corner, one where all the rules are clear ... why isn't Kathy talking about THAT world? She assumes we know about it. She babbles on about her friends ... and it made me so uneasy to read at first, because I was frightened of what I did not know. I knew I wasn't being told the whole story, I knew there were certain things that seemed off: is it an orphanage? A mental hospital? Where are the parents? Are they physically deformed children? Are they dwarves? Or are they actually NOT children - but little old people in a nursing home? Anything seemed possible. We never hear what anybody else looks like, we never get context like that. We also know that the children are brought up in a state of secrecy and mystery: information is withheld from them, until they can handle it. And because they have (seemingly) no contact with the outside world, the children do not question the rules, or the way things are. The book doesn't seem to take place in the far future, although it feels ... off ... and Ishiguro makes a point of telling us the year on the first page: England, late 1990s. Which just gives a chill, when you realize what the story really IS.

One of Kathy's friends in school is a boy named Tommy. It seems that Tommy has guessed what the deal is, long before the rest do. And he rages. He has temper tantrums. He is uncontrollable. There was a teacher at the school, too, who apparently did not agree with keeping information from the children - although the children are prepared for their roles in life from a very early age - but more than that - she thought that making the children busy busy busy with schoolwork and artwork was a disservice to them. Their preparations should have been much deeper, she thought. The teacher, naturally, did not last long at the school. She rocked the boat.

This excerpt is from early on in the book. Kathy and Tommy meet up by the pond at the school, Tommy has something he wants to tell her. The excerpt shows the oddness of the world: like, of course it would be good if children were creative ... but why does this school make such a huge deal out of it? What is going on here?? Kathy doesn't seem to question it, but Tommy does.

Comparing this book to Remains of the Day just leaves me in awe at Ishiguro's breadth.

Excerpt from Never Let Me Go - by Kazuo Ishiguro

Miss Lucy was the most sporting of the guardians at Hailsham, though you might not have guessed it from her appearance. She had a squat, almost bulldoggy figure, and her odd black hair, when it grew, grew upwards so it never covered her ears or chunky neck. But she was really strong and fit, and even when we were older, most of us - even the boys - couldn't keep up with her on a fields run. She was superb at hockey, and could even hold her own with the Senior boys on the football pitch. I remember watching once when James B. tried to trip her as she went past him with the ball, and he was the one sent flying instead. When we'd been in the Juniors, she'd never been someone like Miss Geraldine who you turned to when you were upset. In fact, she didn't tend to speak much to us when we were younger. It was only in the Seniors, really, we'd started to appreciate her brisk style.

"You were saying something," I said to Tommy. "Somethiing about Miss Lucy telling you it was all right not to be creative."

"She did say something like that. She said I shouldn't worry. Not mind what other people were saying. A couple of months ago. Maybe longer."

Over at the house, a few Juniors had stopped at one of the upstairs windows and were watching us. But I now crouched down in front of Tommy, no longer pretending anything.

"Tommy, that's a funny thing for her to say. Are you sure you got it right?"

"Of course I got it right." His voice lowered suddenly. "She didn't just say it once. We were in her room and she gave me a whole talk about it."

When she'd first asked him to come to her study after Art Appreciation, Tommy explained, he'd expected yet another lecture about how he should try harder - the sort of thing he'd had already from various guardians, including Miss Emily herself. But as they were walking from the house towards the Orangery - where the guardians had their living quarters - Tommy began to get an inkling this was something different. Then, once he was seated in Miss Lucy's easy chair - she'd remained standing by the window - she asked him to tell her the whole story, as he saw it, of what had been happening to him. So Tommy had begun going through it all. But before he was even half way she'd suddenly broken in and started to talk herself. She'd known a lot of students, she'd said, who'd for a long time found it very difficult to be creative: painting, drawing, poetry, none of it going right for years. Then one day they'd turned a corner and blossomed. It was quite possible Tommy was one of these.

Tommy had heard all of this before, but there was something about Miss Lucy's manner that made him keep listening hard.

"I could tell," he told me, "she was leading up to something. Something different."

Sure enough, she was soon saying things Tommy found difficult to follow. But she kept repeating it until eventually he began to understand. If Tommy had genuinely tried, she was saying, but he just couldn't be very creative, then that was quite all right, he wasn't to worry about it. It was wrong for anyone, whether they were students or guardians, to punish him for it, or put pressure on him in any way. It simply wasn't his fault. And when Tommy had protested it was all very well Miss Lucy saying this, but everyone did think it was his fault, she'd given a sigh and looked out of her window. Then she'd said:

"It may not help you much. But just you remember this. There's at least one person herre at Hailsham who believes otherwise. At least one person who believes you're a very good student, as good as any she's ever come across, never mind how creative you are."

"She wasn't having you on, was she?" I asked Tommy. "It wasn't some clever way of telling you off?"

"It definitely wasn't anything like that. Anyway ..." For the first time he seemed worried about being overheard and glanced over his shoulder towards the house. The Juniors at the window had lost interest and gone; some girls from our years were walking towards the pavilion, but they were still a good way off. Tommy turned back to me and said almost in a whisper:

"Anyway, when she said all this, she was shaking."

"What do you mean, shaking?"

"Shaking. With rage. I could see her. She was furious. But furious deep inside."

"Who at?"

"I wasn't sure. Not at me anyway, that was the most important thing!" He gave a laugh, then became serious again. "I don't know who she was angry with. But she was angry all right."

I stood up again because my calves were aching. "It's pretty weird, Tommy."

"Funny thing is, this talk with her, it did help. Helped a lot. When you were saying earlier on, about how things seemed better for me now. Well, it's because of that. Because afterwards, thinking about what she'd said, I realised she was right, that it wasn't my fault. Okay, I hadn't handled it well. But deep down, it wasn't my fault. That's what made the difference. And whenever I felt rocky about it, I'd catch sight of her talking about, or I'd be in one of her lessons, and she wouldn't say anything about our talk, but I'd look at her, and she'd sometimes see me and give me a little nod. And that's all I needed. You were asking earlier if something had happened. Well, that's what happened. But Kath, listen, don't breathe a word to anyone about this, right?"

I nodded, but asked: "Did she make you promise that?"

"No, no, she didn't make me promise anything. But you're not to breathe a word. You've got to really promise."

"All right." The girls heading for the pavilion had spotted me and were waving and calling. I waved back and said to Tommy, "I'd better go. We can talk more about it soon."

But Tommy ignored this. "There's something else," he went on. "Something else she said I can't quite figure out. I was going to ask you about it. She said we weren't being taught enough, something like that."

"Taught enough? You mean she thinks we should be studying even harder than we are?"

"No, I don't think she meant that. What she was talking about was, you know, about us. What's going to happen to us one day. Donations and all that."

"But we have been taught about all that," I said. "I wonder what she meant/ Does she think there are things we haven't been told yet?"

Tommy thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't think she meant it like that. She just thinks we aren't taught about it enough. Because she said she'd a good mind to talk to us about it herself."

"About what exactly?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe I got it all wrong, Kath. I don't know. Maybe she was meaning something else completely, something else to do with me not being creative. I don't really understand it."

Tommy was looking at me as though he expected me to come up with an answer. I went on thinking for a few seconds, then said:

"Tommy, think back carefully. You said she got angry ..."

"Well, that's what it looked like. She was quiet, but she was shaking."

"All right, whatever. Let's say she got angry. Was it when she got angry she started to say this othher stuff? About how we weren't taught enough about donations and the rest of it?"

"I suppose so ..."

"Now, Tommy, think. Why did she bring it up? She's talking about you and you not creating. Then suddenly she starts up about this other stuff. What's the link? Why did she bring up donations? What's that got to do with you being creative?"

"I don't know. There must have been some reason, I suppose. Maybe one thing reminded her of the other. Kath, you're getting really worked up about this yourself now."

I laughed, because he was right: I'd been frowning, completely lost in my thoughts. The fact was, my mind was going in various directions at once. And Tommy's account of his talk with Miss Lucy had reminded me of something, perhaps a whole series of things, little incidents from the past to do with Miss Lucy that had puzzled me at the time.

"it's just that ..." I stopped and sighed. "I can't quite put it right, not even to myself. But all this, what you're saying, it sort of fits with a lot of other things that are puzzling. I keep thinking about all these things. Like why Madame comes and takes away our best pictures. What's that for exactly?"

"It's for the Gallery."

"But what is her gallery? She keeps coming here and taking away our best work. She must have stacks of it by now. I asked Miss Geraldine once how long Madame's been coming here, and she said for as long as Hailsham's been here. What is this gallery? Why should she have a gallery of things done by us?"

"Maybe she sells them. Outside, out there, they sell everything."

I shook my head. "That can't be it. It's got something to do with what Miss Lucy said to you. About us, about how one day we'll start giving donations. I don't know why, but I've had this feeling for some time now, that it's all linked in, though I can't figure out how. I'll have to go now, Tommy. Let's not tell anything yet, about what we've been saying."

"No. And don't tell anyone about Miss Lucy."

"But will you tell me if she says anything else to you like that?"

Tommy nodded, then glanced around him again. "Like you say, you'd better go, Kath. Someone's going to hear us soon."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

November 20, 2007

The Books: "The Remains of the Day" (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

RemainsOfDay.jpgExcerpt from The Remains of the Day - by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro blows me away. I've only read this one and Never Let Me Go (you have to read it, if you haven't!! I posted about it here.) I don't know much about Ishiguro, nothing beyond his bio paragraphs at the ends of his books. The word that comes up for me, though, when I think of his writing is "ventriloquist". He inhabits these other people - both of the books of his I read are first person. And you cannot get more different than Stevens in Remains of the Day and Kath in Never Let Me Go. A perfect butler, and a seemingly normal love-crazed obsessive teenage girl. And yet both are utterly convincing. Ishiguro is INSIDE these people, and he changes his entire way of writing, his style - to suit the narrator. It's extraordinary. It really is. Wonderful writer, wonderful imagination. I adored Remains of the Day - I read it before I saw the movie (which I think is terrific, too) - and the book haunted me. There is a similarity with Never Let Me Go which is: we start to see the whole picture before the narrator does. Because isn't that the way it is in real life? Often those around us can see our lives more clearly than we inside of them. It becomes clear pretty early on that Stevens, the perfect butler, is actually serving NOT the perfect master, but Lord Darlington, a kind of Oswald Mosley type ... a perfect English gentleman, but with a rotting evil core (this only unfolds through the course of the book) . Stevens says early in the book: "professional prestige lay most significantly in the moral worth of one's employer." So dark dark days are ahead. It is also apparent, since we know the end, that the world Stevens lives in - the world he has dedicated his life to - is dying. It's not going to last. It's already over. Thanks for the service, Stevens - you, and your kind, will no longer be needed. But Stevens (what a great character) is slow to learn these things, because, of course, he is living them. Who wants to admit your entire life is a sham? The title of the book says it all. It is the remains of the day. A new morning will come. But there will be no place for people like Stevens in it. And, on top of all of this, is the unspoken passion and love that Stevens has for Mrs. Benn. The book is a tragedy. Nothing works out for the best. Not really. People lose, and they lose big. But Stevens' voice is so proper, so stiff at times - that it is hard to really tell what might be happening underneath that exterior. Ishiguro is so so so good that way. So at the end when Stevens and Mrs. Benn meet up in Weymouth, and they sit on the beach and talk - and Stevens says (and it's so perfectly put, and so ... un-histrionic - that you might even miss it): "Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed - why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking" - it packs an even larger punch than something said more openly, or more rawly. Because it's Stevens. And you know what it would cost for him to say something like that. You know how bad it must be if he is even admitting that it is going on inside him. Even in that little passage, he has to sneak up on his own experience. He begins with the tepid "a certain degree of sorrow" - and then, breathtakingly, he opens the door in the next sentence: "why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking." I read that entire last chapter with tears streaming down my face. It's a perfect example of: if you, the artist, do not cry - then your audience will. If you, the artist, try to hold it back - then you will have to mop your audience up off the floor. My heart broke with Stevens. How does one calmly realize that one has wasted one's life? How does one face it?

Ishiguro is a marvel. The voice of this book is so specific, so clear and true ... you would have sworn that Ishiguro himself had been a butler, or that his father had been one. But no. It is just his imagination, his world of creativity - allowing him to step so completely into somebody else's shoes. A ventiloquist. Or maybe it would be apt to say he puts on a mask. And like all classic mask work: you take on the personality of the mask, you change your entire outlook to fit the mask ... and what comes out is not your voice, but another's. Ishiguro is untouchable in this respect.

Bravo.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from The Remains of the Day - by Kazuo Ishiguro

I believe I can best highlight the difference between the generations by expressing myself figuratively. Butlers of my father's generation, I would say, tended to see the world in terms of a ladder - the houses of royalty, dukes and the lords from the oldest families placed at the top, those of 'new money' lower down and so on, until one reached a point below which the hierarchy was determined simply by wealth - or the lack of it. Any butler with ambition simply did his best to climb as high up this ladder as possible, and by and large, the higher he went, the greater was his professional prestige. Such are, of course, precisely the values embodied in the Hayes Society's idea of a 'distinguished household', and the fact that it was confidently making such pronouncements as late as 1929 shows clearly why the demise of that society was inevitable, if not long overdue. For by that time, such thinking was quite out of step with that of the finest men emerging to the forefront of our profession. For our generation, I believe, it is accurate to say, viewed the world not as a ladder, but more as a wheel. Perhaps I might explain this further.

It is my impression that our generation was the first to recognize something which had passed the notice of all earlier generations: namely that the great decisions of the world are not, in fact, arrived at simply in the public chambers, or else during a handful of days given over to an international conference under the full gaze of the public and the press. Rather, debates are conducted, and crucial decisions arrived at, in the privacy and calm of the great houses of this country. What occurs under the public gaze with so much pomp and ceremony is often the conclusion, or mere ratification, of what has taken place over weeks or months within the walls of such houses. To us, then, the world was a wheel, revolving with these great houses at the hub, their mighty decisions emanating out to all else, rich and poor, who revolved around them. It was the aspiration of all those of us with professional ambition to work our way as close to this hub as we were each of us capable. For we were, as I say, an idealistic generation for whom the question was not simply one of how well one practised one's skills, but to what end one did so; each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great gentlemen of our times in whose hands civilization had been entrusted.

Of course, I am now speaking in broad generalizations and I would readily admit there were all too many persons of our generation who had no patience for such finer considerations. Conversely, I am sure there were many of my father's generation who recognized instinctively this "moral" dimension to their work. But by and large, I believe these generalizations to be accurate, and indeed, such "idealistic" motivations as I have described have played a large part in my own career. I myself moved quite rapidly from employer to employer during my early career - being aware that these situations were incapable of bringing me lasting satisfaction - before being rewarded at last with the opportunity to serve Lord Darlington.

It is curious that I have never until today thought of the matter in these terms; indeed, that through all those many hours we spent discussing the nature of 'greatness' by the fire of our servants' hall, the likes of Mr. Graham and I never considered this whole dimension to the question. And while I would not retract anything I have previously stated regarding the quality of 'dignity', I must admit there is something to the argument that whatever the degree to which a butler has attained such a quality, if he has failed to find an appropriate outlet for his accomplishments he can hardly expect his fellows to consider him 'great'. Certainly, it is observable that figures like Mr. Marshall and Mr. Lane have served only gentlemen of indisputable moral stature - Lord Wakeling, Lord Camberley, Sir Leonard Gray - and one cannot help get the impression that they simply would not have offered their talents to gentlemen of lesser calibre. Indeed, the more one considers it, the more obvious it seems: assocation with a truly distinguished household is a prerequisite of 'greatness'. A 'great' butler can only be, surely, one who can point to his years of service and say that he has applied his talents to serving a great gentleman - and through the latter, to serving humanity.

As I say, I have never in all these years thought of the matter in quite this way; but then it is perhaps in the nature of coming away on a trip such as this that one is prompted towards such surprising new perspectives on topics one imagined one had long ago thought through thoroughly. I have also, no doubt, been prompted to think along such lines by the small event that occurred an hour or so ago - which has, I admit, unsettled me somewhat.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3)

November 19, 2007

The Books: "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (John Irving)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

OwenMeanyPrayer.jpgExcerpt from A Prayer for Owen Meany - by John Irving

I've written quite a bit about my reading of this book. So far, I've only read it once - I think the whole bursting-into-sobs-at-the-last-sentence thing made me hesitant to pick it up again. My first reading of the book was so perfect, so utterly engrossing ... that it almost makes me nervous to re-visit it. I remember sitting on the beach with my boyfriend, in our beach chairs, both of us reading it - neck and neck. He was a bit ahead of me - and his guffaws of laughter were music to my ears. We were reading the Christmas pageant scene, which is one of the funniest pieces of writing I have ever read. I read it, and snorted and howled with laughter. This is so rare - how often does a book make you do that??

Owen Meany has an almost mathematical structure to it - with things dovetailing perfectly, themes looping back in ... clues dropped on page 1 woven in to the picture on page 297 - That was a criticism of the book, I recall: that it was TOO neat. I can see that, or at least - I can see where a criticism like that is coming from. It seems to me, though, that that very "neatness" goes along with the themes of the book, and its overriding view of the world: that things make sense, that there is a cosmic meaning to the universe, that sometimes, on this earth, we meet someone who is an instrument of God. Johnny Wheelwright believes that Owen Meany was an instrument of God - and Owen believes that himself. The opening paragraph (again, Irving opens his books like nobody else) has Johnny stating: "It is Owen who made me a believer." So we know, from the getgo, that this is going to be a pretty intense journey. Owen Meany is a fantastic character - what a creation! The shortness, the ashy colored skin - and the voice. I don't know about you, but I have his voice in my head ... I'm sure other readers imagine it differently - but we all MUST imagine something. Irving tells us just enough to get our imaginations going ... and then the rest is up to us. Fantastic.

The book has such a wide span - and it's been so long since I read it. But I remember the pageant, and I remember Johnny's mother. I remember Owen being tormented when the Sunday School teacher was out of the room. I remember the ending, boy oh boy. I remember Johnny's present-day narration - where we begin to realize things about him - that he lives in Canada, that he's a minister ... and other things which I won't give away. But the present-day narration comes at intervals, so it's not a full picture right away. We wonder: what happened to Johnny? And ... what happened to Owen? Where is Owen now? God. What a book.

I remember Mitchell reading the book around the same time as I did. We were talking about it feverishly - and one of the things we both looooved about the book is Johnny's cousins: Noah, Simon, and Hester (nickname: Hester the Molester). And I still remember something Mitchell said to me, and as a person with about 50 cousins all together, I think he's so right: "John Irving just nails that whole cousin dynamic." It's very specific - and if you either have no cousins, or if you have cousins you never see and do not know ... then you might not realize just how specific Irving is, and how right ON he is with that very particular kind of familial relationship. I would get so excited when I was going to see my cousins ... and then when we were in each other's presence - we would have so much fun that it was almost like we were GORGING on fun. Desperate fun. SO MUCH FUN. And then - when it was time to go ... there was almost a swooning feeling of sadness, that the fun had to end. Someone usually cried. It was like we were dragged away from one another, sobbing. This is very particular to a COUSIN relationship. The fun you have with your cousins, as a kid, is so ferocious that someone usually got hurt. Because it's not like a friend from school you see all the time - so you have to squeeze in as much fun as you possibly can! There's something almost unpleasant about it. I am laughing out loud. Anyway, John Irving just "gets" that ... I've never read a better and more apt description of feverish cousin relationships than in Owen Meany - and that's going to be my excerpt from this book. Even though Owen Meany himself doesn't make an appearance here. His cousins are vaguely terrifying, and totally awesome.

Excerpt from A Prayer for Owen Meany - by John Irving

I would never describe my cousins as bullies; they were good-natured, rambunctious roughnecks and daredevils who genuinely wanted me to have fun - but fun in the north country was not what I was used to in my life with the women at 80 Front Street, Gravesend. I did not wrestle with my grandmother or box with Lydia, not even when she had both her legs. I did play croquet with my mother, but croquet is not a contact sport. And given that my best friend was Owen Meany, I was not inclined to much in the way of athletic roughhousing.

My mother loved her sister and brother-in-law; they always made her feel special and welcome - they certainly made me feel that way - and my mother doubtless appreciated a little time away from my grandmother's imperious wisdom.

Grandmother would come to Sawyer Depot for a few days at Christmas, and she would make a grand appearance for one weekend every summer, but the north country was not to Grandmother's liking. And although Grandmother was perfectly tolerant of my solitary disruption of the adult life at 80 Front Street - and even moderately tolerant of the games I would play in that old house with Owen - she had scant patience for the disruption caused in any house by all her grandchildren. For Thanksgiving, the Eastmans came to 80 Front Street, a disturbance that my grandmother referred to in terms of "the casualties" for several months after their visit.

My cousins were active, combative athletes - my grandmother called them "the warriors" - and I lived a different life whenever I was with them. I was both crazy about them and terrified of them; I couldn't contain my excitement as the time to see them drew near, but after several days, I couldn't wait to get away from them - I missed the peace of my private games, and I missed Owen Meany; I even missed Grandmother's constant but consistent criticism.

My cousins - Noah, Simon, and Hester (in order of their ages) - were all older than I: Hester was older by less than a year, although she would always be bigger; Simon was older by two years; Noah, by three. Those are not great differences in age, to be sure, but they were great enough in all those years before I was a teenager - when each of my cousins was better than I was, at everything.

Since they grew up in the north country, they were fabulous skiers. I was, at best, a cautious skier, modeling my slow, wide turns on my mother's graceful but undaring stem Christie - she was a pretty skier of intermediate ability who was consistently in control; she did not think that the essence of the sport was speed, nor did she fight the mountain. My cousins raced each other down the slopes, cutting each other off, knocking each other down - and rarely restraining their routes of descent to the marked trails. They would lead me into the deep, unmanageable powder snow in the woods, and in my efforts to keep up with them, I would abandon the controlled, conservative skiing that my mother had taught me and end up straddling trees, embracing snow fences, losing my goggles in icy streams.

My cousins were sincere in their efforts to teach me to keep my skis parallel - and to hop on my skis - but a school-vacation skier is never the equal to a north-country native. They set such standards for recklessness that, eventually, I could no longer have fun skiing with my mother. I felt guilty that I made her ski alone; but my mother was rarely left alone for long. By the end of the day, some man - a would-be ski instructor, if not an actual ski instructor - would be coaching her at her side.

What I remember of skiing with my cousins is long, humiliating and hurtling falls, follwowed by my cousins retrieving my ski poles, my mittens, and my hat - from which I became inevitably separated.

"Are you all right?" my eldest cousin, Noah, would ask me. "That looked rather harsh."

"That looked neat!" my cousin Simon would say; Simon loved to fall - he skied to crash.

"You keep doing that, you'll make yourself sterile," said my cousin Hester, to whom every event of our shared childhood was either sexually exhilarating or sexually damaging.


In the summers, we went waterskiing on Loveless Lake, where the Eastmans kept a boathouse, the second floor of which was remodeled to resemble an English pub - Uncle Alfred was admiring of the English. My mother and Aunt Martha would go sailing, but Uncle Alfred drove the powerboat wildly and fast, a beer in his free hand. Because he did not water-ski himself, Uncle Alfred thought that the responsibility of the boat's driver was to make the skier's ride as harrowing as possible. He would double back in the middle of a turn so that the rope would go slack, or you could even catch up to the rope and ski over it. He drove a murderous figure 8; he appeared to relish surprising you, by putting you directly in the path of an oncoming boat or of another surprised water-skier on the busy lake. Regardless of the cause of your fall, Uncle Alfred took credit for it. When anyone racing behind the boat would send up a fabulous spray, skimming lengthwise across the water, skis ripped off, head under one second, up the next, and then under again - Uncle Alfred would shout, "Bingo!"

I am living proof that the waters of Loveless Lake are potable because I swallowed half the lake every summer while waterskiing with my cousins. Once I struck the surface of the lake with such force that my right eyelid was rolled up into my head in a funny way. My cousin Simon told me I had lost my eyelid - and my cousin Hester added that the lost eyelid would lead to blindness. But Uncle Alfred managed to locate the missing eyelid, after a few anxious minutes.

Indoor life with my cousins was no less vigorous. The savagery of pillow-fighting would leave me breathless, and there was a game that involved Noah and Simon tying me up and stuffing me in Hester's laundry hamper, where Hester would always discover me; before she'd untie me, she'd accuse me of sniffing her underwear. I know that Hester especially looked forward to my visits because she suffered from being the constant inferior to her brothers - not that they abused her, or even teased her. Considering that they were boys, and older, and she was a girl, and younger, I thought they treated her splendidly, but every activity my cousins engaged in was competitive, and it clearly irked Heater to lose. Naturally, her brothers could "best" her at everything. How she must have enjoyed having me around, for she could "best" me at anything - even, when we went to the Eastman lumberyard and the sawmill, at log-rolling. There was also a game that involved taking possession of a sawdust pile - those piles were often twenty or thirty feet high, and the sawdust nearer the bottom, in contact with the ground, was often frozen or at least hardened to a crusty consistency. The object was to be king of the mountain, to hurl all comers off the top of the pile - or to bury one's attackers in the sawdust.

The worst part about being buried in the pile - up to your chin - was that the lumberyard dog, the Eastmans' slobbering boxer, a mindlessly friendly beast with halitosis vile enough to give you visions of corpses uprooted from their graves ... this dog with the mouth of death was then summoned to lick your face. And with the sawdust packed all around you - as armless as Watahantowet's totem - you were powerless to fend the dog off.

But I loved being with my cousins; they were so vastly stimulating that I could rarely sleep in their house and would lie awake all night, waiting for them to pounce on me, or for them to let Firewater, the boxer, into my room, where he would lick me to death; or I would just lie awake imagining what exhausting contests I would encounter the next day.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

November 17, 2007

The Books: "The Cider House Rules" (John Irving)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

CiderHouse.jpgExcerpt from The Cider House Rules - by John Irving

Mitchell has been known to get teary-eyed just thinking about Homer Wells. I believe this one is my dad's favorite of John Irving's. It's a spectacular book. Not just for its theme and its topic (a heartwarming bittersweet funny book about abortion? Well, sure!) - but for the characters, the atmosphere, the arc - St. Cloud's is REAL to me. The cider house is REAL. And the names! Dr. Larch. Fuzzy Stone. Candy. Nurse Edna. I read this book eons ago, in college. I think I read it one more time, when I was in Chicago, and flipped through it this morning and felt the need to read it again. Bits of prose coming out at me, remembered sentences, and also - the remembered sensation of reading this book for the first time. For some reason, this book really made my heart hurt. More so even than Owen Meany, which had a more searing sense of fate and destiny which made the sacrifice and the pain somehow make sense. Cider House Rules, to me, has an elegiac tone to it (that last paragraph!! Gulp!) - something that looks back on youth, and smiles. We look back on the pain and the loneliness ... and we can see it all ... but still, we smile. Homer Wells is one of John Irving's nicest characters, isn't he? By nice, I really mean "nice". You like this person. You actually LOVE this person. I'm in the middle of Bleak House, as I know I mention every day - and there are a couple of characters in it: Esther, first of all ... and then (I can barely think about her without getting a lump in my throat) - Mrs. Bagnet - who is a relatively minor character ... but my God, Dickens pulls out all the stops with her. Anyway, these characters - without any preachiness, or falsity - are just flat out GOOD people. They are always doing their best, even if it's awkward, or cautious. They are not petty. They do not have a petty bone in their bodies (it's amazing how rare that is - I would say that "pettiness" is a near-universal in most people i meet - they've all got that petty side ... But the ones who don't? They stand out) ... Mrs. Bagnet takes action, when all the menfolk around her stand around baffled, discussing theories of law and what they should do. Oh, hell no, Mrs. Bagnet won't stand for that! And off she goes. Esther ... my mother put it wonderfully when I was talking about it with her this last weekend: "She is a perfect person." Yup. Pretty much. Homer Wells is not perfect. But God, you love him. Owen Meany is a bit ... scary, shall we say ... I mean, you love him, but still, he's a bit distant from the rest of us human slobs, isn't he? He's set apart - by his looks, his voice, his outlook on life ... Homer Wells is one of us. I don't know, I need to read the book again for more details, all I know is in flipping through it this morning I kept getting fragments of memories coming back, and it choked me up.

Great book. A great American novel.

Here's an excerpt frome early on in the book. Mrs. Grogan with her continuous "Oh, how it hurts me" makes me laugh out loud. I love Melony freaking OUT at 'gleams of sunshine' ... and shouting "Gleams!" at Homer, as he leaves - hahahahaha ... just the whole thing. Wonderful book.

EXCERPT FROM The Cider House Rules - by John Irving

Nurse Edna teased Dr. Larch about Homer Wells. "You have a new shadow, Wilbur," she said.

"Doctor Larch," Nurse Angela said, "you have developed an echo. You've got a parrot following you around."

"God or whatever, forgive me," wrote Dr. Larch. "I have created a disciple, I have a thirteen-year-old disciple."

By the time Homer was fifteen, his reading of David Copperfield was so successful that some of the older girls in the girls' division asked Dr. Larch if Homer might be persuaded to read to them.

"Just to the older girls?" Homer asked Dr. Larch.

"Certainly not," said Dr. Larch. "You'll read to all of them."

"In the girls' division?" Homer asked.

"Well, yes," Dr. Larch said. "It would be awkward to have all the girls come to the boys' division."

"Right," said Homer Wells. "But do I read to the girls first or to the boys first?"

"The girls," Larch said. "The girls go to bed earlier than the boys."

"They do?" Homer asked.

"They do here," Dr. Larch said.

"And do I read them the same passage?" Homer asked. He was, at the time, in his fourth journey through David Copperfield, only his third aloud - at Chapter 16, "I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One."

But Dr. Larch decided that girl orphans should hear about girl orphans - in the same spirit that he believed boy orphans should hear about boy orphans - and so he assigned Homer the task of reading aloud to the girls' division from Jane Eyre.

It struck Homer immediately that the girls were more attentive than the boys; they were an altogether better audience - except for the giggles upon his arrival and upon his departure. That they should be a better audience surprised Homer, for he found Jane Eyre not nearly so interesting as David Copperfield; he was convinced that Charlotte Bronte was not nearly as good a writer as Charles Dickens. Compared to little David, Homer thought, little Jane was something of a whiner - a sniveler - but the girls in the girls' division always cried for more, for just one more scene, when, every evening, Homer would stop and hurry away, out of the building and into the night, racing for the boys' division and Dickens.

The night between the boys' and girls' division frequently smelled of sawdust; only the night had kept the memory of the original St. Cloud's intact, dispensing in its secretive darkness, the odors of the old saw mills and even the rank smell of the sawyers' cigars.

"The night sometimes smells like wood and cigars," Homer Wells told Dr. Larch, who had his own memory of cigars; the doctor shuddered.

The girls' division, Homer thought, had a different smell from the boys', although the same exposed pipes, the same hospital colors, the same dormitory discipline prevailed. On the one hand, it smelled sweeter; on the other hand, it smelled sicker - Homer had difficulty deciding.

For going to bed, the boys and girls dressed alike - undervests and underpants - and whenever Homer arrived at the girls' division, the girls were already in their beds, with their legs covered, some of them sitting up, some of them lying down. The very few with visible breasts were usually sitting with their arms folded across their chests to conceal their development. All but one - the biggest one, the oldest one; she was both bigger and older than Homer Wells. She had carried Homer across the finish line of a particularly famous three-legged race - she was the one called Melony, who was meant to be Melody; the one whose breasts Homer had mistakenly touched, the one who'd pinched his pecker.

Melony sat for the reading Indian style - on top of her bed covers, her underpants not quite big enough for her, her hands on her hips, her elbows pointed out like wings, her considerable bosom thrust forward, a bit of her big, bare belly was exposed. Every night, Mrs. Grogan, who directed the girls' division, would say, "Won't you catch cold outside your covers, Melony?"

"Nope," Melony would say, and Mrs. Grogan would sigh - it was almost a groan. That was her nickname: Mrs. Groan. Her authority rested in her ability to make the girls think that they caused her pain by doing harm to themselves or each other.

"Oh, that hurts me to see that," she would tell them when they fought, pulled hair, gouged eyeballs, bit each other in the face. "That really hurts me." Her method was effective with the girls who liked her. It was not effective with Melony. Mrs. Grogan was especially fond of Melony, but she felt she was a failure at making Melony like her.

"Oh, it hurts me, Melony, to see you catching cold - outside your covers," Mrs. Grogan would say, "only partially clothed. That really hurts me."

But Melony would stay put, her eyes never leaving Homer Wells. She was bigger than Mrs. Grogan, she was too big for the girls' division. She was too big to be adopted. She's too big to be a girl, thought Homer Wells. Bigger than Nurse Edna, bigger than Nurse Angela - almost as big as Dr. Larch - she was fat, but her fat looked solid. Although he had not competed in the three-legged race for several years, Homer Wells also knew that Melony was strong. Homer had decided not to compete as long as he would be paired with Melony - and he would be paired with her as long as he was the oldest boy and she was the oldest girl.

In reading aloud from Jane Eyre, Homer needed to keep his eyes off Melony; one look at her would remind him of having his leg tied to hers. He sensed that she resented his withdrawal from the annual competition. He was also afraid that she might sense how he liked her heaviness - how fat, to an orphan, seemed such good fortune.

The sweeter passages of Jane Eyre (too sweet, for Homer Wells) brought tears to the eyes of the girls in the girls' division, and drew the most plaintive sighs and moans from Mrs. Grogan, but these same, sweeter passages extracted from Melony the most tortured breathing - as if sweetness provoked in her an anger barely restrainable.

The end of Chapter Four provided Melony with too much anger to restrain.

" 'That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony,' " Homer Wells read to them; hearing Melony hiss at the words "peace" and "harmony", he bravely read on. " 'And in the evening Bessie told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her sweetest songs.' " Homer continued, glad there was only one more sentence to get through; he saw Melony's broad chest heave. " 'Even for me [chirped little Jane Eyre], life had its gleams of sunshine.' "

" 'Gleams of sunshine'!" Melony shouted in violent disbelief. "Let her come here! Let her show me the gleams of sunshine!"

"Oh, how it hurts me, Melony - to hear you say that," Mrs. Grogan said.

"Sunshine?" Melony said with a howl. The younger girls crawled all the way under their bed covers; some of them began to cry.

"The pain this causes me, I don't know if I can bear it, Melony," Mrs. Grogan said.

Homer Wells slipped away. It was the end of the chapter, anyway. He was due at the boys' division. This time the giggles attendant on his departure were mixed with sobs and with Melony's derision.

"Gleams!" Melony called after him.

"How this hurts us all," Mrs. Grogan said more firmly.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 15, 2007

The Books: "The World According to Garp" (John Irving)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Garp.jpgExcerpt from The World According to Garp - by John Irving

Ah, Garp. What a book. I come from a huge family of John Irving fans - and Mitchell and David and I were always neck and neck when reading Irving books - racing to the finish. "Don't tell me what happens!" we would shout at each other. To me, a new John Irving book is like an event. I think John Irving will be read and revered long after we are all dust. I wrote some of my thoughts about him here.

Prayer for Owen Meany was one of those books (like Geek Love - which I wrote about here) - where I can still remember where I was when I finished it. Atonement's another one. Vivid memory of finishing that book. I read Owen Meany when I was right out of college. My boyfriend and I read it together - I remember the two of us sitting on the beach in the summer, both with our copies resting on our knees, GUFFAWING with laughter because we had both reached the infamous Christmas pageant scene which is, to this day, one of the funniest pieces of writing I have ever read.

I read Garp in high school - and it was one of those weird things where I saw the movie first. I remember seeing Garp at Edwards Hall - up on the college campus - where they (used to? Do they anymore?) showed movies on Friday nights. Not first-run movies, there was always a bit of a delay before they were shown at Edwards. The sound system was terrible - they basically just had big stereo speakers, and they projected the film onto a large screen, like you would use in a Geology 101 course or something. There was a big balcony, which is where we all used to sit. It was mainly a college crowd in attendance but we in high school always went, too. I remember people smoking pot around us. People brought in beer. I often wonder if my parents had ANY idea the debauched atmosphere that really went on at Edwards. I went on my first "real" date to Edwards. We sat in the balcony and hung our feet over the railing. We both had on high-top sneakers. Memories! I saw some pretty damn good movies there in that crazy atmosphere! I saw Ordinary People there for the first time. I saw Sophie's Choice there. They played some heavy-hitters! And I saw Garp the movie there. I had read no John Irving. I probably hadn't even talked to my dad about it because Irving wasn't on my radar, and I was also just in high school and not the chatty Kathy that I am now. But that movie - my GOD that movie!!!! I still love that movie. It absolutely riveted me. Garp chasing after cars that drove too fast? John Lithgow in a dress? Glenn freakin' Close in what has to be one of the most startling film debuts since Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. Like - no WAY was that woman NOT going to be a star! Hard to believe it was her first movie - her acting is so sure, so complex, so ... biZARRE. Anyway, it totally caught my attention. So I read the book. And that was my introduction to John Irving.

Garp blew me away. I was 16, 17 when I read it - so much of it was lost to me - I was an innocent yount thing - but still: the book! The writing! The books within books - where we get to read Garp's writing, and see his obsessions. The spectre of rape that hangs over the entire book. Garp's obsession with rape. Also, just the writing - God, Irving is good. He's one of the best. He creates complex living characters who are completely themselves. Like - Hester the Molester in Owen Meany is like nobody else. I would recognize Hester if I met her in real life, she's that real to me. Same with all of his characters. I don't know how he does it. I know I'm not the first person to make this comparison - but since I'm reading Bleak House right now, it's on my mind: When Dickens describes a character - he does so in total freedom, as though he is describing someone real. His imagination is that strong. Many writers can't do that. Their characters are archetypes - or ciphers - even when they are interesting. But Dickens launches into these detailed descriptions of what some dude's face looks like, and how his hands move, and what his eyes are like, etc. - and it's so damn good, it's like a perfect portrait of a full human being. We may never know what is in his heart - but we certainly GET his surface, in a way that very few writers can do. John Irving, to me, has the same freedom with his imagination. Like - the cast of characters he has created ... and how he writes about them, how detailed, how intricate, how funny, how tragic ... This is a man who is at the top of his game. I am in awe of him.

Not to mention his sheer writing chops. The dude can WRITE. Nobody begins a book like John Irving, and nobody ends a book like Irving. He knows how to craft his story, he knows how to end properly (very very difficult). That's why Owen Meany packs such a huge punch. It's the cumulation of the whole thing, of course - we realize we have been building up to that ending all along - but it's HOW he gets us there. I love him.

Not sure which of his is my favorite of his books - there are some that I have missed.

I read Garp probably before I was "ready" to. Movies have done that for me a lot. I read Oliver Twist at age 10 because I had seen the musical and became obsessed. Much of the book was really difficult for me - the language - but I struggled through. I read All the President's Men in 7th grade because I had seen the movie. HA! I remember my civics teacher being fascinated that this little 7th grader in a Fair Isle sweater with big thick glasses was reading this famous book of reportage. He kept coming over to me to ask me what part I was at in the book, etc. Too funny. There are more examples.

I found Garp challenging at the time - and even upsetting. It's quite a violent book, if you think about it. I mean, just look at the last sentence. There are tongues cut out, rapes in laundromats, you know ... the world is a terrible and violent and random place. This is why Garp chases down cars that drive too fast in his neighborhood. He can't control much, but boy - he can try to control THAT.

Great great character.

Here's an excerpt that makes me laugh. Jenny Fields. I mean, my God. What a character!! She is so WEIRD! But don't you just love her? Jenny and Garp, mother and son, move to Vienna - to be writers together. Although Garp seems more baffled and dominated by her than anything else, and he keeps thinking about Helen, the girl he has a crush on back home. Jenny, all excited and evangelical, tells him about a writer's room that was recreated perfectly in the Museum in Vienna. The writer's name (and I am laughing out loud right now) was Franz Grillparzer.

I chose this excerpt because I think it's funny and totally weird - but I also chose it because it's about writing.

EXCERPT FROM The World According to Garp - by John Irving

Franz Grillparzer died in 1872; he was an Austrian poet and dramatist, whom very few people outside Austria have ever heard of. He is one of those nineteenth-century writers who did not survive the nineteenth-century with any enduring popularity, and Garp would later argue that Grillparzer did not deserve to survive the nineteenth-century. Garp was not interested in plays and poems, but he went to the library and read what is considered to be Grillparzer's outstanding prose work: the long short story "The Poor Fiddler". Perhaps, Garp thought, his three years of Steering German were not enough to allow him to appreciate the story; in German, he hated it. He theen found an English translation of the story in a secondhand bookstore on Habsburgergrasse; he still hated it.

Garp thought that Grillparzer's famous story was a ludicrous melodrama; he also thought it was ineptly told and baldly sentimental. It was only vaguely remindful to him of nineteenth-century Russian stories, where often the character is an indecisive procrastinator and a failure in every aspect of practical life; but Dostoevsky, in Garp's opinion, could compel you to be interested in such a wretch; Grillparzer bored you with tearful trivia.

In the same secondhand bookstore Garp bought an English translation of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; he had been made to read Marcus Aurelius in a Latin class at Steering, but he had never read him in English before. He bought the book because the bookstore owner told Garp that Marcus Aurelius had died in Vienna.

"In the life of a man," Marcus Aurelius wrote, "his time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his sense a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, his fame doubtful. In short, all that is body is as coursing waters, all that is of the soul as dreams and vapors." Garp somehow thought that Marcus Aurelius must have lived in Vienna when he wrote that.

The subject of Marcus Aurelius's dreary observations was certainly the subject of most serious writing, Garp thought; between Grillparzer and Dostoevsky the difference was not subject matter. The difference, Garp concluded, was intelligence and grace; the difference was art. Somehow this obvious discovery pleased him. Years later, Garp read in a critical introduction to Grillparzer's work that Grillparzer was "sensitive, tortured, fitfully paranoid, often depressed, cranky, and choked with melancholy; in short, a complex and modern man."

"Maybe so," Garp wrote. "But he was also an extremely bad writer."

Garp's conviction that Franz Grillparzer was a "bad" writer seemed to provide the young man with his first real confidence as an artist - even before he had written anything. Perhaps in every writer's life there needs to be that moment when some other writer is attacked as unworthy of the job. Garp's killer instinct in regard to poor Grillparzer was almost a wrestling secret; it was as if Garp had observed an opponent in a match with another wrestler; spotting the weaknesses, Garp knew he could do better. He even forced Jenny to read "The Poor Fiddler". It was one of the few times he would seek her literary judgment.

"Trash," Jenny pronounced it. "Simplistic. Maudlin. Cream puff."

They were both delighted.

"I didn't like his room, really," Jenny told Garp. "It was just not a writer's room."

"Well, I don't think that matters, Mom," Garp said.

"But it was a very cramped room," Jenny complained. "It was too dark, and it looked very fussy."

Garp peered into his mother's room. Over her bed and dresser, and taped to her wall mirror - nearly obscuring his mother's own image - were the scattered pages of her incredibly long and messy manuscript. Garp didn't think his mother's room looked very much like a writer's room either, but he didn't say so.

He wrote Helen a long, cocky letter, quoting Marcus Aurelius and slamming Franz Grillparzer. In Garp's opinion, "Franz Grillparzer died forever in 1872 and like a cheap local wine does not travel very far from Vienna without spoiling." The letter was a kind of muscle-flexing; perhaps Helen knew that. The letter was calisthenics; Garp made a carbon copy of it and decided he liked it so well that he kept the original and sent Helen the carbon. "I feel a little like a library," Helen wrote him. "It's as if you intend to use me as your file drawer."

Was Helen really complaining? Garp was not sensitive enough to Helen's own life to bother to ask her. He merely wrote back that he was "getting ready to write". He was confident she would like the results. Helen may have felt warned away from him, but she didn't indicate any anxiety: at college, she was gobbling courses at nearly triple the average rate. Approaching the end of her first semester, she was about to become a second-semester junior. The self-absorption and ego of a young writer did not frighten Helen Holm; she was moving at her own remarkable pace, and she appreciated someone who was determined. Also, she liked Garp's writing to her; she had an ego, too, and his letters, she kept telling him, were awfully well written.

In Vienna, Jenny and Garp went on a spree of Grillparzer jokes. They began to uncover little signs of the dead Grillparzer all over the city. There was a Grillparzergasse, there was a Kaffeehaus des Grillparzers; and one day in a pastry shop they were amazed to find a sort of layer cake named after him: Grillparzertorte! It was much too sweet. Thus, when Garp cooked for his mother, he asked her if she wanted her eggs soft-boiled or Grillparzered. And one day at the Schonbrunn Zoo they observed a particularly gangling antelope, its flanks spindly and beshitted; the antelope stood sadly in its narrow and foul winter quarters. Garp identified it: der Gnu des Grillparzers.

Of her own writing, Jenny one day remarked to Garp that she was guilty of "doing a Grillparzer." She explained that this meant she had introduced a scene or a character "like an alarm going off." The scene she had in mind was the scene in the movie house in Boston when the soldier had approached her. "At the movie," wrote Jenny Fields, "a soldier consumed with lust approached me."

"That's awful, Mom," Garp admitted. The phrase "consumed with lust" was what Jenny meant by "doing a Grillparzer".

"But that's what it was," Jenny said. "It was lust, all right."

"It's better to say he was thick with lust," Garp suggested.

"Yuck," Jenny said. Another Grillparzer. It was the lust she didn't care for, in general. They discussed lust, as best they could. Garp confessed his lust for Cushie Percy and rendered a suitably tame version of the consummation scene. Jenny did not like it. "And Helen?" Jenny asked. "Do you feel that for Helen?"

Garp admitted he did.

"How terrible," Jenny said. She did not understand the feeling and did not see how Garp could ever associate it with pleasure, much less with affection.

" 'All that is body is as coursing waters,' " Garp said lamely, quoting Marcus Aurelius; his mother just shook her head. They ate dinner in a very red restaurant in the vicinity of Blutgasse. "Blood Street," Garp translated for her, happily.

"Stop translating everything," Jenny told him. "I don't want to know everything." She thought the decor of the restaurant was too red and the food was too expensive. The service was slow and they started for home too late. It was very cold and the gay lights of the Karntnerstrasse did little to warm them.

"Let's get a taxi," Jenny said. But Garp insisted that in another five blocks they could take a streetcar just as easily. "You and your damn Strassenbahns," Jenny said.

It was clear that the subject of "lust" had spoiled their evening.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (11)

November 14, 2007

The Books: "The Bone People" (Keri Hulme)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BonePeople.jpgExcerpt from The Bone People - by Keri Hulme

God, what a wonderful wonderful book this is. Unforgettable, really - Hulme has a writing style all her own, and she really hasn't written anything else, which makes me wonder about her. I would love to hear from her again. It's like Katherine Dunn and Geek Love. Her mind is so singular, so itself - that she'll only write another book when she is good and damn well ready. I don't know much about Keri Hulme, but perhaps she's like that. The book was a pretty big phenomenon when it came out - and it won The Booker. It's difficult to describe a writing style, but I'll give it a shot. Unlike a book with a more straight narrative, this one has an almost Ulysses-like stream-of-consciousness to it - the senses flow into one another, there are snippets of poetry and prayers woven into it, there's also a hard edge to Kerewin's sections - she's a tough cookie, not always easy to like or sympathize with ... but we are so inside her head that her issues become ours, we see the world strictly through her eyes. We may have some sense of how unreasonable she is at times, and how she should probably quit drinking ... and how we wish she would just soften up a bit ... life might seem easier to her if she did ... but that's not the story being told. Or - it IS, but it's on Kerewin's terms, not ours. By the end of the book, I loved her (and the other two main characters - but mostly her) so much that my heart hurt. It was not an easy love. I was aware of the fragility of life, and the beauty and redemption in human connection ... and how we must, above all, try to (in the words of Auden) love our crooked neighbor with our crooked hearts. Life is NOT easy. Life does a number on us all. Nobody gets out of it untouched.

The Bone People is about three damaged souls ... whose lives intersect. The world has either forgotten them, or has abandoned them because they're too difficult.

Kerewin is the main character, and she will live on in your memory long after you put the book down. She is part Maori, part European - and there's enough of the Maori language in the book that there is a glossary in the back. She is an artist. And probably an alcoholic. Something hurts her to the core. She drinks to soothe herself. She lives in a 6-floored stone tower on the shore (in New Zealand) - isolated, she never has to deal with other people ... and that is the point for her. She can't deal with humanity. She's a tough broad. Unforgiving, hard ... and only able to live on her own terms. She goes fishing every day for her meals, she has set up her life so that there is a huge moat around it. She lives in her tower (an awesome space.... I love how it is described in the book) - and does her best to avoid the human race. Most of the book is from her point of view, and a more arresting voice you will never hear.

One day - she comes home from one of her long walks - to find that a little boy has somehow broken into her house and is hiding out there. He is mute. I think he can hear fine - but he cannot speak. He communicates through writing notes. Kerewin is, to put it mildly, NOT a maternal person. She wants this little person OUT of her house. He has obviously been abused ... he's terrified ... he's running away.

Eventually - his father comes into the picture - Joe, another character I fell so in love with that it made my heart hurt. He's another toughie. He's abusive, he's an alcoholic, but the pain that is there ... How much he loves his son ... The mother died, and has left the two of them behind ... Joe is Maori as well.

So. The book is the story of these three people - Kerewin, Simon and Joe. An unlikely trio. And nothing in the book turns out the way you would expect. It's not about Joe and Kerewin falling in love and making a nice home for Simon. It's not about Simon melting the ice in Joe's heart or softening Kerewin up. None of those Lifetime Movie moments happen. But other things do. And you ache, and long, and LOVE these people. You LOVE these people.

And above all of that: is the voice of the book, which you will see in the excerpt below. I would imagine some people might find it challenging - it's not typical, or normal - you can tell that Keri Hulme, the writer, speaks a language other than English - there's a Maori tilt in her language, you can feel the other words pushing themselves into the narrative - and it feels almost like a story being told round a fire, by someone of the old-school - someone who really knows how to spin a tale. There's a fairy tale aspect to it - even though Kerewin, dark and heavy and angry, makes a strange and ungrateful princess in her tower. But isn't that the way life is sometimes? I succumbed to Hulme's voice immediately ... it's overblown, emotional, it's deep and dark - she flies off into poetics - and then crashes back to earth, with the taste of whiskey, the smell of mold.

Terrific writer. Terrific book. I highly recommend it.

This excerpt is early on in the book. The 3 paths have not yet converged - but they are about to.

Excerpt from The Bone People - by Keri Hulme

It is still dark but she can't sleep anymore.

She dresses and goes down to the beach, and sits on the top of a sandhill until the sky pales.

Another day, herr Gott, and I am tired, tired.

She stands, and grimaces, and spits. The spittle lies on the sand a moment, a part of her a moment ago, and then it vanishes, sucked in, a part of the beach now.

Fine way to greet the day, my soul ... go down to the pools. Te Kaihau, and watch away the last night sourness.

And here I am, balanced on the saltstained rim, watching minute navyblue fringes, gill=fingers of tubeworms, fan the water ... put the shadow of a finger near them, and they flick outasight. Eyes in your lungs ... neat. The three-fin blenny swirls by ... tena koe, fish. A small bunch of scarlet and gold anemones furl and unfurl their arms, graceful petals, slow and lethal ... tickle tickle, and they turn into uninteresting lumps of brownish jelly ... haven't made sea-anemone soup for a while, whaddaboutit? Not today, Josephine ... at the bottom, in a bank of brown bulbous weed, a hermit crab is rustling a shell. Poking at it, sure it's empty? Ditheringly unsure ... but now, nervously hunched over his soft slug of belly, he extricates himself from his old hutch and speeds deftly into the new ... at least, that's where you thought you were going, e mate? ... hoowee, there really is no place like home, even when it's grown a couple of sizes too small.

There is a great bank of Neptune's necklaces fringing the next pool.

"The sole midlittoral fuccoid," she intones solemnly, and squashes a bead of it under the butt of her stick. "Ahh me father he was orange and me mother she was green," slithers off the rocks, and wanders further away down the beach, humming. Nothing like a tidepool for taking your mind off things, except maybe a quiet spot for killing ...

Walking the innocent stick alongside, matching its step to hers, she climbs up the sandhills. Down the other side in a rush, where it is dark and damp still, crashing through loose clusters of lupins. Dew sits in the centre of each lupin-leaf, hands holding jewels to catch the sunfire until she brushes past and sends the jewels sliding, drop by drop weeping off.

The lupins grow less; the marram grass diminishes into a kind of reedy weed; the sand changes by degrees into mud. It's an estuary, where someone built a jetty, a long long time ago. The planking has rotted, and the uneven teeth of the pilings jut into nowhere now.

It's an odd macabre kind of existence. While the nights away in drinking, and fill the days with petty killing. Occasionally, drink out a day and then go and hunt all night, just for the change.

She shakes her head.

Who cares? That's the way things are now. (I care.)

She climbs a piling, and using the stick as a balancing pole, jumps across the gaps from one pile to the next out to the last. There she sits down, dangling her legs, stick against her shoulder, and lights a cigarillo to smoke away more time.

Intermittent wheeping flutes from oystercatchers.

The sound of the sea.

A gull keening.

When the smoke is finished, she unscrews the top of the stick and draws out seven inches of barbed steel. It fits neatly into slots in the stick top.

"Now, flounders are easy to spear, providing one minds the toes."

Whose, hers or the fishes', she has never bothered finding out. She rolls her jeans legs up as far as they'll go, and slips down into the cold water. She steps ankle deep, then knee deep, and stands, feeling for the moving of the tide. Then slowly, keeping the early morning sun in front of her, she begins to stalk, mind in her hands, and eyes looking only for the puff of mud and swift silted skid of a disturbed flounder.

All this attention for sneaking up on a fish? And they say we humans are intelligent? Sheeit ...

and with a darting levering jab, stabbed, and a flounder flaps bloodyholed at the end of the stick.

Kerewin looks at it with slow smiled satisfaction.

Goodbye soulwringing night. Good morning sinshine, and a fat happy day.

The steeled stick quivers.

She pulls a rolledup sack from her belt and drops the fish, still weakly flopping, in it. She hangs the lot up by sticking her knife through the sackneck into a piling side.

The water round the jetty is at thigh-level when she brings the third fish back, but there has been no hurry. She guts the fish by the rising tide's edge, and lops off their heads for the mud crabs to pick. Then she lies down in a great thicket of dun grass, and using one arm as a headrest and the other as a sunshade, falls quietly asleep.

It is the cold that wakes her, and clouds passing over the face of the sun. There is an ache in the back of her neck, and her pillowing arm is numb. She stands up stiffly, and stretches: she smells rain coming. A cloud of midge-like flies blunders into her face and hair. On the ground round the sack hovers another swarm, buzzing thinly, through what would seem to be for them a fog of fish. The wind is coming from the sea. She picks up the sack, and sets off for home through the bush. Raupo and fern grow into a tangle of gorse: a track appears and leads through the gorse to a stand of windwarped trees. They are ngaio. One tree stands out from its fellows, a giant of the kind, nearly ten yards tall.

Some of its roots are exposed and form a bowl-like seat. Kerewin sits down for a smoke, as she nearly always does when she comes this way, keeping a weather eye open for rain.

In the dust at her feet is a sandal.

For a moment she is perfectly still with the unexpectedness of it.

Then she leavs forward and picks it up.

It can't have been here for long because it isn't damp. It's rather smaller than her hand, old and scuffed, with the position of each toe palely upraised in the leather. The stitching of the lower strap was coming undone, and the buckle hung askew.

"Young to be running loose round here."

She frowns. She doesn't like children, doesn't like people, and has discouraged anyone from coming on her land.

"If I get hold of you, you'll regret it, whoever you are ..."

She squats down and peers up the track. There are footprints, one set of them. Of a sandalled foot and half an unshod foot.

Limping? Something in its foot so that's why the sandal is taken off and left behind?

She rubs a finger inside the sandal. The inner sole was shiny and polished from long wearing and she could feel the indentation of the foot. Well-worn indeed ... in the heel though there is a sharpedged protrusion of leather, like a tiny crater rim. She turns it over. There is a corresponding indriven hole in the rubber.

"So we jumped on something that bit, did we?"

She slings the sandal into the sack of flounders, and marches away belligerently, hoping to confront its owner.

But a short distance before her garden is reached, the one and a half footprints trail off the track, heading towards the beach.

Beaches aren't private, she thinks, and dismisses the intruder from her mind.

The wind is blowing more strongly when she pushes open the heavy door, and the sky is thick with dark cloud.

"Storm's coming," as she shuts the door, "but I am safe inside ..."

The entrance hall, the second level of the six-floored Tower, is low and stark and shadowed. There is a large brass and wood crucifix on the far wall and green seagrass matting over the floor. The handrail of the spiral staircase ends in the carved curved flukes of a dolphin; otherwise, the room is bare of furniture and ornament. She rubs up the stairs, and the sack drips as it swings.

"One two three aleary hello my sweet mere hell these get steeper daily, days of sun and wine and jooyyy,"

the top, and stop, breathless.

"Holmes you are thick and unfit and getting fatter day by day. But what the hell ..."

She puts the flounders on bent wire hooks and hangs them in the coolsafe. She lights the fire, and stokes up the range, and goes upstairs to the library for a book on flatfish cooking. There is just about everything in her library.

A sliver of sudden light as she comes from the spiral into the booklined room, and a moment later, the distant roll of thunder.

"Very soon, my beauty, all hell will break loose ..." and her words hang in the stillness.

She stands over by the window, hands fistplanted on her hips, and watches the gathering boil of the surf below. She has a curious feeling as she stands there, as though something is out of place, a wrongness somewhere, an uneasiness, an overwatching. She stares morosely at her feet (longer second toes still longer, you think they might one day grow less, you bloody werewolf you?) and the joyous relief that the morning's hunting gave, ebbs away.

"Bleak grey mood to match the bleak grey weather," and she hunches over to the nearest bookshelf. "Stow the book on cooking fish. Gimme something escapist, Narnia or Gormenghast or Middle Earth, or,"

it wasn't a movement that made her look up.

There is a gap between two tiers of bookshelves. Her chest of pounamu rests inbetween them, and above it, there is a slit window.

In the window, standing stiff and straight like some weird saint in a stained gold window, is a child. A thin shockheaded person, haloed in hair, shrouded in the dying sunlight.

The eyes are invisible. It is silent, immobile.

Kerewin stares, shocked and gawping and speechless.

The thunder sounds again, louder, and a cloud covers the last of the sunlight. The room goes very dark.

If it moves suddenly, it's going to go through that glass. Hit rockbottom forty feet below and end up looking like an impoded plum ...

She barks,

"Get the bloody hell down from there!"

Her breathing has quickened and her heart thuds as though she were the intruder.

The head shifts. Then the child turns slowly and carefully round in the niche, and wriggles over the side in an awkward progression, feet ankles shins hips, half-skidding half-slithering down to the chest, splayed like a lizard on a wall. It turns round, and gingerly steps onto the floor.

"Explain."

There isn't much above a yard of it standing there, a foot out of range of her furthermost reach. Small and thin, with an extraordinary face, highboned and hollowcheeked, cleft and pointed chin, and a sharp sharp nose. Nothing else is visible under an obscuration of silverblond hair except the mouth, and it's set in an uncommonly stubborn line.

Nasty. Gnomish, thinks Kerewin. The shock of surprise is going and cold cutting anger comes sweeping in to take its place.

"What are you doing here? Aside from climbing walls?"

There is something distinctly unnatural about it. It stands there unmoving, sullen and silent.

"Well?"

In the ensuing silent, the rain comes rattling against the windows, driving down in a hard steady rhythm.

"We'll bloody soon find out," saying it viciously and reaching for a shoulder.

Shove it downstairs and call authority.

Unexpectedly, a handful of thin fingers reaches for her wrist, arrives and fastens with the wistful strength of the small.

Kerewin looks at the fingers, looks sharply up and meets the child's eyes for the first time. They are seabluegreen, a startling colour, like opal.

It looks scared and diffident, yet curiously intense.

"Let go my wrist," but the grip tightens.

Not restraining violence, pressing meaning.

Even as she thinks that, the child draws a deep breath and lets it out in a strange sound, a groaning sigh. Then the fingers round her wrist slide off, sketch urgently in the air, retreat.

Aue. She sits down, back on her heels, way back on her heels. Looking at the brat guardedly; taking out cigarillos and matches; taking a deep breath herself and expellng it in smoke.

The child stays unmoving, hands back behind it; only the odd seaeyes flicker, from her face to her hands and back round again.

She doesn't like looking at the child. One of the maimed, the contaminating ...

She looks at the smoke curling upward in a thin blue stream instead.

"Ah, you can't talk, is that it?"

A rustle of movement, a subdued rattle, and there, pitched into the open on the birdboned chest, is a pendant hanging like a label on a chain.

She leans forward and picks it up, taking intense care not to touch the person underneath.

It was a label.

1 PACIFIC STREET
WHANGAROA
PHONE 633Z COLLECT

She turns it over.

SIMON P. GILLAYLEY
CANNOT SPEAK

"Fasinating," drawls Kerewin, and gets to her feet fast, away to the window. Over the sound of the rain, she can hear a fly dying somewhere close, buzzing frenetically. No other noise.

Reluctantly she turns to face the child. "Well, we'll do nothing more. You found your way here, you can find it back." Something came into focus. "O there's a sandal you can collect before you go."

The eyes which had followed each of her movements, settling on and judging each one like a fly expecting swatting, drop to stare at his bare foot.

She points to the spiral stairs.

"Out."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

November 13, 2007

The Books: "Catch-22" (Joseph Heller) Excerpt 6

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Catch22Heller.jpgSixth excerpt from Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

A beautiful and deep and funny excerpt. Yossarian emerges from the plane, covered in Snowden- who had died in the back. Yossarian is naked. He pretty much refuses to put his clothes on. He goes about his business naked because he doesn't "want to wear a uniform any more". He says he feels fine, reassures the doctor he's okay ... he just needs to be naked. He goes and sits in a tree. Milo, the dude profiteering from the war (and the Milo chapters are among the most cynical and funny in the book - he is willing to bomb his own countrymen in order to get his black market shipments of caviar where they need to go) - Milo comes and finds him in the tree. Milo's business is falling apart spectacularly. He pushed things too far. Milo is the kind of person who can only flourish during a war. He has flourished to such a degree that he has become the 'shah of Oran', parades meet his planes, he is hailed in countries across Europe - he has become a dictator of profit, basically. He LOVES the war. War, as a possible money-maker, is something he understands! It must go on, as long as he profits from it. But things begin to splinter. He misjudged a market - and now he has to unload a ton of stuff on the unwilling squadron. He is now desperate, desperate for delicacies to feed the men. (Thru the whole book, the meals in the commissary tent are described as though they are a 5-star restaurant level - and that's all Milo's doing.) Snowden's funeral is going on below the tree - Yossarian and Milo sit up there and watch. I just love this section. Poor Milo. Trying to understand Yossarian. That's the device of the book: Yossarian is the only one who seems sane (despite the fact that he is buck naked, up in a tree). Milo is TRULY nuts, but the world treats him like he is sane because, to some degree, he plays by the world's rules. So Milo (insane) cannot understand why Yossarian (sane) will not put on his uniform. He doesn't get it. He tries to act like he gets it but he is beyond baffled. This is what happens when the truly insane (most of the world) are confronted with a truly sane person (very rare indeed). The insane think: "What the hell is wrong with THAT guy?"

This is Yossarian's dilemma, this is the catch-22.

The joke of this somber section is that Yossarian watches the funeral (his thoughts are unknown to us - I mean, we can get a sense of what he thinks from how the narrator describes prayer, and the grave, and the crowd around the grave ... it's not strictly Yossarian's voice, but we can infer - we know how Yossarian feels about God, even though he is deeply in love with the chaplain.) - but anyway, the joke is that Yossarian watches Snowden's funeral - and Milo sits beside him and at times it SEEMS like he might be becoming, actually, human ... that the spectacle of death below might have actually touched him ... but then it always turns out that Milo is referring to something else, something totally unrelated.

EXCERPT FROM Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

"Please taste this and let me know what you think. I'd like to serve it to the men."

"What is it?" asked Yossarian, and took a big bite.

"Chocolate-covered cotton."

Yossarian gagged convulsively and sprayed his big mouthful of chocolate-covered cotton right out into Milo's face. "Here, take it back!" he shouted angrily. "Jesus Christ! Have you gone crazy? You didn't even take the goddam seeds out."

"Give it a chance, will you?" Milo begged. "It can't be that bad. Is it really that bad?"

"It's even worse."

"But I've got to make the mess halls feed it to the men."

"They'll never be able to swallow it."

"They've got to swallow it," Milo ordained with dictatorial grandeur, and almost broke his neck when he let go with one arm to wave a righteous finger in the air.

"Come on out here," Yossarian invited him. "You'll be much safer, and you can see everything."

Gripping the bough above with both hands, Milo began inching his way out on the limb sideways with utmost care and apprehension. His face was rigid with tension, and he sighed with relief when he found himself seated securely beside Yossarian. He stroked the tree affectionately. "This is a pretty good tree," he observed admiringly with proprietary gratitude.

"It's the tree of life," Yossarian answered, waggling his toes, "and of knowledge of good and evil, too."

Milo squinted closely at the bark and branches. "No it isn't," he replied. "It's a chestnut tree. I ought to know. I sell chestnuts."

"Have it your way."

They sat in the tree without talking for several seconds, their legs dangling and their hands almost straight up on the bough above, the one completely nude but for a pair of crepe-soled sandals, the other completely dressed in a coarse olive-drab uniform with his tie knotted right. Milo studied Yossarian diffidently through the corner of his eye, hesitating tactfully.

"I want to ask you something," he said at last. "You don't have any clothes on. I don't want to butt in or anything, but I just want to know. Why aren't you wearing your uniform?"

"I don't want to."

Milo nodded rapidly like a sparrow pecking. "I see, I see," he stated quickly with a look of vivid confusion. "I understand perfectly. I heard Appleby and Captain Black say you had gone crazy, and I just wanted to find out." He hesitated politely again, weighing his next question. "Aren't you ever going to put your uniform on again?"

"I don't think so."

Milo nodded with spurious vim to indicate he still understood and then sat silent, ruminating gravely with troubled misgiving. A scarlet-crested bird shot by below, brushing sure dark wings against a quivering bush. Yossarian and Milo were covered in their bower by tissue-thin tiers of sloping green and largely surrounded by other gray chestnut trees and a silver spruce. The sun was high overhead in a vast sapphire-blue sky beaded with low, isolated, puffy clouds of dry and immaculate white. There was no breeze, and the leaves about them hung motionless. The shade was feathery. Everything was at peace but Milo, who straightened suddenly with a muffled cry and began pointing excitedly.

"Look at that! That's a funeral going on down there. That looks like the cemetery. Isn't it?"

Yossarian answered him slowly in a level voice. "They're buring that kid who got killed in my plane over Avignon the other day. Snowden."

"What happened to him?" Milo asked in a voice deadened with awe.

"He got killed."

"That's terrible," Milo grieved, and his large brown eyes filled with ears. "That poor kid. It really is terrible." He bit his trembling lip hard, and his voice rose with emotion when he continued. "And it will get even worse if the mess halls don't agree to buy my cotton. Yossarian, what's the matter with them? Don't they realize it's their syndicate? Don't they know they've all got a share?"

"Did the dead man in my tent have a share?" Yossarian demanded sarcastically.

"Of course he did," Milo assured him lavishly. "Everybody in the squadron has a share."

"He was killed before he even got into the squadron."

Milo made a deft grimace of tribulation and turned away. "I wish you'd stop picking on me about that dead man in your tent," he pleaded peevishly. "I told you I didn't have anything to do with killing him. Is it my fault that I saw this great opportunity to corner the market on Egyptian cotton and got us into all this trouble? Was I supposed to know there was going to be a glut? I didn't even know what a glut was in those days. An opportunity to corner a market doesn't come along very often, and I was pretty shrewd to grab the chance when I had it." Milo gulped back a moan as he saw six uniformed pallbearers lift the plain pine coffin from the ambulance and set it gently down on the ground beside the yawning gash of the freshly dug grave. "And now I can't get rid of a single penny's worth," he mourned.

Yossarian was unmoved by the fustian charade of the burial ceremony, and by Milo's crushing bereavement. The chaplain's voice floated up to him through the distance tenuously in an unintelligible, almost inaudible monotone, like a gaseous murmur. Yossarian could make out Major Major by his towering and lanky aloofness and thought he recognized Major Danby mopping his brow with a handkerchief. Major Danby had not stopped shaking since his run-in with General Dreedle. There were strands of enlisted men molded in a curve around the three officers, as inflexible as lumps of wood, and four idle gravediggers in streaked fatigues lounging indifferently on spades near the shocking, incongrous heap of loose copper-red earth. As Yossarian stared, the chaplain elevated his gaze toward Yossarian beatifically, pressed his fingers down over his eyeballs in a manner of affliction, peered upward again toward Yossarian searchingly, and bowed his head, concluding what Yossarian took to be a climactic part of the funeral rite. The four men in fatigues lifted the coffin on slings and lowered it into the grace. Milo shuddered violently.

"I can't watch it," he cried, turning away in anguish. "I just can't sit here and watch while those mess halls let my syndicate die." He gnashed his teeth and shook his head with bitter woe and resentment. "If they had any loyalty, they would buy my cotton till it hurts so that they can keep right on buying my cotton till it hurts them some more. They would build fires and burn up their underwear and summer uniforms just to create a bigger demand. But they won't do a thing. Yossarian, try eating the rest of this chocolate-covered cotton for me. Maybe it will taste delicious now."

Yossarian pushed his hand away. "Give up, Milo. People can't eat cotton."

Milo's face narrowed cunningly. "It isn't really cotton," he coaxed. "I was joking. It's really cottonc andy, delicious cotton candy. Try it and see."

"Now you're lying."

"I never lie!" Milo rejoindered with proud dignity.

"You're lying now."

"I only lie when it's necessary," Milo explained defensively, averting his eyes for a moment and blinking his lashes winningly. "This stuff is better than cotton candy, really it is. It's made out of real cotton. Yossarian, you've got to help me make the men eat it. Egyptian cotton is the finest cotton in the world."

"But it's indigestible," Yossarian emphasized. "It will make them sick, don't you understand? Why don't you try living on it yourself if you don't believe me."

"I did try," admitted Milo gloomily. "And it made me sick."

The graveyard was yellow as hay and green as cooked cabbage. In a little while the chaplain stepped back, and the beige crescent of human forms began to break up sluggishly, like flotsam. The men drifted without haste or sound to the vehicles parked along the side of the bumpy dirt road. With their heads down disconsolately, the chaplain, Major Major and Major Danby moved toward their jeeps in an ostracized group, each holding himself friendlessly several feet away from the other two.

"It's all over," observed Yossarian.

"It's the end," Milo agreed despondently. "There's no hope left. And all because I left them free to make their own decisions. That should teach me a lesson about discipline the next time I try something like this."

"Why don't you sell your cotton to the government?" Yossarian suggested casually as he watched the four men in streaked fatigues shoveling heaping bladefuls of the copper-red earth back down inside the grave.

Milo vetoed the idea brusquely. "It's a matter of principle," he explained firmly. "The governement has no business in business, and I would be the last person in the world to ever try to involve the government in a business of mine. But the business of government is business," he remembered alertly, and continued with elation. "Calvin Coolidge said that, and Calvin Coolidge was a President, so it must be true. And the government does have the responsibility of buying all the Egyptian cotton I've got that no one else wants so that I can make a profit, doesn't it?" Milo's face clouded almost as abruptly, and his spirits descended into a state of sad anxiety. "But how will I get the government to do it?"

"Bribe it," Yossarian said.

"Bribe it!" Milo was outraged and almost lost his balance and broke his neck again. "Shame on you!" he scolded severely, breathing virtuous fire down and upward into his rusty mustache through his billowing nostrils and prim lips. "Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it's not against the law to make a profit, is it? So it can't be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of course not!" He fell to brooding again, with a meek, almost pitiable distress. "But how will I know who to bribe?"

"Oh, don't you worry about that," Yossarian comforted him with a toneless snicker as the engines of the jeeps and ambulance fractured the drowsy silence and the vehicles in the rear began driving away backward. "You make the bribe big enough and they'll find you. Just make sure you do everything right out in the open. Let everyone know exactly what you want and how much you're willing to pay for it. The first time you act guilty or ashamed, you might get into trouble."

"I wish you'd come with me," Milo remarked. "I won't feel safe among people who take bribes. They're no better than a bunch of crooks."

"You'll be all right," Yossarian assured him with confidence. "If you run into trouble, just tell everybody that the security of the country requires a strong domestic Egyptian-cotton speculating industry."

"It does," Milo informed him solemnly. "A strong Egyptian-cotton speculating industry means a much stronger America."

"Of course it does. And if that doesn't work, point out the great number of American families that depend on it for income."

"A great many American families do depend on it for income."

"You see?" said Yossarian. "You're much better at it than I am. You almost make it sound true."

"It is true," Milo exclaimed with a strong trace of the old hauteur.

"That's what I mean. You do it with just the right amount of conviction."

"You're sure you won't come with me?"

Yossarian shook his head.

Milo was impatient to get started. He stuffed the remainder of the chocolate-covered cotton ball into his shirt pocket and edged his way back gingerly along the branch to the smooth gray trunk. He threw his arms about the trunk in a generous and awkward embrace and began shinnying down, the sides of his leather-soled shoes slipping constantly so that it seemed many times he would fall and injure himself. Halfway down, he changed his mind and climbed back up. Bits of tree bark stuck to his mustache, and his straining face was flushed with exertion.

"I wish you'd put your uniform on instead of going around naked that way," he confided pensively before he climbed back down again and hurried away. "You might start a trend, and then I'll never get rid of all this goldarned cotton."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 10, 2007

The Books: "Catch-22" (Joseph Heller) Excerpt 5

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Catch22Heller.jpgFifth excerpt from Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

I don't have a favorite section of this book - the entire thing is an assault, one I love - I just ride the wave when I read it. But I do remember my first time reading the following excerpt, and I remember how, at some point during it, I started to laugh ... and I just continued to laugh all the way through. Because Heller keeps going where other writers would stop. He has the comedic sensibility of Andy Kaufman ... someone who didn't even realize there WAS a line that other people did not go over. The joke in the excerpt is that Yossarian goes into the hospital repeatedly because he feels safe there. That's it. That's the joke. Yossarian feels SAFE in a place of sickness and death. Heller takes that absurdity and plays on it, in a long long long paragraph that gets funnier and funnier as it goes on ... Like, we, the reader, get the point of the joke immediately. The punchline is in the first sentence of the damn paragraph! But Heller's not going for a punchline. Heller is expanding on something, a concept, a joke - spinning it further and further - until the entire thing reaches a level of ludicrous reality that I still feel, when I read this excerpt: God, I wish I could write like that! It's fearless - because it's so stupid. And by "stupid" I mean "awesome". I have friends (cough David cough Mitchell cough Jackie cough) who take jokes to absurd extremes. It's like there they are, and they realize that whatever bit they are doing is funny - and so they begin to explore the funniness therein - pushing it - making it bigger - going larger, wider - and the roars of laughter of their friends just pushes them on ... until the original joke is completely unrecognizable, all we have now is the ultimate absurdity of the RIFF on that joke. I love people who think in such a manner - and the following excerpt is a perfect example.

EXCERPT FROM Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

Being in the hospital was better than being over Bologna or flying over Avignon with Huple and Dobbs at the controls and Snowden dying in back.

There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater, more orderly job of it. They couldn't dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn't keep Death out, but while she was in she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside the hospital. They did not blow up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian's tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane.

"I'm cold," Snowden had whimpered. "I'm cold."

"There, there," Yossarian had tried to comfort him. "There, there."

They didn't take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn't explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn't drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn't get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, bludgeoned to death with axes by parents or children, or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without commen in an oxygen tent. There was none of that tricky now-you-see-me-now-you-don't business so much in vogue outside the hospital, none of that now-I-am-and-now-I-ain't. There were no famines or floods. Children didn't suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn't stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a whoosh!, accelerating at the rate of thirty-two feet per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry.

All things considered, Yossarian often preferred the hospital, even though it had its faults. The help tended to be officious, the rules, if heeded, restrictive, and the management meddlesome. Since sick people were apt to be present, he could not always depend on a lively young crowd in the same ward with him, and the entertainment was not always good. He was forced to admit that the hospitals had altered steadily for the worse as the war continued and one moved closer to the battlefront, the deterioration in the quality of the guests becoming most marked within the combat zone itself where the effects of booming wartime conditions were apt to make themselves conspicuous immediately. The people got sicker and sicker the deeper he moved into combat, until finally in the hospital that last time there had been the soldier in white, who could not have been any sicker without being dead, and he soon was.

The soldier in white was constructed entirely of gauze, plaster and a thermometer, and the thermometer was merely an adornment left balanced in the empty dark hole in the bandages over his mouth early each morning and late each afternoon by Nurse Cramer and Nurse Duckett right up to the afternoon Nurse Cramer read the thermometer and discovered he was dead. Now that Yossarian looked back, it seemed that Nurse Cramer, rather than the talkative Texan, had murdered the soldier in white; if she had not read the thermometer and reported what she had found, the soldier in white might still by lying there alive exactly as he had been lying there all along, encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze with both strange, rigid legs elevated from the hips and both strange arms strung up perpendicularly, all four bulky limbs in casts, all four strange, useless limbs hoisted up in the air by taut wire cables and fantastically long lead weights suspended darkly above him. Lying there that way might not have been much of a life, but it was all the life he had, and the decision to terminate it, Yossarian felt, should hardly have been Nurse Cramer's.

The soldier in white was like an unrolled bandage with a hole in it or like a broken block of stone in a harbor with a crooked zinc pipe jutting out. The other patients in the ward, all but the Texan, shrank from him with a tenderhearted aversion from the moment they set eyes on him the morning after the night he had been sneaked in. They gathered soberly in the farthest recess of the ward and gossiped about him in malicious, offended undertones, rebelling against his presence as a ghastly imposition and resenting him malevolently for the nauseating truth of which he was a bright reminder. They shared a common dread that he would begin moaning.

"I don't know what I'll do if he does begin moaning," the dashing young fighter pilot with the golden mustache had grieved forlornly. "It means he'll moan during the night, too, because he won't be able to tell time."

No sound at all came from the solider in white all the time he was there. The ragged round hole over his mouth was deep and jet black and showed no sign of lip, teeth, palate or tongue. The only one who ever came close enough to look was the affable Texan, who came close enough several times a day to chat with him about more votes for the decent folk, opening each conversation with the same unvarying greeting: "What do you say, fella? How you coming along?" The rest of the men avoided them both in their regulation maroon corduroy bathrobes and unraveling flannel pajamas, wondering gloomily who the soldier in white was, why he was there and what he was really like inside.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 9, 2007

The Books: "Catch-22" (Joseph Heller) Excerpt 4

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Catch22Heller.jpgFourth excerpt from Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

The horrifying attack of Bologna hovers over much of this book like a spectre. Heller leaps around in time a bit - we're before Bologna, we're after Bologna - it's like whatever happened there is so horrible that it cannot be told in a straight-up manner. You have to go at it obliquely, work your way up to it, come towards it like a crab, sideways. By avoiding the details, the apprehension grows.

And I remember the first time reading this book - feeling that the section below really stood out for me.

Let me try to put my thoughts into words. There is such a rat-a-tat-tat to the dialogue in the book, nothing ever stops, the jokes come and go, you never get a moment's rest.

And suddenly: in the middle of all of that: a breath. A deep deep breath.

Catch-22 is also not a book that dwells on nature and all of its beauty. Other authors and other books almost incorporate nature as another character into the stories (Annie Proulx is a great example - but you know, there are many others). Heller doesn't do that. We don't hear about the beauty of the sky, or the coldness of the air - or if we do, it's certainly not dwelled upon. Things are moving way too quickly to notice any of that crap. It's war, after all.

But ... with Bologna approaching ... and everyone has a bad feeling about it ... and Yossarian is trying to get out of it - even to the point that he demands they turn the plane around and go back to the base ... there's just a malevolent feeling in the air about this particular battle ...

and in the middle of all of that: this.

It's stunning. Ominous. It's like there are no people left on the earth. Eerie. It's Yossarian - left with himself and his thoughts. I think this is some of the best writing in the book - and this section really stands out for me. It's different from all the rest. Something else is going on here.

Fourth excerpt from Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

Back at the field, the party fizzled out abruptly. An uneasy silence replaced it, and Yossarian was sober and self-conscious as he climbed down from the plane and took his place in the jeep that was already waiting for them. None of the men spoke at all on the drive back through the heavy, mesmerizing quiet blanketing mountains, sea and forests. The feeling of desolation persisted when they turned off the road at the squadron. Yossarian got out of the car last. After a minute, Yossarian and a gentle warm wind were the only things stirring in the haunting tranquillity that hung like a drug over the vacated tents. The squadron stood insensate, bereft of everything human but Doc Daneeka, who roosted dolorously like a shivering turkey buzzard beside the closed door of th emedical tent, his stuffed nose jabbing away in thirsting futility at the hazy sunlight streaming down around him. Yossarian knew Doc Daneeka would not go swimming with him. Doc Daneeka would never go swimming again; a person could swoon or suffer a mild coronary occlusion in an inch or two of water and drown to death, be carried out to sea by an undertow, or made vulnerable to poliomyelitis or meningococcus infection through chilling or overexertion. The thread of Bologna to others had instilled in Doc Daneeka an even more poignant solicitude for his own safety. At night now, he heard burglars.

Through the lavendar gloom clouding the entrance of the operations tent, Yossarian glimpsed Chief White Halfoat, diligently embezzling whiskey rations, forging the signatures of nondrinkers and pouring off the alcohol with which he was poisoning himself into separate bottles rapidly in order to steal as much as he could before Captain Black roused himself with recollection and came hurrying over indolently to steal the rest himself.

The jeep started up again softly. Kid Sampson, Nately and the others wandered apart in a noiseless eddy of motion and were sucked away into the cloying yellow stillness. The jeep vanished with a cough. Yossarian was alone in a ponderous, primeval lull in which everything green looked black and everything else was imbued with the color of pus. The breeze rustled leaves in a dry and diaphanous distance. He was restless, scared and sleepy. The sockets of his eyes felt grimy with exhaustion. Wearily he moved inside the parachute tent with its long table of smoothed wood, a nagging bitch of a doubt burrowing painlessly inside a conscience that felt perfectly clear. He left his flak suit and parachute there and crossed back past the water wagon to the intelligence tent to return his map case to Captain Black, who sat drowsing in his chair with his skinny long legs up on his desk and inquired with indifferent curiosity why Yossarian's plane had turned back. Yossarian ignored him. He set the map down on the counter and walked out.

Back in his own tent, he squirmed out of his parachute harness and then out of his clothes. Orr was in Rome, due back that same afternoon from the rest leave he had won by ditching his plane in the waters off Genoa. Nately would already be packing to replace him, entranced to find himself still alive and undoubtedly impatient to resume his wasted and heartbreaking courtship of his prostitute in Rome. When Yossarian was undressed, he sat down on his cot to rest. He felt much better as soon as he was naked. He never felt comfortable in clothes. In a little while he put fresh undershorts back on and set out for the beach in his moccasins, a khaki-colored bath towel draped over his shoulders.

The path from the squadron led him around a mysterious gun emplacement in the woods; two of the three enlisted men stationed there lay sleeping on the circle of sand bags and the third sat eating a purple pomegranate, biting off large mouthfuls between his churning jaws and spewing the ground roughage out away from him into the bushes. When he bit, red juice ran out of his mouth. Yossarian padded ahead into the forest again, caressing his bare, tingling belly adoringly from time to time as though to reassure himself it was all still there. He rolled a piece of lint out of his navel. Along the ground suddenly, on both sides of the path, he saw dozens of new mushrooms the rain had spawned poking their nodular fingers up through the clammy earth like lifeless stalks of flesh, sprouting in such necrotic profusion everywhere he looked that they seemed to be proliferating right before his eyes. There were thousands of them swarming as far back into the underbrush as he could see, and they appeared to swell in size and multiply in number as he spied them. He hurried away from them with a shiver of eerie alarm and did not slacken his pace until the soil crumbled to dry sand beneath his feet and they had been left behind. He glanced back apprehensively, half expecting to find the limp white things crawling after him in sightless pursuit or snaking up through the treetops in a writhing and ungovernable mutative mass.

The beach was deserted. The only sounds were hushed ones, the bloated gurgle of the stream, the respirating hum of the tall grass and shrubs behind him, the apathetic moaning of the dumb, translucent waves. The surf was always small, the water clear and cool. Yossarian left his things on the sand and moved through the knee-high waves until he was completely immersed. On the other side of the sea, a bumpy sliver of dark land lay wrapped in mist, almost invisible. He swam languorously out to the raft, held on a moment, and swam languourously back to where he could stand on the sand bar. He submerged himself head first into the green water several times until he felt clean and wide-awake and then stretched himself out face down in the sand and slept until the planes returning from Bologna were almost overhead and the great, cumulative rumble of their many engines came crashing through his slumber in an earth-shattering roar.

He woke up blinking with a slight pain in his head and opened his eyes upon a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper order. He gasped in utter amazement at the fantastic sight of the twelve flights of planes organized calmly into exact formation. The scene was too unexpected to be true. There were no planes spurting ahead with wounded, none lagging behind with damage. No distress flares smoked in the sky. No ship was missing but his own. For an instant he was paralyzed with a sensation of madness. Then he understood, and almost wept at the irony. The explanation was simple: clouds had covered the target before the planes could bomb it, and the mission to Bologna was still to be flown.

He was wrong. There had been no clouds. Bologna had been bombed. Bologna was a milk run. There had been no flak there at all.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1)

November 8, 2007

The Books: "Catch-22" (Joseph Heller) Excerpt 3

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Catch22Heller.jpgThird excerpt from Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

The manic brilliant LUNATIC energy in the next excerpt is so wonderful to me. Why I love it is: you can obviously read deeper meanings in it, Heller is NOT being subtle - he's lampooning ideological purity as well as patriotism, and the need that some folks have to be surrounded by identical little clones. (It is interesting that I would write that huge post about the Russian Revolution at the same time I'm doing Catch-22!) So he is obviously spoofing that whole thing - yet somehow, it's like a magic trick - you don't catch him spoofing - as far as Heller is concerned, he's just putting down what happened ... and the humor in the excerpt - I mean, it makes me laugh out loud - is a disappearing act at the same time that it is a reveal. By that I mean: it's there and it's NOT there at the same time. The book is full of language like that, which is why I think people who love it can go back to it time and time again. Heller makes his points - but he is NEVER a bore, the way so many other authors (and regular people) are when they are intent on "making their points". He goes for the humor, the absurdity - rather than the jugular. And yet he also karate chops you in the jugular. It's a beautiful gift he has - to continuously pull something like that off, throughout an entire book! I don't know how he did it. I just know that I read the following excerpt, and I start to laugh about 4 sentences in, and then just keep laughing til the end - the pictures he brings up in my mind, the images - I can just SEE that commissary and all the craziness of everyone racing around ... I LOVE it, I LOVE this kind of humor. Heller is lampooning something that has ruined people's lives, throughout history. But he does it by making fun of it, by showing the ultimate stupidity of those in power who wish for purity.

But you cannot deny the rage in a line like:

You never heard him denying it until we began accusing him, did you?

The tragedy of politics run amok, politics run by mental nitwits, is in that sentence.

I love someone who navigates his way through the lunacy of the world, and sees the tragedy of it - but can only laugh in response. And do so in a way that can make ME laugh! Bless Joseph Heller!

Here's the excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

When fellow administrative officers expressed astonishment at Colornel Cathcart's choice of Major Major, Captain Black muttered that there was something funny going on; when they speculated on the political value of Major Major's resemblance to Henry Fonda, Captain Black asserted that Major Major really was Henry Fonda; and when they remarked that Major Major was somewhat odd, Captain Black announced that he was a Communist.

"They're taking over everything," he declared rebelliously. "Well, you fellows can stand around and let them if you want to, but I'm not going to. I'm going to do something about it. From now on I'm going to make every son of a bitch who comes to my intelligence tent sign a loyalty oath. And I'm not going to let that bastard Major Major sign one even if he wants to."

Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full flower, and Captain Black was enraptured to discover himself spearheading it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath to receive their flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath for Lieutenant Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the trucks. Every time they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They signed a loyalty oath to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian barbers. To Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging and introduced loyalty oaths of their own, he went them one better by making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of allegiance, and after that "The Star-Spangled Banner," one chorus, two choruses, three choruses, four choruses. Each time Captain Black forged ahead of his competitors, he swung upon them scornfully for their failure to follow his example. Each time they followed his example, he retreated with concern and racked his brain for some new stratagem that would enable him to turn upon them scornfully again.

Without realizing how it had come about, the combat men in the squadron discovered themselves dominated by the administrators appointed to serve them. They were bullied, insulted, harassed and shoved about all day long by one after the other. When they voiced objection, Captain Black replied that people who were loyal would not mind signing all the loyalty oaths they had to. To anyone who questioned the effectiveness of the loyalty oaths, he replied that people who really did owe allegiance to their country would be proud to pledge it as often as he forced them to. And to anyone who questioned the morality, he replied that "The Star-Spangled Banner" was the greatest piece of music ever composed. The more loyalty oaths a person signed, the more loyal he was; to Captain Black it was as simple as that, and he had Corporal Kolodny sign hundreds with his name each day so that he could always prove he was more loyal than anyone else.

"The important thing is to keep them pledging," he explained to his cohorts. "It doesn't matter whether they mean it or not. That's why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what 'pledge' and 'allegiance' means."

To Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a glorious pain in the ass, since it complicated their task of organizing the crews for each combat mission. Men were tied up all over the squadron signing, pledging and singing, and the missions took hours longer to get under way. Effective emergency action became impossible, but Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren were both too timid to raise any outcry against Captain Black, who scrupulously enforced each day the doctrine of "Continual Reaffirmation" that he had originated, a doctrine designed to trap all those men who had become disloyal since the last time they had signed a loyalty oath the day before. It was Captain Black who came with advice to Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren as they pitched about in their bewildering predicament. He came with a delegation and advised them bluntly to m ake each man sign a loyalty oath before allowing him to fly on a combat mission.

"Of course, it's up to you," Captain Black pointed out. "Nobody's trying to pressure you. But everyone else is making them sign loyalty oaths, and it's going to look mighty funny to the F.B.I. if you two are the only ones who don't care enough about your country to make them sign loyalty oaths, too. If you want to get a bad reputation, that's nobody's business but your own. All we're trying to do is help."

Milo was not convinced and absolutely refused to deprive Major Major of food, even if Major Major was a Communist, which Milo secretly doubted. Milo was by nature opposed to any innovation that threatened to disrupt the normal course of affairs. Milo took a firm moral stand and absolutely refused to participate in the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade until Captain Black called upon him with his delegation and requested him to.

"National defense is everybody's job," Captain Black replied to Milo's objection. "And this whole program is voluntary, Milo - don't forget that. The men don't have to sign Piltchard and Wren's loyalty oath if they don't want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they don't. It's just like Catch-22. Don't you get it? You're not against Catch-22, are you?"

Doc Daneeka was adamant.

"What makes you so sure Major Major is a Communist?"

"You never heard him denying it until we began accusing him, did you? And you don't see him signing any of our loyalty oaths."

"You aren't letting him sign any."

"Of course not," Captain Black explained. "That would defeat the whole purpose of our crusade. Look, you don't have to play ball with us if you don't want to. But what's the point of the rest of us working so hard if you're going to give Major Major medical attention the minute Milo begins starving him to death? I just wonder what they're going to think up at Group about the man who's undermining our whole security program. They'll probably transfer you to the Pacific."

Doc Daneeka surrendered swiftly. "I'll go tell Gus and Wes to do whatever you want them to."

Up at Group, Colonel Cathcart had already begun wondering what was going on.

"It's that idiot Black off on a patriotism binge," Colonel Korn reported with a smile. "I think you'd better play ball with him for a while, since you're the one who promoted Major Major to squadron commander."

"That was your idea," Colonel Cathcart accused him petulantly. "I never should have let you talk me into it."

"And a very good idea it was, too," retorted Colonel Korn, "since it eliminated that superfluous major that's been giving you such an awful black eye as an administrator. Don't worry, this will probably run its course soon. The best thing to do now is send Captain Black a letter of total support and hope he drops dead before he does too much damage." Colonel Korn was struck with a whimsical thought. "I wonder! You don't suppose that imbecile will try to turn Major Major out of his trailer, do you?"

"The next thing we've got to do is turn that bastard Major Major out of his trailer," Captain Black decided. "I'd like to turn his wife and kids out into the woods, too. But we can't. He has no wife and kids. So we'll just have to make do with what we have and turn him out. Who's in charge of the tents?"

"He is."

"You see?" cried Captain Black. "They're taking over everything! Well, I'm not going to stand for it. I'll take this matter right to Major ------ de Coverley himself if I have to. I'll have Milo speak to him about it the minute he gets back from Rome."

Captain Black had boundless faith in the wisdom, power and justice of Major ------ de Coverley, even though he had never spoken to him before and still found himself without the courage to do so. He deputized Milo to speak to Major ------ de Coverley for him and stormed out impatiently as he waited for the tall executive officer to return. Along with everyone else in the squadron, he lived in profound awe and reverence of the majestic, white-haired major with the craggy face and Jehovan bearing, who came back from Rome finally with an inuured eye inside a new celluloid eye patch and smashed his whole Glorious Crusade to bits with a single stroke.

Milo carefully said nothing when Major ------ de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. The hubub began to subside slowly as Major ------ de Coverley paused in the doorway with a frown of puzzled disapproval, as though viewing something bizarre. He started forward in a straight line, and the wall of officers before him parted like the Red Sea. Glancing neither left nor right, he strode indomitably up to the steam counter and, in a clear, full-bodied voice that was gruff with age and resonant with ancient eminence and authority, said:

"Gimme eat."

Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major ------ de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major ------ de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.

"Gimme eat, I said," he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.

Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.

"Give him eat," he said.

Corporal Snark began giving Major ------ de Coverley eat. Major ------ de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:

"Give everybody eat!"

"Give everybody eat!" Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.

Captain Black was deeply disillusioned by this treacherous stab in the back from someone in high place upon whom he had relied so confidently for support. Major ------ de Coverley had let him down.

"Oh, it doesn't bother me a bit," he responded cheerfully to everyone who came to him with sympathy. "We completed our task. Our purpose was to make everyone we don't like afraid and to alert people to the danger of Major Major, and we certainly succeeded at that. Since we weren't going to let him sign loyalty oaths anyway, it doesn't really matter whether we have them or not."

Seeing everyone in the squadron he didn't like afraid once again throughout the appalling, interminable Great Big Siege of Bologna reminded Colonel Black nostalgically of the good old days of his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade when he hh ad been a man of real consequence, and when even big shots like Milo Minderbinder, Doc Daneeka and Piltchard and Wren had trembled at his approach and groveled at his feet.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

November 7, 2007

The Books: "Catch-22" (Joseph Heller) Excerpt 2

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Catch22Heller.jpgCatch-22 - by Joseph Heller

Because I must. Because he makes me laugh out loud. Because I adore him and also because I fear him. Here is an excerpt involving Chief White Halfoat. He talks a little bit about his past. I am wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. I mean, it's funny - but it's also vicious. Heller is being vicious here. However - the prose has this "what, me??" plausible deniability to it at all times ... it's slippery, slidey - elusive. It's also fast - the second you feel like he might be honing in on some kind of specific rage at a specific thing - he's on to the next thing, or he makes it all ridiculous. I still laugh, though, at the image of the "White Halfoats" traveling around with enormous crews of oilmen trailing along behind them.

The excerpt below ends with the explanation of Catch-22.

EXCERPT FROM Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

"He called me a wise guy and punched me in the nose. 'What are you, a wise guy?' he said, and knocked me flat on my ass. Pow! Just like that. I'm not kidding."

"I know you're not kidding," Yossarian said. "But why did he do it?"

"How should I know why he did it?" Doc Daneeka retorted with annoyance.

"Maybe it had something to do with Saint Anthony?"

Doc Daneeka looked at Yossarian blankly. "Saint Anthony?" he asked with astonishment. "Who's Saint Anthony?"

"How should I know?" answered Chief White Halfoat, staggering inside the tent just then with a bottle of whiskey cradled in his arm and sitting himself down pugnaciously between the two of them.

Doc Daneeka rose without a word and moved outside the tent, his back bowed by the compact kit of inustices that was his perpetual burden. He could not bear the company of his roommate.

Chief White Halfoat thought he was crazy. "I don't know what's the matter with that guy," he observed reproachfully. "He's got no brains, that's what's the matter with him. If he had any brains he'd grab a shovel and start digging. Right here in the tent, he'd start digging, right under my cot. He'd strike oil in no time. Don't he know how that enlisted man struck oil with a shovel back in the States? Didn't he ever hear what happened to that kid - what was the name of that rotten rat bastard pimp of a snotnose back in Colorado?"

"Wintergreen."

"Wintergreen."

"He's afraid,"Yossarian explained.

"Oh, no. Not Wintergreen." Chief White Halfoat shook his head with undisguised admiration. "That stinking little punk wise-guy son of a bitch ain't afraid of nobody."

"Doc Daneeka's afraid. That's what's the matter with him."

"What's he afraid of?"

"He's afraid of you," Yossarian said. "He's afraid you're going to die of pneumonia."

"He'd better be afraid," Chief White Halfoat said. A deep, low laugh tumbled through his massive chest. "I will, too, the first chance I get. You just wait and see."

Chief White Halfoat was a handsome, swarthy Indian from Oklahoma with a heavy, hard-boned face and tousled black hair, a half-blooded Creek from Enid who, for occult reasons of his own, had made up his mind to die of pneumonia. He was a glowering, vengeful, disillusioned Indian who hated foreigners with names like Cathcart, Korn, Black and Havermeyer and wished they'd all go back to where their lousy ancestors had come from.

"You wouldn't believe it, Yossarian," he ruminated, raising his voice deliberately to bait Doc Daneeka, "but this used to be a pretty good country to live in before they loused it up with their goddamn piety."

Chief White Halfoat was out to revenge himself upon the white man. He could barely read or write and had been assigned to Captain Black as assistant intelligence officer.

"How could I learn to read or write?" Chief White Halfoat demanded with simulated belligerence, raising his voice again so that Doc Daneeka would hear. "Every place we pitched our tent, they sank an oil well. Every time they sank a well, they hit oil. And every time they hit oil, they made us pack up our tent and go someplace else. We were human divining rods. Our whole family had a natural affinity for petroleum deposits, and soon every oil company in the world had technicians chasint us around. We were always on the move. It was one hell of a way to bring a child up, I can tell you. I don't think I ever spent more than a week in one place."

His earliest memory was of a geologist.

"Every time another White Halfoat was born," he continued, "the stock market turned bullish. Soon whole drilling crews were following us around with all their equipment just to get the jump on each other. Companies began to merge just so they could cut down on the number of people they had to assign to us. But the crowd in back of us kept growing. We never got a good night's sleep. When we stopped, they stopped. When we moved, they moved, chuckwagons, bulldozers, derricks, generators. We were a walking business boom, and we began to receive invitations from some of the best hotels just for the amount of business we would drag into town wiht us. Some of those invitations were mighty generous, but we couldn't accept any because we were Indians and all the best hotels that were inviting us wouldn't accept Indians as gusts. Racial prejudice is a terrible thing, Yossarian. It really is. It's a terrible thing to treat a decent, loyal Indian like a nigger, kike, wop, or spic." Chief White Halfoat nodded slowly with conviction.

"Then, Yossarian, it finally happened - the beginning of the end. They began to follow us around from in front. They would try to guess where we were going to stop next and would begin drilling before we even got there, so we couldn't even stop. As soon as we'd begin to unroll our blankets, they would kick us off. They had confidence in us. They wouldn't even wait to strike oil before they kicked us off. We were so tired we almost didn't care the day our time ran out. One morning we found ourselves completely surrounded by oilmen waiting for us to come their way so they could kick us off. Everywhere you looked there was an oilman on a ridge, waiting there like Indians getting ready to attack. It was the end. We couldn't stay where we were because we had just been kicked off. And there was no place left for us to go. Only the Army saved me. Luckily, the war broke out just in the nick of time, and a draft board picked me right up out of the middle and put me down safely in Lowery Field, Colorado. I was the only survivor."

Yossarian knew he was lying, but did not interrupt as Chief White Halfoat went on to claim that he had never heard from his parents again. That didn't bother him too much, though, for he had only their word for it that they were his parents, and since they had lied to him about so many other things, they could just as well have been lying to him about that too. He was much better acquainted with the fate of a tribe of first cousins who had wandered away north in a diversionary movement and pushed inadvertently into Canada. When they tried to return, they were stopped at the border by American immigration authorities who would not let them back into the country. They could not come back in because they were red.

It was a horrible joke, but Doc Daneeka didn't laugh until Yossarian came to him one mission later and pleaded again, without any real expectation of success, to be grounded. Doc Daneeka snickered once and was soon immersed in problems of his own, which included Chief White Halfoat, who had been challenging him all that morning to Indian wrestle, and Yossarian, who decided right then and there to go crazy.

"You're wasting your time," Doc Daneeka was forced to tell him.

"Can't you ground someone who's crazy?"

"Oh, sure, I have to. There's a rule saying I have to ground anyone who's crazy."

"Then why don't you ground me? I'mc razy. Ask Clevinger."

"Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find Clevinger and I'll ask him."

"Then ask any of the others. They'll tell you how crazy I am."

"They're crazy."

"Then why don't you ground them?"

"Why don't they ask me to ground them?"

"Because they're crazy, that's why."

"Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied. "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I? And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?"

Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another appraoch. "Is Orr crazy?"

"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.

"Can you ground him?"

"I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."

"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"

"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."

"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"

"That's all. Let him ask me."

"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.

"No. Then I can't ground him."

"You mean there's a catch?"

"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 6, 2007

The Books: "Catch-22" (Joseph Heller)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Catch22Heller.jpgCatch-22 - by Joseph Heller

As per usual, I get a little bit nervous when I come to a book in my shelf that is this important to me. I was nervous when I came to Cat's Eye, I was nervous when I got to the Emily books. Having to write about Possession in a calm manner freaked me out.

Believe it or not, I work hard at my writing - even here on this blog - and these book excerpts - which appear every day like clockwork - take a lot out of me. I try to do my best. I try to express what it is in each book I am left with, what is the "take away". And if I love a book dearly ... I feel the need to get into words in just the right way. And that takes work, and contemplation. It's easier to talk about what pisses you off than what pleases you. At least I've found that to be the case for myself. I could probably write a blistering essay on why I despise Forrest Gump, and it would be funny and raging - and it really wouldn't take a lot out of me. It's at my fingertips right now. But to write about something I love - to really get into what I LOVE about something ... I can't just sit down and rattle that off. I have to think about it, and plan it out. Where am I going to start from? What IS it about such and such that I love? I usually take the book for the next day off the shelf the night before, and flip through it ... just thinking about what I want to say, the excerpt I want to choose ... and what it is I want to lead off with. Writing isn't easy. It gives me great pleasure, but it is hard work. I say this thinking of my friends on the picket line right now, but I also say this because sometimes I look at my own blog as though I am not me - and it's not mine - and it seems like perhaps a ROBOT is in charge of the thing. Like: did I actually write that much about Tess of the D'Urbervilles?? Where did that COME from? I had no idea I had so much to say about that book and about Thomas Hardy. I couldn't have written that if I hadn't, so to speak, cleared the deck mentally before I wrote it. That's how I work, with these excerpts. It's one of my favorite things I do on this blog - because I limit myself to alphabetical reality - I am not randomly choosing books, I am not editorializing in the choice of books - if a book is on my shelf and I've read it - then I include it. It forces me to write about things every day - and it also forces me to write about something even if I'm not really in the mood. I love the "book excerpt" thing. I am not always in the mood for Tennessee Williams. Or for Emily Bronte. Or Charles Dickens. But it's good for me, I think, to force myself to "get in the mood" for my daily book excerpt. It's excellent writing practice. So now I pull Catch-22 off the shelf, and thoughts cyclone through my brain, crowding in on each other. Where to begin?

I'll begin with my own story, because I can't help but think about that when I think about Catch-22. Weirdly, once I finished Scarlet Letter, in line in Central Park (I linked to that story yesterday) I took out the next book in my bag - and that was Catch-22, a book I had never read.

Catch 22 is an O'Malley favorite. Everybody talks about it, everybody quotes from it constantly. I started to read it in August of 2001 and was deep in the midst of reading it on the bus when the second plane hit the WTC. I couldn't pick up Catch-22 again for months. First of all, I wasn't ready for fiction, escape, pleasure, amusement for a long long time. Second of all, every time I looked at the book, I remembered the morning of September 11. When I finally picked up the book again, I was amazed to read the paragraph where I had left off. It was one of those weird cosmic-tumbler clicking moments - that gave me a chill like no other. The book was telling me, in no uncertain terms, what was coming, what was headed our way. Here's the essay I wrote about that morning, and about that paragraph from Catch-22.

So that always comes up for me now, when I think about Catch-22, the surrounding circumstances of my first reading of it.

Now onto the book itself.

Heller wrote: "Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts, and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?"

There is no other book quite like it. It has no heirs, as far as I'm concerned. It's stand-alone.

The Catch-22, acknowledged right up front as an unspoken rule of the universe, is directly responsible for the black is white and white is black insanity of the book. (Here's an explanation of the rules of Catch 22.) The book is so much fun to read, because literally: almost every sentence contradicts the one that came before it - BUT it does so in a way that SOUNDS LIKE it's in agreement. Hard to describe, but so so funny when you get into the rhythm. There's a ba-dum-ching quality to every sentence - but the punch line is never what you expect. You think you're going one way, and then Heller whips you around and forces you to go the OTHER way. In sentence after sentence after sentence. And it's not a gimmick, or self-conscious ... It is a completely correct style for a book that is about the ultimate insanity of the universe. Don't try to make sense of it. Only INSANE people think the world makes sense! This is Yossarian's dilemma.

Heller fans will know that the "catch-22" dilemma of the book was originally a "catch 18". He completed the book, and sent it to his publishers with the title Catch-18. One problem though: Leon Uris had just scored a huge hit with his book Mila 18, and Heller's publisher didn't want there to be any confusion. So they made him change it. Which ... God, it just goes so perfectly with the random no-cause-no-effect universe Heller describes in his book. Like: He had created this "rule", and it was called, in his mind "catch-18". I mean, that's the title of the damn book, so you know how Heller must have felt about it, the importance he gave it. He was BUMMED that he was forced to change it, and to him - it would always be "catch-18". Of course. It would be like changing a character's name. Yossarian is Yossarian. Captain Ahab is Captain Ahab. jane Eyre is Jane Eyre. I don't care if they're fictional characters. They are real people to the authors who create them - and what they CALL their characters is of the utmost importance. So imagine how Heller must have felt ... He never really reconciled himself to Catch-22 - which, again, is so amusing - because look at what he has wrought. He has actually created a phrase that now exists in our language. It did not exist before he created it. How many feckin' authors do that nowadays? I'll tell you how many. NONE. You say, "Man, I'm in trouble. It's like a total catch-22" and everybody knows what you are talking about. "Catch22" entered the language almost immediately. Again; extraordinary.

But forever in Heller's mind, it should have been a catch-18.

Damn Leon Uris.

The book is LAUGH OUT LOUD funny. I mean, please. Major Major Major Major. The chaplain. Dunbar. (I have a huge crush on Dunbar). Nately's whore chasing him through Europe with a knife, popping out from bushes, from behind buildings. Colonel Cathcart. Even just the names make me laugh out loud. Please: Major Major Major Major? That is SOMEONE'S NAME. I reiterate: his actual name is Major Major Major Major. I'm dying. And I think my favorite is the bitter Indian named Chief White Halfoat. He's a pissed-off murderous Indian, and everyone is rightly afraid of him. The book moves so quickly - it never dwells on itself, which is part of its charm. But dammit, he makes his points. Every other paragraph has some deep insight about insanity, incompetence, war, stupidity ... but they flash by so fast you don't feel bludgeoned. If you get it, you get it, if you don't ... too bad, we're moving on!! Life's short, baby, keep up!

Heller keeps going - where other authors would say, "Okay, that's enough." His sense of the absurd, his vaudevillian sense of humor, his love of upping the ante, his adoration of long insane twisted sentences that build and build and build - until, in a jujitsu move in the last 2 words, you are left wondering: "Wait ... did he just say what I THINK he just said??" He is so so good.

If you haven't read it yet, all I can say is: do yourself a favor and pick it up.

It's certainly one of the great novels of the last century or any century, for that matter. And try as I might, I can't think of any book to compare it to. It is its own thing. If you read me a passage of Heller's writing, and didn't tell me it was Heller - I bet I would guess the author. He's that distinctive. And sense of humor, of course, is a very individual thing - so maybe some people would read this and not "get" the humor. If you don't "get" the humor, I would imagine the book would seem dreadfully stupid and perhaps way too long. But I click with that humor - so every page rollicks, roars, rolls, ba-dum-chings ... and I am wiping tears of laughter off my face about Chief White Halfoat or Major Major Major Major ... and at the same time overwhelmed by the sensation of how insanely violent and awful the world is - and how Yossarian, by choosing to check out, pretty much has a point.

His whole thing is:

"When I go on bombing raids - there are people down there who are shooting up at me!!!!"

The usual response to that is, "Yossarian, they're shooting at everyone. It's war."

Because of catch-22, this is not a satisfactory answer to Yossarian. He's like, "So??? And this is normal to who??? They're shooting at ME, PERSONALLY, I don't care what you say!"

Brilliant brilliant book.

And I'm going to have to do more than one excerpt with this one.

First excerpt is from the first chapter. Yossarian and his buddy Dunbar are faking sick in the hospital so they don't have to go back out to war. Nobody can figure out what is wrong with them, and they linger ... as long as they can ... in the sick ward.
The book opens with Yossarian's sick-leave job of censoring letters home. He takes a creative approach to it. You can see how Yossarian's actions would be completely crazy-making to the folks back home receiving the butchered letters ... like : you would go INSANE if you got such weird letters ... and that's Yossarian's point. The world is nuts. I'm just behaving accordingly.

EXCERPT FROM Catch-22 - by Joseph Heller

All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation "Dear Mary" from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, "I yearn for you trafically. A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." A.T. Tappman was the group chaplain's name.

When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began attacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer's name. Most letters he didn't read at all. On those he didn't read at all he wrote his own name. On those he did read he wrote, "Washington Irving". When that grew monotonous he wrote, "Irving Washington." Censoring the envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that floated a C.I.D. man back into the ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn't censor letters. He found them too monotonous.

It was a good ward this time, one of the best he and Dunbar had ever enjoyed. With them this time was the twenty-four-year-old fighter-pilot captain with the sparse golden mustache who had been shot into the Adriatic Sea in midwinter and had not even caught cold. Now the summer was upon them, the captain had not been shot down, and he said he had the grippe. In the bed on Tossarian's right, still lying amorously on his belly, was the startled captain wtih malaria in his blood and a mosquito bite on his ass. Across the aisle from Yossarian was Dunbar, and next to Dunbar was the artillery captain with whom Yossarian had stopped playing chess. The captain was a goodc hess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish. Then there was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means - decent folk - should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk - people without means.

Yossrian was unspringing rhythms in the letters the day they brought the Texan in. It was another quiet, hot, untroubled day. The heat pressed heavily on the roof, stifling sound. Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again with his eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll's. He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his life span that Yossarian thought he was dead. They put the Texan in a bed in the middle of the ward, and it wasn't long before he donated his views.

Dunbar sat up like a shot. "That's it," he cried excitedly. "There was something missing - all the time I knew there was something missing - and now I know what it is." He banged his fist down into his palms. "No patriotism," he declared.

"You're right," Yossarian shouted back. "You're right, you're right, you're right. The hot dog, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mom's apple pie. That's what everyone's fighting for. But who's fighting for the decent folk? Who's fighting for more votes for the decent folk? There's no patriotism, that's what it is. And no matriotism, either."

The warrant officer on Yossarian's left was unimpressed. "Who gives a shit?" he asked tiredly, and turned over on his side to go to sleep.

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack

November 5, 2007

The Books: "The Scarlet Letter" (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

ScarletLetter.jpgThe Scarlet Letter - by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This was another one of those "had to read" books in high school that I yowled my way thru in protest. The hi-falutin' language ... the bleakness, the foreignness of that world (at least to my naive eyes) - Bah, what a mess!! The Crud (teacher) did his best with it - and I still remember his lecture on the symbolism thruout. Even though I found the book soooo boring, he - with his clues of what to look for - helped us through it. He helped us crack the code of symbols, and that's all I really remember of the book.

In 2001, I launched my "let's go back and read all those books from high school" project. I started with The Scarlet Letter. And, naturally, was amazed by the book - reading it as an adult. His writing! The flashes of insight. Also, the development of the characters! Hester is not just some boring symbol (although she is that as well). She's also a real live person - with stubbornness, gumption ... she came to life for me. The Scarlet Letter - unlike Tess of the D'Urbervilles - contains a real possibility of redemption. Redemption through sacrifice and suffering, a la Dostoevsky. And Hawthorne, in his writing, lets us know that this is not meant to be a literal tale, not really. The last sentence of the book contains the word "legend". So this is meant to seem like a tale passed down through generations ... one that has taken on mythic or legendary status. As in: "so once upon a time there was a woman named Hester Prynne ... and here is what happened to her ..." That style really works perfectly. Even in the descriptions of nature - and the townsfolk - and the red beams of sunset - all of that combine to create an IMAGE of a world, almost like a postcard, or a medieval painting. We are not meant to be IN that world ... we look at it, in wonder and compassion ... we see all the elements, it is an incredibly detailed portrait ... but we are meant to maintain our distance from it, just a bit. It is, at its heart, a STORY - and it is meant to be SEEN as one.

I'll always remember this second reading of the book because I finished it while sitting in the dirt in line in Central Park, 7 hours into my wait. Story here, if you haven't read it.

Here's an excerpt. The line about "borrowing from the future" startles me in its brilliance and insight. But then - most every page of this remarkable book has some kind of sentence like that one. Astonishing.

EXCERPT FROM The Scarlet Letter - by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshhold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatureal tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulted event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of econmy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that condemned her - a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm - had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison-door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. To-morrow would brings its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast, -- at her, the child of honorable parents, -- at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman, -- at her, who had once been innocent, -- as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.

It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her, -- kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure, -- free to return to her birthplace, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being, -- and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her, -- it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth - even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago - were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.

It might be, too, -- doubtless it ws so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hold, -- it mgiht be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trod the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, the temper of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she had seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe - what, finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New England -- was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saintlike, because the result of martyrdom.

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

November 4, 2007

The Books: "Damage" (Josephine Hart)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DamageJosephineHart.jpg Damage - by Josephine Hart

My memories of reading this book are so so vivid. I suppose it is indicative (mainly) of my mindset at the time of reading it - because flipping through it now, not only do I NOT find it captivating, I actually find it badly written. Overwrought, obvious - quite terrible, actually. What on earth did I see in it?? On the whole I don't read "popular" fiction - which I've talked about before here. If I look around on the subway and see everyone reading a certain book, it's usually a book I have no interest in reading. Just a taste thing. I don't go for "beach reads", meaning big ol' popular books that are "easy". If I'm on vacation, then that will be the time I take to read The Possessed or some other MASSIVE tome I have been putting off in my "normal" life, because I don't have the time or the brain space. That kind of reading is FUN for me, and for many others. I have caved a couple of times and read the book everybody else was reading on the subway and I've usually been sorry. I read The Notebook and it made me angry. I read Tuesdays with Morrie and it made me angrier. Sometimes I go into one of these reading experiences knowing it will be trash (The DaVinci Code) and have a great time regardless. That book is still a piece of shit, in terms of the writing - but I could not put it down. There are always exceptions. I love Stephen King, for example, although with him I feel he gets a raw deal in terms of critical acclaim. He is WAY better a writer than he is given credit for. But in general: those "AND THIS BOOK IS TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM" books are usually crap, and I have no use for them. Too many books in the world (tooooo many books) to waste my time on cotton candy malarkey. And please, to those who love those kinds of books, good for you. I hope you love reading, and that these books please you. To each his own. I had a funny email conversation with Lisa recently - she had forwarded me a bitchy editorial about Annie Proulx (Lisa knows I like Proulx) and the writer had a huge chip on her shoulder, she was basically saying, "These books are not FUN. I want FUN books, okay?" I'm almost not paraphrasing. The writer RESENTED the fact that Annie Proulx had critical acclaim - she seemed to feel ambushed by, oh, you know, that whole Northeast snobby literary set (yawn, yawn, yawn. Project much?) ... and was defending herself, saying, "I don't WANT to read Annie Proulx." (Uhm, then don't. Do what you want to do. And shut up about it!) I emailed back to Lisa, "Well, maybe easy beach reads are fun for that writer - good for her - but I, personally, would rather slit my wrists than read Bergdorf Blondes. Everyone has a different definition of fun." Lisa was like, "I find it fun to read about the monarchy in medieval Bulgaria, so that chick can suck it." hahahaha Seriously: to each his own!

Damage was one of those "TAKING THE WORLD BY STORM" books - and I was absolutely blown AWAY by it. I read it when it first came out, I think - I was a couple years out of college. I can read a book like The DaVinci Code and have an amazing time -but I still know, in my head, "Wow. Terrible writing." Damage was not like that for me. I thought it was amazing writing, too. I am baffled. Maybe I was looking for an expression of my own anxieties about my relationship - which was shrieking towards a cliff of doom at the speed of light. Damage taps into those anxieties. Damage says, in an ominous (bullshit) whisper, "You think your life is normal? You think you have escaped pain? Just wait. Just wait."

Which is fine. That's a fine message for a book. I'm more interested in the fact that I thought it was so good that I told everyone to read it - including my EX boyfriend - who was an intense "dark" person (he actually wasn't - he just WISHED he was dark and intense - he really was quite a sweet normal friendly person. Still is.) But anyway, I kind of re-connected with him during the time I was reading Damage - and told him he HAD to read it. I didn't cheat on my boyfriend with my ex-boyfriend - at least not physically - but I sure did in my heart, at that time. I was reaching out to him, going to him in my head all the time, for escape, respite. I saw the ex-boyfriend soon after that, and all we could talk about was Damage.

Bizarre. The book sucks, to my eyes, now. What on EARTH would we find to talk about?? To have my tastes change so much!

I think the book came along at a time when I needed it. I needed to hear that ominous message, that "never relax, because the axe is about to fall" message. And something about the prose - the preternaturally calm bleak tone - really spoke to me at the time. I have no idea why.

It was made into a movie, which I did not like - an opinion which places me at odds with the rest of the entire Western world. Everyone went gaga over that picture. I, who had somehow been brainwashed into thinking the book rivaled Anna Karenina, did not think the movie did it justice.

hahahaha

Now. Having said all that, let me say something else that completely contradicts all that:

The last two sentences of the book are an absolute slam dunk. I re-read them just now and felt, again, a chill. A perfect ending.

And the first chapter - a two-pager - which I will post as the excerpt - is pretty damn great, if you ask me - and you MUST keep reading. Especially after that last sentence, another slam dunk. If you don't already know the plot of the book, if you haven't seen the movie - then that last sentence COMMANDS that you read on. It makes you gasp, "What happened????? Turn the page and find out!"

But still: the WRITING is not good. I mean, in the excerpt below: "There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city." No shit, Sherlock. This is news?

That's why I'm baffled by my younger self. My taste in writing has not changed at all. I always liked good writing. My taste veers towards the classic, it always has. I always liked challenging writing, whether it be EB White or Dickens or Fitzgerald. And the excerpt below is not good writing. Although I suppose you could make the argument that if you want to read on - then that is a KIND of good writing.

Sure. I'll buy that. I'm just curious as to why this book so knocked me out as a 22 year old that I ended up having an affair (in my head) with another guy about it. Weird!!

I've never read anything else Josephine Hart wrote. I think her second book was not as much of a success (although it would be hard to top the success of Damage) and I read a couple pages of it and it sounded exactly like the prose in Damage - cold, almost dead, with an overwhelming sense of, "And I was never the same after that" in the tone. So maybe she's a one-trick pony. No idea.

And I suppose the book served its purpose. I had a GREAT time reading it, once upon a time. I will never read it again, but that's okay too.

Okay - so here's the excerpt. The opening of the book!

EXCERPT FROM Damage - by Josephine Hart

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.

Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home.

Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city.

For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe.

We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.

I have been at the bedsides of the dying, who looked puzzled at their family's grief as they left a world in which they had never felt at home.

I have seen men weep more at the death of their brother, whose being had once locked into theirs, than at the death of their child. I have watched brides become mothers, who only once, long ago, were radiant on their uncle's knee.

And in my own life, I have travelled far, acquiring loved and unfamiliar companions: a wife, a son, and a daughter. I have lived with them, a loving alien in surroundings of unsatisfying beauty. An efficient dissembler, I gently and silently smoothed the rough edges of my being. I hid the awkwardness and pain with which I inclined towards my chosen outline, and tried to be what those I loved expected me to be - a good husband, a good father, and a good son.

Had I died at fifty I would have been a doctor, and an established politician, though not a household name. One who had made a contribution, and was much loved by his sorrowing wife, Ingrid, and by his children, Martyn and Sally.

My funeral would have been well attended by those who had gone further in life than I, and who therefore honoured my memory by their presence. And by those who believed they had loved the private man, and by their tears gave testimony to his existence.

It would have been the funeral of an above-average man, more generously endowed with the world's blessings than most. A man who, at the comparatively early age of fifty, had ended his journey. A journey which would certainly have led to some greater honour and achievement, had it continued.

But I did not die in my fiftieth year. There are few who know me now, who do not regard that as a tragedy.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

November 3, 2007

The Books: "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (Thomas Hardy)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

TessDUrbervilles.jpgTess of the D'Urbervilles - by Thomas Hardy.

Tess is one of those books I was forced to read in high school. Unlike Tale of 2 Cities or The Great Gatsby I did NOT, as a teenager, take to Tess. As a matter of fact, reading that book was the ultimate in drudgery for me at the time. Years passed - and I remembered NONE of it. Nothing had "taken" in my head. Starting in 2001, I decided to go back and re-read all of those old books I had been forced to read for class in high school. Not in order, and not all at once ... as a matter of fact, I am still working on the list. (I recently re-read Billy Budd, for example). So I re-read The Scarlet Letter, and Moby Dick (holy Mary mother of God), and many others. It's been a great project - I'm really happy about it - because these are great novels, and many of them were wasted on me as a 15 year old. I still think Billy Budd is simplistic and boring ... but I NEEDED to go back and confront the book again.

I re-read Tess in 2002 - and I remember talking with Maria about it (she loves the book) - and I was raving about how I felt like I had never read the book at ALL ... because I was having such an intense and great experience with it ... it seemed like a totally different book from the one I had read 'lo those many years ago. And I said something like, "I totally can't put it down ..." and Maria said (and this phrase stuck with me): "It's a page-turner, it really is."

That's what I had certainly missed back in high school, for whatever reason. And as an adult, yes - I found this book to be an almost horrifyingly compulsive page-turner. I knew it would not end well - mainly because it's Thomas Hardy, a gloomy angry personality on his BEST days. So as you flip through those pages, moving on towards the irrevocable end ... you can't stop yourself from trying to peek forward, to see what will happen - to see what is up next ... even though you know it's all going to be bleak and horrible. And what a terrible terrible thing it was ... the way the world treated Tess. There is nothing good about it. Nothing redeeming. Hardy did not forgive, Hardy is not Dostoevsky ... Hardy, at times, even as an old man, seems baffled at the world's cruelty. Not baffled in a naive way - he certainly understood the world to be a brutal place, and that's what he wrote about. In obsessive detail. But he still seems capable of being surprised by it - at least on behalf of characters like Tess. The story is peppered throughout with paragraphs of longing sadness, of regret - an omniscent voice wondering: "What could Tess have become if the world had been a different place?" Hardy is an omniscent type dude - as a writer he created an entire world ("Wessex") - and even during his lifetime literary "Wessex tours" began, for fans of the books to come out and see the countryside Hardy had described so intimately. His eye for detail - it's like you get to know every field, every hedgerow. The garden in front of this house, the small clump of trees on the way out of town ... etc. It has the detail of Tolkien's Middle Earth, with the maps and the signposts ... It feels like if you were dropped down into Tolkien's world, you'd be able to figure out your way around, just because he has described it so well. Hardy's world is the same way.

The thing you really are left with, though, in Hardy's "world" - is the lack of God. Books have been written about this, and about Hardy's disillusionment - and even though church is mentioned at times in Tess, and the beauty of nature - which could be seen to have a spiritual component, and all that ... God is not present. Hardy wrote a poem called "God's Funeral" which pretty much states his view on the matter:

I
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

IV
And this phantasmal variousness
Ever possessed it as they drew along:
Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

V
Almost before I knew I bent
Towards the moving columns without a word;
They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: --

VI
'O man-projected Figure, of late
Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?
Whence came it we were tempted to create
One whom we can no longer keep alive?

VII
'Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,
We gave him justice as the ages rolled,
Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

VIII
'And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And what we had imagined we believed,

IX
'Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude reality
Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

X
'So, toward our myth's oblivion,
Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope
Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

XI
'How sweet it was in years far hied
To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,
To lie down liegely at the eventide
And feel a blest assurance he was there!

XII
'And who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?'...

XIII
Some in the background then I saw,
Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
Who chimed as one: 'This is figure is of straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!'

XIV
I could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

XV
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI
Whereof, to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had said,
'See you upon the horizon that small light --
Swelling somewhat?' Each mourner shook his head.

XVII
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best....
Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.

The world is not just. Nothing makes sense. Anyone who tries to make sense out of the random cruelty experienced by Tess from almost Day One of her life is a fool. A delusional fool. Remember the last scene of Tess? After wandering through the countryside, camping out in empty mansions, hiding in inns, sleeping in haystacks ... Angel and Tess, in the dark of night, walk across a field ... they can't see where they are going - but they become aware that there is some sort of stone column - they feel it with their hands. They wonder ... is this a "Temple of the Winds", they ask each other. Gradually, they realize that they have come across Stonehenge. They are so exhausted that they lie down on slabs of rock, surrounded by the upright stone slabs - and sleep. This is where, of course, it all ends for Tess. Stonehenge - an obviously pre-Christian site - almost pre-historical - mysterious, just THERE, we can only guess at why it was created (or, like the tour guides at Newgrange, in Ireland: "Well, nobody knows, love ...") ... but it sure as hell has nothing to do with Christianity. Hardy chooses to end his merciless book THERE. It is where Tess can sink into the slabs of stone, and where truth can finally be told. I mean, it's obvious. Hardy was not afraid of being obvious in his hatreds. There's a reason why Tess was such a scandal at its original publication.

Nobody likes to be told they are a fool. And Hardy, with his books, did so over and over again. Time has obviously vindicated him. In the introduction to my copy of the book, by Robert Heilman, he writes:

In 1895, at the age of 55, Thomas Hardy gave up novels for poetry (which occupied him steadily for the remaining 33 years of his life). Rarely has a writer ended a career, or a phase of it, more triumphantly. In his last ten years as a novelist Hardy published three great works of tragic hue: The Mayor of Casterbridge, 1886; Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 1891; Jude the Obscure, 1895. The artistic achievement of thewse works was not immediately matched by the admiration of the world, for Tess and Jude offended many readers by the sense of disaster dominating them and by their treatment of sex; but the novels gradually won popular as well as critical esteem, and they are now generally ranked among the major works of nineteenth-century fiction.

One of the things that makes Tess stand out from other books of its kind (because let's remember that Hardy, with his plots, was not reinventing the wheel. The plot of Tess is basically a "modern" plot, a seduction novel, a story of virtue sullied, of trials and tribulations. People had been writing books with the same plot as Tess since the 1700s - and these books, now forgotten, while Tess remains, are really the birth of the modern novel). But anyway, one of the things that elevates Tess from the herd of other books with similar topics and structures - is that the three leads (well, and everyone in the book - but mainly the three leads) - are so individual, and unexpected. They live and breathe. Alec is not just a rapist, a blackguard. He truly believes that Tess could be had. Hardy makes the point over and over again that Tess has the body of a well-developed woman - yet in her heart she is still a girl. But men only saw the body. And so Alec rapes her. BUT. Not to excuse the horror of that - because Hardy sure as hell doesn't excuse it - it is Tess' ruination - but Alec is not a snarling villain like you see in silent movies. He is not painted in black and white terms (although you despise him for his actions). And Tess is not JUST a damsel in distress. There is a big deal in the book (and it's controversial to this day) about her partial consent to him. The lines are not clearly drawn. This makes things much much worse, because the shame Tess eventually heaps upon her own head is FAR worse than anything the gossips and prudes and evil-ones could ever do. Tess is punished enough, through her own self-hatred. Bah. It's horrible. The main problem seems to be that Alec misunderstands Tess. And as you will recall, he ends up paying a heavy heavy price for being delusional, for only seeing what he wants to see, for misunderstanding her. He basically messed up the wrong girl, although that would not be apparent at first. And then there is Angel - Tess' husband ... another 3-dimensional character. And Tess. She is not a damsel in distress - although her situation just goes from bad to worse. She is a human being, trying - desperately - to handle what she has been dealt. She seems REAL.

And, to me, THIS is why the book is such a "page-turner".

The plot is familiar. We know where we are going. No real big surprises there.

But Hardy turns our expectations upside down. Because nobody here is a "type". He is not writing a warning pamphlet about "what can happen to girls" in this world. He is writing about a particular girl, and her particular life. And so we come to not just care about her, but LOVE her. And because Hardy makes us love her, the book is that much more brutal.

Here's an excerpt, from near the beginning of the book. The omniscent narrator comes in periodically, as you will see ... and puts a chill over everything. An inhuman chill, the chill of an uber-perspective. Especially Alec's loud laugh at the end of the scene, and his declaration that the girl is "crumby" (in this context it means handsome, plump - it's a vaguely sexual term in this world.) It's just horrible - because of the chilly omniscence that comes directly before. This is one of Hardy's main themes in Tess which is devastating: when happiness DOES come, or at least the possibility of it - life, and the world, has already ruined us. Happiness always comes too late.

So Alec's laugh, and his covetousness - feels random, and yet unstoppable. It's GOING to happen.

shivers. And the paragraph beginning "In the ill-judged execution ..." has a terrible resonance for me, and re-reading it this morning has almost ruined my day.

Thanks, Thomas! Going out to breakfast now to shake off the ghosts and haunting echoes you always bring.

EXCERPT FROM Tess of the D'Urbervilles - by Thomas Hardy.

"Do you mind my smoking?" he asked.

"Oh, not at all, sir."

He watched her pretty and unconscious munching through the skeins of smoke that pervaded the tent, and Tess Durbeyfield did not divine, as she innocently looked down at the roses in her bosom, that there behind the blue narcotic haze was potentially the "tragic mischief" of her drama - one who stood fair to be the blood-red ray in the spectrum of her young life. She had an attribute which amounted to a disadvantage just now; and it was this that caused Alec D'Urberville's eyes to rivet themselves upon her. It was a luxuriance of aspect, a fulness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was. She had inherited the feature from her mother without the quality it denoted. It had troubled her mind occasionally, till her companions had said that it was a fault which time would cure.

She soon had finished her lunch. "Now I am going home, sir," she said, rising.

"And what do they call you?" he asked, as he accompanied her along the drive till they were out of sight of the house.

"Tess Durbeyfield, down at Marlott."

"And you say your people have lost their horse?"

"I -- killed him!" she answered, her eyes filling with tears as she gave particulars of Prince's death. "And I don't know what to do for father on account of it!"

"I must think if I cannot do something. My mother must find a berth for you. But Tess, no nonsense about 'd'Urberville'; - 'Durbeyfield' only, you know - quite another name."

"I wish for no better, sir," said she with something of dignity.

For a moment - only for a moment - when they were in the turning of the drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if -- but, no: he thought better of it, and let her go.

Then the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting's import she might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired one in all respects - as nearly as humanity can supply the right and desired; yet to him who amongst her acquaintances might have approximated to this kind, she was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.

When d'Urberville got back to the tent he sat down astride on a chair reflecting, with a pleased gleam in his face. Then he broke into a loud laugh.

"Well, I'm damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby girl!"

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

November 2, 2007

The Books: "The End of the Affair" (Graham Greene)

Next book on my my adult fiction shelves :

EndOfAffair.jpgThe End of the Affair - by Graham Greene.

Graham Greene was a big BLANK in my education - I never read him (same with Evelyn Waugh, and I suppose many others). It wasn't on PURPOSE ... and his name comes up all the time in my reading (especially when I've read Robert Kaplan's stuff - Graham Greene, and his travelogues and journalism, is obviously a huge inspiration to Kaplan). Somehow over the last year, Eric found out that I had never read The End of the Affair. We talked about in a blog-post somewhere on my blog, can't remember where. And he FREAKED. He begged me to read it! He hoped against hope that I hadn't seen the movie! But I had. Wasn't wacky about it either to tell you the truth, but that had more to do (I imagine) with Ralph Fiennes than Graham Greene's story. I never ever ever buy Ralph Fiennes as a leading man. Nope. There's something too soft in his eyes, something ... I don't know. He reeks of mama's boy to me. And not that there's anything wrong with that - when he plays that kind of part, an underdeveloped man (of which his monster in Schindler's List is the best example) - then you really can't imagine anyone else playing the part. But as a lover? A guy pursuing a woman? A leading man? Don't even try, CHiPs.

So anyway - The End of the Affair is obviously one of Eric's favorite books - he felt that strongly about it - was so excited for me to experience it for the first time, and was bummed that I already knew the plot (because - if you've read the book - you know that there's a freakin' sucker punch in the last 2 pages. Like a sucker punch you've never had before in your life). But for whatever reason, the movie left a kind of TEPID response in my head (thanks, Ralph!) - so the details of the story were not strong to me. A couple weeks passed - and finally Eric could stand it no longer, and a package arrived at my house one day - I opened it - and there was The End of the Affair, from my blog-friend Eric. I laughed out loud when I saw it. My friend Allison and I have this thing with books we love - we basically BEG the other person to read it. We plead, we beg, we shove copies of said book into each other's hands ... Because our tastes are so similar, we have really expanded our reading that way - and I love it.

So finally, I read The End of the Affair. It's a slim little book, I read it in a weekend - and it's also the type of book you cannot put down. I was nearly killed by yellow cabs because I was stepping off curbs into the street with my nose in that book. I guess it's one of those books I took for granted. It's like when I first read Jane Eyre - I came to that one late, too - I was an adult when I first read it, and you know, you hear about Jane Eyre, blah blah blah ... great novel, etc. - but then you read it - and to be confronted head on with such greatness is a truly humbling and awe-inspiring experience. The End of the Affair was like that. I had a great time talking with my dad about it, too. It blew. me. away.

On its surface it is almost a detective story. You don't get all the pieces until those last 2 pages ... the narrative is not linear. We start at the end (and of course the book begins with this sentence: "A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.") Our narrator doesn't know where to begin. He writes from the wreckage of the aftermath (literal and metaphorical - because let's not forget that this is also one of the greatest war-time novels ever written.) Our narrator knows the end ... and he struggles to discover how to tell his own story - and that struggle is in the writing. You can feel his anguish, you can feel his psychic torment - He is poisoned by hate, and yet he feels that it is only his hate that will help him survive the disaster of the end of the affair. Hate. Hard and clear. He will NOT succumb. God will not "get" him, boy. Nope. Fuck. YOU, God. I have never read such an angry book. It's breathtaking.

Graham Greene was, of course, Catholic - and this is also one of the greatest Catholic books ever written. I'd put Ulysses on that list too, although that's Irish Catholicism which is a horse of a different color entirely. I should know. Like Joyce said, "In Ireland, Catholicism is black magic."

The Catholic themes of End of the Affair unfold slowly ... horribly ... irrevocably ... and I wouldn't dream of giving anything away. I had to put the book down a couple of times, just to catch my breath.

The book is also a searing unforgettable love story. And since our narrator writes after "the end of the affair", everything is suffused with the misery of what came after. Even the joy, even the love they shared. He can't look at any of it without feeling the loss. He can't look at ANY of it without raging at God, a God he refuses to believe in. REFUSES. Out of spite. So there were times when I was reading about their trysts, and what they talked about, and how they worked as a couple (she, of course, is married already - so there's quite a bit of danger of being found out - and if it weren't for the fact that London was being bombed from above on a nightly basis, perhaps they would have been "found out" long before) ... anyway, there were times when the sweetness of their love, the strength of it - was so powerfully rendered (and yet so simple - because isn't love, at its purest, very very simple?) - when tears flooded my eyes. I cried because of how beautiful it was - but I also cried because I knew, in my reading of the book, that it was all over. And I didn't know HOW it ended (because I couldn't remember the movie very well), but the sadness of the loss trembles through his prose. He is a man left bereft. Forever. There will be no respite for him. No comfort. Greene, in his brilliant way, somehow suggests that the narrator is CHOOSING comfortlessness. Comfort does exist. But the narrator refuses it. Again, I hesitate to say more - if you haven't read it.

The End of the Affair is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM The End of the Affair - by Graham Greene.

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihhilates us: we lose our identity. The words of human love have been used by the saints to describe their vision of God, and so, I suppose, we might use the terms of prayer, meditation, contemplation to explain the intensity of the love we feel for a woman. We too surrender memory, intellect, intelligence, and we too experience the deprivation, the noche oscura, and sometimes as a reward a kind of peace. The act of love itself has been described as the little death, and lovers sometimes experience too the little peace. It is odd to find myself writing these phrases as though I loved what in fact I hate. Sometimes I don't recognize my own thoughts. What do I know of phrases like "the dark night" or of prayer, who have only one prayer? I have inherited them, that is all, like a husband who is left by death in the useless possession of a woman's clothes, scents, pots of cream ... And yet there was this peace ...

That is how I think of those first months of war - was it a phoney peace as well as a phoney war? It seems now to have stretched arms of comfort and reassurance all over those months of dubiety and waiting, but the peace must, I suppose, even at that time have been punctuated by misunderstanding and suspicion. Just as I went home that first evening with no exhilaration but only a sense of sadness and resignation, so again and again I returned home on other days with the certainty that I was only one of many men - the favourite lover for the moment. This woman, whom I loved so obsessively that if I woke in the night I immediately found the thought of her in my brain and abandoned sleep, seemed to give up all her time to me. And yet I could feel not trust: in the act of love I could be arrogant, but alone I had only to look in the mirror to see doubt, in the shape of a lined face and a lame leg - why me? There were always occasions when we couldn't meet - appointments with a dentist or a hairdresser, occasions when Henry entertained, when they were alone together. It was no good telling myself that in her own home she would have no opportunity to betray me (with the egotism of a lover I was already using that word with its suggestion of a non-existent duty) while Henry worked on the widows' pensions or - for he was soon shifted from that job - on the distribution of gas-masks and the design of approved cardboard cases, for didn't I know it was possible to make love in the most dangerous circumstances, if the desire were there? Distrust grows with a lover's success. Why, the very next time we saw each other it happened in jut the way that I should have called impossible.

I woke with the sadness of her last cautious advice still resting on my mind, and within three minutes of waking her voice on the telephone dispelled it. I have never known a woman before or since so able to alter a whole mood by simply speaking on the telephone, and when she came into a room or put her hand on my side she created at once the absolute trust I lost with every separation.

"Hello," she said, "are you asleep?"

"No. When can I see you? This morning?"

"Henry's got a cold. He's staying at home."

"If only you could come here ..."

"I've got to stay in to answer the telephone."

"Just because he's got a cold?"

Last night I had felt friendship and sympathy for Henry, but already he had become an enemy, to be mocked and resented and covertly run down.

"He's lost his voice completely."

I felt a malicious delight at the absurdity of his sickness: a civil servant without a voice whispering hoarsely and ineffectively about widows' pensions. I said, "Isn't there any way to see you?"

"But of course."

There was silence for a moment on the line and I thought we had been cut off. I said, "Hello. Hello." But she had been thinking, that was all, carefully, collectedly, quickly, so that she could give me straightaway the correct answer. "I'm giving Henry a tray in bed at one. We could have sandwiches ourselves in the living room. I'll tell him you want to talk over the film - or that story of yours", and immediatley she rang off the sense of trust was disconnected and I thought, how many times before has she planned in just this way? When I went to her home and rang the bell, I felt like an enemy - or a detective, watching her words as Parkis and his son were to watch her movements a few years later. And then the door opened and trust came back.

There was never any quesiton in those days of who wanted whom - we were together in desire. Henry had his tray, sitting up against two pillows in his green woollen dressing-gown, and in the room below, on the hardwood floor, with a single cushion for support and the door ajar, we made love. When the moment came, I had to put my hand gently over her mouth to deaden that strange sad angry cry of abandonment, for fear Henry should hear it overhead.

To think I had intended to just pick her brain. I crouched on the floor beside her and watched and watched, as though I might never see this again - the brown indeterminate-coloured hair like a pool of liquor on the parquet, the sweat on her forehead, the heavy breathing as though she had run a race and now like a young athlete lay in the exhaustion of victory.

And then the stair squeaked. For a moment we neither of us moved. The sandwiches were stacked uneaten on the table, the glasses had not been filled. She said in a whisper, "He went downstairs." She sat in a chair and put a plate in her lap and a glass beside her.

"Suppose he heard," I said, "as he passed."

"He wouldn't have known what it was."

I must have looked incredulous, for she explained with dreary tenderness, "Poor Henry. It's never happened - not in the whole ten years," but all the same we weren't so sure of our safety: we sat there silently listening until the stair squeaked again. My voice sounded to myself cracked and false as I said rather too loudly, "I'm glad you like that scene with the onions," and Henry pushed open the door and looked in. He was carrying a hot-water-bottle in a grey flannel cover. "Hello, Bendrix," he whispered.

"You shouldn't have fetched that yourself," she said.

"Didn't want to disturbe you."

"We were talking about the film last night."

"Hope you've got everything you want," he whispered to me. He took a look at the claret Sarah had put out for me. "Sholud have given him the '29," he breathed in his undimensional voice and drifted out again, clasping the hot-water-bottle in its flannel cover, and again we were alone.

"Do you mind?" I asked her, and she shook her head. I didn't really know what I meant - I think I had an idea that the sight of Henry might have roused remorse, but she had a wonderful way of eliminating remorse. Unlike the rest of us she was unhaunted by guilt. In her view when a thing was done, it was done: remorse died with the act. She would have thought it unreasonable of Henry, if he had caught us, to be angry for more than a moment. Catholics are always said to be freed in the confessional from the mortmain of the past - certainly in that respect you could have called her a born Catholic, although she believed in God as little as I did. Or so I thought then and wonder now.

If this book of mine fails to take a straight course, it is because i am lost in a strange region: I have no map. I sometimes wonder whether anything that I am putting down here is true. I felt that afternoon such complete trust when she said to me suddenly, without being questioned, "I've never loved anybody or anything as I do you." It was as if, sitting there in the chair with a half-eaten sandwich in her hand, she was abandoning herself as completely as she had done, five minutes back, on the hardwood floor. We most of us hesitate to make so complete a statement - we remember and we foresee and we doubt. She had no doubts. The moment only mattered. Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space. What did time matter - all the past and the other men she may from time to time (there is that word again) have known, or all the future in which she might be making the same statement with the same sense of truth? When I replied that I loved her too in that way, I was the liar, not she, for I never lose the consciousness of time: to me the present is never here: it is always last year or next week.

She wasn't lying even when she said, "Nobody else. Ever again." There are contradictions in time, that's all, that don't exist on the mathematical point. She had so much more capacity for love than I had - I couldn't bring down that curtain round the moment, I couldn't forget and I couldn't not fear. Even in the moment of love, I was like a police officer gathering evidence of a crime that hadn't yet been committed, and when more than seven years later I opened Parkis's letter the evidence was all there in my memory to add to my bitterness.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBack

November 1, 2007

The Books: "Veronica" (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my my adult fiction shelves :

VeronicaMaryGaitskill.jpgVeronica - - by Mary Gaitskill. Veronica is Gaitskill's latest book, a novel. As is probably clear by now, Mary Gaitskill is one of my favorite writers today. I was kinda disappointed in Veronica - not the writing, never the writing ... It was the cumulative effect of the story, the narration ... It just didn't add up for me. To me, her genius is in the short story form ... although I'm open to persuasion! (Jon?? Ted?) Speaking of Ted, he wrote a great post about Veronica which he read recently. This post here describes my original response to Veronica when it was still fresh in my mind. To me, the novel works best when she gets really specific - the way New York feels and looks at 5 o'clock in the morning, the kinds of conversations you have when you're drunk at a sex club in Paris, the way roommates act, the way moss on the tree gets drenched with rain ... Gaitskill is so so good at that stuff. In Veronica that is all there - but I felt her straining for something else. Something universal. This mostly comes up in the present-day sections when Allison is ill and taking a walk and thinking back on her life. I found my mind wandering during these sections ... Gaitskill is not, to my taste, a "universal" writer, but I have to think more about this. She is obviously versatile - it's not like she just keeps writing about the same people over and over, her characters have the stamp of authenticity - they stay behind in your mind, their quirks, the way their eyes flash, what they say ... But it seemed to me in Veronica that perhaps Gaitskill felt that that wasn't ENOUGH and she needed to move her telescope back and try to 'say' something about ALL of humankind. Not that Gaitskill shouldn't stretch and challenge herself as an artist.

One of my favorite quotes about her is from a review of her story collection Because They Wanted To, and I think it applies here:

In "The Wrong Thing", the novella that concludes the collection, Ms. Gaitskill seems to be striving toward an uncertain goal, and (like her narrator, Susan) she isn't entirely successful. She's slightly out of her depth -- which is exactly where she needs to be; it's the only place she's going to make the discoveries that will take her up to the next level and the levels beyond. Once an artist of her command relinquishes enough control to let her brilliance lead her where it wants to, anything is possible.

YES. Gaitskill, a writer of fearless truth, unblinking honesty, and almost chilling accuracy, needs to be "out of her depth" - yes yes yes. And I felt that in Veronica. Gaitskill is getting older. She is not the 23 year old phenom who wrote Bad Behavior and scared the crap out of everybody. She's an established writer. So what next? Where should she go next? What is her next topic? In order to answer those questions through her art, Gaitskill needs to take risks. And taking risks means there is a possibility of failure. I don't think Veronica is a failure. Far from it. It just didn't really work for me. But I see it in the context of her career as a whole. Pushing herself. Digging in. Rutting around. Being relentless with herself. Never resting on her laurels. Investigating. Coming out of what we might expect of her - and doing something else.

But also, it's never EVER the writing that suffers. There's some writing in this book that is as good as it gets.

As always, I look forward to what Mary Gaitskill will do next. She is a reminder to me to be courageous, to be truthful, to not care what people will think (you think it's a coincidence that I decided to try to write my Enter Sandman story at the same time as I have been doing Gaitskill excerpts? Think again!!) - to be bold, and open, and true. To work hard. To hone your vision so you can see INTO an experience rather than stay on the surface of it. Gaitskill is a great great teacher in that regard.

Here's an excerpt from Veronica.

EXCERPT FROM Veronica - - by Mary Gaitskill.

I stopped looking for a permanent job. I went out whenever I could, under any circumstance. When Sheila's cousin in Brooklyn had a birthday party, I took the train out, only to stand in a sparsely furnished room with strangers. When a temp at the office gave a reading combined with a dance performance, I showed up to watch determined girls in leotards creep and crouch across a ratty stage drenched in nightmare orange. A friend of Candy's - a harmless girl I despised for being harmless - invited us to a bachelorette party and I went.

No matter how unfashionable the party, fashionable music was always playing. The fashion then was silly and sepulchral at once, with hopping, skipping beats playing off a funereal overlay. Somebody sang, "This kiss will never fade away," his voice like an oily black machine operating a merry-go-round of music flying on grossly painted wings. "It's about the bombing of Dresden," said a drunk boy. "Excuse me," I said, and walked away. Heat flared in the flying music, then died like an explosion seen from far away. People walked around smiling and talking while the music likened mass death to a kiss and gave silliness a proud twist to its head. This kiss will never fade away. Alain kissed me forever while I stood on the outskirts of parties, watching people who meant something to one another. A fat person with an outthrust jawbone took someone's hand and squeezed it; there was a burst of goodwill. A woman with desperate bony calves, made stark by her big high heels, grinned at someone across the room, her grin a signal of deep things inside both of them that nobody else could see. Sometimes I saw the goodwill and the deep things and longed to know them. Sometimes I saw the thrusting jaw and the bony calves and turned up my nost. Because I could never fully have either feeling, I stayed detached. It was as if I were seventeen again and longing to live inside a world described by music - a world that was sad at being turned into a machine, but ecstatic, too, singing on the surface of its human heart as the machine spread through its tissue and silenced the flow of its blood. In this world, there were no deep things, no vulgar goodwill, only rigorous form and beauty, and even songs about mass death could be sung on the light and playful surface of the heart.

I didn't say any of this. I didn't even think it. But it was visible in the way I held my body, and in my bitter, despising eyes. Other people could see it in me as surely as I saw it in them. And so I was able to make friends. I went to nightclubs with an "actress" named Joy, who might've been a model if not for hips that would've been ungainly in a photograph, but which gave her living walk a pleasing, viscous reek. She worked as a hostess in a piano bar, where she got paid to drink and talk to lonely businessmen. She lived in a tiny shotgun apartment piled with dirty dishes, cat boxes, and open jars of clawed-at cold cream. Hurled pairs of pants tried to flee across the couch; wilted dresses snored on the kitchen chairs. The two cats tore the stuffing out of the couch and rolled toilet paper down the hall. During the day, Joy sat in this ragged nest like a princess, bathing in the kitchen with one gleaming pink foot perched on the edge of the tub, or sitting wrapped in a soiled comforter to drink coffee and eat cheesecake out of a tin. At night, she sailed out wearing absurd clothes as if they were Givenchy gowns. Once when I complimented her on one of her mismatched earrings, she pointed at the sky and said, "That earring means, Don't look at my finger; look at the moon."

Together, we were assured admittance to exclusive clubs where, lifted up and out of the hoi polloi and deposited at the entrance by the doorman's fastidious gaze, we handed our coats to a gaunt creature in a coat-lined cave, then walked down the glowing sound-chamber hall, where music, lightly skipping in the main rooms, here bumbled from wall to wall like a ghost groaning in purgatory. We turned a corner and the music showed its laughing public face. We entered the great night flower of fun, open and dark like a giant lily swarming with drunken fairies. Into the swarm we flew, Joy darting, hovering, seeking and finding the inevitable man handing out cocaine to girls.

Our converation was so much torn paper on the surging current of our united forward intent. But at some point, she would lean with her hip against me, and her body would talk to me, light and charmingly, of earrings and the moon. And at some other point, I would emerge from the bathroom and she would be gone, leaving me to wander with drunken, burning eyes, seeking a way into heaven. Sometimes I would wake with a dry mouth in the dim apartment of a naked man who'd promised he was that way but whose snoring face now denied it.

If I called Joy, she would tell me of her adventures, of this one's amazing kiss, or that one's art-world status. Otherwise, I didn't hear from her until she wanted to go out again; if I wasn't able to go out that night, she quickly got off the phone.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

October 31, 2007

The Books: "Because They Wanted to" - 'The Wrong Stuff' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my my adult fiction shelves :


BecauseTheyWantedTo.jpgBecause They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill. This excerpt is from the last four-part story in the book (I could read a novel about this character - she's so well-drawn and touching and weird): "The Wrong Stuff". For the most part, Gaitskill does third-person narration - there are definitely exceptions, but the majority of her stuff has that distant voice. This one is first-person narration - and so much of first-person narration depends on the VOICE. And man, is the voice in this story arresting. I can't stop reading. It's a sad sad story - but it's not a sad voice (as you will see in the excerpt). The sadness comes unexpectedly - I don't mean to say that the character is unaware of her own sadness, and we, the reader, feel sad when she doesn't. No. She has her moments, moments of total blankness - when a guy she just screwed has left the apartment - and she says something about how it took her an hour to calm down. Not because of the sex but because of the loneliness in his wake. That kind of stuff. I'm going to excerpt the beginning of the story, just so you can see how the voice launches itself at us. It's funny, it's startling - almost scary in its aggression ... I am in love with the voice.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill - 'The Wrong Stuff'

Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was and I said, "I have deep longings that will never be satisfied." I go in there all the time, so I thought it was okay. But she frowned slightly and said, "Is it the weather that does it to you?" "No," I said, "it's just my personality." She aughed.

It's the kind of thing that I enjoy saying at the moment but that has a nasty reverb. I want it to be a joke, but I'm afraid it's not.

Last week a woman I have not spoken to for years called to tell me that someone I used to have sex with had died of a drug overdose. I was shocked to hear it, but not especially sorry. He'd had a certain fey glamour and a knack for erotic chaos that was both entertaining and horrible, but he was essentially an absurdly cruel, absurdly unhappy person, and I thought that, in the end, he was probably quite relieved to go. I had not seen him in ten years, and our association had been pornographic, loveless, and stupid. We had had certain bright moments of camaraderie and high jinks, but none of it justified the feelings I'd had for him. Even now he occasionally appears in my dreams - loving and tender, smiling as he hands me, variously, a candy bar, a brightly striped glass ball, a strawberry-scented candle. In one dream he grew wings and flew to South America with me clinging to his back, ribbons flying from our hair and feet.

"I know he hurt you," my friend said. "But I think he hurt himself a lot more."

"Yeah," I said. "He did."

When I got off the phone, I sat still for some moments. Then I got up and dressed for the party I was about to attend. It was a birthday party for an acquaintance, a self-described pro-sex feminist who had created a public niche for herself as a pornographer and talk-show guest. I put on a see-through blouse, a black bra, a tiny black skirt, high-heeled boots, and a ratty black wig i had found in the bargain bin of a used-clothing store.

I took a taxi to the party, and the driver, whom I had engaged in conversation, commented on my clothes. "I just wondered," he said, "why you're dressed so, well, so ... I mean ..."

"You mean like a slut?"

"Uh, yeah." He glanced in his rearview. "Not that I'm saying anything."

"It's okay," I said. "It's because I think it's fun. It's not a big scary sex thing. It's an enthusiastic, participatory kind of thing. Besides, I'm thirty-nine, and pretty soon I won't be able to do it anymore, because I'll be an old bag."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Well, that's cool," he said. "It's just that you don't seem like the type who needs the attention."

His comment was so touching that it made me feel maudlin, and feeling maudlin made me feel belligerent. "A guy I used to be involved with used to criticize me for not dressing slutty enough," I said. "He said I wasn't much of a girl. He'd probably like what I've got on, but the little jerk is dead now." I dug around in my bag for the fare. The driver's eyes flashed urgently in his rearview.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

October 22, 2007

The Books: "Because They Wanted to" - 'Comfort' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


BecauseTheyWantedTo.jpgBecause They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill. This excerpt is from the story 'Comfort'.

A typically bitchy ironic title from Gaitskill - because the characters in the story are comfortless. There is no "comfort" to be found. They all want it - and it seems to Daniel (the main character) that some people (like his brother and his wife) might even have found it ... in the little things ... but he sure as hell doesn't have it. Comfort. What a word. Daniel gets a call that his mother is in the hospital. He flies home to be with her. He has a brother, a father. There are family issues. Ambivalence. Lots of things unsaid. But the main slamdunk of this story is the character of Jacquie - Daniel's girlfriend. What a character. I kind of despise her, although I know she (like all of us) has her reasons. She's analytical. She's abstract. Nothing GETS IN THERE with her. There's something beautiful and sweet about her, too - but in moments of crisis - she tries to say the "smart" thing, THE thing - as opposed to knowing that sometimes, it's best to just say SOMETHING - even if it's not the most original thing in the world. When something bad happens to someone you love - it is not necessary to come up with a treatise about the universe and its flaws and things happening for a reason - it is not necessary to be the savior who says the exact right thing that will get the person you love out of their funk. But it IS necessary that you at least say, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry - how are you doing?" Jacquie cannot do that. She's not malevolent or cruel. It's just that simple statements like that never occur to her. She doesn't "get" families. I forget her story - but she doesn't "get" that Daniel has a family - and that it's inappropriate for her to casually refer to his father as a "prick". She doesn't understand. Isn't his father just a person like any other person? What did she say wrong?? Anyway, all of this comes to a head because of Daniel's family emergency.

I'm just going to excerpt from the beginning of the story - where all of this is set up. I'm doing a lot of explaining and describing ... better to just read Gaitskill.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Comfort'.

Daniel sat in his San Francisco apartment on a big, mushy pillow with his black rubber drum pad on his lap. He stretched his legs and pushed the coffee table on which he and Jacquie had just eaten dinner into the middle of the room at a cockeyed angle. Jacquie sat on the bed, coiled in a blanket, holding an Edith Wharton novel in her small, stubby hands. As she read, her gold-brown eyes moved intently back and forth, giving off a spark of private frisson. Half hidden under her lowered lids, the movement of her eyes reminded him of an animal glimpsed as it slips quietly through the underbrush. With loose wristed strokes, Daniel cheerfully swatted his pad. The phone rang.

"Probably somebody we don't want to talk to," said Jacquie.

Daniel rolled his eyes. It was his brother, Albert, calling from Iowa.

"Dan," said Albert. "Something bad happened."

"What?"

"Mom had a car crash. She's alive, but she's really hurt. She's broken her neck and smashed her pelvis." He paused, breathing heavily. "And she also broke some ribs."

Daniel made an involuntary noise. Jacquie's quick glance was almost sharp. The drumsticks fell to the floor and rolled.

The evening became a terrible melding of misery and sensual tenderness. Jacquie held her head against her breast and stroked him as pain moved through him in slow, even waves. At moments, the pain seemed to blur with the contours of Jacquie's body, to align itself with her warmth and care, as if by soothing it, she actually made it greater. He stared at their dirty dinner plates, shocked by their brute ordinariness: tiny bones, hunks of torn-up lemon, mashed fish skin.

Late at night, they lay without sleeping on their narrow bed. Jacquie held him from behind, one strong arm firmly around his chest, her dry feet pressed against his. She spoke against his back, her voice muffled, her breath a warm puff against his skin. "Your family gets in a lot of car crashes, don't they?"

He opened his eyes. "Yes," he said. "So do a lot of people. There's car crashes all over America all the time."

"Well, there was the one with the whole family in it when you were a little kid, and then the one when your father drove into the fence, and then the one where your mother got hit in the parking lot, and now this. That seems like a lot for one family."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm not trying to say anything. I just noticed it."

"My mother's lying in the hospital with half her bones broken, and you just noticed that."

Jacquie took her arm from him and turned the other way.

There is something wrong with her, he thought. They had been together for two years; this was not the first time he had had this thought.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2007

The Books: "Because They Wanted to" - 'Blanket' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


BecauseTheyWantedTo.jpgBecause They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill. This excerpt is from the story 'Blanket'.

Only Mary Gaitskill could write a story with a happy ending and have it FEEL like a sad ending. To some people in this life, happiness is not the easy choice. Happiness is as foreign as going to Mars for some people. It is easier to stay cautious, guarded, narrow ... because what the hell will happen if ... something actually works out?? Gaitskill does not write about the "winners" of the world. Other writers focus on them - and whether or not they are really "winners", blah blah blah. Gaitskill is all about those who try to fly under the radar ... who try to just get out of this life alive ... dodging emotional bullets ... behaving in what would seem to be incomprehensible ways to those who are more traditional or "normal" ... But again, to many many people - being "happy" is not all that great shakes. It's terrifying. Especially if you are the type of person who has made it to adulthood without ever experiencing it. It's like that searing moment at the end of Tess of the D'Urbevilles where Hardy says (and I'm paraphrasing): When happiness eventually arrives, life has already damaged her so much that she is unable to accept it. Bah. I'll find the exact quote. Perhaps the circumstances for contentment and happiness are present ... but there is such a thing as being made to wait too long. There is such a thing as having something come "too late".

'Blanket' is a story about a relationship that almost comes "too late". And to be honest, who knows what will happen with these two, long-term. It's too shaky to know.

But this is probably Gaitskill's only story with a "happy" ending. And because she doles out "happiness" so sparingly, it was 500 times more effective. I really get what the COST is to some people to accept contentment, intimacy, love. It is NOT easy. Maybe it is for some, but Gaitskill sure as hell ain't writing about them. Who knows. Valerie - the "lead" of this story - An overly serious damaged woman - 36 years old - finds herself in a relationship with Michael, 24. Because it's Gaitskill there are dark undertones to everything. Valerie has been alone for too long to have anything even CLOSE to a "normal" reaction to having a boyfriend. Loneliness marks a person. Loneliness impacts how a person behaves. Loneliness can make happiness feel stressful. Trust me. It can.

I'll excerpt from the beginning of the story. I find it intensely moving. I also like how it's told from both points of view. 'Blanket' is my favorite story in the whole collection.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Blanket'.

Valerie had been celibate for two years when she met Michael, and sex with Michael was like a solid left hook; she reeled and cartoon stars burst about her head. The second time he came to her San Francisco apartment, he walked in with two plastic bags of fruit, extending a fat red tomato in one outstretched hand, his smile leaping off his face. "I brought you things," he said. "I brought you fruit to put on your windowsill, and this." He handed her the tomato and said, "I'm a provider." His voice was full of ridiculous happiness. He was wearing shorts, and one of his graceful legs was scuffed at the knee. He was twenty-four years old.

Valerie was thirty-six. Michael couldn't actually provide for her, but she didn't need him to do that. She loved that he'd gone to the grocery store and roamed the aisles of abundant, slightly tatty and unripe fruit so that he could bring her bags of it. His impulse seemed both generous and slightly inept, which she found sweeter than generosity straight.

Michael himself was a little surprised by his beneficient urges, surprised and pleased by their novelty. It occurred to him that it had something to do with her physicality, although he didn't know quite what. Valerie was pretty, but she was not beautiful. Her arms and neck were fine-boned and elegant, while her hips and legs were curvy, fatty, almost crudely female. She embraced him confidently but her fingers sought his more delicate places - the base of his head, the knobs of his spine - with a tactile urgency that was needy and uncertain. After their first time together, on the floor of her living room, she'd put on her underpants and stood over him, posing with her hands on her hips, chin lifted, one hip tilted bossily - but she held her legs close together, and her one bent inturned knee had the tremulous look of a cowed animal. "Woman of the year," he'd said, and he'd meant it.

It was only their second time together when she suggested that they "role play." "You know," she said. "Act out fantasies."

"Fantasies?" The idea was a little embarrassing, yet it also intrigued him; under the cheesy assurance of it, he felt her vulnerability, hidden and palpitant. Besides, the fantasies were fun. She would be a slutty teenager who's secretly hoping for love, and he would be the smug prick who exploits her. He would be the coarse little gym teacher trying to persuade the svelte English teacher to let him go down on her after the PTA cocktail party. She would be a rude girl with no panties flaunting herself before an anxious student in the library. Feverishly, they'd nose around in each situational nuance before giving in to dumb physicality. Then she'd make them a dinner of meat and salad and a pot of grains, and they'd eat it with their feet on the table.

When he left her apartment, Michael felt as if the entire world loved him. He walked down the street, experiencing everything - scraps of trash, traffic, trotting pets, complex, lumbering pedestrians - as a kind of visual embrace. Once, immediately after leaving her, he went into a bookstore and sat down on a little stepladder to peruse a book, and he was assailed with a carnal memory so pungent that he opened his mouth and dropped a wrinkled wad of gray chewing gum on the page. He stared at it, embarrassed and excited by his foolishness. Then he closed the book on the wad.

For the first week she wouldn't let him spend the night with her, because that was too intimate for her. But he would get in bed with her and hold her, cupping her head against his chest and stroking the invisible little hairs at the base of her spine. "My girlfriend," he would say. "My girlfriend." His chest was big and solid, but under her ear, his heart beat with naked, helpless enthusiasm.

When he held her that way, she felt so happy that it disturbed her. After he left, it would take her hours to fall asleep, and then when she woke up she would feel another onrush of agitated happiness, which was a lot like panic. She wished she could grab the happiness and mash it into a ball and hoard it and gloat over it, but she couldn't. It just ran around all the place, disrupting everything.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

October 18, 2007

The Books: "Because They Wanted to" - 'Orchid' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BecauseTheyWantedTo.jpgBecause They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill. This excerpt is from the story 'Orchid'. Another killer of a story with what I see as a familiar Gaitskill "plot": running into an old friend, someone you knew years ago - and lost touch with, either because of a dust-up, or just moving on. And when you see that person, all kinds of stuff is stirred up. Memories of who you were back then, the gap between who you were then and who you are now ... or, conversely - the frightening realization that you haven't changed at ALL. That you have just gotten older.

Margot - a spinsterish lesbian - who had always had relationship problems, due to being kind of weird and intense - runs into Patrick - her roommate in college. Patrick had been a beautiful boy - strangely beautiful, so that people were drawn to him. A cloud of girls hovered over him. He wanted to be an actor. They lived together - with Patrick's sister - who had been in a mental institution - and for a couple of semesters, Margot was drawn into Patrick's intense circle. She would watch the girls come and go from his room - it was always a drama ... and Margot, although a young woman, was already on the way to having a quiet narrow little life ... and was amazed by how much drama one man could withstand. They were friends, though - he was a deep friend. They lost touch. Years pass. And Margot runs into him on the streets of Seattle. Gaitskill just so gets that feeling of disorientation in such situations ... the memory of the closeness, the awareness of the present-day desolation - and the worry: How does this person see me? What do I SEEM like to my old friend now? How is he judging me? You can walk around in your everyday life and never ask those questions. But run into an old friend, and suddenly you are confronted by all of these identity crises.

Here's a brief excerpt. Margot returns home from her run-in with Patrick.

I love how Gaitskill coldly tells us what she does. A list of details and objects. It isn't until we get halfway through the first paragraph that Gaitskill lets us in on the inner life of Margot.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Orchid'.

Margot's apartment was cold when she arrived. She turned on the heat and then went through all the rooms, turning on the lights. She put her pink flannel robe over her clothes and made herself a dinner of sliced carrots, a ham sandwich, and a Styrofoam cup of take-out vegetable soup. She put the sandwich and the carrots on a turquoise plate and the soup in a burgundy bowl. She put out a folded napkin and a spoon and vitamin capsules. She poured herself half a glass of red wine. She sat down, and suppressed pain oscillated through her in a slow, hard wave. When she had told Patrick that Roberta had left her, she had seen a faint look of satisfaction move in his eyes - satisfaction not at her loss but at seeing the Margot who was familiar to him, stalwart in a state of loss. His look almost made her bitter. But at the same time, she felt that something in her voice had invited it.

She poured lots of salt on her ham sandwich and allowed her little dinner to comfort her. It was one of the things she and Roberta were good at: small, comforting dinners. Roberta had been gone for six months, and it was still difficult for Margot to sit down to eat by herself. Still, she was determined to do it, and her determination felt good to her. It made her feel like a tenacious animal, burrowing a home in hard, dry soil. And that, of course, had been what Patrick had heard in her voice.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 16, 2007

The Books: "Because They Wanted to" - 'Because They Wanted to' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BecauseTheyWantedTo.jpgBecause They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill. The following excerpt is from the title story 'Because They Wanted to'. Elise is a runaway and a prostitute. She's probably about 17 years old. She drifts about from situation to situation, living in big drug houses for a while, crashing on the couch - "turning tricks" in the park to get by. The story is told with alternating flashbacks - there is a present-day narrative, where Elise sees a sign on a bulletin board saying "Babysitter needed". She goes to see about the job. It's a young single mom - who has 3 small children (they live in the ghetto) - and the mom has to go to a job interview and needs someone to watch her kids. The only problem is she doesn't have any money to pay Elise. But she WILL. If she gets this job!! And she's not sure WHEN she will be back ... because she may have to start her job right away ... but that would be even better, because then they would have to pay her ... and then she could pay Elise. The whole thing is very sketchy but Elise says sure, she'd watch the kids. So she does. And throughout the entire day - as she is confusedly trying to occupy the kids and feed them and diaper them (she has no experience with children, practically being one herself) - we get flashbacks to her past, and who she is, where she has come from. It's a meandering story - there are no "jump-cuts" - it's like the past and the present bleed together. We get both tales going on simultaneously. And Gaitskill, yet again, just NAILS the certain aimlessness of a certain class of people. The people you see hanging out on the streets with nowhere to go. Maybe they are mentally ill. Maybe they are drug addicts. Maybe they just can't deal with real life. Who knows. But TIME is different to such people. They have nowhere to go, no appointments, nowhere to be ... Elise, trapped in this apartment with these 3 kids, having no idea when the mother will return ... sinks into this endless march of time .... Like: it's only 2:30 now?? How on EARTH will I make it through the rest of the day with these kids? Disorienting. And you want to smack the mother who would just up and leave like that ... but again, Gaitskill is writing from the ground-level of people who would do such things. People who would think nothing of leaving their 3 kids with a runaway prostitute who needs a job. People who would think nothing of NOT paying said babysitter ... and not telling the babysitter, "Okay I'll be home by 6 pm." Time is open-ended in this story. It's kind of upsetting. You want everyone to get Outlook calendars and manage their lives better. Despite Elise's chaotic life, you really like her. And I really feel like she is doing her ultimate BEST with the kids. She has no idea how to cook, change diapers ... she is also so self-involved that "playing" with little kids seems beyond her at first. But then she gets into it ... because there is nothing more insistent than a bored child looking at you like: Entertain me, please.

I have hope for Elise. She is living the life that Gaitskill once lived. And Gaitskill turned out okay. But in the meantime - she meanders through a timeless world, enduring cruelty and neglect, trying not to mind.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to - - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Because They Wanted to'

After dinner, she heated the formula and fed Penny. The baby was sleepy and docile. She was very wet again, but she wasn't complaining, so Elise didn't change her. She had agreed to stay only until six anyway. Robin could change her when she got home. Penny release the nipple of her bottle with a guttural chirp; a sparkling thread of spit spanned nipple and lip, then broke and fell down Penny's chin. Elise patted it dry with a Kleenex. She put her hand on the baby's stomach and rocked her.

She thought Robin must sleep in this bed with Penny, curled round her protectively as you would sleep with a kitten. Eric and Andy must sleep with them too. The bed was big, but stil they would have to sleep close. She wondered if they wore pajamas. That would be uncomfortable in the heat, but it might be even more uncomfortable to touch sticky naked limbs. She pictured them all lying together, the children asleep and Robin awake and blinking in an oscillating band of street light. She wondered if Robin had a light, lacy gown to wear, or a nylon shortie.

Fleetingly, she thought of her mother in the short cotton gown she called "nighties". She wore them with a white rayon peignoir that she had bought when she was eighteen. Elise remembered her mother's short, thick calves, the little hood of fat covering each round knee. Her mother's legs were middle-aged and ugly, but there was something childish and sweet about them.

Every summer Elise went to stay with her mother. She lived with a man who had custody of two sons from a previous marriage because their mother spent so much time in mental hospitals. Elise liked the man and the sons okay. Robbie had turned into a strange, fat kid who read philosophy books that were beyond his age range, but she liked him too. She spent her summer days sleeping late, making blender drinks, and staying out late with her friends. She would come in after midnight and find her mother sitting in the warm dark, watching a late-night talk show in her peignoir and a nightie. Her mother would turn her head to greet Elise. It was too dark to see her expression, but Elise saw in her profile a mix of love and sadness, of gratitude to see her daughter arrive home safely and forlorn bewilderment at the way everything had turned out. The expression repelled Elise and then drew her in. She would go into the kitchen and make them both hot chocolate. They would sit at opposite ends of the couch, drinking cocoa and commenting about the people on the talk show. They showed off for each other, trying to be smart. Elise's repulsion would slowly dissolve into deep comfort, becoming part of and affecting the texture of the comfort.

When the talk show was over, her mother got up and turned on the light and came to kiss Elise good night. Her peignoir would open slightly as she bent into the kiss, showing her neck and sun-reddened upper chest. The diaphonous yoke of her gown was embroidered with small, plain flowers bearing four round petals apiece. Elise imagined how much her mother must've liked the peignoir when she bought it. She imagined her putting it on for the first time, her shy vanity at the way it looked with her skin and chestnut hair. Her mother had been beautiful, and her beauty still whispered in her eyes and skin. When she wore the peignoir, her whispered beauty aligned itself with the coarse redness of her middle age and made it better than beautiful.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 15, 2007

The Books: "Because They Wanted to" - 'Tiny, Smiling Daddy' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


BecauseTheyWantedTo.jpgBecause They Wanted to - a book of short stories (her second) by Mary Gaitskill. Gaitskill (in my opinion) just gets better as she gets older. It's hard to find a better short story collection than Bad Behavior, but I would say Because They Wanted To is certainly up there. It has the same Gaitskill coldness-of-eye ... and also the searing potential for heat beneath. It's like sometimes in the last paragraph of a story she will let the lava burst out of the rock - and because of the contrast it's even MORE effective. I don't know ... girl can write is all I'm sayin'.

'Tiny Smiling Daddy' is the first story in the collection - and it's killer. I almost didn't want to finish it. Again, Gaitskill has that effect on me sometimes. I find her unblinking stare a bit hard to take - and I need to gear up, to gear up for her stuff. In this story, an older couple wonder what happened to their daughter Kitty. Kitty was a regular little kid, happy, and life was good. Then she became a lesbian, and all hell broke loose. She began to move away from them - in her lifestyle, her beliefs - she became fascinated with prostitution and the parents were worried that she might have taken up hooking, just to see what it was like. But they could no longer talk to her - because she seemed to have some kind of anger towards them, only neither of them knew why. The story is told from the father's point of view - and he asks himself at one point, "What exactly had he done?" She was angry because they didn't want her to be a sex worker? Who could blame them? Where had they gone wrong?? Eventually, she breaks contact with them altogether and years pass. 'Tiny Smiling Daddy' opens with the father going to a magazine store, by himself ... He had seen his daughter's face smiling from the cover of some artsy magazine. There is some interview with his long-lost daughter inside. He needs to go and stand, in public, and read the article. Who is she now? What will she say? What is she like?

By breaking it down like this, I'm taking away from the sheer power of the story. I can tell. It's only 7 or 8 pages long but when I finished it I felt like I had been punched in the gut and had the wind knocked out of me.

The father's pain and embarrassment and baffled helplessness brings tears to my eyes. He loves his daughter. What happened?

But then - typical Gaitskill - at the very very end - 2nd to last sentence - she jujitsus you with something else, a bit of context not shared before ... and it's truly awful.

You ache for everyone involved.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Because They Wanted to - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Tiny Smiling Daddy'

He was horribly aware of being in public, so he paid for the thing and took it out to the car. He drove slowly to another spot in the lot, as far away from the drugstore as possible, picked up the magazine and began again. She described the "terrible difficulties" between him and her. She recounted, briefly and with hieroglyphic politeness, the fighting, the running away, the return, the tacit reconciliation.

"There is an emotional distance that we have both accepted and chosen to work around, hoping the occasional contact - love, anger, something -will get through."

He put the magazine down and looked out the window. It was near dusk; most of the stores in the little mall were closed. There were only two other cars in the parking lot, and a big, slow, frowning woman with two grocery bags was getting ready to drive one away. He was parked before a weedy piece of land at the edge of the lot. In it were rough, picky weeds spread out like big green tarantulas, young yellow dandelions, frail old dandelions, and bunches of tough blue chickweed. Even in his distress he vaguely appreciated the beauty of the blue weeds against the cool white-and-gray sky. For a moment the sound of insects comforted him. Images of Kitty passed through his memory with terrible speed: her nine-year-old forehead bent over her dish of ice cream, her tiny nightgowned form ran up the stairs, her ringed hand crushed her face, the keys on her belt jiggled as she walked her slow blue-jeaned walk away from the house. Gone, all gone.

The aritcle went on to describe how Kitty hung up the phone feeling frustrated and then listed all of the things she could've said to him to let him know how hurt she was, paving the way for "real communication"; it was all in ghastly talk-show language. He was unable to put these words together with the Kitty he had last seen lounging around the house. She was twenty-eight now, and she no longer dyed her hair or wore jewels in her nose. Her demeanor was serious, bookish, almost old maidish. Once, he'd overheard her saying to Marsha, "So then this Italian girl gives me the once over and says to Joanne, 'You 'ang around with too many Wasp.' And I said, 'I'm not a Wasp, I'm white trash.' "

"Speak for yourself," he'd said.

"If the worst occurred and my father was unable to respond to me in kind, I still would have done a good thing. I would have acknowledged my own needs and created the possibility to connect with what therapists call 'the good parent' in myself."

Well, if that was the kind of thing she was going to say to him, he was relieved she hadn't said it. But if she hadn't said it to him, why was she saying it to the rest of the country?

He turned on the radio. It sang, "Try to remember, and if you remember, then follow, follow." He turned it off. The interrupted dream echoed faintly. He closed his eyes. When he was nine or ten, an uncle of his had told him, "Everybody makes his own world. You see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear. You can do it right now. If you blink ten times and then close your eyes real tight, you can see anything you want to see in front of you." He'd tried it, rather halfheartedly, and hadn't seen anything but the vague suggestion of a yellowish-white ball moving creepily through the dark. At the time, he'd thought it was perhaps because he hadn't tried hard enough.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

October 12, 2007

The Books: "Two Girls Fat and Thin" (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


TwoGirls.jpgTwo Girls Fat and Thin - by Mary Gaitskill. This is her first novel. I first read it, I recall, in 1992 ... in the early days of my time in Chicago. I've written about that time, that vivid almost jagged time ... and I had loved Gaitskill's first collection - but for some reason Two Girls Fat and Thin was not what I needed at that moment. It's not that I couldn't get into the writing - I can always get into the writing. There was a cruelty and a brutality in the book which is, after all, not surprising, considering the rest of her work - but I don't think I was in the mood for it then. I remember one scene in particular where I winced my way through it. I had to force myself to finish the book. I was in the process of trying to "get healthy" myself - after a couple of years of depression - and maybe there was something in Two Girls Fat and Thin that seemed to threaten to pull me back under. That's the sensation I recall anyway. Like: hmmm. I need to stay away from this right now.

It's the story of two girls, one fat and one thin. (Duh) Here's what I remember: the fat one is a fanatical follower of an Ayn Rand-like writer named Anna Granite. Anna Granite's philosophy is defined as Definitism - and if I'm remembering correctly - there's something in the stark unblinkered philosophy that pierces through the fat girl's pain and misery and outsider status ... and then the other girl, the thin girl, is a journalist. With a penchant for masochism in her personal life. She is doing a story on Definitism - and encounters the fat girl (I can't remember her name). She wants to interview some Granite followers. So the lives of these two girls become intertwined ... do they become friends? I seriously can't remember. They have two totally separate journeys. The fat girl's part of the story is told in first person. Thin girl's is third person.

I should read it again - this is all I really remember. What I mostly remember when I think of this book is my first apartment, on Melrose, a block from Lake Michigan ... my cat Sammy ... the mattress on the floor ... no possessions ... temping in downtown Loop offices ... meeting crazy improv boys and having adventures ... feeling a giddy and dangerous sense of freedom. Anything could happen at any time. To me, it's the larger context of the book - and it might be a completely inappropriate connection - I'm not sure - but my life is linked to the book somehow. That happens sometimes!

Here's an excerpt. You'll see pretty early on the unforgiving tone, the unemotional quality of it. I've said it before - that I think the short story is Gaitskill's true milieu. I'm not sure what it is - and I've had interesting conversations with those (Jon!) who think otherwise. I'm not convinced I'm RIGHT - this is probably a taste issue more than anything else. To me, it seems that Gaitskill is best in small doses. Like cayenne pepper or something.

EXCERPT FROM Two Girls Fat and Thin - by Mary Gaitskill.

When Jutine was seven, she ordered the Catholic boy who lived down the street to tie her to his swing set and pretend to brand her, as she had seen Brutus do to Olive Oyl on TV. Sometimes she made him chase her around the yard with a slender branch, whipping her legs.

His name was Richie, and she remembers he was Catholic because his mother, faceless in memory, told her that if she lied there'd be a sin on her soul and she'd have to go to hell.

"Mrs. Slutsky is a good woman, but she is ignorant," said Justine's mother. "You must be kind and respectful to her, but don't listen to anything she says."

But Justine liked listening to Mrs. Slutsky talk about hell and encouraged her to do so every Saturday morning when she went to play with Richie. The Slutsky's apartment was close and ramshackle. Once Justine put her finger on the wall and dirt came off it; she felt like she was in a story about poor people. She loved the picture of the beautiful doe-eyed Jesus with a dimly flaming purple heart wrapped in thorns adorning the middle of his chest which hung in Mrs. Slutsky's bedroom. She loved the ornately written prayer to the saints in the den. She loved to stand in the kitchen, which smelled of old tea bags and carrot peels, and question Mrs. Slutsky about hell.

"What if you do something bad but you believe in God? What if you believe in God but you're always doing really bad things? What if you do something bad but you're sorry?"

Mrs. Slutsky would explain everything as she did the dishes or ironed or smoked, expansively delineating the various levels of hell and purgatory. Sometimes Justine and Richie would sit at the kitchen table and draw pictures of a smoking red hell with the victim's snarled-up arms writhing skyward. Justine liked to draw angels floating at the top of the page, looking down in sorrow and raining pink tears of pity into hell.

She and Richie spent hours watching Saturday morning cartoons on the Slutsky's sagging, loamy-smelling green couch. She wanted to be tied up and whipped after watching cartoon characters being beaten and tortured by other characters for the viewer's amusement. She watched the animated violence with queasy fascination, feeling frightened and exposed. It was the same feeling she had had when Dr. Norris touched her, and she felt a bond with docile, daydreaming Richie, simply because he was near her while she was having this feeling.

When she began making him tie her up, she couldn't tell if he wanted to do it or if he were passively following her lead. She recalls his face as furtive and vaguely ashamed, as though he were picking her nose in public.

One day she saw a cartoon about hell. In it, a wily dog with paw pads like flower petals plotted against a kitten he was jealous of. He locked the kitty out of the house in a snowstorm, then settled down to rest before the fireplace. He fell asleep before the fire and suddenly, through a series of hallucinatory sequences, he went to hell. Hell was very hot and populated by demon ice cream vendors who sold blazing Popsicles on which the desperate dog burned himself while seeking relief; it was overseen by pitchfork-wielding devils who chased the hound, breathing fire and stabbing his bottom. He was tormented, howling and weeping, from one end of hell to the other until a coal leapt out from the fireplace and awakened him from the nightmare. He raced to rescue the kitten, but the happy ending did not mitigate Justine's dismay at seeing an eternity of torture and punishment presented as an amazing possibility. She sat with the now familiar sensation of ciolation coursing through her body as if it could split her apart.

She was at home when she saw this, and she ran to her mother crying.

"And they stuck him with pitchforks," she wept. "He tried to buy a POpsicle and it burned him and they laughed."

"That is very bad. They shouldn't put things like that on television."

Her mother consoled her with statements that cruelty and violence are wrong, and then helped her to write a letter to the TV station on the widely lined manila paper she used in school, in which she told them how much the cartoon upset her.

It had upset her, but she thought of it again and again. At night she would lie in bed and imagine being tormented forever because you had envious thoughts or were angry at someone. She didn't have the vocabulary to express, even to herself, the feeling these images evoked in her; it was too overpowering for her even to see clearly waht it was. It seemed to occupy the place that all her daily activities and expressions came from, the same place Dr. Norris had touched. It felt like the foundation that all the other events of her life played upon.

Of course, she didn't think of it like this until much later, when she could only look at the ancient, entrenched feeling as an animal looks at a trap on its leg. At the time she soothed the demanding feeling by tying herself to her bedpost, gagging herself, and forcing morose but compliant Richie to beat her, or to pretend to.

Some time after she wrote the letter to the station, she received a reply from them apologizing for the cartoon and thanking her for writing. Her mother read it aloud to her when it came and then again at the dinner table.

"This is very good," said her father. "It is a civics lesson. She can see how she can affect her environment, make her views known. Isn't that right, Sugar?"

Justine nodded even though to her the letter was a surprising but irrelevant development that had nothing to do with affecting her environment.

Posted by sheila Permalink

October 11, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'Heaven' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - Today's excerpt is from the final story 'Heaven'. This is more of a novella than a short story - and, to my mind, shows Gaitskill's truly phenomenon wisdom and talent - It's hard to believe that someone so young wrote this story. Unlike the other stories in the book, this one is from the point of view of a middle-aged woman, a wife and mother. Without 'Heaven', I don't think the collection would be as startling as it is. I mean, the stories are all great ... but then with 'Heaven' - it's like Gaitskill is saying to the reader, "Okay. So after reading all that, you probably think you know me, right? You probably think you can predict my subject matter and what I will write about, right? Well, get a load of THIS." It tells the story of one family - Virginia and Jarold are married, they have 4 kids - and 'Heaven' basically takes us through their whole life. I find it a supremely disorienting read. It's like I don't want to face certain things. Things like getting older, or loss, or things falling apart. I know that feeling of looking back at a certain time of my life - a time when I felt: wow, things are really coming together for me now!! - and looking back on it in wonder, and hurt - knowing the tough tough road that was ahead of me. Gaitskill, a young woman of 23, also gets into the head of a wife and mother, totally convincing. 'Heaven' spans decades. To have a young writer capable of expressing such a long view ... that's very rare.

I find 'Heaven' really painful. It makes me think of my parents. And family stuff. It makes me think of things I try not to look at. Stuff I find it easier to just ignore, in order to get through the day. gaitskill just strolls right in to those dangerous areas.

She knows life is all about loss, and grieving. You must keep going ... and keep doing your best ... but if you think anyone escapes this life unscathed, you're an idiot. It's not an easy story. With all of the other stuff in the book - the degradation, the rough sex, the S&M, the humiliation, the drugs - with all of that, I think 'Heaven' is the cruellest story. The one I find toughest to take.

And her writing is beyond compare.

Bravo, Gaitskill.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Heaven'.

"I want to marry Brian in a gypsy wedding," said Magdalen. "I want to have it on the ridge behind the house. Our friends will make a circle around us and chant. I'll be wearing a gown of raw silk and a light veil. And we'll have a feast."

"Does Brian want to marry you?" asked Virginia dryly.

Magdalen was seventeen. She had just returned home after a year's absence. She carried a fat green knapsack on her back. Her feet were filthy. "I'm coming home to clear my head out," she said.

She ate huge breakfasts with eggs and bacon, baked a lot of banana bread and lay around the den playing with tarot cards. Family life went on around her brooding, cross-legged frame. Her long blond hair hung in her face. She flitted around with annoying grace, her jeans swishing the floor, humming songs about ladies on islands.

After six months she "decided" to marry Brian, and went to Vancouver to tell him about it.

Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an overlong cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick - "Mom, don't be stupid, everybody wears it"; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal's office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked -- "You've got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow. She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two"; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terrycloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the coach, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother's legs and moaning, "Oh, David, David, please make love to me"; Magdalen in the psychiatrist's office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken.

For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: "When boys tell me I'm a prude, I say, 'You're absolutely right. I cultivate it.' " She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

October 10, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'Other Factors' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - Today's excerpt is from the story 'Other Factors'.

This story depresses the hell out of me. I mean, if you've been following these Gaitskill excerpts then you know that she is not exactly a cheery writer - but this one, in particular, got under my skin. It's another story where the focus is a damaged female friendship ... and the neverending loss that that brings. Like Christine Lavin's song "the kind of love you never recover from". Who knows why certain things fall apart. Sometimes it cannot be analyzed. We move on from the loss. We try to forget. We make other friends. But something haunts us at the back of our consciousness. There is something MISSING. And you just have to learn to live with it. That's what 'Other Factors' is about. There is such longing in this story! It's killer.

Constance, a writer, runs into an old friend in the Village. A couple years back, he declared his love to her - she turned him down - and within a week he was engaged to someone else. It's an odd anxious memory for Constance - and it's all tied up with this time in her life when she was dear friends with a difficult yet mesmerizing woman named Alice. That friendship shattered (the details of why escapes me) - and running into Franklin brings it all back. Constance is now living with a woman who is her girlfriend. She never really identified as strictly gay ... but she fell in love with Deana, and they live in domestic snuggle-land, with cats and Chinese takeout, etc. Constance, an anxious vulnerable person, feels like she has settled down. And that has seemed like a GOOD thing ... until the run-in with the old friend. It stirs up shit. Constance starts to look around her apartment, look at Deana ... and wonder what Alice would think and say about all of it. Franklin tells her he's going to some party later that week and Alice will be there- and she should really come! "I know Alice would love to see you!" The wound is so deep - Constance doesn't know if she can handle it. The friendship with Alice had been, like many female friendships, intertwined, intimate, messed up, dysfunctional - and all-engrossing. To see her and have a polite, "Hi, how have you been" conversation is unthinkable to Constance.

Anyway, I find the whole thing incredibly depressing. Gaitskill, yet again, NAILS that feeling of loss, of missing someone ... It's a searing pain, when you let yourself feel it.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Other Factors'.

She woke up in the middle of the night, slumberously thinking of Franklin. "I love you," he said. "I love you in a way I've never loved anyone." "I don't know what you mean," she said. "He's just crazed," said his friends. "Frank's hyper, that's all." What would happen if she went to his party? Would he fall all over her and rave about how glad he was to see her, then disappear for the rest of the night? Would it hurt her feelings? She imagined Alice standing near a table of ravaged snacks, holding a plastic cup of alcohol, a little hat neatly sitting on her blow-dried head. It wasn't true that Alice had no unhappiness. She had a schizophrenic mother who lived in a state mental hospital (Alice's family wasn't wealthy) and who sometimes didn't know her. Alice felt that she wasn't accepted as an artist by her circle, and sometimes would get so upset about it that she'd scream and throw things. "I feel like a piece of shit," she once said to Connie.

Connie turned and put her stomach and breasts against Deana's warm back. She thought about the first woman she'd had a crush on, a beautiful stripper with black hair and bitter blue eyes. She had gone to see her strip and was irretrievably moved by the resigned but arrogant turn of her strong chin, the way she casually offered and rigidly withheld her body, as well as her tacky black lingerie.

"You don't love women. You're just trying to live out some kind of porno fantasy invented by men with the corniest props you can find," a gay woman had told her.

She turned again and placed her back in a matching curve against Deana's. When she was a child, her mother had said, "When boys get angry with each other, they just fight it out and it's all over. But girls are dirty. They pretend to be your friend and go behind your back." She remembered herself as the new girl in elementary school trying to belong with the bony-legged clusters of little girls snapping their gum and talking about things that she never discovered the significance of. She saw herself sitting alone in a high school cafeteria eating French fries and a Cap'n Crunch bar.

She opened her eyes and could barely see the big-eared outline of the tiny ceramic Siamese cat that her aunt had given her when she was twelve. At the time she had thought that itand its brood of ceramic kittens were the height of taste and elegance, and even though its face had been broken in half and Krazy-glued back together, it still seemed faintly regal and glamorous. It had been one of the items that Alice had in mind when she looked at Connie's dresser and said, "One of these days you're going to wake up and look at all this stuff and say, 'This doesn't have anything to do with me,' and throw it out."

But it does have something to do with me, thought Connie.

Posted by sheila Permalink

October 9, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'Secretary' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - I'll excerpt from the sixth story today: 'Secretary'.


'Secretary'. of course, was made into a film - it's hard to picture ANY of Gaitskill's stories being made into films - especially American films which can be so prudish and hypocritical about sex. By cramming everything into the PG-13 rating - to appeal to teenagers - it ensures that the views of sex will be prurient and dirty-minded. So the ratings system dooms any honestly sexual film from the start. If everything has to appeal to teenagers, then we're fucked. (So kudos to the studio who let 8 Mile, for example, get an R-rating. That was ballsy. Eminem is in it. The rating of that film sent a very clear message about who it was for. He has armies of tweens who adore him. But that rating left them out of the picture. Ballsy. It NEEDED that rating, though - it would have suffered under a PG-13 rating - it couldn't have been as honest as it needed to be. And it still made 40 million bucks in its opening weekend. So THERE MPAA!! And kudos to the studio execs at Focus Features who let Ang Lee's Lust, Caution go out with the dreaded NC-17 rating. Good. Good, to those willing to take a risk- in order to maintain the integrity of the film. KuDOS)

All of this is to say - that Secretary, the film, is based on a Gaitskill story - and I suppose it could be described as "out there" although I personally DON'T find it out there - I do know that most people will, and that sado-masochism is not mainstream. The movie was quite startling, because it didn't treat S&M as though it were a problem that needed to be solved ... or that she was a sicko who needed treatment. The movie didn't see a problem in it at all, as long as they are consenting adults, blah blah blah yawn yawn yawn - but anyway, as out there as that movie would seem to most people - it's still Hollywood-ized a bit, with the ending (although quite effective, in context of the film) and I am sure Gaitskill saw the final product and had a nice chuckle to herself about it. To my taste, the film works wonderfully - on its own. And where the movie veers off into its own entity - with her being a "cutter" - perfect for the story - and beautifully played - her in the wedding dress at the end, and also her being let out of an institution, etc. - all of that stuff really ADDS. It's not a literal adaptation, more of a spinning-off point and I think it works really well.

The original is, of course, much bleaker than the film ... almost psychotic. She does not get the release that the movie provides her. It ends up being this weird little episode between her and her boss that detaches her even more from reality ... but that's okay, because she prefers to be detached from reality. In the film, the sado-masochistic relationship with her boss is her way IN to a more integrated and full and grown-up life. It is her way out of being dominated by her parents. It is her ticket to healing, and growth, and ... well, love. Gaitskill "gets" S&M - make no mistake - she writes about it with convincing clarity and coldness ... She doesn't see it as weird or deviant ... just something that certain people are into ... who knows why ... so what that some chick likes to be humiliated? If it works for her, whatevs ... But as always, it's not that simple. Gaitskill also gets that there are lines ... people do have lines that should not be crossed, and the lines are different for each person. What is "too far"? How would you know?

Secretary is about a tentative unspoken exploration in that direction.

Our narrator is damaged. Passive, dominated by her parents, doesn't have much going on. And this nutjob of a lawyer (he's way more of a nutjob in the story, believe it or not!!) - SEES her. He SEES her in a way she has never been seen.

And, as we know from science, we are changed when we are observed. We can't help it.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Secretary'.

When he asked me to come into his office at the end of the day, I thought he was going to fire me. The idea was a relief, but a numbing one. I sat down and he fixed me with a look that was speculative but benign, for him. He leaned back in his chair in a comfortable way, one hand dangling sideways from his wrist. To my surprise, he began talking to me about my problems, as he saw them.

"I sense that you are a very nice but complex person, with wild mood swings that you keep hidden. You just shut up the house and act like there's nobody home."

"That's true," I said. "I do that."

"Well, why? Why don't you open up a little bit? It would probably help your typing."

It was really not any of his business, I thought.

"You should try to talk more. I know I'm your employer and we have a prescribed relationship, but you should feel free to discuss your problems with me."

The idea of discussing my problems with him was preposterous. "It's hard to think of having that kind of discussion with you," I said. I hesitated. "You have a strong personality and ... when I encounter a personality like that, I tend to step back because I don't know how to deal with it."

He was clearly pleased with this response, but he said, "You shouldn't be so shy."

When I thought about this conversation later, it seemed, on the one hand, that this lawyer was just an asshole. On the other, his comments were weirdly moving, and had the effect of making me feel horribly sensitive. No one had ever made such personal comments to me before.

The next day I made another mistake. The intimacy of the previous day seemed to make the mistake even more repulsive to him because he got madder than usual. I wanted him to fire me. I would have suggested it, but I was struck silent. I sat and stared at the letter while he yelled. "What's wrong with you?"

"I'm sorry," I said.

He stood quietly for a moment. Then he said, "Come into my office. And bring that letter."

I followed him into his office.

"Put that letter on my desk," he said.

I did.

"Now bend over so that you are looking directly at it. Put your elbows on the desk and your face very close to the letter."

Shaken and puzzled, I did what he said.

"Now read the letter to yourself. Keep reading it over and over again."

I read: "Dear Mr. Garvy: I am very grateful to you for referring ..." He began spanking me as I said "referring". The funny thing was, I wasn't even surprised. I actually kept reading the letter, although my understanding of it was not very clear. I began crying on it, which blurred the ink. The word "humiliation" came into my mind with such force that it effectively blocked out all other words. Further, I felt that the concept it stood for had actually been a major force in my life for quite a while.

He spanked me for about ten minutes, I think. I read the letter only about five times, partly because it rapidly became too wet to be legible. When he stopped he said, "Now straighten up and go type it again."

I went to my desk. He closed the office door behind him. I sat down, blew my nose and wiped my face. I stared into space for several minutes, every now and then dwelling on the tingling sensation in my buttocks. I typed the letter again and took it into his office. He didn't look up as I put it on his desk.

I went back out and sat, planning to sink into a stupor of some sort. But a client came in, so I couldn't. I had to buzz the lawyer and tell him the client had arrived. "Tell him to wait," he said curtly.

When I told the client to wait, he came up to my desk and began to talk to me. "I've been here twice before," he said. "Do you recognize me?"

"Yes," I said. "Of course." He was a small, tight-looking middle-aged man with agitated little hands and a pale scar running over his lip and down his chin. The scar didn't make him look tough; he was too anxious to look tough.

"I never thought anything like this wouold ever happen to me," he said. "I never thought I'd be in a lawyer's office even once, and I've been here three times now. And absolutely nothing's been accomplished. I've always hated lawyers." He looked as though he expected me to take offense.

"A lot of people do," I said.

"It was either that or I would've shot those miserable blankety-blanks next door and I'd have to get a lawyer to defend me anyway. You know the story!"

I did. He was suing his neighbors because they had a dog that "barked all goddamn day." I listened to him talk. It surprised me how this short conversation quickly restored my sensibility. Everything seemed perfectly normal by the time the lawyer came out of his office to greet the client. I noticed he had my letter in one hand. Just before he turned to lead the client away, he handed it to me, smiling. "Good letter," he said.

When I went home that night, everything was the same. My life had not been disarranged by the event except for a slight increase in the distance between me and my family. My behind was not even red when I looked at it in the bathroom mirror.

But when I got into bed and thought about the thing, I got excited. I was more excited, in fact, than I had ever been in my life. That didn't surprise me, either. I felt a numbness, I felt that I could never have a normal conversation with anyone again. I masturbated slowly, to put off the climax as long as I could. But there was no climax, even though I tried for a long time. Then I couldn't sleep.

It happened twice more in the next week and a half. The following week, when I made a typing mistake, he didn't spank me. Instead, he told me to bend over his desk, look at the typing mistake and repeat "I am stupid" for several minutes.

Our relationship didn't change otherwise. He was still brisk and friendly in the morning. And, because he seemed so sure of himself, I could not help but react to him as if he were still the same domineering but affable boss. He did not, however, ever invite me to discuss my problems with him again.

I began to have recurring dreams about him. In one, the most frequent, I walked with him in a field of big bright red poppies. The day was brilliant and wram. We were smiling at each other, and there was a tremendous sense of release and goodwill between us. He looked at me and said, "I understand you now, Debby." Then we held hands.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 3, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'Trying To Be' - (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - I'll excerpt from the fifth story today: 'Trying To Be'.

Another one of Gaitskill's stories that take place in the underworld of sex workers. What always struck me about her tone in these stories is how casual she is about it ... almost dead and matter-of-fact ... it's chilling. It doesn't feel like an effect, as in: Let Me Show You This and SHOCK YOU! It's not self-conscious. It is a tone that is appropriate to the subject matter. Calm, factual ... but perhaps the calmness is there to mask the shrieking misery beneath. But who knows? When people are so damaged ... it's hard to know what is what. Is the facade the real thing? Or is there more? Gaitskill never has an easy answer for those questions - and, to be honest, those questions don't seem to interest her all that much.

Stephanie is a writer. She lives in New York City. She's an intellectual (you can tell from the friends she has - her college friends, all academic feminist sex-positive types) - and she's also a prostitute. She doesn't work off the street - she works out of a house - it's called Christine's. She kind of just fell into it. She doesn't mind it. She's able to keep herself distant from her clients, and she's doing it for the money. But at the start of the story - for some reason - she finds herself giving her number to a guy she just serviced - Bernard the Lawyer. She's not sure why. She liked him. She'd seen him a couple of times and there was something different about him. He seemed to treat her and the other sex workers as an anthropological oddity ... he was interested in it from a psychological standpoint ... To some degree, he romanticized them. Stephanie knows there is nothing romantic about being a prostitute - but she lets him have his fantasy. Meanwhile, she has pretty much kept her job a secret from her friends - she's tried to tell one or two of them - and they are all horrified. Horrified. Even though, for the most part, these women are the types who think women should be able to do what they want to do with their own bodies. Stephanie has now gone beyond the pale though. They think she is degrading herself. They wonder if she is writing anymore, how her book is coming along. Stephanie herself wonders that about herself. She can't seem to harness her creative energies anymore. Days pass in a blur. She sleeps til 3 pm. She is not writing. There's some sort of swan-dive into oblivion happening here ... and she can't seem to stop it.

Make no mistake, this story is freakin' depressing.

But Gaitskill makes it so without telegraphing her intent that this is depressing. She just methodically tells us what Stephanie does, and thinks. And you want to run screaming into the night.

Here's an excerpt. Stephanie goes out with her old friend Babette. Babette is trying to be an actress, and is really into the whole S&M scene in New York - so Stephanie had thought Babette might be supportive of the fact that she was hooking for money. She thought Babette might even be interested in it, and want to hear all the stories. Instead, Babette bursts into tears and says something like, "How could you?? How could you degrade yourself like that?" Meanwhile, Babette goes to clubs in the middle of the night and gets tied up to a hitching post and gets whipped. Degradation? Who knows what that even IS anymore. Everyone has their limits. The line over which they will not go.

There's humor in this excerpt, too. Dark humor ... but very human. It feels right, it feels like what those clubs are really like.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Trying To Be'.

Babette entered a period of energy and optimism and began asking her out to nightclubs again. Babette had a lot of friends in the club business, so they could unfailingly sail past the block-long lines of people vainly trying to catch some doorman's imperious eye. Babette, a tiny angular creature with long, slightly slanted eyes, looked annoyingly perfect in her silk Chinese jacket and black suede boots, her slim hip tilted one way, her little head the other. Stephanie always felt large and unraveled by comparison, as though her hat was wrong or her hem was falling out.

They could spend hours wandering through the dark rooms, holding their drinks and shouting comments at one another. Often they would meet friends of Babette's who would invite them into the bathroom for cocaine. Sometimes Babette would go off to dance and Stephanie would stand on the periphery of the dance floor, watching the dancers grinning and waving their arms in blind delight or staring severely at the floor as they thrashed their limbs. Lights flashed off and on, and the disc jockey spun one record after another in a pattern of controlled delirium. Stephanie would stroll through the club, watching the non-dancers blankly scrutinizing the dancers or standing in groups that were laughing with mysterious animation. After about fifteen minutes, she would be forced to face the fact that she was bored. Then she would remember what she was like before she came to New York and realize that this was what she had pictured: herself in a glamorous club full of laughing or morosely posing people. In frustration, she would decide that the reason it all seemed so dull was that she was seeing only the outermost layer of a complex society that spoke in ingenious an dimpenetrable signs to outsiders who, even if they were able to physically enter the club, were unable to enter the conversations that so amused everyone else. This was a discouraging idea, but it was better than thinking that the entire place was a nonsensical bore that people actually longed to belong in.

"Hi," said a man with a hideous hunk of hair. 'I like your hat."

"Thank you."

"Would you like to dance?"

"No, thank you." She looked right at him when she said this, meaning to convey that she didn't consider him repulsive, but that she was deep in thought and couldn't dance.

It didn't work; he stared away with a ruffled air and then said, "Do you want to go to the Palladium?"

"No, thank you."

He looked at her with theatrical scorn and she noticed that he was actually very handsome. "Are you French?" he asked.

"No. Why do you ask? Do I sound French?"

"I don't know. You just look like you might be. Are you a dancer?"

"No. Why?"

"I don't know. You have to be something." He looked as if he was about to spit.

"What do you do?" she asked.

"I'm an architect. Do you want some coke?"

"No, thank you."

He looked at her as though she were completely mad and walked away. She quickly moved off the spot of this encounter toward a roomful of people in groups, determined to hear at least part of an interesting conversation. She was stopped by a man who wanted to know if she was Italian. She said no and escaped him. She was continuing toward a courtly group of large, aging transvestites who were the most welcoming and companionable bunch she'd seen all night when a very handsome black man took her elbow and said, "Bonsoir. Are you French?"

"No."

"Italian?"

"No."

His face changed a shade. "What are you?"

"I'm from Illinois."

He dropped her elbow with unmistakable contempt and turned his back to her. That was the last straw. She walked out of the club and into the street, not even bothering to look for Babette.

She walked ten blocks in her high heels, and was almost home when she decided to stop at a neighborhood lesbian bar. It would be comfortable, she thought, to get drunk in the company of jovial women. And it was, until a pleasant conversation she thought she was having turned into a nasty argument, before she ever saw the turn, about whether or not bisexual women are lying cowards. Then she staggered home.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

October 2, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'Connection' - (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - I'll excerpt from the fifth story today: 'Connection'. This story is like a deep bruise in the heart of an apple. Like - a bruise that goes all the way through. It's painful, something I relate to deeply. It's the kind of loss that you really just need to forget about it in order to navigate the rest of your life. There's no "getting over" it, or "healing". Just move ON. Sometimes we lose people along the way of life, and you'll never stop missing them - so you might as well just keep going, and stop looking back. (Atwood's Cat's Eye is similar to this, about that type of loss - 'Connection' reminds me a lot of Cat's Eye)

Susan and Leisha were, once upon a time, dear friends. Perhaps dysfunctional friends - "sob sisters" as Leisha describes it. They were in college - Leisha wanted to be an actress, Susan a writer. The story begins long after the friendship has ended - Susan is visiting New York, and kind of having a walk-down-memory-lane. She sees a bag lady on the street, and is jolted out of complacency - she thinks it might be Leisha. Once we get to know Leisha (through flashbacks) - we realize it wouldn't be too far out to imagine her homeless. But thinking she sees Leisha starts the memories coming - things she hasn't thought about in years. An intense friendship ... that shattered, without any big fanfare - just a couple of nasty truthful things said. Leisha was always dramatic, and emotional, and (in Susan's first impression of her) "vulgar" - having emotional scenes with boyfriends in public, crying at parties, etc. Susan was (is) a cool customer. Outwardly demure - but with a whole kinky side - she attracted a wide cornucopia of horrible men, and had adventures she's pretty much lucky to have survived at all. (Leisha, even with all her mess and complications, was much more conventional - she had BOYFRIENDS - one after the other, but just one guy to one girl - not sado-masochistic anonymous encounters in sex bars at 3 am like Susan was into) But the power of Susan was that nobody would ever guess that she was like that, from her appearance. She deliberately dressed conservatively, as a cover. That was why Leisha's "out there" truthiness startled and disgusted Susan at first (and later). Leisha was always getting pregnant, having abortions, trying to commit suicide, etc. Her life was a mess. And slowly - over the years - the power started shifting. Leisha was a drain on Susan (the story is from Susan's point of view). Leisha would call her in the middle of the night, crying ... but then when Susan needed her - Leisha wouldn't return her calls.

I'm making this story sound rather matter-of-fact, and that's not quite right. It's HAUNTED. That "female friendship" thing that Margaret Atwood gets so deeply ... and what a loss it is, what an irrevocable loss ... when such a friendship ends.

Susan is now not so wild as she once was. She's given up on being a writer. She's calmed down sexually. She is monogamous.

But there's been a loss in the transformation. Something was lost in the transfer.

What was it? Leisha?

Was Leisha right about her all along? That she was just a lying phony? That at least Leisha was HONEST about who she was, even with all the mess? Susan, suddenly, overwhelmingly, is haunted by these questions.

But Leisha, the only one who could truly answer these questions, is long gone.

Beautiful story. Really painful. Oh, and lastly: I just love how Gaitskill writes about New York City. She nails it, as far as I'm concerned. It's hard to write about New York without being a cliche. She sticks to details - and a whole world is erected.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Connection'.

Her life in New York had been erratic and unconnected. She had lived hand to mouth most of the time, working a series of menial jobs that made her feel isolated and unseen, yet strangely safe. She ate dinners of rice and beans or boxes of Chinese takeout food on the floor. She stayed up until seven or eight in the morning working on her manuscripts, and then slept all day. She went to Harlem to interview voodoo practitioners. She went to nightclubs and after-hours bars, standing on the periphery of scene after scene with Leisha or some other, less central girlfriend. She took long walks late at night, especially in winter, loving the sound of her own muted footfalls, the slush-clogged city n oises, and the sight of the bundled, shuffling drunks staggering home, looking up in surprise to see a young woman walking alone at 4:00 a.m. The desolation and cruelty of the city winter horrified and fascinated her. She was astonished by the contrasting layers of existence sitting so closely atop one another, and the desperate survival of bag people and misfits wedged into the comfortless air pockets and crawl spaces between layers. During her first year in the city she gave spare change to anyone who asked her. Eventually she gave money only if she happened to have some in her hand when she was asked.

Her relationships with men at that time were disturbing; she had conversation after conversation with Leisha, agonizing over why she always wound up with these terrible people. She remembered them all in an embarrassing blur: the pretty, delicate drug addict, the masochistic Chinese boy, the pretentious Italian journalist, the married professor, the pompous law student, the half-crazy club owner who almost strangled her one night with his belt. The guy she met and screwed in the rest room of some tiny East Village bar, the one who later involved her in an exhausting menage a trois with his Italian girlfriend. Leisha had violently (and primly, Susan thought) disapproved of that one. Strangely enough, after fleeing what she contemptuously labeled "conventional" and "suburban" for anything "unconventional" she could safely lay her hands on, Leisha had performed an indignant and sudden about-face, calling the bohemia she'd adopted "pretentious" and "fake". When Susan didn't follow, Leisha had said things like "It's just horribly painful to even be around you when you're involved in this adolescent, self-destructive garbage."

It was too bad Leisha couldn't see her now, with her steady job, her matching housewares, her kind and gentle boyfriend. It was also annoying to know that Leisha would come to some happy conclusion about her based on the current trappings of her life ("How wonderful it is that Susan has become so stable") and then compare her favorably with the younger Susan. Susan examined her clearly lined face as she stood before the mirror. There had been changes in her during the last six years, and she thought most of them were good. But she was still, for better or worse, the same woman who had drunkenly screwed a strangeer in the reeking can of a tacky bar and then run out into a cab, smiling as she pressed her phone number into his hand.

She sighed and went into the "living area", leaning against an exposed brick wall to look out a curtainless window. It seemed as though her friendship with Leisha had never been what she would now call a friendship at all, but a complex system of reassurance and support for self-involved fantasies that they had propped up between them and reflected back and forth. Susan now identified her early fascination with Leisha as a vicarious erotic connection with the ex-lover they had both slept with. She did not fantasize about Leisha and this man together, but she had been oddly gratified to experience secondhand the dynamic between him and this throaty-voiced little bad girl, and to reflect this dynamic back to Leisha, making it more of a drama by becoming another character in the story. Leisha had done the same, clearly enjoying her two-way link with their lover and the mysterious, contrary, perverse woman he had described to her, this tackily glamorous icon of a dirty-magazine woman who was also her reliable friend Susan. During the first year of their friendship they discussed and described him, pro and con, right down to the blond pinkness, the raised, strangely exposed quality of his genitals, and they were both greatly amused to discover that the sight of them talking and giggling together unnerved him.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

October 1, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'An Affair, Edited' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - I'll excerpt from the fourth story today: 'An Affair, Edited'. Joel lives in New York and works for a film distribution company. One day, on the street, he catches a glimpse of Sara - a woman he had had a "brief disturbing affair" with in Ann Arbor - where they had both gone to college. Nobody had really looked at it as a healthy thing - she was so dramatic and weird and serious - and he didn't really count Sara as a valid ex-girlfriend. But something about seeing her on the street sparks off all of these weird memories - some of them which he wishes he could bury. Memories of violence - how she would beg him to hit her when they had sex - stuff that he didn't understand at the time, and that he still doesn't understand. But something about Sara got to him, stayed with him ... and he can't get her out of his mind suddenly. He can't imagine her having a regular life - what does she do now? What is her job? She wanted to be a painter back then. But there was such a darkness around Sara - he can't picture her being happy or complete. Sometimes he had hit her when they had sex - because she asked him to. He doesn't understand these memories that come. They are strangely erotic to him - he starts to have insane sex dreams the week after seeing her on the street. He wants to find her ... he wants to get in touch with Sara ... he speaks with a college friend about it, Wilson - and Wilson has heard a bit about what Sara is up to - mentions that her work had been in a small gallery show - but that was a couple of years ago. He tries to dissuade Joel from contacting her. He had thought their relationship back then was bad, unhealthy - even though, of course, he wanted all the details.

What I like about this story is the distance with which we see Sara at all times. We see her only through the gauze of memory -and we see her only through Joel's eyes. I like stories like that - because it is hard to ever really KNOW someone ... there are so many barriers ... and also because it just GETS the intensity of relationships in college. When you're young enough to have not been ruined by dating for 15 years, or jaded, or cynical. The thing about Sara was, though - that even though she was in college like the rest of them ... she had something different about her. She was set apart.

As Joel obsesses on her, and the memories - his feelings for her grow. Not in a sentimental way ... but in an obsessive way. Like: what was going on back then?? Who WAS that person I let into my life??

The details Gaitskill chooses to give, the details she chooses to leave out ... it's all perfect.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - : 'An Affair, Edited'.

Interrupted, static-ridden commercials for memories of Sara flitted mutely through his mind, chopped up and poorly edited - Sara before he knew her, a small slender person walking down State Street with her books, wearing jeans and fawn-colored boots. She had a very stiff walk despite her round hips, a tight sad mouth and wide abstracted eyes. She was always alone whenever he saw her, and always appeared vageuly surprised by everything around her. He saw her propped up in her bed, reading a book about South Africa. He saw her sitting across a table, a sauce-red shrimp in her fingers, chatting about her experience as a hooker, oblivious to stares from the next table. She appeared seated in the dark of the film auditorium, her hand at her jaw, her booted legs tossed over the next few chairs, her tongue snapping sarcastically.

"It's so dishonest, it's so middle-class. Who does he think he's shocking? It's such a reaction to convention. It's babyish."

"You don't understand the concept of subversion," he said.

"I know more about subversion than anybody else in this stupid town," she said.

The clips sped up and blurred into glimpses. Her melancholic paleness in the dark, the sheets rumbled to reveal her gray-tinged mattress. The stark lumpiness of her spine and shoulder blades as she reached across him to snatch a "snot rag" from its box. The dry toughness of her heels. The nervous stickiness of her fingers. "Hurt me," she said. "Hurt me."

He could feel his eyes become clouded with privacy as he slipped discreetly into a sheltering cave of sexual fantasy. His focus wobbled, he slipped out again. In Ann Arbor he had pierced his ear, he had worn a beret sometimes. He had written articles in the sstudent paper on labor unions. He had brought Andy Warhol to Cinema I. He saw himself drunk on the curb outside the Del Rio, talking with Wilson and vomiting. They were talking about politics and sex, Wilson mainly talking politics, since he rarely fucked anybody. Joel had just met Sara. "She's great. She's every man's dream. I can't tell you how, because she made me promise not to." He turned and barfed.

Everything was so important in Ann Arbor, so fraught with the tension held tight in the bud of fantasy before it bursts into gaily striped attempt. "I have this fantasy of becoming an anarchist on the Left Bank," he said to Sara. "Throwing bombs and creating a disturbance."

"I want to become a good painter," she said. "Or a great painter."

"Listen," he said, raising himself above her on his elbow. "I want you to be strong. You've come so far in spite of everything. I want you to be successful."

"I am strong," she said. Her eyes were serene. "I'm stronger than anyone else I know."

He cleared his eyes and looked once more at the querulous buildings sweating in the afternoon heat. Of course, she hadn't been strong at all. He remembered the tremulous whine coming out of the phone during their last conversation. "I'm scared," she'd wept. "I feel like I don't exist, I can't eat, I can't do anything, I want to kill myself."

"Look, I grew up in a normal, happy family," he'd said. "I'm well adjusted. I can't identify with this self-esteem crisis, or whatever it is you've got. Anyway, we've only known each other for a few months and I'm not obligated to listen to your problems. You should call a psychiatrist, and anyway I have to take a bath right now."

He couldn't stand weak women.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

September 30, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'Something Nice' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - I'll excerpt from the third story today: 'Something Nice'.

Classic Gaitskill. This story is told from the point of view of the male - a kind of shlubby average guy - married - who frequents a certain house of prostitution in Manhattan about once a month. Gaitskill's rendering of what such places are like have such a stamp of reality that anything else pales in comparison. She KNOWS these places. We all have ideas about what prostitutes are, and who they are on their off-days - but Gaitskill actually KNOWS ... Then - the narrator's wife goes away for a month - and there is no longer a compulsion for him to go home - so he starts to go to the sex house every night. He's a veterinarian (although he lies to the prostitute, for some reason - and says he's a lawyer - very interesting: he's a sad guy - he makes me sad, anyway)- he's got money, so it's no issue. And he requests the same girl every time. The interesting thing about this story is that Jane - the prostitute that the narrator likes best, and requests over and over ... is, objectified by him - but not in the way that you would think. You don't get the sense that he goes to whores for the hot kinky sex that his wife won't do with him. You get the sense that he is lonely, and he feels protective towards this young girl who has sex with him once a month - and that he wants to talk to someone. A friend of mine was a prostitute and she said that that was overwhelmingly the case. That sometimes the guy would just want to talk. Be listened to. It's kind of pathetic, but again - Gaitskill doesn't overtly JUDGE this man ... but I gotta say: he's hauntingly awful. You just know he's living in a fantasy world - which turns the whole event on its ear. Our expectations of what prostitutes are like are not fulfilled by this sad pathetic little story. Jane, the prostitute, doesn't seem to have the hard edges yet - the true "professional" vibe - she's young, and still kind of fresh. Our narrator fantasizes about her - but not sexually - He is filled with yearning towards her, he wants to give her things, he wants to take her out to dinner (he'll pay for her time, of course) - he wants to know who she is (but then when she reveals things - like what she does on her days off - and it doesn't fit with his perception of her, he kind of doesn't know what to say). It is another way of objectifying a human being: to fall in love with an IDEA of them, and not really be able to deal with the reality. Gaitskill doesn't take the simplistic view, though. Jane is not an awesome sex goddess, in charge of what she's doing. And he is not a sad sack of a loser. Jane is rather unpleasant. Indifferent, event. She's a prostitute because she wants to go to art school. She's a painter. She's cut off so much from what she is actually doing that nothing matters to her. Not really. And she is baffled - and kind of cold - towards this lonely man who just wants to do something nice for her. It's a love story, in Gaitskill's universe. Based on ideals and misunderstanding. If we only see prostitutes as victims who need to be saved ... we are missing a vast WORLD of people who do it for all KINDS of reasons. (Same thing with porn stars and exotic dancers and all that stuff.) And it's very dangerous, anyway, to romanticize ANYONE out of their humanity. I've had it done to me. I can tell that whatever the dude is in love with - it's not really ME. It's an IDEA of me. He's made up his mind who I am, from the bat ... and that is what he goes for ... and anything that doesn't really fit in is treated with confusion - as opposed to interest. That's really what this story is all about. It's very very sad. And the ending is AWESOME. Jane disappears from the house o' prostitution. It is disorienting for the narrator. You really get, through Gaitskill's prose, how much space Jane took up in his mind. In a funny way, you ache for him. But it's a cold world out there - and you best not mess with prostitutes if you're looking for anything other than sexual release with no commitment. Know what you're doing before you start doing it. Anyway - months pass. Jane recedes from memory. And then one day - in a cafe in New York - he sees her sitting at a table with some friends. He is stunned to see her out of context. He eavesdrops - and it's obvious that she is now in art school, and her and her friends are sitting there gossiping (uncharitably) towards another friend. They're self-righteous, in the way that gossips can be about other people's "bad behavior". Anyway, I can't describe how Gaitskill does it in this last moment ... but you are left with the feeling of the lost-ness of everyone, that everyone is looking for ... something ... sometimes we intersect - and all along the narrator thought, sadly, that Jane might have looked up to him, or looked to him for protection. Like: he had a fantasy of himself that he was a "nice guy", as opposed to all the other assholes who go to prostitutes. But that's the big lie - that you are different, somehow unique - special.

It's a great story about loneliness and isolation. Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - 'Something Nice'.

The minute she came into the room, he went to her and put his arms around her hips. "Hello, Jane."

"Hi."

"It was strange not seeing you out there waiting for me."

She looked puzzled.

"I guess I somehow got used to thinking of you as my own little girl. I didn't like the idea that you were with some other guy. Silly, huh?"

"Yes." She broke away and snapped the sheet out over the bed. "Do you say things like that because you think I like to hear them?"

"Maybe. Some of the girls do, you know."

He could feel the sarcasm of her silence.

He watched her pull her dress off over her head and drop it on the aluminum chair. "I guess it's only natural that you've begun to get jaded."

She snorted. "I wouldn't call it that."

"What would you call it?"

She didn't answer. She sat on the bed and bent to take off her heels, leaving her socks on. When she looked at him again she said, "Do you really think it's a good idea for you to come to see me every night? It's awfully expensive. I know lawyers make a lot of money, but still. Won't your wife wonder where it's going?"

He sat next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't you see how special you are? No other girl I've seen like this would ever have thought to say something like that. All they can think of is how to get more money out of me and here you are worrying about how much I'm spending. I'm not trying to flatter you, you are different."

"Aren't you worried about getting AIDS?"

"From a girl like you? C'mon, don't put yourself down."

She smiled, sad and strained, but sort of affectionate, and put her hands on his shoulders. She felt to him like one of his puppy patients embracing him as he carried it across the room for a shot.

"I'm sorry I'm being so shitty," she said. "I just hate this job and this place."

"Here," he said. "I'm going to buy two hours, so we can just relax and unwind. You just lie down and get snuggled up in the sheet." He got up and turned off the light. He found a romantic jazz station on the radio. He undressed and got under the sheet with her, wrapping them both in a ball. He held her neck and felt her forehead against his shoulder. Her limbs were nestled and docile, as if all her stiff, pony-trot energy had vanished. The dim light of the gurgling fish tank cast an orangy glow over the room. "This is so nice and glamorous," he said.

"When is your wife coming back?" asked a voice from the nuzzling bundle on his arm.

"In three days." He sighed and stared at the stupid, lovely slivers of fish darting around their ugly castle.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1)

September 29, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'A Romantic Weekend' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - a short story collection - I'll excerpt from the second story today: 'A Romantic Weekend'. Gaitskill sets up expectations with the title of the story. We think we know what " a romantic weekend" means. She has other things in mind. The way she writes about sex can be frightening. She writes about women who either do NOT have the "fight or flight" instinct in them - or that instinct is there, only turned on its ear. Where other women would run away, Gaitskill's characters run toward. It's tough stuff. But it's real. It's the Gaitskill Voice. Beth is the lead in this story - she is going away on a romantic weekend with a man she has fallen in love with. He's married. I think he and Beth met at a party. Oh, and he is un-named in the story. He's just "he". The narration includes both of their thought processes - we're not just inside Beth's head. He's a sadist. And he senses the masochism in Beth. The first time they sleep together, he hurts her. She's frightened but she takes it. He tells her he won't give her any more pain than she can handle. There's something in this comment of his that seems so loving to Beth, so kind, that she falls head over heels for him. Even though on some level he terrifies her. They make a plan to go away for the weekend. The story is a dark pit. You need a strong stomach for some of it. You feel like this guy is a total lunatic. He hates women. But, as always with Gaitskill, she is uninterested in making judgments. She just describes what they do, and what they think - and Gaitskill never blinks! You wait for her to intervene - as a narrator, a writer - but she does not. Hard to explain - but it's startling stuff. Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill - 'A Romantic Weekend'.

They had more drinks on the plane. They were served a hunk of white-frosted raisin pastry in a red paper bag. He wasn't hungry, but the vulgar cake appealed to him so he stuck it in his baggage.

They had a brief discussion about shoes, from the point of view of expense and aesthetics. They talked about intelligence and art. There were large gaps of silence that were disheartening to both of them. She began talking about old people, and how nice they could be. He had a picture of her kneeling on the floor in black stockings and handcuffs. This picture became blurred, static-ridden, and then obscured by their conversation. He felt a ghastly sense of longing. He called back the picture, which no longer gave him any pleasure. He superimposed it upon a picture of himself standing in a nightclub the week before, holding a drink and talking to a rather combative girl who wanted his number.

"Some old people are beautiful in an unearthly way," she continued. "I saw this old lady in the drugstore the other day who must've been in her nineties. She was so fragile and pretty, she was like a little elf."

He looked at her and said, "Are you going to start being fun to be around or are you going to be a big drag?"

She didn't answer right away. She didn't see how this followed her comment about the old lady. "I don't know."

"I don't think you're very sexual," he said. "You're not the way I thought you were when I first met you."

She was so hurt by this that she had difficulty answering. Finally, she said, "I can be very sexual or unsexual depending on who I'm with an in what situation. It has to be the right kind of thing. I'm sort of a cerebral person. I think I respond to things in a cerebral way, mostly."

"That's what I mean."

She was struck dumb with frustration. She had obviously disappointed him in some fundamental way, which she felt was completely due to misunderstanding. If only she could think of the correct thing to say, she was sure she could clear it up. The blue puffball thing unfurled itself before her with sickening power. It was the same image of him holding her and gazing into her eyes with bone-dislodging intent, thinly veiling the many shattering events that she anticipated between them. The prospect made her disoriented with pleasure. The only problem was, this image seemed to have no connection with what was happening now. She tried to think back to the time they had spent in her apartment, when he had held her and said, "You're cute." What had happened between then and now to so disappoint him?

She hadn't yet noticed how much he had disappointed her.

He couldn't tell if he was disappointing her or not. She completely mystified him, especially after her abrupt speech on cerrebralism. It was now impossible to even have a clear picture of what he wanted to do to this unglamorous creature, who looked as though she bit her nails and read books at night. Dim, half-formed pictures of his wife, Sharon, Beth and a sixteen-year-old Chinese hooker he'd seen a month before crawled aimlessly over each other. He sat and brooded in a bad-natured and slightly drunken way.

She sat next to him, diminished and fretful, with idiot radio songs about sex in her head.

Posted by sheila Permalink

September 28, 2007

The Books: "Bad Behavior" - 'Daisy's Valentine' (Mary Gaitskill)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

BadBehaviorGaitskill.jpgBad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is what I would call a "scary-good" writer. She has been since her startling debut - with the short story collection Bad Behavior. I think she was 23 or 24 when it came out and the author photo on the back looks like it could have come out of a high school yearbook. She's tiny and young and ... well, she terrifies me, let's be honest. She's just so freakin' GOOD. The NY Times Book Review is excerpted on the front cover with the words: "Wise beyond her years, utterly unsentimental, Gaitskill is ... glorious." It's that "utterly unsentimental" part that is truly startling about her work - especially for such a young woman. Her stories are COLD. Her prose is spare, yet - deceptively simple. It is not easy to write the way Gaitskill writes. And believe me. I have tried. One of the nicest compliments I've ever received on this here blog was when Jon said that something I wrote reminded him of Gaitskill. I don't say that to brag - or hell, maybe I do. To be compared to her - especially in a piece that I wrote pretty much off the cuff - gave me a nice moment, and one of those encouraging feelings of: "Keep going. You can write. Just keep going." Her work is so so so good. What is it that makes her so good? To me, it is that "unsentimental" thing that stops me in my tracks. Gaitskill does not write about "nice" people. Many of them are assholes, actually. In the post I wrote about her on her birthday (lots of information about her there) I write:

I have to feel on pretty sturdy ground in order to be able to deal with Gaitskill. If I'm having a blue day ... or a blue month ... she's one of the writers I stay FAR away from. She doesn't wallow. She doesn't mope. None of her characters mope. That is what is so tragic about them. They survive. They are survivors. And there is something beautiful about survival but oh, there can be such sadness there too. When you have a consciousness of what you have lost along the way. Gaitskill writes about those moments ... those moments when you realize what you have lost.

I actually can't think of a writer to compare her to. Her idol is Nabokov - and I can definitely see his influence - there's KIND of a Margaret Atwood feel, at times - but not really. Atwood is also "utterly unsentimental" - which is why she's so great ... but Gaitskill - it's like she's living on a frozen ice-cap - It's not that she doesn't care about people, there is great compassion in her writing - just from how she observes things, she sees EVERYTHING. It's that she doesn't waste time psychologizing, or trying to understand WHY or give reasons for her characters behavior (their "bad behavior"). She just tells us what they do. Gaitskill was a runaway as a teenager. She lived on the street, and was a callgirl for a while. She's quite open about that period of her life. Many of her characters are prostitutes, strippers, drug addicts, runaways - and then there's the whole sex thing. Gaitskill writes about sex in a way that makes you (at times) want to run away screaming. These are not people who are yearning for intimacy, in the women's magazines definition of the word. To Gaitskill's characters, intimacy exists when someone punches you in the face as he's fucking you. Gaitskill does not pity such people, who yearn for pain, who only understand love when it hurts. She doesn't glorify them either. She is not interested in judging them in one way or another. She just tells us what they do. That's why I say: if I'm feeling shaky, or on the verge of a depression - Gaitskill is the last writer I will look to. She's not interested in comforting me. She's not interested in shocking me, either - this is not about shock-value.

The movie Secretary is based on a Gaitskill short story - and they definitely Hollywood-ed it up - but I was amazed how much they were able to get away with. (I love that movie, by the way. And I love that relationship. Read into that what you will!)

It's not so much her subject matter that I am drawn to - but the sheer virtuosity of her prose. She's as good as it gets. She just came out with a novel Veronica - it's her second novel ... In my opinion, her "milieu" is the short story - her two novels, while filled with unbelievable writing, didn't work as well for me as her short stories - where she knocks it out of the park, page after page after page.

I often wonder what it would be like to be able to write like Mary Gaitskill. I know I have my own gifts, my own style ... but I do wonder what it would be like to have something within me cauterized to such a severe degree, that I would be able to write about rape and rough sex and homeless runaways and drugs and users ... with such a cold clear unblinking eye. Gaitskill is terrifying. Terrifyingly good.

Bad Behavior like I said was her debut. And if you're gonna have a literary debut, then you want Gaitskill's literary debut. Because she writes so much about sex - and because it's not the kind of sex you normally hear about - she got a lot of attention for that. There are some parts of some of her stories that even I wince at. But Gaitskill doesn't. That's the power of it. She's not rubbing my face in shit, and saying, "LOOK! THESE ARE PEOPLE TOO!" or whatever - her interests as a writer are not: "Let me humanize a subversive group of people ..." She's not an evangelist. She's not polemical. She doesn't care if we've never heard of sex clubs and S&M joints and runaways who like to get punched in the face and look for men who will punch them in the face. She knows those people, she lived among those people, she probably IS one of those people - and so she, without blinking, writes about what they do.

I dislike writers who want to "shock" me (and, it's funny - 2 of the writers in the last 5 years who seemed interested in "shocking" me turned out to be frauds!!) Gaitskill is not a fraud. These are her people. Gaitskill, despite her subject matter, couldn't care less if I was shocked or not. She's still gonna keep writing about these people, and telling me what they do. The title of her book is a wonderful little wink - at those who would judge, at those who couldn't "take" such stories - because they would need a moral, or they would need SOME narrative voice to say, "This woman is abused and needs to be healed - her behavior right now is 'bad' - and she needs to get past it ..." or some other such Glamour mag sentiment. Gaitskill does not satisfy in this regard. She does not look at her characters as needing to go through 12 step programs to join regular society. She does not concede ground to those who would mutter, "Wow. That girl is so SICK."

Maybe that girl IS sick. Gaitskill, again, doesn't care about diagnosing her characters. She doesn't go for easy labels. There is nothing about Gaitskill that is easy. And, to be honest, I know a lot of these people. I've known "Gaitskill characters" in my life. Her observations are so clear, so RIGHT, that you yourself as a reader feel exposed by them.

She's one of the best writers alive today - certainly in America at the top of the heap.

The first story in Bad Behavior is called 'Daisy's Valentine'. Her stories don't really have "plots". At least not that would be interesting to relate. Suffice it to say: Joey and Daisy work in a second-hand bookstore in Manhattan together. They are dating. Joey is also living with a woman named Diane - his girlfriend of 8 years. Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Bad Behavior - by Mary Gaitskill

When Joey first noticed Daisy, he wondered why this pretty young woman had chosen to work in a filthy, broken-down store amid unhappy homosexuals. As time went on, it seemed less and less inappropriate. She was comfortable in the typing pool. She was happy to listen to the boys talk about their adventures in leather bars, where men got blow jobs in onpen wooden booths or pissed on other men. She told jokes about Helen Keller and sex. She talked about her boyfriends and her painting. She was always crouching at Evelyn's desk, whispering and laughing about something, or looking at Evelyn's back issues of True Detective magazine. She wore T-shirts with pictures of cartoon characters on them, and bright-colored pants. Her brown hair was bobbed in a soft curve that ended on either side of her high cheekbones. When she walked, her shoulders and long neck were erect in a busy, almost ducklike way, but her hips and waist were fluid and gently mobile.

The heterosexual men were always coming to stand by her desk and talk to her about their poetry or political ideas while she looked at them and nodded. Even the gay men developed a certain bravado in her presence. Tommy kept on reassuring her that her prince was just around the corner. "I can feel it, Daisy," he would say exultantly. "You're on collision course with Mr. Right!"

"Do you really think so, Tom?"

"It's obvious! Aren't you excited?"

Then Ariel would get up from his desk and lumber over to her and, bending from the waist, would put his large fleshy arms around her sholuders. Joey could see her small white hand emerge on Ariel's broad flank as she patiently patted him.

And, as if it weren't enough to be the heartthrob of the basement crowd, she was kind to helpless, repulsive people. There was a grotesque old woman who would come into the store from time to time to seek out her kindness. The woman was at least sixty years old, and covered her face with heavy orange makeup. She bought horrible best-sellers and self-help books with lurid red covers. She'd stand by Daisy's desk for half an hour and talk to ther about how depressed she was. Daisy would turn off her typewriter and turn toward the woman with her chin in her hand. She'd listen gravely, agreeing sometimes, letting the woman give her small bags of hard candy and kiss her on the cheek. Everyone made rude comments about Daisy and "that crazy old dyke." But Daisy remained courteous and attentive to the distressed creature, even though she often made fun of her after she left.


Joey didn't think of having sex with Daisy, at least not in detail. It was more the idea of being near her, protecting her. She was obviously so confused. She looked everywhere for answers, for someone to tell her what to think. "I just want your perspective," she'd say.

There was a customer she called the "answer man" because he claimed that he could predict the future through "automatic handwriting". He was a handsome elderly man who wore expensive suits and looked as though he'd had at least one face lift. He had been coming into the store for years. Every time he came in, Daisy would walk him off into a corner and ask him questions. He would scrawl down answers in thin red ink and hand them to her with an imperious, terribly personal look. She would become either stricken or joyous. Later she would run around talking about what he'd said, examining the red-scrawled pieces of store stationery. "He says my painting is going to start being successful in a year and a half." "He says there are no worthwhile men around me and that there won't be for months." "He says David will move out next month."

"You don't take that stuff seriously, do you?" asked Joey.

"Oh, not really," she said. "But it's interesting." She went back to her desk and stuck the papers in her drawer and began typing, her face still glowing and upturned because someone who was possibly crazy had told her that she would eventually be a success.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5)

September 27, 2007

The Books: "Howards End" (E.M. Forster)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

HowardsEnd.jpgHowards End - by E.M. Forster

I wrote yesterday a bit about Howards End. This book feels like it becomes more relevant with each passing day. Aside from the intricacies of the characters lives - it's about England - city vs. country - and what faster transportation will mean - or do ... the divides between us, the misunderstandings - that have, at times, lasted centuries ... they are engrained. These larger themes of course are reflected in the lives of the characters - the two Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen - and their encounters with the Wilcox family. The Schlegels are intellectuals - on their own - they're "modernism" ... the Wilcoxes, ensconced on their estate in the country - are about tradition - but there's an elegiac feeling to them, as though this is their last decade of being on the top of the heap - and somewhere they know it. For them, life is about LAND, and possessions - the traditions of their family bound up in trees and houses, etc. These two strands of English life come together - there are multiple plots - spinning away on their own - until finally, they all start to merge. I'm not writing about the book brilliantly - but it is a brilliant book. One of the true greats.

Normally I try to find an excerpt that might be a little unexpected - I usually stay away from "openings" of books - and I certainly stay away from the endings!! In this case, I can't help myself - I'm posting the most famous passage from the book.

I read the book at a time of huge upheaval. I was heartbroken because of a man. I was falling in love with another man. But ... but ... I was young enough to be dismayed that the love for the NEW man didn't feel the same as the love for the other man! I wanted it to feel the same as that OTHER love. There was such a sadness in me then, such a loss - and Michael - who was not a day over 20 years old - tried to deal as best he could. And along comes Howards End, which I was reading at the time for the first time. (I had seen the movie, but that doesn't count.) And along comes this passage. I had probably heard it before - because it's one of THOSE passages - like "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times ..." Whether or not you have read Tale of 2 Cities you probably have heard of that. But in the blazing fall that I read this book - the passage came across to me not just as beautiful writing, or good philosophy ... It came across as something I NEEDED. RIGHT THEN. It was a message I needed in that very moment. You know how books can sometimes do that? And it comes out of nowhere - but you realize: this is what I have been looking for, this is what I have been missing ....

So normally I stay away from the most-famous passages - just because it's funner to find alternatives, flipping through the books, etc. But in this case I'll make an exception. Because I read it and I see the fiery autumn leaves, and I see me and Michael lying in the park, reading our books, drinking coffee, and I remember my struggle, my internal struggle ... The book helped me FRAME my own life in that autumn. This love with Michael is, as great as it is, PROSE. The other one was POETRY. But still. This PROSE is pretty nice. Not everything has to be poetry. Accept the prose. Accept the prose. That experience with the other man does not have to "disconnect" you from love forever ... or from other men ... only connect, only connect ... Integrate it somehow ... integrate it ... live with it ... Prose has its place. Prose has its place - no less than poetry ...

Only connect. Only connect.

It was a deeply profound thing for me - in that moment ... so. Here's the passage. Interestingly enough, it is a description of Margaret's feelings about love.

If I could pick one passage that describes how I want to live my life - in every aspect - it would be the "only connect" passage below.

EXCERPT FROM Howards End - by E.M. Forster

Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy going.

It was hard going in the road of Mr. Wilcox's soul. From boyhood he had neglected them. "I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside." Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within, all had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had always the sneaking belief that bodily passion is bad, a belief that is desirable only when held passionately. Religion had confirmed him. The words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catharine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. "Amabat, amare timebat." And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him.

It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

Nor was the message difficult to give. It need not take the form of a good "talking". By quiet indications the bridge would be built and span their lives with beauty.

But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness. He simply did not notice things, and there was no more to be said. He never noticed that Helen and Frieda were hostile, or that Tibby was not interested in currant plantations; he never noticed the lights and shades that exist in the greyest conversation, the finger-posts, the milestones, the collisions, the illimitable views. Once - on another occasion - she scolded him about it. He was puzzled, but replied with a laugh: "My motto is Concentrate. I've no intention of frittering away my strength on that sort of thing." "It isn't frittering away the strength," she protested. "It's enlarging the space in which you may be strong." He answered: "You're a clever little woman, but my motto's Concentrate." And this morning he concentrated with a vengeance.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

September 26, 2007

The Books: "A Room with a View" (E.M. Forster)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

RoomWithAView.bmpA Room with a View - by E.M. Forster

I saw the movie before I read the book - this is the case with all of Forster, actually. I came to Forster late - I read Howards End in the fall of 1994 - why I remember such things, I'll never know - but I was reading it when I was in Ithaca, doing a show, recovering from a horrible love-loss, and finding myself falling in love with Michael. And all we did together (besides ... you know ...) was sit around and read. He was reading the 5,000 page Brando biography and I was reading Howards End. I've re-read Howards End since and it's weird - because of the vividness of the time when I first read it, I still, when I pick it up, feel that blazing autumn of 1994 hovering around its pages. The atmosphere of the world I was living in when I read it - has somehow seeped into the pages. I LOVED that book - it's my favorite Forster - but I pick up Room with a view right now - and naturally I had to check the front page to see when I bought it (I do my little month/year thing on every book I buy). And there it is: Oct. 94. So I bought it while still in Ithaca - still enraptured by Howards End - and knowing I wanted to stay on the Forster kick a bit longer. That's why I write that little month/date ... it can trigger memories that I really want to hold onto.

I re-read Room with a View last year, I think - and had just as good a time wiht it as I did the first time. Howards End is his masterpiece, I think - it's almost like he somehow gets the entire history of England and humanity into one book - NO IDEA how he does it ... Room with a View is a bit more light, although it touches on many of the same issues.

Lucy Honeychurch is traveling with a babbling entourage through Italy. Much of Forster's work has to do with watching how English people deal with "the other". Meaning: anyone who is not English. The fad at the time was to take sweeping trips across Europe - with an entire staff to carry your 25 satchels behind you ... and yes, the point was to 'see' Italy - but Forster also shows how some people need to bring their home country with them wherever they go - they don't REALLY want an exotic experience, they don't REALLY want to be confronted with any scary "other". They want to say they've traveled, it's just what you do ... but they expect England to follow THEM. This makes for MUCH high comedy. Room with a view is a VERY funny book - all of those English people sitting around in the drawing room of the pension, being all British, and moaning about not "having a view" ... meanwhile: RIGHT OUTSIDE is Italy proper! Go out and see it!

Lucy - a lovely character - actually DOES want to have adventures, wants to see the "real" Italy. But she is a young lady, traveling with chaperones - and it's very hard to get any alone time whatsoever.

Her first moment of alone time (in excerpt below) ends in tragedy, fear, a dead faint, and a fateful encounter with George Emerson, another young British man in Italy. In his own way, EM Forster is quite quite radical. Lucy does not have "any system of revolt". A critique of an entire culture is in that line. And notice how often SPACE is mentioned here - the distances, George seeing her "across something" ... the "receding heavens", the "vast panoramas", etc. Lucy feels cramped - not just by her room without a view, but by her whole life. The way it's set up, the rules for women, etc. But the book is full of images of space, and air, and light ... It's like we are inside Lucy's head, in her spinning of airy castles, her yearning for unlimited space and freedom. It is not an accident that she first sees George "across something" ... it's like HE is her view. She doesn't know it yet - but it's all there in the language. It's so romantic!

It's a lovely read. Deep, funny, thoughtful, beautiful prose, great characters.

EXCERPT FROM A Room with a View - by E.M. Forster

Mr. Beebe was right. Lucy never knew her desires so clearly as after music. She had not really appreciated the clergyman's wit, nor the suggestive twitterings of Miss Alan. Conversation was tedious; she wanted something big, and she believed that it would have come to her on the wind-swept platform of an electric train.

This she might not attempt. It was unladylike. Why? Why were most big things unladylike? Charlotte had once explained to her why. It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored. Poems had been written to illustrate this point.

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of so much early Victorian song. It is sweet to protect her in the intervals of business, sweet to pay her honour when she has cooked our dinner well. But alas! the creature grows degenerate. In her heart also there are springing up strange desires. She too is enamoured of heavy winds, and vast panoramas, and green expanses of the sea. She has marked the kingdom of this world, how full it is of wealth, and beauty, and war - a radiant crust, built around the central fires, spinning towards the receding heavens. Men, declaring that she inspires them to it, move joyfully over the surface, having the most delightful meetings wiht other men, happy, not because they are masculine, but because they are alive. Before the show breaks up she would like to drop the august title of the Eternal Woman, and go there as her transitory self.

Lucy does not stand for the medieval lady, who was rather an ideal to which she was bidden to lift her eyes when feeling serious. Nor has she any system of revolt. Here and there a restriction annoyed her particularly, and she would trangress it, and perhaps be sorry that she had done so. This afternoon she was peculiarly restive. She would really like to do something of which her well-wishers disapproved. As she might not go on the electric tram, she went to Alinari's shop.

There she bought a photograph of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus". Venus, being a pity, spoilt the picture, otherwise so charming, and Miss Bartlett persuaded her to do without it. (A pity in art of course signified the nude.) Giorgione's "Tempesta," the "Idolino," some of the Sistine frescoes and the Apoxyomenos, were added to it. She felt a little calmer then, and bought Fra Angelico's "Coronation," Giotto's "Ascension of St. John," some Della Robba babies, and some Guido Reni Madonnas. For her taste was catholic, and she extended uncritical approval to every well-known name.

But thought she spent nearly seven lire, the gates of liberty seemed still unopened. She was conscious of her discontent; it was new to her to be conscious of it. "The world," she thought, "is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them." It was not surprising that Mrs. Honeychurch disapproved of music, declaring that it always left her daughter peevish, unpractical, and touchy.

"Nothing ever happens to me," she reflected, as she entered the Piazza Signoria and looked nonchalantly at its marvels, now fairly familiar to her. The great square was in shadow; the sunshine had come too late to strike it. Neptune was already unsubstantial in the twilight, half god, half ghost, and his fountains plashed dreamily to the men and satyrs who idled together on its marge. The Loggie showed as the triple entrance of a cave, wherein dwelt many a deity, shadowy, but immortal, looking forth upon the arrivals and departures of mankind. It was the hour of unreality - the hour, that is, when unfamiliar things are real. An older person at such an hour and in such a place might think that sufficient was happening to him, and rest content. Lucy desired more.

She fixed her eyes wistfully on the tower of the palace, which rose out of the lower darkness like a pillar of roughened gold. It seemed no loger a tower, no longer supported by earth, but some unattainable treasure throbbing in the tranquil sky. Its brightness mesmerized her, still dancing before her eyes when she bent them to the ground and started towards home.

Then something did happen.

Two Italians by the Loggia had been bickering about a debt. "Cinque lire," they had cried, "cinque lire!" They sparred at each other, and one of them was hit lightly upon the chest. He frowned; he bent towards Lucy with a look of interest, as if he had an important message for her. He opened his lips to deliver it, and a stream of red came out between them and trickled down his unshaven chin.

That was all. A crowd rose out of the dusk. It hid the extraordinary man from her, and bore him away to the fountain. Mr. George Emerson happened to be a few paces away, looking at her across the spot where the man had been. How very odd! Across something. Even as she caught sight of him he grew dim; the palace itself grew dim, swayed above her, fell on to her softly, slowly, noiselessly, and the sky fell with it.

She thought: "Oh, what have I done?"

"Oh what have I done?" she murmured, and opene dher eyes.

George Emerson still looked at her, but not across anything. She had complained of dullness, and lo! one man was stabbed, and another held her in his arms.

They were sitting on some steps in the Uffizi Arcade. He must have carried her. He rose when she spoke, and began to dust his knees. She repeated:

"Oh, what have I done?"

"You fainted."

"I - I am very sorry."

"How are you now?"

"Perfectly well - absolutely well." And she began to nod and smile.

"Then let us come home. There's no point in our stopping."

He held out his hand to pull her up. She pretended not to see it. the cries from the fountain - they had never ceased - rang emptily. The whole world seemed pale and void of its original meaning.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3)

September 25, 2007

The Books: "The Great Gatsby" (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

GreatGatsby.jpg The Great Gatsby - by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Strangely enough, I did note in my head that yesterday was F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthday - I was just too busy to re-post my birthday tribute to him. Too busy, too, to finish my Quantum Leap post - but that'll come!! I know now to not promise a timeline for these things. Ack!!

This post here chroicles my journey with The Great Gatsby, starting with when I first read it in 10th grade English - which is probably, when all is said and done, the greatest class I have ever taken. With a truly great teacher: Mr. Crothers (known, lovingly, by his students as "Crud" or "The Crud". We called him that TO HIS FACE. "Crud - will there be a quiz on Friday?" I mean - what?? "The Crud says there's gonna be a big paper at the end of the quarter .." we'd mutter to each other. How did we get away with it? We meant it KINDLY, too. We loved him. He was a great great teacher. The best thing about that post above I linked to is if you scroll through the comments ... look who shows up at the very bottom. !!!! My blog is a wonderful thing. People FIND themselves when they Google their own name ... it has happened more times than I can count!)

Anyway, that post about "Revisiting Gatsby" has a lot of the pertinent memories of that class - and how I still remember some of The Crud's lectures, on Gatsby certainly, but on other books - almost word for word. When I came to re-read Gatsby decades later ... I STILL remembered some of his points and observations. Like: the names of the people at Gatsby's party. We spent a whole class analysing all of Fitzgerald's in-jokes, embodied in those names. The Crud was a great teacher. We were 15 year old students ... but he introduced us to literature. I didn't like all of it (cough Billy Budd cough) ... but he gave me SO much in that class. He taught me how to write, too. I mean, I could always write - but he taught me how to write a paper. I can never thank him enough.

When I came back to Gatsby, I was surprised at what a slim little volume it was. It had seemed so HUGE in high school. But I read it in 3 days this last time.

As far as I'm concerned - the opening and closing paragraphs are pretty much as good as American literature gets. It is amazing to think of how young he was when he wrote such lines. The comparison with Michael Chabon is quite a propos, I think ... an old soul, a keen mind, in a young man's body.

Here's a lyrical excerpt from the book - the book has a kind of magical space in my mind, and I'm not sure why. I haven't analyzed it. I know it has its detractors, and I respect their position. But from my experience - you can't explain why something is magic to you. It just is. To me, the book doesn't have a flaw. And it works on me on multiple levels - there's the story level - where you just get into the plot and the characters. And Gatsby is such a character. He could not exist in any other country. He is American. The American tragedy. How did Fitzgerald see it? But the book also works on an intense subconscious level - I would almost use the word "keening" - a word I don't really understand - at least not deeply - The word "keen" in that sense comes from the old Irish - caínim - "lament" - or "I lament" -so when one "keens" with grief, or despair ... it is like a swoon. It is not abrupt or jagged ... it is a dive, a long slow dive. That's how the book works on me.

Here's the excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM The Great Gatsby - by F. Scott Fitzgerald

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York - every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb.

At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another.

By seven o'clock the orchestra had arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the Follies. The party has begun.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6)

September 24, 2007

The Books: "L.A. Confidential" (James Ellroy)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

LAConfidentialEllroy.jpgL.A. Confidential - by James Ellroy

God, I love James Ellroy. I love everything about him. I love his books, I love his persona - and he is a great great interview. He's honest to the degree that sometimes you get nervous for him. He's an open wound - which is funny because his writing is so rat-a-tat-tat. But the nuances he manages to suggest - the entire WORLD he gets into and creates ... He's consistently terrific, and I just love him.

Of course this book was made into a massively successful film - one of my favorite movies ever made, actually - and while the book is far more involved - way more going on - the movie is pretty faithful, not just to the plotline but to the FEEL of the book. Entire scenes of dialogue are lifted verbatim. Because why would you change it? It's perfect already. He doesn't do a lot of "he said" "she said" - Ellroy's narrative brain works faster than that. He doesn't sit back from the action - he's in it, ba da bing ba da boom - here's this, then this, and we move on, but now we're back in ... and we, as readers, are just lucky if we can keep up. (Speaking of the movie, here's a piece I wrote on Bud White, and that first close-up in the film)

The book he wrote about his mother's still-unsolved murder (excerpt here) is a must-read.

But so are all his others.

Here's an excerpt involving Jack Vincennes. I could never write like this. It's not my sensibility - my imagination does not express itself in this way ... but what a pleasure it is ... to read prose like this.

EXCERPT FROM L.A. Confidential - by James Ellroy

He found a juke joint, ordered a line of shots. Two drinks killed his shakes; two more made him a toastmaster.

To the men I just killed: sorry, I'm really better at shooting unarmed civilians. I'm being squeezed into retirement, so I thought I'd 86 a couple of real bad guys before I capped my twenty.

To my wife: you thought you married a hero, but you grew up and you learned you were wrong. Now you want to go to law school andbe a lawyer like Daddy and Ellis. No sweat on the money: Daddy bought the house, Daddy upgrades your marriage, Daddy will pay for tuition. When you read the paper and see that your husband drilled two evil robbers, you'll think they're the first notces on his gun. Wrong - in '47 dope crusader Jack blasted two innocent people, the big secret he almost wants to spill just to get some life kicking back into his marriage.

Jack downed three more shots. He went where he always went when with a certain amount of shit in his system - back to '53 and smut.

He felt safe on the blackmail: his depositions for insurance, the Hudguns snuff buried - Hush-Hush resurrected it, got nowhere. Patchett and Bracken never approached him - they had the carbon of Sid's Big V file, kept their end of the bargain. He heard Lynn and Bud White were still an item; call the brainy whore and Patchett memories - bad news from that bad bloody spring. What drove him was the smut.

He kept it in a safe-deposit box. He knew it was there, knew it excited him - knew that loving it would trash his marriage. He threw himself into the marriage, building walls to keep them safe from that spring. A string of sober days helped; the marriage helped. Nothing he did changed things - Karen just learned who he was.

She saw him muscle Deuce Perkins; he said "nigger" in front of her parents. She figured out his press exploits were lies. She saw him drunk, pissed off. He hated her friends; his one friend - Miller Stanton - dropped out of sight when he blew Badge of Honor. He got bored with Karen, ran to the smut, went crazy with it.

He tried to ID the posers again - still no go. He went to Tijuana, bought other fuck books - no go. He went looking for Christine Bergeron, couldn't find her, put out teletypes that got him bupkis. No way to have the real thing - he decided to fake it.

He bought hookers, shook down call girls. He fixed them up to look like the girls in his books. He had them three and four at a pop, chains of bodies on quilts. He costumed them, choreographed them. He aped the pictures, took his own pictures, recaptured; sometimes he thought of the blood pix and got scared: perfect matches to murder mutilations.

Real women enver thrilled him like the pictures did; fear kept him from going to Fleur-de-Lis - straight to the source. He couldn't figure out Karen's fear - why she didn't leave him.

A last drink - bad thoughts adieu.

Jack cleaned up, walked back to his car. No hubcaps, broken wiper blades. Crime scene tape around Hank's Ranch Market; two black-and-whites in the lot. No reprimand note on his windshield - the vandals probably stole it.

* * *

He hit the bash at full swing: Ellis Loew, a suite packed with Republican bigshots. Women in cocktail gowns; men in dark suits. The Big V chinos, a sport shirt sprayed with dog blood.

Jack flagged a waiter, grabbed a martini off his tray. Framed pictures on the wall caught his eye.

Political progress: Harvard Law Review, the '53 election, a howler shot: Loew telling the press the Nite Owl killers confessed before they escaped. Jack laughed, sprayed gin, almost choked on his olive. Behind him: "You used to dress a bit more nicely."

Jack turned around. "I used to be some kind of hotshot."

"Do you have an excuse for your appearance?"

"Yeah, I killed two men today."

"I see. Anything else?"

"Yeah, I shot them in the back, plugged a dog and took off before my superior officers showed up. And here's a news flash: I've been drinking. Ellis, this is getting stale, so let's get to it. Who do you want me to touch?"

"Jack, lower your voice."

"What is it, boss? The Senate or the statehouse?"

"Jack, it's not the time to discuss this."

"Sure it is. Tell true. You're gearing up for the '60 election."

Loew, on the QT. "All right, it's the Senate. I did have some favors to ask, but your current condition precludes my asking them. We'll talk when you're in better shape."

An audience now: the whole suite. "Come on, I'm dying to run bag for you. Who do I shake down first?"

"Sergeant, lower your voice."

Raise that voice. "Cocksucker, I shit where you breathe. I put Bill McPherson in the tank for you, I cold-coked him and put him in bed with that colored girl, I fucking deserve to know who you want me to put the screws to next."

Loew, a hoarse whisper. "Vincennes, you're through."

Jack tossed gin in his face. "God, I fucking hope so."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

September 23, 2007

The Books: "Middlemarch" (George Eliot)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

MiddlemarchEliot.jpgMiddlemarch - by George Eliot

I finally read this monumental book - one of the greatest achievements in English literature - a couple years ago. It intimidated me. Or - no, not intimidated. It was daunting, in the same way that picking up Anna Karenina for the first time was daunting. Its reputation precedes it. And you know that you are in for a RIDE. The comparison with Tolstoy is deliberate. Middlemarch - while about this one small town in England - and all its inhabitants - is actually about an entire society, and culture. It's a BIG book - in the way Tolstoy wrote BIG books - but it is only big through the concentration on the most intimate details of life of the characters, and how they fit in to the larger picture, even if they are unaware of it. The books encompass an entire world. Jane Austen wrote great books too - but you would never have known about the wars England was fighting at the time, or Napoleon, or any of the other current events from her books. Her books are strictly interior books - and she excavates interpersonal relationships in a way that has barely been topped since. But someone like George Eliot puts the entire WORLD into her book. And it's somehow still not top-heavy or ponderous! (Again: see Tolstoy for the similarity). In Middlemarch - we learn about land laws, and politics, and economics, and educational systems, and the class divide - the book also has one of the most perceptive and SEARING descriptions of what it actually feels like to be way over your head in debt. Lydgate's agony goes on for chapters ... and it's a secret shame (being in debt back then was seen as MUCH more shameful than it's seen now - when most people carry at least a small load of debt). You just FEEL for Lydgate - George Eliot lays it all out - the slow creep of debt, the hiding of it, the growing feeling of panic - the increasing sense of entrapment and doom ... Great stuff. There are love stories in Middlemarch, of course - but - in her omniscent way - Eliot goes to make larger points about the society, about women (and how women not being educated beyond a "toy box history of the world" is bad for everyone - not just women), about marriage itself - through these smaller one-on-one stories. Dorothea Brooke is a TYPE ... but I have to say she's not a "type" written about all that much ... and I often wonder why. I wonder this because I see so much of myself in Dorothea Brooke - she's a cautionary tale, of course ... AS Byatt (who is the main heir to George Eliot) writes about such types all the time ... and convincingly. She does it from the inside, rather than just as an observer. She KNOWS that world. It is the focus on intellectuals - or, no, bad word, with all its connotations. People who are CEREBRAL rather than strictly emotional. That's not quite right, either. But something along those lines. Byatt (in Possession certainly - but in all the Frederica Potter books too) looks at the experience of love through the eyes of someone who is mainly cerebral, perhaps over-educated, weighed down by CONTEXT - not able to come to anything pure. Everything is a reminder of something else ... and so the modern-day experience of something like, oh, love ... begins to feel second-hand, not to be trusted. This is highly specific - and to many people it would not be relevant at all - perhaps interesting to read about, but not reflective of their own experience in any way. But that IS my life. Byatt writes about ME, over and over and over. Dorothea Brooke, with her ideals, is part of that continuum - although she hasn't had the educational advantages of Byatt's characters. But she yearns for them. She yearns to live in the world of ideas. And her life is, on some level, meaningless - she has the opposite of the Byatt characters - she has NO context ... just a vague yearning for a life that has meaning. But give her a doctorate in English lit, and put her in 1980s London - and she'd step right into an AS Byatt book. She would become ALL context and there is a paralysis that accompanies "all context" people. I should know.

One of the things that is so stunning to me about this book is George Eliot's freedom in inserting herself into the narrative. There's quite a presence there - a watching presence - someone who inserts herself (or himself - it's not specific) into the writing, to make philosophical observations, to pull the telescope back, so to speak. It's like you're in the middle of a conversation between two characters - and suddenly - with one sentence - you're orbiting the earth, looking down on all humanity.

And she pulls this off on almost every page! It's a hugely philisophical book, meant to make you think and question and look within, and either go: Yes, I recognize that in myself! Or: No, I do not recognize that in myself - but I do recognize it in my neighbor ... I had never quite thought of it before though!

A couple examples of the pulling-telescope back - but these are just two of many:

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts -- not to hurt others.

Or

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store accorded to their appetite.

Then of course there is the humor of such lines as:

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

Middlemarch has it all. George Eliot obviously has some issues, shall we say, with the institution of marriage - and she lays it all out, to devastating effect, in this book ... It is the opposite of "happily ever after". And this is not your typical book where the wealthy are unhappy and the working class are happy ... Middlemarch, on that telescopic level, is about the emerging middle class in England, the merchants and traders - and the upheaval in society that will come about because of it. It's an examination of marriage, and economics, and religion - how modern transportation will change the world forever (Forster echoes this in his books, of course - but Eliot was there at the beginning - trains across England, faster communication - what will it all mean?) and then also - just good old observational writing ... what certain people are LIKE - like Mrs. Cadwallader - or Rosamond (Lydgate's naive wife - I wanted to slap her about the head for being such a nitwit - but again: who can blame her? Life had not prepared her for anything serious. It had prepared her to be a pretty little wife who cared only about silverware. She was an undeveloped human being, and that is what happens when an entire section of society is denied educational freedom. EVERYONE suffers - it's like Ibsen's plays). So in that way, the book is quite radical.

It's also a soap opera. With a bazillion recurring characters - all of whom have journeys that are interesting to read about. It's not QUITE a page-turner - because it doesn't have that one thruline of a plot that makes you unable to put a book down - like Tess of the D'urbevilles, for example ... but it's a magnificent book, one of the greatest accomplishments in the English language.

Excerpt below. I've chosen an excerpt that is of a more interpersonal nature - Dorothea trying to be intimate with her husband - but having no idea how. There is no dialogue in the scene - it's all just interior - and it's encyclopedic. What we do to each other, the misunderstandings and misinterpretations of teeny moments ... these things last a lifetime sometimes.

And I have to say that the line below about Dorothea: "for her ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder" - that line fills me with recognition, and despair ... I know that. I know that feeling, Dorothea. If one's ardor is continually repulsed ... then you end up navigating your relationships in a state of heightened dread. And who needs that. Not me, that's for sure.

Not that Mr. Casaubon is totally to blame. George Eliot is way too much of a humanist to take that easy way out. Dorothea Brooke - whose life has not set her up to have meaning outside of marriage - whose society and culture has decreed that she shouldn't be too educated because of her sex - has nothing to DO with all of her ardor ... except yearn for a husband who is kind of a father figure, a man she can yoke herself to - and learn from. She is looking for intellectual intimacy. And sorry. Physical intimacy is easy peasy. Intellectual intimacy? Not so much. This is Byatt's territory as well ... but Eliot just barges right into it, fearlessly, and breaks it all down into its components.

it's just so ACCURATE. And again: the point is made: It is not just Dorothea Brooke who suffers because of women's second-class citizen status, and lack of education. Mr. Casaubon suffers too. Neither of them can see outside of the box - and who of us really can, in our lives - we get glimpses maybe, of what else might be out there ... but we are all limited by our own horizons.

The rejection of Dorothea's impulses below sends a chill to my heart. I've been there, hon.

EXCERPT FROM Middlemarch - by George Eliot

Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him; and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence of a sorrow. Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death - who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace, which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace "We must all die" tranforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness "I must die - and soon," then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. To Mr. Casaubon, now, it was as if he suddenly found himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward - perhaps with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties of self-assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a clue to. He held himself to be, with some private scholarly reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of the present and hopes of the future. But what we strive to gratify, though we may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love. And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire was not for divine communion and light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places.

Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband. But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have represented a heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to a comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill that she felt her timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand through his arm.

Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behiind him and allowed her pliant arm to cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.

There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this responsive hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness - calling their denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his was a mind which shrank from pity: have you ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is pressing it as a grief may be really a source of contentment, either actual or future, to the being who already offends by pitying? Besides, he knew little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected tha ton such an occasion as the present they were comparable in strength to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.

Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak. Mr. Casaubon did not say, "I wish to be alone," but he directed his steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass door on the eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free. He entered the library and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.

She went up to her boudoir. The open bow-window let in the serene glory of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees cast long shadows. But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene. She threw herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in the dazzling sun-rays: if there were discomfort in that, how could she tell that it was not part of her inward misery?

She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she had felt since her marriage. Instead of tears there came words: ---

"What have I done -- what am I -- that he should treat me so? He never knows what is in my mind -- he never cares. What is the use of anything I do? He wishes he had never married me."

She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one who had lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw in one glance all the paths of her young hope which she should never find again. And just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her husband's solitude - how they walked apart so that she was obliged to survey him. If he had drawn hertowards him, she would never have surveyed him - never have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would have felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly, "It is his fault, not mine." In the jar of her whole being, Pity was overthrown. Was it her fault that she had believed in him - had believed in his worthiness? - And what, exactly, was he? -- She was able enough to estimate him - she who waited on his glances with trembling, and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him. In such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

September 22, 2007

The Books: "Geek Love" (Katherine Dunn)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

geeklove.JPGGeek Love - by Katherine Dunn

The less said about this book the better.

All I can do is tell you to read it. But don't ever say that I didn't warn you.

I read it years ago when I was living in Philadelphia and quietly having a nervous breakdown that didn't show to the outside world. I was sitting on my front porch when I finished Geek Love. We lived in Mt. Airy, surrounded by forest preserves and mountain bike trails, a lushness of green literally 20 minutes outside the city proper. Trees overhung the porch, the green pressed up against our house from all sides, the street was misty and quiet. I had a big mug of cold coffee next to me. It had been hot when I came out onto the porch ... but I was near the end of the book and so I sat there, horrified, struck dumb and still - not taking one sip from the cup next to me. At the last sentence of the book, I literally burst into tears. That's only happened to me a couple of times at the end of a book. Sometimes I'll mist up ... get moved in an intellectual way ... but a bursting into sobs is something that has rarely happened. Geek Love pierced through my armor - what I had erected to shield me from how depressed I was, how sad, how lonely ... and it wasn't just about me, and what I was going through ... it was about Olympia - and how much I had entered into her psyche, her pain, her love. To me, Geek Love is a book about love (obviously, with that title). Love that is eternal, and altruistic, and essentially GOOD. With all the pain that it causes. My boyfriend came home from his run and found me lying on the wicker couch on the front porch, drenched in tears. I don't think I stopped crying, not really, for a good 2 days after finishing that book. I have never picked it up since.

It's like a strange little club - those of us who have read the book. It's a bit of a litmus test. If someone says, "I loved Geek Love" ... I am immediately drawn to that person, like a moth to the flame ... who are you, it says something about you that THAT would be your favorite ... One of the falling-in-love moments I had with the great love of my life was during a "what books do you love" conversation. I said, casually, "I don't think I've ever cried harder when a book ended than when I finished Geek Love." He looked at me as though I had struck him. He seriously did a double-take. But then didn't say anything for a while. He wasn't a big "let me share with you every thought that goes through my head" type of guy. He was a bit shyer than that. The conversation went on. I had noticed his response but didn't really "get" it ... and later, a couple of people came over and joined us, interrupting our tete a tete - and he said to me, privately, underneath the chatter of the other people, "I don't think I've ever met anyone who also has read that book."

It meant something to him that I had read it and loved it. It meant something about who I am.

It's that kind of book.

One of the most assaultive books I have ever read. With prose you could cut with a knife - an original voice, a truly original voice. Extraordinary book.

I can't even bring myself to give a plot summary.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book.

EXCERPT FROM Geek Love - by Katherine Dunn

Now Crystal Lil holds the phone receiver clenched against her long flat tit while she howls up the stairwell, "Forty-one!", meaning that the red-haired, zit-skinned, defrocked Benedictine in room Number 41 has another phone call and should come running down the three flights of stairs and take this intruding burden off Lil's confused mind. She puts a patented plastic amplifier against the earpiece when she answers the phone and turns the knob on her hearing aid to high and screams, "What! What!" into the mouthpiece until she gets a number back. That number she will shriek up the mildewed staircase until someone comes down or she gets tired.

I am never sure how deaf she is. She always hears the ring of the pay phone in the hall but she may pick up its vibration in her slipper heels. She is also blind. Her thick, pink plastic glasses project huge filmy eyes. The blurred red spurts across her whites like a bad egg.

Forty-one rattles down the stairs and grabs the receiver. He is in constant communication with acquaintances on the edge of the clergy, cultivating them in hopes of slinking back into his collar. His anxious muttering into the phone begins as Crystal Lil careens back into her room. She leaves the door open to the hallway.

Her window looks onto the sidewalk in front of the building. Her television is on with the volume high. She sits on the backless kitchen chair, feels around for the large magnifying glass until she finds it on top of the TV, and then leans close, her nose scant inches from the screen, pumping the lens in and out before her eyes in a constant struggle to focus an image around the dots. When i come through the hall I can see the grey light flickering through the lens onto the eager blindness of her face.

Being called "Manager" explains, for Crystal Lil, why no bills come to her, why her room is free, and why the small check arrives for her each month. She is adamant in her duties as rent collector and enfeebled watchdog. The phone is part of the deal.

When Crystal Lil howls, "Twenty-one!", which is my room number, I stop by my door to grab the goat wig from its nail and jam it onto my bald pate before I take the single flight of stairs in a series of one-legged hops that is hard on my knees and ankles but disguises my usual shuffle. I pitch my voice high and loud, an octave into the falsetto. "Thank you!" I shriek at her gaping mouth. Her gums are knnobby and a faintly iridescent green - shiny where the teeth were. I wear the same wig when I go out. I don't trust Lil's blindness or her deafness to disguise me completely. I am, after all, her daughter. She might harbor some decayed hormonal recognition of my rhythms that could penetrate even the wall of refusal her body has thrown up against the world.

When Lil calls, "Thirty-five!" up the stairwell, I wobble over to the door and stare one-eyed through the hole drilled next to the lock. When "Thirty-five" comes hurtling down the staircase, I get an instant glimpse of her long legs, sometimes flashing bare through the slits in her startling green kimono. I lean my head against the door and listen to her strong young voice shouting at Lil and then dropping to its normal urgency on the phone. Number Thirty-five is my daughter, Miranda. Miranda is a popular girl, tall and well shaped. She gets phone calls every evening before she leaves for work. Miranda does not try to disguise herself from her grandmother. She believes herself to be an orphan named Barker. And Crystal Lil herself must imagine that Miranda is just one more of the gaudy females who trail their sex like slug slime over the rooms for a month at a time before moving on. Perhaps the fact that Miranda has lived here in the big apartment for three years has never penetrated to Lil. How would she notice that the same "Thirty-five" always answers the call? They have no bridge to each other. I am the only link between them, and neither of them knows me. Miranda, though, has far less reason to remember me than the old woman does.

This is my selfish pleasure, to watch unseen. It wouldn't give them pleasure to know me for who I am. It could kill Lily, bringing back all the rot of the old pain. Or she might hate me for surviving when all her other treasures have sunk into mold. As for Miranda, I can't be sure what it would do to her to know her real mother. I imagine her bright spine cringing and slumping and staying that way. She makes a gallant orphan.

We are all three Binewskis, though only Lily claims the name. I am just "Number Twenty-one" to Crystal Lil. Or "McGurk, the cripple in Twenty-one". Miranda is more colorful. I've heard her whispering to friends as they pass my door, "The dwarf in Twenty-one," or "The old albino hunchback in Twenty-one."

I rarely need to speak to either of them. Lil puts the rent checks in a basket just inside her open door and I reach to get them. On Thursdays I take out the garbage and Lily thinks nothing of it.

Miranda says hello in the hall. I nod. Occasionally she tries to chat me up on the stairs. I am distant and brief and escape as quickly as possible with my heart pounding like a burglar's.

Lily chose to forget me and I choose not to remind her, but I am terrified of seeing shame or disgust in my daughter's face. It would kill me. So I stalk and tend them both secretly, like a midnight gardener.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

September 21, 2007

The Books: "Hunts in Dreams" (Tom Drury)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

HuntsInDreams.jpgHunts in Dreams - by Tom Drury

My sister Siobhan turned me on to this writer - she adores him - and she gave me this book for Christmas some years ago. It tells the story of a family, over a particularly intense 4 day period - and one of the cool things about the book is that it switches narrative points of view. We're inside Charles - the father - or we're inside Micah - the young son ... Lyris, the daughter - or whatever. I read one of the Amazon reviews that said: "You could call this novel warm and funny and you wouldn't be wrong, although wry and weirdly edgy is probably closer to the mark." I like that. It's not angst-ridden, but it's certainly not without its bleakness either. And Drury knows how to write dialogue - it's quite amazing, actually - you can hear the voices so clearly. It doesn't feel like you're reading when you read his dialogue - it feels like you're eavesdropping.

The excerpt below is a great example. This feels like a totally real conversation to me. And also: hmmm, how to put this. It feels like nothing is going on - at first - it's just some banter in a tavern. But there's an edge to it. Something is underneath. And Drury does this without saying a WORD of narration. It's in the dialogue itself. You can FEEL it, rather than just read about it. I looooooove dialogue like that. It's a rare rare writer who can pull it off.

Like: "when the pickled egg was king" ????

Funny!

EXCERPT FROM Hunts in Dreams - by Tom Drury

Earl the deputy stopped by the tavern a couple hours into his nightly rounds. A sign on the wall said that the maximum number of people allowed on the premises was ninety-five, but there were only seven in the tavern, counting the bartender. "How's the old shillelagh?" he asked Earl.

"No complaints," said Earl. "Give me a Pepsi and a pickled egg."

The bartender uncapped a jar of brine and reached in with tongs. "I'm thinking of discontinuing these. We hardly sell any of them."

"Not like the old days," said the deputy, "when the pickled egg was king."

The bartender put the egg on a sheet of wax paper and handed it over. "Why, the sidewalk would be jammed with people, each with their own egg."

"That was the heyday of the steam-powered adding machine."

"Now everything's changed except the jokes."

"Old jokes for old men."

"All maintenance, here on out."

"How true."

Earl took the egg and the Pepsi to the back of the tavern and pressed coins into the metal sleeve of the pool table. The cast-resin balls rattled down the open shelf. He walked around the table, setting up trick shots. He ate the egg, which had the consistency of glue.

The young man named Follard came over and put quarters on the rail for a game of last-pocket. Follard shot from a crouch, peering over the edge of the table.

"You guys break up a party tonight?" he said.

"Not me."

"Then who would it have been?"

Earl shrugged and sank a bank shot he had no business making.

"Well, I heard some kids got their keg taken from a party at the Elephant."

"Entirely possible, but it's nothing I've heard of," said Earl. "And these were cops that did it?"

"So it was told to me," said Follard.

Earl took a five-dollar bill from his shirt pocket and folded it into a sleeve, which he slid down the cue, ferrule to joint. "What am I again?"

"Little ones."

"I can't even remember what I am. That's where my head is at."

"I got a knife off them."

"Off who?"

"The ones who told me about the party."

"They just offered it up. Out of generosity."

"Out of something. They don't know where it went."

"Well, Follard, what'd you take it for? You see, this is how you get in trouble."

Follard reached under the table for the bridge.

"The ladies' aid," commented Earl.

Follard held the butt of the bridge in one hand and fitted the cue intently into the brass notch. "To tell you the truth, I don't even know why I did it."

"Don't think I won't run you in."

"For a little jackknife? Put it this way: it would surprise me."

"Let me see it."

"I gave it to a girl."

Earl folded his arms with the cue against his badge. "I ought to rough you up or something."

"Why do you say that?"

"I don't know. It's just a feeling. Like it would be an ounce of prevention."

"Well, she's more deserving than the one who lost it. In a sense, I did a good thing."

"I doubt it," said Earl.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

September 20, 2007

The Books: "The Brothers Karamazov " (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:


BrothersK.jpgThe Brothers Karamazov - by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - oh, and the link I provided there does not go to the translation I read. I read the Constance Garnett translation - on purpose - she really doesn't bug me like she bugs other people. I get why she is out of favor now - I just don't share that view. I read her Crime and Punishment, her Anna K ... The language does have a formality to it, that some people might find off-putting or too old-fashioned - but to me, it "goes" with the book. I didn't have a problem with it. But there are more recent translations of the book that are highly praised as well - so if you haven't read it, you'd just have to look around for one that suits you.

I read The Brothers Karamazov for the first time in 2004. I found an exhilarated post I wrote about it (but of course, at this point in the baseball season, I am merely struck by the fateful DATE of that post!!) And here's the post I wrote when I finished it. I remember that sensation: of forcing myself to slow down my reading speed as I neared the end of the book, because I so dreaded it to end. Not that it would be a sad ending, but that I was upset that the experience I was having with that book would soon be over. It's tremendous, one of the greatest novels ever written. It's an examination of faith, family, Russia, love, justice - and it stays with you long after it is over. I reference it quite often in my mind. I'm never done with it - it's not a book you read, put down, and move on. It percolates. Sometimes it nags. It makes you question things. It does not have A side. It shows all side. Ivan Karamazov isn't the star of the book - it's divided up between Dmitri and Alyosha and Ivan ... the three "aspects" of the Russian character, as Dostoevsky sees it - and each gets equal time. Alyosha is the spiritual one, the man of faith (in the best sense). Dmitri is spoiled, indulged, a man of great appetites - and Ivan (my favorite) is the tormented intellectual. Alyosha does emerge as the compass of the thing - which is not surprising, considering Dostoevsky's views on human nature, and the value of suffering. The end of Crime and Punishment, with its searing redemption - for ALL - is also Alyosha's journey, and it is not an easy one. Alyosha, a man not just determined to see the good in his fellow man - but under an obligation to do so - is constantly rocked by the suffering and sorrow around him - not just in the town, and in Russia - but in his own family. How did that family, with all its issues, produce him?

The "Grand Inquisitor" chapter is something you hear about often when people talk about this book - it's usually one of the first things mentioned. I went into it knowing some of the context of it, knowing: "Oh. Here is that famous chapter" - so I almost geared up for it, I tried to go into it fresh - to just let myself experience it for the first time, without all the commentary I'd heard about it trickle down and influence my response. I had to calm down, literally, as I went into that chapter. "Okay, Sheila. Breathe. Just start it. And take it slow." I read someone say in an Amazon review that it (the "Grand Inquisitor" chapter) is one of the most "spine-tingling critiques of organized religion ever written". And is it ever. It was so brilliant that I found myself actually blocking it out AS I read it. I couldn't deal with it. Then I had to take a break, clear the ol' noggin', and go back to it. It wasn't that it was dense, or intellectual - it was that it was like a laser beam of light cutting me in half, and it was too intense.

The whole book felt like that (well, except for the Father Zossima section which felt, frankly, endless to me - but once I finished the book, I realized why it was there. The book would not be the same without it.)

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading this feast of intellect and soul and passion: do yourself a favor.

It's a book that you will never forget.

I had a helluva time picking an excerpt. I wanted to stay far away from the Grand Inquisitor chapter - because to excerpt that would feel just WRONG ... and I wanted to stay away from the defense attorneys speech and the prosecutors speech at the end of the book (again: SO brilliant and thought-provoking: each side having their say. Dostoevsky, dude. I tip my hat to you!!) This is one of the best crime novels ever written. With an AWESOME trial.

So I decided to excerpt from a long conversation (it spans many chapters) between the brothers Ivan and Alyosha ... it culminates in the Grand Inquisitor chapter - they obviously are talking (arguing) about God. Religion. Suffering. Russia. Classic Russian stuff. Ivan dominates this particular argument - it's his "turn" to speak without interruption. And he does.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM The Brothers Karamazov - by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"I must make one confession," Ivan began. "I could never understand how one can love one's neighbors. It's just one's neighbors, to my mind, that one can't love, though one might love those who live at a distance. I once read somewhere of the saint, John the Merciful. When a hungry, frozen beggar came to him, he took him into his bed, held him in his arms, and began breathing into his mouth, which was putrid and loathsome from some awful disease. I am convinced that he did that from 'self-laceration', from self-laceration of falseness, for the sake of the charity imposed by duty, as a penance laid on him. For anyone to love a man, he must be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone."

"Father Zossima has talked of that more than once," observed Alyosha. "He, too, said that the face of a man often hinders people not practiced in love, from loving him. But yet there's a great deal of love in mankind, an almost Christ-like love. I know that myself, Ivan."

"Well, I know nothing of it so far, and can't understand it, and the mass of mankind are with me there. The question is, whether this lack of ability to love is due to men's bad qualities or whether it's inherent in their nature. To my thinking, Christ-like love for men is a miracle impossible on earth. He was God. But we are not gods. Suppose I, for instance, suffer intensely. Another can never know how much I suffer, because he is another and not I. And what's more, a man is rarely ready to admit another's suffering. Why won't he admit it, do you think? Because I smell unpleasant, because I have a stupuid face, because I once trod on his foot. Besides there is suffering and suffering; degrading, humiliating suffering such as humbles me - hunger, for instance. But when you come to higher suffering - for an idea, for instance - he will very rarely admit it, perhaps because my face he thinks is not the face of a man who suffers for an idea. And so he deprives me instantly of his favor, and not at all from badness of heart. Beggars, especially genteel beggars, should never show themselves, but ask for charity through the newspapers.

"One can love one's neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible. If it were as on the stage, in the ballet, where if beggars come in, they wear silken rags and tattered lace and beg for alms dancing gracefully, then one might enjoy looking at them. But even then we should not love them. But enough of that. I simply wanted to show you my point of view. I meant to speak of the suffering of mankind generally. But we had better confine ourselves to the sufferings of children. That reduces the scope of my argument to a tenth of what it would be. Still we'd better keep to children, though it does weaken my case. But, in the first place, children can be loved even at close quarters, even when they are dirty, even when they are ugly. The second reason why I won't speak of grown-up people is that, besides being disgusting and unworthy of love, they have a compensation - they've eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become 'like god'. They go on eating it still. But children haven't eaten anything, and are innocent. Are you fond of children, Alyosha? I know you are, and you will understand why I prefer to speak of them. If they, too, suffer horribly on earth, they must suffer for their fathers' sins, they must be punished for their fathers, who have eaten the apple. But that reasoning is of the other world and is incomprehensible for the heart of man here on earth. The innocent must not suffer for another's sins, and especially such innocents! You may be surprised at me, Alyosha, but I am awfully fond of children, too. And remember, cruel people, the violent, the rapacious, the Karamazovs are sometimes very fond of children. Children whil they are quite little - up to seven, for instance - are so remote from grown-up people; they are different creatures, as it were, of a different species. I knew a criminal in prison who had murdered whole families, including several children. But when he was in prison, he had a strange affection for them. He spent all his time at his window watching the children playing in the prison yard. He trained one little boy to come up to his window and made friends with him ... You don't know why I am telling you all this, Alyosha? My head aches and I am sad."

"You speak in such a strange way," observed Alyosha uneasily, "as though you were not quite yourself."

"By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in Bulgaria through fear of a general uprising of the Slavs. They burned villages, murdered, outraged women and children, they nailed their prisoners by the ears to the fences, left them till morning, and in the morning they hanged them -- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts: A beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother's eyes. Doing it before the mother's eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a game; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and the Turk pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say."

"Ivan, what are you driving at?" asked Alyosha.

"I think if the devil doesn't exist, then man has created him. He has created him in his own image and likeness."

"Just as man created God, then?" observed Alyosha.

" 'It's wonderful how you can turn words,' as Polonius says in Hamlet," laughed Ivan. "You turn my words against me. Well, I am glad. Yours must be a fine God, if man created Him in His image and likeness. You asked just now what I was driving at. You see, I like to collect certain facts, and, would you believe, I even copy anecdotes of a certain sort from newspapers and books. I've already got a fine collection. The Turks, of course, are included, but they are foreigners. I have Russian examples that are even better than the Turks. You know we prefer beating - rods and scourges - that's our national institution. Nailing ears is unthinkable for us, for we are, after all, Europeans. But the rod and the scourge we have always with us and they cannot be taken from us. Abroad now they scarcely do any beating. Manners are more humane, or laws have been passed, so that they don't dare to flog men now. But they make up for it in another way just as national as ours. It isso national that it would be practically impossible among us, though I believe we are being inoculated with it, since the religious movement began in our aristocracy.

"I have a charming pamphlet translated from the French describing how, quite recently, five years ago, a murderer, Richard, was executed - a young man, I believe, of twenty-three, who repented and was converted to the Christian faith at the scaffold. This Richard was illegitimate and had been given as a child of six by his parents to some shepherds on the Swiss mountains. They brought him up to work for them. He grew up like a wild beast among them. The shepherds taught him nothing, and scarcely fed or clothed him, but sent him out at seven to herd the flock in cold and wet, and no one hesitated to treat him in this way. On the contrary, they thought they had every right, for Richard had been given to them as chattel, and they did not even see the necessity of feeding him. Richard himself described how in those years, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel, he longed to eat of the mash given to the pigs, which were fattened for sale. But they wouldn't even give him that, and beat him when he stole from the pigs. And that was how he spent all his childhood and his youth, till he grew up and was strong enough to go away and be a thief. The savage began to earn his living as a day laborer in Geneva. He drank what he earned, he lived like a brute, and finished by killing and robbing an old man. He was caught, tried, and condemned to death. They are not sentimentalists there. And in prison he was immediately surrounded by pastors, members of Christian brotherhoods, philanthropic ladies, and the like. They taught him to read and write in prison, and expounded the Gospel to him. They exhorted him, worked upon him, drummed at him incessantly, till at last he solemnly confessed his crime. He was converted. He wrote to the court himself that he was a monster, but that in the end God had given him light and shown him grace.

"All Geneva was excited about him - all philanthropic and religious Geneva. All the aristocratic and well-bred society of the town rushed to the prison kissed Richard and embraced him: 'You are our brother, you have found grace.' And Richard did nothing but weep with emotion: 'Yes, I've found grace! All my youth and childhood I was glad of pigs' food, but now even I have found grace. I am dying in the Lord.' 'Yes, Richard, die in the Lord; you have shed blood and you must die. Though it's not your fault that you knew not the Lord, when you coveted the pigs' food and were beaten for stealing it (which was very wrong of you, for stealing is forbidden); but you've shed blood and you must die.' And on the last day, Richard, perfectly limp, did nothing but cry and repeat every minute: 'This is my happiest day. I am going to the Lord.' 'Yes,' cried the pastors and the judges and philanthropic ladies. 'This is the happiest day of your life, for you are going to the Lord!' They all walked or drove to the scaffold behind the prison van. At the scaffold they called to Richard: 'Die, brother, die in the Lord, for even thou hast found grace!' And so, covered with his brothers' kisses, Richard was dragged to the scaffold, and led to the guillotine. And they chopped off his head in brotherly fashion, because he had found grace. Yes, that's characteristic. That pamphlet is translated into Russian by some Russian philanthropists of aristocratic rank and evangelical aspirations, and has been distributed gratis for the enlightenment of our people.

"Richard's case is interesting because it's national. Though to us it's absurd to cut off a man's head, because he has become our brother and has found grace, yet we have our own specialty, which is worse. Our historical pastime is the direct satisfaction of inflicting pain. There are lines in Nekrassov describing how a peasant lashes a horse on the eyes, 'on its meek eyes,' everyone must have seen it. It's typically Russian. He describes how a feeble little nag had foundered under too heavy a load and could not move. The peasant beats it, beats it savagely, beats it at last not knowing what he is doing in the intoxication of cruelty. He thrashes it mercilessly over and over again. 'However weak you are, you must pull, even if you die doing it.' The nag strains, and then he begins lashing the poor defenseless creature on its weeping, on its 'meek eyes'. The frantic beast tugs and draws the load, trembling all over, gasping for breath, moving sideways, with a sort of unnatural spasmodic action - it's awful. But that's only a horse, and God has given horses to be beaten. So the Tatars have taught us, and they left us the knout as a remembrance of it.

"But men, too, can be beaten. A well-educated, cultured man and his wife beat their own child with a birch rod, a girl of seven. I have an account of it. The father was glad that the birch was covered with twigs. 'It stings more,' said he, and so he began stinging his daughter. I know for a fact that there are people who at every blow are worked up to sensuality, to literal sensuality, which increases progressively at every blow they inflict. They beat for a minute, for five minutes, for ten minutes, more often and more savagely. The child screams. At last the child cannot scream, it gasps, 'Daddy! daddy!' By some diabolical unseemly chance the case was brought into court. A lawyer is engaged. The Russian people have long called a lawyer 'a conscience for hire'. The lawyer protests in his client's defense. 'It's such a simple thing,' he says, 'an everyday occurrence. A father punishes his child. To our shame be it said, it is brought into court.' The jury, convinced by him, give a favorable verdict. The public roars with delight that the torturer is acquitted. Ah, pity I wasn't there! I would have proposed to raise a subscription in his honor! ... Charming pictures.

"But I've still better things about children. I've collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, 'most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding'. You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children and children only. To all other type of humanity these torturers behave mildly and kindly, like cultivated and humane Europeans. But they are very fond of tormenting children. It's just their defenselessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets the tormentor's vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden - the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

"This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, kicked her for no reason till her body was on ebruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty - shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement. It was her mother, her mother who did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing her poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, Alyosha, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to 'dear, kind God'. I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! ... I am making you suffer, Alyosha. I'll stop if you like."

"Never mind. I want to suffer too," muttered Alyosha.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

September 17, 2007

The Books: "Crime and Punishment" (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

CrimeAndPunishment.jpgCrime and Punishment - by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As per usual, I always get a little bit nervous when I realize that one of my favorite books is next on the shelf. How to talk about it? Without, like, sounding, uhm, stupid and, like, inarticulate? How can I discuss Crime and Punishment in any normal way? How can I not just SHOUT: "THIS BOOK FREAKIN' ROCKS." Which it does. I've written before - if you have any curiosity at all about the criminal mind, about psychopaths and sociopaths - and what it is actually like to be them ... then you really have got to read the book. No "crime library" is complete without it. It's like an excavation of a human mind. Or ... surgery or something. Surgery on someone's psyche. I never get over this book. And I've read it a couple times - it's a workout, to read - I have to gear up for it. And each time I read it, I find myself getting caught up in it - and caught up in Dostoevsky's brilliant trap: I do not want Raskolnikov to succeed. Because he is planning a senseless murder and you can soooo feel his madness in how Dostoevsky methodically and painstakingly describes his thought process. I don't want him to succeed - and yet I feel for him. Tremendously. And when the investigation begins - when the "punishment' phase begins ... and the inspectors are starting to narrow in on Raskolnikov - I have an odd feeling of urgency and nervousness. Like, in spite of the fact that I know he should be caught ... I am somehow on "his side". (Really good thriller movies do that, too - if they have an awesome villain. Even if you hate the villain's actions, somehow you find yourself on the villain's side).

And as far as I'm concerned - the ending of the book - and how it all comes out - the possibility of redemption - is one of the most difficult and healing things about it. It elevates it. From a great crime story (THE great crime story) to a work of almost divine healing energy. I remember the first time I read it - and it was years ago - and the ending made me want to cry - I got this hot sensation in my throat, my eyes burned - it was such a painful glimpse: yet beautiful too. Evil burning itself out. If there is a chance for Raskolnikov to be forgiven ... then we all have a chance. Dostoevsky (as always) does not take the easy way out.

And there is a reason that I was "rooting" for Raskolnikov - in that weird uncomfortable way. Because he is redeemable. We are all redeemable. Dostoevsky wrote from the dregs of the earth, he wrote from within the muck - the forgotten throngs - the bitter aggrieved Travis Bickles of the world. What does it do to someone's psyche - to someone's outlook - to be hated and scorned from the day you are born? To have no chance? Dostoevsky doesn't let society off the hook, of course. That's one of his main points. But he also doesn't hang it all up on society. Raskolnikov is mad. He must be punished. And he will be.

But then what??

Dostoevsky is one of our greatest and most human writers - because to him, he always asks: Then what????

This book shows that there is an undeniable logic in madness. And that there are no easy answers.

Here's the frenzied part of the book where Raskolnikov is trying to keep to his plan. And that's the thing: I read this, and part of my brain disconnects from it ... observing: "Wow. He so shouldn't go thru with this." But then another part of my brain is thinking, along with Raskolnikov: "He has to get GOING! He can't be late!!!!" Meaning: late for the murder. I am implicated by the book, because it makes me think such things as: "He can't be late for the murder!!!" That's the genius of it.

Note the kind of creepy omniscent narrator inserting itself here and there. "We may note, in passing ..." You can tell that even though Raskolnikov is in the full frenzy of his murderous impulse ... the writing itself is looking back on it. It FEELS like a crime report, is basically what I'm trying to say.

There's an arrogance in Raskolnikov. The arrogance of madness and a feeling of superiority. Reminds me of Leopold & Loeb ... how they truly felt they were ABOVE being caught ... they were "supermen" ... they would be able to murder someone and first of all, have no emotional response to the murder - and also, to be so smart, smarter than other criminals who were just MORONS - and never be caught. But then, ha ha, frickin' Leopold leaves his GLASSES at the crime scene. Because, wow, whaddya know ... you DO get panicked when you murder someone, you DO have an emotional response to killling ... and you DO get discombobbled. And of course, the glasses were found ... and led the investigators right to Leopold's door.

But it was the arrogance, in the first place ... the belief that there was such a thing as a "perfect crime" ...

Raskolnikov, below, seems to believe that at some point - his calculations and his planning will stop ... and he will then move forward, inevitably, still himself, still with his brain working - and go and do the deed. He fears thoughtlessness, he fears the frenzy of murder - because that's when criminals get sloppy. But - to his horror - he finds that he cannot stop the obsessive planning, and going over and over and over all the probabilities in his mind beforehand ... That he keeps thinking and planning ... and he wonders if it will ever stop ... and if he will not only be able to go thru with it, but believe in it beforehand ....

Brilliant psychological observations. The need of criminals and psychopaths to believe they are smarter than ordinary mortals ... that they are above certain things. So when the house of cards start tumbling - the sense of inferiority is enraging - way more than it would be to a regular person who knows he is NOT a "superman intellect".

EXCERPT FROM
Crime and Punishment - by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He still had the most important thing to do - to steal the axe from the kitchen. That the deed must be done with an axe he had decided long ago. He had also a pocket pruning-knife, but he could not rely on the knife and still less on his own strength, and so resolved finally on the axe. We may note, in passing, one peculiarity in regard to all the final resolutions taken by him in the matter; they had one strange characteristic; the more final they were, the more hideous and the more absurd they at once became in his eyes. In spite of all his agonising inward struggle, he never for a single instant all that time could believe in the carrying out of his plans.

And, indeed, if it had ever happened that everything to the least point could have been considered and finally settled, and no uncertainty of any kind had remained, he would, it seems, have renounced it all as something absurd, monstrous and impossible. But a whole mass of unsettled points and uncertainties remained. As for getting the axe, that trifling business cost him no anxiety, for nothing could be easier. Nastasya was continually out of the house, especially in the evenings; she would run in to the neighbours or to a shop, and always left the door ajar. It was the one thing that landlady was always scolding her about. And so, when the time came, he would only have to go quietly into the kitchen and take the axe, and an hour later (when everything was over) go in and put it back again. But there were doubtful points. Supposing he returned an hour later to put it back, and Nastasya had come back and was on the spot. He would of course have to go by and wait till she went out again. But supposing she were in the meantime to miss the axe, look for it, make any outcry - that would mean suspicion or at least grounds for suspicion.

But those were all trifles which he had not even begun to consider, and indeed he had no time. He was th inking of the chief point, and put off trifling details, until he could believe in it all. But that seemed utterly unattainable. So it seemed to himself at least. He could not imagine, for instance, that he would sometimes leave off thinking, get up and simply go there ... Even his late experiment (i.e., his visit with the object of a final survey of the place) was simply an attempt at an experiment, far from being the real thing, as though one should say, "Come, let us go and try it - why dream about it?" - and at once he had broken down and had run away cursing, in a frenzy with himself. Meanwhile it would seem, as regards the moral question, that his analysis was complete; his casuistry had become keen as a rzor, and he could not find rational objections in himself, and doggedly, slavishly sought arguments in all directions, fumbling for them, as though someone were forcing and drawing him to it.

At first - long before indeed - he had been much occupied with one question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He had come gradfually to many different and curious conclusions, and in his opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impoosibility of concealing the crime as in the criminal himself. Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential. It was his conviction that this eclipse of reason and failure of will-power attacked a man like a disease developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the perpetration of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the individual case, and then passed off like any other disease. The quetions whether the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether the crime from its own peculiar nature is always accompanied by something of the nature of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide.

When he reached these conclusions, he decided hat in his own case there could not be such a morbid reaction, that his reason and will would remain unimpaired at the time of carrying out his design, for the single reason that his design was "not a crime ...." We will omit all the process by means of which he arrived at this last conclusion; we have run too far ahead already ... We may add only that the practical, purely material difficulties of the affair occupied a secondary position in his mind. "One has but to keep all one's will-power and reason to deal wtih them, and they will all be overcome at the time when once one has familiarised oneself with the minutest details of the business ..." But this preparation had never been begun. His final decisions were what he came to trust least, and when the hour struck, it all came to pass quite differently, as it were accidentally and unexpectedly.

One trifling circumstance upset his calculations before he had even left the staircase. When he reached the landlady's kitchen, the door of which was open as usual, he glanced cautiously in to see whether, in Nastasya's absence, the landlady herself was there, or if not, whether the door to her own room was closed, so that she might not peep out when he went in for the axe. But what was his amazement when he suddenly saw that Nastasya was not only at home in the kitchen, but was occupied there, taking linen out of a basket and hanging it on a line. Seeing him, she left off hanging the clothes, turned to him and stared at him all the time he was passing. He He turned away his eyes, and walked past as though he noticed nothing. But it was the end of everything; he had not the axe! He was overwhelmed.

"What made me think," he reflected, as he went under the gateway. "What made me think that she would be sure not to be at home at that moment? Why, why, why did I assume this so certainly?"

He was crushed and even humiliated. He could have laughed at himself in his anger ... A dull animal rage boiled within him.

He stood hesitating in the gateway. To go into the street, to go a walk for appearance' sake was revolting; to go back to his room, even more revolting. "And what a chance I have lost for ever!" he muttered, standing aimlessly in the gateway, just opposite the porter's little dark room, which was also open. Suddenly he strated. From the porter's room, two paces away from him, something shining under the bench to the right caught his eyes ... He looked about him - nobody. He approached the room on tiptoe, went down two steps into it and in a faint voice called the porter. "Yes, not at home! Somewhere near though, in the yard, for the door is wide open." He dashed to the axe (it was an axe) and pulled it out from under the bench, where it lay between two chunks of wood; at once, before going out, he made it fast in the noose, he thrust both hands into his pockets and went out of the room; no one had noticed him! "When reason fails, the devil helps!" he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.

He walked along quietly and sedately, without hurry, to avoid awakening suspicion. He scarcely looked at the passersby, tried to escape looking at their faces at all, and to be as little noticeable as possible. Suddenly he thought of his hat. "Good heavens! I had th emoney the day before yesterday and did not get a cap to wear instead!" A curse rose from the bottom of his soul.

Glancing out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he saw by a clock on the wall that it was ten minutes past seven. He had to make haste and at the same time to go some way round, so as to approach the house from the other side ...

When he had happened to imagine all this beforehand, he had sometimes thought that he would be very much afraid. But he was not very much afraid now, was not afraid at all, indeed. His mind was even occupied by irrelevant matters, but by nothing for long. As he passed the Yusupov garden, he was deeply absorbed in considering the building of great fountains, and of their refreshing effect on the atmosphere in all the squares. By degrees he passed to the conviction that if the summer garden were extended to the field of Mars, and perhaps joined to the garden of the Mihailovsky Palace, it would be a splendid thing and a great benefit to the town. Then he was interested in the question why in all great towns men are not simply driven by necessity, but in some peculiar way inclined to live in those parts of the town where there are no gardens nor fountains; where there are most dirt and smell and all sorts of nastiness. Then his own walks through the Hay Market came back to his mind, and for a moment he waked up to reality. "What nonsense!" he thought, "better to think of nothing at all!"

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

September 14, 2007

The Books: "Play It As It Lays" (Joan Didion)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

PlayItAsItLaysDidion.jpgPlay It As It Lays - by Joan Didion

If you do a search on my site for "Joan Didion" you'll probably see she comes up a lot. She's one of my favorite writers of all time. Her essay collections (Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album to name my 2 faves) are addictive - and thought-provoking - and HIGHLY emotional - even though her writing is as cool (sometimes cold) and clear as frost. Her best-selling memoir that just came out The Year of Magical Thinking - about the year after her lhusband's death (her husband was writer John Gregory Dunne - brother to Dominick Dunne) is one of the most astonishing books I've ever read. She doesn't just look into the heart of the sun directly - she writes from WITHIN that burning - That book has to be read to be believed. She has no distance from her experience - she is in the throes of intense grief and longing and the kind of madness that can come when you lose someone so vital to your life ... and yet her skill as a writer is so acute, that she is able to DESCRIBE her experience. The otherworldliness of having him - her mate - NOT be there. And why she can't throw away his clothes. And how she keeps going over and over and over in her mind the night he died ... she is convinced that it could be reversed. That he didn't REALLY die. That's what she means by her title. It is an incredible book.

Her career has spanned decades, and she's done it all. Personal essays, reportage, screenplays, novels. She's a real idol of mine.

Play It As It Lays is one of her novels. Joan Didion started out her career as a writer by moving to New York (she's a born-and-bred Californian) - she wrote for Vogue - eventually, she met and married John Gregory Dunne and they moved back to California. They wrote screenplays together, and lived in Malibu. They had a daughter (who tragically died ALSO in the "year of magical thinking" - an unexpected heart failure at the age of 31 - unbelievable) ... and they settled into life on the outskirts of Hollywood. Occasionally they were main players in that world. Play It As It Lays is a book about Hollywood. In a larger sense, it's a book about America - and America at a certain time - the late 1960s - and a certain set of people: the fringe of the elite in Hollywood. The ones with careers either on the ascendant or the decline. Maria Wyeth is the main character in the book - and sometimes she narrates chapters in her cold creepy voice (she is totally cut off) - and sometimes there is an omniscent narrator. Maria is on the decline. She was an actress. She had a rough past - orphaned, now divorced - she has a daughter who is in an institution. But there's something wrong with Maria, too. You can tell from how she writes. Something has been cut off in her - some ability to respond with warmth. A wound has been cauterized. And she is left forever damaged.

The book goes downhill from there.

It's a bleak read. Joan Didion, on occasion, can be the bleakest of writers. Didion takes a world that many people envy (for all the wrong reasons) - and slices it open to see how it works. It's not pretty.

Didion has written essays about what it's like to drive on the freeways in LA - and in the book Maria Wyeth, a restless woman, running away from something - spends hours driving on the freeways. That's the excerpt below.

EXCERPT FROM Play It As It Lays - by Joan Didion

In the first hot month of the fall after the summer she left Carter (the summer Carter left her, the summer Carter stopped living in the house in Beverly Hills), Maria drove the freeway. She dressed every morning with a greater sense of purpose than she had felt in some time, a cotton skirt, a jersey, sandals she could kick off when she wanted the touch of the accelerator, and she dressed very fast, running a brush through her hair once or twice and tying it back with a ribbon, for it was essential (to pause was to throw herself into unspeakable peril) that she be on the freeway by ten o'clock. Not somewhere on Hollywood Boulevard, not on her way to the freeway, but actually on the freeway. If she was not she lost the day's rhythm, its precariously imposed momentum. Once she was on the freeway and had maneuvered her way to a fast lane she turned on the radio at high volume and she drove. She drove the San Diego to the Harbor, the Harbor up to the Hollywood, the Hollywood to the Golden State, the Santa Monica, the Santa Ana, the Pasadena, the Ventura. She drove it as a riverman runs a river, every day more attuned to its currents, its deceptions, and just as a riverman feels the pull of the rapids in the lull between sleeping and waking, so Maria lay at night in the still of Beverly Hills and saw the great signs soar overhead at seventy miles an hour. Normandie 1/4 Vermont 3/4 Harbor Fwy I. Again and again she returned to an intricate stretch just south of the interchange where successful passage from the Hollywood onto the Harbor required a diagonal move across four lanes of traffic. On the afternoon she finally did it without once braking or once losing the beat on the radio she was exhilarated, and that night slept dreamlessly. By then she was sleeping not in the house but out by the pool, on a faded rattan chaise left by a former tenant. There was a jack for a telephone there, and she used beach towels for blankets. The beach towels had a special point. Because she had an uneasy sense that sleeping outside on a rattan chaise could be construed as the first step toward something unnameable (she did not know what it was she feared, but it had to do with empty sardine cans in the sink, vermouth bottles in the wastebaskets, slovenliness pat the point of return) she told herself that she was sleeping outside just until it was too cold to sleep beneath beach towels, just until the heat broke, just until the fires stopped burning in the mountains, sleeping outside only because the bedrooms in the house were hot, airless, only because the palms scraped against the screens and there was no one to wake her in the mornings. The beach towels signified how temporary the arrangement was. Outside she did not have to be afraid that she would not wake up, outside she could sleep. Sleep was essential if she was to be on the freeway by ten o'clock. Sometimes the freeway ran out, in a scrap metal yard in San Pedro or on the main street of Palmdale or out somewhere no place at all where the flawless burning concrete just stopped, turned into common road, abandoned construction sheds rusting beside it. When that happened she would keep in careful control, portage skillfully back, feel for the first time the heavy weight of the becalmed car beneath her and try to keep her eyes on the mainstream, the great pilings, the Cyclone fencing, the deadly oleander, the luminous signs, the organism which absorbed all her reflexes, all her attention.

So that she would not have to stop for food she kept a hard-boiled egg on the passenger seat of the Corvette. She could shell and eat a hard-boiled egg at seventy miles an hour (crack it on the steering wheel, never mind salt, salt bloats, no matter what happened she remembered her body) and she drank Coca-Cola in Union 76 stations, Standard stations, Flying A's. She would stand on the hot pavement and drink the Coke from the bottle and put the bottle back in the rack (she tried always to let the attendant notice her putting the bottle in the rack, a show of thoughtful responsibility, no sardine cans in her sink) and then she would walk to edge of the concrete and stand, letting the sun dry her damp back. To hear her own voice she would sometimes talk to the attendant, ask advice on oil filters, ho wmuch air the tires should carry, the most efficient route to Foothill Boulevard in West Covina. Then she would retie the ribbon in her hair and rinse her dark glasses in the drinking fountain and be ready to drive again. In the first hot month of the fall she left Carter, the summer Carter left her, the summer Carter stopped living in the house in Beverly Hills, a bad season in the city, Maria put seven thousand miles on the Corvette. Sometimes at night the dread would overtake her, bathe her in sweat, flood her mind with sharp flash images of Les Goodwin in New York and Carter out there on the desert with BZ and Helene and the irrevicability of what seemed already to have happened, but she never thought about that on the freeway.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

September 13, 2007

The Books: "A Tale of Two Cities" (Charles Dickens)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves:

TaleOf2Cities.jpgA Tale of Two Cities - by Charles Dickens

One of my favorite books ever.

The interesting thing to me is: You know how you're forced to read books in high school? And sometimes you're like: WHY am I being put through this TORTURE? Because you're 14 years old, and you don't get why an angry sea captain MUST track down a whale over 600 pages and what does it have to do with me??

Well, some of those books got through my self-involved teenager haze ... a lot of that had to do, I think, with my teacher (Mr. Crothers!!) .... Even Mr. Crothers couldn't help me like Billy Budd!! But Tale of Two Cities was on the curriculum in 10th grade - it was on the summer reading list - and I remember just DIGGING it. I had already read Dickens - for pleasure - Christmas Carol and also Oliver Twist. So he wasn't like, oh, Thomas Hardy - who was completely unknown to me and a little bit more difficult to latch onto. (Very glad I went back and re-read Tess - it's a terrific book, a total page-turner, actually! But in 10th grade, it was TOUGH, man, to finish that damn thing).

Here's an old post I wrote about my high school literature curriculum - I have no memory of writing that, but it describes pretty well what I'm talking about.

And I re-read Tale of Two Cities earlier this year (posted about it here) and had SUCH a good time - It had been years since I read it. Here's a post I wrote about Sydney Carton - one of my favorite fictional characters.

I mean: I LOVE him. You know? I think about him and I get a lump in my throat. I LOVE him.

Great great character. You think you know him. Then you read this and you realize: Oh God. His humanity. His loneliness. All else is a facade.

I love this book. I love it because of the characters - I mean, Madame defarge? She is everything that is despicable about our human race. And yet she is not a stereotype, or generalized. She is very very specific. She LIVES. Because evil people ilke her DO live. She is what makes a revolution. She still lives. She is among us. That "type". She's everywhere. We'll never get rid of Madame Defarges. She's part of us. She's not an "aberration", or a mistake. shivers. And weirdly: I remember getting that about her in high school. I don't think I got all of it - but I got most of it. She terrified me. My friend J. and I would make jokes about Madame Defarge - and joke about how we would sit in the cafeteria at school and knit the names of people we hated into a scarf ... we would laugh about how funny and weird that would be. Some bitch walking by that we hated, and she and I would snarl, and clack our knitting needles, putting the bitch's name down ... For what purpose? (shivers) Great creation - a great great character. Stalin would have loved her. And then would have killed her. Because that's what always happens to fanatics like her in a revolution. That fanaticism you helped create, that rigid unforgiving unhuman atmosphere you helped promote - will turn around and get YOU. And you have no one to blame but your own evangelical fervor.

It was good to read it this last time, too, because I know a lot more about the French Revolution now than I did in high school - and the relationship between the French and the English at that time - and the whole "American" question, which really fucked everything up. So the panoramic sweeps across the English Channel - from one of the cities to the other - make a lot more sense to me now, at least in terms of the wider context.

I have so many favorite scenes, it's hard to pick.

-- when the wine bottle breaks and goes into the cobblestones outside the defarge shop
-- the whole section about the increasing sound of footsteps outside the London house (great great section)
-- the famous opening
-- the whole chapter called "the Jackal"
-- the two chapters about "knitting"

Dickens outdoes himself.

I decided to go with one of my favorite bits of writing in the book - where the sun comes up over the Monsieur the Marquis' stone home. It's funny - there were no motion pictures in Dickens' day - he couldn't have a "summer blockbuster" in his head as he wrote. But to me there is something very cinematic about his writing (I know this isn't an original observation - many others before me have made it) His books usually translate very easily into movies ... because he has already done half the work for the adaptation. This section about the sun coming up over the stone house is a perfect example. Dickens' audience would obviously have not thought about "moving pictures" ... but the thing about the prose is: You can SEE it. He is so so so good at description. You can SEE it, and you can see the slow camera pan over the objects he describes. It's just so marvelous. And very very creepy. The house itself is alive. Look how Dickens starts the image - and brings it to its inevitable conclusion. Everything is deliberate. He's a maestro here.

So. Finally. The excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM A Tale of Two Cities - by Charles Dickens

The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.

For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed.

The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard - both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time - through three dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.

Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bedchamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with opened mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.

Now, the sun was full up and movement began in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering - chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stove, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two, attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.

The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knves of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.

All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?

What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain.

All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all of the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?

It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.

The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.

It lay back on the pillow on Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:

"DRIVE HIM FAST TO HIS TOMB. THIS, FROM JACQUES."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

September 12, 2007

The Books: "Great Expectations" (Charles Dickens)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

GreatExpectations.jpgGreat Expectations - by Charles Dickens

I was torn on which excerpt to post today! This book is so rich, so full - it spans many years - There were times when it made me laugh out loud (Dickens often does) - and then there were times when his psychological observations were so astute and piercing that it brought tears to my eyes (especially when it comes to the character Joe. sniff, sniff. I love Joe so much.) There are also wonderful lyrical passages - and Dickens doesn't often "do" lyrical - so it's a treat when he does.

Then, of course, there is the shimmering spectre of Miss Havisham - who has to be one of the most indelible characters ever created. She haunts me. I read this book for the first time when I was in Chicago - I think David was reading it at the time, and raving about it. I had read much Dickens (some because I had to in high school, others because I wanted to - like when I read Oliver Twist in the 5th grade) but I had never read Great Expectations. And I have a vivid memory of what it was like the first time I read the Miss Havisham part. She had already seeped into my consciousness - I mean, you hear her name all the time - she's famous, she's one of those famous characters used as a descriptor, or context - "You know, she's like Miss Havisham ..." ... but when I first read that FREAKY chapter - where he goes into that dark room - and there's the cake - and the mold - and the wedding dress - and what she makes him do ... I was like: WHAT????? Who can forget that scene? It's one of the freakiest things ever written.

But I'm not going to excerpt that today - I'm going to excerpt another one of my favorite parts: when a group of them go to see Mr. Wopsle in an amateur production of Hamlet.

Dickens' description of the amateur acting - and his critique of it - is one of the funniest things I've ever read. It's like we're suddenly in Waiting for Guffman. Hilarious!! It's the WAY he writes about it ... first of all, Pip writes about it as though it is real ("The king and queen of Denmark ..." as opposed to "the actors playing the king and queen of Denmark") - which makes it even funnier. he describes every bad amateur play any of us have ever seen - and the audience at this play shouts and screams up at the actors, making it a totally interactive experience. Mr. Wopsle, in particular, gets picked out for heckling.

EXCERPT FROM Great Expectations - by Charles Dickens

On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen of that country elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen table, holding a Court. The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer with a dirty face, who seemed to have risen from the people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on the whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood gloomily apart, with folded arms and I could have wished that his curls and forehead had been more probable.

Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action proceeded. The late king of the country not only appeared to have been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease but to have taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The royal phantom also carried a ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally referring, and that, too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality. It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being advised by the gallery to "turn over!" - a recommendation which it took extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted of this majestic spirit that whereas it always appeared with an air of having been out a long time and walked a long distance, it perceptibly came from a closely-contiguous wall. This occasioned its terrors to be received derisively. The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public to ahve too much brass about her; her chin being attached to her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous toothache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as "the kettledrum". The noble boy in the ancestral boots was inconsistent, representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a grave-digger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost importance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority of whose practised eye and nice discrimination the finest strokes were judged. This gradually led to a want of toleration for him, and even - on his being detected in holy orders, and declining to perform the funeral service - to the general indignation taking the form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical madness, that when, in course of time, she had taken off her white muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who had been long cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the front row of the gallery, growled, "Now the baby's put to bed, let's have supper!" Which, to say the least of it, was out of keeping.

Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated with playful effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As for example, on the question whether 'twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared yes and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said "toss up for it;" and quite a Debating Society arose. When he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries of "Hear, hear!" When he appeared with his stocking disordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very neat fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got up with a flat iron), a conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking the recorders - very like a little black flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at the door - he was called upon unanimously for Rude Britannia. When he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man said, "And don't you do it, neither; you're a deal worse than him!" And I grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of these occasions.

But his greatest trials were in the churchyard: which had the appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ecclesiastical washhouse on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr. Wopsle, in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering at the turnpike, the grave-digger was admonished in a friendly way, "Look out! Here's the undertaker a-coming, to see how you're getting on with your work!" I believe it is well known in a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have returned the skull, after moralizing over it, without dusting his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast; but even that innocent and indispensable action did not pass without the comment "Wai-ter!" The arrival of the body for interment (in an empty black box with the lid tumbling open) was the signal for a general joy which was much enhanced by the discovery, among the bearers, of an individual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wopsle through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra and the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the king off the kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the ankles upwards.

We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr. Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore we had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll; and yet I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution - not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything. When the tragedy was over, and he had been called for and hooted, I said to Herbert, "Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 10, 2007

The Books: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (Philip K. Dick)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

DoAndroidsDream.jpgDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - by Philip K. Dick

I came to this wonderful book late. I read it this year. Wonderful stuff. There's a Dashiell Hammett quality to the prose - spare, to the point, yet fantastically deep. How such writers do it I will never know. The ideas in the book are ones that fascinate me - and it's no wonder that over the years I've been blogging - people have begged me to read it. I write a lot about identity, and personality .... what makes us US? What makes me ME? Is identity flexible? Or is it static? Are we born with it? Where does nature end and nurture begin? This is one of the reasons why cults hold such a fascination for me. It's way too easy to point at those trapped in cults and try to figure out what is wrong with them, what is LACKING in them that they would submit to mind control. People who scoff at "those people" are afraid of looking at themselves, are afraid of the implications. They want to say, vehemently, "I would NEVER get caught in a cult!" I am so glad that those people are so certain. I, however, am not. I am certain, about a couple of things - and I am certain that mind control is something that does not just affect the weak, or the ones who LACK things. The mind is a delicate thing. It's strong, too - don't get me wrong ... but people can have experiences in life that impact, forever, how they react to certain things. I have had experiences in my life - from years and years ago - that have forever marked me. I am not the same person I was as when I was an infant. Life has marked me. Life has marked us all. There are things that have affected me adversely that I WISH did not. Even though my BRAIN and my DESIRE say, "Dammit ... don't let this affect who you are ..." ... it doesn't matter. Life happens. And grooves start to form - like a trickling stream across the desert - that eventually, one day, becomes the Grand Canyon. The grooves that are formed make it easier to go "that way" the NEXT time you are in such a situation - even if the groove itself is dysfunctional. All I am saying is: the question of identity, and who we are, should interest all of us. Many don't want to look at it - or they come back too quickly with answers ... I recognize those types, having had to deal with them on my blog from time to time. My blog is not an objective blog. It makes no pretense at being objective. It is a subjective blog ... and either you enjoy my personality - and therefore you are interested in reading my subjective thoughts ... or you do not. There are those who seem more irritated by my personality - and always need to set themselves up in opposition to me - even though I'm babbling about books I like and movies I like. And that's fine - I don't like everybody in the world - and I feel no need to try to woo those people in, or argue with them, or whatever. This goes back to PERSONALITY. I write from my essence. So when I write some post about something I'm struggling with, or something I'm in pain about, or a memory that is particularly jagged - and someone comes back, immediately, with a judgmental argumentatitve response ... as though this is a political blog, or an "issue" blog ... or as though I was pretending to be objective and they need to tell me where I'm wrong ... that is an issue for me. How could me writing about a personal memory be anything OTHER than subjective? What is the matter with people who cannot tell the difference? This may sound like a tangent, but it's really not.

I guess what I'm getting at here is what Rilke meant when he said, "Live the questions." That's what I prefer to do. It's how I write from, it's where my curiosity is engaged, it's what feels most RIGHT to me. I am uninterested in hanging around people who cannot "live the questions" - who always must have the answers - and who get angry when you try to engage them on another level. Or no - they don't get angry - so much as they get contemptuous. To me, life is about "living the questions". Not to say I don't have opinions, and I don't have an idea about right and wrong. I'm talking about how I write, and how I like to engage with other people. Regardless of opinions.

The questions and ideas that Philip Dick writes about in this book are ones that are difficult to ponder - and sometimes confronting. Like we want to believe that we are something PERMANENT. As in: My "Sheila"-ness is PERMANENT. Nobody could touch my ESSENCE. No no no no!"

Oh yeah?

I loved this book and I am so glad I read it. I know I have a lot of Philip Dick fans who read me - and this is the only book of his I have read - so I would love to hear all of your thoughts about him - as a thinker, a writer, etc. I feel like I would have liked the guy. He ponders the questions of identity. He is unafraid to look at what might NOT be permanent.

And the whole question of "what is empathy?" that he deals with so extensively in this book ... WOW. Like how empathy can be mis-used, or exploited ... our capability of empathy is one of the things that separates us from the beasts. I personally believe that it comes from a God - to me, it is the divine that is in us, our ability to empathize with our fellow human beings.

And look how the world Dick describes twists that, USES it in the most cynical way possible, with the empathy box, etc. People can get lost in a trance of empathy, be aware of how deeply they are feeling for other human beings ... "LOOK HOW EMPATHIC I AM ...:" .... and be missing their whole lives.

And lastly: the human race has turned "demonization of certain undesirable groups of people" into an artform. A science. Millions of people have died because of our ability to make them non-persons. No big deal to kill them, shun them ... because they are not, actually, PEOPLE.

Philip Dick, with this book about androids - who are, in actuality, NOT PEOPLE ... looks at this. Looks at it HARD. (The excerpt below deals with this issue). If you, a human being, have an "empathic" response to an android ... something that is NOT human ... then what does that mean? What does that mean about our NEED to kill them all? I was going to say "dehumanize" them - but that's the brilliance of this book. Androids already are NOT human ... and yet ... can we say they do not live? Can Deckard say, with any certainty, that they do not LIVE? And isn't all of that a moot point if he, as a man, has a soft or sensitive or human response to one of them?

Where does our humanity lie? In our OWN hearts?

Is this like the Velveteen Rabbit? That only when an object is loved does it become real?? If Deckard LOVES an android ... does that mean she ceases to be a machine?

Again: there are those who think they have the answers to all of this.

I am not interested in having conversastions with those people. In my real life, or here. I have worked hard to cultivate an audience, believe it or not ... to cultivate people who like to PONDER things, and talk, and share ... even when sharing opinions they share them as OPINIONS, not as truth. The other types of folks do not hold my interest. Why? Because it seems to me that they are more interested in having the conversation END. You know? I prefer to live the questions ... and Philip Dick's book certainly helped me do that.

Here's an excerpt. I loved this part. LOVED the conversation - and LOVED the conclusion of the conversation.

EXCERPT FROM Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - by Philip K. Dick

"Do you have your ideology framed?" Phil Resch asked. "That would explain me as part of the human race?"

Rick said, "There is a defect in your empathic, role-taking ability. One which we don't test for. Your feelings towards androids."

"Of course we don't test for that."

"Maybe we should." He had never thought of it before, had never felt any empathy on his own part toward the androids he killed. Always he had assumed that throughout his psyche he experienced the android as a clever machine - as in his conscious view. And yet, in contrast to Phil Resch, a difference had manifested itself. And he felt instinctively that he was right. Empathy toward an artificial construct? he asked himself. Something that only pretends to be alive? But Luba Luft had seemed genuinely alive; it had not worn the aspect of a simulation.

"You realize," Phil Resch said quietly, "what this would do. If we included androids in our range of empathic identification, as we do animals."

"We couldn't protect ourselves."

"Absolutely. These Nexus-6 types ... they'd roll all over us and mash us flat. You and I, all the bounty hunters - we stand between the Nexus-6 and mankind, a barrier which keeps the two distinct. Furthermore --" He ceased, noticing that Rick was once again hauling out his test gear. "I thought the test was over."

"I want to ask myself a question," Rick said. "And I want you to tell me what the needles register. Just give me the calibration; I can compute it." He plastered the adhesive disk against his cheek, arranged the beam of light until it fed directly into his eye. "Are you ready? Watch the dials. We'll exclude time lapse in this; I just want magnitude."

"Sure, Rick," Phil Resch said obligingly.

Aloud, Rick said, "I'm going down by elevator with an android I've captured. And suddenly someone kills it, without warning."

"No particular response," Phi Resch said.

"What'd the needles hit?"

"The left one 2.8. The right one 3.3."

Rick said, "A female android."

"Now they're up to 4.0 and 6, respectively."

"That's high enough," Rick said; he removed the wired adhesive disk from his cheek and shut off the beam of light. "That's an emphatically empathic response," he said. "About what a human subject shows for most questions. Except for the extreme ones, such as those dealing with human pelts used decoratively ... the truly pathological ones."

"Meaning?"

Rick said, "I'm capable of feeling empathy for at least specific, certain androids. Not for all of them but - one or two." For Luba Luft, as an example, he said to himself. So I was wrong. There's nothing unnatural or unhuman about Phil Resch's reactions; it's me.

I wonder, he wondered, if any human has ever felt this way before about an android.

Of course, he reflected, this may never come up again in my work; it could be an anomaly, something for instance to do with my feelings for The Magic Flute. And for Luba's voice, in fact her career as a whole. Certainly this had never come up before; or at least not that he had been aware of. Not, for example, with Polokov. Nor with Garland. And, he realized, if Phil Resch had proved out android, I could have killed him without feeling anything, anyhow after Luba's death.

So much for the distinction between authentic living humans and humanoid constructs. In that elevator at the museum, he said to himself, I rode down with two creatures, one human, the other android ... and my feelings were the reverse of those intended. Of those I'm accustomed to feel - am required to feel.

"You're in a spot, Deckard," Phil Resch said; it seemed to amuse him.

Rick said, "What - should I do?"

"It's sex," Phil Resch said.

"Sex?"

"Because she - it - was physically attractive. Hasn't that ever happened to you before?" Phi Resch laughed. "We were taught that it constitutes a prime problem in bounty hunting. Don't you know, Deckard, that in the colonies they have android mistresses?"

"It's illegal," Rick said, knowing the law about that.

"Sure it's illegal. But most variations in sex are illegal. But people do it anyhow."

"What about - not sex - but love?"

"Love is another name for sex."

"Like love of country," Rick said. "Love of music."

"If it's love toward a woman or an android imitation, it's sex. Wake up and face yourself, Deckard. You wanted to go to bed with a female type of android - nothing more, nothing less. I felt that way, on one occasion. When I had just started bounty hunting. Don't let it get you down; you'll heal. What's happened is that you've got your order reversed. Don't kill her - or be present when she's killed - and then feel physically attracted. Do it the other way."

Rick stared at him. "Go to bed with her first --"

"-- and then kill her," Phil Resch said succinctly. His grainy, hardened smile remained.

You're a good bounty hunter, Rick realized. Your attitude proves it. But am I?

Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he had begun to wonder.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (16)

September 9, 2007

The Books: "Underworld" (Don Delillo)

Next book on my adult fiction shelves:

Underworld.jpgUnderworld - by Don DeLillo

I have very conflicting feelings about this massive tome. Here's an open letter to Don DeLillo - I wasn't even finished with the book yet when I wrote that ... and my feelings about the book remain the same, even after finishing it. Weird. The opening - a 52 page masterpiece - takes place at this famous event. First of all: I love baseball writing - and the opening of Underworld is some of the best baseball writing I have ever read. Like: EVER. That opening blew me AWAY. The writing! My God. Even though, for me, the whole book doesn't add up (and it's 5,000 pages long - it took me FOREVER to finish it) - that opening is worth the price of admission. I'm sure lots of people would say, 'Well, it's part of a hugely flawed whole - so no, I won't give that opening the props." And I can see their point. I was SO disappointed that the rest of the book did not fulfill the promise of that opening. On page 958, when they reintroduced a character I hadn't seen for 500 pages - and I had no idea who he was, or why I should care ... I was like: BRO. WHAT are you doing??? WHO is Mr. Bronzini? And why he is he back in this book with his arthritic fingers? WHAT ABOUT THE GIANTS-DODGERS GAME IN 1951?? And Bobby Thomson's walkoff homerun? Can we go back THERE? Now: all of this being said:

As with any DeLillo book - you're gonna get brilliant writing. And there is brilliant prose throughout. If you've read a DeLillo book (uhm - Linus?? hahaha) then you know what I am talking about.

For me, with Underworld, it wasn't enough. And it made me sad - because the "prologue" was so off-the-charts amazing. I mean, everyone knows what happened at that game (at least baseball fans do) - but it's how DeLillo writes about it - how he metaphorizes it (word?) - how he pulls his lens BACK to get perspective and then pushes his lens further IN to see the miniscule ... I mean, I would honestly say: If you're interested in great writing, you could get away with just reading the prologue of Underworld.

The book - although huge - dissolved into thin air after I read it - and I couldn't tell you much about it. A strange experience. It didn't STICK.

Linus left a great comment on my White Noise excerpt below which describes the sensation perfectly:

I do so love Don DeLillo, even when he isn't brilliant - because when he is, nobody does it better. The only downside for me is that I sometimes find it very hard to remember his books. The writing gets so transparent that sometimes it blurs and vanishes once I'm past it.

Odd. But that is my experience as well.

However: if all one did in one's life was write something as good as that prologue in Underworld, then one could die happy.

I'm not going to excerpt that, though - because it would ruin it. To take it apart, or take a piece out.

There's another event early in the book ... the surrounding details are gone for me - but I know this: A narrator goes out into the desert to look at an art project. There are all these old rusting military planes - out in the middle of the desert in, New Mexico, I think ... relics of the cold war (that's a huge theme of the book: the cold war is over ... now what?) ... and a group of artists and mechanics and renovators and pilots have gathered for a big project to "save" the planes - to not let them rust away into nothing. It's basically being turned into a giant art installation in the middle of nowhere. The "campsite" for the Project itself is a couple miles away - and you have to drive through nothingness to get to the planes.

This is a description of the narrator (who is he?? There are multiple narrators in this book and I can't remember any of them) ... driving out to see the planes.

It gives a taste of the greatness (potential) of this book.

The writing. Holy GOD. There's a moment where he describes seeing something "so moving" that you know you're supposed to move on immediately - to let it be a flash - to not try to hold onto it ... move on, move on ... It's just so perfectly described.

It just doesn't add up - the book itself - and that's a huge bummer for me.

But I encourage anyone who loves baseball - or who just loves good writing - to read the prologue of Underworld. You won't be sorry!!

EXCERPT FROM Underworld - by Don DeLillo

I drove out to the site at sunrise. I parked near an equipment shed and began to climb a small rise that would place me at a natural vantage in relation to the aircraft. I heard them before I saw them, an uneasy creaking, wind gusts spinning the movable parts. Then I reached the tip of the sandstone ledge and there they were in broad formation across the bleached bottom of the world.

I didn't know there would be so many planes. I was astonished at the number of planes. They were arranged in eight staggered ranks with a few stray planes askew at the fringes. I counted every last plane as the sun came up. There were two hundred and thirty planes, swept-winged, finned like bottom creatures, some painted in part, some nearly completed, many not yet touched by the paint machines, and these last were gunship gray or wearing faded camouflage or sanded down to bare metal.

The painted aircraft took on sunlight and pulse. Sweeps of color, bands and spatters, airy washes, the force of saturated light - the whole thing odly personal, a sense of one painter's hand moved by impulse and afterthought as much as by epic design. I hadn't expected to register such pleasure and sensation. The air was color-scrubbed, coppers and ochers burning off the metal skin of the aircraft to exchange with the framing desert. But these colors did not simply draw down power from the sky or lift it from the landforms around us. They pushed and pulled. They were in conflict with each other, to be read emotionally, skin pigments and industrial grays and a rampant red appearing repeatedly through the piece - the red of something released, a burst sac, all blood-pus thickness and runny underyellow. And the other planes, decolored, still wearing spooky fabric over the windscreen panels and engines, dead-souled, waiting to be primed.

Sometimes I see something so moving I know I'm not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long, you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave.

She wanted us to see a single mass, not a collection of objects. She wanted our interest to be evenly spaced. She insisted that our eyes go slowly over the piece. She invited us to see the land dimension, horizonwide, in which the work was set.

I listened to the turboblades rattle in the wind and felt the sirocco heat come blowing in and my eyes did in fact go slowly over the ranks and I felt a kind of wildness all around me, the grim vigor of weather and desert, and those old weapons so forcefully rethought, the fittingness of what she'd done, but when I'd seen it all I knew I wouldn't stay an extra second.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

September 7, 2007

The Books: "White Noise" (Don Delillo)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

WhiteNoise.jpgWhite Noise - by Don DeLillo

I know Underworld was a huge EVENT - and while Don DeLillo has been writing novels for decades - suddenly, with Underworld he was everywhere. But I think White Noise is his masterpiece. (So far.) I have a couple of friends (Allison, Michael) who count White Noise as one of their favorite books. I have very conflicted feelings about Underworld (which I've written about before - and which I'll get to tomorrow) - but White Noise is one of those books where you barely notice you're READING - it's so perfect. And yet - at least in my copy of the book - there are some lines that are so good to me, so ... I guess that yes, they do call attention to themselves - and I've underlined those lines - I can FEEL the excitement I had when I first read the book, in those scratch marks on the page.

Like:

I like clearing my arm from the folds of the garment to look at my watch. The simple act of checking the time is transformed by this flourish.

That still thrills me. It's classic DeLillo.

Or another line I marked:

Shouldn't death, I thought, be a swan dive, graceful, white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed?

Last one (although the book is full of startling lines like this one):

Children wincing in the sun, women in sun hats, men shading their eyes from the glare as if the past possessed some quality of light we no longer experience, a Sunday dazzle that caused people in their churchgoing clothes to tighten their faces and stand at an angle to the future, somewhat averted it seemed, wearing fixed and fine-drawn smiles, skeptical of something in the nature of the box camera.

White Noise is an ominous story, eerie and quiet. Jack and Babette are a married couple (she's his fourth wife, I believe) - he teaches "Hitler studies" at a small college in the Midwest (if I remember correctly) - and they have a couple kids. And one day there is an 'airborne toxic event' - some industrial accident has unleashed this perfect black cloud that floats by overhead. (No matter how I write about this I am going to make it sound stupid ... what DeLillo does with the black cloud, what he makes it about ... is along the lines of what Mary Shelley did in Frankenstein - Allison helped me see this when we talked about the book. There's a huge metaphor at work here ... and it's gracefully handled - you never feel bashed over the head with it.) Anyway, the "airborne toxic event" begins to affect their lives in all kinds of ways - it sort of takes over - the black cloud ... How does something like that get INSIDE you? I don't mean "pollution" - I mean, psychological pollution. The "white noise" shimmers through their lives - messing up the radio, the television - every transmission you can imagine - until you can barely have a conversation with the person sitting right next to you it is so "loud". It's been years since I read the book - but I can still recall the THRILL of my first time reading it.

The excerpt below is something that immediately came to mind this morning when I picked up the book. "Oh, maybe I'll excerpt the bit about the kid crying." One of Jack and Babette's kids - a little baby boy - cries one day for seven hours. Straight. They end up taking him to the doctor - the doctor is baffled, nothing is wrong with the kid. It's how DeLillo talks about the crying ... Seriously, the guy is just a phenomenal writer. A bit distant, I would say - not necessarily warm ... but "warmth" is not a prerequistie for good writing. What is unbelievable about DeLillo is his EYE - what he sees ... and then how he chooses to put it into words - I can't get over it!

So here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from White Noise - by Don DeLillo

He was in the sixth hour of his crying. She ran along the sidewalk and into the building.

I thought of taking him to the hospital. But if a doctor who examined the boy thoroughly in his cozy office with paintings on the wall in elaborate gilded frames could find nothing wrong, then what could emergency technicians do, people trained to leap on chests and pound on static hearts?

I picked u=him up and set him against the steering wheel, facing me, his feet on my thighs. The huge lament continued, wave on wave. It was a sound so large and pure I could almost listen to it, try consciously to apprehend it, as one sets up a mental register in a concert hall or theatre. He was not sniveling or blubbering. He was crying out, saying nameless things in a way that touched me with its depth and richness. This was an ancient dirge all the more impressive for its resolute monotony. Ululation. I held him upright with a hand under each arm. As the crying continued, a curious shift developed in my thinking. I found that I did not necessarily wish him to stop. It might not be so terrible, I thought, to have to sit and listen to this a while longer. We looked at each other. Behind the dopey countenance, a complex intelligence operated. I held him with one hand, using the other to count his fingers inside the mittens, aloud, in German. The inconsolable crying went on. I let it wash over me, like rain in sheets. I entered it, in a sense. I let it fall and tumble across my face and chest. I began to think he had disappeared inside this wailing noise and if I could join him in his lost and suspended place we might together perform some reckless wonder of intelligibility. I let it break across my body. It might not be so terrible, I thought, to have to sit here for four more hours, with the motor running and the heater on, listening to this uniform lament. It might be good, it might be strangely soothing. I entered it, fell into it, letting it enfold and cover me. He cried with his eyes open, his eyes closed, his hands in his pockets, his mittens on and off. I sat there nodding sagely. On an impulse I turned him around, sat him on my lap and started up the car, letting Wilder steer. We'd done this once before, for a distance of twenty yards, at Sunday dusk, in August, our street deep in drowsy shadow. Again he responded, crying as he steered, as we turned corners, as I brought the car to a halt back at the Congregational church. I set him on my left leg, an arm around him, drawing him toward me, and let my mind drift toward near sleep. The sound moved into a fitful distance. Now and then a car went by. I leaned against the door, faintly aware of his breath on my thumb. Some time later Babette was knocking on the window and Wilder was crawling across the seat to lift the latch for her. She got in, adjusted his hat, picked a crumpled tissue off the floor.

We were halfway home when the crying stopped. It stopped suddenly, without a change in tone and intensity. Babette said nothing. I kept my eyes on the road. He sat between us, looking into the radio. I waited for Babette to glance at me behind his back, over his head, to show relief, happiness, hopeful suspense. I didn't know how I felt and wanted a cue. But she looked straight ahead as if fearful that any change in the sensitive texture of sound, movement, expression would cause the crying to break out again.

At the house no one spoke. They all moved quietly from room to room, watching him distantly, with sneaky and respectful looks. When he asked for some milk, Denise ran softly to the kitchen, barefoot, in her pajamas, sensing that by economy of movement and lightness of step she might keep from disturbing the grave and dramatic air he had brought with him into the house. He drank the milk down in a single powerful swallow, still fully dressed, a mitten pinned to his sleeve.

They watched him with something like awe. Nearly seven straight hours of serious crying. It was as though he'd just returned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges - a place where things are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with the mingled reverence and wonder we hold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

September 6, 2007

The Books: "House of Leaves" (Mark Danielewski)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

HouseOfLeaves.jpgHouse of Leaves - by Mark Z. Danielewski

Uhm, pardon my French, but this book is a total mind f***!!!!! Has anyone else read it? I LOVED it ... if by "loved" I mean: "horrified and riveted". This is one of the few books that has given me actual nightmares. Spatial disorientation nightmares - which is what the book is all about. The kind of phenomenal thing about this book is that there is a "gimmick" to it - and normally I hate books with gimmicks - or, I hate books that are JUST the 'gimmick' - so I usually stay away from them. This book is far more than its gimmick. It is a fantastic story, one I could not put down - one that I lived in my dark imagination after I put the stupid thing down ... AND it has some startlingly good writing. It is quite an accomplishment. I would love to hear from other people who read this book.

The book is about a couple who uproot themselves from their big city life, buy a house in the suburbs somewhere, move in ... and over time, realize that there is something ... off about the house. Doors open on hallways which should not be there - hallways that would go off into the backyard if they were real. Meaning: the INSIDE of the house is larger than the outside frame. This becomes more and more apparent as the book goes on ... and basically, they discover ETERNITY is inside their house. They could explore it for thousands of years and never get to the bottom of it.

I say the book is ABOUT this couple - but that's not quite true. The real lead character is a guy named Johnny Truant - he works in a tattoo parlor, he has stripper girlfriends, and a rough past. And - he basically comes across a manuscript - written by a blind man who is now dead, named Zampano - Zampano's manuscript is a scholarly treatise about the "Navidson" house. And the manuscript is found in bits and pieces, with whole sections missing - footnotes unexplained - and Johnny Truant becomes obsessed with the story. It starts to take over his mind. He begins to research the manuscript - and he adds his own footnotes - to explain other footnotes - and slowly - as you read the manuscript, the footnotes begin to take over the page. Johnny Truant interjects himself - and then - we don't know when - it is apparent that another person took over the manuscript - and they add corrective notes to Truant's footnotes - all in a very cold voice: "Mr. Truant here appears to be dissembling ..." So it makes you wonder: what happened to Truant? Did he go mad trying to put together the manuscript?

The "gimmick" of the book is that it does give you the feeling that you are looking through a pile of unorganized papers, trying to make sense of it. Some of the pieces of the manuscript were written on scraps of paper - pasted over other pieces of paper ... the book's design manages to suggest that. There are a couple sections where the print appears backwards and you have to hold it up to a mirror to read it. There are some parts written in code - you have to figure it out and break the code. The parts where the Navidsons get lost in their own house - where suddenly they are on a staircase that has no bottom ... the way the words are put on the page suggest that experience (if you've read the book you know what I mean). Some pages have one word on it. Some have 3 or 4 but they're scattered all over the place. All of this could be SO annoying if it weren't so good - and so fun - and actually, so right. The gimmick fits the book. Mark Danielewski is obviously enormously clever (if you're gonna read the book, have your Thesaurus nearby!) - and to have thought up such a thing ... and then to execute it ... and also, to have it WORK!! I tip my hat.

I feel as though I have not described the experience of this book sufficiently - and i was almost nervous today, knowing that this was the next book on my shelf.

What I love about the book, though, is the voice of Johnny Truant. Working out his demons in the footnotes of this other manuscript. Talking TO the manuscript, wrestling with his fear, his past, and trying to make something better of himself. Revealing too much, hiding even more ... it's a terrific narrative voice. I could HEAR him in my head.

An amazing achievement - and any fans of "horror" books who have not read it - I sincerely suggest you give it a shot. It's absolutely terrifying. I'm making it sound very intellectual - and in many ways it is ... but the vision of the nothingness inside that house, the gaping maw, the abyss revealed behind doors ... is one I will never forget.

Here's a bit of Johnny Truant's introduction - he tells how he came across the manuscript, and he hints at how it has taken over his life - I had a hard time figuring out not just WHAT to excerpt it, but how - every page has 5 footnotes - all in different typefaces - and it's all graphically represented, so it feels like you're reading Post-It notes, scraps of paper, and fragments. I always try to pick an excerpt that gives the feeling of the book itself ... or, what I love about a particular book ... but that wasn't really possible with this one. It has to be taken as a whole.

Excerpt from House of Leaves - by Mark Z. Danielewski

With a little luck, you'll dismiss this labor, react as Zampano had hoped, call it needlessly complicated, pointlessly obtuse, prolix - your word -, ridiculously conceived, and you'll believe all you've said, and then you'll put it aside - though even here, just that one word, "aside", makes me shudder, for what is ever really just put aside? - and you'll carry on, eat, drink, be merry and most of all you'll sleep well.

Then again there's a good chance you won't.

This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick of feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how. You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place.

Old shelters - television, magazines, movies - won't protect you anymore. You might try scribbling in a journal, on a napkin, maybe even in the margins of this book. That's when you'll discover you no longer trust the very walls you always took for granted. Even the hallways you've walked a hundred times will feel longer, much longer, and the shadows, any shadow at all, will suddenly seem deeper, much, much, deeper.

You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you;ll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.

Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you've ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.

And then the nightmares will begin.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6)

September 5, 2007

The Books: "The Colorist" (Susan Daitch)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

ColoristSusanDaitch.jpgThe Colorist - by Susan Daitch.

God, I adored this book - and it looks like it's out of print or something. It was published in the 80s - and I write my purchase date on the title page of every book I buy, it's a weird quirk I have - and I know I associate The Colorist with a certain time in my life - it's just odd to see the date there, in black and white: "Oct. 91". That month and that date signify a kind of nadir of existence - a whirlwind of awful-ness ... so bizarre, surreal almost. Anyway, I remember where I was when I bought this book - I was in a bookstore in Berkeley, California - and I don't know why I picked this book up, but I did. (The other books I bought in this same trip were: Lives of the Saints, by Nancy Lemann, and Passion by Jeanette Winterson - I basically hit the jackpot with this one trip to the bookstore). I don't know why I was in the mood for trying new things, new authors - I had heard of none of these authors ... and 2 of them were first novels ... and I'm not big on first novels, unless they come highly recommended to me by someone I trust.

The Colorist is about a Julie, a young woman, with a kind of disoriented, passive personality, who lives in New York City and has graduated from art school and she now works for a comic strip - one that's been around since WWII - and the main character is "Electra". Electra sounds a bit like a Wonder Woman character - all va-va-voom, not much substance and lots of cleavage - and she's had to change over the years to reflect the times ... I believe she now wears go-go boots as well ... But anyway, Julie sits at a desk every day, and colors in the strips that come her way. She doesnt' come up with the storyline, she doesn't do the lettering of the narrative ... those are for other people. She colors in. She's not wacky about Electra, the character - but she also doesn't think or worry about it too much - she has too much else on her mind. One day, she is up on her roof - and she is attacked at knifepoint by some random dude up there. It freaks her out (naturally) - but our narrator is such that you don't get a clear reason of how much, or how often. Julie is not a panicker - but this experience kind of did her in - so she moves in with a guy she just started dating - Eamonn - a guy she has only known a couple of weeks. Eamonn is a photojournalist - his life is photography - he's from Northern Ireland, he's political, he's secretive, and he's kind of a snot. Like - he doesn't really respect Julie's life. It's not serious enough for him. Julie suspects that the only reason he allowed her to move in with him is because, with the knife-point attack on the roof, Julie comes CLOSE to having some kind of REAL experience ... of danger, war, whatever. Eamonn is a dick, obviously. But a very interesting character! Julie is obsessed with his photographs, and sits up late into the night, staring at them - trying to get to know him better by looking at his photos. Who is this man? Meanwhile, she takes her work home with her - so Electra bounds all over her table ... and drips dry in the bathroom, and Julie obsesses over which blue to use to make her black hair particularly shiny ... etc. etc. And Eamonn judges her - judges her for taking her work seriously, first of all - because it's stupid work - and then also judging her for not being serious ENOUGH. Julie, eventually, is laid off from the comic strip - basically, Electra cannot compete with newer strips ... Julie sits at home, depressed, lethargic ... and, if I recall correctly (it's been years) - she, out of boredom, out of anger at Eamonn, out of anger at the passive-ness of her own life - begins to create HER Electra - the Electra that SHE wants to create. An alternate reality - an alternate version of Julie - perhaps exorcising her fears and anxieties about the dude with the knife on the roof, or being victimized or whatever - Julie starts to pour all of her focus into this NEW Electra - even though no one will ever see it ... Electra begins to have grittier experiences - and Julie experiments with writing out the narrative for the first time. And for the first time, Electra starts to reflect Julie's own life.

That's all I really remember of the book - although I do remember loving it (and picking it up, just now, and flipping through it - I can see why I loved it. I was coming across passages I liked this morning, remembering them ... and they still seemed good to me).

The Colorist is about things falling apart. All the images in the book have to do with buildings toppling, cracks in the sidewalk, subways screeching to a halt - machinery breaking down ... possible apocalypse ... a certain comic-book sensibility about the world and its fragility. I needed to read about chaos at that time in my life when I bought it.

And - if I might analyze it a bit further - Julie has man problems, to say the least. Eamonn is elusive, he's kind of a liar, yet he also has this ramrod sense of integrity that he holds her to. There are other men - she tries to date other men - but it doesn't work out. Nobody seems able to connect in this book. Everyone is a self-involved little unit, circling around endlessly - never intersecting. That was totally my experience of the world at the time that I bought the book. I almost felt like there was a thick layer of glass between me and the rest of humanity. The Colorist is all about that. Even Electra - the comic strip character - is trapped, isolated - within the pages of her storyline - can she bust out? ... Julie tries to help her escape the bounds of the comic strip boxes - tries to give her some LIFE ... but Julie's just the "colorist". Without the folks giving her the storyline ahead of time, she finds it very hard to continue.

I really liked the book - sorry to see it's out of print.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from The Colorist - by Susan Daitch.

Sometimes I think I'm too old for this. Martin in a doorway, desperate calls to comics, Eamonn who comes and goes. I heard about a woman who was in my class in high school who has two children, life insurance, and a rich husband who sees other women when he can. She's way ahead of me. She lives in a big house that looks like a prison built by Louis XIV and it's next door to the house she grew up in. The east side of the avenue near Seventh Street is a series of five-story buildings and at night they look entirely like a trompe l'oeil painting, a false front stuck in a landscape where real-estate values make the idea of its falseness absurd. I know it's not true. From the street, people can be seen in their apartments and you can walk around to the back. It's not painted on. People live in those (not) trompe l'oeil buildings, and they probably don't consider themselves living according to trompe l'oeil inclinations. The woman in the Louis XIV prison who waits for her husband until early in the morning, as she looks at her neighbors' houses, does she think they're a painted setup, fakes staged to make her feel miserable? I don't feel tromped on or watched by my fakes, and this is the reassuring part.

I have tried to assign definitions to my fakes whether reproduced Electra stories or imagined meetings with Martin. I ask myself where the heart of fakery lies. It's the kind of thing I tend to forget when it's raining pleasantly outside; Orion's obsession is in remission, and Electra appears content in her spaceship. But there are situations, dramatic and easily dreamed up, which give the fakes a nudge, sends them spinning into a troubled frenzy.

EPISODE III
Electra Returns to Earth

Electra shut the book on Kandinsky again. Dr. Mary Atlas hadn't coded her against claustrophobia or homesickness and longing, by-products of a good memory. Orion was pelting her with intergalactic valentines, but his offers were annoying, dangerous, and offered no companionship. She suspected that if he was in love with her, he would still appear a kind of pest, another (space) chiseler who, instead of spare parts or a lift, might want only a little sympathy. She felt sorry for him but wished he'd glom onto someone else. She was curious about Earth. What had happened to Kandinsky and Cocteau? To her mother? She turned her spaceship around. Orion went numb. He couldn't follow her. On Earth he'd be a mammoth, a freak with an ursine cast to his features. No privacy, no secrecy, no subtle way to plead his case. He'd be seen from miles away. He couldn't function on the planet of Electra's origin. As far as he was concerned, that whole galaxy was a Palookaville, nothing more. The disappearance of the object of his desire turned the universe into a dull, barren place inhabited only by early life forms, evolving slowly. He watched her ship grow smaller, until only a faint light remained hundreds of miles away. His gorgon-like assistants clutched the buttons and dials of the cockpit in terror of Orion's violent depression. In his frustration he pounded the controls of his spaceship, and a fragment of an amnesia=inducing ray pierced Electra's thermaglass window. It was only a small bit of a ray, but it erased the part of her brain that stored the memory of Dr. Atlas. The spaceship still headed toward Earth. It was too late to change course. Though slight, the laser beam did more than just alter Electra's memory. Her spaceshift disintegrated as it fell through the Earth's atmosphere, and Electra grew lighter. She landed beside Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park, clutching a microchip from her image duplicator.

Eamonn frequently sold his pictures ot newspapers. We lined them up on the table in chronological order, and they read like a nursery rhyme before I swept them into a pile. One jumped in front of the R Local, two shot a teller and a bank guard, three escaped from prison and were found alrady dead in a Williamsburg basement, four were threatened by white gangs, a family of five living in an abandoned car in an abandoned lot. None of the pictures was in color, and in their black-and-white harshness I found no clues as to his foolhardiness or bravery. I had no desire to say to him, Did you really see that, were you really there? It was his job, that was all.

Blue-and-white roadblocks crossed Fifth Avenue. A bomb had gone off in an embassy. The avenue metamorphosed from a street whose history had always been one of order, expensive clothing, and jewelry to one of police sirens, ambulances, fire engines, and camera crews. In the chaos, what had been valuable, even priceless, suffered the displacement of archaeological relics uncovered at a location where their original context had been rendered impossible to guess. A neo-Baroque facade shattered, angel body parts were found five bocks away, flying slivers of glass blinded tourists on their way to the Metropolitan, credit-card machines smashed on curbstones, bloody cuffs on mannequins. People who passed by or ran to the site from unaffected blocks had two choices: to watch or to walk away. They stood behind the cordons, some of them, and struggled to see or to be recorded by a television camera or by Eamonn. Later, at home, witnesses could repeat, Today I saw ...

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

September 4, 2007

The Books: "The Final Solution: A Story of Detection" (Michael Chabon)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

FinalSolution.jpgThe Final Solution: A Story of Detection - by Michael Chabon. This slim book was Chabon's follow-up to the monster novel Kavalier & Clay and is basically his homage to Sherlock Holmes, and the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As anyone who is a Chabon fan knows, he's on a sort of mission to "rescue" genre fiction from the wilderness (whether or not it's in a wilderness is debatable, as far as I'm concerned.) He has written numerous essays on the topic - and is quite vocal about it - he makes some good points, actually - but I find this particular "homage" tiresome, frankly. Kinda condescending. There is (naturally) some amazing writing in the book andI'd read it by Chabon if it were a grocery list. And his enthusiasm for "genre" fiction is very much akin to my own ... and his frustration that people like Poe or Doyle or whoever are - relegated to the genre stacks, as opposed to being integrated with "real" literature - is something I think as well. And I am sure he had to rest after writing the behemoth Kavalier & Clay (uhm, who's being condescending now??) - and sort of take the heat off, relax, etc. etc. ... so he wrote The Final Solution - the story of a Holocaust survivor, a tiny boy, who doesn't speak, whose only friend is an African parrot. A crime is committed. And an ancient man - once a famous detective (he's un-named if I recall correctly - so I guess we are encouraged to imagine him as Sherlock Holmes) - anyway, a once famous detective is lured out of retirement ... to try to solve the crime.

The writing has that Chabon spark ... but I have to admit. The book is 90 pages long - and I had to force myeslf to finish it. Why don't I just read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - and go to the source - rather than read your fanboy ramblings?

Now look. I'm a huge fangirl. I am THIS CLOSE to writing some Quantum Leap fanfic just to LET OFF SOME STEAM ... and also because most of the writing I'm doing now is off-line, and serious, and takes up a lot of my concentration ... and it would be fun to just sit down and be a big fat freakin' fangirl, imagining what would happen if Al and Sam did THIS or what if Sam leapt into THAT ... etc.

Fun!!

(Would I want anyone else to read it though????) But that's beside the point.

So obviously, I got no problem with the fanboy aspect of it. But to me, it's not good enough. The original is better. The original Sherlock Holmes books are better. Go read those.

But great American novel? Great sweeping panorama of American life? Read Michael Chabon. I won't hold his fanboy books against him - I have them all - and I read them all. Not saying I like them all - but I sure as shit read them all. He's important. I know what it means to be a fan.

I can't wait to read Chabon's latest - The Yiddish Policeman's Union ... I get that writers have different ways of working and creating, and that writing a book takes time to recover from. All that focus and energy - and also pressure - if you're already successful. It's draining. Something like The Final Solution must have been a lark for Chabon, and really fun to write - relaxing, easy ... and hell, he knows there are folks out there like me who will buy it. (He even speaks to that in interviews. Basically it is his hope to broaden the appeal of Sherlock Holmes - but again, I find that condescending. Anyhoo, I'LL LET IT GO!)

Here's an excerpt - where the detective, referred to as "the old man" looks around for clues. \

Excerpt from The Final Solution: A Story of Detection - by Michael Chabon.

With a series of huffings and grunts, laboring across twenty feet square of level ground as if they were the sheer icy face of Karakorum, the old man turned his beloved lens upon everything that occupied or surrounded the fatal spot, tucked between the lush green hedgerows of Hallows Lane, at which Shane's half-headless body had been foound, early that morning, by his landlord, Mr. Panicker. Alas that the body had already been moved, and by clumsy men in heavy boots! All that remained was its faint imprint, a twisted cross in the dust. On the right tire of the dead man's motorcar - awfully flash for a traveler in milking machines - he noted the centripetal pattern and moderate degree of darkening in the feathery spray of blood on the tire's white wall. Though the police had made a search of the car, turning up an ordnance survey map of Sussex, a length of clear rubber milking hose, bits of valve and pipe, several glossy prospectuses for the Chedbourne & Jones Lactrola R-5, and a well-thumbed copy of Treadley's Common Diseases of Milch Kine, 1929 edition, the old man went over the whole thing again. All the while, though he was unaware of it, he kept up a steady muttering, nodding his head from time to time, carrying on one half of a conversation, and showing a certain impatience with his invisible interlocutor. This procedure required nearly forty minutes, but when he emerged from the car, feeling quite as if he ought to lie down, he was holding a live .45 caliber cartridge for that highly unlikely Webley, and an unsmoked Murat cigarette, an Egyptian brand whose choice by the victim, were it his, seemed to indicate still greater unsuspected depths of experience or romance. Finally he dug around in the mulchy earth that lay beneath the hedgerows, finding in the process a piece of shattered cranium, stuck with bits of skin and hair, that the policemen, to their evident discomfiture, had missed.

He handled the grisly bit of evidence without hesitation or qualm. He had seen human beings in every state, phase, and attitude of death: a Cheapside drab tumbled, throat cut, headfirst down a stairway of the Thames Embankment, blood pooling in her mouth and eye sockets; a stolen child, green as a kelpie, stuffed into a storm drain; the papery pale husk of a pensioner, killed with arsenic over the course of a dozen years; a skeleton looted by kites and dogs and countless insects, bleached and creaking in a wood, tattered garments fluttering like flags; a pocketful of teeth and bone chips in a shovelful of pale incriminating ash. There was nothing remarkable, nothing at all, about the crooked X that death had scrawled in the dust of Hallows Lane.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (19)

September 2, 2007

The Books: "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (Michael Chabon)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

KavalierAndClay.jpgThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - by Michael Chabon.

This is one of my favorite books ever written - and I consider it to be in the pantheon of great American novels. I don't really want to say more about it because words fail me, sometimes, when it comes to these books I love so dearly. It's a great great book - it's got it all - memorable characters, a sweeping panoramic view of American life and culture, details, humor, and fantastic writing ... It's not too dark, as a matter of fact - it's just the opposite. Although there are evil forces at work - WWII, for one - fascism, the Nazi threat - (we start right in the middle of all of that with the escape from Prague) - there is a deep sense of hope in the book. Even amidst horror. I want to speak about that more - because the whole "everything happens for a reason" morons have hijacked the way we talk about hardship in this country ... Not that I don't believe in REASONS for things happening - I do! - but when the first response to some tragedy is a kneejerk, "Everything happens for a reason" - then my response to that is one of suspicion and contempt. That is a person who wants to cut off feeling things, who leaps over the tough stuff to some easy slogan. The reasons will come - if we are open to the universe, and to ourselves, and the beauty of life. But you can't skip steps. Hope, to me, means something very different, something much more hard-won, and perhaps more fragile. Yet tremendously valuable. It should be protected, hovered over, nurtured. It's not a bumper sticker. It can't be summed up in a slogan. It's not EASY. Like Anne Frank in her attic - staring out the window where she can see just a part of the huge tree in the street. She loves that tree, she writes about it, she muses on it, she misses the outdoors, that tree becomes a symbol - something to hold onto, to stare at in the midst of yet another year in hiding ... (that tree was just cut down, by the way - it had rotted ...) Anyway - to me, THAT is "hope" - Actually, Ted and I had a discussion on his blog about that a week ago - and I found one of my favorite quotes of Vaclav Havel's:

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Yes. Yes.

Anne Frank's knowledge that she should be free is right - regardless. Regardless of how it turned out. It's like Thomas Jefferson putting that pesky little phrase "the pursuit of happiness" into the Declaration. How on EARTH can a government ensure that? What on EARTH does "happiness" have to do with the fortunes of men and warfare and politics? But what a difference it has made - to the world - to have that phrase in the public record. It is not a GOAL. It is a journey, a reminder ... a necessary reminder in the darkest of times ... of what is the best in us. The pursuit of happiness is the best that is in us.

And it is right - "regardless of how it turns out".

My life has not been one long successful journey of happiness. That is not the point of life - and anyone who is consistently thrown off course because life isn't easy or smooth - is (as far as I'm concerned) not a developed person. Life is difficult. Start from there. Accept it, goddammit ... and then maybe you'll get somewhere! There are those who seem to feel that life SHOULD be easy. I am very sorry for those people - they have a rough time of it. And they only have themselves to blame, as far as I'm concerned. So no. "HAPPINESS" has not been my main course in life. Maybe it is for some other people - and I am envious. But the PURSUIT of what makes me happy ... whatever that may be ... continues to help me get up in the morning, even when my feet are dragging, my heart is heavy, and I have lost yet another possibility ... it is the PURSUIT that matters. It is the PURSUIT that is guaranteed. And it is the PURSUIT that is right ... 'regardless of how it turns out'. (this all dovetails with the Stockwell obsession and why I think it has come to me right now).

I have wandered far from my topic ... but I suppose that is one of the marks of a great book. And The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a great book. I did not want this book to end. I couldn't bear the thought that I wouldn't get to "see" all of those people again.

Read it, if you haven't.

It was hard to choose an excerpt - because the book is so great ... the opening is just ... Fuggedaboutit - I DARE you to read those first 3 pages and not read further! But I decided to go with Joe and Rosa meeting at the crazy Bohemian party ... Joe had actually SEEN Rosa Luxemberg Saks before - had caught her naked in a friend's bed - a couple years before, when he was still new and green to America - still struggling wtih English, etc. Years later, he is at a party in Greenwich Village with a bunch of artists - Dali is there, Joseph Cornell, etc. etc. And he runs into Rosa again. He remembers her immediately - and she thinks he looks familiar - but he tries to shoo her off that old story. Rosa is one of those characters my heart ached to leave behind. Chabon writes women very well. Even when he was a young man, I thought that Jane and Phlox from Mysteries of Pittsburgh were very well-drawn characters. And, I saw a lot of myself in Rosa. I almost never see myself in fictional characters - there's always some huge character trait that is either missing, or present ... that throws the whole thing off. I kind of relate to Franny in Franny and Zooey - she "feels" very close to me, in terms of how I relate, what panics me, what love feels like, what religious faith feels like ... art ... all that. That's complex stuff and Franny is right there with me. Rosa is one of those characters - from the second we first meet her (or hear her, actually - we first hear her voice shouting, "FUUUUUUUUUCK" - and she's standing in the middle of a group of men at a party - and everyone is laughing uproariously at some bitter thing she's just said) ... and then she takes Joe up to her room - and because of the image we have first had of her, a ballsy loud woman surrounded by men, we think we know what's going to happen up in the private room. But no - we don't know. And I really saw myself in that. In who Rosa was - the public AND the private. In a person who is "unclassifiable".

Also her blush - which gives it all away. And how she immediately goes with Joe - into his emotional life. Watch how immediately she does that. Who wouldn't fall in love with such a person?

So here's an excerpt.

The writing is exquisite. The talcum being a 'guardrail' - the 'optimistic descent' into a first kiss - how she starts to smoke the cigarette without it being lit - the 'determined blankness' in her eyes - that whole section - and the words he uses to describe the color of her eyes. It's all just so damn GOOD.

Excerpt from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - by Michael Chabon.

It was fascinating to see her face again after so long. Although Joe had never forgotten the girl whom he had surprised that morning in Jerry Glovsky's bedroom, he saw that, in his nocturnal reimaginings of the moment, had had badly misremembered her. He never would have recalled her forehead as so capacious and high, her chin as so delicately pointed. In fact, her face would have seemed overlong were it not counterbalanced by an extravagant flying buttress of a nose. Her rather small lips were set in a bright red hyphen that curved downward just enough at one corner to allow itself to be read as a smirk of amusement, from which she herself was not exempted, at the surrounding tableau of human vanity. And yet in her eyes there was something unreadable, something that did not want to be read, the determined blankness that in predator animals conceals hostile calculation, and in prey forms part of an overwhelming effort to seem to have disappeared.

The men around her had parted reluctantly as Harkoo, providing blocking for Joe and Sammy like a back for the latter's beloved Dodgers, shoehorned them into the circle.

"We've met," Rosa said. It was almost a question. She had a strong, deep, droll, masculine voice, turned up to a point that verged on speaker-rattling, as if she were daring everyone around her to listen and to judge. But then maybe, Joe thought, she was just very drunk. There was a glass of something amber in her hand. In her case, her voice went well, somehow, with her dramatic features and the wild mass of brown woolen loops, constrained here and there by a desperate bobby pin, that constituted her hairstyle. She gave his hand a squeeze that partook of the same bold intentions as her voice, a businessman's shake, dry and curt and forceful. And yet he noticed that she was, if anything, blushing more obviously than ever. The delicate skin over her clavicles was mottled.

"I don't believe so," said Joe. He coughed, partlly to cover his discomfiture, partly to camouflage the suave rejoinder he had just been fed by the prompter crouching by the footlights of his desire, and partly because his throat had gone bone-dry. He felt a weird urge to lean down - she was a small woman, the top of whose head barely reached his collarbone - and kiss her on the mouth, in front of everyone, as he might have done in a dream, with that long optimisticc descent across the distance between their lips enduring for minutes, hours, centuries. How surreal would that be? Instead, he reached into his pocket and took out his cigarettes. "Someone like you I would absolutely remember," he said.

"Oh, good God," said one of the men beside her in disgust.

The young woman to whom he was lying produced a smile which - he couldn't tell - might have been either flattered or appalled. Her smile was a surprisingly broad and toothy achievement for a mouth that in contemplation had been compacted into such a tiny pout.

"Huh," said Sammy. He, at least, sounded impressed by Joe's suavity.

Longman Harkoo said, "That's our cue." He put his arm once more around Sammy's shoulder. "Let's get you a drink, shall we?"

"Oh, I don't -- I'm not --" Sammy reached out to Joe as Harkoo led him away, as though worried that their host was about to drag him off to the promised volcano. Joe watched him go with a cold heart. Then he held the pack of Pall Malls out to Rosa. She tugged a cigarette free and put it to her lips. She took a long drag. Joe felt constrained to point out that the cigarette was not lit.

"Oh," she said. She snorted, "I'm such an idiot."

"Rosa," chided one of the men standing beside her, "you don't smoke!"

"I just took it up," Rosa said.

There was a muffled groan, then the cloud of men around her seemed to dissolve. She took no notice. She inclined toward Joe and peered up, curving her hand around his and the flame of the match. Her eyes shone, an indeterminate color between champagne and the green of a dollar. Joe felt feverish and a little dizzy, and the cool talcum smell of Shalimar she gave off was like a guardrail he could lean against. They had drawn very close together, and now, as he tried and failed to prevent himself from thinking of her lying naked and facedown on Jerry Glovsky's bed, her broad downy backside with its dark furrow, the alluvial hollow of her spine, she took a step backward and studied him.

"You're sure we haven't met?"

"Fairly."

"Where are you from?"

"Prague."

"You're Czech."

He nodded.

"A Jew?"

He nodded again.

"How long have you been here?"

"One year," he said, and then, the realization filling him with wonder and chagrin, "one year today."

"Did you come with your family?"

"Alone," he said. "I left them there." Unbidden, there flashed in his mind's eye the image of his father, or the ghost of his father, striding down the gangplank of the Rotterdam, arms outstretched. Tears stung his eyes, and a ghostly hand seemed to clutch at his throat. Joe coughed once, and batted at the smoke from his cigarette, as if it were irritating him. "My father has recently died."

She shook her head, looking sorrowful and outraged and, he thought, entirely lovely. As his glibness had departed him so a more earnest nature seemed to feel greater liberty to confess itself in her.

"I'm really sorry for you," she said. "My heart goes out to them."

"It's not so bad," Joe said. "It will be all right."

"You know we're getting into this war," she declared. She wasn't blushing now. The brass-voiced party girl of a moment before, telling a story on herself that ended in an oath, seemed to have vanished. "We have to, and we will. Roosevelt wil arrange it. He's working toward it now. We won't let them win."

"No," Joe said, although Rosa's views were hardly typical of her countrymen, most of whom felt that the events in Europe were an embroilment to be avoided at any price. "I believe ..." He found himself, to his mild surprise, unable to finish the sentence. She reached out and took his arm.

"What I'm saying is just, I don't know. I guess 'don't despair,' " she said. "I really, really do mean that, Joe."

At her words, the touch of her hand, her pronouncing of his short blank American name devoid of all freight and family associations, Joe was overcome with a flood of gratitude so powerful that it frightened him, because it seemed to reflect in its grandeur and force just how little hope he really had left. He pulled away.

"Thank you," he said stiffly.

She let her hand fall, dismayed at having offended him. "I'm sorry," she said again. She lifted an eyebrow, quizzical, bold, and on the verge, he thought, of recognizing him. Joe averted his eyes, his heart in his throat, thinking that if she were able to recollect him and the circumstances of their first meeting, his chances with her would be ruined. Her eyes got very big, and her throat, her cheeks, her ears were flooded with the bright heart's blood of humiliation. Joe could see her making an effort not to look away.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9)

August 31, 2007

The Books: "Wonder Boys" (Michael Chabon)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

WonderBoys.jpg Wonder Boys - by Michael Chabon. I wrote somewhere once about the long long wait for this book after Chabon's debut The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Mitchell and I had fallen so in love with his writing that we eagerly waited to see what he would do next. Years passed. Occasionally, one of us would say to the other, "What ever happened to Michael Chabon, dammit??"

Then - finally - Wonder Boys. His second novel.

The story of what happened in those intervening years is well-known (so I won't repeat it here) - and in a way - it's what Wonder Boys is all about. It's always just been such a great example to me - of following your gut. Of knowing when to say: You know what? What I'm working on is NOT WORKING. Of being bold enough to throw something out - and start over completely. (Like recently - when John Irving re-wrote his entire book, changing the POV - and NOBODY wanted him to do it, because he would miss his deadline, etc. and it's almost like - at a certain point in the process, it seems like it becomes too late to change things. I LOVE that story about Irving and I love the story about Chabon. Be bold. Be bold. Don't be afraid. Follow your gut.) The Wonder Boys is a lovely novel - funny - so funny, sad, and full of indelible characters. I mean. Grady Tripp. Come on. I can never forget him.

Oh, and GREAT adaptation of the book into a film. I heard it was going to be a film and got scared ... because I kinda feel proprietary about Michael Chabon and I didn't want them to mess it up (as they so often do. I'm still pissed about The Shipping News) But not only did they not mess it up - they did a great job - and captured the SPIRIT of the book, which sometimes is the hardest thing to get. I love that movie. Bravo.

But what I really love about this book is the parts about writing. It's not so much Chabon navel gazing ... but really examining the whole process. And how one can get so easily sidetracked - that's the excerpt I chose today - although there were so many to choose from.

Excerpt from The Wonder Boys - by Michael Chabon.

While the coffee was brewing I drank a tall glass of orange juice, to which I added two tablespoons of honey, on the theory that an increase in my blood sugar, along with a massive dose of caffeine, would eliminate the last traces of my hangover. Pot for the nausea and the heaviness of heart, vitamin C for the cell structure, sugar for the depleted blood, caffeine to burn off the moral fog; it was starting to come back to me now - the whole praxis of alcoholism and reckless living. When the coffee was ready, I poured it into a thermos pitcher and carried it out to my office at the back of the house, where James Leer lay on the sofa, his head pillowed on his praying hands, like someone pantomiming sleep. The sleeping bag had slid partway to the floor and I saw now that he'd gone to bed naked. His suit, shirt, and tie were draped across the footrest of my old Eames chair, white BVDs folded neatly on top of the pile. I wondered if Hannah had undressed him, or if he'd managed it himself. He had the shrunken look of a tall person asleep, curled up into himself, his knees and elbows and wrists too large, his skin pale and freckled. His body had almost no hair and his naked little circumcised johnson was nearly as pale as the rest of him, white as a boy's - perhaps over time one's genitals emerge from the pots and bubbling vats of love permanently stained, like the hands of a wool dyer. I felt sorry for James Leer when I saw his penis. Carefully I redistributed the sleeping bag over his form.

"Thank you," he said, without waking.

I said, "You're welcome," and then carried the pot of coffee over to my desk. It was six-fifteen. I went to work. I had to slap an ending on Wonder Boys by tomorrow evening if I was going to let Crabtree see it. I took a sip of coffee and gave my left cheek an exhortatory smack. For the one thousandth time I resorted to the nine-page plot outline, single-spaced, tattered and coffee-stained, that I'd fired off on a vainglorious April morning five years before. As of this fine morning I was halfway through its fourth page, more or less, with another five pages to go. An accidental poisoning, a car crash, a house on fire; the births of three children and a miraculous trotter named Faithless; a theft, an arrest, a trial, an electrocution; a wedding, two funerals, a cross-country trip; two dances, a seduction in a fallout shelter, and a deer hunt; all these scenes and a dozen others I had yet to write, according to the neat headings of my stupid fucking outline: nine central characters' and a lifetime's worth of destiny that I had, for the last month, been attempting to compress into fifty-odd pages of terse and lambent prose. I reread with scorn the confident, pompous annotations I'd made on that distant day: Take your time with this, and This has to be very very big, and worst of all, This scene should read as a single vast Interstate of Language, three thousand miles long. How I hated the asshole who had written that note!

Once again and with the usual pleasure I entertained the notion of tossing the whole thing out. With this swollen monster out of the way I'd be at liberty to undertake The Snake Handler, or the story of the washed-up astronaut who marooned himself in Disney World, or the story of the two doomed baseball teams, blue and gray, playing nine on the eve of Chancellorsville, or The King of Freestyle, or any of the dozen other imaginary novels that had fluttered past like admirals and lyrebirds while I labored with my shovel in the ostrich pen of Wonder Boys. Then I indulged the equally usual, not quite as pleasurable fantasy of taking Crabtree into my confidence, telling him that I was still years away from finishing Wonder Boys, and throwing myself on his mercy. Then I thought of Joe Fahey and, as always, rolled a blank sheet of paper into the machine.

I worked for four hours, typing steadily, lowering myself on a very thin cord into the dank and worm-ridden hole of an ending I'd already tried three times before. This one would oblige me to go back through the previous two-thousand-odd pages to flatten out and marginalize one of the present main characters and to eliminate another entirely, but I thought that of the five false conclusions to the novel I'd come up with in the last month, it was probably my best shot. While I worked I told myself lies. Writers, unlike most people, tell their best lies when they are alone. Ending the book this way, I told myself, would work out for the best; this was in fact the very ending my book had been straining toward all along. Crabtree's visit, viewed properly, was a kind of creative accident, a gift from God, a hammer blow to loosen all the windows my imagination had long since painted shut. I would finish it sometime tomorrow, hand it over to Crabtree, and thus save both our careers.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 30, 2007

The Books: "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" (Michael Chabon)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MysteriesOfPittsburgh.jpgMysteries of Pittsburgh - by Michael Chabon. I wrote a bit about my regard for this book, Chabon's first novel, here - and I'm not surprised, but I even reference the "scene" from the book I'm excerpting below. It's been years since I've read the book - but I remember the scene vividly - to me, it's one of the great introductions of a character. We keep hearing her name at the party - "Jane Bellwether" - "we need to find Jane Bellwether" ... and our narrator has never met her, has no idea what the big deal is ... or what exactly it is that Jane can give them (some of the details are lost to me) ... so they wander through this raging party, looking for Jane. And then: she appears. Awesome introduction of character.

Michael Chabon was 24 years old when his book came out. And for once - time has shown that he was deserving of all that hype. He was hailed as the next great American novelist. And whaddya know. He is. How often does that happen?? I love his writing so much - and it's cool to know that I was there from the beginning. I freakin' LOVED Mysteries of Pittsburgh - I still remember where I was when I read it (I think it might have been one of the first books I read after moving to Chicago - a vivid crazy time ... and a perfect book to read, anyway, when you're in the middle of a transition). Then when Mitchell arrived to Chicago - I passed the book off to him. He HAD to read it! He read it - and I had such a good time, reliving it through his eyes. It just goes to show you that you don't have to re-invent the wheel. You don't have to come up with the next best thing. But you had BEST know how to write! Mysteries of Pittsburgh is a coming of age novel, plain and simple. A group of college friends navigate, fight, fuck, fall in love, cheat, talk, drink beer, make mistakes, experiment sexually - things shift, move, break, meld ... No big revelations in terms of plot. It is what is expected. But the writing. Even from the first sentence:

At the beginning of the summer I had lunch with my father, the gangster, who was in town for the weekend to transact some of his vague business.

A great first sentence. I must read on. It's an attention-getter, to be sure, but in general I find that Chabon's style does not call too much attention to itself - and yet it is undeniably beautiful writing. Can you tell I adore him? I adore him even more because he has actually developed in such an interesting way (what happened to him AFTER Mysteries of Pittsburgh and before Wonder Boys is almost as interesting as one of his books - fascinating) - He was hailed as this new writer of unbelievable promise, and for once the powers-that-be got it right.

So about the excerpt .

You know people who are like celebrities - even though they're not famous to the world? People who are famous in a certain circle ... who are revered and watched and admired and envied - in the same way that celebs are? Someone who, even though they are not famous, they have star quality? It may be more of a thing that happens when we are young ... you know, like the popular kids in high school and how they were like famous people to those of us not popular. We knew who was dating who, we took note of what they wore, we were always aware of them - even if we were sitting at another table, or across the room. They were KNOWN.

Whether or not this attention was warranted is irrelevant. It's what happens.

And sometimes ... (like with my friend from grade school and high school Keith M.) - the person is a star. They have that magic THING about them, that aura ... people want to be near a person like that, people vie for attention, or status ... they just want to be CLOSE to the magic. The glow. Whatever ineffable thing this star-quality person has.

It's what big movie stars must feel all the time.

Jane Bellwether and her boyfriend - whose name is Cleveland - both have that.

They are famous. They are different. Cleveland is a great character - my favorite in the book - a wild guy who rides a motorcycle - and who is seen as the key to all things good and right. He is beloved. (I need to read the book again.)

But here is our first glimpse of Jane - her name, though, has already come up multiple times. Because she's famous. "Where's Jane?" "We need to talk to Jane." "You need to meet Jane."

So here she is.

Excerpt from Mysteries of Pittsburgh - by Michael Chabon.

To find Jane Bellwether, who acquired a last name and a few vague features during our search, we passed out of the jumping seraglio and through a long series of quieter, darker rooms, until we came to the kitchen, which was white. All the lights shone from overhead, and, as is sometimes the case with kitchens at large parties, an unwholesome-looking group, all the heavy drinkers and eaters, had convened in the fluorescence. Its members all lookeda t us as we entered the kitchen, and I had the distinct impression that a word had not been said in there for several minutes prior to our arrival.

"Say! Hi, Takeshi," Arthur said to one of two blenched Japanese who stood near the refrigerator.

"Arthur Lecomte!" he yelled. He was well more than half in the bag. "This is my friend Ichizo. He goes to C-MU."

"Hi, Ichizo. Glad to meet you."

"My friend," Takeshi continued, his voice rising, "is very horny. My friend say that if I were a girl, he would fuck me."

I laughed, but Arthur stood straight, looked deeplyl, beautifully sympathetic for perhaps a tenth of a second, and nodded, with that fine, empty courtesy he seemed to show everyone. He had an effortless genius for manners; remarkable, perhaps, just because it was unique among people his age. It seemed to me that Arthur, with his old, strange courtliness, would triumph over any scene he chose to make; that in a world made miserable by frankness, his handsome condescension, his elitism, and his perfect lack of candor were fatal gifts, and I wanted to serve in his corps and to be socially graceful.

"Does any of you know Jane Bellwether?" said Arthur.

The louts, so morose, so overfed and overliquored, said no. None looked at us, and it seemed to me, in the exaggerating way that things seemed to me that exaggerated evening, as though they could not stand the sight of Arthur, or of me in his magic company, in our Technicolor health and high spirits, in our pursuit of the purportedly splendid Jane Bellwether.

"Try on the patio," one, some kind of Arab, finally said, through a white moutful of shrimp. "There are many people sporting out there."

We came out into the yellow light of the back porch, that estival old yellow of Bug Lite, which had illuminated the backyards and soft moth bodies of so many summers past. It was untrue; there were not many people sporting on the murky lawn, though a large group had gathered with their drinks and their light sweaters. Only one young woman sported, and the rest watched her.

"That's Jane," Arthur said.

She stood alone in the dim center of the huge yard, driving imperceptible balls all across the neighborhood. As we clunked down the wooden steps to the quiet crunch of the grass, I watched her stroke. It was my father's ideal: a slight, philosophical tilt to her neck, her backswing a tacit threat, her rigid, exultant follow-through held for one aristocratic fraction of a second too long. She looked tall, thin, and, in the bad light, rather gray in her white golf skirt and shirt. Her face was blank with concentration. Thik! and she msiled, shaking out her yellow hair, and we clapped. She fished in her pocket for a ball and teed it.

"She's plastered," a girl said, as though that were all the explanation we might require.

"She's beautiful," I heard myself say. Some of the spectators turned toward me. "I mean, her stroke is absolutely perfect. Look at that."

She smashed another one, and a few moments later I heard the distant sound of the ball striking metal.

"Jane!" Arthur shouted. She turned and lowered her shining club, and the yellow light caught her full in the face and fell across the flawless front of her short skirt. She put a hand to her forehead to try to make out the caller among us shadows on the patio.

"Arthur, hi," she said. She smiled, and stepped through the grass to him.

"Arthur, she's whose girlfriend?"

Half a dozen people answered me.

"Cleveland's," they said.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack

August 29, 2007

The Books: "The Alienist" (Caleb Carr)

It is now time to say goodbye to Truman Capote.

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

Alienist.jpgThe Alienist - by Caleb Carr.

I have to confess - I remember almost nothing about this book - which I find weird, because I remember loving it when I first read it!

I read this book when it first came out, although it's not really my thing. Actually, it is my thing - with the whole historical New York setting, which I love - and the serial killer plotline - which I love even more. I love any book about the psychology of killers (having just finished 2 books in a row on Leopold & Loeb ... the theme continues) But it was one of those moments when you look around on the subway and you see EVERYONE reading the same book ... and in general, I don't read books like that. Not that I have anything against them, morally or whatever - but if everyone's reading it, I probably will not be into it myself. At any given moment you can look around and see people reading Nicholas Sparks. Or Mitch Albom. I'm not reading those people. But they're obviously massive bestselling authors - which is why you look around and see everyone reading their books - but I am not their audience. Just not. There have been a couple of times when my taste coincided with the zeitgeist moment - and The Alienist was one of them. I can't remember why I picked it up - because i'm usually turned off by 100% agreement, as in: a neverending chorus of "you have to read this book!" What can I say. I'm contrary. The weird thing is, though, I can remember my experience of reading The Alienist (I could not put that book down. Total page-turner) - but I can remember almost nothing about it. I know there was a group of people who came together to solve the crime. I know that one of them was a woman. I remember loving all of the characters - and kind of wishing that I was back in time and part of the group. And the whole setting of New York in 1896 was SO well done - I truly felt like I was reading a novel that had been written IN the 1890s - it had such a breath of reality to it, and it made me look at the streets of Manhattan in a new way (especially Union Square - although I was unable to find the Union Square section this morning ... so I'm wondering if that was actually from his second book Angel of Darkness?) Don't know. I remember almost nothing about The Alienist - no plot points, nothing ... But I do remember these elements very well.

I wonder why on EARTH it hasn't been made into a film. It seems like it is MADE for a Hollywood movie treatment ... it feels very cinematic to me, inherently dramatic - with a great cast of characters ...

I liked the book so much I even read the second one in the series (which, I think, stopped at 2) - and that one I wasn't so wacky about. But I think he should have kept going. I would have definitely kept reading. The main draw about the book was the group of investigators and their interactions - it was a pleasaure to read about them.

Anyhoo, I flipped thru the book this morning and was amazed by how much I didn't remember. And I couldn't find the Union Square section which I DID remember and wanted to excerpt ... so here's another excerpt I tripped over, that seems to capture the true time-machine appeal of this book.

Especially since I live here in New York - and I feel proprietary about the city - it's MINE - I loved the sepia-toned landscapes in the book, with the different skyline - but some of the buildings are still there, buildings I know well. I love that.

Excerpt from The Alienist - by Caleb Carr.

True to Kreizler's prediction, Harris Markowitz proved thoroughly unsuitable as a suspect in our case. Aside from being short, stout, and well into his sixties - and thus wholly unlike the physical speciment described by the Isaacsons at Delmonico's - he was obviously quite out of his mind. He'd killed his grandchildren, he claimed, in order to save them from what he perceived to be a monstrously evil world, whose salient aspects he described in a series of rambling, highly confused outbursts. Such poor systemization of unreasonably fearful thoughts and beliefs, as well as the apparently complete lack of concern for his own fate that Markowitz exhibited, often characterized cases of dementia praecox, Kreizler told me as we left Bellevue. But while Markowitz clearly had nothing to do with our business, the visit was still valuable, as Laszlo had hoped it would be, in helping us determine aspects of our killer's personality by way of comparison. Obviouslly, our man was not murdering children out of any perverse desire to attend to their spiritual well-being. The furious mutilation of the bodies after death made that much plain. Nor, clearly, was he unconcerned with what would happen to him as a result of his acts. But most of all, it was apparent from his open display of his handiwork - a display that was, as Laszlo had explained, an implicit entreaty for apprehension - that the killings did disturb some part of him. In other words, there was evidence in the bodies not of the murderer's derangement but of his sanity.

I puzzled with that concept all the way back to Number 808 Broadway, but on arrival my attention was distracted by my first really clear-headed perusal of the place that, as Sara had said, would be our home for the foreseeable future. It was a handsome yellow-brick building, which Kreizler told me had been designed by James Renwick, the architect responsible for the Gothic edifice of Grace Church next door, as well as for the more subdued St. Denis Hotel across the street. The southern windows of our headquarters looked directly out onto the churchyard, which lay in a dark shadow cast by Grace's enormous tapering spire. There was quite a parochial, serene feel about this little stretch of Broadway, despite the fact that we were smack in the center of one of the city's busiest shopping strips: besides McCreery's, there were stores selling everything from dry goods to boots to photographs within steps of Number 808. The single greatest monument to all thes commerce was an enormous cast-iron building across Tenth Street from the church, formerly A.T. Stewart's department store, currently operated by Hilton, Hughes and Company, and eventually to gain its greatest fame as Wanamaker's.

The elevator at Number 808 was a large, caged affair, quite new, and it took us quietly back up to the sixth floor. Here we discovered that great progress had been made during our absence. Things were now so arranged that it actually looked like human affairs were being conducted out of the place, though one would still have been hard-pressed to say precisely what kind. At five o'clock sharp each of us sat at one of the five desks, from which vantage points we could clearly see and discuss matters with one another. There was nervous but pleasant chatter as we settled in, and real camaraderie when we began to discuss the events of our various days As the evening sun dipped above the Hudson, sending rich golden light over the rooftops of western Manhattan and through our Gothic front windows, I realized that we had become, with remarkable speed, a working unit.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (21)

August 27, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'Nocturnal Turnings, or How Siamese Twins Have Sex' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'Nocturnal Turnings, or How Siamese Twins Have Sex'. This is the final piece in Music for Chameleons and it is a "transcription" of a conversation Truman Capote had with himself, as he lay tossing and turning in bed one lonely night. One side of his personality interviews the other. It's incredibly narcissistic, but because I find him an interesting character as well as a wonderful writer and storyteller, I love it. For example, the excerpt below. Now he was a huge name-dropper (as should be probably obvious by now) - but I don't really have a problem with that, either - not like some folks do. I love to hear stories about famous people, and if someone's got the dish on someone else - I'm on board. I read Perez Hilton. Of course I do. Anyway, here is Capote's story about someone famous - an idol of his. He is ruminating to himseslf about "great conversationalists" he has known. He lists some names. Then tells this story.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'Nocturnal Turnings, or How Siamese Twins Have Sex'.

When I was eighteen I met the person whose conversation has impressed me the most, perhaps becaue the person in question is the one who has most impressed me. It happened as follows:

In New York, on East Seventy-ninth Street, there is a very pleasant shelter known as the New York Society Library, and during 1942 I spent many afternoons there researching a book I intended writing but never did. Occasionally, I saw a woman there whose appearance rather mesmerized me - her eyes especially: blue, the pale brilliant cloudless blue of prairie skies. But even without this singular feature, her face ws interesting - firm-jawed, handsome, a bit androgynous. Pepper-salt hair parted in the middle. Sixty-five, thereabouts. A lesbian? Well, yes.

One January day I emerged from the library into the twilight to find a heavy snowfall in progress. The lady with the blue eyes, wearing a nicely cut black coat with a sable collar, was waiting at the curb. A gloved, taxi-summoning hand was poised in the air, but there were no taxis. She looked at me and smiled and said: "Do you think a cup of hot chocolate would help? There's a Longchamps around the corner."

She ordered hot chocolate; I asked for a "very" dry martini. Half seriously, she said, "Are you old enough?"

"I've been drinking since I was fourteen. Smoking, too."

"You don't look more than fourteen now."

"I'll be nineteen next September." Then I told her a few things: that I was from New Orleans, that I'd published several short stories, that I wanted to be a writer and was working on a novel. And she wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson ..." "No living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rivalry factor being what it is, for one contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway - a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe - all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?"

With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it."

I had seen photographs of Willa Cather - long-ago ones, made perhaps in the early twenties. Softer, homelier, less elegant than my companion. Yet I knew instantly that she was Willa Cather, and it was one of the frissons of my life. I began to babble about her books like a schoolboy - my favorites: A Lost Lady, The Professor's House, My Antonia. It wasn't that I had anything in common with her as a writer. I would never have chosen for myself her sort of subject matter, or tried to emulate her style. It was just that I considered her to be a great artist. As good as Flaubert.

We became friends; she read my work and was always a fair and helpful judge. She was full of surprises. For one thing, she and her lifelong friend, Miss Lewis, lived in a spacious, charmingly furnished Park Avenue apartment - somehow, the notion of Miss Cather living in an apartment on Park Avenue seemed incongrous with her Nebraska upbringing, with the simple, rather elegiac nature of her novels. Secondly, her principal interest was not literature, but music. She went to concerts constantly, and almost all her closest friends were musical personalities, Yehudi Menuhin and his sister Hepzibah.

Like all authentic conversationalists, she was an excellent listener, and when it was her turn to talk, she was never garrulous, but crisply pointed. Once she told me I was overly sensitive to criticism. The truth was that she was more sensitive to critical slights than I; any disparaging reference to her work caused a decline in spirits. When I pointed this out to her, she said: "Yes, but aren't we always seeking out our own vices in others and reprimanding them for such possessions? I'm alive. I have clay feet. Very definitely."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

August 26, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'A Beautiful Child' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'A Beautiful Child'.

This is perhaps the most famous of these little transcripts. 1955. Marilyn Monroe and Truman Capote, drinking buddies and gossipy friends, meet up at a funeral for a well-loved actress and acting teacher. Monroe and Capote spend the whole day hanging out, drinking champagne, walking down by the docks, talking ... at this point, Marilyn is divorced from Dimaggio - and has a "secret lover" - which will turn out to be Arthur Miller. Monroe has moved back to New York - to protest the crap movies the studios were placing her in - she has formed her own production company and started studying acting with Lee Strasberg. I love this photograph of Capote and Monroe - dude, hold her HAND, not her wrist!!

capotemonroe.jpg

It's a fun piece .... an illuminating glimpse of Marilyn Monroe.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'A Beautiful Child'.

TC: Now do you think we can get the hell out of here? You promised me champagne, remember?

MARILYN: I remember. But I don't have any money.

TC: You're always late and you never have any money. By any chance are you under the delusion that you're Queen Elizabeth?

MARILYN: Who?

TC: Queen Elizabeth. The Queen of England.

MARILYN: (frowning) What's that cunt got to do with it?

TC: Queen Elizabeth never carries money either. She's not allowed to. Filthy lucre ust not stain the royal palm. It's a law or something.

MARILYN: I wish they'd pass a law like that for me.

TC: Keep going the way you are and maybe they will.

MARILYN: Well, gosh. How does she pay for anything? Like when she goes shopping?

TC: Her lady-in-waiting trots along with a bag full of farthings.

MARILYN: You know what? I'll bet she gets everything free. In return for endorsemenkts.

TC: Very possible. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. By Appointment to Her Majesty. Corgi dogs. All those Fortnum & Mason goodies. Pot. Condoms.

MARILYN: What would she want with condoms?

TC: Not her, dopey. For that chump who walks two steps behind. Prince Philip.

MARILYN: Him. Oh, yeah. He's cute. He looks like he might have a nice prick. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Errol Flynn whip out his prick and play the piano with it? Oh well, it was a hundred years ago, I'd just got into modeling, and I went to this half-ass party, and Errol Flynn, so pleased with himself, he was there and he took out his prick and played the piano with it. Thumped the keys. He played You Are My Sunshine. Christ! Everybody says Milton Berle has the biggest schlong in Hollywood. But who cares? Look, don't you have any money?

TC: Maybe about fifty bucks.

MARILYN: Well, that ought to buy us some bubbly.

(Outside, Lexington Avenue was empty of all but harmless pedestrians. It was around two, and as nice an April afternoon as one could wish: ideal strolling weather. So we moseyed toward Third Avenue. A few gawkers spun their heads, not because they recognized Marilyn as the Marilyn, but because of her funereal finery; she giggled her special little giggle, a sound as tempting as the jingling bells on a Good Humor wagon, and said: "Maybe I should always dress this way. Real anonymous."

As we neared P.J. Clarke's saloon, I suggested P.J.'s might be a good place to refresh ourselves, but she vetoed that: "It's full of those advertising creeps. And that bitch Dorothy Kilgallen, she's always in there getting bombed. What is it wiht these micks? The way they booze, they're worse than Indians."

I felt called upon to defend Kilgallen, who was a friend, somewhat, and I allowed as to how she could upon occasion be a clever funny woman. She said: "Be that as it may, she's written some bitchy stuff about me. But all those cunts hate me. Hedda. Louella. I know you're supposed to get used to it, but I just can't. It really hurts. What did I ever do to those hags? The only one who writes a decent word about me is Sidney Skolsky. But he's a guy. The guys treat me okay. Just like maybe I was a human person. At least they give me the benefit of the doubt. And Bob Thomas is a gentleman. And Jack O'Brian."

We looked in the windows of antique shops; one contained a tray of old rings, and Marilyn said: "That's pretty. The garnet with the seed pearls. I wish I could wear rings, but I hate people to notice my hands. They're too fat. Elizabeth Taylor has fat hands. But with those eyes, who's looking at her hands? I like to dance naked in front of mirrors and watch my titties jump around. There's nothing wrong with them. But I wish my hands weren't so fat."

Another window displayed a handsome grandfather clock, which prompted her to observe: "I've never had a home. Not a real one with all my own furniture. But if I ever get married again, and make a lot of money, I'm going to hire a couple of trucks and ride down Third Avenue buying every damn kind of crazy thing. I'm going to get a dozen grandfather clocks and line them all up in one room and have them all ticking away at the same time. That would be real homey, don't you think?")

MARILYN: Hey! Across the street!

TC: What?

MARILYN: See the sign with the palm? That must be a fortunetelling parlor.

TC: Are you in the mood for that?

MARILYN: Well, let's take a look.

(It was not an inviting establishment. Through a smearaed window we could discern a barren room with a skinny, hairy gypsy lady seated in a canvas chair under a hellfire-red ceiling lamp that shed a torturous glow; she was knitting a pair of baby-booties and did not return our stares. Nevertheless, Marilyn started to go in, then changed her mind.)

MARILYN: Sometimes I want to know what's going to happen. Then I think it's better not to. There's two things I'd like to know, though. One is whether I'm going to lose weight.

TC: And the other?

MARILYN: That's a secret.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 23, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'Then It All Came Down' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'Then It All Came Down'. This is another transcription of a conversation Capote had, and it's the most chilling in all the collection. Truman Capote sits in a maximum security prison cell with Robert Beausoleil - the real key to the Manson murders. He was convicted of killing musician Gary Hinman - and imprisoned. Manson thought, "Hmmm ... maybe if we - my little brood of happy hippies and gunmen - do some copycat killings while he's in jail - then it will be obvious that he is innocent and he'll be released." On the wall of Hinman's apartment were the words "Death to Pigs" - written in his blood. Of course we all know that other such erudite statements were found on the walls of the Tate house and the LaBianca house. Naturally, Manson's little plot to free his bud didn't work out as planned. The rest is history. Bobby Beausoleil is still in jail to this day. Truman Capote, ever since In Cold Blood spent a lot of time in prisons - interviewing killers and those on death row - he became quite in demand ... and I think there was something in him that was quite fascinated by people's capacity for evil. It made him sick to his stomach (he said he would vomit when he left the prison after interviewing Perry Smith and Dick Hickock) - but he also just wanted to get close to it. What secrets could such people reveal? And, the eternal question: WHY? As a novelist, as a student of human nature - it is perhaps the most important question to ask.

I am not sure of the date that this takes place - it must be the late 70s. Beausoleil has been in jail for a decade.

Truman Capote sits in the cramped cell, and asks questions.

Here's just a bit of it. The whole thing, though, is a must-read. It gives no answers (naturally) - it's just a terrifying glimpse.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'Then It All Came Down'.

RB: (reaches for guitar, tunes it, strums it, sings): "This is my song, this is my song, this is my dark song, my dark song ..." Everybody always wants to know how I got together with Manson. It was through our music. He plays some, too. One night I was driving around with a bunch of my ladies. Well, we came to this old roadhouse, beer place, with a lot of cars outside. So we went inside, and there was Charlie with some of his ladies. We all got to talking, played some together; the next day Charlie came to see me in my van, and we all, his people and my people, ended up camping out together. Brothers and sisters. A family.

TC: Did you see Manson as a leader? Did you feel influenced by him right away?

RB: Hell, no. He had his people, I had mine. If anybody was influenced, it was him. By me.

TC: Yes, he was attracted to you. Infatuated. Or so he says. You seem to have had that effect on a lot of people, men and women.

RB: Whatever happens, happens. It's all good.

TC: Do you consider killing innocent people a good thing?

RB: Who said they were innocent?

TC: Well, we'll return to that. But for now: What is your own sense of morality? How do you differentiate between good and bad?

RB: Good and bad? It's all good. If it happens, it's got to be good. Otherwise, it wouldn't be happening. It's just the way life flows. Moves together. I move with it. I don't question it.

TC: In other words, you don't question the act of murder. You consider it "good" because it "happens". Justifiable.

RB: I have my own justice. I live by my own law, you know. I don't respect the laws of this society. Because society doesn't respect its own laws. I make my own laws and live by them. I have my own sense of justice.

TC: And what is your sense of justice?

RB: I believe what goes around comes around. What goes up comes down. That's how life flows, and I flow with it.

TC: You're not making much sense - at least to me. And I don't think you're stupid. Let's try again. In your opinion, it's all right that Manson sent Tex Watson and those girls into that house to slaughter total strangers, innocent people --

RB: I said: Who says they were innocent? They burned people on dope deals. Sharon Tate and that gang. They picked up kids on the Strip and took them home and whipped them. Made movies of it. Ask the cops; they found the movies. Not that they'd tell you the truth.

TC: The truth is, the LaBiancas and Sharon Tate and her friends were killed to protect you. Their deaths were directly linked to the Gary Hinman murder.

RB: I hear you. I hear where you're coming from.

TC: Those were imitations of the Hinman murder - to prove that you couldn't have killed Hinman. And thereby get you out of jail.

RB: To get me out of jail. (He nods, smiles, sighs - complimented). None of that came out at any of the trials. The girls got on the stand and tried to really tell how it all came down, but nobody would listen. People couldn't believe anything except what the media said. The media had them programmed to believe it all happened because we were out to start a race war. That it was mean niggers going around hurting all these good white folks. Only - it was like you say. The media, they called us a "family". And it was the only true thing they said. We were a family. We were mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son. If a member of our family was in jeopardy, we didn't abandon that person. And so for the love of a brother, a brother who was in jail on a murder rap, all those killings came down.

TC: And you don't regret that?

RB: No. If my brothers and sisters did it, then it's good. Everything in life is good. It all flows. It's all good. It's all music.

TC: When you were up on Death Row, if you'd been forced to flow down to the gas chamber and whiff the peaches, would you have given that your stamp of approval?

RB: If that's how it came down. Everything that happens is good.

TC: War. Starving children. Pain. Cruelty. Blindness. Prisons. Desperation. Indifference. All good?

RB: What's that look you're giving me?

TC: Nothing. I was noticing how your face changes. One moment, with just the slightest shift of angle, you look so boyish, entirely innocent, a charmer. And then - well, one can see you as a sort of Forty-second Street Lucifer. Have you ever seen Night Must Fall? An old movie with Robert Montgomery? No? Well, it's about an impish, innocent-looking delightful young man who travels about the English countryside charming old ladies, then cutting off their heads and carrying the heads around with him in leather hat-boxes.

RB: So what's that got to do with me?

TC: I was thinking - if it was ever remade, if someone Americanized it, turned the Montgomery character into a young drifter with hazel eyes and a smoky voice, you'd be very good in the part.

RB: Are you trying to say I'm a psychopath? I'm not a nut. If I have to use violence, I'll use it, but I don't believe in killing.

TC: Then I must be deaf. Am I mistaken, or didn't you just tell me that it didn't matter what atrocity one person committed against another, it was good, all good?

RB: (Silence)

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 21, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'Hidden Gardens' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'Hidden Gardens'. This is another transcription of a conversation Capote had - this one takes place in New Orleans in 1979. He runs into an old friend - someone he's known for 40 years - a raucous bar-owning woman whose name, apparently, is Big Junebug Johnson. They sit and talk and reminisce - she's a great character. You can HEAR her voice in the transcription. Here they talk about good old Clay Shaw. Big Junebug Johnson's nickname for Capote is "Jockey" - back from the time when he was little and lithe and young.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'Hidden Gardens'.

BIG JUNEBUG JOHNSON: When was the last time you got to Mardi Gras?

TC: (reluctant to reply, not desiring to evoke Mardi Gras memories: they were not amusing events to me, the streets swirling with drunken, squalling, shrouded figures wearing bad-dream masks; I always had nightmares after childhood excursions into Mardi Gras melees): Not since I was a kid. I was always getting lost in the crowds. The last time I got lost they took me to the police station. I was crying there all night before my mother found me.

BIG JUNEBUG JOHNSON: The damn police! You know we didn't have any Mardi Gras this year 'cause the police went on strike. Imagine, going on strike at a time like that. Cost this town millions. Blackmail is all it was. I've got some good police friends, good customers. But they're all a bunch of crooks, the entire shebang. I've never had no respect for the law around here, and how they treated Mr. Shaw finished me off for good. That so-called District Attorney Jim Garrison. What a sorry sonofagun. I hope the devil turns him on a slooow spit. And he will. Too bad Mr. Shaw won't be there to see it. From up high in heaven, where I know he is, Mr. Shaw won't be able to see old Garrison rotting in hell.

(B.J.J. is referring to Clay Shaw, a gentle, cultivated architect who was responsible for much of a finer-grade historical restoration of New Orleans. At one time Shaw was accused by James Garrison, the city's abrasive, publicity-deranged D.A., of being the key figure in a purported plot to assassinate President Kennedy. Shaw stood trial twice on this contrived charge, and though fully acquitted both times, he was left more or less bankrupt. His health failed, and he died several years ago.)

TC: After his last trial, Clay wrote me and said: "I've always thought I was a little paranoid, but having survived this, I know I never was, and know now I never will be."

BIG JUNEBUG JOHNSON: What is it - paranoid?

TC: Well. Oh, nothing. Paranoia's nothing. As long as you don't take it seriously.

BIG JUNEBUG JOHNSON: I sure do miss Mr. Shaw. All during his trouble, there was one way you could tell who was and who wasn't a gentleman in this town. A gentleman, when he passed Mr. Shaw on the street, tipped his hat; the bastards looked straight ahead. (Chuckling) Mr. Shaw, he was a ard. Every time he come in my bar, he kept me laughing. Ever hear his Jesse James story? Seems one day Jesse James was robbing a train out West. Him and his gang barged into a car with their pistols drawn, and Jesse James shouts: "Hands up! We're gonna rob all the women and rape all the men." So this one fellow says: "Haven't you got that wrong, sir? Don't you mean you're gonna rob all the men and rape all the women?" But there was this sweet little fairy on the train, and he pipes up: "Mind your own business! Mr. James knows how to rob a train."

(Two and three and four: the hour-bells of St. Louis Cathedral toll: ... five ... six ... The toll is grave, like a gilded baritone voice reciting, echoing ancient episodes, a sound that drifts across the park as solemnly as the uncoming dusk: music that mingles with the laughing chatter, the optimistic farewells of the departing, sugar-mouthed, balloon-toting kids, mingles with the solitary grieving howl of a far-off shiphorn, and the jangling springtime bells of the syrup-ice peddler's cart. Redundantly, Big Junebug Johnson consults her big ugly wristwatch.)

BIG JUNEBUG JOHNSON: Lord save us. I ought to be half way home. Jim has to have his supper on the table seven sharp, and he won't let anybody fix it for him 'cept me. Dont ask why. I can't cook worth an owl's ass, never could. Only thing I could ever do real good was draw beer ... Oh hell, that reminds me: I'm on duty at the bar tonight. Usually now I just work days,a nd Irma's there the rest of the time. But one of Irma's little boys took sick, and she wants to be home with him. See, I forgot to tell you, but I got a partner now, a widow gal with a real sense of fun, and hard-working, too. Irma was married to a chicken farmer, and he up and died, leaving her with five little boys, two of them twins, and her not thirty yet. So she was scratching out a living on that farm - raising chickens and wringing their necks and trucking them into the market here. All by herself. And her just a mite of a thing, but with a scrumptious figure, and natural strawberry hair, curly like mine. She could go up to Atlantic City and win a beauty contest if she wasn't cockeyed: Irma, she's so cockeyed you can't tell what she's looking at or who. She started coming into the bar with some of the other gal truckers. First off I reckoned she was a dyke, same as most of the gal truckers. But I was wrong. She likes men, and they dote on her, cockeye and all. Truth is, I think my guy's got a sneaker for her; I tease him about it, and it makes him soooo mad. But if you want to know, I have more than a slight notion that Irma gets a real tingle when Jim's around. You can tell who she's looking at then. Well, I won't live forever, and after I'm gone, if they want to get together, that's fine by me. I'll have had my happiness. And I know Irma wil take good care of Jim. She's a wonderful kid. That's why I talked her into coming into business with me. Say now, it's great to see you again, Jockey. Stop by later. We've got a lot to catch up on. But I've got to get my old bones rattling now.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

August 20, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'A Day's Work' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'A Day's Work'.

In 1979 Truman Capote spends the day hanging out with Mary Sanchez - a professional cleaning woman who has worked for him for years. She is tremendously loyal to her clients - she has been cleaning the same apartments for decades - and is very involved in the personal lives of all of the people she cleans for (as will be apparent at the end of this excerpt - the people she prays for, mostly, are her clients.) He records their conversation. He follows her from job to job - they get stoned - and talk about all kinds of things - -Robert Frost, drugs, her work, her family. Her husband Pedro - who had been an alcoholic, a mean drunk, and a sucky father - died last year.

Here's an excerpt. I love these recorded conversations - there are a bunch of them in the book, and 'A Day's Work' is the first. The excerpt below is the end of the story. Beautiful.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'A Day's Work'.

TC: Let me catch you a cab.

MARY: I hate to give them my business. Those taxi people don't like coloreds. Even when they're colored themselves. No, I can get the subway down here at Lex and Eighty-Sixth.

(Mary lives in a rent-controlled apartment near Yankee Stadium; she says it was cramped when she had a family living with her, but now that she's by herself, it seems immense and dangerous: "I've got three locks on every door, and all the windows nailed down. I'd buy me a police dog if it didn't mean leaving him by himself so much. I know what it is to be alone, and I wouldn't wish it on a dog.")

TC: Please, Mary, let me treat you to a taxi.

MARY: The subway's a lot quicker. But there's someplace I want to stop. It's just down here aways.

(The place is a narrow church pinched between broad buildings on a side street. Inside, there are two brief rows of pews, and a small altar with a plaster figure of a crucified Jesus suspended above it. An odor of incense and candle wax dominates the gloom. At the altar a woman is lighting a candle, its light fluttering like the sleep of a fitful spirit; otherwise, we are the only supplicants present. We kneel together in the last pew, and from the satchel Mary produces a pair of rosary beads - "I always carry a couple extra" - one for herself, the other for me, though I don't know quite how to handle it, never having used one before. Mary's lips move whisperingly.)

MARY: Dear Lord, in your mercy. Please, Lord, help Mr. Trask to stop boozing and get his job back. Please, Lord, don't leave Miss Shaw a bookworm and an old maid; she ought to bring your children into this world. And, Lord, I beg you to remember my sons and daughter and my grandchildren, each and every one. And please don't let Mr. Smith's family send him to that retirement home; he don't want to go, he cries all the time ...

(Her list of names is more numerous than the beads on her rosary, and her requests in their behalf have the earnest shine of the altar's candle-flame. She pauses to glance at me.)

MARY: Are you praying?

TC: Yes.

MARY: I can't hear you.

TC: I'm praying for you, Mary. I want you to live forever.

MARY: Don't pray for me. I'm already saved. (She takes my hand and holds it.) Pray for your mother. Pray for all those souls lost out there in the dark. Pedro. Pedro.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

August 10, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from a story called 'Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime'.

An interesting story - not sure what is real or not - Capote blurs the edges - but one thing's for certain: he is trying to "get back" into In Cold Blood territory - and yet (this is a judgment) he no longer has the narrative power. He cannot write a narration - in the same cool detached way he was able to in In Cold Blood. He inserts himself into the story - he is a character - and, as you will see in the excerpt - the majority of the story (it's a novella) is done as though it were a script. It's interesting to read - it's a good story, true or no ... but this script thing (which he does time and again in this collection) to me is indicative of Capote's lessening of confidence in himself as a writer. Again, this is a judgment - based on knowing the rest of Capote's work, and knowing what was going on for him in his life at the time he wrote this collection. He was FLAILING about for just a smidgeon of his old ease ... There's something about Handcarved Coffins that REALLY appeals to me - the main characters - Jake and Addie - are wonderfully drawn, they seem real - and you give a shit about them.

Here's an excerpt. It's been years since I've read it, so many of the details are lost - but I always remember the bit about the rattlesnakes.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'Handcarved Coffins: A Nonfiction Account of an American Crime'.

Jake Pepper is a detective employed by the State Bureau of Investigation. We had first met each other through a close mutual friend, another detective in a different state. In 1972 he wrote a letter saying he was working on a murder case, something that he thought might interest me. I telephoned him and we talked for three hours. I was very interested in what he had to tell me, but he became alarmed when I suggestted that I travel out there and survey the situation myself; he said that would be premature and might endanger his investigation, but he promised to keep me informed. For the next three years we exchanged telephone calls every few months. The case, developing along lines intricate as a rat's maze, seemed to have reached an impasse. Finally I said: Just let me come there and look around.

And so it was that I found myself one cold March night sitting with Jake Pepper in his motel room on the wintry, windblown outskirts of this forlorn little Western town. Actually, the town was pleasant, cozy; after all, off and on, it had been Jake's home for almost five years, and he had built shelves to display pictures of his family, his sons and grandchildren, and to hold hundreds of books, many of them concerning the Civil War and all of them the selections of an intelligent man: he was partial to Dickens, Melville, Trollope, Mark Twain.

Jake sat crosslegged on the floor, a glass of bourbon beside him. He had a chessboard spread before him; absently he shifted the chessmen about.

TC: The amazing thing is, nobody seems to know anything about this case. It's had almost no publicity.

JAKE: There are reasons.

TC: I've never been able to put it into proper sequence. It's like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

JAKE: Where shall we begin?

TC: From the beinning.

JAKE: Go over to the bureau. Look in the bottom drawer. See that little cardboard box? Take a look at what's inside it.

(What I found inside the box was a miniature coffin. It was a beautifully made object, carved from light balsam wood. It was undecorated; but when one opened the hinged lid one discovered the coffin was not empty. It contained a photograph - a casual, candid snapshot of two middle-aged people, a man and a woman, crossing a street. It was not a posed picture; one sensed that the subjects were unaware that they were being photographed.)

That little coffin. I guess that's what you might call the beginning.

TC: And the picture?

JAKE: George Roberts and his wife. George and Amelia Roberts.

TC: Mr. and Mrs. Roberts. Of course. The first victims. He was a lawyer?

JAKE: He was a lawyer, and one morning (to be exact; the tenth of August 1970) he got a present in the mail. That little coffin. With the picture inside it. Roberts was a happy-go-lucky guy; he showed it to some people around the courthouse and acted like it was a joke. One month later George and Amelia were two very dead people.

TC: How soon did you come on the case?

JAKE: Immediately. An hour after they found them I was on my way here with two other agents from the Bureau. When we got here the bodies were still in the car. And so were the snakes. That's something I'll never forget. Never.

TC: Go back. Describe it exactly.

JAKE: The Robertses had no children. Nor enemies, either. Everybody liked them. Amelia worked for her husband; she was his secretary. They had only one car, and they always drove to work together. The morning it happened was hot. A sizzler. So I guess they must have been surprised when they went out to get in their car and found all the windows rolled up. Anyway, they each entered the car through separate doors, and as soon as they were inside - wam! A tangle of rattlesnakes hit them like ilghtning. We found nine big rattlers inside that car. All of them had been injected with amphetamine; they were crazy, they bit the Robertses everywhere, neck, arms, ears, cheeks, hands. Poor people. Their heads were huge and swollen like Halloween pumpkins painted green. They must have died almost instantly. I hope so. That's one hope I really hope.

TC: Rattlesnakes aren't that prevalent in these regions. Not rattlesnakes of that caliber. They must have been brought here.

JAKE: They were. From a snake farm in Nogales, Texas. But now's not the time to tell you how I know that.

(Outside, crusts of snow laced the ground; spring was a long way off - a hard wind whipping the window announced that winter was still with us. But the sound of the wind was only a murmur in my head underneath the racket of rattling rattlesnakes, hissing tongues. I saw the car dark under a hot sun, the swirling serpents, the human heads growing green, expanding with poison. I listened to the wind, letting it wipe the scene away.)
Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

August 9, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'Dazzle' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from a story called 'Dazzle'.

A touching short story about a little boy in New Orleans - he lives with relatives - and he is tormented by a secret worry. Eventually it is revealed - he wants to be a girl instead of a boy. But he can't tell ANYone this secret, it is too horrible, too ... weird ... he doesn't know anyone else who has such a problem. He is only 8 years old but he already knows he is beyond the pale.

There is a woman in the Garden District - named Mrs. Ferguson - she is a laundress, but also a fortune teller. Our tortured little narrator is fascinated by Mrs. Ferguson and decides that maybe he could tell HER his horrible secret. But nobody must know that he is even going to speak to her! He has to do it quietly and subversively!

Mrs. Ferguson is a weirdo, frankly - and not a very nice person. She covets a certain dazzling (dazzle dazzle) necklace worn by our narrator's grandmother. She uses it as a bargaining chip with the little narrator when he asks if he can have a session with her. Basically: sure, come see me - and bring that necklace as payment.

Here's an excerpt. A lovely sad little story. You really feel for this little boy with the secret.

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote- 'Dazzle'.

Now, about this wish of my own, the worry that was with me from first thing in the morning until last thing at night: it wasn't anything I could just straight out ask her. It required the right time, a carefully prepared moment. She seldom came to our house, but when she did I stayed close by, pretending to watch the delicate movements of her thick ugly fingers as they handled lace-trimmed napkins, but really attempting to catch her eye. We never talked; I was too nervous and she was too stupid. Yes, stupid. It was just something I sensed; powerful witch or not, Mrs. Ferguson was a stupid woman. But now and again our eyes did lock, and dumb as she was, the intensity, the fascination she saw in my gaze told her that I desired to be a client. She probably thought I wanted a bike, or a new air rifle; anyway, she wasn't about to concern herself with a kid like me. What could I give her? So she would turn her tiny lips down and roll her full-moon eyes elsewhere.

About this time, early December in 1932, my paternal grandmother arrived for a brief visit. New Orleans has cold winters; the chilly humid winds from the river drift deep into your bones. So my grandmother, who was living in Florida, where she taught school, had wisely brought with her a fur coat, one she had borrowed from a friend. It was made of black Persian lamb, the belonging of a rich woman, which my grandmother was not. Widowed young, and left with three sons to raise, she had not had an easy life, but she never complained. She was an admirable woman; she had a lively mind, and a sound, sane one as well. Due to family circumstances, we rarely met, but she wrote often and sent me small gifts. She loved me and I wanted to love her, but until she died, and she lived beyond ninety, I kept my distance, behaved indifferently. She felt it, but she never knew what caused my apparent coldness, nor did anyone else, for the reason was part of an intricate guilt, faceted as the dazzling yellow stone dangling from a slender gold-chain necklace that she often wore. Pearls would have suited her better, but she attached great value to this somewhat theatrical geegaw, which I understood her own grandfather had won in a card game in Colorado.

Of course the necklace wasn't valuable; as my grandmother always scrupulously explained to anyone who inquired, the stone, which was the size of a cat's paw, was not a "gem" stone, not a canary diamond, nor even a topaz, but a chunk of rock-crystal deftly faceted and tinted dark yellow. Mrs. Ferguson, however, was unaware of the trinket's true worth, and when one afternoon, during the course of my grandmother's stay, the plump youngish witch arrived to stiffen some linen, she seemed spellbound by the brilliant bit of glass swinging from the thin chain around my grandmother's neck. Her ignorant moon eyes glowed, and that's a fact: they truly glowed. I now had no difficulty attracting her attention; she studied me with an interest absent heretofore.

As she departed, I followed her into the garden, where there was a century-old wisteria arbor, a mysterious place even in winter when the foliage had shriveled, stripping this leaf-tunnel of its concealing shadows. She walked under it and beckoned to me.

Softly, she said, "You got something on your mind?"

"Yes."

"Something you want done? A favor?"

I nodded; she nodded, but her eyes shifted nervously; she didn't want to be seen talking to me.

She said: "My boy will come. He will tell you."

"When?"

But she said hush, and hurried out of the garden. I watched her waddle off into the dusk. It dried my mouth to think of having all my hopes pinned on this stupid woman. I couldn't eat supper that night; I didn't sleep until dawn. Aside from the thing that was worrying me, now I had a whole lot of new worries. If Mrs. Ferguson did what I wanted her to do, then what about my clothes, what about my name, where would I go, who would I be? Holy smoke, it was enough to drive you crazy! Or was I already crazy? That was part of the problem: I must be crazy to want Mrs. Ferguson to do this thing I wanted her to do. That was one reason why I couldn't tell anybody: they would think I was crazy. Or something worse. I didn't know what that something worse could be, but instinctively I felt that people saying I was crazy, my family and their friends and the other kids, might be the least of it.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 8, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'Mojave' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from a story called 'Mojave'.

Now it's no secret that Capote lost much, in terms of his talent, as he grew older. His drinking and drug use I am sure contributed to it. He had horrific writer's block. And he was one of those "lucky" writers who had success (and huge success) very early on ... his first novel was a hit, and he became an immediate celebrity. He loved it at the time, he was young, popular, an artist - but to be a success, especially as a writer, at a young age, can turn around and bite you in the ass. The pressure to repeat yourself, the unreal expectations of what kind of money your books should make, etc.

Anyway, all of this is to say that - I love Capote's writing, even the late-era stuff - but I can feel, in stories like 'Mojave' - his struggle to write. It feels sketched in, to me - as opposed to fully realized. His earlier stuff is truly effortless (not that he didn't work his ass off - he did - but the finished products FEEL effortless. Like he agonized over In Cold Blood - every sentence was parsed and examined - he was ruthless in his own editing of that book - but when you READ it, it feels effortless. None of his sweat and tears SHOW.) The stories in Music for Chameleons do not have any of the significance of his earlier stories - they are light, they are fragments - it's almost like each one is an overheard piece of gossip. Now this style has its own charm - and if you're interested in people, and how weird and beautiful and mysterious they can be - Music for Chameleons is all about that. It's just that I can feel the effort.

And also (and this is key): This is the best Capote could do in that moment. Capote is, without a doubt, doing his best.

This was part of his torment. He knew what, at his prime, his best was. And now all he could squeeze out were 3 page stories that were little more than character sketches - writing exercises.

But you know what? That's what he could do at that particular moment. He did not have a novel in him anymore. he did not have the constitution to complete anything BIG. He had ruined his health. A small story like "Mojave" - which really is just a sketch, a draft - was what he could do. And so he did it. And I happen to think there is a beauty in that. Perhaps a sad beauty - because we remember what he was capable of - but a beauty nonetheless.

Here's the opening of "Mojave".

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'Mojave'.

At 5 p.m. that winter afternoon she had an appointment with Dr. Bentsen, formerly her psychoanalyst and currently her lover. When their relationship had changed from the analytical to the emotional, he insisted, on ethical grounds, that she cease to be his patient. Not that it mattered. He had not been of much help as an analyst, and as a lover - well, once she had watched him running to catch a bus, two hundred and twenty pounds of short-ish, fiftyish, frizzly-haired, hip-heavy, myopic Manhattan Intellectual, and she had laughed: how was it possible that she could love a man so ill-humored, so ill-favored as Ezra Bentsen? The answer was she didn't; in fact, she disliked him. But at least she didn't associate him with resignation and despair. She feared her husband; she was not afraid of Dr. Bentsen. Still, it was her husband she loved.

She was rich; at any rate, had a substantial allowance from her husband, who was rich, and so could afford the studio-apartment hideaway where she met her lover perhaps once a week, sometimes twice, never more. She could also afford gifts he seemed to expect on those occasions. Not that he appreciated their quality: Verdura cuff links, classic Paul Flato cigarette cases, the obligatory Cartier watch, and (more to the point) occasional specific amounts of cash he asked to 'borrow'.

He had never given her a single present. Well, one: a mother-of-pearl Spanish dress comb that he claimed was an heirloom, a mother-treasure. Of course, it was nothing she could wear, for she wore her own hair, fluffy and tobacco-colored, like a childish aureole around her deceptively naive and youthful face. Thanks to dieting, private exercises with Joseph Pilatos, and the dermatological attentions of Dr. Orentreich, she looked in her early twenties; she was thirty-six.

Posted by sheila Permalink

August 7, 2007

The Books: "Music for Chameleons" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

MusicForChameleons.jpgMusic for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. This lovely collection of short fiction, essays, and ... er ... transcriptions of conversations ... was the last thing Capote had published. I love it - you can't sit and read it and compare it to In Cold Blood because that wouldn't be fair - you have to take it on its own terms. I personally think some of his best writing is in Music for Chameleons. In the preface to the book, he goes on a long explanation of what he is "working" on, and he says that in this collection he himself has taken center stage. This is true, as anyone who has read the collection will know. He transcribes conversations he has (with people such as Marilyn Monroe - in perhaps the most well-known piece from the collection - and also people such as the superintendent of his building.) He creates little SCRIPTS, slices of life, snippets - Capote says in his preface that he thinks he has created a new form of literature here (which rather makes me sad. I do love the little scripts, but I wouldn't say that it was anything "new".) But I guess I should remember that when In Cold Blood came out, it truly was hailed as something "new" - a nonfiction book that read like fiction ... a nonfiction true crime book that had the touch of the poetic in the writing ... Anyway, Capote is grasping at straws in Music for Chameleons, still trying to be that writer who was hailed as new and important. But still, I have to say - I love the collection and it did quite well, staying firmly on the NY Times bestseller list for months. (This is why the blunt end-title in the movie Capote sayiing he never published another book after In Cold Blood annoys me. Yes, he did publish another book. Okay, not a novel - not another In Cold Blood - but Music for Chameleons is, indeed a book.)

If you don't like Capote, as a persona, then Music for Chameleons would, perhaps, be annoying, since he is a character in his own book. And you know what? This just occurred to me. In a funny way, the writing here is a precursor of certain trends in literature right now - well, literature and other parts of culture. The self-driven culture - reality TV, memoirs, and then the Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace school of literature ... naval-gazing - but also, commenting on themselves as a persona, noticing themselves operating in the world - and expanding on it, making fun of it, mocking it ... That's what Capote is doing here. And he's not doing it in a typical memoir fashion - he's doing it in scripts, little movie-scripts of conversations from his own life. Very Eggers-esque, huh?

Here's an excerpt from the first story in the collection - called "Music for Chameleons". It's a situation where you do not know if the "I" of the narrator is Capote - but the way he sets it up makes you believe it is. And so ... what is true? What is fiction? Capote blurs the edges - he was always into that ... and in the stories here he delights in that confusion.

He also uses the present-tense - which is now almost passe - but was never done at the time.

This is the story of a writer who goes to Martinique - a friend of his had been murdered there many years before. The writer sits on the porch of a woman called Madame - she is the grande dame of Martinique - she knows everything, and everyone ... the story is just the two of them sitting out there ... she talks, he listens and asks questions ... It's a mood piece. There's something grotesque here. I am not sure how to describe it. But it's a grotesque piece of writing. (That's not a judgment - I'm just describing). There's a black mirror on the wall - used by various famous writers who came to Martinique to write - if you look in the mirror, you will see the truth, you will find the way. So the narrator-writer finds himself drawn to the black mirror - glancing over at it ... And what about his friend who had been murdered in Martinique? Would he be seen in that haunted mirror?

Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'Music for Chameleons'

She is tall and slender, perhaps seventy, silver-haired, soigne, neither black nor white, a pale golden rum color. She is a Martinique aristocrat who lives in Fort de France but also has an apartment in Paris. We are sitting on the terrace of her house, an airy, elegant house that looks as if it was made of wooden lace; it reminds me of certain old New Orleans houses. We are drinking iced mint tea slightly flavored with absinthe.

Three green chameleons race one another across the terrace; one pauses at Madame's feet, flicking its forked tongue, and she comments: "Chameleons. Such exceptional creatures. The way they change color. Red. Yellow. Lime. Pink. Lavender. And did you know they are very fond of music?" She regards me with her fine black eyes. "You don't believe me?"

During the course of the afternoon she had told me many curious things. How at night her garden was filled with mammoth night-flying moths. That her chaffeur, a dignified figure who had driven me to her house in a dark green Mercedes, was a wife-poisoner who had escaped from Devil's Island. And she had desribed a village high in the northern mountains that is entirely inhabited by albinos. "Little pink-eyed people white as chalk. Occasionally one sees a few on the streets of Fort de France."

"Yes, of course I believe you."

She tilts her silver head. "No, you don't. But I shall prove it."

So saying, she drifts into her cool Caribbean salon, a shadowy room with gradually turning ceiling fans, and poses herself at a well-tuned piano. I am still sitting on the terrace, but I can observe her, this chic, elderly woman, the product of varied bloods. She begins to perform a Mozart sonata.

Eventually the chameleons accumulated: a dozen, a dozen more, most of them green, some scarlet, lavender. They skittered across the terrace and scampered into the salon, a sensitive, absorbed audience for the music played. And then not played, for suddenly my hostess stood and stamped her foot, and the chameleons scattered like sparks from an exploding star.

Now she regards me. "Et maintenant? C'est vrai?"

"Indeed. But it seems so strange."

She smiles. :"Alors. The whole island floats in strangeness. This very house is haunted. Many ghosts dwell here. And not in darkness. Some appear in the bright light of noon, saucy as you please. Impertinent."

"That's common in Haiti, too. The ghosts there often stroll about in daylight. I once saw a horde of ghosts working in a field near Petionville. They were picking bugs off coffee plants."

She accepts this as fact, and continues: "Oui. Oui. The Haitians work their dead. They are well known for that. Ours we leave to their sorrows. And their frolics. So coarse, the Haitians. So Creole. And one can't bathe there, the sharks are so intimidating. And their mosquitoes: the size, the audacity! Here in Martinique we have no mosquitoes. None."

"I've noticed that; I wondered about it."

"So do we. Martinique is the only island in the Caribbean not cursed with mosquitoes, and no one can explain it."

"Perhaps the night-flying moths devour them all."

She laughs. "Or the ghosts."

"No. I think ghosts would prefer moths."

"Yes, moths are perhaps more ghostly fodder. If I was a hungry ghost, I'd rather eat anything than mosquitoes. Will you have more ice in your glass? Absinthe?"

"Absinthe. That's something we can't get at home. Not even in New Orleans."

"My paternal grandmother was from New Orleans."

"Mine, too."

As she pours absinthe from a dazzling emerald decanter: "Then perhaps we are related. Her maiden name was Dufont. Alouette Dufont."

"Alouette? Really? Very pretty. I'm aware of two Dufont families in New Orleans, but I'm not related to either of them."

"Pity. It would have been amusing to call you cousin. Alors. Claudine Paulot tells me this is your first visit to Martinique."

"Claudiene Paulot?"

"Claudine and Jacques Paulot. You met them at the Governor's dinner the other night."

I remember: he was a tall, handsome man, the First President of the Court of Appeals for Martinique and French Guiana, which includes Devil's Island. "The Paulots. Yes. They have eight children. He very much favors capital punishment."

"Since you seem to be a traveler, why have you not visited here sooner?"

"Martinique? Well, I felt a certain reluctance. A good friend was murdered here."

Madame's lovely eyes are a fraction less friendly than before. She makes a slow pronouncement: "Murder is a rare occurrence here. We are not a violent people. Serious, but not violent."

"Serious. Yes. The people in restaurants, on the streets, even on the beaches have such severe expressions. They seem so preoccupied. Like Russians."

"One must keep in mind that slavery did not end here until 1848."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

August 3, 2007

The Books: "Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

UnansweredPrayers.jpgAnswered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel - by Truman Capote. This is the notorious book that sunk Truman. It was unfinished. He was always threatening to publish the rest of it - and made hints, publicly, that he was working on it. But at the time of his death, no manuscript was found. To people who knew him and his pack-rat ways, this was very suspicious. Capote probably was making those public statements to either bolster himself up, or try to create some buzz, or maybe because "if you say it, it's so" ... His writer's block was a torment. He completely lost the ease of his prose as a young man. The last years of his life were horrific, in terms of loneliness and loss of work. The publication of one of the chapters of Capote's new novel was like a bomb that went off through high society, the circle in which Capote thrived. "La Cote Basque" is the name of the chapter - and it was highly anticipated. The author of In Cold Blood! His new novel! It was very exciting. Anyway, I won't go into what happened when "La Cote Basque" came out - but it's a fascinating story, one of the huge literary dust-ups of our time. It ruined Truman Capote's life - and it took him a while to fully realize the impact. Entire groups of people took him off their address books. He had been a staple at their parties and yacht outings - he was beloved. As a pet, sure - as a witty bitchy person to have around ... and in one fell swoop, all of that was done. Many of his friends never spoke to him again. It was a devastating blow to Capote and he never really recovered. He tried to plead his case - "I'm a writer! What did they think I was doing all that time at their parties? I was observing them, taking note - I'm a writer!" Yeah, well, "they" did not like it. Every door in New York closed to Capote practically overnight.

The three chapters of the unfinished novel have been published under the name "Answered Prayers". Capote had always hinted that this was going to be his greatest book. And when you read it - I don't know, it makes me sad. In no way, shape or form would this ever be considered his "greatest" book - and so his words, to me, seem desperate, like he's trying to imagine himself back into the groove he once had. But so much has been lost. The writing of In Cold Blood sapped him of strength, perhaps forever. He was never the same again after it. I don't know, I'm such a fan of Capote's stuff, I'd read a grocery list written by him ... but "Answered Prayers" is too bitchy - he has lost ALL the heart in his work. And my God, what heart he has. A Grass Harp, Christmas Memory, Other Voices, Other Rooms ... what a beautiful human heart he has. None of it is in evidence in the three chapters of "Answered Prayers". What I get from his writing here - is that he is angry, he has a bone to pick with the wealthy elite (even though they invited him into their circles) - and he his going to show them to themselves. He is going to unmask them. He is going to say, in the bitchiest tone possible, "You thought a book written about you would be flattering - but that is only because you are so vain, so empty inside - So here. Here is what I REALLY think of you." Capote can plead his innocence all he wants - that's what he's doing here. And the readers recognized themselves - he told their secrets, amped up what they whispered to each other, he named names - He used pseudonyms (but not always - the book is also a big name-dropping extravaganza) but with enough detail that identities were unmistakable. Infidelities, impotence, possible murder, shallow, whatever - he revealed it all here. Every single person in this book is heinous.

So I wonder. Oh, Truman. What happened.

Gerald Clarke's biography of Truman Capote is a masterpiece of the genre and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Capote. The chapters on the publication of "La Cote Basque" and the fallout afterwards are great - tons of details and quotes and context given. I'm just sketching it in here.

Here's an excerpt from the "La Cote Basque" chapter.

Excerpt from Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel - by Truman Capote.

Mrs. Matthau and Mrs. Cooper lingered over cafe filtre. "I know," mused Mrs. Matthau, who was analyzing the wife of a midnight-TV clown/hero, "Jane is pushy: all those telephone calls - Christ, she could dial Answer Prayer and talk an hour. But she's bright, she's fast on the draw, and when you think what she has to put up with. This last episode she told me about: hair-raising. Well, Bobby had a week off from the show - he was so exhausted he told Jane he wanted just to stay home, spend the whole week slopping around in his pajamas, and Jane was ecstatic; she bought hundreds of magazines and books and new LP's and every kind of goody from Maison Glass. Oh, it was going to be a lovely week. Just Jane and Bobby sleeping and screwing and having baked potatoes with caviar for breakfast. But after one day he evaporated. Didn't come home night or call. It wasn't the first time, Jesus be, but Jane was out of her mind. Still, she couldn't report it to the police; what a sensation that would be. Another day passed, and not a word. Jane hadn't slept for forty-eight hours. Around three in the morning the phone rang. Bobby. Smashed. She said: 'My God, Bobby, where are you?' He said he was in Miami, and she said, losing her temper now, how the fuck did you get in Miami, and he said, oh, he'd gone to the airport and taken a plane, and she said what the fuck for, and he said just because he felt like being alone. Jane said: 'And are you alone?' Bobby, you know what a sadist he is behind that huckleberry grin, said: 'No. There's someone lying right here. She'd like to speak to you.' And on comes this scared little giggling peroxide voice: 'Really, is this really Mrs. Baxter, hee hee? I thought Bobby was making a funny, hee hee. We just heard on the radio how it was snowing there in New York - I mean, you ought to be down here with us where it's ninety degrees!' Jane said, very chiseled: 'I'm afraid I'm much too ill to travel.' And peroxide, all fluttery, distress: 'Oh, gee, I'm sorry to hear that. What's the matter, honey?' Jane said: 'I've got a double dose of syph and the old clap-clap, all courtesy of that great comic, my husband, Bobby Baxter - and if you don't want the same, I suggest you get the hell out of there.' And she hung up."

Mrs. Cooper was amused, though not very; puzzled, rather. "How can any woman tolerate that? I'd divorce him."

"Of course you would. But then, you've got the two things Jane hasn't."

"Ah?"

"One; dough. And two: identity."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

July 17, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" 'My Side of the Matter' (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGStill in the short-story collection The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote. Next story is "My Side of the Matter".

I love the voice of this story. It's Capote at his rollicking gossipy best. Writing like this is really FUN to read. You can HEAR the voice of the narrator. Also, if you think about the tone of much of Capote's other stuff - the elegiac, nostalgic, bittersweet, romantic tone - and compare it to the voice below - funny, acerbic, ignorant, chatty - you can see part of the reason why he was so dazzling to begin with. Truman Capote wasn't just ONE thing, one writer with one kind of voice. He seemed to contain many different worlds - even as a young man. And the confidence! The story below, the voice below, has confidence.

The excerpt below is the opening of the story.

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote - "My Side of the Matter".

I know what is being said about me and you can take my side or theirs, that's your own business. It's my word against Eunice's and Olivia-Ann's, and it should be plain enough to anyone wiht two good eyes which one of us has their wits about them. I just want the citizens of the U.S.A. to know the facts, that's all.

The facts: On Sunday, August 12, this year of our Lord, Eunice tried to kill me with her papa's Civil War sword and Olivia-Ann cut up all over the place with a fourteen-inch hog knife. This is not even to mention lots of other things.

It began six months ago when I married Marge. That was the first thing I did wrong. We were married in Mobile after an acquaintance of only four days. We were both sixteen and she was visiting my cousin George. Now that I've had plenty of time to think it over, I can't for the life of me figure how I fell for the likes of her. She has no looks, no body, and no brains whatsoever. But Marge is a natural blonde and maybe that's the answer. Well, we were married going on three months when Marge ups and gets pregnant; the second thing I did wrong. Then she starts hollering that she's got to go home to Mama - only she hasn't got no mama, just these two aunts Eunice and Olivia-Ann. So she makes me quit my perfectly swell position clerking at the Cash 'n' Carry and move here to Admiral's Mill which is nothing but a darn gap in the road any way you care to consider it.

The day Marge and I got off the train at the L&N depot it was raining cats and dogs and do you think anyone came to meet us? I'd shelled out forty-one cents for a telegram, too! Here my wife's pregnant and we have to tramp seven miles in a downpour. It was bad on Marge as I couldn't carry hardly any of our stuff on account of I have terrible trouble with my back.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

July 13, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" - "The Headless Hawk" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGStill in the short-story collection The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote. Next story is "The Headless Hawk". I love this story, it seems to capture a certain era in New York (and actually, that New York does still exist - you just have to look a little harder) - and a certain area and season in New York ... it's very potent stuff, classic Capote.It's kind of a love story - between Vincent, who works in an art gallery - he's in his 30s - and a young girl, 18, who comes in one day to sell a painting she owns. She's a bit of a waif, she has nowhere to go, she's beautiful and mysterious. Capote, in this story, captures the feeling of almost unbearable loneliness in New York City on beautiful spring nights ... surrounded by humanity, the lonely person can feel as though he or she does not exist. Vincent is haunted by the girl who sold the painting to him ... but fears he will never see her again. I don't know - something about the prose here brings the ache of loneliness to life, so vividly.

It's the New York of Joseph Cornell and Edward Hopper - penny arcades, automats, organ grinders ...

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote - "The Headless Hawk".

Then, too, he'd quite expected she would reappear, but February passed, and March. One evening, crossing the square which fronts the Plaza, he had a queer thing happen. The archaic hansom drivers who line that location were lighting their carriage lamps, for it was dusk, and lamplight traced through moving leaves. A hansom pulled from the curb and rolled past in the twilight. There was a single occupant, and this passenger, whose face he could not see, was a girl with chopped fawn-colored hair. So he settled on a bench, and whiled away time talking with a soldier, and a fairy colored boy who quoted poetry, and a man out airing a dachshund: night characters with whom he waited - but the carriage, with the one for whom he waited, never came back. Again he saw her (or supposed he did) descending subway stairs, and this time lost her in the tiled tunnels of painted arrows and Spearmint machines. It was as if her face were imposed upon his mind; he could no more dispossess it than could, for example, a dead man rid his legendary eyes of the last image seen. Around the middle of April he went up to Connecticut to spend a weekend with his married sister; keyed-up, caustic, he wasn't, as she complained, at all like himself. "What is it, Vinny, darling - if you need money ..." "Oh, shut up!" he said. "Must be love," teased his brother-in-law. "Come on, Vinny, 'fess up; what's she like?" And all this so annoyed him he caught the next train home. From a booth in Grand Central he called to apologize, but a sick nervousness hummed inside him, and he hung up while the operator was still trying to make a connection. He wanted a drink. At the Commodore Bar he spent an hour or so drowning four daiquiris - it was Saturday, it was nine, there was nothing to do unless he did it alone, he was feeling sad for himself. Now in the park behind the Public Library sweethearts moved whisperingly under trees, and drinking-fountain water bubbled softly, like their voices, but for all the white April evening meant to him, Vincent, drunk a little and wandering, might as well have been old, like the old bench-sitters rasping phlegm.

In the country, spring is a time of small happenings happening quietly, hyacinth shoots thrusting in a garden, willows burning with a sudden frosty fire of green, lengthening afternoons of long flowing dusk, and midnight rain opening lilac; but in the city there is the fanfare of organ-grinders, and odors, undiluted by winter wind, clog the air; windows long closed go up, and conversation, drifting beyond a room, collides with the jangle of a peddler's bell. It is the crazy season of toy balloons and roller skates, of courtyard baritones and men of freakish enterprise, like the one who jumped up now like a jack-in-the-box. He was old, he had a telescope and a sign: 25c See the Moon! See the Stars! 25c! No stars could penetrate a city's glare, but Vincent saw the moon, a round, shadowed whiteness, and then a blaze of electric bulbs: Four Roses, Bing Cro -- he was moving through caramel-scented staleness, swimming through oceans of cheese-pale faces, neon, and darkness. Above the blasting of a jukebox, bulletfire boomed, a cardboard duck fell plop, and somebody screeched: "Yay Iggy!" It was a Broadway funhouse, a penny arcade, and jammed from wall to wall with Saturday splurgers. He watched a penny movie (What the Bootblack Saw), and had his fortune told by a wax witch leering behind glass: "Yours is an affectionate nature" ... but he read no further, for up near the jukebox there was an attractive commotion. A crowd of kids, clapping in time to jazz music, had formed a circle around two dancers. These dancers were both colored, both girls. They swayed together slow and easy, like lovers, rocked and stamped and rolled serious savage eyes, their muscles rythmically attuned to the ripple of a clarinet, the rising harangue of a drum. Vincent's gaze traveled round the audience, and when he saw her a bright shiver went through him, for something of the dance's violence was reflected in her face. Standing there beside a tall ugly boy, it was as if she were the sleeper and the Negroes a dream. Trumpet-drum-piano, bawling on behind a black girl's froggy voice, wailed toward a rocking finale. The clapping ended, the dancers parted. She was alone now, though Vincent's instinct was to leave before she noticed, he advanced, and, as one would gently waken a sleeper, lightly touched her shoulder. "Hello," he said, his voice too loud. Turning, she stared at him, and her eyes were clear-blank. First terror, then puzzlement replaced the dead lost look. She took a step backward, and just as the jukebox commenced hollering again, he seized her wrist: "You remember me," he promoted, "the gallery? Your painting?" She blinked, let the lids sink sleepily over those eyes, and he could feel the slow relaxing of tension in her arm. She was thinner than he recalled, prettier, too, and her hair, grown out somewhat, hung in casual disorder. A little silver Christmas ribbon dangled sadly from a stray lock. He started to say, "Can I buy you a drink?" but she leaned against him, her head resting on his chest like a child's, and he said: "Will you come home with me?" She lifted her face; the answer, when it came, was a breath, a whisper: "Please," she said.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 12, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" - "Miriam" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGStill in the short-story collection The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote. Next story is "Miriam".

Miriam scares me! She is a small precocious child who shows up at somebody's door one snowy night and she is scary! An ominous creature, you know like those movies where little kids wear school uniforms and their eyes are serious and you are terrified of them. That's the impression this story gives me. Miriam. Shivers. The ending is pretty much a BOO! ending which scared the crap out of me when I first read it ... but I'll excerpt from earlier on in the story, when Miriam shows up for the second time.

I love Truman's writing. I don't know ... something about it always tastes good to me. A satisfying sensoral experience. Like the second sentence of the excerpt below. Lovely.

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote - "Miriam".

It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted, and Mrs. Miller lost track of the days. Friday was no different from Saturday and on Sunday she went to the grocery; closed, of course.

That evening she scrambled eggs and fixed a bowl of tomato soup. Then, after putting on a flannel robe and cold-creaming her face, she propped herself up in bed with a hot-water bottle under her feet. She was reading the Times when the doorbell rang. At first she thought it must be a mistake and whoever it was would go away. But it rang and rang and settled to a persistent buzz. She looked at the clock: a little after eleven; it did not seem possible, she was always asleep by ten.

Climbing out of bed, she trotted barefoot across the living room. "I'm coming, please be patient." The latch was caught; she turned it this way and that way and the bell never paused an instant. "Stop it," she cried. The bolt gave way and she opened the door an inch. "What in heaven's name?"

"Hello," said Miriam.

"Oh ... why, hello," said Mrs. Miller, stepping hesitantly into the hall. "You're that little girl."

"I thought you'd never answer, but I kept my finger on the button; I knew you were home. Aren't you glad to see me?"

Mrs. Miller did not know what to say. Miriam, she saw, wore the same plum-velvet coat and now she had also a beret to match; her white hair was braided in two shining plaits and looped at the ends with enormous white ribbons.

"Since I've waited so long, you could at least let me in," she said.

"It's awfully late ..."

Miriam regarded her blankly. "What difference does that make? Let me in. It's cold out here and I have on a silk dress." Then, with a gentle gesture, she urged Mrs. Miller aside and passed into the apartment.

She dropped her coat and beret on a chair. She was indeed wearing a silk dress. White silk. White silk in February. The skirt was beautifully pleated and the sleeves long; it made a faint rustle as she strolled about the room. "I like your place," she said. "I like the rug, blue's my favorite color." She touched a paper rose in a vase on the coffee table. "Imitation," she commented wanly. "How sad. Aren't imitations sad?" She seated herself on the sofa, daintily spreading her skirt.

"What do you want?" asked Mrs. Miller.

"Sit down," said Miriam. "It makes me nervous to see people stand."

Mrs. Miller sank to a hassock. "What do you want?" she repeated.

"You know, I don't think you're glad I came."

For a second time Mrs. Miller was without an answer; her hand motioned vaguely. Miriam giggled and pressed back on a mound of chintz pillows. Mrs. Miller observed that the girl was less pale than she remembered; her cheeks were flushed.

"How did you know where I lived?"

Miriam frowned. "That's no question at all. What's your name? What's mine?"

"But I'm not listed in the phone book."

"Oh, let's talk about something else."

Mrs. Miller said, "Your mother must be insane to let a child like you wander around at all hours of the night - and in such ridiculous clothes. She must be out of her mind."

Miriam got up and moved to a corner where a covered bird cage hung from a ceiling chain. She peeked beneath the cover. "It's a canary," she said. "Would you mind if I woke him? I'd like to hear him sing."

"Leave Tommy alone," said Mrs. Miller, anxiously. "Don't you dare wake him."

"Certainly," said Miriam. "But I don't see why I can't hear him sing." And then, "Have you anything to eat? I'm starving! Even milk and a jam sandwich would be fine."

"Look," said Mrs. Miller, rising from the hassock. "look -- if I make some nice sandwiches will you be a good child and run along home? It's past midnight, I'm sure."

"It's snowing," reproached Miriam. "And cold and dark."

"Well, you shouldn't have come here to begin with," said Mrs. Miller, struggling to control her voice. "I can't help the weather. If you want anything to eat you'll have to promise to leave."

Miriam brushed a braid against her cheek. Her eyes were thoughtful, as if weighing the proposition. She turned toward the bird cage. "Very well," she said, "I promise."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 11, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" - "A Jug of Silver" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGStill in the short-story collection The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote. Next story is "A Jug of Silver".

This story reminds me of Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor. Except without the real sense of evil and foreboding. "Jug of Silver" takes place in a small town. A young boy has an after-school job at the drugstore which is owned by a supposed Egyptian (there are doubts as to his origins). Mr. Hamurabai keeps a jug full of silver coins in the drugstore - and at a certain point, he is going to hold a contest - where those in the town can guess how much money is in the jug. Whoever guesses correctly will win the entire jug, money and all. The people in the town really get into it, there's a competition heating up - everyone wants that jug. And in the middle of this, two strangers come to town. And they change everything. I'll excerpt the part where the strangers arrive.

I kinda wanted to excerpt the final paragraphs - because they're perfect, in my opinion, but that would give the ending away to anyone who hasn't read it!

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote - "A Jug of Silver".

At about this time Appleseed and sister made their first appearance.

He was a stranger in town. At least no one could recall ever having seen him before. He said he lived on a farm a mile past Indian Branches; told us his mother weighed ony seventy-four pounds and that he had an older brother who would play the fiddle at anybody's wedding for fifty cents. He claimed that Appleseed was the only name he had and that he was twelve years old. But his sister, Middy, said he was eight. His hair was straight and dark yellow. He had a tight, weather-tanned little face with anxious green eyes that had a very wise and knowing look. He was small and puny and high-strung; and he wore always the same outfit: a red sweater, blue denim britches and a pair of man-sized boots that went clop-clop with every step.

It was raining that first time he came into Valhalla; his hair was plastered round his head like a cap and his boots were caked with red mud from the country roads. Middy trailed behind as he swaggered like a cowboy up to the fountain where I was wiping some glasses.

"I hear you folks got a bottle fulla money you fixin' to give 'way," he said, looking me square in the eye. "Seein' as you-all are givin' it away, we'd be obliged iffen you'd give it to us. Name's Appleseed, and this here's my sister, Middy."

Middy was a sad, sad-looking kid. She was a good bit taller and older-looking than her brother: a regular bean pole. She had tow-colored hair that was chopped short, and a pale pitiful little face. She wore a faded cotton dress that came way up above her bony knees. There was something wrong with her teeth, and she tried to conceal this by keeping her lips primly pursed like an old lady.

"Sorry," I said, "but you'll have to talk with Mr. Marshall."

So sure enough he did. I could hear my uncle explaining what he would have to do to win the jug. Appleseed listened attentively, nodding now and then. Presently he came back and stood in front of the jug and, touching it lightly with his hand, said, "Ain't it a pretty thing, Middy?"

Middy said, "Is they gonna give it to us?"

"Naw. What you gotta do, you gotta guess how much money's inside there. And you gotta buy two bits' worth so's even to get a chance."

"Huh, we ain't got no two bits. Where you 'spec we gonna get us two bits?"

Appleseed frowned, and rubbed his chin. "That'll be the easy part, just leave it to me. The only worrisome thing is: I can't just take a chance and guess ... I gotta know."

Well, a few days later they showed up again. Appleseed perched on a stool at the fountain and boldly asked for two glasses of wter, one for him and one for Middy. It was on this occasion that he gave out the information about his family: "...and there's Papa Daddy, that's my mama's papa, who's a Cajun, an' on accounta that he don't speak English good. My brother, the one who plays the fiddle, he's been in jail three times ... It's on accounta him we had to pick up and leave Louisiana. He cut a fella bad in a razor fight over a woman ten years older'n him. She had yellow hair."

Middy, lingering in the background, said nervously, "You oughtn't to be tellin' our personal private fam'ly business thataway, Appleseed."

"Hush now, Middy," he said, and she hushed. "She's a good little gal," he added, turning to pat her head, "but you can't let her get away with much. You go look at the picture books, honey, and stop frettin' with your teeth. Appleseed here's got some figurin' to do."

This figuring meant staring hard at the jug, as if his eyes were trying to eat it up. With his chin cupped in his hand, he studied it for a long period, not batting his eyelids once. "A lady in Louisiana told me I could see things other folks couldn't see 'cause I was born with a caul on my head."

"It's a cinch you aren't going to see how much there is," I told him. "Why don't you just let a number pop into your head, and maybe that'll be the right one."

"Uh, uh," he said, "too darn risky. Me, I can't take no sucha chance. Now, the way I got it figured, there ain't but one sure-fire thing and that's to count every nickel and dime."

"Count!"

"Count what?" asled Hamurabi, who had just moseyed inside and settling himself at the fountain.

"This kid says he's going to count how much is in the jug," I explained.

Hamurabi looked at Appleseed with interest. "How do you plan to do that, son?"

"Oh, by countin'," said Appleseed matter-of-factly.

Hamurabi laughed. "You better have X-ray eyes, son, that's all I can say."

"Oh, no. All you gotta do is be born with a caul on your head. A lady in Louisiana told me so. She was a witch; she loved me and when my ma wouldn't give me to her she put a hex on her and now my ma don't weigh but seventy-four pounds."

"Ve-ry in-ter-esting," was Hamurabi's comment as he gave Appleseed a queer glance.

Middy sauntered up, clutching a copy of Screen Secrets. She pointed out a certain photo to Appleseed and said, "Ain't she the nicest-lookin' lady? Now you see, Appleseed, you see how pretty her teeth are? Not a one outa joint."

"Well, don't you fret none," he said.

After they left Hamurabi ordered a bottle of orange Nehi and drank it slowly, while smoking a cigarette. "Do you think maybe that kid's o.k. upstairs?" he asked presently in a puzzled voice.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

July 10, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" - "Shut a Final Door" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGStill in the short-story collection The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote. Next story is "Shut a Final Door". The strangest thing to me about this story is that it was written in the 1940s - and yet appears to describe to a T the disaster awaiting Capote later in his life, when all of his friends abandoned him - due to the betrayal they felt after the publication of one chapter of his much-buzzed-about new book - which turned out to be a bitchy expose of the shallowness of all of his friends. Capote never recovered emotionally from the shattering experience of being dropped by everybody - it was like one minute he was throwing the black and white ball, the toast of the city - and the next? His phone stopped ringing completely. This story is about a man being cut off like that, and knowing, without anyone having to tell him, how much he is despised. Capote wrote this story as a young man, but it's oddly prophetic. You would totally think he had drawn on the Cote d'Azur debacle - but no, this came from his potent imagination. Perhaps he always knew how fragile his standing would ALWAYS be, with anyone. Who knows.

A guy named Walter hides out in a hot hotel room, running away from the catastrophe in New York - he has been a shit-disturber (the details elude me) - something to do with his boss, and the girl he is screwing - He's a gossip, and also relatively cynical. Sort of a monster if you want to know the truth. Slowly, a series of events lead to Walter being fired - and to him being "shunned" by his fabulous group of friends. It happens quite suddenly. One day, he is no longer welcome in his own life.

And its not just upsetting. It's scary. Because he is hated, and he knows it.

Here's an excerpt:

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote - "Shut a Final Door".

His apartment, a one-room walk-up near Gramercy Park, needed an airing, a cleaning, but Walter, after pouring a drink, said to hell with it and stretched out on the couch. What was the use? No matter what you did or how hard you tried, it all came finally to zero; everyday everywhere everyone was being cheated, and who was there to blame? It was strange, though; lying here sipping whiskey in the dusk-graying room he felt calmer than he had for God knows how long. It was like the time he'd failed algebra and felt so relieved, so free: failure was definite, a certainty, and there is always peace in certainties. Now he would leave New York, take a vacation trip; he had a few hundred dollars, enough to last until fall.

And, wondering where he should go, he all at once saw, as if a film had commenced running in his head, silk caps, cherry-colored and lemon, and little, wise-faced men wearing exquisite polka-dot shirts. Closing his eyes, he was suddenlyl five years old, and it was delicious remembering the cheers, the hot dogs, his father's big pair of binoculars. Saratoga! Shadows masked his face in the sinking light. He turned on a lamp, fixed another drunk, put a rumba record on the phonograph, and began to dance, the soles of his shoes whispering on the carpet: he'd often thought that with a little training he could've been a professional.

Just as the music ended, the telephone rang. He simply stood there, afraid somehow to answer, and the lamplight, the furniture, everything in the room went quite dead. When at last he thought it had stopped, it commenced again; louder, it seemed, and more insistent. He tripped over a footstool, piked up the receiver, dropped and recovered it, said: "Yes?"

Long0distance, a call from some town in Pennsylvania, the name of which he didn't catch. Following a series of spasmic rattlings, a voice, dry and sexless and altogether unlike any he'd ever heard before, came through: "Hello, Walter."

"Who is this?"

No answer from the other end, only a sound of strong orderly breathing; the connection was so good it seemed as though whoever it was was standing beside him with lips pressed against his ear. "I don't like jokes. Who is this?"

"Oh, you know me, Walter. You've known me a long time." A click, and nothing.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

July 9, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" - "Children on Their Birthdays" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGStill in the short-story collection The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote. Next story is "Children on Their Birthdays". I remember having to read this in 7th or 8th grade. It's the story of a group of kids in a little Southern town, written in the first person. A new girl comes to town - a kind of fabulous bragging little creature, who calls herself Miss Bobbit. She is 10 years old, and she is going to be a Hollywood star. Just ask her, she'll tell you.

I love the voice of this story. Truman's great. Here's the opening (great opening)

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote: "Children on Their Birthdays".

Yesterday afternoon the six-o'clock bus ran over Miss Bobbit. I'm not sure what there is to be said about it; after all, she was only ten years old, still I know no one of us in this town will forget her. For one thing, nothing she ever did was ordinary, not from the first time that we saw her, and that was a year ago. Miss Bobbit and her mother, they arrived on that same six-o'clock bus, the one that comes through from Mobile. It happened to be my cousin Billy Bob's birthday, and so most of the children in town were here at our house. We were sprawled on the front porch having tutti-frutti and devil cake when the bus stormed around Deadman's Curve. It was the summer that never rained; rusted dryness coated everything; sometimes when a car passed on the road, raised dust would hang in the still air an hour or more. Aunt El said if they didn't pave the highway soon she was going to move down to the seacoast; but she'd said that for such a long time. Anyway, we were sitting on the porch, tutti-fruitti melting on our plates, when suddenly, just as we were wishing that something would happen, something did; for out of the red road dust appeared Miss Bobbit. A wiry little girl in a starched, lemon-colored party dress, she sassed along with a grownup mince, one hand on her hhip, the other supporting a spinsterish umbrella. Her mother, lugging two cardboard valises and a wind-up victrola, trailed in the background. She was a gaunt shaggy woman with silent eyes and a hungry smile.

All the children on the porch had grown so still that when a cone of wasps started humming the girls did not set up their usual holler. Their attention was too fixed upon the approach of Miss Bobbit and her mother, who had by now reached the gate. "Begging your pardon," called Miss Bobbit in a voice that was at once silky and childlike, like a pretty piece of ribbon, and immaculately exact, like a movie-star or a school-marm, "but might we speak with the grownup persons of the house?" This, of course, meant Aunt El; and, at least to some degree, myself. But Billy Bob and all the other boys, no one of whom was over fourteen, followed down to the gate after us. From their faces you would have thought they'd never seen a girl before. Certainly not like Miss Bobbit. As Aunt El said, whoever heard tell of a child wearing make-up? Tangee gave her lips an orange glow, her hair, rather like a costume wig, was a mass of rosy curls, and her eyes had a knowing penciled tilt; even so, she had a skinny dignity, she was a lady, and, what is more, she looked you in the eye with manlike directness. "I'm Miss Lily Jane Bobbit, Miss Bobbit from Memphis, Tennessee," she said solemnly. The boys looked down at their toes, and, on the porch, Cora McCall, who Billy Bob was ourting at the time, led the girls into a fanfare of giggles. "Country children," said Miss Bobbit with an understanding smile, and gave her parasol a saucy whirl. "My mother," and this homely woman allowed an abrupt nod to acknowledge herself, "my mother and I have taken rooms here. Would you be so kind as to point out the house? It belongs to a Mrs. Sawyer." Why, sure, said Aunt El, that's Mrs. Sawyer's, right there across the street. The only boarding house around here, it is an old tall dark place with about two dozen lightning rods scattered on the roof: Mrs. Sawyer is scared to death in a thunderstorm.

Coloring like an apple, Billy Bob said, please, maam, it being such a hot day and all, wouldn't they rest a spell and have some tutti-frutti? and Aunt El said yes, by all means, but Miss Bobbit shook her head. "Very fattening, tutti-frutti; but merci you kindly," and they started across the road, the mother half-dragging her parcels in the dust. Then, and with an earnest expression, Miss Bobbit turned back; the sunflower yellow of her eyes darkened, and she rolled them slightly sideways, as if trying to remember a poem. "My mother has a disorder of the tongue, so it is necessary that I speak for her," she announced rapidly and heaved a sigh. "My mother is a very fine seamstress; she has made dresses for the society of many cities and towns, including Memphis and Tallahassee. No doubt you have noticed and admired the dress I am wearing. Every stitch of it was handsewn by my mother. My mother can copy any pattern, and just recently she won a twenty-five-dollar prize from the Ladies' Home Journal. My mother can also crochet, knit and embroider. If you want any kind of sewing done, please come to my mother. Please advise your friends and family. Thank you." And then, with a rustle an a swish, she was gone.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 8, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" - "Master Misery" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGStill in the short-story collection The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote. Next story in the collection is a haunting beautifully written piece called "Master Misery". There are elements of Breakfast at Tiffany's here - young girl in New York, navigating around. Many of his short stories take place in the South, Truman's main source of inspiration - his childhood home. But New York has its own energy source for Truman, its own poetry - and here he taps into it. I LOVE the writing here - great characters too. Sylvia, the ingenue, is in New York - living with her sister and her sister's husband. She ends up meeting a man who "buys dreams". Literally - you tell him a dream you had, and he will pay you.

There's a melancholic creepiness at work here ... what happens when you sell your dreams, etc. But the symbolism isn't too overt - Capote sticks with his story. Mr. Revercomb buys your dreams. Sylvia sells one. Then she sells two. And then things start to change for her.

I particularly like the opening of this story, so I'll excerpt that.

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night - by Truman Capote - "Master Misery"

Her high heels, clacking across the marble foyer, made her think of ice cubs rattling in a glass, and the flowers, those autumn crysanthemums in the urn at the entrance, if touched they would shatter, splinter, she was sure, into frozen dust; yet the house was warm, even somewhat overheated, but cold, and Sylvia shivered, but cold, like the snowy swollen wastes of the secretary's face: Miss Mozart, who dressed all in white, as though she were a nurse. Perhaps she really was; that, of course, could be the answer. Mr. Revercomb, you are mad, and this is your nurse; she thought about it for a moment: well, no. And now the butler brought her scarf. His beauty touched her: slender, so gentle, a Negro with freckled skin and reddish, unreflecting eyes. As he opened the door, Miss Mozart appeared, her starched uniform rustling drylly in the hall. "We hope you will return," she said, and handed Sylvia a sealed envelope. "Mrs. Revercomb was most particularly pleased."

Outside, dusk was falling like blue flakes, and Sylvia walked crosstown along the November streets until she reached the lonely upper reaches of Fifth Avenue. It occurred to her then that she might walk home through the park: an act of defiance almost, for Henry and Estelle, always insistent upon their city wisdom, had said over and over again, you have no idea how dangerous it is, walking in the park after dark; look what happened to Myrtle Calisher. This isn't Easton, honey. That was the other thing they said. And said. God, she was sick of it. Still, and aside from a few of the other typists at SnugFare, an underwear company for which she worked, who else in New York did she know? Oh, it would be all right if only she did not have to live with them, if she could afford somewhere a small room of her own: but there in that chintz-cramped apartment she sometimes felt she would choke them both. And why did she come to New York? For whatever reason, and it was indeed becoming vague, a principal cause of leaving Easton had been to rid herself of Henry and Estelle; or rather, their counterparts, though in point of fact Estelle was actually from Easton, a town north of Cincinnati. She and Syvia had grown up together. The real trouble with Henry and Estelle was that they were so excruciatingly married. Nambypamby, bootsy-totsy, and everything had a name: the telephone was Tinkling Tillie, the sofa, Our Nellie, the bed, Big Bear; yes, and what about those His-Her towels, those He-She pillows? Enough to drive you loony. "Loony!" she said aloud, the quiet park erasing her voice. It was lovely now, and she was right to have walked here, with wind moving through the leaves, and globe lamps, freshly aglow, kindling the chalk drawings of children, pink birds, blue arrows, green hearts. But suddenly, like a pair of obscene words, there appeared on the path two boys: pimple-faced, grinning, they loomed in the dusk like menacing flames, and Sylvia, passing them felt a burning all through her, quite as though she'd brushed fire. They turned and followed her past a deserted playground, one of them bump-bumping a stick along an iron fence, the other whistling: these sounds accumulated around her like that gathering roar of an oncoming engine, and when one of the boys, with a laugh, called, "Hey, whatsa hurry?" her mouth twisted for breath. Don't, she thought, thinking to throw down her purse and run. At that moment, a man walking a dog came up a sidepath, and she followed at his heels to the exit. Wouldn't they feel gratified, Henry and Estelle, wouldn't they we-told-you-so if she were to tell them? and, what is more, Estelle would write it home and the next thing you knew it would be all over Easton that she'd been raped in Central Park. She spent the rest of the way home despising New York: anonymity, in virtuous terror; and the squeaking drainpipe, all-night light, ceaseless footfall, subway corridor, numbered door (3C).

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

July 5, 2007

The Books: "The Grass Harp" - "The Grass Harp" (Truman Capote)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

It's now time (sadly) to say goodbye to A.S. Byatt. It's been so fun for me! Next author on Ye Olde Adult Fiction Shelf is Truman Capote, another all-time favorite of mine. And Mitchell - get ready for the heart-crack!! Today I am excerpting from his novella The Grass Harp - which is one of his most beautiful elegiac pieces of writing. It almost hurts - this is Capote at his very best. How he writes without tipping over into overt sentimentality I will never know - but his attitude here is primarily nostalgic, there's a keening sense of loss over everything - but his focus seems to be on the sweetness, the painful sweetness of that time. He's so good at it. This is a WONDERFUL story. It feels semi-autobiographical, and knowing a bit about his upbringing - and about his beloved cousin (the one he elegized so beautifully in A Christmas Memory.)

180px-GrassHarp1.JPGThe book is a paperback, falling apart - it's called The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night.

The Grass Harp tells the story of a group of people - in a small Southern town - all unconnected to one another - who, for one reason or another, all end up hiding out from society in a huge tree. They will not come down, even when the Sheriff demands that they do. They are misfits - spinsters - there's a Judge (wonderful character) - and all of them have either a secret, or a struggle - they either can't deal with society, or they can - and they hate it. It's been a long time since I've read this story so many of the details are lost, but I do remember the feeling of it vividly.

The story is narrated by a little boy, who lives with his two spinster aunts - his main friend being his aunt Dolly, a sort of Laura in Glass Menagerie type, except much older.

I don't know - with a story like this, it has to be all about the writing. Capote, when he's on, is the best there is. It's a certain TYPE of writing, which is why In Cold Blood was such a shocker, in so many ways. Nothing Capote had yet done prepared anyone for what he accomplished in that book.

Here's an excerpt. To me, this writing just tastes good!! Dolly, Catherine and the narrator haven't gone up into the tree yet - this is just the setup of their relationship.

Excerpt from The Grass Harp and a Tree of Night, by Truman Capote - "The Grass Harp"

On winter afternoons, as soon as I came in from school, Catherine hustled open a jar of preserves, while Dolly put a foot-high pot of coffee on the stove and pushed a pan of biscuits into the oven; and the oven, opening, would let out a hot vanilla fragrance, for Dolly, who lived off sweet foots, was always baking a pound cake, raisin bread, some kind of cookie or fudge: never would touch a vegetable, and the only meat she liked was the chicken brain, a pea-sized thing gone before you've tasted it. What with a woodstove and an open fireplace, the kitchen was warm as a cow's tongue. The nearest winter came was to frost the windows with its zero blue breath. If some wizard would like to make ame a present, let him give me a bottle filled with the voices of that kitchen, the ha ha ha and fire whispering, a bottle brimming with its buttery sugary bakery smells - though Catherine smelled like a sow in the spring. It looked more like a cozy parlor than a kitchen; there was a hook rug on the floor, rocking chairs; ranged along the walls were pictures of kittens, an enthusiasm of Dolly's; there was a geranium plant that bloomed, then bloomed again all year round, and Catherine's goldfish, in a bowl on the oilcloth-covered table, fanned their tails through the portals of the coral castle. Sometimes we worked jigsaw puzzles, dividing the pieces among us, and Catherine would hide pieces if she thought you were going to finish your part of the puzzle before she finished hers. Or they would help me with my homework; that was a mess. About all natural things Dolly was sophisticated; she had the subterranean intelligence of a bee that knows where to find the sweetest flower: she could tell you of a storm a day in advance, predict the fruit of the fig tree, lead you to mushrooms and wild honey, a hidden nest of guinea hen eggs. She looked around her, and felt what she saw. But about homework Dolly was as ignorant as Catherine. "America must have been called America before Columbus came. It stands to reason. Otherwise, how would he have known it was America?" And Catherine said, "That's correct. America is an old Indian word." Of the two, Catherine was the worst: she insisted on her infallibility, and if you did not write down exactly what she said, she got jumpy and spilled the coffee or something. But I never listened to her again after what she said about Lincoln: that he was part Negro and part Indian and only a speck white. Even I knew this was not true. But I was under special obligation to Catherine: if it had not been for her who knows whether I would have grown to ordinary human size? At fourteen I was not much bigger than Biddy Skinner, and people told how he'd had offers from a circus. Catherine said don't worry yourself honey, all you need is a little stretching. She pulled at my arms, legs, tugged at my head as though it were an apple latched to an unyielding bough. But it's the truth that within two years she'd stretched me from four feet nine to five feet seven, and I can prove it by the breadknife knotches on the pantry door, for even now when so much has gone, when there is only wind in the stove and winter in the kitchen, those growing-up scars are still there, a testimony.

Despite the generally beneficial effect Dolly's medicine appeared to have on those who sent for it, letters onoce in a while came saying Dear Miss Talbo we won't be needing any more dropsy cure on account of poor Cousin Belle (or whoever) passed away last week bless her soul. Then the kitchen was a mournful place; with folded hands and nodding heads my two friends bleakly recalled the circumstances of the case, and Well, Catherine would say, we did the best we could Dollyheart, but the good Lord had other notions. Verena, too, could make the kitchen sad, as she was always introducing a new rule or enforcing an old one: do, don't, stop, start: it was as though we were clocks she kept an eye on to see that our time jibed with her own, and woe if we were ten minutes fast, an hour slow: Verena went off like a cuckoo. That One! said Catherine, and Dolly would go hush now! hush now! as though to quiet not Catherine but a mutinous inner whispering. Verena in her heart wanted, I think, to come into the kitchen and be a part of it; but she was too like a lone man in a house full of women and children, and the only way she could make contact with us was through assertive outbursts: Dolly, get rid of that kitten, you want to aggravate my asthma? who left the water running in the bathroom? which one of you broke my umbrella? Her ugly moods sifted through the house like a sour yellow mist, That One. Hush now, hush.

Once a week, Saturdays mostly, we went to River Woods. For thoese trips, which lasted the whole day, Catherine fried a chicken and deviled a dozen eggs, and Dolly took along a chocolate layer cake and a supply of divinity fudge. Thus armed, and carrying three empty grain sacks, we walked out the church road past the cemetery and through the field of Indian grass. Just entering the woods there was a double-trunked China tree, really two trees, but their branches were so embraced that you could step from one into the other; in fact, they were bridged by a tree-house: spacious, sturdy, a model of a tree-house, it was like a raft floating in the sea of leaves. The boys who built it, provided they are still alive, must by now be very old men; certainly the tree-house was fifteen or twenty years old when Dolly first found it and that was a quarter of a century before she showed it to me. To reach it was easy as climbing stairs; there were footholds of gnarled bark and tough vines to grip; even Catherine, who was heavy around the hips and complained of rheumatism, had no trouble. But Catherine felt no love for the tree-house; she did not know, as Dolly knew and made me know, that it was a ship, that to sit up there was to sail along the cloudy coastline of every dream. Mark my word, said Catherine, them boards are too old, them nails are slippery as worms, gonny crack in two, gonna fall and bust our heads don't I know it.

Storing our provisions in the tree-house, we separated into the woods, each carrying a grain sack to be filled with herbs, leaves, strange roots. No one, not even Catherine, knew altogether what went into the medicine, for it was a secret Dolly kept to herself, and we were never allowed to look at the gatherings in her own sack: she held tight to it, as though inside she had captive a blue-haired child, a bewitched prince. That was her story: "Once, back yonder when we were children (Verena still with her babyteeth and Catherine no higher than a fence post) there were gipsies thick as birds in a blackberry patch - not like now, when maybe you see a few straggling through each year. They came with spring: sudden, like the dogwood pink, there they were - up and down the road and in the woods around. But our men hated the sight of them, and daddy, that was your great-uncle Uriah, said he would shoot any he caught on our place. And so I never told when I saw the gipsies taking water from the creek or stealing old winter pecans off the ground. Then one evening, it was April and falling rain, I went out to the cowshed where Fairybell had a new little calf; and there in the cowshed where three gipsy women, two of them old and one of them young, and the young one was lying naked and twisting on the cornshucks. When they saw that I was not afraid, that I was not going to run and tell, one of the old women asked would I bring a light. So I went to the house for a candle, and when I came back the woman who had sent me was holding a red hollering baby upside down by its feet, and the other woman was milking Fairybell. I helped them wash the baby in the warm milk and wrap it in a scarf. Then one of the old women took my hand and said: Now I am going to give you a gift by teaching you a rhyme. It was a rhyme about evergreen bark, dragon-fly fern - and all the other things we come here in the woods to find: Boil till dark and pure if you want a dropsy cure. In the morning they were gone; I looked for them in the fields and on the road; there was nothing left of them but the rhyme in my head."

Calling to each other, hooting like owls loose in the daytime, we worked all morning in opposite parts of the wood. Towards afternoon, our sacks fat witih skinned bark, tender, torn roots, we climbed back into the green web of the China tree and spread the food. There was good creek water in a mason jar, or if the weather was cold a thermos of hot coffee, and we wadded leaves to wipe our chicken-stained, fudge-sticky fingers. Afterwards, telling fortunes with flowers, speaking of sleepy things, it was as though we floated through the afternoon on the raft in the tree; we belonged there, as the sun-silvered leaves belonged, the dwelling whipporwills.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack

July 3, 2007

The Books: "Little Black Book of Stories" - 'The Pink Ribbon' (A.S. Byatt)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

book%2Bof%2Bstories-1.jpgThe next book on the shelf is the last short story collection by AS Byatt, and this one is called Little Black Book of Stories. This is an excerpt from "The Pink Ribbon", the last story in the collection. Sad, sad story. I almost didn't want to read it, due to the subject matter. James Ennis is an old man. He has been married to Madeleine (Mado) for 50 years or something like that - their courtship began in the middle of the blitz in WWII - and she is now completely lost to Alzheimer's. James takes care of her himself, with the help of a Mrs. Bright who stops by to give his wife a bath, or whatever. James is going through the motions. He can't LOOK at what has happened - at all - it's too horrible. You get the sense he loved his wife. They were good friends. And now he sits there, brushing her long hair, and trying to keep her from hurting herself.

One night - a knock comes on the door. Mado is asleep - James opens the door. A beautiful young woman in a red silk dress stands there, and invites herself in. She calls herself "Dido" - James has no idea who she is - but she seems to know a hell of a lot about his life. Particularly about his wife. She'll suddenly say something deep and penetrating about his wife's character ("She was always like that, wasn't she ...") - Dido says that she is an orphan and she has cast her own family off. She comes a couple of different times - and every time she goes, she leaves something behind - something James can see the next morning (the sash to her dress, whatever) and know that she had actually been there, he hadn't dreamed her. But who is she?

So begins a long series of late nights - of talk - of reliving the marriage - with a woman who has to be in her early 20s ... how does she know, intimately, Mado's side of things? She'll say something like, "She was always a great liar ..." And James will reply, "How do you know?"

Anyway, it's a lovely sad elegiac story - a beautiful way to end the collection.

The following excerpt is why Byatt - even with her intellectualism, her interest in the cerebral - is considered also to be a great erotic writer. She's one of my favorites in that regard. Actually, it makes me think that it's BECAUSE of her cerebral bent, her intellectualism - that she is such a poignant erotic writer.

Excerpt from Little Black Book of Stories - "The Pink Ribbon"

Afterwards, many things made him doubt that she had really been there at all. Starting with the name she had given herself, Dido, out of his reading. Though equally, she could have picked up his book whilst he was seeing to Mado, and chosen the name of the passionate queen more or less at random. She had known that Po was Eridanus, which he had forgotten, he thought, registering fear at a known fact lost, as he always did. She had some classical knowledge, unexpectedly. And why not, why should a beautiful woman in red silk not know some classical things, names of rivers, and so on? She had known that Mado hated pink, which she could not have known, which Mrs. Bright did not know, which he kept to himself. He must have invented, or at least misremembered, that part of the conversation. Maybe she existed as little - or as much - as Sasha, the imaginary blood-sister. He felt a weird sense of loss, with her departure, as though she had brought life into the room - pursued by death and the dark - and had taken it away again. What he felt for her was not sexual desire. He saw the old man he was from the outside, with what he thought was clarity. His creased face and his arthritic fingers and his cobbled teeth and his no doubt graveyard breath had nothing to do with anything so alive and lovely. What he felt was more primitive, pleasure in quickness. She was the quick, and he was the dead. She would never come again.

In bed that night he was visited - as he increasingly was - by a memory so vivid that for a time it seemed as though it was real and here and now. This happened more and more often as he slipped and lost his footing on the slopes between sleep and waking. It was as though only a membrane separated him from the life of the past, as only a caul had separated him from the open air at the moment of birth. Mostly he was a boy again, wandering amongst the intense horse-smell and daisy-bright fields of his childhood, paddling in trout-streams, hearing his parents discuss him in lowered voices, or riding donkeys on wide wet sands. But tonight he relived his first night with Madeleine.

They were students and virgins; he had half-feared and half-hoped that she might not be, for he wanted to be the first and he wanted it not to be a fiasco, or a worse kind of failure. He hadn't asked her about it until they were undressing together in the hotel room he had taken. She turned to laugh at him through the black hair she was unpinning, catching exactly both his anxieties.

"No, there's no one else, and yes, you will have to work it all out from scratch, but since human beings always have worked it out, we'll probably manage. We've done pretty well up to now," she said, glancing under her lashes, recalling increasingly complicated and tantalising fumbles in cars, in college rooms, in the river near the roots of willows.

She had always demonstrated a sturdy, even shocking, absence of the normal feminine reticences, or modesty, or even anxiety. She loved her own body, and he worshipped it.

They went at it, she said later, tooth and claw, feather and velvet, blood and honey. This night he relieved intimacies he had very slowly forgotten through years of war, and other snatched moments of blissful violence, and then the effacement of habit. He remembered feeling, and then thinking, no one else has ever known what this is really like, no one else can ever have got this right, or the human race would be different. And when he said so to her, she laughed her sharp laugh, and said he was presumptuous - I told you, James, everyone does it or almost - and then she broke down and kissed him all over his body, and her eyes were hot with tears as they moved like questing insects across his belly, and her muffled voice said, don't believe me, I believe you, no one else ever ...

And tonight he didn't know - he kept rising towards waking like a trout in a river and submerging again - whether he was a soul in bliss, or somehow caught in the toils of torment. His hands were nervy and agile and they were lumpen and groping. The woman rode him, curved in delight, and lay simultaneously like putty across him.

And his eyes which had watered but never wept, were full of tears.

Posted by sheila Permalink

July 2, 2007

The Books: "Little Black Book of Stories" - 'Raw Material' (A.S. Byatt)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

book%2Bof%2Bstories-1.jpgThe next book on the shelf is the last short story collection by AS Byatt, and this one is called Little Black Book of Stories. This is an excerpt from "Raw Material". A creative writing teacher in a small town - a failed writer but a good teacher - discovers something in one of his students essays - something that makes him want to write again. It's an unexpected student too - an 80 year old spinster (his words), who never speaks in class, who writes these long pieces about how they used to do the wash, how they used to black the stoves - and, because this is AS Byatt we're talking about - we get to read the student's essays. A story within a story. The title takes on a couple layers of meaning - because, as we read the student's essays - we are reading, unedited, the "raw material". The teacher, Jack, is a great little character study - in a couple of broad brush strokes AS Byatt creates an entire world, a life, a history. She's so good at that. And another thing - she never has contempt for her characters. Even if they are ridiculous or self-aggrandizing or whatever. Think of Leonora, the blowsy lesbian feminist literary critic in Possession - who is, to some degree, a stereotype of the clumsy well-meaning boorish TMI American. She's supposed to be a caricature - but Byatt doesnt' write about her with contempt. Jack could be someone we just laugh or sneer at ... but thank God, we don't. He is a failure. But he sees something in this woman's writing, something raw - somethiing good - and the story is about that ephemeral fleeting feeling of wanting to make art, needing to make art. Oh, and her observations about what the other students in the class write - even though we don't get to read those - are hysterical, and maddening. You know, writing as therapy, or writing as hiding - wanting to be congratulated, or admired, whatever. The 80 year old student doesn't write for any of those reasons. She writes to show. Here is the opening of the story. See how she create Jack??

And believe it or not - the story has a terrifying horrible ending ( hard to believe, I know). But I had to go back and reread the whole story, looking for clues, things I might have missed.

Excerpt from Little Black Book of Stories. - "Raw Material".

He always told them the same thing, to begin with "Try to avoid falseness and strain. Write what you really know about. Make it new. Don't invent melodrama for the sake of it. Don't try to run, let alone fly, before you can walk with ease." Every year, he glared amiably at them. Every year they wrote melodrama. They clearly needed to write melodrama. He had given up tellilng them that Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy. In ways both sublime and ridiculous it clearly was, precisely, that.

The class had been going for fifteen years. It had moved from a schoolroom to a disused Victorian church, made over as an Arts and Leisure Centre. The village was called Sufferacre, which was thought to be a corruption of sulfuris aquae. It was a failed Derbyshire spa. It was his home town. In the 1960s he had written a successfully angry, iconoclastic and shocking novel called Bad Boy. He had left for London and fame, and returned quietly, ten years later. He lived in a caravan in somebody's paddock. He traveled widely, on a motor bike, teaching Creative Writing in pubs, schoolrooms and arts centres. His name was Jack Smollett. He was a big, shuffling, smiling, red-faced man, with longish blond hair, who wore cable-kknit sweaters in oily colours, and bright scarlet neckerchiefs. Women liked him, as they liked enthusiastic Labrador dogs. They felt, almost all - and his classes were predominantly female - more desire to cook apple pies and Cornish pasties for him, than to make violent love to him. They believed he didn't eat sensibly. (They were right.) Now and then, someone in one of his classes would point out, as he exhorted them to stick to what they knew, that they themselves were what he "really knew". Will you write about us, Jack? No, he always said, that would be a betrayal of confidence. You should always respect other people's privacy. Creative writing teachers had something in common with doctors, even if - yet again - creative writing wasn't therapy.

In fact, he had tried unsuccessfully to sell two different stories based on the confessions (or inventions) of his class. They offered themselves to him like raw oysters on pristine plates. They told him horrorand bathos, day-dreams, vituperation and vengeance. They couldn't write, their inventions were crude, and he couldn't find a way to perform the necessary operations to spin the muddy straw into silk, or turn the raw bleeding chunks into a savoury dish. So he kept faith with them, not entirelly voluntarily. He did care about writing. He cared about writing more than anything, sex, food, beer, fresh air, even warmth. He wrote and rewrote perpetually, in his caravan. He was rewriting his fifth novel. Bad Boy, his first, had been written in a rush just out of the sixth form, and snapped up by the first publisher he'd sent it to. It was what he had expected. (Well, it was oone of two scenarios that played in his young brain, immediate recognition, painful, dedicated struggle. When success appeared it appeared blindingly clear that it had always been the only possible outcome.) So he didn't go to university, or learn a trade. He was, as he knew he was, a Writer. His second novel, Smile and Smile, had sole 600 copies, and was remaindered. His third and his fourth - frequently rewritten - lay in brown paper, stamped and restamped, in a tin chest in the caravan. He didn't have an agent.


Classes ran from September to March. In the summer he worked in literary festivals, or holiday camps on sunny islands. He was pleased to see the classes again in September. He still thought of himself as wild and unattached, but he was a creature of habit. He liked things to happen at precise, recurring times, in precise, recurring ways. More than half of most of his classes were old faithfuls who came back year after year. Each class had a nucleus of about ten. At the beginning of the year this was often doubled by enthusiastic newcomers. By Christmas many of these would have dropped away, seduced by other courses, or intimidated by the regulars, or overcome by domestic drama or personal lassitude. St. Antony's Leisure Centre was gloomy because of its high roof, and draughty because of its ancient doors and windows. The class themselves had brought oil heaters, and a circle of standard lamps with imitation stained-glass covers. The old churchy chairs were pushed into a circle under these pleasant lights.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 28, 2007

The Books: "Little Black Book of Stories" - 'The Thing in the Forest' (A.S. Byatt)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

book%2Bof%2Bstories-1.jpgThe next book on the shelf is the last short story collection by AS Byatt, and this one is called Little Black Book of Stories (which is such a good-looking book - I LOVE the design of it. Kudos!). There are five stories in this collection - and the first one is called "The Thing in the Forest". This story is creeeeepy. I love, too, when AS Byatt writes about the WWII generation - not the adults - but the kids, the ones who were little during the war in England. What did it mean - to not be fully conscious of world events, at least not the political ins and outs - but to have your lilfe be so impacted? And that generation stands apart, in terms of its thrift, its practicality - etc. Byatt comes back to this time and time again. That era is closer to the Victorian era, in terms of sensibility, than anything closer to the modern era. "The Thing in the Forest" is all about that.

It's written like a fairy tale, which adds to the creep factor - because it's a fairy tale during the Blitz. Penny and Primrose and two little English girls who are one of a huge group of kids evacuated to the country during the war (a la Lion Witch and Wardrobe). Penny and Primrose befriend each other on the train. The kids are sent to a massive drafty country estate - and are basically set free, to do what they please all day long, before they have to go to sleep in makeshift dormitories set up throughout the estate.

And one day Penny and Primrose take a walk in the forest. And while in the forest, they see a "thing". A terrifying huge slug-like creature - out of a nightmare - stinking of death and decay. By huge, I mean - fairy-tale huge. They hang back, and watch it slither by - destroying everything in its path. It doesn't swerve for trees in its way - it moves right through, so the tree slices it in half - and then the slug re-attaches itself afterwards. Penny and Primrose never speak about what they saw. And they never speak to each other again.

Until .... many years later - when they are both in their 40s or 50s - and they are taking a tour of that old country estate - which has now been turned into a WWII museum. And they happen to be there on the same day.

What was "the thing"? Was it real? They BOTH saw it. But there is something unspeakable about it. Do they feel marked by it? It's like the kids in Stephen King's It - they will be forever changed, and forever linked together, by the horror that they saw. How to live with it?

This is a dark fairy tale. Wonderful writing.

I'll excerpt from the beginning.

Excerpt from Little Black Book of Stories - "The Thing in the Forest"

The two ittle girls had not met before, and made friends on the train. They shared a square of chocolate, and took alternate bites at an apple. One gave the other the inside page of her Beano. Their names were Penny and Primrose. Penny was thin and dark and taller, possibly older, than Primrose, who was plump and blonde and curly. Primrose had bitten nails, and a velvet collar to her dressy green coat. Penny had a bloodless transparent paleness, a touch of blue in her fine lips. Neither of them knew where they were going, nor how long the journey might take. They did not even know why they were going, since neither of their mothers had quite known how to explain the danger to them. How do you say to your child, I am sending you away, because enemy bombs may fall out of the sky, because the streets of the city may burn like forest fires of brick and timber, but I myself am staying here, in what I believe may be daily danger of burning, burying alive, gas, and ultimately perhaps a grey army rolling in on tanks over the suburbs, or sailing its submarines up our river, all guns blazing? So the mothers (who did not resemble each other at all) behaved alike, and explained nothing, it was easier. Their daughters they knew were little girls, who would not be able to understand or imagine.

The girls discussed on the trin whether it was a sort of holiday or a sort of punishment, or a bit of both. Penny had read a book about Boy Scouts, but the children on the train did not appear to be Brownies or Wolf Cubs, only a mongrel battalion of the lost. Both little girls had the idea that these were all perhaps not very good children, possibly being sent away for that reason. They were pleased to be able to define each other as "nice". They would stick together, they agreed. Try to sit together, and things.


The train crawled sluggishly further and further away from the city and their homes. It was not a clean train - the upholstery of their carriage had the dank smell of unwashed trousers, and the gusts of hot steam rolling backwards past their windows were full of specks of flimsy ash, and sharp grip, and occasional fiery sparks that pricked face and fingers like hot needles if you opened the window. It was very noisy too, whenever it picked up a little speed. The engine gave great bellowing sighs, and the invisible wheels underneath clicked rhythmically and monotonously, tap-tap-tap-CRASH, tap-tap-tap-CRASH. The window-panes were both grimy and misted up. The train stopped frequently, and when it stopped, they used their gloves to wipe rounds, through which they peered out at flooded fields, furrowed hillsides and tiny stations whose names were carefully blacked out, whose platforms were empty of life.

The children did not know that the namelessness was meant to baffle or delude an invading army. They felt - they did not think it out, but somewhere inside them the idea sprouted - that the erasure was because of them, because they were not meant to know where they were going or, like Hansel and Gretel, to find the way back. They did not speak to each other of this anxiety, but began the kind of coversation children have about things they really disliked, things that upset, or disgusted, or frightened them. Semolina pudding with its grainy texture, mushy peas, fat on roast meat. Listening to the stairs and the window-sashes creaking in the dark or the wind. Having your head held roughly back over the basin to have your hair washed, with cold water running down inside your liberty bodice. Gangs in playgrounds. They felt the pressure of all the other alien children in all the other carriages as a potential gang. They shared another square of chocolate, and licked their fingers, and looked out at a great white goose flapping its wings beside an inky pond.

The sky grew dark grey and in the end the train halted. The children got out, and lined up in a crocodile, and were led to a mud-coloured bus. Penny and Primrose managed to get a seat together, although it was over the wheel, and both of them began to feel sick as the bus bumped along snaking country lanes, under whipping branches, dark leaves on dark wooden arms on a dark sky, with torn strips of thin cloud streaming across a full moon, visible occasionally between them.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 26, 2007

The Books: "The Matisse Stories" - 'The Chinese Lobster (A.S. Byatt)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

067976223X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgThe next book on the shelf is another short story collection by AS Byatt, and this one is called The Matisse Stories. This excerpt is from the last story in the collection "The Chinese Lobster". Byatt takes the gloves off here about art theory, academia, political correctness, social mores - and the problem with lack of context. Context is everything. How do you study Matisse without context? In this story - the Dean of Women's Studies has met up for dinner at a Chinese restaurant with a professor in her program - who has been accused of sexually assaulting a student. (The Dean has, in her possession, a horribly written - in terms of grammar and spelling - accusation from the student). There's no real plot here - the two people just sit and talk over their food, as a lobster meanders about in a big tank behind them with open staring mute eyes. Perry Diss, the professor, is outraged - not just that he has been accused, but that he has been accused by an ignorant politically correct anorexic women's studies nitwit, who hasn't even TRIED to understand the work of Matisse. All the student sees is the fleshy naked bodies, the voluptuous females - and she hates it. She thinks the work is misogynistic. Perry Diss thinks: what a waste of an education. To see everything politically. What a waste. Missing the point of life. The students aren't even able to SEE any more ... because of all the "theory" surrounding such education. How does one LOOK at Matisse? THAT is the question. Perry Diss has reached the end of his rope with this kind of nonsense. And he also happens to love Matisse. He knows the student is ignorant, but he also begins to realize that the student is the one with the power here. All it takes is to make the accusation, true or not. However, very important: Perry Diss is no saint, and Hillelblau has a point. Oh, and Perry Diss also says inappropriate things about the student - as you can see in the excerpt below. He could easily be misunderstood. Nothing is simple in Byatt's world, and those looking for nice little black and white representations of their own rigidity should surely look elsewhere. Byatt - as always - means to engage reality - not point a finger. She observes, and reports. I feel she does take sides, she's on Perry's side - on the side of art, pure, she is not neutral in the argument - yet she is also aware of the validity of the other side (all of Possession is like that). She concedes points all the time. That's what makes good writing. Oh - and I like this story too because it's funny. It's a serious matter - but she writes in this rollicking free way - most of it is conversation, and you can just hear both of the voices.

Anyway, really interesting story - a topic very dear to my heart. Byatt knows this shit inside and out.

Excerpt from The Matisse Stories. This excerpt is from the last story in the collection "The Chinese Lobster".

'I have had this rather unpleasant letter which I must talk to you about. It seemed to me important to discuss it informally and in an unofficial context, so to speak. I don't know if it will come as surprise to you.'

Perry Diss reads quickly, and empties his glass of Tiger beer, which is quickly replaced with another by the middle-aged Chinese man.

'Poor little bitch,' says Perry Diss. 'What a horrible state of mind to be in. Whoever gave her the idea that she had any artistic talent ought to be shot.'

Don't say bitch, Gerda Himmelblau tells him in her head, wincing.

'Do you remember the occasion she complains of?'

'Well, in a way I do, in a way. Her account isn't very recognisable. We did meet last week to discuss her complete lack of progress on his dissertation - she appears indeed to have regressed since she put in her proposal, which I am glad to say I was not responsible for accepting. She has forgotten several of the meagre facts she once knew, or appeared to know, about Matisse. I do not see how she can possibly be given a degree - she is ignorant and lazy and pigheadedly misdirected - and I felt it my duty to tell her so. In my experience, Dr Himmelblau, a ot of harm has been done by misguided kindness to lazy and ignorant students who have been cosseted and nurtured and never told they are not up to scratch.'

'That may well be the case. But she makes specific allegations - you went to her studio - '

'Oh yes. I went. I am not as brutal as I appear. I did try to give her the benefit of the doubt. That part of her account bears some resemblance to the truth - that is, to what I remember of those very disagreeable events. I did say something about the inarticulacy of painters and so on - you can't have worked in art schools as long as I have without knowing that some can use words and some can only use materials - it's interesting how you can't always predict which.

'Anyway, I went and looked at her so-called Work. The phraseology is cating. "So-called". A pantechnicon contemporary term of abuse.'

'And?'

'The work is horrible, Dr Himmelblau. It disgusts. It desecrates. Her studio - in which the poor creature also eats and sleeps - is papered with posters of Matisse's work. La Reve. La Nu rose. La Nu bleu. Grande Robe bleue. La Musique. L'Artiste et son modele. Zorba sur la terrasse. And they have all been smeared and defaced. With what looks like organic matter - blood, Dr Himmelblau, beef stew or faeces - I incline towards the latter since I cannot imagine good daube finding its way into that miserable tenement. Some of the daubings are deliberate reworkings of bodies or faces - changes of outlines - some are like thrown tomatoes - probably are thrown tomatoes - and eggs, yes - and some are great swastikas of shit. It is appalling. It is pathetic.'

'It is no doubt meant to disgust and desecrate,' states Dr Himmelblau, neutrally.

'And what does that matter? How can that excuse it?' roars Perry Diss, startling the younger Chinese woman, who is lighting the wax lamps under the plate warmer, so that she jumps back.

'In recent times,' says Dr Himmelblau, 'art has traditionally had an element of protest.'

'Traditional protest, hmph,' shouts Perry Diss, his neck reddening. 'Nobody minds protest, I've protested in my time, we all have, you aren't the real thing if you don't have a go at being shocking, protest is de rigeur, I know. But what I object to here, is the shoddiness, the laziness. It seems to me - forgive me, Dr Himmelblau - but this - this caca offends something I do hold sacred, a word that would make that little bitch snigger, no doubt, but sacred, yes - it seems to me, that if she could have produced worked copies of those - those masterpieces - those shining - never mind - if she could have done some work - understood the blues, and the pinks, and the whites, and the oranges, yes, and the blacks too - and if she could still have brought herself to feel she must - must savage them - then I would have had to feel some respect.'

'You have to be careful about the word masterpieces,' murmurs Dr Himmelblau.

'Oh, I know all that stuff, I know it well. But you have got to listen to me. It can have taken at the maximum half an hour - and there's no evidence anywhere in the silly girl's work that she's ever spent more than that actually looking at a Matisse - she has no accurate memory of one when we talk, none, she amalgamates them all in her mind into one monstrous female corpse bursting with male aggression - she can't see, can't you see? And for half an hour's shit-spreading we must give her a degree?'

'Matisse,' says Gerda Himmelblau, 'would sometimes make a mark, and consider, and put the canvas away for weeks or months until he knew where to put the next mark.'

'I know.'

'Well - the - the shit-spreading may have required the same consideration. As to location of daubs.'

'Don't be silly. I can see paintings, you know. I did look to see if there was any wit in where all this detritus was applied. Any visual wit, you know, I know it's meant to be funny. There wasn't. It was just slapped on. It was horrible.'

'It was meant to disturb you. It disturbed you.'

'Look - Dr Himmelblau - whose side are you on? I've read your Mantegna monograph. Mes compliments, it is a chef-d'oeuvre. Have you seen this stuff? Have you for that matter seen Peggi Nollett?'

'I am not on anyone's side, Professor Diss. I am the Dean of Women's Students, and I have received a formal complaint against you, about which I have to take formal action. And that could be, in the present climate, very disturbing for me, for the Department, for the University, and for yourself. I may be exceeding my strict duty in letting you know of this in this informal way. I am very anxious to know what you have to say in answer to her specific charge.

'And yes, I have seen Peggi Nollett. Frequently. And her work, on one occasion.'

'Well, then. If you have een her you will know that I can have made no such - no such advances as she describes. Her skin is like a potato and her body is like a decaying potato, in all that great bundle of smocks and vests and knitwear and penitential hangings. Have you seen her legs and arms, Dr Himmelblau? They are bandaged like mummies, they are all swollen with strapping and strings and then they are contained in nasty black greaves and gauntlets of plastic with buckles. You expect some awful yellow ooze to seep oout between the layers, ready to be smeared on La Joie de vivre. And her hair, I do not think her hair can have been washed for some years. It is like a carefully preserved old frying-pan, grease undisturbed by water. You cannot believe I could have brought myself to touch her, Dr Himmelblau?'

'It is difficult, certainly.'

'It is impossible. I may have told her that she would be better if she wore fewer layers - I may even, imprudently - thinking, you understand, of potatoes - have said something about letting the air get to her. But I assure you that was as far as it went. I was trying against my instincts to converse with her as a human being. The rest is her horrible fantasy. I hope you will believe me, Dr Himmelblau. You yourelf are about the only almost-witness I can call in my defense.'

'I do believe you,' says Gerda Himmelblau, with a little sigh.

'Then let that be the end of the matter,' says Perry Diss. 'Let us enjoy these delicious morsels and talk about something more agreeable than Peggi Nollett. These prawns are as good as I have ever had.'

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 25, 2007

The Books: "The Matisse Stories" - 'Art Work' (A.S. Byatt)

Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:

067976223X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgThe next book on the shelf is another short story collection by AS Byatt, and this one is called The Matisse Stories. "Art Work" is the second story in this collection - and it's a weird experience reading it. I felt it dragged in the beginning - it was a SURFACE, a highly detailed surface - and I kind of got lost in all of the descriptions of things, which sometimes went on for pages. But it worked on me in a subliminal way, because at the end - when the revelation comes - I literally gasped out loud. I am sure that Byatt, in all her talent, did this deliberately - it didn't quite work for me - but the story itself, taken as a whole, packs a huge punch. I could see this being a successful film. It has all the elements.

Debbie and Robin are a married couple and they have a couple of young kids. Debbie used to be an artist - her favorite thing to make was woodcuts ... but she gave that up (and it grieves her, haunts her - the art she used to make) in order to be practical and make money. She works for a women's magazine, writing copy for photo shoots about kitchen redecorating. She struggles to find the perfect word for the color of that linoleum, etc. There is something horrible in this for her, yet she does it anyway. Because of her husband - Robin. Who really IS an artist, and works all day long upstairs in his attic studio, tormented, weird, obsessive, paranoid. She sacrificed her work for his. Their life is insanely busy - and Robin is a difficult man - so keeping a housekeeper and nanny has not been easy. But Debbie finally found one who works - a Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown is the grease in the wheels - without her, the whole house of cards would come down. She is flexible, easygoing, and she understands the family dynamic. Debbie lives in terror that Mrs. Brown will one day quit - over some tirade of Robin's ... she cannot imagine what she would do without Mrs. Brown. It's almost like the servant is the head of the family. But Mrs. Brown is a humble unprepossessing individual - except for her clothes - which are colorful mismatched castoffs, so she always looks quite bizarre. A blaze of color, oranges and pinks and greens. Mrs. Brown ends up being extremely important to the story. GREAT character.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from The Matisse Stories. "Art Work"

Left to himself, Robin Dennison walks agitated up and down his studio. He is over forty. He thinks, I am over forty. He prevents himself, all the time now, from seeing his enterprise, his work, his life, as absurd. He is not suited to the artistic life, in most ways. By upbringing and temperament, he should have been a solicitor or an accountant, he should have worn a suit and fished for trout and played cricket. He has no great self-confidence, no braggadocio, no real or absolute disposition to the sort of self-centred isolation he practises. He does it out of a stubborn faithfulness to a vision he had, a long time ago now, a vision which has never expanded or diminished or taken its teeth out of him. He was given a set of gouache paints by an aunt when he was a boy, and painted a geranium, and then a fish-tank. He can still remember the illicit, it seemed to him, burst out of sensuous delight with which he saw the wet carmine trail of his first flick of the brush, the slow circling of the wet hairs in a cobalt pool, the dashes of yellow ochre and orange, as he conjured up, on matt white, wet and sinuous fish-tails and fins. He was not much good at anything else, which muted any familial conflict over his choice of future. With his brushes in his hand he could see, he told himself, through art school. Without them, he was grey fog in a world of grey fog. He painted small bright things in large expanses of grey and buff and beige. Everyone said, 'He's got something,' or more dubiously, 'He's got something.' Probably not enough, they qualified this, silently to themselves, but Robin heard them well enough, for all that.

He could talk to Debbie. Debbie knew about his vision of colour, he had told her, and she had listened. He talked to her agitatedly at night about Matisse, about the paradoxical way in which the pure sensuousness of Luxe, calme et volupte could be a religious experience of the nature of things. Not softness, he said to Debbie, power, calm power.

Debbie said yes, she understood, and they went to the South of France for a holiday, to be in the strong light, la-bas. This was a disaster. He tried putting great washes of strong colour on the canvas, a la Matisse, a la Van Gogh, and it came out watery and feeble and absurd, there was nothing he could do. His only successful picture of that time was a kind of red beetle or bug and a large shining green-black scarab and a sulphurous butterfly on a seat of pebbles, grey and pinkish and sandy and buff and white and terracotta, you can imagine the kind of thing, it is everywhere in all countries, a variegated expanse of muted pebbles. Extending to all the four corners of the world of the canvas, a stony desert, with a dead leaf or two, and some random straws, and the baleful insects. He sold that one to a gallery and had hopes, but heard no more, his career did not take off, and they never went back to the strong light, they take their holdiays in the Cotswolds.

Robin has ritualised his life dangerously, but this is not, as he thinks it is, entirely because of his precarious vocation. His father, a Borough Surveyor, behaved in much the same way, particularly with regard to his distinction between his own untouchable 'things' and other people's, especially the cleaning-lady's 'filth'. Mr. Dennison, Mr. Rodney Dennison, used to shout at and about the 'charwoman' if pipe-dottle was thrown away, or soap-fragments amalgamated, or scattered bills tidily gathered. He, like Robin with Mrs. Brown, used to feel a kind of panic of constriction, like the pain of sinus-fluid thickening in the skull-pockets, when threatened by tidy touches. He, like Robin, used to see Mrs. Briggs' progress like a snail-trail across his private spaces. Robin puts it all down to Art. He does not ask himself if his hatred of Mrs. Brown is a deflected resentment of his helplessness in the capable hands of his wife, breadwinner and life-manager. He knows it is not so: Debbie is beautiful and clean and represents order. Mrs. Brown is chaotic and wild to olok at and a secret smoker and represents - even while dispersing or re-distributing it - 'filth'.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 22, 2007

The Books: "The Matisse Stories" - 'Medusa's Ankles' (A.S. Byatt)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:

067976223X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgThe next book on the shelf is another short story collection by AS Byatt, and this one is called The Matisse Stories. There are only three stories in this collection - each one takes, as a jumping-off point, a sketch or a painting of Matisse. I guess you could say each story is a RIFF. It's not hidden, either - or symbolic, or thematic. The Matisse works are usually front and center, in each of the stories. In terms of her collections, this one is not my favorite. The writing is, of course, universally good - and the second story in particular really got to me - but I guess there's something about it that feels self-conscioius. Or - no, that's not the right word. It feels a bit thin. And that is one thing that almost never happens with Byatt - and it seems to happen here. Not the writing - the writing isn't thin ... but the collection itself.

The first story in the collection is called "Medusa's Ankles", and it's the best one in the collection. It ends with such a ka-BOOM - and I would bet that every woman who has ever gotten a terrible haircut would relate, and cheer the ending of this story. It's horrifying - and yet ... I have so wanted to take the actions that Susannah, our narrator, takes. What is it like ... when you cross that line? When you stop caring what people will think? When you let the rage out? Not just the rage at a bad haircut - the bad haircut is the catalyst - but the rage at growing old, at losing your looks - and, by association, losing your power. It's painful, and this story is all about that pain.

Our narrator is a woman in her late 40s. She has been going to the same salon for quite some time, getting her hair cut by the same guy. He is a chatty melodramatic person, who understands her hair, and takes care of her. Going to the hair salon is vaguely stressful for her ... since she no longer is young and beautiful, and whatever is done to her cannot HOLD. It's a race against time. None of this is spoken aloud, but it's there. And one day, she walks into the salon - to find that it has been completely redecorated, revamped and restaffed ... it's now sleek, modern, and (to her) alienating.

But I'll excerpt from the beginning of the story - before the catastrophic re-decorating and all of the tragedies that follow.

Excerpt from The Matisse Stories - "Medusa's Ankles"

She had walked in one day because she had seen the Rosy Nude through the plate glass. That was odd, she thought, to have that lavish and complex creature stretched voluptuously above the coat rack, where one might have expected the stare, silver and supercilious or jetty and frenzied, of the model girl. They were all girls now, not women. The rosy nude was pure flat colour, but suggested mass. She had huge haunches and a monumental knee, lazily propped high. She had round breasts, contemplations of the circle, reflections on flesh and its fall.

She had asked cautiously for a cut and blow-dry. He had done her himself, the owner, Lucian of 'Lucian's', slender and soft-moving, resembling a balletic Hamlet with full white sleeves and tight black trousers. The first few times she came it was the trousers she remembered, better than his face, which she saw only in the mirror behind her own, and which she felt a middle-aged disinclination to study. A woman's relation with her hairdresser is anatomically odd. Her face meets his belt, his haunches skim her breathing, his face is far away, high and behind. His face had a closed and monkish look, rather fine, she thought, under soft, straight, dark hair, bright with health, not with added fats, or so it seemed.

'I like your Matisse,' she said, the first time.

He looked blank.

'The pink nude. I love her.'

'Oh, that. I saw it in a shop. I thought it went exactly with the colour-scheme I was planning.'

Their eyes met in the mirror.

'I thought she was wonderful,' he said. 'So calm, so damn sure of herself, such a lovely colour, I do think, don't you? I fell for her, absolutely. I saw her in this shop in the Charing Cross Road and I went home, and said to my wife, I might think of placing her in the salon, and she thought nothing to it, but the next day I went back and just got her. She gives the salon a bit of class. I like things to have class.'

In those days the salon was like the interior of a rosy cloud, all pinks and creams, with creamy muslin curtains here and there, and ivory brushes and combs, and here and there - the mirror-frames, the little trollies - a kind of sky blue, a dark sky blue, the colour of the couch or bed on which the rosy nude spread herself. Music played - Susannah hated piped music - but this music was tinkling and tripping and dropping, quiet seraglio music, like sherbet. He gave her coffee in pink cups, with a pink and white wafer biscuit in the saucer. He soothed her middle-aged hair into a cunningly blown and natural windswept sweep, with escaping strands and tendrils, softening brow and chin. She remembered the hairdressing shop of her wartime childhood, with its boarded wooden cubicles, its advertisements for Amami shampoo, depicting ladies with blonde pageboys and red lips, in the forties bow which was wider than the thirties rosebud. Amami, she had always supposed, rhymed with smarmy and was somehow related to it. When she became a linguist, and could decline to verb to love in several languages, she saw suddenly one day that Amami was an erotic invitation, or command. Amami, love me, the blondes said, under their impeccably massed rolls of hair. Her mother had gone draggled under the chipped dome of the hairdryer, bristling with metal rollers, bobby-pins and pipe-cleaners. And had come out under a rigidly bouncy 'et', like a mountain of wax fruit, that made her seem artificial and embarrassing, drawing attention somehow to the unnatural whiteness of her false teeth.

They had seemed like some kind of electrically shocking initiation into womanhood, those clamped domes descending and engulfing. She remembered her own first 'set', the heat and buzzing, and afterwards a slight torn tenderness of the scalp, a slight tindery dryness to the hair.

In the sixties and seventies she had kept a natural look, had grown her hair long and straight and heavy, a chestnut-glossy curtain, had avoided places like this. And in the years of her avoidance, the cubicles had gone, everything was open and shared and above board, blow-dryers had largely replaced the hoods, plastic spikes the bristles.

She had had to come back because her hair began to grow old. The ends split, the weight of it broke, a kind of frizzed fur replaced the gloss. Lucian said that curls and waves - following the lines of the new unevenness - would dissimulate, would render natural-looking, that was, young, what was indeed natural, the death of the cells. Short and bouncy was best, Lucian said, and proved it, tactfully. He stood above her with his fine hands cupped lightly round her new bubbles and wisps, like the hands of a priest round a Grail. She looked, quickly, quickly, it was better than before, thanked him and averted her eyes.

She came to trust him with her disintegration.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 19, 2007

The Books: "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" - 'The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my adult fiction shelves:

c7281.jpgStill excerpting the short story fairy-tale collection by AS Byatt (my favorite - obviously!) - called The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - This excerpt is from the title story. And it's the last story in the book. It's a novella - and I remember the first time I read it. It gripped me slowly - it's a bit slow to get going, but I trust Byatt, so I just go with it. Once I got to the end - (and I was lingering over the reading of it, by that point I never wanted it to end!) I was so invested in this story, and in these characters - that I found myself, 3 pages to go, sitting on a bench on the edge of Central Park - I was waiting for a friend - and I was so into the story, so so into it .... that I was mentally willing my friend not to show up until I had finished. If my friend had walked up and I had 1 page to go, I would have been forced to say, "Great to see you! Hi! Just let me finish this story ... I'll be right with you."

And - like with Possession - the last 3 lines pulsed with feeling, aliveness - and I found myself with tears rolling down my face. It was life-affirming. The story is life-affirming, and I LOVE her for writing it.

I highly recommend it!!! For me, it was slow in the beginning ... so just know that, going in. But hang in there ... the ending is awesome.

The story stars Gillian Perholt, an intellectual woman, a woman who lives in her head - a woman who is a "narratologist" - she travels the world, collecting stories and myths ... she goes to conferences with other narratologists, all over the world. She gives papers. She speaks. The story opens - Gillian is in Turkey, for a story conference. First Ankara, and then Istanbul. She has been to Turkey before, and has a good friend - Orhan - another narratologist, who acts as tour-guide and friend. Gillian's husband has left her for another woman, a younger model. Gillian has a couple kids, she's in her 50s ... and there's a sadness there, although she loves her work. But there is something hovering on the edges of her consciousness - an awareness of her own death ... and she feels such intense loss about it ... It almost appears to her as an apparition at times, waiting in the back of conference halls for her.

So anyway. Here is Gillian. Not really in crisis - but you get the sense that all is not as it should be. She gives her paper at the conference. It's on Patient Griselda, the tale nobody really likes in Canterbury Tales.

There are long sections where Gillian and Orhan sight-see. They go to Haghia Sophia. They go out to dinner. I was not sure where the story was going ... until Gillian and Orhan end up at the Grand Bazaar. Gillian loves paperweights, and always buys one from whatever city she travels to. So she and Orhan go to a small shop (run by one of Orhan's students) - and she is looking for a paperweight.

What ends up happening is the "paperweight" she buys is actually a container for a genie (or - the correct term, as I have also learned from my Arabian Nights reading: "djinn") ... Later, in her hotel room, she uncorks the bottle - and out comes a genie.

And the relationship between these two that follows is something you'll just have to read for yourself. Like I said before, it's life-affirming. The djinn is one of my favorite Byatt characters. And I relate to Gillian. I so so relate to her. The woman who lives in her mind. And what it feels like when that ice begins to crack, the cerebral armor - what it is like when an intellectual head-y woman gets into her body, into the physical. This, I would say, is one of Byatt's main themes - and "Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" is its clearest and most beautiful expression. I love this story!!

Here's the excerpt where she picks out the bottle, unknowing that within lies ... the djinn ... who will so change her life.

Excerpt from The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye"

Another of Orhan's students had a little shop in the central square of the market-maze, Iç Bedestan, a shop whose narrow walls were entirely hung with pots, pans, lamps, bottles, leather objects, old tools whose purpose was unguessable, chased daggers and hunting knives, shadow-puppets made of camel skin, perfume flasks, curling tongs.

'I will give you a present,' said Orhan. 'A present to say good-bye.'

(He was leaving the next day for Texas, where a colloquium of narratologists was studying family sagas in Dallas. Gillian had a talk to give at the British Council and three more days in Istanbul.)

'I will give you the shadow puppets, Karagöz and Hacivat, and here is the magic bird, the Simurgh, and here is a woman involved with a dragon, I think she may be a djinee, with a little winged demon on her shoulders, you might like her.'

The small figures were wrapped carefully in scarlet tissue. Whilst this was happening Gillian poked about on a bench and found a bottle, a very dusty bottle amongst an apparently unsorted pile of new/old things. It was a flask with a high neck, that fitted comfortably into the palms of her hands, and had a glass stopper like a miniature dome. The whole was dark, with a regular whirling pattern of white stripes moving round it. Gillian collected glass paperweights: she liked glass in general, for its paradoxical nature, translucent as water, heavy as stone, invisible as air, solid as earth. Blown with human breath in a furnace of fire. As a child she had loved to read of glass balls containing castles and snowstorms, though in reality she had always found these disappointing and had transferred her magical attachment to the weights in which coloured forms and carpets of geometric flowers shone perpetually and could be made to expand and contract as the sphere of glass turned in her fingers in the light. She liked to take a weight back from every journey, if one could be found, and had already bought a Turkish weight, a cone of glass like a witch's hat, rough to touch, greenish-transparent like ice, with the concentric circles, blue, yellow, white, blue, of the eye which repels the evil eye, at the base.

'What is this?' she asked Orhan's student, Feyyaz.

He took the flask from her, and rubbed at the dust with a finger.

'I'm not an expert in glass,' he said. 'It could be çesm-i bülbül, nightingale's eye. Or it could be fairly recent Venetian glass. "Çesm-i bülbül" means nightingale's eye. There was a famous Turkish glass workshop at Incirköy - round about 1845, I think - made this famous Turkish glass, with this spiral pattern of opaque blue and white stripes, or red sometimes, I think. I don't know why it is called eye of the nightingale. Perhaps nightingales have eyes that are transparent and opaque. In this country we were obsessed with nightingales. Our poetry is full of nightingales.'

'Before pollution,' said Orhan, 'before television, everyone came out and walked along the Bosphorus and in all the gardens, to hear the first nightingales of the year. It was very beautiful. Like the Japanese and the cherry blossom. A whole people, walking quietly in the spring weather, listening.'

Feyyaz recited a verse in Turkish and Orhan translated.

In the woods full of evening the nightingales are silent
The river absorbs the sky and its fountains
Birds return to the indigo shores from the shadows
A scarlet bead of sunshine in their beaks.

Gillian said, 'I must have this. Because the word and the thing don't quite match, and I love both of them. But if it is çesm-i bülbül it will be valuable ...'

'It probably isn't,' said Feyyaz. 'It's probably recent Venetian. Our glassmakers went to Venice in the eighteenth century to learn, and the Venetians helped us to develop the techniques of the nineteenth century. I will sell it to you as if it were Venetian, because you like it, and you may imagine it is çesm-i bülbül and perhaps it will be, is, that is.'

'Feyyaz wrote his doctoral thesis on Yeats and Byzantium,' said Orhan.

Gillian gave the stopper an experimental twist, but it would not come away and she was afraid of breaking it. So the nightingale's-eye bottle too was wrapped in scarlet tissue, and more rose tea was sipped, and Gillian returned to her hotel. That evening there was a farewell dinner in Orhan's house, with music, and raki, and generous beautiful food. And the next day, Gillian was alone in her hotel room.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 15, 2007

The Books: "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" - 'Dragons' Breath' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c7281.jpgStill excerpting the short story fairy-tale collection by AS Byatt (my favorite - obviously!) - called The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - This excerpt is from "Dragons' Breath". I love a story that starts with "Once upon a time ..." And, for me, this eerie story - about a village that is, over time, slowly threatened by a herd (a herd?) of dragons - who descend upon them inevitably from the mountains - is most wonderful in its ending. Which I won't reveal here. There's not a plot twist or a revelation - but it's where Byatt chooses to take the story, in terms of tone - she chooses to make the whole story a contemplation on stories, and why we tell each other stories, and why human beings need stories. It's so beautiful - it has a sweep of time in it ... like - how did people talk in the aftermath of Vesuvius blowing up? What stories did they pass on? And more than just the details of the story: what did they make it mean? We all make things MEAN something - and there is no one correct interpretation. It also becomes about - how a catastrophe can make life, in the aftermath, even the drudgery, seem beautiful and precious. So once upon a time ... some dragons came down from the mountains ...

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - "Dragons' Breath".

The first sign may have been the hunters' reports of unusual snow-slides in the high mountains. Or maybe it was, as some of them later claimed, dawns that were hectically rosy, sunsets that flared too crimson. They began to hear strange rumblings and crackings up there, above the snow-line, which they discussed, as they discussed every strange and every accustomed sound, with their repetitious measuring commentary that made Jack and Harry grind their teeth with rage at the sameness of it all. After a time it became quite clear that the rim of the mountains directly above the village, both by day and by night, was flickering and dancing with a kind of fiery haze, a smoky salmon-pink, a burst here and there of crimson and gold. The colours were rather beautiful, they agreed as they watched from their doorsteps, the bright ribbons of colour flashing through the grey-blue smokiness of the air, and then subsiding. Below this flaming rim the white of the snow was giving way to the gaunt grey of wet rock, and the shimmer - and yes, steam - of new water.

They must have been afraid from the beginning: they could see well enough that large changes were taking place, that everything was on the move, earth and air, fire and water. But the fear was mixed great deal of excited interest, and with even a certain pleasure in novelty, and with aesthetic pleasure, of which many of them were later ashamed. Hunting-parties went out in the direction of the phenomenon and came back to report that the hillside seemed to be on the move, and was boiling and burning, so that it was hard to see through the very thick clouds of ash and smoke and steam that hung over the movement. The mountains were not, as far as anyone knew, volcanic, but the lives of men are short beside the history of rocks and stones, so they wondered and debated.

After some time they saw on the skyline lumps like the knuckles of a giant fist, six lumps, where nothing had been, lumps that might represent objects the size of large sheds or small houses, at that distance. And over the next few weeks the lumps advanced, in smoke and spitting sparks, regularly and slowly, side by side, without hesitation or deviation, down the mountainside. Behind each tump trailed a long, unbending tube, as it were, or furrow-ridge, or earth-work, coming over the crest of the mountain, over the rim of their world, pouring slowly on and down.

Some brave men went out to prospect but were forced back by clouds of scalding steam and showers of burning grit. Two friends, bold hunters both, went out and never returned.

One day a woman in her garden said: -- "It is almost as though it was not landslides but creatures, great worms with fat heads creeping down on us. Great fat, nodding bald heads, with knobs and spouts and whelks and whorls on them, and nasty hot wet eyes in great caverns in their muddy flesh, that glint blood-red, twelve eyes, can you see them, and twelve hairy nostrils on blunt snouts made of grey mud." And after conversations and comparisons and pointings and descriptions they could all see them, and they were just as she said, six fat, lolling, loathsome heads, trailing heavy bodies as long as the road from their village to the next, trailing them with difficulty, even with pain, it seemed, but unrelenting and deadly slow.

Posted by sheila Permalink

June 14, 2007

The Books: "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" - 'The Story of the Eldest Princess' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c7281.jpgNext book on the shelf is yet another short story collection by AS Byatt (my favorite - obviously!) - this one is called The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - This excerpt is from "The Story of the Eldest Princess".

Fairy tales are often stories of quests, and in this one: a Princess is sent out, by her kingdom, on a quest. She is the oldest Princess of three, and her kingdom is benevolent and peaceful. But suddenly - for no discernible reason - the sky has become green, instead of blue. There is much consternation in the land. People look up, afraid, they blame the King and Queen for it. Priests are consulted. They say to repent. Generals are consulted. They advise attacking the neighboring kingdom. But an old wizard says that someone must be sent along the Road, thru the Forest, across the Desert, into the Mountains - to bring back the single silver bird and her nest. The bird was in a walled garden - surrounded by poisonous thorns and snakes ... etc. You get the drill. It will be a terrifying dangerous quest. And whoever goes on this quest - must follow the directions exactly (of course) - and not take any shortcuts. After a meeting of the family, the Eldest Princess says that she would be happy to go.

So off she goes.

Now the thing about this story (and the thing that makes this small collection of tales so special) is that - well, I guess you'd say there's a postmodern TINGE here - just a tinge! In general, it's a straight-up fairy story - but in the middle of it (and you'll see in this excerpt) - the Princess begins to realize that she is in a tale. She recognizes the plot of her own story, so to speak ... and ... Well, it becomes (in its own way) a rumination on stories, and can we decide to be the authors of our own stories? What is Fate? Are we ruled by it? Do we have any say?

I love how Byatt writes about these things. One of the reasons I cherish her stuff is that (unlike a lot of authors) - for some reason I take her stuff personally. It seems applicable to my life. There's somthing about it. Or something about how she writes, and how she sees the world ... I espeically felt this in the last story in this collection, the title story - but I'll talk about that when I get to it.

So here is the Eldest Princess.

Excerpt from The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - "The Story of the Eldest Princess".

So she set out. They gave her a sword, and an inexhaustible water-bottle someone had brought back from another Quest, and a package of bread and qualis' eggs and lettuce and pomegranates, which did not last very long. They all gathered at the city gate to wish her well, and a trumpeter blew a clear, silver sound into the emptiness ahead, and a minister produced a map of the Road, with one or two sketchy patches, especially in the Desert, where its undeviating track tended to be swallowed by sandstorms.

The eldest Princess travelled quickly enough along the Road. Once or twice she thought she saw an old woman ahead of her, but this figure vanished at certain bends and slopes of the path, and did not reappear for some time, and then only briefly, so that it was never clear to the Princess whether there was one, or a succession of old women. In any case, if they were indeed, or she was indeed, an old woman, or old women, she or they were always very far ahead, and travelling extremely fast.

The Forest stretched along the Road. Pale green glades along its edges, deeper rides, and dark tangled patches beyond these. The Princess could hear, but not see, birds calling and clattering and croaking in the trees. And occasional butterflies sailed briefly out of the glades towards the Road, busy small scarlet ones, lazily swooping midnight-blue ones, and once, a hand-sized transparent one, a shimmering film of wings with two golden eyes in the centre of the lower wing. This creature hovered over the Road, and seemed to follow the Princess for several minutes, but without ever crossing some invisible barrier between the Forest and the Road, When it dipped and turned back into the dappled light of the trees the Princess wanted to go after it, to walk on the grass and moss, and knew she must not. She felt a little hungry by now, although she had the inexhaustible water-bottle.

She began to think. She was by nature a reading, not a travelling princess. This meant both that she enjoyed her new striding solitude in the fresh air, and that she had read a great many stories in her spare time, including several stories about princes and princesses who set out on Quests. What they all had in common, she thought to herself, was a pattern in which the two elder sisters, or brothers, set out very confidently, failed in one way or another, and were turned to stone, or imprisoned in vaults, or cast into magic sleep, until rescued by the third royal person, who did everything well, restored the first and the second, and fulfilled the Quest.

She thought she would not like to waste seven years of her brief life as a statue or prisoner if it could be avoided.

She thought that of course she could be vigilant, and very courteous to all passers-by - most elder princesses' failings were failings of courtesy or over-confidence.

There was nobody on the Road to whom she could be courteous, except the old woman, or women, bundling aong from time to time a long way ahead.

She thought, I am in a pattern I know, and I suspect I have no power to break it, and I am going to meet a test and fail it, and spend seven years as a stone.

This distressed her so much that she sat down on a convenient large stone at the side of the road and began to weep.

Posted by sheila Permalink

June 13, 2007

The Books: "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" - 'Gode's Story' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c7281.jpgNext book on the shelf is yet another short story collection by AS Byatt (my favorite - obviously!) - this one is called The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - This excerpt is from "Gode's Story" - this is another "story within the story" from Possession. Sophie de Kercoz kept a journal in possession - she lives in the wildness of Brittany - and records some of the myths and legends of her place. This is one of them - which takes on ominous significance in the larger story of Possession - but which also works, and beautifully, as a fairy tales all on its own.

I'll just excerpt the beginning, without saying anything more about it.

Actually, no, I'll just say this. Having read all of Byatt's published books - fiction and non-fiction - it continuously amazes me how WELL she can morph into another voice. She does it in all of her books - she'll excerpt ficitonal scholary papers, or private journals, or letters ... she becomes a ventriloquist, in a way ... I find her to be utterly convincing in all of her various guises. I am lost in admiration.

Here she is a storyteller. Plain and simple. Please notice that she starts almost every paragraph with the word "And". And then recall The Arabian Nights. That breathy feeling of desperation - of a real voice - propelling the stories along - for her own desperate urgent reasons ... "And ... And ... And ..."

Excerpt from The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - "Gode's Story"

There was once a young sailor who had nothing but his courage and his bright eyes - but those were very bright - and the strength the gods gave him, which was sufficient.

He was not a good match for any girl in the village, for he was thought to be rash as well as poor, but the young girls liked to see him go by, you can believe, and they liked most particularly to see him dance, with his long, long legs and his clever feet and his laughing mouth.

And most of all one girl liked to see him, who was the miller's daughter, beautiful and stately and proud, with three deep velvet ribbons to her skirt, who would by no means let him see that she liked to see him, but looked sideways with glimpy eyes, when he was not watching. And so did many another. It is always so. Some are looked at, and some may whistle for an admiring glance till the devil pounces on them, for so the Holy Spirit makes, crooked or straight, and naught to be done about it.

He came and went, the young man, for it was the long voyages he was drawn to, he went with the whales over the edge of the world and down to where the sea boils and the great fish move under it like drowned islands and the mermaids sing with their mirrors and their green scales and their winding hair, if tales are to be believed. He was first up the mast and sharpest with the harpoon but he made no money, for the profit was all the master's, and so he came and went.

And when he came he sat in the square and told of what he had seen, and they all listened. And the miller's daughter came, all clean and proud and proper, and he saw her listening at the edge and said he would bring her a silk ribbon from the East, if she liked. And she would not say if she liked, yes or not, but he saw that she would.

And he went again, and had the ribbon from a silk-merchant's daughter in one of those countries where the women are golden with hair like black silk, but they like to see a man dance with long, long legs, and clever feet and a laughing mouth. And he told the silk-merchant's daughter he would come again and brought back the ribbon, all laid up in a perfumed paper, and at the next village dance he gave it to the miller's daughter and said, "Here is your ribbon."

And her heart banged in her side, you may believe, but she mastered it, and asked coolly how much she was to pay him for it. It was a lovely ribbon, a rainbow-coloured silk ribbon, such as had never een seen in these parts.

And he was very angry at this insult to his gift, and said she must pay what it had cost her from whom he had it. And she said,

"What was that?"

And he said, "Sleepless nights till I come again."

And she said, "The price is too high."

And he said, "The price is set, you must pay."

And she paid, you may believe, for he saw how it was with her, and a man hurt in his pride will take what he may, and he took, for she had seen him dance, and she was all twisted and turned in her mind and herself by his pride and his dancing.

And he said, if he went away again, and found some future in any part of the world, would she wait till he came again and asked her father for her.

And she said, "Long must I wait, and you with a woman waiting in every port, and a ribbon fluttering in every breeze on every quay, if I wait for you."

And he said, "You will wait."

And she would not say yes or no, she would wait or not wait.

And he said, "You are a woman with a cursed temper, but I will come again and you will see."

Posted by sheila Permalink

June 12, 2007

The Books: "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" - 'The Glass Coffin' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c7281.jpgNext book on the shelf is yet another short story collection by AS Byatt (my favorite - obviously!) - this one is called The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye - This excerpt is from "The Glass Coffin"

I think this might be my favorite of her short story collections (and we've got one more to go!) and ironically, I resisted reading it. Even though it was AS Byatt. It's "Five Fairy Stories" - as I've mentioned, and as anyone who's read Byatt knows - she is VERY into fairy stories, and myths and fables ... her books usually have books-within-books - where magical things happen - the poems and stories in Possession ... My copy of The Arabian Nights has a preface by AS Byatt - she is very into all of it. So in this particular collection, she has 5 fairy stories (2 which appear within the narrative of Possession, and 3 that are new). And I guess I need to be in the mood for fairy stories, not sure - but I didn't read this one for a long time, it just sat on my shelf. And now - particularly the title story - I go to the stories again and again. She's just so damn GOOD. I finished the title story, sitting on a bench on the edge of Central Park - I was waiting for someone - and the wind was HUGE that day - and I was afraid (yes, afraid) that my friend would actually be on time for once - and interrupt me 2 pages from the end. I was literally sitting there, willing my friend to be a couple seconds late so I could finish the story in peace. Because it just GOT me. Tears flooded my eyes at one point ... and the ending - the last 3 paragraphs - are my definition of perfect. Closes out the story perfectly. So satisfying, so moving.

But the first story in the collection is "The Glass Coffin" which was, actually, Christabel's story in Possession. It's about a "little tailor" who journeys thru a forest, trying to "make a meagre living" - he wanted to find someone who would want his skills, so he goes deeper and deeper into the forest, until he comes across a little house. He knocks and a little old man lets him in. Beside the little old man stands a huge grey dog with red eyes. In the house are a lot of animals, sitting in chairs, lying on rugs. The little old man tells the tailor he has no need of a tailor - but would he mind making dinner? So the little tailor goes and makes a great dinner for everybody, humans and animals. Turns out, this was a test set to him by the little old man. He says, "You are a good man - you made dinner for all of us, not just the humans - you left nobody unattended - here are 3 objects - which one do you want?" There is a purse, a cooking pot, and a glass key. He ponders. He knows it will be an important choice. He chooses the key. The man tells him to go outside and call to the West Wind - show her the key - and let her carry him where she will. No fighting is allowed, no questions. She will let you down at a place where there will be the "gate to your adventure" ... and etc. etc. It's a fairy story. Lovely, haunting, and very eerie at points.

Here's the part where the West Wind takes him.

Excerpt from The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye "The Glass Coffin"

And that was a delightful and most alarming sensation, when the long, airy arms of the West Wind reached down through the trees and caught him up, and the leaves were all shivering and clattering and trembling with her passing, and the straws danced before the house and the dust rose and flew about in little earth-fountains. The trees grabbed at him with twiggy fingers as he rose up through them, lurching this way and that in the gusts, and then he felt himself held against the invisible rushing breast of the long Wind, as she hurled moaning along the sky. He rested his face against his airy pillows, and did not cry out or struggle, and the sighing song of the West Wind, full of fine rain and glancing sunshine, streaming clouds and driven starlight, netted him around and around.

She put him down as the little grey man had foretold on a huge grey granite stone, pitted and scarred and bald. He heard her whisking and wailing on her way, and he bent down and laid the cock-feather on the stone, and behold with a heavy groaning and grinding the huge stone swung up in the air and down in the earth, as though on a pivot or balance, disturbing waves of soil and heather like thick sea-water, and showing a dark, dank passage under the heather-roots and the knotty roots of the gorse. So in he went, bravely enough, thinking all the time of the thickness of rock and peat and earth over his head, and the air in that place was chill and damp and the ground underfoot was moist and sodden. He bethought him of his little key and held it up bravely before him, and it put out a little sparkling light that illumined a step at a time, silvery-pale. So he came down to the vestibule, where the three doors were, and under the sills of the two great doors, light shone, warm and enticing, and the third was behind a musty leather curtain. He touched this leather, just brushing it with the tip of his soft hen-feather, and it was drawn away in angular folds like bat-wings, and beyond a little dark door lay open into a tiny hole, into which he thought he might just manage to put his shouders. Then truly he was afraid, for his small grey friend had said nothing of this narrow little place, and he thought if he put his head in he might never come out alive.

So he looked behind himself and saw that the passage he had just come down was one of many, all wrinkled and wormy and dripping and tangled with roots, and he thought he could never find his way back so he must perforce push on and see what lay in store. It took all the courage he had to thrust his head and shoulders into the mouth of that entrance, but he closed his eyes and twisted and turned and after a time tumbled out into a great stone chamber, lit with a soft light of its own that dimmed the glitter of his shining key. It was a miracle, he thought, that the glass had not shivered in that tight struggle, but it was as clear and brittle as ever. So he looked about him, and saw three things. The first was a heap of glass bottles and flasks, all of them covered with dust and cobwebs. The second was a glass dome, the size of a man, and a little taller than our hero. And the third was a shining glass coffin, lying on a rich velvet pall on a gilded trestle. And from all these things the soft light proceeded, like the glimmering of pearls in the depth of water, like the phosphorescent light that moves of itself on the night surface of southern seas, or shines round the heaving shoals, milky-white over their silver darts, in their own dark Channel.

Well, he thought, one of these is my adventure.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 11, 2007

The Books: "Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice" - 'Christ in the House of Martha and Mary' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c2833.jpgNext book on the shelf is another short story collection - this one called Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. This is an excerpt the story "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary". This story uses the following Diego Velasquez painting as the jumping-off point. It ends up being a rumination on objects, the beauty of objects - especially homey objects - like fish in a bowl, or eggs ... but sometimes we cannot see the divinity within such objects. The lead character of the story is the woman in the painting who is looking right at us. She is the drudge in a house where a "painter" has come to stay for a whie. She is resentful of her life, of having to cook, clean, of being ugly ... I like Byatt because she does not always feel a compulsion to end her stories unhappily. Not that there isn't honor in an unhappy ending ... but one of the things Byatt does best is to describe joy, those moments (sometimes small) when life takes a turn for the better. Think of the second to last scene in Possession when Roland and Maud get into bed together. It's messy, frightening, you have no idea if it will work, but ... to know that human connectino is possible ... to have a breakthrough in your armor of ice - to let go of certain rigid ideas you might have of oneself ... Sometimes those moments are awful, sometimes beautiful -and sometimes they are a little bit of both at the same time. Byatt goes into this area again and again, and I love her for it. I have had those moments. And very few writers can really write about it.

Dolores is the name of the woman in the painting. She has one of those moments at the end of this beautiful little story. What does it mean to be seen ... This is a very potent concept, for me, for everybody. Byatt is talking artistically, of course - to see yourself as an artist sees you is an odd thing ... but she's also talking on a human level ... when you are actually seen by another. So much of what I want to write about (and what I do write about) are those moments.

It's a fable - as most of the stories in this collection are.

Excerpt from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt - "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary".

The young artist was a friend of Concepción's. He borrowed things, a pitcher, a bowl, a ladle, to sketch them over and over. He borrowed Concepción, too, sitting quietly in a corner, under the hooked hams and the plaits of onions and garlic, drawing her face. He made Concepción look, if not ideally beautiful, then wise and graceful. She had good bones, a fine mouth, a wonderful pattern of lines on her brow, and etched beside her nose, which Dolores had not been interested in until she saw the shapes he made from them. His sketches of Concepción increased her own knowledge that she was not beautiful. She never spoke to him, but worked away in a kind of fury in his presence, grinding the garlic in the mortar, filleting the fish with concentrated skill, slapping dough, making a tattoo of sounds with the chopper, like hailstones, reducing onions to fine specks of translucent light. She felt herself to be a heavy space of unregarded darkness, a weight of miserable shadow in the corners of the room he was abstractedly recording. He had given Concepción an oil painting he had made, of shining fish and white solid eggs, on a chipped earthenware dish. Dolores did not know why this painting moved her. It was silly that oil paint on board shoudl make eggs and fish more real, when they were less so. But it did. She never spoke to him, though she partly kknew that if she did, he might in the end give her some small similar patch of light in darkness to treasure.

Sunday was the worst day. On Sunday, after Mass, the family entertained. They entertained family and friends, the priest and sometimes the bishop and his secretary, they sat and conversed, and Doña Conchita turned her dark eyes and her pale, long face to listen to the Fathers, as they made kindly jokes and severe pronouncements on the state of the nation, and of Christendom. There were not enough servants to keep up the flow of sweetmeats and pasties, syllabubs and jellies, quails and tartlets, so that Dolores was sometimes needed to fetch and carry as well as serve, which she did with an ill grace. She did not cast her eyes modestly down, as was expected, but stared around her angrily, watching the convolutions of Doña Conchita's neck with its pretty necklace, the tapping of her pretty foot, directed not at the padre whose words she was demurely attending to, but at young Don José on the other side of the room. Dolores put a hot dish of peppers in oil down on the table with such force that the pottery burst apart, and oil and spices ran into the damask cloth. Doña Ana, Doña Conchita's governess, berated Dolores for a whole minute, threatening dismissal, docking of wages, not only for clumsiness but for insolence. Dolores strode back into the kitchen, not slinking, but moving her large legs like walking oak trees, and began to shout. There was no need to dismiss her, she was off. This was no life for a human being. She was no worse than they were, and more of use. She was off.

The painter was in his corner, eating her dish of elvers and alioli. He addressed her directly for the first time, remarking that he was much in her debt, over these last weeks, for her good nose for herbs, for her tact with sugar and spice, for her command of sweet and sour, rich and delicate. You are a true artist, said the painter, gesturing with his fork.

Dolores turned on him. He had no right to mock her, she said. He was a true artist, he could reveal light and beauty in eggs and fishes that no one had seen, and which they would then always see. She made pastries and dishes that went out of the kitchen beautiful and came back mangled and mashed - they don't notice what they're eating, they're so busy talking, and they don't eat most of it, in case they grow fat, apart from the priests, who have no other pleasures. They order it all for show, for show, and it lasts a minute only until they put the knife to it, or push it around their plate elegantly with a fork.

The painter put his head on one side, and considered her red face, as he considered the copper jugs, or the glassware, narrowing his eyes to a slit. He asked her if she knew the story St Luke told, of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary. No, she said, she did not. She knew her catechism, and what would happen to sinners at the Last Judgment, which was on the wall of the church. And about butchered martyrs, who were also on the walls of the church.

They were sisters, the painter told her, who lived in Bethany. Jesus visited them, from time to time, and rested there. And Mary sat at his feet and listened to his words, and Martha was cumbered with much serving, as St Luke put it, and complained. She said to the Lord, 'Dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.' And Jesus said to her, 'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall nto be taken away from her.'

Dolores considered this, drawing her brows together in an angry frown. She said, 'There speaks a man, for certain. There will always be serving, and someone will always be doomed to serving, and will have no choice or chance about the better part. Our Lord could make loaves and fishes from the air for the listeners, but mere mortals cannot. So we - Concepción and I - serve them whilse they have the better part they have chosen.'

And Concepción said that Dolores should be careful, or she would be in danger of blaspheming. She should learn to accept the station the Lord had given her. And she appealed to the painter, should Dolores not learn to be content, to be patient? Hot tears sprang in Dolores' eyes. The painter said:

'By no means. It is not a question of accepting our station in the world as men have ordered it, but of learning not to be careful and troubled. Dolores here has her way to that better part, even as I have, and, like mine, it begins in attention to loaves and fishes. What matters is not that silly girls push her work about their plates with a fork, but that the work is good, that she understands what the wise understand, the nature of garlic and onions, butter and oil, eggs and fish, peppers, aubergines, pumpkins and corn. The cook, as much as the painter, looks into the essence of the creation, not, as I do, in light and on surfaces, but with all the other senses, with taste, and smell, and touch, which God also made in us for purposes. You may come at the better part by understanding emulsions, Dolores, by studying freshness and the edges of decay in leaves and flesh, by mixing wine and blood and sugar into sauces, as well as I may, and likely better than fine ladies twisting their pretty necks so that the light may catch their pretty pearls. You are very young, Dolores, and very strong, and very angry. You must learn now, that the important lesson - is that the divide is not between the servants and the served, between the leisured and the workers, but between those who are interested in the world and its multiplicity of forms and forces, and those who merely subsist, worrying or yawning. When I paint eggs and fishes and onions, I am painting the godhead - not only because eggs have been taken as an emblem of the Resurrection, as have dormant roots with green shoots, not only because the letters of Christ's name make up the Greek word for fish, but because the world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it. You have a way in. Take it. It may incidentally be a way out, too, as all skills are. The Church teaches that Mary is the contemplative life, which is higher than Martha's way, which is the active way. But any painter must question, which is which? And a cook also contemplates mysteries.'

'I don't know,' said Dolores, frowning. He tilted his head the other way. Her head was briefly full of images of the skeleton of fishes, of the whirlpool of golden egg-and-oil in the bowl, of the pattern of muscles in the shoulder of a goat. She said, 'It is nothing, what I know. It is past in a flash. It is cooked and eating, or it is gone bad and fed to the dogs or thrown out.'

'Like life,' said the painter. 'We eat and are eaten, and we are very lucky if we reach our three score years and ten, which is less than a flash in the eyes of an angel. The understanding persists, for a time. In your craft and mine.'

He said, 'Your frown is a powerful force in itself. I have an idea for a painting of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary. Would you let me draw you? I hae noticed that you are unwilling.'

'I am not beautiful.'

'No. But you have power. Your anger has power, and you have power yourself, beyond that.'

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 9, 2007

The Books: "Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice" - 'Jael' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c2833.jpgNext book on the shelf is another short story collection - this one called Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. This is an excerpt the story "Jael".

The narrator is a woman who directs commercials. She went to Oxford. She has a wealth of associations in her head - all of which she puts to use to sell, oh, Lysol. Whatever. She reminisces about a drawing she did as a young girl - of Jael and Sisera - for some reason, that story in the Bible really - not tormented her, but - gripped her. She couldn't stop thinking about it. She talks about how she has used some of those images from her childhood in her adult work - The story has no plot, but it's a rumination on different things -as the excerpt below will show.

I love the details of her writing, the sense-memory feel of it.

Excerpt from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. "Jael".

Anyway, Jael. Why do I remember Jael? Metaphrs. I do know - I have always known - that I felt a faint click of symmetry as I drove the point of my pencil into the paper. Pencil, peg. Another detached image, like the grenade. Pointed. Pointless. I do know also that whenever I remember that patch of fierce colour I remember, like an after-image, a kind of dreadful murky colour, a yellow-khaki-mustard-thick colour, that is the colour of the days of our boredom. For we were not unhappy girls, we were cared-for, nice, clever girls, and we were bored. It's quite hard to think back to that time. All the buidings were the same colours, green and cream. We wore milk-chocolate-coloured gymslips over khaki-colored shirts, with what we then amiably called nigger-brown ties. I do not believe any of thought of the nasty meaning of those words, nigger-brown, we just recognised the colour. Ignorance, innocence, boredom. It's strange how I hesitate, out of fear, to write down the true fact that we used that word, in that unloaded way. It's so long ago, we shall be judged without being imagined. All the excitement of life was in books. Jane Eyre, with her burning bed-curtains, or being punished in the Red Room (I've made films with both those images, fire insurance and children's furniture). Ivanhoe charging, Robin Hood in the dappled green light with his bow, Eliza escaping across the breaking ice, wolves and narwhals, volcanoes and tidal waves, excitement was all in books, none of it, nothing at all, seeped out into life. We were the pre-television age, and we cannot - that is, the absolute quality of our boredom cannot - be imagined by those who grew up with the magic lantern, the magic window on the world, the Pandora's box peopling the world with temptations and emotions and knowledge and other places and people in the corner of the lounge/sitting room/front room. I know young people now have a worked-up nostalgia for an imaginary time when families communicated, people made things, played games, instead of passively watching. Now and then we did. I remember the physical pleasure of frenzied playground skipping. I remember the passionate life with which I invested a collection of lead ponies. But mostly - apart from books - I remember this smeared, fuggy, limited light of boredom, where you couldn't see very much or very far, and the horizon was unimaginable.

Posted by sheila Permalink

June 8, 2007

The Books: "Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice" - 'Cold' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c2833.jpgNext book on the shelf is another short story collection - this one called Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. This is an excerpt from the third story in the collection, called "Cold".

I love this story!! Like all fairy tales, it transports you into another world - it's a wonderful story - but then - like all good fairy tales, it potentially shows you, the reader, something about yourself. It's an extended metaphor for an aspect of the human condition. But it's not didactic! I've been reading The Arabian Nights - and while all of those stories have morals (and, er, most of the morals have something to do with: "All women are salacious and evil so beware!" - so forgive me if I don't take the moral part of the venture seriously!) the real potency and magic (God, they're magical - I love them!) lies in the stories themselves. Like, you can't stop reading. Byatt has cited The Arabian Nights as a major influence on her work (that and George Eliot. Uhm, I love AS Byatt??) and it shows in tales like "Cold".

A princess is born "in a temperate kingdom". Her name is Fiammarosa. She is the 13th in a long line of children. She is loved by everybody. And yet there seems to be something wrong with her. She is fragile. She "seems breakable". She lies on grassy fields, watching other people play and frolic. She can't seem to get any energy. Her tutor commits to her education - although Princesses don't need TOO much education - and so she goes along in her life, unremarkable, except for her weakness, her almost transparent fragility. Then - one snowy night - she stares outside at the icy landscape and feels an overwhleming desire to be out there in the snow. It is not so much a desire - as a NEED. Some need sunlight. We all need food and water. She NEEDS the cold. She tries to sneak outside to walk around in the snow, but finds she cannot get outside - the doors are all locked, and she runs into a sentry, who gently informs her it's too cold, she can't go outside, she might get sick. Defeated, Fiammarosa goes back to bed, but she lies there, imagining in her mind, over and over and over - herself out there in the snow - naked - rolling around - submerging herself - walking on a frozen pond in bare feet - Her body yearns for the ice.

And so begins her transformation.

And, of course, because it is a fairy tale - she encounters many (often deadly) obstacles along the way.

The story is wonderful - I've read it often.

It reminds me of this heart-breaking line from Summer and Smoke - in the killer last scene of the play. Miss Alma says to John Buchanan, "It wasn't the physical you I wanted" - He responds, "You didn't have that to give me." She says, "Not at the time." He says, "You had something else to give." She asks, "What?"

And John responds, with words that have such resonance for me, personally - that it's hard for me to even express it:

You couldn't name it and I couldn't recognize it. I thought it was just a Puritanical ice that glittered like flame. But now I believe it was flame, mistaken for ice. I still don't understand it, but I know it was there, just as I know that your eyes and your voice are the two most beautiful things I've ever known -- and also the warmest, although they don't seem to be in your body at all ...

I guess I want to say that my flame has been mistaken for ice. And there is nothing more devastating in all the world.

Something like that is going on in AS Byatt's story - as you can see from the excerpt below.

Excerpt from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. "Cold"

The next night she reconnoitred the corridors and cupboards, and the night after that she went down in the small hours, and took a small key from a hook, a key that unlocked a minor side-door that led to the kitchen-garden, which was now, like everywhere else, under deep snow, the taller herbs stiffly draggled, the tufted ones humped under white, the black branches brittle with the white coating frozen along their upper edges. It was full moon. Everything was black and white and silver. The princess crept in her slippers between the beds of herbs, and then bent down impulsively and pulled off the slippers. The cold snow on the soles of her feet gave her the sense of bliss that most humans associate with warm frills of water at the edge of summer seas, with sifted sand, with sunny stone. She ran faster. Her blood hummed. Her pale hair floated in the wind of her own movement in the still night. She went under an arch and out through a long ride, running lightly under dark, white-encrusted boughs, into what in summer was a meadow. She did not know why she did what she did next. She had always been decorous and docile. Her body was full of an electric charge, a thrill, from an intense cold. She threw off her silk wrap, and her creamy woollen nightgown, and lay for a moment, as she had imagined lying, with her naked skin on the cold white sheet. She did not sink, the crust was icy and solid. All along her body, in her knees, her thighs, her small round belly, her pointed breasts, the soft inner skin of her arms, she felt an intense version of that paradoxical burn she had received from the touch of the frosted window. The snow did not numb Fiammarosa; it pricked and hummed and brought her, intensely, to life. When her front was quite chilled, she turned over on her back, and lay there, safe inside the form of her own faint impression on the untouched surface. She stared up, at the great moon with its slaty shadows on its white-gold disc, and the huge fields of scattered, clustered, far-flung glittering wheeling stars in the deep darkness, white on midnight, and she was, for the first time in her life, happy. This is who I am, the cold princess thought to herself, wriggling for sheer pleasure in the snow-dust, this is what I want. And when she was quite cold, and completely alive and crackling with energy, she rose to her feet, and began a strange, leaping dance, pointing sharp fingers at the moon, tossing her long mane of silver hair, sparkling with ice-crystals, circling and bending and finally turning cartwheels under the wheeling sky. She could feel the cold penetrating her surfaces, all over, insistent and relentless. She even thought that some people might have thought that this was painful. But for her, it was bliss. She went in with the dawn, and lived through the day in an alert, suspended, dreaming state, waiting for the deep dark, and another excursion into the cold.


Night after night, now, she went and danced in the snowfield. The deep frost held and she began to be able to carry some of her cold energy back into her daily work. At the same time, she began to notice changes in her body. She was growing thinner, rapidly - the milky softness induced by her early regime was replaced with a slender, sharp, bony beauty. And one night, as she moved, she found that her whole body was encased in a transparent, crackling skin of ice that broke into spiderweb-fine veined sheets as she danced and then re-formed. The sensation of this double skin was delicious. She had frozen eyelashes and saw the world through an ice-lens; her tossing hair made a brittle and musical sound, for each hair was coated and frozen. The faint sounds of shivering and splintering and clashing made a kind of whispered music as she danced on. In the daytime now, she could barely keep away, and her night-time skin persisted patchily in odd places, at the nape of her neck, around her wrists, like bracelets. She tried to sit by the window, in her lessons, and also tried surreptitiously to open it, to let in the cold wind, when Hugh, her tutor, was briefly out of the room. And then, one day, she came down, rubbing frost out of her eyelashes with rustling knuckles, and found the window wide open, Hugh wrapped in a furred jacket, and a great book open on the table.

'Today,' said Hugh, 'we are going to read the history of your ancestor, King Beriman, who made an expedition to the kingdoms beyond the mountains, in the frozen North, and came back with an icewoman.'

Fiammarosa considered Hugh.

'Why?' she said, putting ehr white head on one side, and looking at him with sharp, pale blue eyes between the stiff lashes.

'I'll show you,' said Hugh, taking her to the open window. 'Look at the snow on the lawns, in the rose-garden.'

And there, lightly imprinted, preserved by the frost, were the tracks of fine bare feet, running lightly, skipping, eddying, dancing.

Fiammarosa did not blush; her whiteness became whiter, the ice-skin thicker. She was alive in the cold air of the window.

'Haev you been watching me?'

'Only from the window,' said Hugh, 'to see that you came to no harm. You can see that the only footprints are fine, and elegant, and naked. If I had followed you I should have left tracks.'

'I see,' said Fiammarosa.

'And,' said Hugh, 'I have been watching you since you were a little girl, and I recognise happiness and health when I see it.'

'Tell me about the icewoman.'

'Her name was Fror. She was given by her father, as a pledge for a truce between the ice-people and King Beriman. The chronicles describe her as wondrously fair and slender, and they say also that King Beriman loved her distractedly, and that she did not return his love. They say she showed an ill will, liked to haunt caverns and rivers and refused to learn the language of the kingdom. They say she danced by moonlight, on the longest night, and that there were those in the kingdom who believed she was a witch, who had enchanted the King. She was seen, dancing naked, with three white hares, which were thought to be creatures of witchcraft, under the moon, and she was imprisoned in the cells under the palace. There she gave birth to a son, who was taken from her, and given to his father. And the priests wanted to burn the icewoman, "to melt her stubbornness and punish her stiffness", but the King would not allow it.

'Then one day, three northmen came riding to the gate of the castle, tall men with axes on white horses, and said they had come "to take back our woman to her own air". No one knew how they had been summoned: the priests said that it was by witchcraft that she had called to them from her stone cell. It may have been. It seems clear that there was a threat of war if the woman was not relinquished. So she was fetched out, and "wrapped in a cloak to cover her thinness and decay" and told she could ride away with her kinsmen. The chronicler says she did not ask to see her husband or her tiny son, but "cold and unfeeling as she had come" mounted behind one of the northmen and they turned and rode away together.

'And King Beriman died not long after, of a broken heart or of witchcraft, and his brother reigned until Leonin was old enough to be crowned. The chronicler says that Leonin made a "warm-blooded and warm-hearted" ruler, as though the blood of his forefathers ran true in him, and the "frozen lymph" of his maternal stock was melted away to nothing.

'But I believe that after generations, a lost face, a lost being, can find a form again.'

'You think I am an icewoman.'

'I think you carry the inheritance of that northern princess. I think also that her nature was much misunderstood, and that what appeared to be kindness was extreme cruelty - paradoxically, probably her life was preserved by what appeared to be the cruellest act of those who held her here, the imprisonment in cold stone walls, the thin prison dress, the bare diet.'

'I felt that in my bones, listening to your story.'

'It is your story, Princess. And you too are framed for cold. You must live - when the thaw comes - in cold places. There are ice-houses in the palace gardens - we must build more, and stock them with blocks of ice, before the snow melts.'

Fiammarosa smiled at Hugh with her sharp mouth. She said:

'You have read my desires. All through my childhood I was barely alive. I felt constantly that I must collapse, vanish, fall into a faint, stifle. Out there, in the cold, I am a living being.'

'I know.'

'You choose your words very tactfully, Hugh. You told me I was "framed for cold". That is a statement of natural philosophy, and time. It may be that I have ice in my veins, like the icewoman, or something that boils and steams at normal temperatures, and flows busily in deep frost. But you did not tell me I had a cold nature. The icewoman did not look back at her husband and son. Perhaps she was cold in her soul, as well as in her veins?'

'That is for you to say. It is so long ago, the tale of the icewoman. Maybe she saw King Beriman only as a captor and conqueror? Maybe she loved someone else, in the North, in the snow? Maybe she felt as you feel, on a summer's day, barely there, yawning for faintness, moving in shadows.'

'How do you know how I feel, Hugh?'

'I watch you. I study you. I love you.'

Fiammarosa noticed, in her cool mind, that she did not love Hugh, whatever love was.

She wondered whether this was a loss, or a gain. She was inclined to think, on balance, that it was a gain. She had been so much loved, as a little child, and all that heaping of anxious love had simply made her feel ill and exhausted. There was more life in coldness. In solitude. Inside a crackling skin of protective ice that was also a sensuous delight.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 7, 2007

The Books: "Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice" - 'A Lamia in the Cévennes' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c2833.jpgNext book on the shelf is another short story collection - this one called Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. This is an excerpt from the second story in the collection "A Lamia in the Cévennes". A painter named Bernard Lycett-Kean (I believe he has had some success in his career, the way Byatt writes about him you can tell he's serious about his work, etc.) can't take England under Margaret Thatcher, and so he takes his savings - and buys a house in The Cévennes. It's a little stone house in a hillside - and he has a swimming pool built into the side of a hill. He lives in total solitude. He becomes obsessed with the blue in the swimming pool - and how to paint it ... (this will be the excerpt today). It is a problem in color and paint that keeps him up at nights. He asks- what is my problem? Why am I tormented by this blue?? But still - he just keeps working the problem. Then one day ... the pool starts to seem cloudy, murky - There's something wrong with it. Bernard kind of freaks out. It must be fixed! Where did the blue go? He has workmen come out - drain the pool - re-fill it with water from an underground spring ... and this completely screws up Bernard's rhythm, in terms of his work ... but he grits it out. When the pool is re-filled ... it's just not the same. The blue is not the same. The depths are cloudy. He swims in the pool and can't see his legs because of the murk. Toads swim in the pool, too. Something is shifting, changing. He doesn't know what it is. Sometimes he thinks he gets a glimpse of a massive (meaning: scary massive) snake, coiled up at the bottom of the pool. In double figure eights. He is not scared of the snake ... or monster ... he tries to paint it. The snake - eventually - .... hmm, this is where Byatt goes into fairy-tale mode, which is one of her voices, or genres. She has an entire book of fairy tales out - she loves that magical stuff ... So basically this snake - is kind of a Little Mermaid type creature ... looking to Bernard to "save" her, and make her be human. She is a disgusting creature - but there's something in her that Bernard likes. And also - he becomes obsessed with his painting of the snake in the pool. He can't follow her instructions that would make her be a human until he has finished his painting.

Anyway - it's a fascinating scary little story.

Here is Bernard, becoming obsessed with the blue.

Oh, and I mentioned yesterday in my first post about Elementals that each story in the collection uses as its jumping-off point an image of some work of art - an artifact, an object, a painting. The one for this is a sketch of a mermaid by Matisse.

The last line of this excerpt kills me. God, it's good. YES.

Excerpt from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. - "A Lamia in the Cévennes"

He swam more and more, trying to understand the blue, which was different when it was under the nose, ahead of the eyes, over and around the sweeping hands and the flickering toes and the groin and the armpits and the hairs of his chest, which held bubbles of air for a time. His shadow in the blue moved over a pale eggshell mosaic, a darker blue, with huge paddle-shaped hands. The light changed, and with it, everything. The best days were under racing cloud, when the aquamarine took on a cool grey tone, which was then chased back, or rolled away, by the flickering gold-in-blue of yellow light in liquid. In front of his prow or chin in the brightest lights moved a mesh of hexagonal threads, flashing rainbow colours, flashing liquid silver-gilt, with a hint of molten glass; on such days liquid fire, rosy and yellow and clear, ran across the dolphin, who lent it a thread of intense blue. But the surface could be a reflective plane, with the trees hanging in it, with two white diagonals where the aluminium steps entered. The shadows of the sides were a deeper blue but not a deep blue, a blue not reflective and yet lying flatly under reflections. The pool was deep, for the Émeraude young men envisaged much diving. The wind changed the surface, frilled and furred it, flecked it with diamond drops, shirred it and made a witless patchwork of its plane. His own motion changed the surface - the longer he swam, the faster he swam, the more the glassy hills and valleys chopped and changed and ran back on each other.

Swimming was volupté - he used the French word, because of Matisse. Luxe, calme et volupté. Swimming was a strenuous battle with immense problems, of geometry, of chemistry, of apprehension, of style, of other colours. He put pots of petunias and geraniums near the pool. The bright hot pinks and purples were dangerous. They did something to that blue.

The stone was easy. Almost too blandly easy. He could paint chalky white and creamy sand and cool grey and paradoxical hot grey; he could understand the shadows in the high rough wall of monstrous cobblestones that bounded his land.

The problem was the sky. Swimming in one direction, he was headed towards a great rounded-green mountain, thick with the bright yellow-green of dense chestnut trees, making a slightly innocent, simple arc against the sky. Whereas the other way, he swam towards crags, towards a bowl of bald crags, with a few pines and lines of dark shale. And against the green hump the blue sky was one blue, and against the bald stone another, even when for a brief few hours it was uniformly blue overhead, that rich blue, that cobalt, deep-washed blue of the South, which fought all the blues of the pool, all the green-tinged, duck-egg-tinged blues of the shifting water. But the sky had also its greenish days, and its powdery-hazed days, and its theatrical louring days, and none of these blues and whites and golds and ultramarines and faded washes harmonised in any way with the pool blues, though they all went through their changes and splendours in the same world, in which he and his shadow swam, in which he and his shadow stood in the sun and struggled to record them.

He muttered to himself. Why bother. Why does this matter so much. What difference does it make to anything if I solve this blue and just start again. I could just sit down and drink wine. I could go and be useful in a cholera-camp in Colombia or Ethiopia. Why bother to render the transparency in solid paint or air on a bit of board? I could just stop.

He could not.


He tried oil paint and acrylic, watercolour and gouache, large designs and small plain planes and complicated juxtaposed planes. He tried trapping light on thick impasto and tried also glazing his surfaces flat and glossy, like seventeenth-century Dutch or Spanish paintings of silk. One of these almost pleased him, done at night, with the lights under the water and the dark round the stone, on an oval bit of board. But then he thought it was sentimental. He tried veils of watery blues on white in watercolour, he tried Matisse-like patches of blue and petunia - pool blue, sky blue, petunia - he tried Bonnard's mixtures of pastel and gouache.

His brain hurt, and his eyes stared, and he felt whipped by winds and dried by suns.

He was happy, in one of the ways human beings have found in which to be happy.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 6, 2007

The Books: "Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice" - 'Crocodile Tears' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

c2833.jpgNext book on the shelf is another short story collection - this one called Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt. I love that: "Stories of Fire and Ice". Each story in this wonderful little collection uses as a jumping-off place some piece of art - a painting, an ancient artifact, a Matisse sketch, a glass goblet ... I love the device. It's not literal, an A to B correlation - but it opens your mind to the possible connections. It's like Chris van Allsburg's wonderful book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick where all you get is a drawing - mysterious - evocative - and one line of text. The rest you have to make up in your head. Byatt's stories, of course, are not just one line ... but I found myself going back to the first page of each of the stories - to look at the image there, whatever it was, and to contemplate it ... and why it had made Byatt write this particular story. She does that a lot - uses art as a launching off place. She has an entire short story collection (still to come) called The Matisse Stories.

The first story in this collection is called Crocodile Tears. Patricia Nimmo and her husband stand in an art gallery on a Sunday afternoon. They have been married for many years, have two grown children. This is a Sunday ritual - they like to go look at art and talk about it. They are very often in sync - not only in their tastes, but also in museum-behavior. You know how some people like to zip thru museums? And others like to linger for 25 minutes in front of one painting? Neither approach is correct, obviously - but it's nice to be in sync on such matters if youre going to a museum togehter ... and the Nimmos, as a team, always have the same impulse to move on at the same time. Patricia Nimmo has never before seriously contemplated the question: "When are you done with seeing?" Meaning: when do you know, at a museum, that is time to move on to the next painting? And what does that mean ... to be done with seeing? How does that work? Is there a saturation point? These questions all come up later in the story, and they are devastating to Patricia ... On this particular Sunday they have a rare disagreement about a painting - Tony likes it, Patricia doesn't - and she judges him for liking it. He sees something in it she does not. She argues for her position, Tony says he wants to buy the painting. She's annoyed. How can he not see how cliched and bland the work is? It has NO depth. She leaves him contemplating the bad (to her) painting and moves on thru the gallery by herself, feeling that the day is ruined. As she continues to browse, she starts to hear vaguely the sound of sirens ... and begins to be aware of a commotion elsewhere in the gallery. She strolls back through, looking for her husband - and she comes across him - He is lying on the floor in the middle of the main room, and he is surrounded by emergency workers, and ambulance drivers - there is a stretcher - and Patricia hears someone say, "He's dead - just had a massive heart attack and died ..."

Patricia then does something shocking. It's shocking because even though we are only 5 pages into the story, we think we know her, and we think we know her relationship with her husband - even though they were just having a disagreement. She walks out of the gallery, walks home, packs a small bag, gets on a train, and goes to southern France. She gets off the train randomly - no plans ... and finds herself in N�mes. She has not notified her children of where she is. She has fled the scene of her husband's death. She has left England without a trace. Byatt, in the writing, makes it clear that Patricia sometimes had such fantasies ... "what would it be like if ..." so when the moment came, she took it.

She does not weep for her husband (not at first). She knows her kids are capable to deal with funeral arrangements - they're adults.

Patricia checks into a gorgeous hotel and basically starts a new life in this small hot French town. She wants to learn French. She buys a copy of Proust's a la recherche, etc., and a dictionary. The hot sun beats down (you can see the "fire" element in action throughout this story ... it's all about heat and light) ... Patricia is a blank. We do not know what she is thinking or feeling. But we do know what she is seeing, we see thru her eyes - the things she looks at, the little field trips she takes, what she eats. She lives in complete solitude.

Until she finally meets (at his insistence) a dude named Nils Isaksen - who is also staying at her hotel. A Norwegian. Two cold northern people in a hot hot place. He tries to engage her - just in conversations about the history of N�mes, the Roman remnants (that's where the title comes from - a Roman coin found in the town that has a crocodile on it - so the town is full of crocodile statues and fountains, etc. Ahem. The launching-off-point image at the beginning of the story is an actual Roman coin - with the "crocodile de N�mes" on it - If you scroll down here, you can see it) ... Patricia has no interest in learning about N�mes. Or the history. She just wants to become a nothing, a blank. She goes to a museum and finds it vaguely upsetting - because she no longer knows when to stop looking at something. She always knew with her husband. Now she is adrift.

Nils Isaksen is also a widower ... but Patricia does not share with Nils that she upped and left the second her husband died. That's not for him to know.

Anyway - there's way more - this is basically just the set-up ... it's a lovely story, beautifully written. Here's an excerpt.

One quick thing. I love the phrase "yawning vegetably". Love it so much.


Excerpt from Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice - by A.S. Byatt - "Crocodile Tears"

After this they had several more brief drinks together, in the evenings, which were getting hotter, and heavier. Patricia did not think she liked Nils Isaksen, and also felt that this simply did not matter. The nerve-endings with which she had once felt out the shape of other people's feelings were severed or numbed. She got no further than acknowledging to herself that he was in some way a driven man. His reading and writing were extravagant, his concentration theatrical, his covering of the paper - wrong somehow, too much, or was it that she felt that any effort, any energy, was too much? The pleasure was going out of A la recherche, though she persisted, and her French improved. They talked about N�mes. He told her things she hadn't wanted to know, hadn't been at all anxious about, which nevertheless changed her ideas. He told her that the city and the water of the fountain, Fons Nemausis, were one single thing; that this closed, walled collection of golden houses with red-tiled roofs in a dustbowl in the garrigue had been built because of the presence of the powerful source. That the god of the town, Nemausus, was the god of the source. That under and beyond it were gulfs, caverns, galleries of water in the hill. That there had been a nunnery on the hill above the fountain, around the temple of Diana, from the year 1000 to the Renaissance, whose abbesses had claimed ownership of the water. He spoke of excavations, of pagan antiquities, of religious wars of resistance to Simon de Montfort, to Louis XIV, to the Germans. He spoke of the guillotine in the revolution, and the gibbet in the Second World War. Patricia listened, and then went shopping, or wandering. She thought, if he talked much more, or overstepped some boundary, she would have to move on. But she did not know where she would go. The weather was getting hotter. The weather-map on the television in her room showed that N�mes was almost invariably the hottest city in France, uncooled by coastal breezes, or mountain winds, a city on a plain, absorbing heat and ight. She took longer walks, for variation. She went into the Jardin de la Fontaine in the midday heat, stared into the green troubled depths, climbed the unshaded, formal staircase with its balustrades, observed a crocodile made of bronze-leaved plants in a bed of rose and white flowers, curving its tail over its back, yawning vegetably, in the dancing bright air. Nils Isaksen told her she shouldn't go out without a hat. She wanted to reply that she didn't care. She said 'I know' but did not buy a hat. Let it bake her brain, something said.

One evening Nils Isaksen broke his cautious bounds. Patricia was very tired. She had taken three eaux-de-vie Mirabelle, instead of one, and saw the cedars shifting across the too spangling stars.

'I should be happy,' said Nils Isaksen, 'if you would come with me to the ethnological museum. I should like to show you ...'

'Oh, no.'

'I should like to show you the tombstones of the gladiators. So young. We can read the life of a city, in its monuments--'

'No, no --'

'Forgive me, I think you should make some change. I am impertinent. When I first lost Liv, I wished the whole world to be dead, too. Frozen stiff, I wished everything to be. But I exist. And you, forgive me, you exist.'

'I don't need company, Mr Isaksen. I don't need to be -- entertained. I have -- I have things to do.'

Before his intervention, something had been going on, in the silence. He had spoiled it. She stared angrily at him.

'Forget I spoke, please. I am in need of speech, from time to time, but that is nothing to do with you, as I can understand.'

The dreadful thing was that her refusal had made more of an event, had brought them closer together.

Posted by sheila Permalink

June 5, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'Sugar' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "Sugar", the final short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

This one feels autobiographical to me - and not just because it's (rare for Byatt) a first-person narrative. I actually don't know all that much about Byatt - bare bones stuff - but I feel like I know many of her intellectual interests. Those all show up here. It's the story of a woman whose father is dying - he's in a hospital bed in Amsterdam where he collapsed - and she has gone to him. One of the themes of the whole story is that her mother - mainly a good woman, an upstanding woman - was also a liar. A fabricator. She told stories about the past - weaving fiction into truth - choosing words carefully, omitting certain things - and also flat out making things up. And by doing so - it's almost like she has hijacked the past. Our narrator doesn't know if some of her memories are real - or ... implanted there by her mother's telling and re-telling and embroidering of the stories. She begins to recognize signs of fictionalization, certain phrases her mother uses - like: Oh, I bet she made that part of it up ... While her father lies dying in Amsterdam, he talks about this trait of his wife ... in a way that makes you feel that she did the same thing to him. She took over his stories. And sometimes she told them wrong. Or sometimes she made shit up - like being at the death-bed of his father and being there at the moment he passed away. This is a sacrilege - to make up something like that. Why does her mother do this? The story doesn't really set out to answer that question ... but the story does set out (in first-person voice) to try to put down what you remember. It's all "I remember this ..." "I remember that" - as though the act of writing will make it concrete, or will make it hers. She wants to know her father. It is hard to know her father without getting thru the mists set up by her mother ... and it is also hard because he's not a gushy talk-y kind of guy. The following excerpt - is also a reminder of what was to come in Possession (this collection of short stories pre-dates Possession) as well as Still Life (excerpt here) - with its intercut scenes of the Potter family narrative and the letters of Vincent Van Gogh. Randolph Henry Ash, in Possession, wrote an epic poem about Ragnarok - and had a great fascination in the chilly northern gods and their myths. It's interesting, here, to hear this narrator (who is or is not Byatt) discuss what it was that drew her to those two specific things.

Excerpt from "Sugar", the final short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

He had often said before, though he didn't repeat it, at least to me, during those weeks, that a man's children are his true and only immortality. As a girl I had been made uncomfortable by that idea. I craved separation. "Each man is an island" was my version of a delightful if melancholy truth. I was like Auden's version of Prospero's rejecting brother, Antonio, "By choice myself alone". But during those extreme weeks in Amsterdam I thought about origins. I thought about my grandfather. I thought also about certain myths of origin which I had pieced together in childhood, to explain things that were important, my sense of northernness, my fear of art, the promised end. By a series of elaborate coincidences two of these had become inextricablly involved in what was happening. The first was the Norse Ragnorak, and the second was Vincent Van Gogh.

We went to see the Gotterdammerung, in Covent Garden, on the last night of my father's doomed Rhine-journey. I had a bad cough, which embarrassed me. Now whenever I could I see Gunter and Gutrune like proto-Nazis in their heavy palace beside the broad and glittering artificial water, and think as I thought then, as I always think, when I think of the 1930s, of my father in those first years of my life knowing and fearing what was coming, appalled by appeasement, volunteering for the RAF. When I was clearing his things I found a copy of the "Speech Delivered in the Reichstag, April 28th 1939, by Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and Chancellor". It was stored in a box of family photographs, the only thing in there that was not a photograph, as though it was an intimate part of our family history. At the time, because I was thinking about islands, I remember very clearly thinking about the similarities and dissimilarities between Prospero and Wotan. I thought, in the red dark, that the nineteenth-century Allfather, compared to the Renaissance rough magician, was enclosed in Victorian family claustrophobia, was essentially, by extension, a social being, though both had broken rods. When Fricka berated Wotan, I thought with pleasure of my father, proceeding slowly and freely along the great river.

My favourite book, the book which set my imagination working, as a small child in Pontefract in the early years of the war, was Asgard and the Gods. Tales and Traditions of our Northern Ancestors. 1880. It was illustrated with steel engravings, of Wodan's Wild Hunt, of Odin tied between two fires, his face threatening and beautiful, of Ragnarok, the Last Battle, with Surtur with his flaming head, come out of Muspelheim, the gaping Fenris Wolf about to destroy Odin himself, Thor thrusting his shield-arm into the maw of the risen sea-serpent Jormungander. I remember the shock of reading about the Last Battle in which all the heroes, all the gods, were destroyed forever. It had not until then occurred to me that a story could end like that. Though I had suspected that real life might, my expectations were gloomy. I found it exciting. I knew Asgard backwards before my mother told me about Sylvia, that is certain. I remember sitting in church, listening to the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours and thinking that this story was no different from the stories in Asgard and less moving than they were. I remember going on to think that Ragnarok seemed "truer" than the Resurrection. After Ragnarok, a very tentative, new, vegetable world began a new cycle, washed clean of blood and fire and gold. I may, I see now, rereading the book as I still do, have been influenced in these childish steps in literary theory and the Higher Criticism by the tone of the authors of Asgard, who rationalize Balder and Hodur into summer and winter, who turn giants into mountain ranges and Odin's wrath to wild weather, and who talk about the superior truths illustrated by the beautiful Christian stories. They are not Frazer, equating all gods gleefully with trees, but they set you on course for him. I identified Our Northern Ancestors in my mind with my father's family, wild, extravagant, stony, large and frightening. They were something of which I was part. They were serious gods, as the Greeks, with their love-affairs and capriciousness, were not. The book was, however, not my father's, but my mother's, bought as a crib for the Ancient Icelandic and Old Norse which formed an obligatory part of her degree course. I can't remember if she gave it to me to read, or if I found it. I do remember that she fed the hunger for reading, there was always a book and another book and another. She never underestimated what we could take. She was not kind to her children as social beings, she screamed at invited friends, she felt and communicated extremes of nervous terror. But to readers she was generous and resourceful. I knew she had been the kind of child I was, speechless and a reader. I knew.

It was with my mother, on the other hand, that the Van Gogh myth originated. Her family name had a Dutch shape and sound to it. Her family came, in part, from the Potteries, from the Five Towers, and a myth had grown up with no foundation in evidence, that they were descended from Dutch Huguenots, who came here in the time of William the Silent, practical, warm, Protestant, hardworking craftsmen, with a buried and secret artistic strain. This Dutch quality was a kind of Gemutlichkeit, the quality with which my mother had hoped to warm and mitigate the wuthering and chill of my father's upbringing. In Sheffield, after the war, we had various reproductions of paintings by Vincent Va Gogh around our sitting room wall. There was one of the bridges at Arles, one of the sunnier ones, where the water is aquamarine and women are peacefully spreading washing. There were the boats on the beach at Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer, which I recognized with shock when I went there eight years later. There was a young man in a hat and yellow jacket whom I now know to have been the son of Roulin, the postman, and there was a Zouave in full oriental trousers and red fez, sitting on a bench on a floor whose perspective rose dizzily and improperly towards him There were also two Japanese prints and what I think now must have been a print of Vermeer's Little Street in the Rijksmuseum, a housefront of great peace and steadiness, with a bending woman in a passageway on the left. I always, from the very earliest, associated these working women in Dutch streets with my mother. I associated the secret inwardness of the houses, de Hooch's houses even more than Vermeer's, with my mother's domestic myth, necessary tasks carried out in clear light, in their own confined but meaningful spaces. In my memory, I have superimposed a de Hooch on the Vermeer, for a remember in the picture a small blonde Dutch child, with a cap and serious expression, close to the woman's skirts, who is my small blonde self, gravely paying attention, as my mother would have liked. The Sheffield house, in whose sitting-room these images were deployed, was one of a pair of semi-detached houses purchased as a wedding present for my father by his father, who could never, clearly, do things by halves, who thought, rightly, it would be an investment. We left one of these houses for Pontefract, during the war, for fear of bombs, and came back to the other. At the period when I most clearly remember the Van Goghs and the Vermeer/de Hooch the second house was in a state of renovation and redecoration. My grandfather had died, various large and dignified pieces of furniture had come to be fitted in, and there was money to spend on wallpaper and curtains. I remember one very domestic one, a kind of blush pink with regular cream dots on it, a sugar-sweet paper that my parents repeatedly expressed themselves surprised to like, and about which I was never sure. In my memory, the Van Goghs hang tamed on this delicately suburban ground, but in fact they cannot have done so. I am almost sure that paper was in the dining-room, where my Aunt Gladys was flustered by my enraged and aproned mother. In any case my earliest acquaintance with the paintings was as pleasantly light decoration round a three-piece suite. This was part of what he meant his work to be, sensuous pleasure for everyone. When did I discover differently? Certainly before I myself went to Arles, before Cambridge, in the 1950s, and saw that tortured and aspiring cypresses were exact truths, of their kind. When my father collapsed at Schiphol I was writing a novel in which the idea of Van Gogh stalked in and out of a text about puritanical northern domesticity. There was nowhere I would rather have found myself than the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I was reading and rereading his letters. He wrote about the Dutch painters and their capacity to paint darkness, to paint the brightness of black. He wrote about the hunger for light, and about how his "northern brains" in that clear, heavy, sulphur yellow southern light were oppressed by its power. He was not cautious, he lived dangerously. He felt his brains were electric and his vision too much for his body. Yet he remained steadily intelligent and analytic, mixing his colours, thinking about the nature of light, of one man's energy, of one man's death. He painted the oppression of his fellow-inmates in the hospital in St. Remy. He was a decorous and melancholic northerner turned absolute and wild. He observed and reobserved his own grim red-headed skull and muscles without gentleness, without self-love, without evasion. He was truthful and mad. In the mornings I went and looked at his paintings, and in the afternoons I took the tram out to my father's echoing hospital, carrying little parcels of delicacies, smoked fish, fruits, chocolates. In the afternoons and evenings he talked. He talked, among other things, about the Van Gogh prints, which were obviously his own, his choice, nothing to do with my "Dutch" mother. He talked particularly about the portrait of the Zouave. That was on one of his good days. I had brought him some freesias and some dahlias. I had not realized, in all those years, that he was one of the rare people who cannot smell freesias. He claimed that on this occasion he could. "Just a ghost of a smell, just a hint, I think I can smell it ..." he said. He helped me to mend one of the dahlias with sellotape, where I had bent its stem. "You can keep them alive," he said, "if you keep the water-channels open. I've often kept things alive successfully for surprisingly long periods, that way." He talked about Van Gogh's Zouave, the one of the family prints I had liked least, as a child, because the floor made me giddy and because the man was alien, both his clothes and his face. It was, said my father precisely, "a very powerful image of pure male sexuality. Absolutely straightforward and simple. It was always my favourite."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

June 4, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'Precipice-Encurled' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "Precipice-Encurled", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

I am not sure what year this beautiful (and ultimately tragic) story was written - but it feels to me like a rehearsal for Possession. We have a scholar - in the present-day - looking back through time at a portrait of a woman ... and also at the poems and letters of Robert Browning ... the scholar does not have much to go on but he believes that Browning and the woman in the portrait had an unrequited love affair - and he believes that the clues are everywhere, in the poems, the letters ... he just needs to piece it all together. The story itself is in pieces, though ... We hear about the portrait. We get inside the scholar's mind. Then - suddenly - we are in Robert Browning's mind. In the Browning sections he talks quite a bit about Sludge, the medium ... and of course that's a HUGE theme in Possession ... It feels to me like Byatt might have been working up to Possession here, so many of the themes and devices are similar. And after that - we are there in Italy, on a trip Browning was supposed to take ... but did not ... we know from the section about the scholar that the scholar is curious as to why Browning did NOT join the others in Italy ... Anyway - it's a well-written short story, completely with the stamp of AS Byatt on it. Nobody else could have written it. Here's an excerpt - from the section where we are inside Robert Browning's head. It was hard to pick an excerpt - the story is rather long, and every page is jammed with great stuff, food for thought, good writing. She is so so good when writing about intellectual and spiritual concerns of a bygone age. It's not about the fact that they didn't have electricity or cars ... although that is a factor, too. It's about what they thought and how they thought about it. So much historical fiction is just balderdash with people wearing costumes. Byatt is interested in how they thought, the intellectual influences of the day, where God fits into all of it .... etc.

Excerpt from "Precipice-Encurled", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

Elizabeth had been a great poet, a captive princess liberated and turned wife, a moral force, silly over some things, such as her growing boy's long curls and the flimsy promises and fake visions of the seance. She too had not known this world that was so important. One such intimate knowledge as I have had with many a person would have taught her, he confided once, unguarded, had she been inclined to learn. Though I doubt if she would have dirtied her hands for any scientific purpose. His pubic self had a scientific purpose, and if his hands were dirty, he could wash them clean in a minute before he saw her, as he trusted to do. He had his reasonable doubts about this event, too, though he wrote bravely of it, the step from this world to that other world, the fog in the throat, the mist in the face, the snows, the blasts, the pain and then the peace out of pain and the loving arms. It was not a time of certainties, however he might assert them from time to time. It was a time of doubt, doubt was a man's business. But it was also hard to imagine all this tenacious sense of self, all this complexity of knowledge and battling, force and curiosity becoming nothing. What is a man, what is a man's soul?

Descartes believed, he noted down, that the seat of the soul is the pineal gland. The reason for this is a pretty reason - all else in our apparatus for apprehending the world is double, viz. two ears, two eyes, etc. and two lobes of our brain moreover; Descartes requires that somewhere in our body all our diverse, our dual impressions must be unified before reaching the soul, which is one. He had thought often of writing a poem about Descartes, dreaming in his stove of sages and blasted churches, reducing all to the tenacity of the observing thinker, cogito ergo sum. A man can inhabit another man's mind, or body, or senses, or history, can jerk it into a kind of life, as galvanism moves frogs: a good poet could inhabit Descartes, the bric-a-brac of stove and ill-health and wooden bowls of onion soup, perhaps, and one of those pork knuckles, and the melon offered to the philosopher by the sage in his feverish dream, all this paraphernalia spinning round the naked cogito as the planets spin in an orrery. The best part of my life, he told himself, the life I have lived most intensely, has been the fitting, the infiltrating, the inventing the self of another man or woman, explored and sleekly filled out, as fingers swell a glove. I have been webbed Caliban lying in the primeval ooze, I have been madman and saint, murderer and sensual prelate, inspired David and the cringing medium, Sludge, to whom I gave David's name, with what compulsion of irony or equivocation, David Sludge? The rooms in which his solitary self sat buzzed with other selves, crying for blood as the shades cried at the pit dug by Odysseus in his need to interrogate, to revive the dead. His father's encyclopaedias were the banks of such blood0pits, bulging with paper lives and circumstances, no two the same, none insignificant. A set of views, a time-confined philosophy, a history of wounds and weaknesses, flowers, clothing, food and drink, light on Mont Blanc's horns of silver, fangs of crystal; these coalesce to make one self in one place. Then decompose. I catch them, he thought, I hold them together, I give them coherence and vitality, I. And what am I? Just such another concatenation, a language and its rhythms, a limited stock of learning, derived from my father's consumed books and a few experiments in life, my desires, my venture in dragon-slaying, my love, my loathings also, the peculiar colours of the world through my two eyes, the blind tenacity of the small, the single driving centre, soul or self.


What he had written down, with the scratchy pen, were one or two ideas for Descartes and his metaphorical orrery: meaningless scraps. And this writing brought to life in him a kind of joy iin greed. He would procure, he would soak in, he would comb his way through the Discourse on Method, and the Passions of the Soul: he would investigate Flemish stoves. His private self was now roused from its dormant state to furious activity. He felt the white hairs lift on his neck and his breath quickened. A bounded man, he had once written, may so project his surplusage of soul in search of body, so add self to self ... so find, so fill full, so appropriate forms ... In such a state a man became pure curiosity, pure interest in whatever presented itself of the creation, lovely or freakish, pusillanimous, wise or vile. Those of his creatures he most loved or most approved moved wiht such delighted and indifferent interest through the world. There was the tragic Duchess, destroyed by the cold egotism of a Duke who could not bear her equable pleasure in everything, a sunset, a bough of cherries, a white mule, his favour at her breast. There was Karshish, the Arab physician, the not-incurious in God's handiwork, who noticed lynx and blue-flowering borage and recorded the acts of the risen Lazarus. There was David, seeing the whole earth shine with significance after soothing the passionate self-doubt of Saul; there was Christopher Smart, whose mad work of genius, his Song to David, a baroque chapel in a dull house, had recorded the particularity of the world, the whale's bulk in the waste of brine, the feather-tufts of Wild Virgin's Bower, the habits of the polyanthus. There was the risen Lazarus himself, who had briefly been in the presence of God and inhabited eternity, and to whose resuscitated life he had been able to give no other characteristics than these, the lively, indifferent interest in everything, a mule with gourds, a child's death, the flowers of the field, some trifling fact at which he will gaze "rapt with stupor at its very littleness."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

June 3, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'In the Air' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "In the Air", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

Mrs. Sugden is a woman in her 60s, a retired schoolteacher, elementary school. She lives with her dog Wolfgang. As she has gotten older, certain phobias and fears have become almost fixations in her mind. One is going outside. The second fear is related to the first. She is almost irrationally terrified of being attacked and raped on her daily walks with Wolfgang. She can feel that her body is old, that she would not be able to fight back ... and she also questions Wolfgang's readiness to come to her defense. She takes her walks every day and it is almost like a monumental act of courage for her ... because the sense of impending doom is so overpowering.

The story is terrible as it unfolds. Because sometimes our worst fears are not irrational. Because SOMEONE experiences your worst fear. My worst fear is to be sitting calmly in my apartment - only to have blood-crazed lunatics come in and chase me around like an animal for the slaughter. No mercy for me. tee hee what an irrational fear, right? Tell that to Abigail Folger, why don't you. Tell that to Jay Sebring. The fear doesn't rule my life but it does come into my head from time to time.

Mrs. Sugden sees a blind woman walking wiht her seeing-eye dog in the park. And she notices, too, that a man appears to always be trailing along behind her - something about it sends an alarm bell in Mrs. Sugden. Who is that man? Sometimes he dances in a circle around the blind woman, waving his hands in the air ... because he knows she can't see him. Mrs. Sugden just does not ike the look of this so suddenly - she befriends the blind woman - and they start to have their afternoon walks in the park together.

But the man keeps trailing along.

The story is terrible. You want to applaud Mrs. Sugden for being so brave ... for stepping into the breach, trying to protect the blind woman ... and you also want to save her. It's not right that she should be alone in this. That she should have to live with such fear. Her fear is so ever-present that she thinks of the future attack that WILL come to her as an inevitability. She doesn't think of her attacker as a stranger, or an unknown. He is already known as "he".

Excerpt from from "In the Air", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

She knew it was irrational, though there was logic in it, to feel better indoors. There were women who had found men waiting for them in the dark when they came home, women who had been followed and then pushed quickly in from behind, women whose windows or barred doors had been contemptuously shattered. Mrs. Sugden still felt safer within walls. Partly because of Wolfgang, who knew that this was his territory, who set up a whole orchestra of aggressive sound if anyone knocked, or stopped to stare, who howled and growled and pealed defiance and threat. In Brent - Mrs. Sugden thought it was Brent, certainly somewhere like that - only two per cent of homes with dogs had been entered and seventyy-five per cent of homes without. Inside her own walls she and Wolfgang had a chance. Outside was different. She knew other women might organize their fear differently, might be most afraid of being cornered, of having their own bed violated, their carpet smeared, their kitchen tools turned against them. In her own rooms, her heart ran evenly like her clocks, almost always, except when she was locking up, except when her hands were on cold glass with black night and whatever else just over the threshold. Fear seeped in through the warped lavatory window. But in general it was in open spaces that she expected the encounter. In open spaces her breath came short, her heart was larger and fleshier and beat in little spurts, she was webbed with dizziness. She could not have run for her life and knew it. This also was shaming. Fear and shame, these were what was left, were they? Mrs. Sugden put on her coat, defying them as she defied them daily. Wolfgang circled and pranced in ecstasy. Mrs. Sugden put on her woolly hat and gathered up his lead.

Her path took her along two roads of pleasant Victorian suburban houses, upwards towards the high ground. The roads debouched on a wide and whirling motorway junction which carved the common land, white and lethal. The underpass was the secret entry to the wild land beyond the concrete. Wolfgang rushed to and fro, lifting his leg on lampposts and parked cars, glistening with good health. A sudden car changed lanes as Mrs. Sugden was looking over a hedge at some iris reticulata, and screeched to a halt beside her, facing the wrong way. Now? Out of a car, now? She looked at the driver's face, which was square, oriental, and expressionless. He was simply parking, he lived there, he had simply failed to signal. Mrs. Sugden dropped her eyes and proceeded towards the underpass. The arch over this was adorned in shaky blood-red paint with the pacific slogan MEAT IS MURDER. The graffiti inside were mostly the work of a neat fanatic, with a spray-gun of white paint, who had surrounded the usual inscribed lists of names, pierced hearts, Julie, Lois, Sharon with tidy boxes and correctly spelled admonitions. "You are a whore." "You are an exhibitionist tramp." "You disgust me." Mrs. Sugden would have given this moralist nine out of ten for handwriting, and ten for spelling. She imagined him in a shiny white raincoat to match his paintwork, staring fixedly from inside metal-rimmed glasses above well-polished shoes. He was certainly a manifestation of the man she feared: his work showed that his hand was steady and his intention clear. It might be that he preferred the young and the pretty, with whom he seemed to have a quarrel. He might not notice a thickened person with grey frizz under a woolly hat, plodding quietly through the puddles?

That was not certain. She had watched a whole television film on the subject, sitting on the sofa with a reluctant Wolfgang panting beside her. There had been an interview wiht one young convicted rapist who, silhouetted black against a bland turquoise ground, had said that he always chose ugly or unattractive women. Incredibly, he put his hand to his mouth and added, oh, I hope none of them are watching, I don't want to hurt their feelings. He explained. He did it out of a deep sense of inadequacy, a need to dominate. The civilized words tripped easily off his tongue, in this classroom discussion. He had been exposed to intensive group therapy. Pretty ones, he said, might have intimidated me, you know, I might have backed down. Hearing him say this, in his pleasant young voice, out of the black hole of his obscurity, Mrs. Sugden had known that this voice was his voice, the man's voice, that she was listening to him speak. He was like boys she had taught, coming back to show off how they had got on in the world. Boys had liked her, as a techer, in those younger days. She had liked boys. The cheeky youngster, the workman with his wolf-whistle from scaffolding, the teaching student grateful for being shown the ropes. It was the world that had changed and she with it.


At the further mouth of the underpass, on her way up into light, she encountered a solitary man, walking rapidly and frowning. He was tall, black-avised with a heavy growth of stubble on gaunt cheeks under a woollen cap pulled well down. Combat jacket, faded jeans, dirty trainers. Fear fogged Mrs. Sugden's gaze. She went on walking, past him. He held his eyes averted, rigidly, as alarmed by her, apparently, as she by him. Or perhaps just English. Once there had been a time when people passed the time of day, surely there had, even if their polite greetings had been a formal indication that they posed no threat? Now, no one dared. She, for fear of provoking him, he, for fear of misapprehension. Or perhaps he was just sour. Perhaps he had not really seen her at all.

In the earlier days of her fear Mrs. Sugden had tried to make herself think about other things. She hd promised herself little rewards. If I get as far as the first copse, on the way to the pond, without thinking about him, there will be a letter from James. Or, more reliably, I will allow myself to buy a chocolate eclair. She had long ago given up this childish self-bribery with things she didn't really look forward to - she found it hard to look forward to anything much, except sleep. It had directly brought on the one mental battle which had caused her to turn tail before the copse, crying for Wolfgang in distress, battling her way home with bursting chest and wandering eyes. No, no, fear was better faced squarely. She could go out into his world if she was prepared for him, if she thought him out rationally, if she knew him and what might happen.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 2, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'The Changeling' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "The Changeling", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

Another short story about writing. Sugar is full of them. In "The Changeling" we meet Josephine - a writer. Her husband left her for another woman. Her son is now 18 or 19. Her son had gone to a private school - and Josephine had taken up the habit of befriending or "taking in" Lost Boys ... boys far away from their families, boys with no families ... whatever. The story begins with the headmaster of the private school asking if she would take in a student in need - his name is Henry Smee. The headmaster says to her that he IS the spitting image of "Simon Vowle" - the adolescent boy who is the "star" of Josephine's most successful book, The Boiler-Room. Josephine takes him in. And so begins the story. What is really interesting to me about this Josephine character is: the degree to which she has play-acted all her life. It's kind of devastating when you realize it. She is full of terror (this is what she writes about too - it sounds to me like her books are Robert Cormier-esque) ... and yet her play-acting self is breezy, calm, organized ... but once Henry Smee comes to live with her, the facade begins to crumble. She has been "found out". I'm not writing about it very well - you should just read the story. But here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from "The Changeling", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

The subject of Josephine's writings was fear. Rational fear, irrational fear, the huge-bulking fear of the young not at home in the world. Every writer, James says, discovers his or her subject matter early and spends a lifetime elaborating and exploring it. That may or may not be generally true, but it was certainly true of Josephine Piper. Her characteristic form was the long novella: her characteristic hero a boy, anywhere between infancy and late adolescence, threatened and in retreat. Some of these boys were actually mutilated or killed, driven away in cars with no inner door handles, rushed stumbling through urban jungles at knife-point, ritually tormented by gangs of other boys in public school dormitory or state schoo playground. If they were hurt it was always fast and unexpected: the subject was not violence but fear. Often they were not hurt: they suffered from a look, an exclusion, a crack in a windowpane, a swaggering bus conductor keeping order on the top deck because he himself was afraid for his life. Josephine's work had been compared to Kafka as well as to Wilkie Collins and James himself. The Boiler-Room, whose central figure was Simon Vowle, was a surreal story of a boy in a boarding school who had built himself a Crusoe-like burrow or retreat in the dust behind the coiling pipe-system of the coke-boiler in the school basement and had finally moved in there completely, making forays for food and drink at night. It had a macabre end: Josephine Piper did not let her characters off. It had been described, with the usual hyperbole, as the last word on institutional terrors in schools. Josephine Piper could make an ordinary desk, a heap of football boots, a locked steel locker, tall and narrow, bristle with the horror of what man can do to man.


She recognized fear in Henry Smee, though she had no idea what he was afraid of, or whether his fears were real or phantasmagoric. She recognized something else too, from her own experience; the inconvenience, to the pathologically afraid, of an excessive gift of intellectual talent. Poor Henry could not but enjoy a grammatical dispute or the strict form of complex music: he perceived order and beauty, he remembered forms and patterns, he was doomed to think. He could not take up hiding as a way of life. She herself had been afraid as a child - where else could such knowledge have come from? - and had been so clever that it had had to be noticed, she could not hide it in silence and stammering,s he had had to read and remember and in the end, as Henry was now doing, to go out at least temporarily into a world where these things mattered.


He developed an inconvenient habit. He would not speak, over breakfast or supper, and Josephine slowly ceased to persist in questionings that received monosyllabic or nodding answers. But he roamed the house at two, at three in the morning, in his pyjamas and dressing gown, and once or twice she came down, fearing intruders, to find him sitting in the kitchen, with a mug of Nescafe, staring at the stove. On these occasions, though he did not confide in Josephine, he showed an extraordinary willingnes to talk. He would talk very quietly, so that she had to strain to hear him, offering, she imagined, the flotsam and jetsam of his thoughts, disconnected observations about the use of learning Latin quantities, or the economy of Stravinsky, or a longish disquisition on the Cambridge syllabus, with a parenthetical remark that he hoped that he didn't have to share supervisions, he found it hard to be in a room with more than one person at once. This was the most personal thing he said, and yet, yawning and low in blood-sugar, Josephine was aware that he was telling her as best he could what or how he was. The trouble was that she did not want to know. What she could face about what Henry was telling her she already knew. And fear is infectious.


Fear is perhaps also hereditary. Josephine's mother had had a mild and for others disagreeable case of agoraphobia, which had worsened as she grew older, with what josephine's father, bewildered, socially embarrassed, lonely, called indulgence. When Josephine was five or six her overwrapped mother would take her overwrapped daughter as far as the local school and had been known to go as far as the public library. By the time Josephine was fourteen, at boarding school, Josephine's mother rarely ventured outside her bedroom, and became giddy even in the back garden. She had never said - Josephine had never supposed it would be worth asking - what she feared, and her daughter had been left to imagine. She remembered her mother veering in agitation out of a bus queue in which they had been standing side by side in uncompanionable silence, running up the road, dropping books and paper bags of plums and carrots. What was frightening about bus stops? It was more understandable that the doorbell should arouse terror. Josephine, who had had to negotiate the Kleen-e-ze man, the meter-readers, the doctor himself, saw all these as menacing. How much more menacing were the laughing large girls in the school dormitory, who threw pillows, who launched themselves on each other's beds, who ragged and mocked the thin child she was, shaking in her liberty bodice? She had been saved, if she had been saved, by the solitary and sensuous pleasure of writing out her fear. Already in the boiler-room at St Clare's School she was writing clumsy tales of justified terror, of bounding packs of girls who accidentally squeezed the last breath out of their pathetic prey, of lost, voiceless sufferers locked in cupboards and accidentally forgotten. The boiler-room had been thick with coal-dust: a scree of coke sloped up to a closed and cobwebbed window under the area and the pavement. If she opened the boiler door the flames hissed and roared and the coke-dust glittered here and there. She collected things: a blanket, a bicycle lamp, an old sweater, a biscuit tin, a special box for pens, a folder that lived there. She squeezed into her burrow, through pipe-gaps too narrow to take a larger girl or member of staff. Sometimes she sacrificed bad writing to the boiler, whose angry red turned briefly golden. When she wrote about Simon Vowle the coke-smell came back in its ancient fustiness and bitterness. Simon Vowle was an exorcism. The woman who could make and observe him was not doomed to relive her mother's curious arrested life - was not?

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

June 1, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'On the Day That E.M. Forster Died' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "On the Day That E.M. Forster Died", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

This is my favorite story in the whole collection. It's also the most revealing. Meaning - I felt named by it. Especially when I re-read it recently. It got me all worked up when I finished it. I felt nervous. Irritable. Worried. It was a free-floating sensation, the kind of which I used to suffer from all the time. Something was wrong ... but what??? Well, recently I could locate the source of my anxiety pretty quickly - it was because I had re-read this story.

I don't want to say too much about it. I will say that it starts with the words: "This is a story about writing." The main character is named Mrs. Smith. We get to know her quite well ... but never her first name. We get to know what goes on in her mind. She is a middle-aged housewife and mother - who goes to the London Library after the kids go to school - and sits there, in that environment, trying to write. She does write. She does write. All kinds of disparate strands of stories take up space in her head ... and on one fateful day, the day that EM Forster died, she decides to put them all together and write a big long complex book - where ALL of her stories are part of it. Take this strand about the Hungarian refugee - and somehow weave it in with the Tolkien-esque story - the whole world opens up for her (inside her head) - Byatt describes the revelatory moment like nobody else. That feeling, that itchy feeling, that knowing .... that you are onto something. That you are not just able to THINK of an idea, but you WILL be able to execute it. You are ready to execute it. It's hard to write about writing. But obviously - with Possession - Byatt has shown she's a master at it.

I won't say too much more about this story. It makes me want to cry. It makes me want to mourn the lost years, the lost time .... and it also makes me nervous, voracious, ready, but paralyzed - because, like Zooey says to Franny: " You'd better get busy though, buddy. The goddamn sands run out on you every time you turn around."

Here's an excerpt:

Excerpt from "On the Day That E.M. Forster Died", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

She went up and down Jermyn Street, through the dark doorway, the windowed umber quiet of St James's Piccadilly, out into the bright churchyard with its lettered stones smoothed and erased by the passage of feet. Along Piccadilly, past Fortnum and Mason's, more windows full of decorous conspicious consumption, down an arcade bright with windowed riches like Aladdin's cave, out into Jermyn Street again. Everything was transformed. Everything was hers, by which phrase she meant, thinking fast in orderly language, that at that time she felt no doubt about being able to translate everything she saw into words, her own words, English words, English words in 1970, with their limited and meaningful and endlessly rich histories, theirs as hers was hers. This was not the same as Adam in Eden naming things, making nouns. It was not that she said nakedly, as though for the first time, tree, stone, grass, sky, nor even, more particularly, omnibus, gas-lamp, culottes. It was mostly adjectives, Elephantine bark, eau-de-nil paint on Fortnum's walls, Nile-water green, a colour fashionable from Nelson's victories at the time when this street was formed, a colour for old drawing-rooms or, she noted in the chemist's window, for a new eyeshadow, Jeepers Peepers, Occidental Jade, what nonsense, what vitality, how lovely to know. Naming with nouns, she thought absurdly, is the language of poetry, There is a Tree, of many One. The Rainbow comes and goes. And Lovely is the Rose. Adjectives go with the particularity of long novels. They limit nouns. And at the same time give them energy. Dickens is full of them. And Balzac. And Proust.

Nothing now, she knew, whatever in the moral abstract she thought about the relative importance of writing and life, would matter to her more than writing. This illumination was a function of middle age. Novels - as opposed to lyrics, or mathematics - are essentially a middle-aged form. The long novel she meant to write acknowledged both the length and shortness of her time. It would not be History, nor even a history, nor certainly, perish the thought, her history. Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction. But it would be written in the knowledge that she had lived through and noticed a certain amount of history. A war, a welfare state, the rise (and fall) of the meritocracy, European unity, little England, equality of opportunity, comprehensive schooling, women's liberation, the death of the individual, the poverty of liberalism. How lovely to trace the particular human events that might chart the glories and inadequacies, the terrors and absurdities, the hopes and fears of those words. And biological history too. She had lived now through birth, puberty, illness, sex, love, marriage, other births, other kinds of love, family and kinship and local manifestations of their universals, Drs Spock, Bowlby, Winnicott, Flower Power, gentrification, the transformation of the adjective gay into a politicized noun. How extraordinary and interesting it all was, how adequate language turned out to be, if you thought in t terms of long flows of writing, looping tightly and lolsey round things, joining and knitting and dividing, or, to change the metaphor, a Pandora's box, an Aladdin's cave, a bottomless dark bag into which everything could be put and drawn out again, the same and not the same. She quoted to herself, in another language, "Nel mzzo del cammin di nostra vita." Another beginning in a middle. Mrs. Smith momentarily Dante, in the middle of Jermyn Street.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 31, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'The Dried Witch' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "The Dried Witch", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt. This is an early version of one of Byatt's fables. It has the sound of myth, or legend ... there's an impersonal tone to the narrator (which is quite different from the more chatty or subjective tones of many of her narrators - like the one in 'Racine and the Tablecloth', among others). The story takes place in a primitive society (primitive meaning: not modern, no dishwashers or cars, so just calm down) - perhaps in Africa - somewhere definitely hot. It's not a Muslim community - the villagers believe in many gods. But it has the same hatred and suspicion of women. You just can't win if you're a woman. Everything is your fault. Infidelity? You brought it on. Sexuality is in women's hands, completely. You're raped? Your fault. The crime? Being a woman. Don't try to win, you won't be able to. Women are beheaded for being alone with a man who is not her relative. That fear hangs over all of the interpersonal relationships in the village. A-Oa is the heroine of our story ... which feels like an analogy for menopause, but I may be reading too much into it. It feels like the devastation of not being OF USE anymore. A-Oa is a woman who has suffered extraordinary losses. She had four sons - all of whom died. Her husband went off to fight in some war - and never returned. The village now suspects that she is a "jinx". She is bad luck. Not only is she bad luck - but she is purposefully malevolent. (She actually isn't - but that's how the village feels about her). She scares them. It's like whatever bad luck hovers around her is catching. There's also a fiery drought on. Everything is drying up. Is this the fault of the "jinx" too? The whole story has a malevolent feeling to it - A-Oa is blameless, yet is she? It's almost like the demands of communal living insist on a literal interpretation of events - not too much room for grey areas. A-Oa has interactions with people full of subtlety, like we all do ... but again: the literalists will take over, they turn everything ugly - those literal-minded people ... and that's what happens here. Meanwhile, A-Oa is also overwhelmingly aware of the dryness of her own body, the lack of saliva - it's a torment.

I would say the story is about 5 or 6 pages too long. It loses its impact just a tiny bit .... the ending is powerful and terrible. Byatt could have gotten there quicker.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from from "The Dried Witch", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

The courtyards were busy and chattering: worshippers moved between greater and lesser temples, brown-robed monk ofs carried baskets of rain and vegetables, families squatted in the dust and argued. In the greater Temple were the huge figures of the Wise Ones, three and awful, taller and wider than the eye could ever see at once, so that it was as much as you could do to focus on a heavy knee, or monstrous, mountainous hand, or far away the three faces, up in the dark of the roofspace, staring quietly out over the heads of the worshipping ants, wonderfully, characteristically blank, bearing a family resemblance in their perfect stillness. The brass lamps were all at the level of the altars, which were themselves below the level of the vast feet, which were dusty but not travel-stained. This gave the illusion that the Wise Ones towered away for ever, out of sight, out of apprehension, out of form. A-Oak bought an incense stick from a monk, lit it, and stood it with the others on one of the smaller altars; she bowed repeatedly, and set out her dishes of beans and fruit before kneeling to pray, her black and silver hair in the dust. It seemed to her that she did not know how to pray or what to ask for. In the past she had asked for sons: or to be forgiven for whatever had caused the sons she had to sicken and fail. To one side of her, standing beside the altar, was a small squat brass boy, a fat and polished child, not dusty like everything else in the huge, smoky and rattling place, but gleaming where countless soft dark hands had touched and caressed him. He wore a small scarlet cloth on a string, just large enough to cover whatever he had between his legs. It was known that his touch brought luck, brought boy-children. On every previous visit A-Oa had touched him. When she was young and humorous she had tickled him like a lover, laughing back quietly at her husband; after the loss of the first child she had touched the warm metal with fearful fingertips. Once she had come with Da-Shin and had touched the boy furtively, laying her fingers over his metal ones, asking friendship, complicity. He had a smile that took up his whole face, curling both mouth and eyebrow corners. She tried to tell the Wise Ones that she was afraid, that she was not herself, that there were changes she couldn't describe. All she was conscious of was the presence of the grinning boy, the sheen of countless handlings, gratified or denied, the dangling red cloth that was never lifted. She thought: when I am dead, this will be over, meaning by "this" the boy and all his works. The Wise Ones vouchsafed no relief, perhaps because she expected so little, was closed to their silent lines of life as her tongue and palate were to water.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 30, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'The Next Room' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "The Next Room", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt. I was very moved by this story. Joanna is a woman whose mother just died. Her feelings about her mother (named Molly) are complicated. Her mother was an invalid and Joanna gave up many years of her life - the prime career years - to take care of her. Her mother was not grateful. Now that her mother is dead, Joanna is trying to get back into her career - only now she's 59 years old. Her career (before her mother got sick) had been traveling to third world countries and helping with development projects. A young woman's game, most definitely. So Joanna feels almost relieved her mother is gone - and also resentful that here she is, almost old now ... and what will she do? She wants to sell her mother's house immediately - get RID of it ... but in the meantime, she stays there ... and intermittently she hears voices in "the next room". It is not ever clearly identified who they are ... but they argue, they complain ... and they are aware of her. Eventually, when Joanna says through the wall - Please be quiet ... she can hear the voices stop, as though they hear her ... and then just begin to complain louder. She wonders if she is going crazy.

And I know people like Molly - people who are perpetually disappointed by life ... making me wonder: What exactly did you want?

Here's an excerpt:

Excerpt from "The Next Room", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

She became aware of two quite different aspects of her sense of her mother who was not here. The first was an expectation of her imminent arrival, querulous or ready with a piece of witty self-deprecation, to take up her seat in her chair and ask for this and that to be fetched or taken away. This almost comfortable epectation was uncanny only because Molly would never come again; it was usual, and would not be switched off to order, or for reason's sake. The second was not expectation, but reminiscence and later came to constitute itself in Joanna's thought as "the jigsaw". She had had such a jigsaw during the long and tedious years at boarding school - a set of images, strip-cartoon pictures, patches of colour, she seemed to snip out with mental scissors and fit together awkwardly and with overlaps or gaps, labelling this for reference "my mother", an entity which had little or nothing to do with the living, slippered creature who would not again patter between Cliff Thorburn and the toaster, or take up the knitting-needles and count stitches. "My mother" in Joanna's schooldays had, like most people's mothers, worn embarrassing and strident hats. She was frozen forever in Joanna's playroom doorway like an avenging angel crying out against powder paint on the carpet fifty-four years ago. A comforting corner of the jigsaw held a kitchen mother with a wooden spoon, dripping cochineal into birthday icing: she was good at cakes, and enjoyed Joanna's pleasure. Joanna turned the finished jigsaw in her mind like a kaleidosocope; there were things now, that constituted sharp corners and jagged edges, that she had never brought out to look at in those long flickering evenings in case Molly overlooked or overheard her thoughts. Many of these pieces were to do with her vanished father, who had begun to vanish long before he had in fact chosed gently to death, who had begun to vanish at precisely the moment when he had become perpetually present, which his premature retirement, or whatever it had been, had confined him to Molly's territory and its margins, the far reaches of the garden, the bonfire, the compost heap, the battle with ground elder from next door. Molly had been a great requirer: she had expected much from life, and had not had it, and had made her disappointment vociferous. Joanna was not, and now never would be, quite sure what she had wanted - it was not particularly to do anything, but to be something, the wife of an influential and successful man. (Joanna's own life, a career devoted to useful work for underdeveloped socieites, had been conceived in direct opposition to this want.) Joanna sometimes suspected that her mother had married her father simply because he represented the nearest thing she knew to this vicarious influence and success. He had been clever, shy, and formal, a step up the social scale for the daughter of a sub-postmistress. He might have become an Under-Secretary or even better. He never talked about his work, and then, suddenly, there was trouble - "the silly mess your father got into" - Joanna would never know what - and it was at an end.

He had become ill, almost immediately, within a year at most. A wasting disease had attacked him. Joanna had heard him say once, in the conservatory, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me," but he had been saying it into the trumpets of his lilies, not to her. He said nothing to Molly, who said a great deal to him, and Joanna had always bitterly felt that he saw Joanna herself as an extension of his wife. He had had fine, cobwebby grey hair, that when he worked he sleeked, briefly, with water. As he wasted away he became all grey; his face grew thinner, and ashen, and developed long fine downwards pleats and incisions, and then a crazy criss-cross of cracks as he diminished steadily. His eyes had always been a pale, smoky grey. He wandered among the smoke of his bonfires in a grey V-necked pullover, carrying increasingly small forkfuls of twigs and dried weeds, ghost-grey. Joanna had been very startled that the ashes which she sifted onto the roots of Madame Alfred Carriere, at the last, had been creamy white.

The stages of his slow decline were marked on the whole by jigsaw pieces depicting, not him, but Molly's dealings with him. Molly declaring, after the fateful interview with the specialist, "There's nothing really wrong with him: he just needs to pull himself together, you'll see." Molly's distaste for his bodily presence and all his activities. He had tried, in the early days, to have a glass of beer in the early evenings. Molly had taken exception to this. The smell, she said, disgusted her. Beer was a sickening smell. (The fact that Joanna also disliked its smell had rendered her icily neutral in this dispute.) Molly had pounced on his beer glass the moment it was emptied, when the air still lingered in the fringe of froth at its brim, and had washed and washed it, her mouth set. Later, she had commented to Joanna on every small eructation. Your father's tummy grumbles all the time. He makes awful belching noises. It's the beer. It's disgusting. Towards the end, when the discreet belches were an inevitable function of his failing body, she had not even waited for his absence to comment. He appeared not to hear. He gave up the beer.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 29, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'The July Ghost' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegThis excerpt is from "The July Ghosts", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt. A creepy story. Byatt is so good psychologically. A young man, whose girlfriend up and left him for another man, is kind of reeling from the shock of it - he needs to find another place to live, so he rents a room in a woman's house. There's a husband in the picture - but things are prickly between them - the young man is a witness to the weirdness in the relationship, and the weirdness of the woman herself. He minds his own business, he has a lot of work to do, he's a writer, and he sits out in the back garden, writing and reading. Kids play in the next yard - so often one of them will come over to retrieve a ball that flew over the fence, or whatever. One day, he sees a little boy sitting up in the tree, staring down at him. He says to him, "You be careful up there ... don't fall ..." The boy doesn't respond. There's something about the boy that really strikes him. His smile, first of all. The boy continues to appear, intermittently, out in the garden, lying in the grass in the corner, smiling over at him. One day, the young man sees the little boy exiting the house, coming out of the kitchen door - as though he lived there. He decides to mention the little boy to the woman.

What I meant earlier by saying that Byatt is so good psychologically is that in just a few sentences she has set up our expectations of how this woman will behave. So that when she starts to behave in unexpected ways - it is breathtaking, and very moving. She seems practical, unemotional, repressed, humorless - not unkind ... but certainly not a woman of any deep feeling.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from "The July Ghosts", another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt.

He felt reluctant to inform on the boy, who seemed so harmless and considerate: but when he met him walking out of the kitchen door, spoke to him, and got no answer but the gentle smile before the boy ran off towards the wall, he wondered if he should speak to his landlady. So he asked her, did she mind the children coming in the garden. She said no, children must look for balls, that was part of being children. He persisted - they sat there, too, and he had met one coming out of the house. He hadn't seemed to be doing any harm, the boy, but you couldn't tell. He thought she should know.

He was probably a friend of her son's, she said. She looked at him kindly and explained. Her son had run off the Common with some other children, two years ago, in the summer, in July, and had been killed on the road. More or less instantly, she had added drily, as though calculating that just enough information would preclude the need for further questions. He said he was sorry, very sorry, feeling to blame, which was ridiculous, and a little injured, because he had not known about her son, and might inadvertently have made a fool of himself with some casual refernence whose ignorance would be embarrassing.

What was the boy like, she said. The one in the house? "I don't -- talk to his friends. I find it painful. It could be Timmy, or Martin. They might have lost something, or want ..."

He described the boy. Blond, almost ten at a guess, he was not very good at children's ages, very blue eyes, slightly built, with a rainbow-striped tee shirt and blue jeans, mostly though not always - oh, and those football practice shoes, black and green. And the other tee shirt, with the ships and wavy lines. And an extraordinarily nice smile. A really warm smile. A nice-looking boy.

He was used to her being silent. But this silence went on and on and on. She was just staring into the garden. After a time, she said, in her precise conversational tone,

"The only thing I want, the only thing I want at all in this world, is to see that boy."

She stared at the garden and he stared with her, until the grass began to dance with empty light, and the edges of the shrubbery wavered. For a brief moment he shared the strain of not seeing the boy. Then she gave a little sigh, sat down, neatly as always, and passed out at his feet.

After this she became, for her, voluble. He didn't move her after she fainted, but sat patiently by her, until she stirred and sat up; then he fetched her some water, and would have gone away, but she talked.

"I'm too rational to see ghosts, I'm not someone who would see anything there was to see, I don't believe in an after-life, I don't see how anyone can, I always found a kind of satisfaction for myself in the idea that one just came to an end, to a sliced-off stop. But that was myself; I didn't think he - not he - I thought ghosts were - what people wanted to see, or were afraid to see ... and after he died, the best hope I had, it sounds silly, was that I would go mad enough so that instead of waiting every day for him to come home from school and rattle the letter-box I might actually have the illusion of seeing or hearing him come in. Because I can't stop my body and mind waiting, every day, every day, I can't let go. And his bedroom, sometimes at night I go in, I think I might just for a moment forget he wasn't in there sleeping, I think I would pay almost anything - anything at all - for a moment of seeing him like I used to. In his pyjamas, with his - his - his hair ... ruffled, and, his ... you said, his ... that smile.

"When it happened, they got Noel, and Noel came in and shouted my name, like he did the other day, that's why I screamed, because it - seemed to same - and then they said, he is dead, and I thought coolly, is dead, that will go on and on and on till the end of time, it's a continuous present tense, one thinks the most ridiculous things, there I was thinking about grammar, the verb to be, when it ends to be dead ... And then I came out into the garden, and I half saw, in my mind's eye, a kind of ghost of his face, just the eyes and hair, coming towards me - like every day waiting for him to come home, the way you think of your son, with such pleasure, when he's -- not there -- and I -- I thought -- no, I won't see him, because he is dead, and I won't dream about him because he is dead, I'll be rational and practical and continue to live because one must, and there was Noel ...

"I got it wrong, you see, I was so sensible, and then I was so shockecd because I couldn't get to want anything - I couldn't talk to Noel -- I -- I -- made Noel take away, destroy, all the photos, I -- didn't dream, you can will not to dream, I didn't ... visit a grave, flowers, there isn't any point. I was so sensible. Only my body wouldn't stop waiting and all it wants is to -- to see that boy. That boy you -- saw."


He did not say that he might have seen another boy, maybe even a boy who had been given the tee shirts and jeans afterwards. He did not say, though the idea crossed his mind, that maybe what he had seen was some kind of impression from her terrible desire to see a boy where nothing was. The boy had had nothing terrible, no aura of pain about him: he had been, his memory insisted, such a pleasant, courteous, self-contained boy, with his own purposes. And in fact the woman herself almost immediately raised the possibility that what he had seen was what she desired to see, a kind of mix-up of radio waves, like when you overheard police messages on the radio, or got BBC I on a switch that said ITV. She was thinking fast, and went on almost immediately to say that perhaps his sense of loss, his loss of Anne, which was what had led her to feel she could bear his presence in her house, was what had brought them - dare she say - near enough, for their wavelengths to mingle, perhaps, had made him susceptible ... You mean, he had said, we are a kind of emotional vacuum between us, that must be filled. Something like that, she had said, and had added, "But I don't believe in ghosts."

Anne, he thought, could not be a ghost, because she was elsewhere, with someone else, doing for someone else those little things she had done so gaily for him, tasty little suppers, bits of research, a sudden vase of unusual flowers, new bold shirt, unlike his own cautious taste, but suiting him, suiting him. In a sense, Anne was worse lost because voluntarily absent, an absence that could not be loved because love was at an end, for Anne.

"I don't suppose you will, now," the woman was saying. "I think talking would probably stop any - mixing of messages, if that's what it is, don't you? But - if - if he comes again" -- and here for the first time her eyes were full of tears -- "if -- you must promise, you will tell me, you must promise."

Posted by sheila Permalink

May 27, 2007

The Books: "Sugar and Other Stories" - 'Racine and the Tablecloth' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bosugar.jpegSugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt. A short story collection - her first. She has a ton more out and I'll be excerpting from them quite a bit. She's fantastic. As anyone who reads Byatt knows, she's very into fairy tales (remember Christabel's story 'The Glass Coffin' - in Possession)? Byatt cites as some of her main influences - not just giants like George Eliot - but also the Brothers Grimm and Arabian Nights (the copy of Arabian Nights I'm reading now has a preface by AS Byatt). The influence is clear, in all of her writing. The stories in this particular collection are not fairy tales, not exactly - but there's something in the writing - a distance, a perspective - that makes them not quite real. They become fables. The narrator is not omniscent - the narrator has a point of view, it's more like a story being told round a fire. I love that aspect of Byatt's short stories. They're thrilling to read.

The first story in this collection is a haunting tale called 'Racine and the Tablecloth'. It reminds me a bit of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye ... the terror and potency of being a young girl, surrounded by other young girls. The danger ... the danger especially of pulling ahead of the pack. In a way, this is a feminist fable. Emily - the lead of the story - is a brilliant student, she is a scholarship student at a boarding school - and she is clearly better, academically, than everyone else. This does not make her any friends. She is isolated. And worse than that - the headmistress of the school, named Miss Crighton-Walker, seems to hone in on Emily - in a way that can only be described as malevolent. She is an adult ... yet she finds something antagonistic about this young girl, who is only 14 years old. And although Miss Crighton-Walker would never admit it, she sets out to destroy Emily's spirit.

Great story. Chilling. And with a narrative voice that is very interesting - continuiing to assert itself into the story. Who is the narrator? Not Emily. No. It's a story-teller, who ruminates over the meaning of things, who pulls us out of the driving action - to contemplate motivations, themes. It's a great device because it elevates the story.

Excerpt from Sugar and Other Stories - by A.S. Byatt. - 'Racine and the Tablecloth'.

I am not going to describe the dance, which was sad for almost all of them, must have been, as they stood in their resolutely unmingled ranks on either side of the grey school hall. Nothing of interest really happened to Emily on that occasion, as she must, in her secret mind, have known it would not. It faded rapidly enough in her memory, whereas Miss Crichton-Walker's peculiar anxiety about it, even down to her curious analogy between razors and lawn-mowers, remained stamped there, clear and pungent, an odd and significant trace of the days of her education. In due course this memory accrued to itself Emily's later reflections on the punning names of depilatories, all of which aroused in her mind a trace-image of Miss Crichton-Walker's swinging, white, hairless body in th emoonlight. Veet. Immac. Nair. Emily at the time of the static dance was beginning to sample the pleasures of being a linguist. Nair sounded like a Miltonic coinage for Satanic scaliness. Veet was a thick English version of French rapidity and discreet efficiency. Immac, in the connexion of Miss Crichton-Walker, was particularly satisfying, carrying with it the Latin, maculata, stained or spotted, immaculata, unstained, unspotted, and the Immaculate Conception, which, Emily was taught at this time, referred to the stainless or spotless begetting of the Virgin herself, not to the subsequent self-contained, unpunctured, manless begetting of the Son. The girls in the dormitories were roused by Miss Crichton-Walker to swap anecdotes about Veet, which according to them had 'the - most - terrible - smell' and produced a stinking slop of hairy grease. No one sent her razor home. It was generally agreed that Miss Crichton-Walker had too little bodily hair to know what it was to worry about it.

Meanwhile, and at the same time, there was Racine. You may be amused that Miss Crichton-Walker should simultaneously ban ladies' razors and promote the study of Ph�dre. It is amusing. It is amusing that the same girls should already have been exposed to the betrayed and betraying cries of Ophelia's madness. 'Then up he rose, and doffed his clothes, and dupped the chamber door. Let in the maid that out a maid, never departed more.' It is the word 'dupped' that is so upsetting in that little song, perhaps because it recalls another Shakespearean word that rhymes with it, Iago's black ram tupping the white ewe, Desdemona. Get thee to a nunnery, said Hamlet, and there was Emily, in a nunnery, never out of one, in a rustle of terrible words and delicate and gross suggestions, the stuff of her studies. But that is not what I wanted to say about Racine. Shakespeare came upon Emily gradually, she could accommodate him, he had always been there. Racine was sudden and new. That is not it, either, not what I wanted to say.

Think of it. Twenty girls or so - were there so many? - in the A level French class, and in front of each a similar, if not identical, small, slim greenish book, more or less used, more or less stained. When they riffled through the pages, the text did not look attractive. It proceeded in strict, soldierly columns of rhymed couplets, a form disliked by both the poetry-lovers and the indifferent amongst them. Nothings eemed to be happening, it all seemed to be the same. The speeches were very long. There appeared to be no interchange, no battle of dialogue. No action. Ph�dre. The French teacher told them that the play was based on the Hippolytus of Euripides, and that Racine had altered the plot by adding a character, a young girl, Aricie, whom Hippolytus should fall in love with. She neglected to describe the original play, which they did not know. They wrote down, Hippolytus, Euripides, Aricie. She told them that the play kept the unities of classical drama, and told them what these unities were, and they wrote them down. The Unity of Time = One Day. The Unity of Space = One Place. The Unity of Action = One Plot. She neglected to say what kind of effect these constrictions might have on an imagined world: she offered a half-hearted rationale she clearly despised a little herself, as though the Greeks and the French were children who made unnecessary rules for themselves, did not see wider horizons. The girls were embarrassed by having to read this passionate sing-song verse aloud in French. Emily shared their initial reluctance, their near-apathy. She was later to believe that only she became a secret addict of Racine's convoluted world, tortuously lucid, savage and controlled. As I said, the imagination of the other girls' thoughts was not Emily's strength. In Racine's world, all the inmates were gripped wholly by incompatible passions which swelled uncontrollably to fill their whole universe, brimming over and drowning its hoizons. They were all creatures of excess, their secret blood burned and boiled and an unimaginably hot bright sun glared down in judgment. They were all horribly and beautifully interwoven, tearing each other apart in a perfectly choreographed dance, every move inevitable, lovely, destroying. In this world men and women had high and terrible fates which were themselves and yet greater than themselves. Ph�dre's love for Hippolyte was wholly unnatural, dragging her world askew, wholly inevitable, a force like a flood, or a conflagration, or an eruption. This art described a world of monstrous disorder and excess and at the same time ordered it with iron control and constrictions, the closed world of the classical stage and the prescribed dialogue, the flexible, shining, inescapable steel mesh of that regular, regulated singing verse. It was a world in which the artist was in unusual collusion with the Reader, his art like a mapping trellis between the voyeur and the terrible writhing of the characters. It was an austere and adult art, Emily thought, who knew little about adults, only that they were unlike Miss Crichton-Walker, and had anxieties other than those of her tired and over-stretched mother. The Reader was adult. The Reader saw with the pitiless clarity of Racine - and also with Racine's impersonal sympathy - just how far human beings could go, what they were capable of.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 26, 2007

The Books: "The Biographer's Tale" (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

0375411143.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgThe Biographer's Tale - by A.S. Byatt.

For the love of Pete, I barely remember a word of this book. It came out in December 2001 - and I bought it and also read it in Dec. of 2001 (I keep a list of the books I read) - and so that may explain why I remember NOTHING of this book. Dec. 2001. That's all that really needs to be said.

I tried to read fiction ... but it would be a year and a half or so before I could submit to a novel ... everything I read had to be historical, factual, whatever. So that might be why I have NO memory of Biographer's Tale - and I can tell that I actually read it because I've marked out certain passages, underlined certain sentences. What? Was I even THERE? There's a good 6 or 7 months around that time that I have almost no memory of, anyway - and I read Biographer's Tale during that time. Vanished from ye olde brain cells.

I don't remember it making a big splash - compared to Possession and Babel Tower it's almost like a sketchbook of an idea ... From what I can gather ... it's about a man who leaves his graduate program in English, or literary theory - something extremely postmodern and analytical ... and decides to confront reality by writing a biography of a great biographer. He begins his research and finds a box of material in an attic somewhere (forgive the vagueness) ... notebooks full of notes written by this great biographer. Because it's Byatt writing - we get to feel like we are rifling through this box. There are catalog cards with notes and quotes scribbled on them - some attributed, some not - we get to read them. "Card No. 29", etc. Byatt loves to do that - books within books, trying to get at a first-hand experience as opposed to something told to us. It becomes apparent - as you read through the notes of the great biographer that he had been in the planning stages for books on Henrik Ibsen - Darwin ... and some other dude. No memory of it.

Uhm ... what the point of all of this is is beyond me. I'd need to read it again. I read this book in the direct aftermath of terrorist attacks and - I guess I thought I needed an escape (well, I did!) ... and maybe this book did help me escape, but nothing of it remains in my brain.

I flipped through the book and decided to excerpt from one of the sections of the biographer's notebook. (I mean - the one that the narrator, the OTHER biographer, is investigating. As always, there are layers within layers in this book). Although "Ibsen" is not named ... it becomes obvious who the notes are referring to.

And re-reading this this morning - I really like it. Especially this line from Ibsen: "summer is best described on a winter day." !!!!!!!!!!

Makes me think I need to read it now - when I'm no longer shell-shocked from a certain blinding blue September day.

Excerpt from The Biographer's Tale - by A.S. Byatt.

III
[The third document, to which I gave the provisional title "I ..."]

He was a public man, and he made a daily public progress. He set out at two o'clock from Victoria Terrace, and walked to the Grand Hotel. He dressed carefully, always in the same clothes - a black, broadcloth frock-coat, black trousers, concertinaed at the ankles over highly polished, high-heeled black boots, a carefully folded umbrella, a glistening silk top-hat, a little fence of miniature medals. His white beard, and his white hair surrounded his sallow, unsmiling face, like the copious flare of a halo. He was a tiny personage, and carried himself stiffly erect, full of a dignity at once self-important and threatening. His lips were thin; his eyes, under their snowy ledges, have been called, finely, "fierce badger eyes". Cartoonists found him easy to "take"; their images proliferated, all recognisable projections, all the same, all different. He knew he was looked at. He had constructed himself to be looked at. Famous men walk behind, or inside, a simplified mask, constructed from inside and outside simultaneously. He groomed his parchment skin and his sleek boot-leather to turn back the light to the onlooker. The onlookers, even as they watched the precise, dandified advance, knew they saw the outside, not the inside. They let their imaginations flicker round the inchoate "inside," which remained bland and opaque. He belonged to them, their countryman. They had never been sure if they liked him.

His effigies were round him in his lifetime. In his latter days, his statue stood outside the National Theatre, larger than life, looming through the snow. He was photographed, diminutive and bristling amongst the dignitaries, at ceremonies of dedication. There was a Platz named for him in Gossensass. There was a proposal to make a waxwork double of him to preside over a Freie Buhne festival in Berlin. They wrote to ask for the loan of an old suit. "Be so good as to tell this gentleman that I do not wear 'old suits,' nor do I wish a wax model of myself to be clothed in an 'old suit'. Obviously I cannot give him a new one, and I therefore suggest he order one from my tailor, Herr Friess, of Maximilianstrasse, Munich." Sculptors and painters found him somehow inordinate. He had, he informed one of them, the largest brainpan ever measured by a certain German expert. Another, having asked him to remove his spectacles, was appalled by the disparity between his eyes.

"One was large, I might almost say horrible - so it seemed to me - and deeply mystical; the other much smaller, rather pinched up, cold and clear and calmy probing. I stood speechless a few seconds and stared at those eyes, and spoke the thought that flashed into my mind: 'I wouldn't like to have you as an enemy.' Then his eyes and his whole body seemed to blaze, and I thought instinctively of the troll in the fairy tale who pops out of his hole and roars: 'Who is chopping trees in my forest?'"

He was a man mjok trollaukinn, with "augmented inhumanity" as one ludicrous translation has it. He wrote:

To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul.
To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.

Division and self-division. The trolls ensconced in the blood and under the pelt of the human creature; the writer, watching himself, summing up, delivering judgement. He wrote surrounded by a swarm of red-tongued gutta-percha trolls. "There must be a troll in what I write," he said. His monstrous troll came out only in extremis, when things were impossibly difficult. "Then I lock my door and bring him out. No other human eye has seen him, not even my wife ... He is a bear, playing the violin, and beating time with his feet."

So there he was, man and troll, badger and bear, black integument and lined parchment sac containing blood, bones, and busy creatures, proceeding towards the Grand Hotel, in Christiania, in Norway, which he did not want to think was home. "Up here among the fjords I have my native land. But-but-but: where do I find my homeland?" "Ten years ago, after my second absence of ten years, when I sailed up the fjord, I literally felt my chest contract with revulsion and a feeling of sickness. I felt the same during my whole stay; I was no longer myself among all these cold and uncomprehending Norwegian eyes in the windows and on the pavements." In the South, he thought of the North.

He turned his ship's
Prow from the north,
Seeking the trail
Of brighter gods.

The snow-land's beacons
Quenched in the sea.
The fauns of the seashore
Stilled his longing

He burned his ships.
Blue smoke drifted
Like a bridge's span
Towards the north.

To those snow-capped huts
From the hills of the south
There rides a rider
Every night.

He was a northerner who went south for light, for distance, in order to see the north, in light, from a distance. He crossed the Alps on May 9th 1864. On April 1, 1898, in Copenhagen, he spoke of the transition.

"Over the high mountains the clouds hung like great, dark curtains, and beneath these we drove through the tunnel and, suddenly, found ourselves at Mira Mara, where that marvellously bright light which is the beauty of the south suddenly revealed itself to me, gleaming like white marble. It was to affect all my later work, even if the content thereof was not always beautiful." He had "a feeling of being released from the darkness into light, emerging from mists through a tunnel into the sunshine."

He was, or had been, a narrow northern Puritan. He was shocked, and then exhilerated, by the excess of energy of Michelangelo and Bernini. "Those fellows had the courage to commit a madness now and then." The Norweigians, he recalled contemptuously, "speak with intense complacency of our Norwegian 'good sense,' which really means nothing but a tepidity of spirit which makes it impossible for those honest souls to commit a madness."

It was his great desire to commit a madness like Michelangelo. Was it for fear of tepidity and dim light only that he fled Norway? Was there a madness, already committed, working away like yeast in the Norwegian small beer of his past, ready to explode the bottle? As a letter-writer, he was inhibited, crabbed, tortuously formal, uncommunicative. After leaving his home town, he never returned there, though on the occasion of his mother's death he wrote a stilted letter to his sister Hedwig, saying that he was just setting off for Egypt, but would like to receive letters. Later, he wrote to his father, who did not preserve the letter, but sent a reply, which was preserved, in which he said, "I tried to read your letter, but I couldn't understand it, I felt ashamed ..."

It is doubly difficult for a famous man, once returned to his native land, not to make a pious pilgrimage to the place of his birth. Spectators of the public life are interested in its beginnings, in the source. It is patently untrue to claim that he himself was indifferent or uninterested. In 1881 he began an autobiography, rapidly abandoned, expressing surprise that a street had been renamed for him. "Or so at any rate the newspapers have reported, and I have also heard it from reliable travellers." He recorded a grim town - "nothing green; no rural, open landscape" -- full of the sound of weirs and, penetrating the watery roar, "from morning to dusk, something resembling the sharp cries of women, now shrieking, now moaning. It was the hundreds of sawblades at work on the weirs. When later I read of the guillotine, I thought of those sawblades." In the tall church, raised by a Copenhagen master builder, the child was exposed, by his nursemaid, sitting in the open window of the town, high, high up. The unexpected sight of him there caused his mother to scream and faint. In the church, too, lived a demonic black poodle with fiery red eyes, the sight of which, at that same window, had shocked a watchman into falling to his death, bursting open his head in the square below. "I felt that the window belonged to me and the church poodle," he wrote. Then he gave up his autobiographical enterprise. It clearly never tempted him into revisiting those scenes. Something forbade him. He stayed away.

Sometimes he described how he set his characters in motion. How, one may ask, does such a man set about constructing another human being, in some sense ex nihilo, an individual who was not there before, and now exists, but whose very identity must leave space for the creative puppet-mastery of a director, the defining touches of a costumier and a maquilleuse, the deliberate accidents of directed light-rays and non-functional, even painted, cloth, chairs and tables? Above all, how does he make such a person "real," whatever that is, and yet leave that "reality" sketched and incomplete, to be fleshed out, to be wormed into, to bulge and sag around the unimagined, unaccommodating perhaps, body, voice - and history, and soul, and human limitations - of an actor? And not even one, definitive, magesterial actor, but a succession of these too fleshy ghosts each filling out different pouches and pockets? How could he collaborate, in his work of imagination, with these unknown helpers or opponents?

Such descriptions as he left of this process - few, as always, fewer than one might reasonably hope or expect - are disappointing in this regard. They could have been written by a novelist, or even - stretching the imagination a little - by a biographer. There is perhaps a little more emphasis on the body and the voice, but this is scratching for grains in sand. In a way, his accounts are platitudes, multiplied in other records of other observers. Nevertheless, the precise form of his platitudes, his own platitudes, cannnot be without interest; we should, if everything were accessible to know, be interested also in the precise combination of flora in his intestine, or layered convolutions in his brain. Do we have instruments for dissecting platitudes finely enough to yield precise local truths?

"Before I write one word," runs this rare confidence, then, "I must know the character through and through, I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. I always proceed from the individual; the staging, the dramatic ensemble, all that comes naturally and causes me no worry, as soon as I am certain of the individual in every aspect of his humanity. But I have to have his exterior in mind also, down to the last button, how he stands and walks, how he carries himself, what his voice sounds like. Then I do not let him go until his fate is fulfilled."

Now we may ask - must ask, indeed, since it appears pointless to raise hypothetical theoretical barriers against such a profound and natural human curiosity - where these imagined humans come from? As we shall see, he compares them, ingeniously or disingenuously, to strangers met on a train. He observed those he met on trains, as a naturalist observes new and familiar species. With an overtone of moral judgement, added to pure observation. He is on record as having driven himself into rage and hatred over some unknown fellow-traveller, a woman, who slept in his railway-compartment all the way from Rome to Gossensass, without once looking out of the window. "What a lazy woman! To sleep the whole way! How can anyone be so lazy? ... Most people die without ever having lived. Luckily for them, they don't realise it."

But the people he, to use a primitive phrase, "made up" must in some sense be not only watched strangers but spun from his own fabric, sensed inside his own stance, seen through one or the other of those terrible disparate eyes?

"As a rule, I make three drafts of my plays, which differ greatly from each other - in characterisation, not in plot. When I approach the first working-out of my material, it is as though I knew my characters from a railway-journey. One has made a preliminary acquaintance, one has chatted about this and that. At the next draft I already see everything much more clearly, and I know the people roughly as one would after a month spent with them at a spa; I have discovered the fundamentals of their characters and their little peculiarities; but I may still be wrong about certain essentials. Finally, in my last draft I have reached the limit of my knowledge; I know from characters from close and long acquaintance - they are my intimate friends, who will no longer disappoint me; as I see them now, I shall always see them.

He took things from others, certainly. A very young woman sent him, in Dresden, a sequel to his dramatic poem Brand, which she had called Brand's Daughters. She called it a religious book. He called it a novel. He bothered, unusually, to give her advice. He liked very young women. He enjoyed their admiration. Something more than talent is required, he told her: "One must have something to create from, some life experience ... Now I know very well that a life in solitude is not a life devoid of experiences. But the human being is in the spiritual sense a long-sighted creature. We see most clearly at a distance; details confuse us; we must get away from what we desire to judge; summer is best described on a winter day."

Light like white marble, remembered amongst crisp snow under steel skies.

Later he appropriated the same young woman's confusion and folly to construct his doll-wife in his dolls' house; she too had borrowed to pay for her sick husband's travel, she too had forged a cheque. Nora arouses the sympathy of millions. Laura, whose acts were stolen, had periods of madness and shame. He did not choose to make, or keep friends.

"Friends are an expensive luxury; and when one sinks all one's capital in a vocation and a mission in life, then one cannot afford to have friends. The extravagance of keeping friends lies not in what one does for them, but what, out of consideration for them, one omits to do. On that account, many intellectual shoots are crippled in oneself. I have gone through this, and on that account, I have several years behind me, in which I did not succeed in being myself."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 25, 2007

The Books: "Babel Tower" (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

0679736808.jpgBabel Tower - by A.S. Byatt.

The third novel featuring the Potter family - this book is epic. Fantastic. Frederica Potter is the star of this book ... but the real star is the 1960s, or - more specifically - London in the 1960s. It's not so much about the counterculture - not yet - but about the upheavals going on at all levels of society. Frederica flees in the night with her son from an abusive marriage. Her husband is an old-school Englishman - who has very specific ideas about what a wife should be. (Why he would marry someone like Frederica then, is beyond me) His disappointment in his wife translates into rage, and domestic violence. Frederica takes her son and leaves - goes and stays with some of her old college friends (all men) in London. They all take her and her son on. It's a collective kind of community - they love Frederica, she needs them, her son needs them ... they step up to the plate. Frederica's husband naturally will not go down without a fight - and divorce proceedings begin, where he drags Frederica's name through the mud. She has to go to trial to prove her fitness as a mother. Meanwhile (sorry, I realize I'm making this sound like a soap opera - and it's NOT) - a book written by an acquaintance of Frederica - a kind of loopy Nitszchean-influenced outcast - is going on trial for obscenity. It's a book along the lines of Marquis de Sade - it purports that it's showing a Utopia, a world of ultimate freedom. Brutal. At the same time that Frederica is fighting for her son and her reputation - this book is standing trial. Because it's Byatt here - we get to read long sections of the controversial book. It has a sort of Anne Rice "Sleeping Beauty" feel to it - only it's more political, less pornographic. Babel Tower - with all of these different elements - ends up being about rebellion - useful rebellion and also useless ... the ideas of the 60s, loopy ones, and also revolutionary ones. How on earth Byatt writes a book about an entire society I will never know - but that's what she does. She does so without sacrificing character - Frederica is as clearly drawn as ever, all the characters are ... but Byatt is really interested here in language - the breaking apart of convention and what that does to our language - this is reflected even down to the personal level of what a word like "wife" or "marriage" means. As society upends itself, as the Swinging Sixties really kick in ... it is not a bold new day dawning ... even with all the new ideas, and new freedoms ... it is just another day, with new struggles, new annoyances - and the rebellion of those days will end up creating the rigid academic world Byatt so beautifully portrays in Possession. All that freedom, all that openness ... ends up solidifying, petrifying - into the postmodernist theoretical atmosphere that is so influential and, at times, annoying, today. Byatt is looking at the beginning of all of that in Babel Tower (I mean, her title kind of says it all).

This is a bold book. A book with huge sweep and ambition. I love it - I am feeling the need to read it again. As with all of the Byatt books I've excerpted - I flip through them, get a glimpse of a passage here, a paragraph there, and think ... argh, have to read it again!!

Here's an excerpt. Frederica is in London. She has left her husband. She's taken a lover. (I love how Byatt writes about sex.)

Excerpt from Babel Tower - by A.S. Byatt.

John and Frederica come back to Gothland in the evening. They walk in the dusk through the village, where the black-faced sheep stare with yellow, inhuman eyes. Something tugs at Frederica's memory. She came here once, in a bus, on a trip, and had what she has now docketed as an interesting and instructive experience with a traveller in dolls. The sight of a sheep and a thorn bush brings back this person, Ed, in his interesting and repelling flishiness, but it also brings back a thought. It was a thought about her own separateness, and the power that was possibly inherent in keeping things separate - sex and language, she thinks, ambition and marriage, what was I thinking? She remembers she was thinking about Racine, and the rhythmic movement of her feet, comfortably in time with the rhythmic movement of the feet of John Ottokar, brings back the couplet in the landscape to which it was wholly irrelevant then, and for that reason interesting, for that reason compelling:

Ce n'est pas une ardeur dans mes veines cachee
C'est Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee

She remembers, and with it her delight in the balance of the lines, the way they pivot on the caesura and are both separated and joined by the rhyme. She says the verse out loud, and John Ottokar puts his hand over her buttocks, lovingly, and laughs, and says, "Precisely." Frederica stops in her tracks, dizzy with sex, and puts her arms tightly round him: watched by sheep, and by the man who was reading Lady Chatterley in the rosy restaurant, they embrace, they kiss, they walk on. They lean together. Frederica's mind, a dark snake burrowing in darkness, looks for a word which then seemed the key to power and safety. She remembers her distress that Stephanie had apparently found happiness with Daniel. She thinks of Forster and Lawrence, only connect, the mystic Oneness, and her word comes back to her again, more insistently: laminations. Laminations. Keeping things separate. Not linked by metaphor or sex or desire, but separate objects of knowledge, systems of work, or discovery. In her pocket her fingers touch Luk Lysgaard-Peacock's snail shells, two greenish and one striped. Are the stripes laminations, or organic growths? The layer of strontium, exposed by the diamond saw in the spiral form, is a layer - an accident in Cumberland, a time of fall-out in the air - what is she saying? Partly that even fear of death in the air is not all-consuming or all-pervading. She has the first vague premonition of an art-form of fragments, juxtaposed, not interwoven, not "organically" spiralling up like a tree or a shell, but constructed brick by brick, layer by layer, like the Post Office Tower. The radomes are on the moor and are seen amongst the heather and the neolithic stones and barrows, but their beauty is in the difference as well as in the simultaneity of the vision.

She is feeling for something, and doesn't know what it is, cannot push the thought further. Laminations. Separation. I was thinking about the Virgin Queen and the power of her solitude and her separation, the fact that her power and her intelligence were dependent upon her solitude and her separation.

"What are you thinking?" says John Ottokar, and takes her shoulders, and turns her face to his. "You've gone away from me. Where? What are you thinking?"

Desire moves round the column of Frederica's spine like the spiral of a helter-skelter, round which she spins screaming with fear and delight.

"I had an idea for a book called Laminations."


"Why Laminations?" he says later, in the bedroom. At the time, he simply smiled and nodded.

"I haven't thought it out. It's to do with what was in the lectures, the Romantic desire for everything to be One - lovers, body and mind, life and work. I thought it might be interesting to be interested in keeping things separate."

"I know about that," he says, sitting naked on the edge of the bed. The lights are out, but the room is full of pale moonlight. "I know what it is like to be afraid of being two separate creatures confined in one skin."

They are naked and cool in the night, sitting companionably on the edge of the bed. On an impulse she touches his sex, the two balls moving loose and separate inside the cool bag of skin. The penis shrinks like a soft curled snail, and then swings out blindly, a lumbering and supple serpent becoming a rod or a branch. Two in one, thinks Frederica, as his arms go round her. You might think, she thinks, as their bodies join, that her are two beings striving to lose themselves in each other, to become one. The growing heat, the wetness, the rhythmic movements, the hot breath, the slippery skins, inside and out, are one, are part of one thing. But we both need to be separate, she thinks. I lend myself to this, the language in her head goes on, with its own rhythm, I lose myself, it remarks with gleeful breathlessness, I am not, I come, I come to the point of crossing over, of not being, and then I fall away, I am myself again, only more so, more so. His face, post coitum is calm like an Apollonian statue. There is no clue to wghat is inside his brain-box. I love that, says Frederica's chatty linguistic self, I love not knowing, I love it that I don't know him.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 24, 2007

The Books: "Angels and Insects" - 'Conjugal Angel' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

14925142.JPGConjugal Angel - by A.S. Byatt.

This is the second novella in the collection Angels and Insects. It also takes place in the 1800s - late 1800s I believe. It has, as its plot-line and theme, another one of AS Byatt's pet interests - the whole seance phenomenon, the table-rapping, mesmerism, etc. - that was such a fad then. This also is featured heavily in Possession - Christabel gets very into it after the breakup with Ash ... and Ash, memorably, infiltratees himself into a seance so that he can confront Christabel. The two novellas - "Morpho Eugenia" and "Conjugal Angel" stand back to back - two sides of the same 19th century coin. The mania for insects, and the mania for seances and spirit-world visitations. There is so much IN these novellas - seriously, Byatt is just a master. I LOVE her.

"Conjugal Angel" takes place at one particular seance. We get to know all the participants - and what they are looking for, the dead person they are hoping to communicate with ... Byatt has a lot to say about what was REALLY going on with this 'fad' ... what people were really looking for. Mrs. Papagay is the "medium" who runs the thing. She was married to a sea captain - who was apparently lost at sea 10 or so years back - his ship never returned. It was through a medium that she "contacted" her dead husband ... and since then has found that she has a talent for this stuff herself.

The ending of this novella was surprisingly moving to me. Something happens on the very last page which takes the breath away - I did not see it coming. At all. And the event is one that completely upends the entire seance proceedings ... and yet also deepens my understanding of it. Byatt isn't interested in judging the silliness of this fad (and the charlatans involved) ... she is more interested in what it indicates, philosophically. What it shows us about ourselves.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Conjugal Angel - by A.S. Byatt.

Mr. Hawke arranged them. He sat between Sophy Sheekhy and Lilias Papagay, with a copy of the Bible, and a copy of Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell in front of him. Mrs. Jesse was next to Mrs. Papagay and on her other side was Mrs. Hearnshaw. Captain Jesse sat between Mrs. Hearnshaw and Sophy Sheekhy, in a kind of parody of dinner-party placement when there were insufficient men. It was Mr. Hawke's custome to begin the proceedings with a reading from Swedenborg and a reading from the Bible. Emily Jesse was not quite sure how he had made himself so central a figure, since he had exhibited no mediumistic powers up to that point. She had been glad at first, when she told him of their promising, if alarming results from their early cautious spiritual experiments, that he had asked to be included. Like her eldest brother, Frederick, and her sister, Mary, she was a dedicated member of the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church, and also a convinced spiritualist. Whilst the spiritualists claimed Swedenborg, who had made such momentous journeys into the interior of the spirit world, as a founder of the faith, many of the more orthodox Swedenborgians looked askance at what they saw as the loose and dangerous power-play of the spiritualists. Mr. Hawke was not an ordaining minister in the New Church, but a wandering preacher, ordained to speak but with no society to govern, a grade, as he never tired of explaining, referred to by Swedenborg as sacerdos, canonicus, or flamen. He sat with his back to the fire and read out:

'The Church on earth before the Lord is One Man. It is also distinguished into societies, and each society again is a Man, and all who are within that Man are also in Heaven. Every member of the Church also is an angel of heaven, for he becomes an angel after death. Moreover, the Church on earth, together with the angels, not only constitutes the inward parts of that Grand Man, but also its outward parts, which are called cartilaginous and osseous. The Church brings this about because men on earth are furnished with a body in which the spiritual ultimate is clothed with a natural. This makes the conjunction of Heaven with the Church, of the Church with Heaven.

'Today's reading from the Word,' he went on, 'is taken from the Book of Revelation, the twentieth chapter, verses 11 to 15.

'And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the book swere opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.'

The passage from Revelation sent a frisson of accustomed delight through the frame of Mrs. Papagay, who loved its sonorous booming and its lurid colours, scarlet, gold, white and the black of the Pit. She loved too, and had loved since childhood, all its strange visions and images, the angels rolling up the scroll of the heavens and tidying them away forever, the stars falling out of the sky into the sea like a rain of golden fiery globes, the dragons and swords, the blood and the honey, the swarms of locusts and the hosts of angels, those creatures at once pure white and fiery-eyed, casting down their golden crowns around a glassy sea. She had asked herself often and often why everyone loved the ferocious Saint John and his terrible vision so, and had answered herself variously, like a good psychologist, that human beings liked to be terrified - look how they enjoyed the nastier Tales of Mr. Poe, pits, pendulums, buried alive. Not only that, they liked to be judged, she considered, they could not go on if their lives were not of importance, of absolute importance, in some higher Eye which watched and made real. For if there were not death and judgement, if there were not heaven and hell, men were no better than creepy-crawlies, no better than butterflies and blowflies. And if this was all, sitting and supping tea, and waiting for bed-time, why were we given such a range of things guessed at, hoped for and feared beyond our fat bosoms confined in stays, and troubles wiht stoves? Why the white airy creatures towering, the woman clothed with the sun and the Angel standing in it?

Mrs. Papagay was not good at giving up thinking. Their practice was to sit in silence, composing the circle, holding hands lightly, to join them into one, waiting, passive mind mind for the spirits to use, to enter, to speak through. At first they had used a system of raps and answers, one for yes, two for no, and every now and then they were still startled by great peals of banging from beneath the table, or shakings of the surface below their fingers. But mostly now they waited until the spirits gave signs of their presence, and then proceeded to automatic writing - all might hold pencil over paper, all, except Captain Jese, had produced scripts, long or short, which they had studied and interrogated. And then, if it was a good day, the visitors would speak through Sophy, or more rarely, through herself. And once or twice, Sophy could see them, she could describe what she saw to others. She had seen Mrs. Jesse's dead nephew and nieces, the three children of her sister Cecilia - Edmund, Emily, and ucy, dead at thirteen, nineteen and only last year at twenty-one. So slow, so sad, Mrs. Papagay thought, though the spirits said how happy and busy they were in a land of Summer amongst flowers and orchards of wonderful light. It was the marriage of this sister, Cecilia, which had been celebrated at the end of In Memoriam as the triumph of Love over Death, with the bride's little slippered feet, Mrs. Papagay could just see them, tripping on the tablets of the dead in the old church. But we live in a Vale of Tears, Mrs. Papagay had to conclude, we need to know that there is Summerland. The unborn child who was the future hope of the Laureate's poem had come and gone, like A.H.H. himself. With whom, for some reason, they were none of them not even Sophy Sheekhy, able to esstablish communication.

The firelight made shadows on walls and ceilings. Captain Jesse's mane of white hair stood out like a crown, his beard was god-like, and Aaron's smooth black head appeared in a smoky and wavering silhouette. Their hands were fitfully lit. Mrs. Jesse's were long and brown, gipsy hands with glinting red rings. Mrs. Hearnshaw's were softly white, covered with mourning rings containing the hair of the lost in littler caskets. Mr. Hawke's were muddy, with a few gingery hairs on them. He took good care of his nails, and wore a little signet ring with a bloodstone. He was given to making little pats and squeezes of encouragement and reassurance to his neighbours. Mrs. Papagay could also feel his knees, which occasionally rubbed her own, and, she was sure, Sophy Sheekhy's. She knew, without having to think about it, that Mr. Hawke was an excitable man in that way, that he liked female flesh, and thought much and very frequently about it. She knew, or thought she knew, that he liked the idea of the cool pale limbs of Sophy Sheekhy, that he imagined undoing that smooth unornamented bodice, or running his hands up those pale legs under the dove-coloured dress. She knew, with slightly less assurance, that Sophy Sheekhy did not respond to this interest. She saw Sophy's pale hands, creamy-pale even under the nails, motionless and at rest in his grip, with no answering sweat, Mrs. Papagay was sure. Sophy seemed to have no interest in that kind of thing. Part of her spiritual success might be due to this intact quality of hers. She was a pure vessel, cool, waiting dreamily.

Mrs. Papagay also knew that Mr. Hawke had considered her own possibilities as a source of creature comfort. She had caught his eye on her breast and waist, involuntarily speculative, she had felt his warm fingers massage her palm, at moments of excitement. She had met his eye, once or twice, as he weighed up her full mouth and her still-youthful coils of hair. She had never offered him any voluntary encouragement, but she had not, as she could have done, repelled him once and for all when he looked too long or brushed against her. She was trying to weigh it all up. She believed any woman who put her mind to it could have Mr. Hawke for the asking, if only that woman were reasonably buxom and inclined to him. Did she want to be Mrs. Hawke? The truth was she wanted Arturo, she wanted what Swedenborg would call the 'conjugal delights' of her married life. She wanted to sleep with male arms round her in the scent of marriage-sheets. Arturo had taught her much and she had been an apt pupil. He had gained courage to tell his wide-eyed wife of what he had seen in various ports, of women who had entertained him - he went so far, and further, as he saw that his surprising wife did not take umbrage, but evinced detailed curiosity. She could teach Mr. Hawke, or some other man, a thing or two, could Lilias Papagay, that would surprise him. If she could bring herself to it, after Arturo. She had a terrible nightmare once, about embracing Arturo and finding herself engorged with a great sea-eel, dragon or sea-serpent, which had somehow half-absorbed or half-extruded parts of him. Though the occasional dream in which he returned, as it were, 'to the life' hurt almost more, on waking. ' "Ah, dear, but come thou back to me," ' said Mrs. Papagay to herself, to her dead man. Her outside thumb found itself measured, and rubbed, by Mr. Hawke's stiff outside thumb. She tried to compose her mind to the purpose of the meeting. She reproached her own backsliding by looking at the expectant strain on Mrs. Hearnshaw's large soft face.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1)

May 23, 2007

The Books: "Angels and Insects" - 'Morpho Eugenia' (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

14925142.JPGMorpho Eugenia - by A.S. Byatt. After Possession, which hit the literary world like a bomb going off ... AS Byatt hung back for a while. I'm sure it was nuts for her. Awards and interviews and fame. The next book that came out (and believe me - after I read Possession, the first of her books I read, I read everything else of hers I could get my hands on ... which took about 3 weeks ... and then ... dadblastit ... I WAITED, and WAITED and WAITED .... It was agony!) Anyway, finally - out came Angels and Insects which is two novellas published as one book. They are peripherally connected to one another - one character overlaps with both stories (a very peripheral character) ... and yet the themes are similar. "Morpho Eugenia" is the first novella in Angels and Insects and it is that story that was turned into a movie called Angels and Insects. Never mind that ONE of the stories is the "insect" story while the other one is the "angels" story ... "Morpho Eugenia" is the insect story. I disliked that they used the title of the collection of novellas for the film of just ONE of the stories. But oh well. I wasn't consulted. It actually wasn't a bad movie - and it's my favorite of Kirstin Scott Thomas' performances, although - I wish she had been made even LESS attractive. (It's hard, though - she's so gorgeous). It's just wrong for the part for her to have any conventional beauty whatsoever. It's a MUCH stronger story if she barely seems like a woman at all. She says that in the electrifying scene at the end of the book (and actually - it's electrifying in the movie, too - you think she is going to EXPLODE) ... "You don't think of me as a woman at all. So why should you be concerned about such and such?"

But let's talk about the story itself, not the film. If you haven't read Angels and Insects, I highly recommend it. Actually, just flipping through it right now made me realize I have to re-read it. I loved every word. It's a feast for the mind and spirit.

"Morpho Eugenia" is the first story in the collection. The story is, well, relatively simple ... although layers of complexity are added until you feel kind of like William himself (he's the main character): buried in innuendoes, lies, and half-truths. You don't know WHAT is going on. It takes place in 1860. William Adamson is a naturalist, who has spent years in the Amazon - living with the indigenous people - and studying flora, fauna, but mainly insects. Byatt returns again and again in all of her books to the fascination 19th century folks had for insects. It was nearly a mania. Randolph Henry Ash in Possession has the same fascination. And some of Christabel's letters and poems in Possession have to do with various insects as metaphors. Mid 19th century. A time of Darwin, of scientific exploration and discovery ... William Adamson represents that. He has spent years outside of normal British society. On his return home to England, his ship sank - and he was rescued, and managed to save his once-in-a-lifetime only specimen collection of tropical butterflies. In comes Harald Alabaster - a rich dude who lives on a self-sustaining estate with his wife, many children, and a bazillion servants. He is interested in Adamson's work - so he basically invites him to come stay on his estate, as the resident naturalist. Bring his specimens. A conservatory is set up where the butterflies can fly free - and a laboratory is set up for Adamson to do his work in peace and quiet. Adamson very quickly kind of falls in love with Eugenia - one of the Harald Alabaster's daughters. At the same time - he begins to "work with" Matty Crompton, a spinster, who is the younger children's governess. Matty Crompton, a woman whose position would never allow her the freedom of Adamson (her position in her class, her sex, her education) ... so she asks Adamson if he woudln't mind helping her teach the children, and go on nature walks with them - to pass on some of his knowledge about insects.

I'm making this book sound very boring. It's actually the total opposite. Something is deeply deeply wrong in the Alabaster household and it takes William a long long time to figure it out. He is in an awkward position because he is indebted to Alabaster - and once he marries Eugenia - he almost becomes enslaved to him. He begins to lose his purpose in life. Eugenia doesn't understand any of his issues. She is most definitely Daddy's little girl. So William tries to lose himself more and more in his work ... only he doesn't know anymore what his work is FOR. He feels trapped on the Alabaster estate.

Matty Crompton, meanwhile, has this intense (one might say fiery) interest in ants - ant societies and communities ... so they set up observation posts to watch the ants do their thing. Because this is Byatt - we get multiple levels of narrative. Crompton keeps notes on what she observes. Instead of Byatt describing the notes to us as an omniscent narrator - we get to read the notes themselves. We get to read William's personal journal. Matty has actually written a fanciful and violent fairy tale - she asks William to read it and give her comments. We get to read the whole thing. You go deeper and deeper into the intellectual pursuits of these two characters - you lose sight of the Alabaster estate altogether (which is what these two experience when they lie in the grass, watching the ants) ... and when you come back up for air - after 20 pages of his journals or whatever ... and you are "back to reality" - it's quite jarring.

A man needs to be free. A man must not be beholden to anyone - father-in-law, wife, job ... William has chosen his own prison - but he didn't realize at the time what a prison it would be. Matty Crompton, the spinster governess, sees all. And yet until the electrifying scene at the end - you never know what it is that she sees. She seems to only be consumed with ants. And John Milton. Other than that ... she is barely human.

It's a brilliant novella - full of ideas, and passion, and long conversations about Darwin and God and Milton ... and also a couple of plot-shockers ... ugliness at the core of life at the Alabasters.

I highly recommend it.

Here's an excerpt. William has not yet married Eugenia. But he is overly conscious of her presence and being at all times ... he's a bit obsessed with her physicality. Another way of saying: he wants her. Yet you can tell too ... from the first sentence ... that there is something about this life ... on an estate where you never have to leave ... that doesnt' suit him. Especially because he is, essentially, an employee.

Watch how he's having this lovely (he thinks) conversation with Eugenia ... where he has been made the 'star' of her attentions ... and watch Matty Crompton's jujitsu move (physical and cerebral). Good for you, Matty. Intellectuals everywhere thank you.

Excerpt from Morpho Eugenia - by A.S. Byatt.

He went on nature rambles. He felt coerced into doing this, reminded of his dependent status by the organisation of Miss Mead and Matty Crompton, and yet at the same time he enjoyed the outings. All three elder girls sometimes came and sometimes did not. Sometimes he did not know whether Eugenia would make one of the party until the very moment of setting out, when they would assemble on the gravel walk in front of the house armed with nets, with jam-jars on string handles, with metal boxes and useful scissors. There were days when his morning's work became almost impossible because of the tension in his diaphragm over whether he would or would not see her, because of the imagination he lavished on how she would look, crossing thel awn to the gate in the wall, crossing the paddock and the orchard under the blossoming fruit trees to the fields which sloped down to the little stream, where they fished for minnows and sticklebacks, caddis grubs and water-snails. He liked the little girls well enough; they were docile, pale little creatures, well buttoned up, who spoke when they were spoken to. Elaine in particular had a good eye for hidden treasures on the undersides of leaves, or interesting bore-holes in muddy banks. When Eugenia was not in the party he felt his old self again, scanning everything with a minute attention that in the forests had been the attention of a primitive hunter as well as a modern naturalist, of a small animal afraid amongst threatening sounds and movements, as well as a scientific explorer. Here the pricking of his skin was associated not with fear, but with the invisible cloud of electric forces that spangled Eugenia's air as she strolled calmly through the meadows. Perhaps it was fear. He did not wish to feel it. He was only in abeyance, untnil he felt it again.

One day, when they were all occupied on the bank of the streams, including both Eugenia and Enid, he was drawn into speaking of his feelings about all this. There had been a great fall of spring rain, and various loose clumps of grass and twigs were floating along the unusually placid surface of the stream, between the trailing arms of the weeping willows and the groups of white poplar. There were two white ducks and a coot, swimming busily; the sun was over the water, kingcups were golden, early midges danced. Matty Crompton, a patient huntress, had captured two sticklebacks and trailed her net in the water, watching the shadows under the bank. Eugenia stood next to William. She breathed in deeply, and sighed out.

"How beautiful all this is," she said. "How lucky I always feel to live just here, of all the spots on the earth. To see the same flowers come out every spring in the meadows, and the same stream always running. I suppose it must seem a very bounded existence to you, with your experience of the world. But my roots go deep ..."

"When I was in the Amazon," he answered simply and truthfully, "I was haunted by an image of an English meadow in spring - just as it is today, with the flowers, and the new grass, and the early blossom, and the little breeze lifting everything, and the earth smelling fresh after the rain. It seemed to me that such scenes were truly Paradise - that there was not anything on earth more beautiful than an English bank in flower, than an English mixed hedge, with roses and hawthorn, honeysuckle and bryony. Before I went, I had read highly coloured accounts of the brilliance of the tropical jungle, the flowers and fruits and gaudy creatures, but there is nothing there so colourful as this. It is all a monotonous sameness of green, and such a mass of struggling, climbing, suffocating vegetation - often you cannot see the sky. It is true that the weather is like that of the Golden Age - everything flowers and fruits perpetually and simultaneously in the tropical heat, you have always Spring, Summer, and Autumn at once, and no Winter. But there is something inimical about the vegetation itself. There is a kind of tree called the Sipo Matador - which translates, the Murderer Sipo - which grows tall and thin like a creeper and clings to another tree, to make its way up the thirty, forty feet to the canopy, eating its way into the very substance of its host until that dies - and the Sipo perforce crashes down with it. You hear the strange retorts of crashing trees suddenly in the silence, like cracks of gunshot, a terrible and terrifying sound I could not for some months explain to myself. Everything there is inordinate, Miss Alabaster. There is a form of the violet, there - see, here are some - that grow to be a huge tree. And yet that is in so many ways the innocent, the unfallen world, the virgin forest, the wild people in the interior who are as unaware of modern ways - modern evils - as our first parents. There are strange analogies. Out there, no woman may touch a snake. They run to ask you to kill one for them. I have killed many snakes for frightened women. I have been fetched considerable distances to do so. The connection of the woman and the snake in the garden is made even out there, as though it is indeed part of some universal pattern ofs ymbols, even where Genesis has never been heard of - I talk too much, I bore you, I am afraid."

"Oh no. I am quite fascinated. I am glad to hear that our Spring world in some sense remains your ideal. I want you to be happy here, Mr. Adamson. And I am most intrigued by what you have to say of the women and snakes. Did you live entirely without the company of civilised peoples, Mr. Adamson? Among naked savages?"

"Not entirely. I had various friends, of all colours and races, during my stay in various communities. But sometimes, yes, I was the only white guest in tribal villages."

"Were you not afraid?"

"Oh, often. Upon two occasions I overheard plots to murder me, made by men ignorant of my knowledge of their tongue. But also I met with much kindness and friendship from people not so simple as you might suppose from seeing them."

"Are they really naked and painted?"

"Some are. Some are part-clothed. Some wholly clothed. They are greatly given to decorating their skins with vegetable dyes."

He was aware of the limpid blue eyes resting on him, and felt that behind her delicate frown she was considering his relations with the naked people. And then felt that his thoughts smutched her, that he was too muddied and dirty to think of her, let alone touch at her secret thoughts from his own secret self. He said, "Those floating grasses, even, remind me of the great floating islands of uprooted trees and creepers and bushes that make their way along the great river. I used to compare those to Paradise Lost. I read my Milton in my rest-times. I thought of the passage where Paradise is cast loose, after the Deluge."

Matty Crompton, without lifting her eyes from the stream surface, provided the quotation.

'then shall this mount
Of Paradise by might of waves be moved
Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood,
With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift,
Down the great river to the opening gulf,
And there take root an island salt and bare,
The haunt of seals and orcs, and sea-mews' clang.'

"Clever Matty," said Eugenia. Matty Crompton did not answer, but made a sudden plunge and twist with her fishing net and brought up a thrashing, furious fish, a stickleback, large, at least for a stickleback, rosybreasted and olive-backed. She tipped it out of the net into the jar with the other captives, and the little girls crowded round to look.

The creature gasped for a moment and floated inert. Then it could be seen to gather its forces. It blushed rosier - its chest was the most amazing colour, a fiery pink overlaid, or underlaid, with the olive colour that pervaded the rest of it. It raised its dorsal fin, which became a kind of spiny, draconian ridge, and then it became an almost invisible whirling lash, attacking the other fish, who had nowhere, in their cylindrical prison, to hide. The water boiled. Eugenia began to laugh ,and Elaine began to cry. William came to the rescue, pouring fish from jar to jar until, after some gasping on grass, he had managed to isolate the rosy-waistcoated aggressor in a jar of his own. The other fish opened and closed their tremulous mouths. Elaine crouched over them.

William said, "It is very interesting that it is only this very aggressive male who has the pink coat. Two of the others are male, but they are not flushed with anger, or elation, as he is. Mr. Wallace argues that females are dull because they keep the nests in general, but this father both makes and guards his own hatchery until the fry swim away. And yet he remains an angry red, perhaps as a warning, long after the need to attract a female into his handsome house has quite vanished."

Matty said, "We have probably orphaned his eggs."

"Put him back," said Elaine.

"No, no, bring him home, let us keep him awhile, and put him back when we have studied him," said Miss Mead. "He will build another nest. Thousands of fish eggs are eaten every minute, Elaine, it is the way of Nature."

"We are not Nature," said Elaine.

"What else are we?" asked Matty Crompton. She had not thought out her theology, William said to himself, without speaking out loud. Nature was smiling and cruel, that was clear. He offered his hands to Eugenia, to help her up the bank of the stream, and she took hold with her hands, gripping his, through her cotton gloves, always through cotton gloves, warmed by her warmth, impregnated by whatever it was that breathed from her skin.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

May 22, 2007

The Books: "Possession: A Romance" (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

possession.jpgPossession: A Romance - by A.S. Byatt. I know I've written here before what that book meant to me (and continues to mean to me - I just re-read it ... again!!). I read it in December of 92 - which means nothing to anyone but me, but I was in a specific place in my life when this book became necessary. Not just a good book ... but a helpful guide - a lantern in the darkness. It didn't solve any problems but it sure as hell put into words - and beautiful words - so many of my own wordless struggles, my too-frightening-to-talk-about fears ... my heartache, which I had a lot at that time. And every single time I have read the book since then - in different stages of my life - I've seen different things, gotten different things ... As a matter of fact, just recently - I had a bit of a crack-up, and was out o' commission for maybe 3 days - not a huge crack-up, but definitely a teeny one - and I immediately turned to Possession again. I knew the passage I needed. It helped. In a weird way, it really did. It's one of those miraculous books that seems to grow with you, the devoted reader. I continue to be amazed by the breadth and depth of AS Byatt's skill. I linked to a piece once where Byatt talked about the writing of this book - Here it is - and there's a fantastic discussion in the comments about the book itself (I have awesome readers. Yay!) I guess the fact that I would place Possession on such a list as this one says it all. I write in that post:

As my life changes, as I grow older ... the book appears to take on deeper meanings - I fluctuate between sympathy for Roland, for Christabel, for Val, for poor Ellen Ash, for Maud ... depending on my mood, or where I am at in my life. Also, and this is a deeper comment: This is a book about intellectuals having love affairs. The cerebral mixed with the primal. This is something that strikes a very intense chord in me ... a problem that has come up in my life repeatedly, because of who I am, and because of my emotional makeup - a fiery mix of brains and passion. Tough for anybody to handle. How will it work? How will I find my way, find peace? My intellectual side is rigid, hard-working, and can be very inflexible. I will not "tone it down" to make others feel comfortable around me. I've been asked (outright, and also subliminally) to "tone it down" and the price (for me) is too great. It's too much of a betrayal. And yet I do not lack feelings, I am not cold ... Maud's struggle in the book with "letting her hair down", her resistance to love, her fear of having her boundaries melded with somebody else's, is my eternal struggle. I have never ever read a better prolonged study of the issues a woman like myself has when she falls in love. It's very specific. There isn't anything generic about a love affair - and yet most books do not tackle it from Byatt's angle. Not only did I love the story, but I felt validated and vindicated by it. It's something I go to again and again, sometimes searchingly, sometimes just with the knowledge that I will be able to lose myself in it ... and sometimes with trepidation. The truths revealed in this book are only live-able to me when I am in a good head-space, and dealing with myself openly. If I'm trying to "hide" (in the same way that Maud hides) - then the book rebukes me. I can't think of too many other books that maintain such a vibrant presence in my life.

I always get kind of nervous when, during this daily book excerpt thing I do, I approach a book which has been truly meaningful to me - like the Emily books - many others.

Byatt is at the top of her game here. She's at the top of anyone's game, frankly. She has written extensively about how she wanted to create almost a Victorian melodrama - the scene at the grave at the very end has all of the "props" - thrashing trees, driving rain, flickering lanterns, dirt - and yet we also have the gleam and bustle of modern-day London, and the postmodern world of academia - (her labeling the book "A Romance" is indicative of what she is trying to do ... it's a bit of a distancing technique). Two modern-day literature scholars - one a feminist, a women's studies professor - and one, a kind of aimless and yet passionate graduate student - end up tripping over a cache of letters between two Victorian poets - Randolph Ash and Christabel laMotte - love letters - and it was never before known that these two even knew each other. As a matter of fact, there is a bit of hostility in the LaMotte camp towards Randolph Ash - he's seen as a "soft-core misogynist" - LaMotte was a lesbian, apparently - she lived with a woman for many years - and all of the LaMotte scholarship since then has slowly and yet inevitably been erected around the sexual politics of the situation. Her work MEANS something to lesbians ... it validates THEIR life in the modern-day world. And now ... to discover ... that she actually had a tormented love affair with ... Randolph Ash?? Randolph Ash is apparently a sort of Tennyson-esque poet - he is part of the edifice of British culture. He was celebrated in his day (the same way Tennyson was) - and he lived an exemplary life, married, never unfaithful (as far as scholarship knows) - he was also a man of his time - inquiring, curious, controversial in some of his beliefs (about religion, for example) ... LaMotte is seen as a minor poet, and the Ash folks kind of pooh-pooh her. She didn't publish as much - a book of fairy tales, a limited edition of an epic about a fairy ... she didn't make her mark in the same way that Ash did. Byatt's depiction of modern-day scholarship is spot ON. She includes "excerpts" from scholarly papers and books which show the absolute opacity of lit-crit writing ... and makes the point that life will always be between the lines. There are things a biographer can NEVER know (the whole section about Ellen Ash at her husband's death bed is a perfect example) ... and Roland and Maud (the two modern-day scholars) have to go through quite a lot to, first of all, understand each other ... and second of all, to understand Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte. Both of them are so-called EXPERTS in their field. There is nothing about Christabel that Maud doesn't know.

And so the discovery of this huge correspondence rocks their world. They know they are sitting on a gold-mine. This will change the face of scholarship. Other forces become involved. Ash scholars, LaMotte scholars ... all of them start closing in ... everyone wants a piece of this new discovery.

Imagine if it was discovered that Tennyson and Emily Dickinson actually had a passionate and unrequited love affair. THAT'S the kind of bombshell we're talking about here. It would change everything.

Byatt's a genius. She acts as a sort of medium here. We get to read Randolph Ash's poetry. And also LaMotte's. And as the book goes on ... we start to see how they influenced one another. It was a meeting of the minds, man.

The book has everything. It's a detective story. At the end, it basically becomes a melodrama. It's a whodunit. It's a romance. The romance, for me, is startlingly effective. I burst into tears at the last sentence of the book. BURST into tears. Noooooooooooo!!!! was my main response.

It works.

Here's an excerpt. Now ... let me just say something about Byatt's writing. There is something here (and you'll see it in the excerpt) where she pulls back her lens a bit ... to comment on the action. It's not like we, the reader, are completely IN Maud and Roland's world ... no. She pulls back from THEM as well. (This goes back to her title of the book: Possession: A Romance) Even though we are peering back through time at the correspondence between Ash and LaMotte - trying to figure out what happened ... we are not QUITE in the present-moment completely either. Byatt is really making the whole point of the book in this section. In the movie (which I liked - I'll write about that at some other time - I was nervous about it, because of my feelings for the book - but I was very pleased with the result. Not 100% pleased, but almost so). Anyway, in the movie - they added a scene - which is kind of a compilation of many different scenes (including, sort of, the excerpt below). Maud and Roland lie in bed, they are in Yorkshire, trying to track down the Victorian poets ... and they have a prickly professional relationship. Yet they're warming up to each other. No romance yet. They lie in bed (they were given one room) ... and it's not awkward, they're just lying there, with books around them ... talking about their search, and about Ash and LaMotte. It starts to get personal. Roland asks Maud why she always wears her hair back (this is also in the book). They start to talk about it. And it segues into a talk about love and relationships. Is Roland seeing someone? How about Maud? They talk. At one point, Roland says something about his desire to stay free and independent, or whatever ... and Gwyneth glances at him, grins, and says, "Aren't we so modern." She's not saying it in a bitchy way. It's perfect, the way she says it. (And it's not in the book. But the FEELING of that moment is in the book - and in this excerpt today. But the movie puts it into language. Wonderful adaptation). The point here is that ... Ash and LaMotte conducted their romance in what may be seen as a simpler time. They didn't have to contend with gender politics, sexual politics, labeling - at least not the way we do in our "modern" era - the "isms" of modern day life. The hyphenated classifications of every human being. When Ash and LaMotte say the word "love" they actually mean something different than a modern person. Roland and Maud are discovering that. Are they falling "in love"? But ... what does that mean now? What have we lost, in being so modern? Gwyneth's little kind grin in that scene where she teases, "Aren't we so modern" says it all.

The funny thing is, and this is Byatt's kind of trickiness in this book (a trickiness that works): below, Roland starts to think about plots, and ... what if THEIR plot, in the modern-day was mirroring the plot of the Victorian poets. But then ... what WAS the plot? How could they know the plot if they don't know the ending? Byatt goes on to talk about the mistrust of "love" in the modern generation - and so ... beautifully ... by calling the book Possession: A Romance ... and by having Roland worry about what plot he is in ... and by explaining that he and Maud do not trust romantic love ... the title of the book answers Roland's question. He may not like that answer, he may be afraid of it ... but it's right there, plain as the nose on his face.

Here's the excerpt.

Excerpt from Possession: A Romance - by A.S. Byatt. I

They had been in Brittany three weeks. They had supposed, when they made their precipitate flight, that they would spend such timem as they stole, decorously in the university library at Nantes. Instead, they found themselves, owing to the closure of the library and the absence of Ariane Le Minier, on holiday, on holiday together, and for the second time that summer. They had separate rooms - with the requisite white beds - but there was no doubt that there was a marital or honeymooning aspect to their lingering. Both of them were profoundly confused and very ambivalent about this. Someone like Fergus Wolff would have known how to take advantage of this state of affairs, and would have assumed that it was natural for, indeed incumbent upon, him to take advantage. But Maud would not again willingly have gone anywhere with Fergus. And she had more than willingly set out with Roland. They had run away together, and were sharply aware of the usual connotations of this act. They spoke peacefully, and with a kind of parody of ancient married agreement of "we" or "us". "Shall we go to Pont-Aven?" one would placidly ask, and the other would answer, "We might try to see the crucifix that was the original of Gauguin's Christ Jaune." They did now, however, discuss this use of the pronoun, although both thought about it.

Somewhere in the locked-away letters, Ash had referred to the plot of fate that seemed to hold or drive the dead lovers. Roland thought, partly with precise postmodernist pleasure, that he and Maud were being driven by a plot of fate that seemed, at least possibly, to be not their plot or fate but that of those others. He tried to extend this apercu. Might there not, he professionally asked himself, be an element of superstitious dread in any self-reflexive, inturned postmodernist mirror-game or plot-coil that recognises that it has got out of hand? That recognises that connections proliferate apparently at random, apparently in response to some ferocious ordering principle, which would, of course, being a good postmodernist principle, require the aleatory or the multivalent or the "free", but structuring, but controlling, but driving, to some - to what? - end. Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love", characteristically, combs the appearances of the world, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot. Roland was troubled by the idea that the opposite might be true. Finding themselves in a plot, they ight suppose it approrpriate to behave as though it was that sort of plot. And that would be to compromise some kind of integrity they had set out with.

So they continued to discuss, almost exclusively, the problems of those dead. They sat over buckwheat pancakes in Pont-Aven, and drank cider from cool earthenware pitchers and asked the difficult questions.

What became of the child?

How or why, in what state of ignorance or knowledge, had Blanche been abandoned? How had Ash and LaMotte parted? Did he know of the possible child?

The letter returning the letters to Christabel was undated. When had that been sent? Had there been more contact? A long affair, an immediate rupture?

Maud was muted and saddened by the poems Ariane had enclosed. She interpreted the second to mean that the child had been born dead, and the "spilt milk" poem to be an evidence of a terrible guilt, on Christabel's part, at the fate, whatever it was, of the infant.

"Milk hurts," Maud said. "A woman with milk who can't feed a child, is in pain."

In terms of Christabel, she too discussed the parodying of plots.

"She wrote a lot about Goethe's Faust round about then. It's a regular motif, the innocent infanticide, in European literature at that time. Gretchen, Hetty Sorrel, Wordsworth's Martha in 'The Thorn.' Despairing women with dead babies."

"We don't know it was dead."

"I can't help thinking, if it was not destined to die, why did she run away? She had gone there for sanctuary. Why didn't she stay where she was safe?"

"She meant no one to know what happened."

"There's an ancient taboo on seeing childbirth. Early versions of the Melusina myth have childbirth instead of the bath."

"Repeating patterns. Again."

They discussed also the future of the project, that is, of the research, without knowing where to go next. Back to Nantes was an obvious step, and they condoned their lingering, on this ground. Maud said Christabel had stayed with friends in London in the early 1860s - she was unaware of the connection with the Vestal Lights. Roland remembered a glancing reference to the Pointe du Raz in Ash -- "tristis usque ad mortem," Ash had said it was - but that was no guarantee he had come there.

Beyond the future of the project, Roland was worried about his own future. He would have been in a panic if he had allowed himself to think, but the dreamy days, the pearly light alternating with the hot blue, and something else, made it possible to leave thinking in abeyance. Things did not look good. He had simply walked out on Blackadder. He had done the same to Val, who was, he considered, unforgiving and dependent in equal proportion - he would have to go back to be berated, and then how could he leave, where would he go, how should he live?


Things had changed between them nevertheless. They were children of a time and culture that mistrusted love, "in love", romantic love, romance in toto, and which nevertheless in revenge proliferated sexual language, linguistic sexuality, analysis, dissection, deconstruction, exposure. They were theoretically knowing: they knew about phallocracy and penisneid, punctuation, puncturing and penetration, about pollymorphous and polysemous perversity, orality, good and bad breasts, clitoral tumescence, vesicle persecution, the fluids, the solids, the metaphors for these, the systems of desire and damage, infantile greed and oppression and transgression, the iconography of the cervix and the imagery of the expanding and contracting Body, desired, attacked, consumed, feared.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed.

One night they fell asleep, side by side, on Maud's bed, where they had been sharing a glass of Calvados. He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.

They did not speak of this, but silently negotiated another such night. It was important to both of them that the touching should not proceed to any kind of fierceness or deliberate embrace. They felt that in some way this stately peacefulness of unacknowledged contact gave back their sense of their separate lives inside their separate skins Speech, the kind of speech they knew, would have undone it. On days when the sea-mist closed them in a sudden milk-white cocoon with no perspectives they lay lazily together all day behind heavy white lace curtains on the white bed, not stirring, not speaking.

Neither was sure how much, or what, all this meant to the other.

Neither dared ask.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5)

May 21, 2007

The Books: "Still Life" (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

519Z7C042GL._SS500_.jpgStill Life - by A.S. Byatt.

This is the second of the "Potter family" books and man, I love this book. Her big themes continue from Virgin in the Garden: intellect vs. body, marriage vs. independence, madness vs. creativity. Interspersed throughout the book are long fascinating excerpts from the letters of Theo and Vincent van Gogh - so the book has an intellectual rigor to it (as all her books do). It's not straight narrative. We get into the nitty-gritty of the characters' lives - and then switch back to treatises, by an omniscent narrator, on the van Goghs, and art, and trying to capture light and color. Frederica - the prickly "star" of this book - escapes Yorkshire and goes to Cambridge. She falls in with a rowdy group of men (who continue on as characters in the subsequent books). Frederica is the kind of woman who flourishes in platonic male friendship. It's not that she doesn't like women - but it's one of her struggles - to remain a woman, while at the same time being a serious academic, and being taken seriously in her work. Stephanie has married Daniel, a vicar - and you can see how she begins to lose her fight in this regard almost immediately. But because it's AS Byatt writing it - it's not a simplistic struggle. It's just that ... at the time (and even now, to some extent) - marriage is seen as a structure that has a specific form, and you must adhere to that form - or it's not a marriage. Wives should be a certain way. Stephanie is not rebellious, by nature - but she has a moment in this book, when she's going into labor, and she knows she's going to be in the hospital for some time - and she is desperate for someone to go home and bring her her books. This request is not understood. She is seen as being difficult, weird. Why does a new mother need her complete Wordsworth by her side? Again, this isn't said explicitlly - but it's there - and you really feel for Stephanie, trapped in a life that she thought maybe would free her up (it is the 50s, after all - you can't be single for TOO long ... marriage was seen as the truly freeing thing). But what really interests me about this book is the back and forth between the spectacular letters of Theo and Vincent - and the Potter family. It's such a nice device. I found it to be hugely effective. Marcus, the brother, has had a nervous breakdown - and has been convalescing in a hospital for some time. His "madness" has to do with how he perceives light. Light comes across to him as a mathematical theorem - he can SEE it - breaking apart, coming together - lines, angles, parabolas - it is something he cannot control. There is a genius in Marcus, a mathematical genius - but he becomes overwhelmed by the very FACT of light's existence, he can't bear it. This, of course, is very similar to Vincent van Gogh's madness ... after all, Vincent never saw his famous painting "Starry Night" as impressionistic, or abstract in any way. This is actually how the stars appeared to him. Is that madness? Does it even matter?

Here's an excerpt from the book. I love her writing, man. There's a distance to it - as there is in all the Potter books. It's almost like a treatise, a sociological examination - you'll see what I mean. This is from Frederica's time at Cambridge. There's something about Byatt's specific excavation of Frederica's motives and actions during this time that reminds me of this time in my life. I was very very Frederica-esque then. Byatt could be describing me. It's odd, and cool, isn't it ... when you see yourself in a book? It's like: but ... but ... that's so private ... how could Byatt know that??

Excerpt from Still Life - by A.S. Byatt.

She had too tough and inflexible a sense of her identity to be as good a chameleon as Alan Melville. She did not intend, as she began to suspect he did, to make a career of it. She tried, in a small way. She said "darling" and "love" to the theater people. She tried to adjust her clothes to the preconceptions of sweet Freddie, though some things cannot be done without money. (He was shocked by a pair of elbow-length nylon gloves she had, which he had supposed might be old lace.) She talked about "value" to the poetry friends and slickly and cynically to Tony and Alan. But only in bed - or on sofas, or in punts, or hand in hand on the Backs - did she truly practice being a chameleon. She gave back as much - or more often as little - as was offered or expected. Her greed did not express itself in bed as it did in conversation. She copied and followed, she did not demand. She was unaware that this was all she did. She awoke once from a dream in which she was a grass meadow, held to the earth by myriad grass roots through her hair, fibrils painlessly incorporating her skin in turf, a Gulliver being absorbed by Lilliput, and over the meadow leaped, slowly, exhaustedly, rhythmically, similarly, a procession of pale yellow frogs, long legged, mostly flaccid, a spurt, a heavy-breathing rest, a floppy spurt, one after the other after the other ...


This may seem to be a chill and cynical account of a time that was, was perceived as, rich, confusing, full of emotion. The language with which I mgiht try to order Frederica's hectic and somewhat varied sexual life in 1954-55 was not available to Frederica then. She had the phsycial and intellectually classifying adjectives, but she did not believe herself to be primarily conducting research but looking for love, trust, "someone who would want her for what she was". And she had thought very little about the feelings or expectations of clever boys or clever young men. There were many things, however many beds she hopped in and out of, however many cheeks she demurely brushed, that she was not fitted to understand. She came, after all, not in utter nakedness but cocooned by her culture in a web of amatory, social, and tribal expectations that was not even coherent and unitary.

She believed unquestioningly, with part of herself, for instance, that a woman was unfulfilled without marriage, that marriage was the end of every good story. She was looking for a husband, partly because she was afraid no one might want her, partly because she couldn't decide what to do with herself until that problem was solved, partly because everyone else was looking for a husband. (It is curious, but true, that the offers she received in no way changed her fixed feeling that the sort of woman she was was essentially not wanted as a wife.)

She believed, with a mixture of "realism" and resignation, that women were much more preoccupied with love than men were, more vulnerable, more in pain. There were imposing tags in her mind. "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart / 'Tis woman's whole existence." "He for God only, she for God in him." "I claim only this privilege for my sex - you need not covet it ... this distinction of loving longest when life, when hope is gone." She was conditioned to desire to be abject. This desire was reinforced by the behavior of Rosamond Lehmann's heroines and of Ursula Brangwen (whom some other part of Frederica was ready to despise heartily.) And there was the knowledge gleaned from agony columns, where abject women asked for help with the indifferent, the unfaithful, the only-wanting-one-thing, the other women's husbands.


The Frederica who had fled to Scarborough with Wilke rather than go to bed with Alexander might be described as instinctively in revolt against "whole" (overwhelming) love, though she would have said she was afraid of failure, embarrassment, bloodshed. The Frederica who conducted experiments in sex in Cambridge was looking for an ideal lover. At one level. At another, she was considering a battle with the whole male sex. She often said, "I like men," as one might say, "I like strong cheese," or "I like bitter chocolate," or "I like red wine." Sghe came to pronounce that each realationship was what it was - dancing, sex, talk, friendship - as many as there were men. This was true, and she believed it, but it was not the whole truth. Her behavior was more dictated by generalizations aout men, or Men, than she was at first aware.

Men had their group behavior. Together they talked about girls as they might about motorcars or beer, joking about breast measurements and legs, planning campaigns of seduction like army or teenage gang maneuvers. For these men women were better or worse, easier or more rarified sex. Simply. Frederica did the same, at first half-consciously, then with deliberation. She judged and categorized men. Quality of skin, size of backside, texture of hair, skill. Men discussed whether girls would or wouldn't. Frederica furiously categorized those men who could and couldn't. If men wanted "only" one thing, so could, and would, and did, Frederica Potter. She took some pride in the fact that there was no one who could feel able to refer to her as his girlfriend. She preempted the planned, staged, purchased 9with curry, with films, with wine) seductions by immediate acquiescence or unusually direct and candid rejection. These habits took some learning and there were moments when she lost her nerve, even wondered if she were cheap, or a tart. (Fast would have been a good word for her but came from another decade.)

There were men who wanted her, or seemed to, who sent letters quoting "the not-impossible She", who asked delicately if she saw them as perhaps special. Here Frederica's confusion was at its height. She believed that she wanted to solve the marriage problem. To find a true mind, with the rest of course added. But she also wanted not to be like her mother's generation, free and powerful only during this brief artificial period before concession and possession. She felt contempt for the suitors, which protected her from taking them seriously, or allowed her to remain abject - in her own mind - before the not-impossible unknown. She prevaricated and cheated, shared them with other women and neither felt nor appeared to feel jealousy. (This was owing to egocentricity: she simply could not imagine men in the company of other women.)

It shouould by now be clear that Frederica was more than once both cruel and destructive. In extenuation it can be argued that she had not been led by custom or by cultural mythology to suppose that men had feelings. Men were deceivers ever, the bad ones, and masterful, the good ones. The world was their world and what she wanted was to live in that world, not to be sought out as a refuge from or adjunct to it.

She might have been instructed by literature. She had read endless descriptions of the shyness and desperation of male first love. But whereas she recognized the humiliation of Charlotte Bronte's Lucy Snowe, of Rosamond Lehmann's brave, doomed girls, and the death of the heart, from some fund of ancient knowledge, she did not recognize, or believe in, the professional coquettes or pure young girls, or mysterious animal presences of the male novels. None of these were anything to do with Frederica Potter, who was brisk, businesslike, interested in but not obsessed by sex, and wanted to make friends of the creatures if they would have it. Women in male novels were unreal and it was beyond Frederica's comprehension that young men might suppose she was any or all of these characters. So they battled, the men to be hopelessly devoted, Frederica to be abject and/or free, and were puzzled and hurt. Frederica was shocked and startled when one young man burst uninvited into a tea she was making for another and smashed a teacup with a poker. She categorized long and deeply considered love letters as parts of a campaign and ignored them. When one desperate man whom she found unexciting, apart from an encyclopedic knowledge of Thomas Mann, burst into tears and said she was mcking him, she could only stare, become wholly silent, and go home.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5)

May 20, 2007

The Books: "The Virgin in the Garden" (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

0679738290.jpgThe Virgin in the Garden - by A.S. Byatt.

This is Byatt's third novel - and actually, she has gone on to write three more books about this particular family, so there was obviously something here that gripped her. You can tell in the writing, too. The book takes place in 1952, in England - the time of Elizabeth's coronation - seen as "the new Elizabethan age". This is AS Byatt's explicit topic. A young playwright/academic has written a new play, in honor of the occasion of the coronation - and if I recall correctly it's in verse, and it's about Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. Drawing parallels between that age and the "new" age. The play is to be put on at a private school - and the headmaster and his family (3 kids) are the main characters of Byatt's book. The chapters alternate points of view. We follow Bill (the father), and Stephanie, Frederica and Marcus (the children) through their lives - but all the time, they are grappling with big questions and issues. What is it to be English? What is culture? Is it something to be inherited? Is how we speak directly influenced by, say, Chaucer? Shakespeare? Byatt revisits these themes again and again in her books (Possession is all about that). Virgin in the Garden is really ABOUT England. England at a particular time. There is a cynicism in the era - a kind of dichotomy between the brou-haha of the upcoming coronation (and all its sincerity - you know, there's no ironic distance in a coronation, no wink-wink at the audience), and all of the shining expectations of what this new age will bring for the British Empire - and the snarkiness going on below in the populace. Another one of Byatt's main themes (this, I believe, is the thing I found most piercingly wonderful in Possession, the thing that spoke to me the most) is the split between the cerebral and the earthy. Body and mind. In a funny way, nobody writes about sex like AS Byatt. At least, to my taste and sensibilities. She writes about cerebral people, intellectuals, to some extent cut off from their own bodies - this is her topic. Sex is not always easy, or grasp-able to certain types - although the desire is usually present in every human. So there's Frederica and Stephanie - the two daughters in this book - both kind of cerebral in their own way. Frederica is sharp-minded, no-nonsense, not always likeable, unlike other girls - not gushy or mushy at all - and then there's Stephanie, a charcter I find truly fascinating. A quiet placid girl, a teacher ... I don't know, she's a mystery to me. With all her quiet placid-ness, I never knew what she was going to do next. Anyway, the lushness of Elizabethan drama, juxtaposed with the dry academic setting in 1950s England - the national hysteria over the coronation - juxtaposed with Stephanies' lectures to her students - on Keats, Ovid, Chaucer ... The book is kind of patchwork, no real plot - (unlike Possession, which is all plot) - but what you are left with is ... the image of a nation on the brink of some big changes. 1950s England. What is it to be English? What is it to be an artist? How does one feel about Shakespeare, if one is English? How does he inform the present? What is culture? A construct? Or something more organic? Byatt knows what's coming - because this book was published in 1976, I believe. Byatt knows that England, like many other countries, is headed for some decades of self-doubt, cynicism, and rebellion against old forms. The prologue of Virgin in the Garden takes place in 1968 - so in some sense, by doing that, Byatt is placing the book in its decade, purposefully. There is some retrospect. What do the 1950s look like, from the end of the 1960s? It's almost like it was a different world entirely.

I love this book. I should go back and read it again.

Here's an excerpt. I didn't know what to pick - the book is so rich, and there are so many parts I love - the family watching the coronation on television, and having all kinds of differing responses to it - the discussions of the new play, rehearsals - but I like this one. I wanted to pick an excerpt having to do with quiet deep Stephanie. Here she is, in the classroom where she teaches. She's gotta be about 20? Can't remember. She, unlike her sister Frederica, isn't a difficult character to like. But she is difficult to understand. There seems to be some melancholy there, and also - perhaps she represents a kind of old order. Meaning: look at the poem she is teaching to her students. A 'revolution' in the culture is coming. In the 60s and 70s, lit crit and multicultural concerns are going to re-make "English" classes into something entirely different. How would Stephanie have fared in that new landscape? It's not that she's a purist. No, not exactly. But her reading - and the way Byatt talks about her reading - is personal. I can't imagine that politicized readings of the classics would appeal to her at all.

Byatt doesn't really get into all of that in this book (she saves that for later books in this same series, and takes it as her main subject for Possession) - but it is there, nonetheless.

Excerpt from The Virgin in the Garden - by A.S. Byatt.

Stephanie sat in a chill brown classroom, whitened over with chalk dust, and taught the Ode on a Grecian Urn to those girls who had not gone to Blesford Ride. Good teaching is a mystery and takes many forms Stephanie's idea of good teaching was simple and limited: it was the induced, shared, contemplation of a work, an object, an artefact. It was not the encouragement of self-expression, self-analysis, or what were to be called interpersonal relations. Indeed, she saw a good reading of the Ode on a Grecian Urn as a welcome chance to avoid these activities.

She had never had trouble with discipline, although she never raised her voice. She exacted quietness, biologically and morally. Girls came in from outside, buzzing, crashing, laughing. Barbara, Gillian, Zelda, Valerie, Susan, Juliet, Grace. Valerie had a disfiguring boil and Barbara an acute curse pain. Zelda's father was dying, this month or next, and Juliet had been shocked by a strange boy who had thrust his fist up her skirt and crooked an elbow around her throat in a Blesford ginnel. Gillian was very clever and required a key, mnemonics and an analytic blueprint of the Grecian Urn for exam purposes. Susan was in love with Stephanie whom she tried to please by straining her attention. Grace wanted only to have a florist's shop, was held at school in a vice of parental ambition, biding her time.

Stephanie's mind was clear of all this information, and she required that their minds should become so. She made them keep still, by keeping unnaturally still herself, as tamers of wild birds and animals keep still, she had read in childhood, so that the creatures become either mesmerized or fearless or both, she was not sure which.

She required also that her mind at least should be clear of the curious clutter of mnemonics that represented the poem at ordinary times, when the attention was not concentrated upon it. In her case: a partial visual memory of its shape on the page, composed, in fact, of several super-imposed patterns from different editions, the gestalt clear, but shifting in size: a sense of the movement of the rhythm of the langauge which was biological, not verbal or visual, and not to be retrieved without calling whole strings of words to the mind's eye and ear again: some words, the very abstract ones, form, thought, eternity, beauty, truth, the very concrete words, unheard, sweeter, green, marble, warm, cold, desolate. A run of grammatical and punctuational pointers: the lift of frozen unasnwered questions in the first stanza, the apparently undisciplined rush of repeated epithets in the third. Visual images, neither seen, in the mind's eye, nor unseen. White forms of arrested movement under dark formal boughs. Trouble with how to "see" the trodden weed. John Keats on his death-bed, requesting the removal of books, even of Shakespeare. Herself at Cambridge, looking out through glass library walls into green boughs, committing to memory, what? Asking what, why?

She read the poem out quietly, as expressionless as possible, a ditty with no tone. And then again. The ideal was to come to it with a mind momentarily open and empty, as though for the first time. They must all hear the words equally, not pounce, or tear, or manipulate. She asked them chilly, "Well?" prolonging the difficult moment when they must just stare, finding speech difficult and judgment unavoidable.

She sat there, looking into inner emptiness, waiting for the thing to rise into form and saw nothing, nothing and then involuntarily flying specks and airy clumps of froth or foam on a strongly running grey sea. Foam not pure white, brown and gold-stained herre and there, blowing together, centripetal, a form cocooned in crusts and swathes of adhesive matter. Not relevant, her judgment said, the other poem, damn it, the foam of perilous seas. The thing had a remembered look, not pleasant, and she grimaced, as she saw it. Venus de Milo, Venus Anadyomene. The foam-born, foam from the castrated genitals of Kronos. Not a bad image, if you wanted one, of the coming to form from shapelessness, but not what she had meant to call up.

"Well," she said to the girls, "well, what do you see?"

They began to talk about when Keats required his reader to see an urn and when a landscape, what colours he called up and what he left to chocie, and moved from there to the nature of the difficulty of seeing what is formed to be
"seen" by language alone, marble men and maidents, the heifer and altar, a burning forehead and a parching tongue, cold pastoral.

Herad melodies are sweet but those unheard
Are sweeter,

said Stephanie. Clever Gillian commented that the word desolate was the centre of the poem, almost allowing one to be taken out of it, like the word forlorn in the Nightingale. They talked about beauty is truth, truth beauty. They talked, as Stephanie had meant them to, about a verbal thing, made of words so sensual and words not sensual at all, like beauty and truth. She talked about what it could mean, that the turn should "tease us out of thought As doth eternity". It is a funeral urn, said Zelda. That is not enough to say, said Susan, staring at Stephanie.

Things moved in the classroom, amongst eight closed minds, one urn, eight urns, nine urns, half realised, unreal, white figures whose faces and limbs could be sensed but not precisely described, bright white, the dark, the words, moving, in ones, in groups, in clusters, in and out of whatever cells held their separate and communal visual, aural or intellectual memories. Stephanie talked them out of the vocabulary she was supposed to be teaching them and left them with none, darlkling. Gillian, who was enjoying the process, reflected that words could be quickly enough snatched back, when the occasion required it. Stephanie reflected that this poem was the poem she most cared for, saying ambivalently that you could not do, and need not attempt, what it required you to do, see the unseen, realise the unreal, speak what was not, and that yet it did it so that unheard melodies seemed infinitely preferable to any one might ever hope to hear. Human beings, she had thought, even as a very small child faced with The Lady of Shalott, might so easily never have hit on the accidental idea of making unreal verbal forms, they might have just lived, and dreamed, and tried to tell the truth. She had kept asking Bill, why did he write it, and the answers had been so many and so voluble and so irrelevant to the central problem, that she closed her mind to them, even whilst effortlessly committing them to memory for future use, as Gillian now must and would.

The bell rang. They came out blinking, like owls into the bright daylight. Stephanie, gathering her books, allowed herself to wonder whether the irrelevant flying foam she had seen had come from the Nightingale, or from her own intellect, making Freudian associations all too tidily between marble maidens, the Venus and the subconscious knowledge she had of the nature of that foam. It was not very nice foam.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 19, 2007

The Books: "The Game" (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

0679742565.jpgThe Game - by A.S. Byatt.

This is AS Byatt's second novel, published in 1967. She had quite a long writing life before she finally hit the jackpoet with Possession - she did a lot of critical writing, studies of Iris Murdoch, she taught, she wrote, but she didn't have, for many many years, fame. I like that about her. I like that she didn't make a splash with her first book, or her second, or her third. Or her fourth ... etc etc. I like the long-percolating aspect of her career. I read these earlier books of Byatt's and she, as a writer - the voice, the concerns, the themes - is clearly in evidence. I totally recognize the writer of Possession here. It's just that the subject matter isn't yet BIG enough for her particular gifts. She's a very detailed writer - but she's also a writer who truly THINKS about things - trends, generations, movements, etc. - She thinks about these things not in a dilettanteish way - she doesn't use these things as plot points ... these are truly her concerns. (Like the whole "lit crit theory" trend - which is the jumping off place for Possession)

The Game - I can't remember much about it. I know it's about two estranged sisters. They had a troubled upbringing and created a fantasy world together when they were little - a sort of Knights of the Round Table world - that reminds me a bit of the two girls in Heavenly Creatures and that claymation world they would escape to. Uhm ... and that's all I remember. I know that now, when the book starts, the two sisters are grown women, married - estranged ... and somehow they are drawn back together again. There's a sort of "evil" guy named Simon - has he had affairs with them both? How does he factor in? No memory. But he, predictably, is some sort of specialist on snakes (see - Byatt hasn't quite figured out yet how to hide her themes more gracefully) - he has a television program about snakes, and the two sisters are kind of haunted by seeing him everywhere. They have known Simon since they were young girls - and ... somehow ... well. He's the snake in the garden. The book is supposed to be really psychologically ominous - but as you can tell, none of it has remained in my memory.

I flipped thru it just now, and some of it came back to me - but only some.

There are long sections of Cassandra's journal (Byatt is very into doing that - she likes that device, a very Jane Austen-y device - of printing letters, memos, journals - that's the whole point of Possession - She likes giving you, the reader, the feeling that you are rifling through someone else's papers.) So anyhoo - here's an excerpt involving the teenage Cassandra's journals.

Like I wrote elsewhere: I totally recognize AS Byatt here. It's 1967, it's years before she hit it with Possession - but the voice is already there. I love that.

Excerpt from The Game - by A.S. Byatt.

Cassandra's Journal. Easter 1944.

Today he showed me the snakes. I hoped he might, as I imagine he would not show them to most people. He says he has 'for some reason' always kept them a secret. So I was very flattered, but could not comment as intelligently or enthusiastically as I would have liked to. I hoped to feel we were sharing something, but he was a bit schoolmasterish - more letting me be there than wanting me. I refine too much on what he says. I said, 'Is there anything I can do?' He said, 'Just sit there and keep me company.' I was absurdly pleased by this. (Must watch myself, no lies, no lies.) One must never ask for more than is offered - not out of virtue, but because if one does one loses what one has.

Snakes are strange things. Not evil-looking, as I had supposed, not anything much, just little heaps like coils of rope or something one might have dropped. He keeps them hidden in this cave. In glass tanks. He has earth on the bottom, and odd stones, and dishes of water for them to swim in. None were swimming. I would make it all look much better, but he clearly doesn't care how it looks. There is water running down the back wall; the stone is stained, silver and gold and olive; there are minute ferns growing in crevices. One could perhaps grow ferns all round, put in a few shelves.

It is strange to me to think anyone could love those snakes - stranger than before I saw them - but in some way he clearly does. He has ten grass-snakes, three smooth-snakes and two adders he caught in the heather. He has a collection of skins, wrapped in oilskin, in a metal box, and a book full of observations. There are no thoughts, only notes on how they excrete, how and when they cast their skins, how they swallow, how long they go iwthout food, what they will and won't eat. They have no names, although he knows them all apart. He told me they were beautiful, which I suppose is a kind of thought. I expected to find them beautiful myself - I am the sort of person you would think would - but I didn't. There was a dryness and nothingness about them. I was somehow surprised they were alive. They were nothing, really, just accidental tubular shapes of things. He says spring is late so they are torpid; they are inert, as though the step from life to death was insignificant to them. Snakes have no lids to their eyes, and so look plainly out at you; this makes them seem not so much fascinating as stupid.

I like watching him watch them. One of the things about knowing him is the excitement of mapping out all the directions in which there are things to learn I shall never know more of than that they are there. (Prose!!) I really don't want to know more than he voluntarily tells me, partly because I am shy. I stand around in a waiting silence much of the time but he doesn't seem to mind too much. I hope my waiting doesn't oppress him. God knows I don't mean it to. He said last week I was censorious, but oh, Simon, not with you, ever.

We had for lunch spam, tomatoes from his greenhouse, half a hard-boiled egg each and an apple.

We had another argument about the Incarnation. I was trying to say I didn't see it was necessary for Christ to have been God or to have died. It seems to have made, proportionately to what is claimed for it, so little difference - historically, that is - it hasn't changed war or murder or cruelty, most people still know nothing about it. I said I didn't want God to have been made flesh, as far as I was concerned if there was any point in the idea of God it was precisely that He was not flesh, he was something else, something other. He said might we not then feel God was inaccessible, and I said that individually, for myself, that was how I did feel. I see the flaw in my argument here.

He said, surely I saw something was wrong with the world - 'something horribly twisted' was how he put it. He said some twisting back on a really grand scale was needed, some 're-wrenching', not done by us, to counteract this.

I said, something was certainly horribly wrong, but it seemed to me likely that it had always been wrong and had not at one point in time 'gone wrong'. I said we have no right to think this re-wrenching actually took place just because we think it ought to have. He said the point about the Crucifixion was that it was the moment when the eternal was involved in history - thus its effects were eternal (we are now forever able to be saved) and historical (it has to be worked out). I said this was too metaphorical. I was angry because he didn't see that if the 'going wrong' wasn't historical, the atonement needn't be. He was angry with me; he wants me to believe.

I told him that what I found saving was the order and structure one could see in things, smooth-running, meaningful. The growth of plants, the circulation of the blood, networks of working muscles, veins on leaves, movements of planets and shoals of fish. A harmony one could see. This is what we are for, to pay attention to this beautiful network of designed movement that we and our tragedies are held in. He said that suffering and sin were rents in this network, and that Christ was a guarantee that they could be mended, the fabric could be restored. I said I thought the need for Christ was a need to simplify, to reduce to terms of human suffering something that is neutral, not loving, inhuman, not human.

We were angry with each other. I wish I didn't have to win arguments, especially with him. It doesn't do me much good. Moreover, about concrete suffering at least, he knows more than I do. Mine is all in the head. But he knows. I feel he is always on edge and menaced. I don't know why. I speculate about how he lives in that house; going into it is unthinkable. He must do normal things, brush his hair and teeth, sit by the fire ... He doesn't talk about his family. I don't ask.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 18, 2007

The Books: "The Shadow of the Sun" (A.S. Byatt)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

71BJPKH1BEL._AA240_.gif.jpegThe Shadow of the Sun - by A.S. Byatt. She's one of my all-time favorite writers. For Possession alone. But then there are the other books that I love ... Angels and Insects, Virgin in the Garden - her short stories ... she's so ... God, she's a true writer of ideas. Some people don't like that about her. My opinion is is that the ideas she tackles don't at all lesen the heart of the books. The first time I read Possession - a sweepingly brilliant book - full of all kinds of themes and ideas (postmodernism - a critique of it and also a validation of it - fascinating - Victoriana, sex, gender, the MEANING of reading ... like, the book is dense) - but anyway, the 'coda' to Possession - with the poet meeting the little girl in the field - knocked my socks off the first time I read it. I clutched at my heart when I read the last sentence, my soul cried out, "NO! NOOOOOO!" Perfect. A perfect and emotional ending to a perfect book. It packed a huge punch - and still does to this day. I've read it countless times and it is ALWAYS good. Shadow of the Sun is her first novel. It was published in the early 60s - she was an undergraduate when she wrote it. It did not make a splash - but was re-published after her huge breakthrough hit of Possession. And naturally I went and bought it and read it, since that one book alone made me a fan of all of AS Byatt's stuff forever. I actually can't remember much about Shadow of the Sun - I do know it's a book about a writer. A young woman whose father is a famous novelist. Byatt herself has commented on this book, saying - "It's a book by a young woman who doesn't quite know WHY she has to write ... but knows she MUST." She also has said (and I have noticed this, on my own reading of her work) that much of her writing is "heliotropic". This is definitely clear in Still Life - which intersperses the narrative with letters between Theo and Vincent Van Gogh. Her books are about color - green and gold are the background of so much - Possession, definitely. Think about Maud - her "golden hair" and the green headscarf she wears - the poems in Possession, full of gold and green. The whole "heliotropic" thing is a huge part of Shadow of the Sun (even the title!) The book opens with a long description of an English garden - and Byatt, the young writer, goes overboard on the descriptors - but you can see there the seeds of the writer she would eventually be. The "descriptive terms" in Possession are by someone who has become a master. She knows when to put them in, when to leave them out ... Shadow of the Sun is overwritten, as many books by young first novelists are ... and because I'm a huge fan of her - it's fun to watch her development. It's fun to read the three-page description of what the hay bales look like, gleaming in the sun ... even though it's "too much", even though a better writer knows to leave stuff out, that one paragraph will suffice. It's fun to read because you can feel AS Byatt finding, through the act of writing, what is important to her. What she SEES. The "heliotropic" focus ... she is not sure what to do with it yet, she is only 22 years old ... but she knows that this is what she sees, this is important to her. So she writes from there. I've picked one of those long sections as an excerpt. The details of the plot are lost to me - I know there's a love affair between the novelist's young teenage daughter and a married man ... Anna (the daughter) feels distant from her famous father, wants her independence ... and Henry (the novelist) is a difficult person, an artist, a fanatical gardener, a solitary man. He disappears for hours at a time when he is thinking out a book, to stride through the golden fields and woods. But more than that, I don't remember.

Here's an excerpt. Notice the use of color - it is purely symbolic. He "shines" - he is an analogy - he is a bull, a mythical bull - his shirt takes on symbolic significance ... In her later books, Byatt has become more graceful - things are not as obviously symbolic, she learned how to layer - meaning upon meaning. But here ... it's all out in the open. A young writer, spreading her wings. Awkwardly. But beautifully. Here she is.

Excerpt from The Shadow of the Sun - by A.S. Byatt.

Henry came over the hill into the sun. The descent was steeper than the ascent had been; the valley was rounded, on the upper slopes bracken and some stones, in the bowl trees, mostly beech, a quick leaping river, divided again and again by large boulders, crossed in one place by a wooden bridge with a handrail, and, on the other side of the trees, slopes of thick gorse bushes, butter yellow, and more bracken. There was a boy on the bridge watching the water. He was camping with a friend, in the next valley, and had quarrelled with him, as two people alone on holiday together are apt to do, so he was watching the water rather sulkily, wishing he had something better to do, or that he had not come at all. The first edge of the bowl was almost vertical, ten feet or so of rock, tufted with wiry grass. Henry appeared on the top so rapidly and so suddenly that the boy had hardly time to take him in, a huge figure with flailing arms against the sky, before he was over. The boy made an involuntary movement to warn him - which at that distance was useless - of the drop. But unlike the philosopher, Henry was not swallowed for presumption; he came down, on a difficult stone, on one foot, balanced all his huge weight on it for a moment, swinging his arms wildly with all the power in them to keep a balance which it suddenly seemed impossible he should lose, took off in a huge leap, and was down the hill again like some enormous animal, an ancient white bull, in full charge.

He had his head down like the bull, and, with the curling mass of his beard and hair obscuring his face from this angle altogether, presented something of the same solid, blind, purposeful front. His speed, or some earlier gesture, had whipped up his hair into two great curved peaks, not unlike horns, which added to the illusion, and the whole of him, silver hair and white garment - his shirt was outside his trousers now, like a tabard - shone in some strange way, with a white glitter, as though he was giving off a concentrated light of his own and not merely the refracted light of the still sun over the hill.

What unnerved the boy was the directness of his progress. As he had come over the hill, so he continued, in a straight line, going over the hillocks, and through gorse bushes, clattering stones out of his way down the hillside. As he came down, in what seemed only a few moments, but must, even at Henry's speed, have been much longer, towards the river, the boy moved aside altogether, pressing himself against a tree for protection. He felt sick with unreasonable fear; either the man would come near him, or he would break his neck in the river, which was here quite wide. It was not full - the summer had been too dry - so the channel between its banks was unusually deep, and the stones were sharp, and glossy with bright olive green moss. Henry came down, still even in the shadow, shining, ignored the bridge, stepped, wide and lightly, one stride into the river, and one, from the same foot on the slimy stone, apparently effortless stride up onto the far bank, shook himself and went on out into the sun again and up onto the further hill.

The boy looked involuntarily up the valley towards where Henry had come from, to see what had been driving him, but the valley was clear and empty under the sun, and nothing monstrous, nor even human, appeared on the skyline. So he turned back to Henry and watched him make his way, with no diminution of speed, towards the next ridge.

Henry was afraid of the thing towards which he was driving himself; it was partly that he was driving, not only that he was driven. In a sense, now, he knew enough about his present state of mind to be able to predict what would be the outcome of his walking. In a sense, too, he could control it, and knew why he must walk as he did, and how far he could go. But more powerfully, it was all new every time he set out, it was all to be learned, to be undergone again, and from his present, still fairly rational state, it seemed terrible. He would, quite consciously, have liked to be able to abandon the whole undertaking and go quietly home to his work, but what came first was to walk, it did not matter how far, to walk until he was exhausted, and at that time he felt himself inexhaustible.

What he called, liking the precise medical metaphor, his attacks of vision, had come upon him very gradually, only becoming really nasty when he was about Anna's age. At first it had been only an inexplicable attentiveness, a tightening of sight, a thing seen suddenly and remembered as a visual touchstone, a tree like a branched and burning candlestick, with flame upon flame of leaping green light. But once, in the main street of the small country town where he had lived as a boy, the thing had shaken and changed him, and the pattern had been set. There had been first the visual insistence - hard outlines, the lines on the pavement suddenly slicing and dangerous, the salmon pinks and dull brick reds of the housefronts suddenly thickened and glaring to the point of suffocation. There had been no pleasure in seeing, then, largely he thought, now, because he did not know what was happening, and fought it, was most unhelpfully afraid. After the sight changed, there had been as now a sudden bewildering access of strength pumped up from inside him, so that, as now, he had lengthened his stride, and pushed things, which, in this case on the crowded marker street, happened to be people - out of his way, thinking in confusion that he could like Samson rip up the gas lamps by their roots to part them more effectively.

Over the years, he had learned to come to terms with these attacks. He recognized the symptoms earlier - noticed a quickening of sight he could not have been alive to when younger; light in his own green glass paperweight had warned him this time, weeks ago, it had been dangerously beautiful, disproportionately important. When it came to him, now, he had to stop writing in the end, he could not attend to anything as long drawn out and demanding as that; he went back to his study of the visionaries, finding all their sentences, all their descriptions of the indescribable, equally, in some curious way, in inspiration and an invitation. Later, when he was an artist again, he found parts of Blake banal and some of Coleridge's notes meaningless, but at the time everything connected, all meanings were a network, and his coming experience the master-knot. He thought a great deal about this, having accepted it almost immediately as the most important area of his life. He knew already before the war that his visionary moments were a direct source of power and that his only way to make a statement as high and as demanding was to write a very violent, stylized action, remote on the whole from the way most people lived, most of the time, which should rarefy, or concentrate what he knew to the bright intensity witih which he knew it. But before the war he had not quite known how; the prison camp had taught him that.

He never, curiously, attempted to write anything other than novels - it may have been that his extreme shyness needed the distance of the dramatic form before he could speak at all. His thought formed itself around whole men, whole actions; it was epic; his own solitary experiences were not, and he always knew it, raw material.

Posted by sheila Permalink

May 17, 2007

The Books: "The Master and Margarita" (Mikhail Bulgakov)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

masterM.jpgThe Master and Margarita - by Mikhail Bulgakov.

I finally read this great great novel last fall as part of a blog-reading challenge - I wrote a big thing about it here.

The book terrifies. The devil comes to Moscow in the 1930s. He is more of a shit-disturber than anything else. A practical joker. But what happens when the devil appears in a city that doesn't believe in God? Or the devil, for that matter? The book is, of course, an extended metaphor about life under Stalin - this book was not allowed to be published in Russia at the time. Bulgakov felt it was too dangerous to even have the manuscript lying around so he destroyed it ... and later re-created it from memory. Unbelievable.

The book opens with the devil appearing to two men (two writers) on a hot day in Moscow. Stalin's name is never mentioned, communism is never mentioned, socialism - but the sense of the ominous-ness of this culture is palpable. Who is this gentleman talking to them? Is he a foreigner? Pontius Pilate comes up (he's a very important theme throughout the book) ... and at the end of the third chapter a tragedy occurs. A tragedy with decidedly occult overtones. It seems that "devilry" is afoot - and also ... a huge black cat has been seen, walking on its hind legs (shiver - that freakin' cat) ... and now ... someone's head has been severed. Ivan - the poet - who witnesses all of this - tries to tell people what has happened. Naturally, he is not believed. He gets more and more frantic. Something is not right. Something evil has arrived in Moscow! He is finally put into a mental institution. That's the excerpt below. He is asked to write down everything that happened that day ... and watch what happens. The chapter is called "Ivan is Split In Two". If you remember the culture, and the year, and what was going on in Russia in the 30s ... this chapter takes on decidedly terrifying meaning. How people themselves must always be 'split in two' in a totalitarian society. What you see is NOT really what you see ... and you cannot EVER have an opinion on what you see .... you must keep your mouth shut ... even if you DO see a massive cat riding the streetcar ... Nope. You didn't really see that. You didn't really see that. In order to survive this .... one must split in two. Ivan was near hysteria when he was brought to the hospital. Things were urgent. The devil himself was loose! We must act quickly! Why won't anyone listen to me?? And slowly .... his attitude changes ...

This chapter scared me. There are times in life when confusion, hysteria, grappling with an issue openly - rather than coming to a concrete decision, emotion, response, reaction ... are appropriate and not to be feared. Certain people (and certain cultures) want to cut all that off. The ideal is an obedient populace. A populace who will swallow ANYthing, even the devil walking around a pond in a public park. And so anyone who says, "You know what? This isn't right!" is seen as a threat, or as just flat out stupid or crazy. The doctor comes in - and Ivan is hysterical - and rightly so ... but the doctor gives him a shot ... and says, as though this is the highest good - that "all will be forgotten".

You want to scream at Ivan - "No! Don't let them make you forget! Don't let them give you that shot! Remember! Remember!"

But the society as a whole has a vested interest in shutting Ivan and his loud-mouth down.

This chapter is phenomenal in describing that process. And watch ... watch how eventually Ivan has internalized the voices of others. This is the split. He begins to doubt himself. He begins to doubt that he saw what he really saw.

Once that happens - the culture has won. It has made him obedient.

The book is a masterpiece, one of the greatest books of the 20th century.

Excerpt from The Master and Margarita - by Mikhail Bulgakov.

The poet's attempts to compose a report on the terrible consultant had come to nothing. As soon as he received a pencil stub and some paper from the stout nurse, whose name was Praskovya Fyodorovna, he had rubbed his hands together in a businesslike fashion and hastily set to work at the bedside table. He had dashed off a smart beginning, "To the police. From Ivan Nikolayevich Bezdomny, member of MASSOLIT. Report. Yesterday evening I arrived at Petrarch's Ponds with the deceased Berlioz ..."

And the poet immediately became confused, largely due to the word "deceased". It made everything sound absurd from the start: how could he have arrived somewhere with the deceased? Dead men don't walk! They really will think I'm a madman!

Such thoughts made him start revising. The second version came out as follows, "... with Berlioz, later deceased ..." That didn't satisfy the author either. He had to write a third version, and that came out even worse than the other two, " ... with Berlioz, who fell under a streetcar ..." What was irksome here was the obscure composer who was Berlioz's namesake; he felt compelled to add, "... not the composer ..."

Tormented by these two Berliozes, Ivan crossed everything out and decided to begin with a strong opening that would immediately get the reader's attention. He began with a description of the cat boarding the streetcar, and then went back to the episode of the severed head. The head and the consultant's prediction made him think of Pontius Pilate, and in order to make the report more convincing, he decided to include the whole story about the procurator, starting with the moment when he came out onto the colonnade of Herod's palace dressed in a white robe with a blood-red lining.

Ivan worked hard, crossing out what he had written and adding new words. He even tried to do drawings of Pontius Pilate, and of the cat on its hind legs. But the drawings didn't help either, and the more the poet worked, the more confused and incomprehensible his report became.

By the time an ominous stormcloud with smoking edges had appeared from the distance and enveloped the woods, and the wind had blown the papers off the table, Ivan felt drained of energy and unable to cope with the report. Making no effort at all to pick up the scattered pages, he burst into silent and bitter tears.

The kind-hearted nurse, Praskovya Fyodorovna, came by to check on Ivan during the storm and was upset to see him crying. She closed the blinds so that the lightning would not frighten him, picked up the papers from the floor, and ran off with them to get the doctor.

The doctor appeared, gave Ivan an injection in his arm and assured him that he would stop crying, that now everything would pass, everything would change and all would be forgotten.

The doctor turned out to be right. The wood across the river started to look as it had before. It stood out sharply, down to the last tree, beneath the sky which had been restored to its former perfect blueness, and the river grew calm. Ivan's anguish began to diminish right after the injection, and now the poet lay peacefully, gazing at the rainbow spread across the sky.

Things stayed this way until evening, and he never even noticed when the rainbow evaporated, the sky faded and grew sad, and the world turned black.

Ivan drank some hot milk, lay down again, and was himself surprised at how his thoughts had changed. The image of the demonic, accursed cat had somehow softened in his memory, the severed head no longer frightened him, and when Ivan stopped thinking about the head, he began to reflect on how the clinic wasn't so bad, everything considered, and how Stravinsky was a clever fellow and a celebrity and extremely pleasant to have dealings with. And, besides, the evening air was sweet and fresh after the storm.

The asylum was falling asleep. The frosted white lights in the quiet corridors went out, and in accordance with regulations, the faint blue night-lights came on, and the cautious steps of the nurses were heard less frequently on the rubber matting in the corridor outside the door.

Now Ivan lay in a state of sweet lethargy, gazing now at the shaded lamp, which cast a mellow light down from the ceiling, now at the moon, which was emerging from the black wood. He was talking to himself.

"Why did I get so upset over Berlioz falling under a streetcar?" the poet reasoned. "In the final analysis, let him rot! What am I to him, anyway, kith or kin? If we examine the question properly, it turns out that I, esentially, didn't really know the deceased. What did I actually know about him? Nothing, except that he was bald and horribly eloquent. And so, citizen," continued Ivan, addressing an invisible audience, "let us examine the following: explain, if you will, why I got so furious at that mysterious consultant, magician, and professor with the black, vacant eye? What was the point of that whole absurd chase, with me in my underwear, carrying a candle? And what about that grotesque scene in the restaurant?"

"But, but, but ..." said the old Ivan to the new Ivan, addressing him in a stern voice from somewhere inside his head or behind his ear, "but didn't he know in advance that Berlioz's head would be cut off? How could you not get upset?"

"What is there to discuss, comrades!" retorted the new Ivan to the broken-down old Ivan. "Even a child can see that there is something sinister about all this. He is, no doubt about it, a mysterious and exceptional personality. But that's what makes it so interesting! The fellow was personally acquainted with Pontius Pilate, what could be more interesting than that? And instead of making that ridiculous scene at Petrarch's Ponds, wouldn't it have been better to have asked him politely about what happened next to Pilate and the prisoner Ha-Notsri? But instead, I got obsessed with the devil knows what! Is it such an earth-shattering event - that an editor got run over! Does it mean the magazie will have to close down? So, what can you do? Man is mortal and, as was said so fittingly, sometimes suddenly so. Well, God rest his soul! There'll be a new editor, and maybe he'll be even more eloquent than the last one."

After dozing off for awhile, the new Ivan asked the old Ivan spitefully, "So how do I look in all this?"

"Like a fool!" a bass voice pronounced distinctly, a voice which did not come from either one of the Ivans and was amazingly reminiscent of the consultant's bass.

For some reason Ivan did not take offense at the word "fool", but was pleasantly surprised by it, smiled, and fell into a half-sleep. Sleep was creeping up on Ivan, and he could already see a palm tree on an elephantlike trunk, and a cat went by - not a fearsome one, but a jolly one, and, in short, sleep was about to engulf him when suddenly the window grille moved aside noiselessly, and a mysterious figure, who was trying to hide from the moonlight, appeared on the balcony, and shook a warning finger at Ivan.

Not feeling the least bit afraid, Ivan raised himself in bed and saw that there was a man on the balcony. And this man pressed his finger to his lips and whispered, "Shh!"

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

May 16, 2007

The Books: "The Da Vinci Code" (Dan Brown)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

The%20Da%20Vinci%20Code%20paperback.jpgThe Da Vinci Code - by Dan Brown.

This book is horribly written. I mean, within the first paragraph, my literary sensibility was cringing at the awful (AWFUL) prose. I bought it on a whim, believe it or not - I bought it because I was in the train station and had a couple hours to kill, and I had no other book on me. This was last year. The book had already been out for ages - and it was EVERYWHERE. You could not get away from displays of this stupid book. I knew it was trash, but I figured - Okay, I'll wait for it to come out in paperback. YEARS then passed. This is when you know you have a ginormous hit on your hands. The same thing happened with The Celestine Prophecy, another horribly written piece of garbage - that didn't come out in paperback for EONS. Anyhoo - last May I picked up The Da Vinci Code - it had just come out in paperback - and I was down in Philadelphia for a relatively grueling acting job that involved long days, pages and pages of text (that had to be memorized - sometimes on the spot) - and I knew that I would need something absolutely EASY to read ... something that would not require ANYTHING on my part. Now: a quick word about this. In general, I do not read to be entertained. "Entertainment" is a by-product of all the reading I do. By that I mean - there's the whole thing about "beach reads", etc. But that's never been my style. I don't read "fluff" on vacation just because it's vacation. I look at a week-long vacation with nothing to do as the most thrilling opportunity ever to FINALLY read The Possessed or Anna K - or I will finally have the space to RE-read Grapes of Wrath. This, to me, is fun. It's how I read. So it was so hysterical to me, starting The Da Vinci Code. The prose in that book! I mean, isn't it awful? Can the guy use any more italicized words? It's so ... breathless. Like: calm down, please. But the thing of it was - I couldn't put it down. (At least in the one hour I had free a day during my time in Philadelphia last year.) I would come back to my hotel at night, EXHAUSTED but also wired - because I had been busy all day long, since 6 a.m. - I'd order take-out Chinese - lie on my bed - and read. I finished it in 2 days. hahaha It's so terrible. On many levels. But I just had to find out what happened!

Oh, and I know all the predictable yappers, the perpetually offended, complaining about how none of it is true and whining about how the book disses Christianity etc. etc. Uhm, I certainly don't read a piece of shit like The Da Vinci Code to find out the truth about anything, mkay? It was a thriller. It was a whodunit. It was a chase. Dan Brown cannot write to save his life.

Could not put the damn thing down.

And so: Well played, Dan Brown.

Or should I say: Well played, Dan Brown.

Here's a particularly awful excerpt.

Excerpt from The Da Vinci Code - by Dan Brown.

Earlier, while telling Sophie about the Knights Templar, Langdon had realized that this key, in addition to having the Priory seal embossed on it, possessed a more subtle tie to the Priory of Sion. The equal-armed cruciform was symbolic of balance and harmony but also of the Knights Templar. Everyone had seen the paintings of Knights Templar wearing white tunics emblazoned with red equal-armed crosses. Granted, the arms of the Templar cross were slightly flared at the ends, but they were still of equal length.

A square cross. Just like the one on this key.

Langdon felt his imagination starting to run wild as he fantasized about what they might find. The Holy Grail. He almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. The Grail was believed to be somewhere in England, buried in a hidden chamber beneath one of the many Templar churches where it had been hidden since at least 1500.

The era of Grand Master Da Vinci.

The Priory, in order to keep their powerful documents safe, had been forced to move them many times in the early centuries. Historians now suspected as many as six different Grail locations since its arrival in Europe from Jerusalem. The last Grail "sighting" had been in 1447 when numerous eyewitnesses described a fire that had broken out and almost engulfed the documents before they were carried to safety in four huge chests that each required six men to carry. After that, nobody claimed to see the Grail ever again. All that remained were occasional whisperings that it was hidden in Great Britain, the land of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Wherever it was, two important facts remained:

Leonardo knew where the Grail resided during his lifetime.

That hiding place had probably not changed to this day.

For this reason, Grail enthusiasts still pored over Da Vinci's art and diaries in hopes of unearthing a hidden clue as to the Grail's current location. Some claimed the mountainous backdrop in Madonna of the Rocks matched the topography of a series of cave-ridden hills in Scotland. Others insisted that the suspicious placement of disciples in The Last Supper was some kind of code. Still others claimed that X rays of the Mona Lisa revealed she originally had been painted wearing a lapis lazuli pendant of Isis - a detail Da Vinci purportedly later decided to paint over. Langdon had never seen any evidence of the pendant, nor could he imagine how it could possibly reveal the Holy Grail, and yet Grail afficianados still discussed it ad nauseam on Internet bulletin boards and worldwide-web chat rooms.

Everyone loves a conspiracy.

And the conspiracies kept coming. Most recently, of course, had been the earthshaking discovery that Da Vinci's famed Adoration of the Magi was hiding a dark secret beneath its layers of paint. italian art diagnostician Maurizio Seracini had unveiled the unsettling truth, which the The New York Times Magazine carried prominently in a story titled "The Leonardo Cover-Up."

Seracini had revealed beyond any doubt that while the Adoration's gray-green sketched underdrawing was indeed Da Vinci's work, the painting itself was not. The truth was that some anonymous painter had filled in Da Vinci's sketch like a paint-by-numbers years after Da Vinci's death. Far more troubling, however, was what lay beneath the impostor's paint. Photographs taken with infrared reflectography and X ray suggested that this rogue painter, while filling in Da Vinci's sketched study had made suspicious departures from the underdrawing ... as if to subvert Da Vinci's true intention. Whatever the true nature of the underdrawing, it had yet to be made public. Even so, embarrassed officials at Florence's Uffizi Gallery immediately banished the painting to a warehouse across the street. Visitors at the gallery's Leonardo Room now found a misleading and unapologetic plaque where the Adoration once hung.

THIS WORK IS UNDERGOING
DIAGNOSTIC TESTS IN PREPARATION
FOR RESTORATION.

In the bizarre underworld of modern Grail seekers, Leonardo da Cinci remained the quest's great enigma. His artwork seemed bursting to tell a secret, and yet whatever it was remained hidden, perhaps beneath a layer of paint, perhaps enciphered in plain view, or perhaps nowhere at all. Maybe Da Vinci's plethora of tantalizing clues was nothing but an empty promise left behind to frustrate the curious and bring a smirk to the face of his knowing Mona Lisa.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack

May 15, 2007

The Books: "Jane Eyre" (Charlotte Bronte)

Next up in my adult fiction shelves:

Jane%20Eyre.jpgJane Eyre - by Charlotte Bronte.

I love this book.

That is all. It is transportive.

Here's an excerpt. I remember the first time I read the first part of this section goosebumps literally raised up on my arm. Terrifying.

Excerpt from Jane Eyre - by Charlotte Bronte.

Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep for thinking of his look wen he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at Thornfield.

"Why not?" I asked myself. "What alienates him from the house? Will he leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks. If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!"

I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I had kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound was hushed.

I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward tranquility was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then it seemed my chamber door was touched; as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I said, "Who is there?" Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear.

All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the kitchen door chanced to be left open, not infrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr. Rochester's chamber. I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down. Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough.

This was a demonic laugh - low, suppressed, and deep - uttered, it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my body was near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laughter stood at my bedside - or rather crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next again to cry out, "Who is there?"

Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the gallery towards the third-story staircase: a door had lately been made to shut in that staircase; I heard it open and close, and all was still.

"Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?" thought I. Impossible now to remain longer by myself; I must go to Mrs. Fairfax. I hurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside, and on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this circumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite dim, as if filled with smoke: and, while looking to the right hand and left, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware of a strong smell of burning.

Something creaked: it was a door ajar; and that door was Mr. Rochester's, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. I thought no more of Mrs. Fairfax; I thought no more of Grace Poole, or the laugh: in an instant, I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour, Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in a deep sleep.

"Wake! wake!" I cried. I shook him, but he only murmured and turned: the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very sheets were kindling. I rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately, one was wide and the other deep, and both were filled with water. I heaved them up, deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room, brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God's aid, succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it.

The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of the pitcher which I had flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Rochseter at last. Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water.

"Is there a flood?" he cried.

"No, sir," I answered, "but there has been a fire: get up, do; you are quenched now; I will fetch you a candle."

"In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?" he demanded. "What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?"

"I will fetch you a candle, sir; and, in Heaven's name, get up. Somebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and what it is."

"There! I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two minutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry there be - yes, here is my dressing-gown. Now run!"

I did run; I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery. He took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming with water.

"What is it? and who did it?" he asked.

I briefly related to him what had transpired: the strange laugh I had heard in the gallery: the step ascending to the third story; the smoke - the smell of fire which had conducted me to his room; in what state I had found matters there, and how I had deluged him with all the water I could lay hands on.

He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more concern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had concluded.

"Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?" I asked.

"Mrs. Fairfax? No: what the deuce would you call her for? What can she do? Let her sleep unmolested."

"Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John and his wife."

"Not at all: just be still. You have a shawl on. If you are not warm enough, you may take a cloak yonder; wrap it about you and sit down on the arm-chair: there - I will put it on. Now place your feet on the stool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return; be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the third story. Don't move, remember, or call any one."

He went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very softlyl, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible, shut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left in total darkness. I listened for some noise, but heard nothing. A very long time elapsed. I grew weary: it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the house. I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester's displeasure by disobeying his orders, when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall, and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting. "I hope it is he," thought I, "and not something worse."

He re-entered, pale and very gloomy. "I have found it all out," said he, setting the candle down on the washstand; "it is as I thought."

"How, sir?"

He made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the ground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather a peculiar tone -

"I forgot whether you said you say anything when you opened your chamber-door."

"No, sir, only the candlestick on the ground."

"But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I should think, or something like it?"

"Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole - she laughs in that way. She is a singular person."

"Just so. Grace Poole - you guessed it. She is as you say, singular - very. Well, I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime, I am glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the precise details of to-night's incident. You are no talking fool: say nothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs" (pointing to the bed) "and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four: in two hours the servants will be up."

"Good-night, then, sir," said I, departing.

He seemed surprised - very inconsistently so, as he had just told me to go.

"What!" he exclaimed, "are you quitting me already, and in that way?"

"You said I might go, sir."

"But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of acknowledgement and goodwill: not, in short, in that brief dry fashion. Why, you have saved my life - snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands."

He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in both his own.

"You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different - I feel your benefit no burden, Jane."

He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips - but his voice was checked.

"Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case."

"I knew," he continued, "you would do me good in some way, at some time: I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not" -- (again he stopped) -- "did not" (he proceeded hastily) "strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!"

Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.

"I am glad I happened to be awake," I said: and then I was going.

"What! you will go?"

"I am cold, sir."

"Cold? Yes - and standing in a pool! Go, then, Jane; go!" But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient.

"I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir," said I.

"Well, leave me," he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone.

I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy - a counter-acting breeze blew off the land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack

May 11, 2007

The Books: "Wuthering Heights" (Emily Bronte)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

0140434186.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgWuthering Heights - by Emily Bronte.

I re-read this book recently and was struck, as if for the first time, by the violence of it. It's truly remarkable. Cathy and Heathcliff are not your ordinary star-crossed lovers. These two people are individuals, strong-willed, not all that likable all the time, selfish - It's like that line in Emily Bronte's poem "Often Rebuked":

I'll walk where my own nature leads me
It vexes me to choose another guide.

This is, on the surface, admirable - but if you truly behave that way - and hang the consequences - you can be seen as a monster. People who just walk where their own nature leads are criticized by those in our society who are really concerned with being nice, being polite, playing well with others ... It seems that the highest good to some folks is our ability to NOT just walk where our own nature leads ... but to suppress those qualities within us that would jar social harmony.

Cathy and Heathcliff thumb their noses at propriety. And it's almost as though: in this book - society itself doesn't even exist. Not as anything REAL anyway. It's a complete construct. Cathy and Heathcliff barely acknowledge its existence - and to those people to whom "fitting in" and "playing well with others" is the highest good - that is the most unforgivable.

It's fascinating. It's truly a radical book. God doesn't exist in this world either. He's a complete construct as well. All that really exists, all that is real and eternal - is the WILLS of Cathy and Heathcliff. Their LOVE - which threatens to sweep away everything in its path ... is the only thing worth saving. Like I said - it's violent. And Godless. It's truly not only ahead of its time, but ahead of ours as well. There's a reason why it's a classic, and why it speaks to generation after generation. Most of us give "society" its due. We let society tell us how to behave. We accept the rules. But how cathartic it is to hang out with two people who, frankly, could not give a crap. It is a teenager's paradise, this book. Rebel without a cause. I mean, I read it - and I want to push down everybody who tries to thwart this couple's overwhelming desire to be together. And love? I don't know - to call what goes on between Cathy and Heathcliff "love" is just another way of society (the construct) trying to neaten up that which is messy. Love? What a neat nice little word. Cathy and Heathcliff are drawn to each other as though it is another form of Mother Nature - the plants drawn to the sun, spring following winter ... a natural process, so natural that to try to get in its way would spell disaster. Mother Nature ALWAYS gets her way. You can put up nice little walls, and she'll just laugh at you. That's the kind of thing that goes on between Cathy and Heathcliff.

Morality? HA! Social norms? WhatEVS.
Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Wuthering Heights - by Emily Bronte.

'Are you alone, Nelly?'

'Yes, Miss,' I replied.

She entered and approached the hearth. I, supposing she was going to say something, looked up. The expression of her face seemed disturbed and anxious. Her lips were half asunder, as if she meant to speak, and she drew a breath; but it escaped in a sigh instead of a sentence.

I resumed my song; not having forgotten her recent behaviour.

'Where's Heathcliff?' she said, interrupting me.

'About his work in the stable,' was my answer.

He did not contradict me; perhaps he had fallen into a dose.

There followed another long pause, during which I perceived a drop or two trickle from Catherine's cheek to the flags.

Is she sorry for her shameful conduct? I asked myself. That will be a novelty: but she may come to the point as she will - I shan't help her!

No, she felt small trouble regarding any subject, save her own concerns.

'Oh dear!' she cried at last. 'I'm very unhappy!'

'A pity,' observed I. 'You're hard to please: so many friends and so few cares, and can't make yourself content!'

'Nelly, will you keep a secret for me?' she pursued, kneeling down by me, and lifting her winsome eyes to my face with that sort of look which turns off bad temper, even when one has all the right in the world to indulge it.

'Is it worth keeping?' I inquired, less sulkily.

'Yes, and it worries me, and I must let it out! I want to know what I should do. To-day, Edgar Linton has asked me to marry him, and I've given him an answer. Now, before I tell you whether it was a consent or denial, you tell me which it ought to have been.'

'Really, Miss Catherine, how can I know?' I replied. 'To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must be either hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.'

'If you talk so, I won't tell you any more,' she returned, peevishly, rising to her feet. 'I accepted him, Nelly. Be quick, and say whether I was wrong!'

'You accepted him! then what good is it discussing the matter? You have pledged your word and cannot retract.'

'But say whether I should have done so - do!' she exclaimed in an irritated tone; chafing her hands together, and frowning.

'There are many things to be considered before that question can be answered properly,' I said, sententiously. 'First and foremost, do you love Mr. Edgar?'

'Who can help it? Of course I do,' she answered.

Then I put her through the following catechism: for a girl of twenty-two, it was not injudicious.

'Why do you love him, Miss Cathy?'

'Nonsense, I do - that's sufficient.'

'By no means; you must say why?'

'Well, because he is handsome, and pleasant to be with.'

'Bad!' was my commentary.

'And because he is young and cheerful.'

'Bad, still.'

'And because he loves me.'

'Indifferent, coming there.'

'And he will be rich, and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband.'

'Worst of all. And now say how you love him?'

'As everybody loves - You're silly, Nelly.'

'Not at all - Answer.'

'I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches, and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions, and him entirely and altogether. There now!'

'And why?'

'Nay, you are making a jest of it: it is exceedingly ill-natured! It's no jest to me!' said the young lady, scowling, and turning her face to the fire.

'I'm very far from jesting, Miss Catherine,' I replied. 'You love Mr. Edgar, because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that, probably; and with it you wouldn't, unless he possessed the four former attractions.'

'No, to be sure not: I should only pity him - hate him, perhaps, if he were ugly, and a clown.'

'But there are several other handsome, rich young men in the world: handsomer, possibly, and richer than he is. What should hinder you from loving them?'

'If there be any, they are out of my way: I've seen none like Edgar.'

'You may see some: and he won't always be handsome, and young, and may not always be rich.'

'He is now; and I have only to do with the present. I wish you would speak rationally.'

'Well, that settles it: if you have only to do with the present, marry Mr. Linton.'

'I don't want your permission for that - I shall marry him; and yet you have not told me whether I'm right.'

'Perfectly right: if people be right to marry only for the present. And now, let us hear what you are unhappy about. Your brother will be pleased ... The old lady and gentleman will not object, I think; you will escape from a disorderly comfortless home into a wealthy, respectable one; and you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?'

'Here! and here!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast, 'in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong!'

'That's very strange! I cannot make it out.'

'It's my secret. But if you will not mock at me, I'll explain it: I can't do it distinctly, but I'll give you a feeling of how I feel.'

She seated herself by my again: her countenance grew sadder and graver, and her clasped hands trembled.

'Nelly, do you never dream queer dreams?' she said, suddenly, after some minutes' reflection.

'Yes, now and then,' I answered.

'And so do I. I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one: I'm going to tell it - but take care not to smile at any part of it.'

'Oh! don't, Miss Catherine!' I cried. 'We're dismal enough without conjuring up ghosts and visions to perplex us. Come, come, be merry and like yourself! Look at little Hareton! he's dreaming nothing dreary. How sweetly he smiles in his sleep!'

'Yes; and how sweetly his father curses in his solitude! You remember him, I dare say, when he was just such another as that chubby thing: nearly as young and innocent. However, Nelly, I shall oblige you to listen: it's not long: and I've no power to be merry to-night.'

'I won't hear it, I won't hear it!' I repeated hastily.

I was superstitious about dreams then, and am still; and Catherine had an unusual gloom in her aspect, that made me dread something from which I might shape a prophecy, and forsee a fearful catastrophe.

She was vexed, but she did not proceed. Apparently taking up another subject, she recommenced in a short time.

'If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.'

'Because you are not fit to go there,' I answered. 'All sinners would be miserable in heaven.'

'But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.'

'I tell you I won't harken to your dreams, Miss Catherine! I'll go to bed,' I interrupted again.

She laughed, and held me down; for I made a motion to leave my chair.

'This is nothing,' cried she: 'I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever are souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'

Ere this speech ended, I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened til he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he staid to hear no farther.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

May 10, 2007

The Books: "Fahrenheit 451" (Ray Bradbury)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

0345342968.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgFahrenheit 451 - by Ray Bradbury. A good and scary book about censorship, book-burning, morons, totalitarians, and firemen. In this world, the firemen are in charge of setting books on fire. That's their job. Guy Montag is a fireman - he never questioned his job, or the whys of it - he's a part of that world. Until ....

My favorite part of the book is when Montag goes on the run - he's being chased - now he knows that the world he lives in is fuuuuuuucked up and he wants no part of it. But "they" (there's always a "they") are after him. He flees into the woods and comes across a group of people - outlaws - sitting around a fire. Who are they? Why don't they live in the neat little suburban world he lives in? What's their deal??

Here's the excerpt: This section makes me think:

If I were one of these people ... in that situation ... what book would I want to commit to memory? What book would I be? The first thing that comes to mind is The Federalist Papers ... like: that document MUST be preserved ... but Moby Dick also comes to mind. Ulysses as well. Can I have those three books in my mind at once?? I'll keep thinking about it. It's an interesting thing to contemplate: you realize what you value.

Excerpt from Fahrenheit 451 - by Ray Bradbury.

Granger touched Montag's arm. "Welcome back from the dead." Montag nodded. Granger went on. "You might as well know all of us, now. This is Fred Clement, former occupant of the Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge in the years before it became an Atomic Engineering School. This other is Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A., a specialist in Ortega y Gasset; Professor West here did quite a bit for ethics, an ancient study now, for Columbia University quite some years ago. Reverend Padover here gave a few lectures thirty years ago and lost his flock between one Sunday and the next for his views. He's been bumming with us some time now. Myself: I wrote a book called The Fingers in the Glove: the Proper Relationship between the Individual and Society, and here I am! Welcome, Montag!"

"I don't belong with you," said Montag, at last, slowly. "I've been an idiot all the way."

"We're used to that. We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn't be here. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago. I've been running ever since. You want to join us, Montag?"

"Yes."

"What have you to offer?"

"Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little bit of Revelation, but I haven't even that now."

"The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?"

"Here." Montag touched his head.

"Ah." Granger smiled and nodded.

"What's wrong? Isn't that all right?" said Montag.

"Better than all right; perfect!" Granger turned to the Reverend. "Do we have a Book of Ecclesiastes?"

"One. A man named Harris in Youngstown."

"Montag." Granger took Montag's shoulder firmly. "Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. See how important you've become in the last minute!"

"But I've forgotten!"

"No, nothing's ever lost. We have ways to shake down your clinkers for you."

"But I tried to remember!"

"Don't try. It'll come when we need it. All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. Simmons here has worked on it for twenty years and now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's been read once. Would you like, someday, Montag, to read Plato's Republic?"

"Of course!"

"I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Simmons is Marcus."

"How do you do?" said Mr. Simmons.

"Hello," said Montag.

"I wnat you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautuma Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."

Everyone laughed quietly.

"It can't be," said Montag.

"It is," replied Granger, smiling. "We're book burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they'd be found. Microfilming didn't pay off; we were always traveling, we didn't want to bury the film and come back later. Always the chance of discovery. Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law. Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavellie, or Christ, it's here. And the hour's late. And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors. What do you think, Montag?"

"I think I was blind trying to go at things my way, planting books in firemen's houses and sending in alarms."

"You did what you had to do. Carried out on a national scale, it might have worked beautifully. But our way is simpelr and, we think, better. All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need intact and safe. We're not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good. We are model citizens, in our own special way; we walk the old tracks, we lie in the hills at night, and the city people let us be. We're stopped and searched occasionally, but there's nothing on our persons to incriminate us. The organization is flexible, very loose, and fragmentary. Some of us have had plastic surgery on our faces and fingertips. Right now we have a horrible job; we're waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. It's not pleasant, but then we're not in control, we're the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war's over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world."

"Do you really think they'll listen then?"

"If not, we'll just have to wait. We'll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can't make people listen. They have to come 'round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can't last."

"How many of you are there?"

"Thousands on the roads, the abandoned railtracks, tonight, bums on the outside, libraries inside. It wasn't planned, at first. Each man had a book he wanted to remember, and did. Then, over a period of twenty years or so, we met each other, traveling, and got the loose network together and set out a plan. The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important, we mustn't be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world. We're nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise. Some of us live in small towns. Chapter One of Thoreau's Walden in Green River. Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine. Why, there's one town in Maryland, only twenty-seven people, no bomb'll ever touch that town, is the complete essays of a man named Bertrand Russell. Pick up that town, almost, and flip the pages, so many pages to a person. And when the war's over, someday, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we'll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that's the wonderful thing about man: he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing."

"What do we do tonight?" asked Montag.

"Wait," said Granger. "And move downstream a little ways, just in case."

He began throwing dust and dirt in the fire.

The other men helped, and Montag helped, and there, in the wildnerness, the men all moved their hands, putting out the fire together.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack

May 9, 2007

The Books: "Vox" (Nicholson Baker)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

1862070962.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpgVox - by Nicholson Baker. I read a couple of the Amazon reviews of this book and find myself thinking: wow. Did these people read the same book I did?? To even be concerned that some of the conversation in this book might be "vulgar" or "crude" is so far outside of ... my worldview, it just wouldn't even occur to me. Why would you even read such a book if you were worried about vulgarity? What on earth are you looking for then? It's like ASKING to be offended. The more vulgar the better, frankly. It's a sex book, for God's sake. But my opinion is - that as graphic as the book gets - there's not one "vulgar" moment in it. "Vulgar" puts a dirty connotation on something that totally is NOT. It's a book about phone sex. Or - it's not ABOUT phone sex. It IS phone sex. The entire book is one long conversation - with very little in the ways of "he said" or "she said". Sometimes an omniscent narrator will say, "There was a pause." Then one of the voices will return to say, "Sorry ... getting a glass of water" or whatever. Abby and Jim are two people who sign up with an erotic phone service - this is obviously a pre-email era, even though it's not too long ago. You sign up with the service - and then you call a number on your list ... and voila ... you are talking to Jim ... or Abby ... and it's not about dating (they are in different cities, on opposite sides of the country) - it's about phone sex. So that's the premise. But because it's Nicholson Baker writing it - you get so much more. To me - it's about sex, yes - but not just that. We aren't just sexual creatures in the bedroom - it is who we are, when we're washing dishes, putting on a bracelet, taking a jog - whatever. We're sexual beings. This book takes a very lighthearted comedic look at that - there are sections of it that are laugh out loud funny. The two characters don't just cut to the chase - they're both kind of awkward at first, they don't know how to get started, Abby and Jim sit, and talk - about their fantasies - but they go off into long tangents ... which are so amusing in this particular context. The two of them probably paid a bazillion dollars for this phone call it goes on so long. But you can tell, in a funny way - with no narrative whatsoever - no omniscent voice - that there's a connection between these two people. They both seem NICE. That's one of the things that I would say I really took away from this book. I LIKE both of these people. It seems like I could be friends with both of them. NICEness is a hard quality to convey - especially with no description - we just get dialogue here ... but I like spending time with both of these people. They seem sensitive, amusing, intelligent, detail-oriented (their sexual fantasies are like War and Peace, in terms of the detail), curious ... my kind of people. He, in particular, strikes me as very amusing. I like him.

Hovering on the outskirts of this whole book is loneliness. A sense that these two people are the only two people awake on the whole planet ... and, miraculously, during a phone-sex conversation with a stranger - they forge a connection. It's so fragile ... you don't even want to invest any energy in hoping they will "make it" ... but in a sense, the book doesn't care whether they "make it" or not. What matters is that connection is possible.

I chose this excerpt because of her monologue about songs fading out, as opposed to just ending with a chord. It, to me, epitomizes what I love about this book. The phrase: "summation of hopefulness"...

Excerpt from Vox - by Nicholson Baker.

There was a pause.

"I hear ice cubes," he said.

"Diet Coke."

"Ah. Tell me more things. Tell me about the room you're in. Tell me about the chain of events that led up to your calling this number."

"Okay," she said. "I'm not in the bedroom anymore. I'm sitting on the couch in my living room slash dining room. My feet are on the coffee table, which would have been impossible yesterday, because the coffee table was piled so high with mail and work stuff, but now it is possible, and the whole room, the whole apartment, is really and truly in order. I took a sick day today, without being sick, which is something I haven't done up to now at this job. I called the receptionist and told her I had a fever. The moment of lying to her was awful, but gosh what freedom when I hung up the phone! And I didn't leave the apartment all day. I just organized my immediate surroundings, I picked up things, I vacuumed, and I laid out all the silver that I've inherited - three different very incomplete patterns - laid it out on the dining-room table and looked at it and I gave some serious thought to polishing it, but I didn't go so far as to polish it, but it looked beautiful all laid out, a big arch of forks, a little arch of knives, five big serving spoons, some tiny salt spoons, and a little grouping of novelty items, like oyster forks. No teaspoons at all. One of the dinner forks from my great aunt's set fell into the dishwasher once when i was visiting her and it got badly notched by that twirly splasher in the bottom, and someone at work was telling me he knew a jeweler who fixed hurt silverware, so I'm planning to have that fixed, it's all ready to go. And I even got together all my broken sets of beads - I sorted them all out - the sight of all those beads jumbled together on my bedside table was making me unhappy every morning, and now they're ready to be restrung, the pink ones in one envelope, and the green ones in one envelope, and the parti-colored Venetian ones in one envelope - and I have them on my dining-room table too, ready to go."

"The same jeweler who fixes silverware restrings beads?" he asked.

"Yes!"

"How did your beads get broken?"

"They seem to break in the morning when I'm rushing to get dressed. They catch on something. The jade ones, my favorite set, which my father gave me, caught on the open door of the microwave when I was standing up too quickly after picking a piece of paper up off the floor. That was the latest tragedy. And of course my sister's babe yanked one set off my neck. But they can all be repaired and they will all be repaired."

"Good going."

"Anyway, this apartment is transformed, I mean it, not just superficially but with new hidden pockets of order in it, and I waited until the midafternoon to have a shower, and I did not masturbate, because the illicitness of calling in sick without justification made me want to be pure and virtuous all day long, and I had an early dinner of Carr's Table Water crackers with cream cheese and sliced pieces of sweet red kosher peppers on them, just delicious, and I did not turn on the TV but instead I turned on the stereo, which I haven't used much lately. It's a very fancy stereo."

"Yes?"

"I think I spent something like fourteen hundred dollars on it," she said. "I bought it from someone who was buying an even fancier system. It was true insanity. I had a crush on this person. He liked the Thompson Twins and the S.O.S. Band and, gee, what were the other groups he liked so much? The Gap Band was one. Midnight Star. And Cameo. This was a while ago. He was not a particularly intelligent man, in fact in a way he was a very dimwitted narrow-minded man, but he was so infectiously convinced that what he liked everyone would like if they were exposed to it. And good-looking. For about four months, while I was in his thrall, I really listened to that stuff. I gave up my life to it. My own taste in music stopped evolving in grade school with the Beatles, the early early Beatles - in fact I used to dislike any song that didn't end - you know, end with a chord, but simply faded out."

"But then you met this guy," he said.

"Exactly!" she said. "All of the songs he liked faded out, or most of them did. And so I became a connoisseur of fade-outs. I bought cassettes. I used to turn them up very loud - with the headphones on - and listen very closely, trying to catch that precise moment when the person in the recording studio had begun to turn the volume dial down, or whatever it was he did. Sometimes I'd turn the volume dial up at just the speed I thought he - I mean the ghostly hand of the record producer - was turning it down, so that the sound stayed on an even plane. I'd get in this sort of trance, like you on the rug, where I thought if I kept turning it up - and this is a very powerful amplifier, mind you - the song would not stop, it would just continue indefinitely. And so what I had thought of before as just a kind of artistic sloppiness, this attempt to imply that oh yeah, we're a bunch of endlessly creative folks who jam all night, and the bad old record producer finally has to turn down the volume on us just so we don't fill the whole album with one monster song, became for me instead this kind of, this kind of summation of hopefulness. I first felt it in a song called 'Ain't Nobody,' which was a song that this man I had the crush on was particularly keen on. 'Ain't nobody, loves me better.' You know that one?"

"You sing well!" he said.

"I do not. But that's the song, and as you get toward the end of it, a change takes place in the way you hear it, which is that the knowledge that the song is going to end starts to be more important than the specific ups and downs of the melody, and even though the singer is singing just as loud as ever, in fact she's really pouring it on now, she's fighting to be heard, it's as if you are hearing the inevitable waning of popularity of that hit, its slippage down the charts, and the twlight of the career of the singer, despite all of the beautiful subtle things she's able to do with a plain old dumb old bunch of notes, and even as she goes for one last high note, full of daring and hope and passionateness and everything worthwhile, she's lost, she's sinking down."

"Oh! Don't cry!" he said. "I'm not equipped ... I mean my comforting skills don't have that kind of range."

There was another sound of ice cubes. She said, "It's just that I really liked him. Vain bum. We went dancing one night, and I made the mistake of suggesting to him as we were on the dance floor that maybe he should take his pen out of his shirt pocket and put it in his back pocket. And that was it, he never called me again."

"That little scum-twirler! Tell me his address, I'll fade him out, I'll rip his arms off."

"No. I got over it. Anyway, that wasn't what I meant to talk about. I just mean I was here in my wonderfully orderly apartment after dinner and I saw this big joke of a stereo system and I switched it on, and the sky got darker and all the little red and green lights on the receiver were like ocean buoys or something, and I started to feel what you'd expect, sad, happy, resigned, horny, some combination of all of them, and I felt suddenly that I'd been virtuous for long enough and probably should definitely masturbate, and I thought wait, let's not just have a perfunctory masturbatory session, Abby, let's do something just a little bit special tonight, to round out a special day, right? So I brought out a copy of Forum that I rather bravely bought one day a while ago. But I'd read all the stories and all the letters and it just wasn't working. So I started looking at the ads, really almost for the first time. And there was this headline: ANYTIME AT ALL."

"MAKE IT HAPPEN."

"That's right. And I like the sound of the pauses in long-distance conversations - the cassette hiss sound. And yet I didn't really want to talk to anyone I knew. So that's more or less why I called. Now I've answered your questions, now you tell me something."

"Do you want to hear something true, or something imaginary?"

"First true, then imaginary," she said.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

May 8, 2007

The Books: "Running from Safety" (Richard Bach)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

0385315287.jpgRunning from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit - by Richard Bach. Hmmm. Man speaks with inner child for length of book. Hmmm. I imagine if you said to me, "Sheila, you've gotta read this book - it's an extended dialogue between a man and his own inner child" - I would have to punch you in the face. Merely for misunderstanding my personality and my taste to such a deep level. HOWEVER. I bought it because Richard Bach wrote it (naturally) - and I always put my name and the date of purchase on the front page of every book I buy (it's kind of obsessive) - and I see that I bought this one in December 1995 - and I imagine read it like a banshee immediately upon purchase - The date goes a long way towards explaining the impact the book had on me. I had just uprooted myself - yet again. A huge love affair had ended and I was a WRECK. I was living in my brother's apartment in New York. I had left Chicago. My stuff was in storage. I was in school all day long. NOTHING was familiar to me. The everyday details of my life were all different ... and there were times when I felt completely unmoored. The whole "running from safety" concept was something I had begun to LIVE ... not because of the book or anything, but just because that's how life goes somehow. Run from safety. RUN. What a rush. But man, sometimes it's hard. I really needed to hear the message in this book at that particular time. It's all about leaving Ye Olde Comforte Zone. It's all about taking risks. And honoring the dreams that you had as a small child. Because some people forget, you know. You forget.

I'm not sure if this book would have as great an impact on me now. I'm way more cynical than I was back then. But who knows ... hopefully you are NEVER done with personal growth.

In this book, Richard, with Leslie's encouragement, opens the door to this dungeon-like room in his imagination - and that is where his 8 year old self has been suffering for 45 years, or whatever. And that 8 year old Dickie is PISSED. He has been abandoned. Richard (with his neuroses, and his yearning for perfection) is put off by the kids rage. He refers to it as "He was pretty annoyed" and Leslie basically laughs at him. "Annoyed? You call that annoyed?" Anyway, she thinks he needs to open that door ... let the child out again. So Richard and his younger self start hanging out - and the younger self asks questions, and Richard answers, and they talk about all kinds of things - love and death and physics and flight ... Richard dredges up memories of what it was like to BE this 8 year old (the memories are the weakest parts of the book, if I recall) - and I'm not sure how it ends ... I can't remember. This Dickie is, naturally, imaginary - but Richard had been walking around for the majority of his life ignoring him. Ignoring the fact of his existence.

Here's an excerpt - a conversation between Richard and Dickie. This is my last Bach book on the shelf - it's been wonderful talking with Richard Bach fans about him this last couple of days. I realized that somewhere along the line, in my travels and my moving, I got rid of the books I have of his flying writing - the compilations of essays he's written about aviation. Gift of Wings - Stranger to the Ground - some of the essays are rather boring, but some are sheer poetry: stories of barnstorming, of being a pilot ... wonderful stuff. I think I need to get those books again.

And I know I'm just guessing here, but it's a theory: In each of his major books, Richard has basically created another character who is a perfect friend. And not only a perfect friend - but someone who will listen to him. Donald Shimoda ... and then Leslie Parrish (I know she's real, but still - he casts her as a "character" in his story) - and in this book - Dickie. And as you can see in the excerpt below - Bach is moving away from plot, from reality. Most of this is just Dickie asking questions and Bach spouting off about his theories. I don't mean to criticize - and a lot of his ideas are things I have NEEDED to hear at certain points in my life ... but if you read this conversation below, and then think of some of the long extended conversations with Leslie in Bridge Across Forever and you'll see the difference. Dickie - as a child - a student - is a captive audience. Bach gets to be the teacher. He talks and talks and talks. Leslie doesn't let him get away with that in Bridge. She is equally a teacher. And her lessons come to him like bolts from the blue ... because he is a bit arrogant, and truly believes that his "truth" is the only "truth". So when Leslie comes along and smacks him out of that - it blows him away. He is a closed system, this Richard Bach - even with all of his out of body experiences, and theories. It's a closed system.

So this book might be a harbinger of things to come for him (and for Leslie). He no longer is interested in talking to someone real. He is back to making up imaginary people for conversations such as the one below.

It's just a theory. Like I said - I got a lot out of this book. I was pretty miserable in December 1995 - even though the changes I had made were all very good and necessary. But oh, I yearned for Chicago, and the man I had left, and all my friends, and M., and Wayne Street ... my whole LIFE was back there! So to read a book about "running from safety" at that point was really good for me. It came along at just the right time.

Oh, and for me? The Principle of Coincidence is something that I have used over and over and over and over ... It's sort of become a way of life now, I would say. It's just part of me, part of how I operate, part of how I navigate slings and arrows, et al.

Excerpt from Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit - by Richard Bach.

"Are you a master?" he asked.

"Of course I am! Me and you and everybody else. But we forget."

"How do they do it?" he said.

"How does who do what?"

"How do masters change their lives at will?"

I smiled at the question. "Power tools."

"Pardon?"

"Another difference between masters and victims is that victims haven't learned power tools and masters use 'em all the time."

"Electric drills? Buzz saws?" He was adrift, asking for help. A good teacher would have left him alone to puzzle it out, but I'm too chatty to teach.

"Not buzz saws. Choice. The enchanted blade, with an edge that shapes lifetimes. Yet if we're afraid to choose anything but what we've got, what good is choice? Might as well leave choice wrapped up in its box, don't bother to read the instructions."

"Who's afraid to use it?" he said. "What's scary about choice?"

"It makes us different!"

"Oh, come on ..."

"Okay, don't choose," I said. "Do what everyone else would do, every minute of your life. What happens?"

"I go to school."

"Yes. And?"

"I graduate."

"Yes. And?"

"I get a job."

"Yes. And?"

"I get married."

"Yes. And?"

"I have children."

"Yes. And?"

"I help them through school."

"Yes. And?"

"I retire."

"Yes. And?"

"I die."

"And when you die, listen to your last words."

He thought about those. "So what."

"Even though you do everything that everyone expects you to do: you're a law-abiding citizen, you're the perfect husband and father, you vote, you give to charity, you're kind to animals. You live what they expect and you die from so what?"

"Hm."

"Because you never chose your life, Dickie! You You never asked for change, you never asked what you loved and you never found it, you never hurled yourself into the world that mattered most to you, never fought dragons that you thought could eat you up, never inched yourself out on cliffsides clinging by the tips of your skill a thousand feet over destruction because your life was there anad you had to bring it home from terror! Choice, Dickie! Choose what you love and chase it at top speed and I your future do solemnly promise that you will never die from so what!"

He looked at me sideways. "Are you trying to convince me?"

"I'm trying," I said, "to turn you astray from Going Along. I owe that to you."

"What if I do it? What happens if I learn choosing from myself, no matter what other people say, and I go out there on the cliffs. Will your magic blade keep me safe?"

I sighed. "Dickie, when did safety become your ambition? Running from safety is the only way to make your last word Yes!"

"The sycamore tree," he said.

"Excuse me?"

" ... in the front yard. It's always there, it's always safe. When I'ms cared I'd give anything to be that tree. When I'm not I couldn't stand the dull life."

The tree lives there yet, I thought, bigger than he'd know it, leafier, lasted another half century by digging its feet ever deeper in the dirt.

"Run from safety doesn't mean destroy yourself," I said. "You don't strap on a racing plane until you learn to fly a Cub first. Little choices, little adventures before big ones. But one day comes the middle of an air race, in the wide-open blast-furnace roar of this monster engine, the world's a steep green blur fifty feet down, you're pulling six G's around the pylons and all at once you remember: I chose this minute to happen to me! I built this life! I wanted it more than anything else, I crawled and walked and ran to get it and now it's here!"

"I don't know," he said. "Do I have to risk my life?"

"Of course you do! With every choice you risk the life you would have had; with every decision, you lose it. Sure, an alternate Dickie in an alternate world splits away and lives what you might have chosen, but that's his choice, not yours. In school and business and marriage, in any adventure you pick, if you care what your last words will be, you trust what you know and you dare toward your hope."

"And if I'm wrong," he said, "I die."

"If you want security," I said, "you've come to the wrong arena. The only security is Life Is, and that's all that matters. Absolute, unchanging, perfect. But Security in Appearance? Even the sycamore falls to dust, someday."

He gritted his teeth, his face a panic of worry-lines.

I laughed at the look. "The wood disintegrates, the symbol vanishes, not the spirit of its life. The belief of your body shatters, not the believer who shaped it."

"Maybe my spirit loves change," he said. "My body hates it."

I remembered. Safe and warm, under the covers, six-thirty sound asleep in the winter morning, and BOBBY! DICKIE! RISE AND SHINE! READY FOR SCHOOL! and if I'd struggle awake, swear that if I ever grew up I would never get out of bed before noon. Same in the Air Force: alert siren goes off, wired to my pillow at two in the morning HONGA-HONGA-HONGA! and I am somehow supposed to wake up? and fly? an airplane? in the dark? Body: Not possible! Spirit: Do it! Now!

"Body hates change," I Nodded. "But look at your body ... every day a little taller, a little changed; Dickie melts upward into Richard, doomed to adulthood! No body's destroyed more completely than a child's grown up, Captain. Gone without a trace, no coffin, not even ashes left to mourn."

"Help," he said. "I need all the power tools I can get!"

"They're already in your hands. What can you say to any appearance?"

"Life Is."

"And?"

"And what?" he asked.

I hinted. "Choice."

"And I can change appearances."

"Within certain limits?"

"Limits heck!" he said. "I don't have to breathe, if I don't want to breathe! Where are your limits now?"

I shrugged.

"When masters don't like the way things seem to be, Richard, why don't they just stop breathing? Why don't they just quit the world of Appearances hwen they run into a really hard problem, and go home?"

"Why quit when we can change the world? Declare Life Is, right in the face of appearance, draw enchanted Choice, and after a decent work-filled interval, the world changes."

"Always?"

"Usually."

The air went out of him. "Usually? You give me a magic formula and your guarantee is it usually works?"

"When it doesn't, the Principle of Coincience shows up."

"The principle of coincidence," he said.

"You've chosen some life-affirming change in your immediate world of Appearance, let's say. You decide changes will appear."

He nodded.

"You declare Life Is, knowing it's true, and you work your little heart out to transform what you will."

He nodded.

"And it doesn't change," I said.

"I was going to ask."

"Here's what you do: You keep working, and you watch for coincidences to come strolling your way. Watch carefully, for it always comes in disguise."

He nodded.

"And you follow that coincidence!"

Dickie was unmoved. "An example would help," he said.

An example. "We need to walk through this brick wall, becuase it locks us into an appearance of life that we choose to change."

He nodded.

"We work like crazy to change it, but our wall remains brick, and it gets if anything harder than ever. We've checked: there's no secret door, no ladder, no shovel to dig under ... solid brick."

He agreed. "Solid brick."

"Then be still and listen. Is that a faint muffled chugging behind us? Has yon bulldozer operator left an engine running during her lunch break and the machine slipped into double compound low gear? Is the machine coincidentally rumbling toward our wall?"

"I'm supposed to trust in coincidence?"

"Remember that this world is not reality. It's a playground of appearances on which we practice overcoming seems-to-be with our knowing of Is. The Principle of Coincidence is a power tool that promises, in this playground, to take us to the other side of our wall."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack

May 7, 2007

The Books: "One" (Richard Bach)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

books.jpegOne - by Richard Bach. The second in Bach's "soulmate" books. Again, he and Leslie are the stars. In this one, he and Leslie fly in their little plane - far above what looks like a vast ocean - yet it is more like the space-time continuum. They can see bright paths in the water below - interconnecting, breaking apart, standing alone ... and they choose to land here, land there ... and encounter themselves in many different identities and lifetimes.

They go back in time - Bach discovers that Attila the Hun, apparently, is a distant ancestor, and he is horrified. No matter where they land, however different things look ... they always encounter themselves - even if they look different, have different accents, whatever. This is Bach's imaginary (although I'm sure he felt it was real at the time) world - where he and Leslie float through some astral plane, far above the muck of humanity ... and he is convinced that they have known one another through multiple lifetimes. I don't have an argument with his theory - I couldn't prove it or disprove it if I tried. I wasn't wacky about One when I first read it - maybe it was TOO disconnected from reality? One of the reasons I so responded to Bridge Across Forever was that it was a "real" love story. Yes, there were moments of new agey floaty stuff - but it was all in service of the "real" story - which was Richard and Leslie finding each other. One has no reality. And I myself never really bought the whole soulmate thing - even though I have certainly felt before that I have "known" someone before. You know that bizarre sense of deja vu (although you can't really call it that) you have with some people. You feel they are "familiar", even though you have no reason to think that. Anyway - for whatever reason - One just didn't get under my skin. The next (and final) book in the "Leslie" series is Running from Safety and THAT one really affected me - I still really like that book. But One was boring. Everything seemed too NEAT. You know? Oh, look at us - here we are as futuristic beings ... here we are in an alternate universe with no war .... here we are as medieval Huns ... whatever. It's too neat. I know that that is his theory, that is his belief - so he's just expanding on it here ... but I missed the mess of Bridge Across Forever. I missed the human-ness. It is interesting to contemplate though: If you could meet your younger self ... what would you say? If you could give advice to your younger self ... poised on the edge of making a huge decision ... what would you say? Sometimes thinking about that stuff is dangerous for me - all I see are regrets - but sometimes it is interesting. That sort of time-travel moment. When you think: Okay, that person is about to have a huge adventure ... one that will change her forever ... is she ready? Is she aware?

And then there are moments - strange moments - where it's almost as though life becomes a literary conceit. LIke, if you made it up - you would be accused of being simplistic. Like the first thing this man said to me was, "Are you waiting for someone?" He meant it in a very prosaic way, and he meant it literally. I was standing on a sidewalk, looking back and forth ... and he wondered if I was waiting for somone. But in the context of what eventually happened between us - the fact that his first words to me were "Are you waiting for someone" - take on a huge meaning. I didn't know him at all. We had never spoken. He came right up to me and said, "Are you waiting for someone?" Naturally, he just wanted to talk to me. That was his opening line. It's weird, that's all. Just weird. It turns out that I WAS waiting for someone, in a metaphorical way - I was waiting for HIM - and I actually (no word of a lie) had a sense of that in that moment. My impulse (and I have the diary entry of that moment to prove it) was to say, jokingly, "Yeah. You." These things happen. And I do believe that in that moment we were tapping into the future - just a bit. Just a bit. It was prophetic.

Here's an excerpt. Leslie and Richard, out for a normal flight, suddenly find themselves in an alternate universe ... they wonder if they have died ... they are not sure what has happened to them ...

Excerpt from One - by Richard Bach.

Leslie took my hand. "Richie," she said, soft and sad, "do you think we're dead? Maybe we hit something in the air, or something hit us so fast we never knew."

I'm the family expert on death and I hadn't even considered ... Could she be right? But what's Growly doing here? There's nothing I've read about dying that says it doesn't even change the oil pressure.

"This can't be dying!" I said. "The books say when we die there's a tunnel and light and all this incredible love, and people to meet us ... if we went to the trouble of dying together, two of us at once, wouldn't you think they'd find a way to meet us on time?"

"Maybe the books are wrong," she said.

We descended in silence, swept with sadness. How could the joy and promise of our lives have ended so swiftly?

"Do you feel dead?" she asked.

"No."

"Neither do I."

We flew low over the parallel channels, checking for coral heads or floating logs before we landed. Even when you're dead, you don't want to tear your airplane apart setting down on some rock.

"What a dumb way to end a lifetime!" Leslie said. "We don't even know what happened, we don't even know how we died!"

"The gold light, Leslie, the shock-wave! Could it have been a nuclear ...? Were we the first ones to die in the Third World War?"

She thought about it. "I don't think so. It wasn't coming toward us, it was going away. And we would have felt something."

We flew in silence. Sad. So sad.

"It's not fair!" said Leslie. "Life had just gotten so beautiful! We worked so hard, we overcame so many problems ... we were just beginning the good times."

I sighed. "Well, if we're dead, we're dead together. That part of our plans came true."

"Our lives are supposed to flash in front of us," she said. "Did your life flash in front of you?"

"Not yet," I said. "Yours?"

"No. And they say everything goes black. That's wrong, too!"

"How can so many books, how could we be so wrong?" I said. "Remember our out-of-body times at night? That's what dying ought to be, just like that except we'd go on, we wouldn't come back in the morning."

Ever had I believed that dying would make sense, it would be a rational creative chance for new understanding, a glad freedom from the limits of matter, an adventure beyond the walls of crude beliefs. Nothing had warned us that death is flying over an endless technicolor ocean.

At least we could land. There were no rocks, nor seaweed nor school of fish. The water was smooth and clear, wind barely enough to ruffle the surface.

Leslie pointed the two bright paths to me. "It's like those two are friends," she said, "always together."

"Maybe they're runways," I said. "It feels best lining up on them. Let's touch down right where they join, OK? Ready to land?"

"I guess so," she said.

I looked out the side windows, double-checking our landing gear. "We have the left main up," I said, "nosewheel up, the right main is up, the wheels are up for a water landing, flaps are down ..."

We began the last turn and the sea tilted graceful slow-motion to meet us. We floated for a long minute, inches above the surface, reflections spangling our white hull.

The keel skimmed wavelets and the seaplane turned racing-boat, flying on a cloud of spray. The whisper of the engine faded into the rush of water as I pulled the throttle back and we slowed.

Then the water vanished, the airplane disappeared. Blurring around us were rooftops, streaks of red tiles and palm trees, the wall of some great windowed building dead ahead.

"LOOK OUT!"

The next second we were stopped inside that building, giddy but unscratched, standing together in a long hallway. I reached to my wife, held her.

"Are you all right?" we said together, breathless, the same second.

"Yes!" we said. "Not a scratch! Are you? Yes!"

There was no shattered glass in the windows at the end of the hall, no hole in the wall through which we had rocketed. Not a person in sight, not a sound in the building.

I burst in frustration. "What in hell is going on?"

"Richie," she said quietly, eyes wide with wonder, "this place is familiar. We've been here before!"

I looked around. A many-doored hallway, brick-red carpet, elevator doors directly across from us, potted palms. The hall window overlooked sunny tile rooftops, low golden hills beyond, a hazy blue afternoon. "It's ... it looks like a hotel. I don't remember any hotel ..."

Came a soft chime, a green arrowhead glowed above the elevator doors.

We watched as the doors rumbled open. Inside stood a rangy angular man and a lovely woman dressed in faded work-shirt under a surplus Navy coat, bluejeans, a spice-color cap.

I heard my wife gasp at my side, felt her body tighten. From the elevator stepped the man and woman we had been sixteen years before, the two we were on the day we met.

Posted by sheila Permalink

May 6, 2007

The Books: "The Bridge Across Forever" (Richard Bach)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

bridgeforever.jpegThe Bridge Across Forever - by Richard Bach. If you read a couple of the Amazon reviews on the re- release of this long-time NY Times bestseller - the ultimate "soulmate" book - you can start to see how angry people are at Richard Bach. Like: really angry. I've spent some time on Richard Bach message forums - and there's a real sense of betrayal in some people. Because life down here - in the swamp - without the astral travel, and the money, and the glamour - kinda sucks - and we all want to find OUR mates - but it's not so easy! And it's not that Richard Bach makes it sound easy in this book - he puts Leslie Parrish through hell. It's that, after 20 years of marriage - he divorced her. So what does THAT mean for all of us schmucks down here who looked to him as a kind of guide? Whether or not you think it's unfair to put all of that responsibility onto Bach's shoulders is another conversation, albeit a very interesting one (there are entire forums devoted to discussing this on various Richard Bach fan sites). It seems to me that some of the sense of "betrayal" is unfair. Because Richard Bach is, after all, just a man. He is not a floaty astral guide from the planet Vega. He is just a MAN. Yes, he set himself up as a guide in his books - there is much that is VERY profound in them ... but still. He is a human being.

I didn't feel betrayed when I heard that Bach and Parrish had divorced. No, I had a much more unattractive response. Mine was more of a grim smug response, lacking sympathy, that sort of "serves you right" response that I mostly associate with self-righteous hypocritcal Christian gossips. I actually think I would prefer the betrayal. That sort of smug glee in the face of someone else's misfortune is so not me. But I will say this: my response has since changed. That was just my first response. I've gone back and re-read all the books. Part of why I wrote those soulmate essays was to come to terms with the whole Richard Bach thing - I'm still not done with them, actually. But there was a lot there that I needed to say. I actually feel sad for Bach now. That's one part of my response to him. He has six children and you would never know it from any of his books. They just do not factor at all into his emotional makeup. You would never know it. And again: I can't stand the smug "serves you right" response ... I am much more interested in ... what the HELL was going on with him??

And some of the passages of Bridge Across Forever still resonate today. It's almost like it's even MORE interesting now that I know that after 20 years, they called it quits. I wish he'd write about THAT. But I wonder. His "soulmate" theory (and he says it himself in the book) requires perfection. Any time Leslie does something, no matter how small, that doesn't fit with his view of "Her", his "ideal" - he's all taken aback. So all of this MEANING is assigned to poor Leslie Parrish, who is just in love, and trying to have a relationship with this man. Like he discovers one day that, when agitated, Leslie Parrish swears like a longshoreman. He is surprisingly (and annoyingly, to me) prudish about this. He is shocked, offended. His "perfect woman" wouldn't swear like that. Leslie, bless her, laughs until she cries when she sees the shocked prissy look on his face. "Ohhhh, did my swearing shock poor little Richie?" But there are many examples of this. Anyone who thinks perfection is the ultimate goal - is a totalitarian at heart. Something's wrong there. We all want to be happy. But some people don't want to feel. And that is their definition of happy. Richard Bach is that kind of person. Leslie has normal emotions - she's not on a short leash with herself. She gets upset, frustrated - she's not afraid of her own anger - If she feels like Bach is running away from her, she comes right out and says it. Bach is frightened and pressured by this. He thinks they should just float in and out of each other's orbits, without expecting anything ... no true involvement ... floating ABOVE the mess of real life. This is Bach's ideal. That's a very neurotic ideal - but I only see this now after 20 years of life, and having learned some hard lessons myself. I yearned for nothingness too. I yearned for perfection, for stasis - for: "happily ever after". These things did not come to me. I lost. Maybe I gained something too - but all I am mainly aware of is the loss. Still. To this day.

Many people have had similar experiences as mine - and took it out on Richard Bach. "I lost my soulmate - NOW WHAT?" In a funny way, it's like Richard Bach IS Donald Shimoda, the Reluctant Messiah in Illusions. Donald Shimoda has a lot of answers to things - and yet he refuses to act like he "owns" the answers. The answers are for all of us - we just need to discover them for ourselves. But this is too much for some people. They need to BLAME, they don't want to take responsiblity ... Bach was a guru to them, and he failed. He lied to them. (This is how they see it). And when word came out that he divorced Leslie - he got death threats, etc.

There are a lot of literal-minded people out there. Damaged people who cling to your "word" - any word - that will give them hope.

Bridge Across Forever - as I wrote in one of my soulmates essays - got me through what was maybe the roughest time of my life - freshman and sophomore year in college. I read it and re-read it, and the copy of the book I am looking at right now is the same one I read back then. It is literally falling apart. I have taped the cover back on. It's in shreds. I eventually moved on - and although the "soulmate" thing continued to inform my thoughts and dreams - until everything fell apart in my late 20s - I can still look at Bridge Across Forever and appreciate it for what it is.

He is just a man. And some of his writing is a bit too cutesy for me, but some of it STILL has the power to get underneath my skin.

Here's an excerpt - I really struggled with choosing one. Leslie Parrish writes him a goodbye letter which is rightly famous - seriously, if you're gonna tell someone off, with love, you couldn't do any better than to just copy that letter and hand it off. Unbelievable. So I thought of choosing that. Then there's his "vision" of love (Mariah??) - the "I AM. AND YOU ARE. AND LOVE. IS ALL. THAT MATTERS" bombardment - I love that section too. I also love the 9 hour long conversation the two of them have ... this is before they've hooked up. Great stuff.

But here's what I chose. Richard Bach has been spending "too much time" with Leslie - he's feeling trapped - he doesn't want to limit his options - so he goes off to his house in Key West - where he has a whole airport full of airplanes that he owns (this was in the wake of the success of JLS and Illusions - he suddenly had become richer than he knew what to do with). Anyway, he's fled Leslie and he walks into his empty house in Key West only to be greeted by a knight, in clanking medieval armor. The knight scolds him: "Why are you spending so much time with Leslie? She is not your perfect woman. You have to keep searching, Richard. Don't tie yourself down." There's a long philosophical argument - between Richard and his own armor - The knight wins the battle.

And Richard is left with wondering what the hell he should do.

The message in the following excerpt still resonates with me: So was there some future ahead of me that could not possibly happen without my first having lived this free lonely present.

I often feel trapped in my "free lonely present". I wonder if someday I will look back on this time and think, "Now all of THAT - back there - makes sense." David says he is sure that that is the case. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about it. How much I want to believe that.


Excerpt from The Bridge Across Forever - by Richard Bach.

I answered mail for an hour, worked on a magazine article that had no deadline. Then, restless, I wandered downstairs to the hangar.

Over the great hollow place hung the faintest veil of something wrong ... so light a vapor that there was nothing to see.

The little BD-5 jet needed flying, to blow the cobwebs from its control surfaces.

There are cobwebs on me, too, I thought. It is never wise to lose one's skill in any airplane, to stay away too long. The baby jet was demanding, the only aircraft I had flown more dangerous on takeoff than landing.

Twelve feet from nose to tail, it wheeled out of the hangar like a hot-dog pushcart without the umbrella, and as lifeless. Not quite lifeless, I thought. It was sullen. I'd be sullen, too, left alone for weeks, spiders in my landing gear.

Canopy cover removed, fuel checked, preflight inspection done. There was dust on the wings.

I should hire someone to dust the airplanes, I thought, and snorted in disgust. What a lazy fop I have become - hire somebody to dust my airplanes!

I used to be intimate with one airplane, now there's a tin harem; I'm the sheikh come to visit now and then. The Twin Cessna, the Widgeon, the Meyers, the Moth, the Rapide, the Lake amphibian, the Pitts Special ... once a month, if then, do I start their engines. Only the T-33 had recent time in its logbook, flying back from California.

Careful, Richard, I thought. To be distant from the airplane one flies is not to invite longevity.

I slid into the baby-jet's cockpit, stared at an instrument panel turned unfamiliar with time.

Used to be, I spent every day with the Fleet, crawled upside-down in the cockpit reaching hay off the floor, streaked my sleeves with oil cleaning the engine and setting the valves just so, tightening cylinder hold-down bolts. Today, I'm as intimate with my many airplanes as I am with my many women.

What would leslie think about that, she who values everything? Weren't we intimate, she and I? I wish she were here.

"Tailpipe clear!" I called the warning from habit, and pressed the start switch.

The igniters fired TSIK! TSIK! TSIK!, and at last a rumble of jet fuel lighting off in burner cans. Tailpipe temperature swept up its gauge, engine rpm turned round on its tiny dial.

So much is habit. Once we learn an airplane, our hands and eyes know how to make it runl ong after our minds have forgotten. Had someone stood at the cockpit and asked how to start the engine, I couldn't have said ... only after my hands finished the starting sequence could I have explained what they had done.

The rough perfume of burning jetfuel sifted into the cockpit ... memories of a thousand other flights sifted along with it. Continuity. This day is part of a lifetime spent mostly flying.

You know another meaning for flying, Richard? Escaping. Running away. What am I escaping, and what am I finding, these days?

I taxied to the runway, saw a few cars stop at the airport fence to watch. There wasn't much for them to see. The jet was so small that without the airshow smoke system on, it would be out of sight before it reached the far end of the runway.

Takeoff is critical, remember. Lightly on the control stick, Richard, feather lightly. Accelerate to 85 knots, then lift the nosewheel one inch and let the airplane fly itself off. Force it off and you are dead.

Pointed down the white runway centerline, canopy closed and locked, I pressed full throttle and the little machine crept forward. With its tiny engine, the jet gathered speed about as fast as an Indian oxcart. Haflway down the runway it was moving, but still asleep ... 60 knots was far too slow to fly. A long time later we were going 85 knots, wide open, and most of the runway was behind us.

I eased the nosewheel off the concrete, and a few seconds later we were airborne, barely, low and sluggish, off the end of the runway, straining to clear the trees.

Wheels up.

Mossy branches flashed ten feet below. Airspeed up to 100 knots, 120 knots, 150 knots and at last the machine woke up and I began to relax in the cockpit,. At 180 the little thing would do anything I wanted it to do. All it needed was airspeed and free sky and it was a delight.

How important was flying to me! It stood for all I loved. Flight seems magic, but it's a learned, practiced skill with a learnable lovable partner. Principles to know, laws to follow, disciplines that lead, curiously enough, to freedom. So much like music, is flying! Leslie would love it.

Away off airways to the north a line of cumulus built toward thunderstorms. Ten minutes and we were skating on their smooth-dome tops, off the edge into thin air, two miles down to the wilderness.

When I was a kid I'd hide in the weeds and watch clouds, see another me perched way up high on just such an edge as this, waving a flag to the boy in the grass, shouting HI DICKIE! and never being heard for the height. Tears in his eyes, he wanted so much to live one minute on a cloud.

The jet turned at the notion, climbed, then shot toward the cloudtop, an Austrian down a ski-jump. We plunged our wings briefly into the hard mist, pulled up and rolled. Sure enough, dwindling behind us, a curling white flag of cloud to mark the jump. Hi, Dickie! I thought, louder than a shout. Hi Dickie crosstime to the kid on the ground thirty years before. Hold your passion for the sky, kiddo, and I promise: what you love will find a way to sweep you up from the earth, high into its joyful scary answers for every question you can ask.

A level rocket, we were, cloudscape changing highspeed around us.

Did he hear?

Do I remember hearing then the promise I just this minute gave the kid watching from the grass of a different year? Maybe. Not the words, but the dead-sure knowing that I would someday fly.

We slowed, rolled inverted, plunged straight down for a long way. What a thought! What if we could talk between us, from one time to another, Richard-now encouraging Dickie-then, touching not in words but in way-deep rememberings of adventures yet to be. Like psychic radio, transmitting wishes, hearing intuitions.

How much to learn if we could spend one hour, spend twenty minutes with the us-we-will-become! How much could we say to us-we-were?

Smoothly smoothly, with the gentlest touch of one finger on the control stick, the little airplane eased out of its dive. At redline airspeed one does nothing sudden with an aircraft, lest it become a puff of separate parts stopped midflight, fluttering here and there into swamps.

Lower clouds shot past like bursts of peaceful flak; a lonely road flicked below and was gone.

Such an experiment that would be! To say hello to all the other Richards flown out ahead of me in time, to find a way to listen to what they'd say! And the alternate me's in alternate futures, the ones who made different decisions along the way, who turned left at corners I turned right, what would they have to tell me? Is their life better or not? How would they change it, knowing what they know now? And none of this, I thought, is to mention the Richards in other lifetimes, in the far futures and the far pasts of the Now. If we all live Now, why can't we communicate?

By the time the airport was in sight, the little jet had forgiven me my neglects and we were friends again. It was harder to forgive myself, but so it usually is.

We slowed and entered the landing pattern, that same pattern that I had seen the day I got off the bus and walked to the airport. Can I see him now, walking there with his bedroll and news he was a millionaire? What do I have to say to him? Oh, my, what do I have to say?

As easy to land as it was tricky to take off, the BD-5 hushed down final approach, touched its miniature wheels to the ground, rolled long and straight to the last taxiway. Then primly she turned and in a minute we were back at the hangar, engine-fire off, turbine spinning slower and slower and stopped at last.

I patted her canopy-bow and thanked her for the flight, the custom of any pilot who's flown longer than he or she thinks they've deserved.

The other airplanes watched enviously. They wanted to fly, too; needed to fly. Here the poor Widgeon, oil leaking from the nose-case of her right engine. The seal had dried from being still for so long.

Could I listen to airplane's futures, as well as my own? Had I practiced and known her future then, I would not have felt sad. She would become a television-star airplane, opening each episode of a wildly popular TV series, flying to a beautiful island, landing on the water, taxiing to dock sparkling and pretty, no oil leaks anywhere. And she couldn't have that future without the present she lived right now, dusty in my hangar after flying her few hundred hours with me.

So was there some future ahead of me that could not possibly happen without my first having lived this free lonely present.

I climbed the stairs back to the house, absorbed in the possibility of contact with the other aspects of me, Richards-before and Richards-yet-to-be, the I's of other lifetimes, other planets, other hypnotic space-times.

Would any of them have looked for a soulmate? Would any of them have found her?

Intuition - the future/past always-me - whispered back, that moment on the stairs:

Yes.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

May 5, 2007

The Books: "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" (Richard Bach)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

illusionsbach.jpegIllusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah - by Richard Bach. This was the first of his books I read. I was in high school - I think I was a junior. I loved it. There are still snippets from "The Messiah's Handbook" that I reference in my mind, from time to time - some great stuff there. Also: the fact that the book ends with the words "Everything in this book might be wrong" is very enlightened. It's humble. I love that. (Bach, when he got divorced from Leslie and caused a shitstorm among his most loyal fans, said that one of his major mistakes was NOT adding the words "Everything in this book might be wrong" at the end of Bridge Across Forever. Amazing)

Illusions tells the tale of a man named Richard who is a barnstormer in the midwest.

He sleeps in his bedroll beneath his wing, he lands in isolated fields and takes people up for rides. He's a mechanic. We don't know much about his life. And one day he meets a fellow barnstormer - whose name is Donald Shimoda. Shimoda has a mystery about him ... his plane is spotless, first of all. How is that possible? But as Richard and Donald keep hanging out - it becomes apparent that this Shimoda is quite an extraordinary individual. He performs miracles. But in a casual off-hand way. He is referred to as "The Reluctant Messiah". He begins to "train" Richard ... first of all, by giving him a ratty little book called "The Messiah's Handbook". They also experiment with things like walking thru walls, walking on water, moving clouds, etc. etc.

The ending of this book is, perhaps, predictable - but I remember it packing a huge punch when I was a kid.

Here's the start of the second chapter of the book. If you remember - the book starts with blotched-looking lined pages - a facsimile of a notebook - and handwriting, telling a fable about a Master who comes to "the holy land of Indiana". But it is in the second chapter when we meet Richard and Donald.

And you know what I get from this book, reading it now as an adult? Richard's loneliness. His ache for connection, communication, friendship ... even though he must be "free" - he is dying for human communion. He dreams up a friend - someone who comes from out of the blue - and is exactly what he needs, at that moment in time. It's kind of sad. I say that having done the very same thing myself.

Excerpt from Illusions - by Richard Bach.

It was toward the middle of the summer that I met Donald Shimoda. In four years' flying, I had never found another pilot in the line of work I do: flying with the wind from town to town, selling rides in an old biplane, three dollars for ten minutes in the air.

But one day just north of Ferris, Illinois, I looked down from the cockpit of my Fleet and there was an old Travel Air 4000, gold and white, landed pretty as you please in the lemon-emerald hay.

Mine's a free life, but it does get lonely, sometimes. I saw the biplane there, thought about it for a few seconds, and decided it would be no harm to drop in. Throttle back to idle, a full-rudder slip, and the Fleet and I fell sideways toward the ground. Wind in the flying wires, that gentle good sound, the slow pok-pok of the old engine loafing its propeller around. Goggles up to better watch the landing. Cornstalks a green-leaf jungle swishing close below, flicker of a fence and then just-cut hay as far as I could see. Stick and rudder out of the slip, a nice little round-out above the land, hay brushing the tires, then the familiar calm crashing rattle of hard ground under-wheel, slowing, slowing and now a quick burst of noise and power to taxi beside the other plane and stop. Throttle back, switch off, the soft clack-clack of the propeller spinning down to stop in the total quiet of July.

The pilot of the Travel Air sat in the hay, his back against the left wheel of his airplane, and he watched me.

For half a minute I watched him, too, looking at the mystery of his calm. I wouldn't have been so cool just to sit there and watch another plane land in a field with me and park ten yards away. I nodded, liking him without knowing why.

"You looked lonely," I said across the distance.

"So did you."

"Don't mean to bother you. If I'm one too many, I'll be on my way."

"No. I've been waiting for you."

I smiled at that. "Sorry I'm late."

"That's all right."

I pulled off my helmet and goggles, climbed out of the cockpit and stepped to the ground. This feels good, when you've been a couple hours in the Fleet.

"Hope you don't mind ham and cheese," he said. "Ham and cheese and maybe an ant." No handshake, no introduction of any kind.

He was not a large man. Hair to his shoulders, blacker than the rubber of the tire he leaned against. Eyes dark as hawk's eyes, the kind I like in a friend, and in anyone else make me uncomfortable indeed. He could have been a karate master on his way to some quietly violent demonstration.

I accepted the sandwich and a thermos cup of water. "Who are you, anyway?" I said. "Years, I've been hopping rides, never seen another barnstormer out in the fields."

"Not much else I'm fit to do," he said, happily enough. "A little mechanicking, welding, roughneck a bit, skinning Cats; I stay in one place too long, I get problems. So I made the airplane and now I'm in the barnstorming business."

"What kind of Cat?" I've been mad for diesel tractors since I was a kid.

"D-Eights, D-Nines. Just for a little while, in Ohio."

"D-Nines! Big as a house! Double compound low gear, can they really push a mountain?"

"There are better ways of moving mountains," he said with a smile that lasted for maybe a tenth of a second.

I leaned for a minute against the lower wing of his plane, watching him. A trick of the light ... it was hard to look at the man closely. As if there were a light around his head, fading the background a faint, misty silver.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"What kind of problems did you have?"

"Oh, nothing much. I just like to keep moving these days, same as you."

I took my sandwich and walked around his plane. It was a 1928 or 1929 machine, and it was completely unscratched. Factories don't make airplanes as new as his was, parked there in the hay. Twenty coats of hand-rubbed butyrate dope, at least, paint like a mirror pulled tight over the wooden ribs of the thing. Don, in old-English gold leaf under the rim of his cockpit, and the registration on the map case said, D.W. Shimoda. The instruments were new out of the box, original 1928 flight instruments. Varnished-oak control stick and rudder-bar; throttle, mixture, spark advance at the left. You never see spark advances anymore, even on the best-restored antiques. No scratch anywhere, not a patch on the fabric, not a single streak of engine oil from the cowling. Not a blade of straw on the floor of the cockpit, as though his machine hadn't flown at all, but instead had materialized on the spot through some time-warp across half a century. I felt an odd creepy cold on my neck.

"How long you been hopping passengers?" I called across the plane to him.

"About a month, now, five weeks."

He was lying. Five weeks in the fields and I don't care who you are, you've got dirt and oil on the plane and there's straw on the cockpit floor, no matter what. But this machine ... no oil on the windshield, no flying-hay stains on the leading edges of wings and tail, no bugs smashed on the propeller. That is not possible for an airplane flying through an Illinois summer. I studied the Travel Air another five minutes, and then I went back and sat down in the hay under the wing, facing the pilot. I wasn't afraid, I still liked the guy, but something was wrong.

"Why are you not telling me the truth?"

"I have told you the truth, Richard," he said. The name is painted on my airplane, too.

"A person does not hop passengers for a month in a Travel Air without getting a little oil on the plane, my friend, a little dust? One patch in the fabric? Hay, for God's sake, on the floor?"

He smiled calmly at me. "There are some things you do not know."

In that moment he was a strange other-planet person. I believed what he said, but I had no way of explaining his jewel airplane parked out in the summer hayfield.

"This is true. But some day I'll know them all. And then you can have my airplane, Donald, because I won't need it to fly."

He looked at me with interest, and raised his black eyebrows. "Oh? Tell me."

I was delighted. Someone wanted to hear my theory!

"People couldn't fly for a long time, I don't think, because they didn't think it was possible, so of course they didn't learn the first little principle of aerodynamics. I want to believe that there's another principle somewhere: we don't need airplanes to fly, or move through walls, or get to planets. We can learn how to do that without machines anywhere. If we want to."

He half-smiled, seriously, and nodded his head one time. "And you think that you will learn what you wish to learn by hopping three-dollar rides out of hayfields."

"The only learning that's mattered is what I got on my own, doing what I want to do. There isn't, but if there were a soul on earth who could teach me more of what I want to know than my airplane can, and the sky, I'd be off right now to find him. Or her."

The dark eyes looked at me level. "Don't you believe you're guided, if you really want to learn this thing?"

"I'm guided, yes. Isn't everyone? I've always felt something kind of watching over me, sort of."

"And you think you'll be led to a teacher who can help you."

"If the teacher doesn't happen to be me, yes."

"Maybe that's the way it happens," he said.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

May 4, 2007

The Books: "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (Richard Bach)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

JONATHAN.jpgJonathan Livingston Seagull - by Richard Bach.

Oh boy. We're moving into Richard Bach land. I have a complicated long-term relationship with Richard Bach. And for those of you who are new to me - I wrote this whole series of essays on soulmates. There's actually more to be said on this topic - but I shy away from it, because it's a loaded issue for me - but whatevs, it's also VERY interesting.

If you're into it, here are my soulmates posts:

Soulmates: An Overview (check out the comment to that post from "JLS" - uhm - Jonathan Livingston Seagull commented on my post. And check out its snotty tone which completely proved my own point about the whole soulmates industry)

Soulmates: An Introduction to Richard Bach

Soulmates: The Timeline

And now - a small tangent about my blog: One of the issues I have with the way some people comment on blogs - not all - SOME (especially those who spend most of their time reading political blogs, and then come to visit me ... they bring that judgey rigid tone HERE - it's like that's the only way they know how to speak, even though I'm posting about Mae West and not the Republican fucking debates - but still, it doesn't matter: they are in the habit of being positional, judgmental, and rigid - where I am so not interested in having that type of black and white conversation - even if I DID post about politics - that tone ruins everything. I don't read blogs who have that tone, and I don't want that spill-over here) To be fair, people who are consistently judgey and rigid don't last long here. I don't tolerate it, because it ruins my fun. But still: it happens on occasion. Anyway - one of the issues I have with that kind of commenter is that it makes for a boring conversation. It's too positional. As in: Richard Bach = BAD. And people who love Richard Bach = STUPID. And that misses my point. I'm not interested in having a political-type audience, who can only take positions on things, who are only in opposition, etc. Whose main attitude appears to be: "What in the hell is wrong with everybody else except me?? Why can't everybody be as smart as I am??" You know the type. Yawn. Also: it seems to be that that type of attitude is geared towards ENDING conversation, rather than continuing it. I'm all about the talk, and the conversation. Even with strong opinions - it is a hope of mine that we can still continue to TALK about things. But "what is wrong with everyone? Such and such is BAD and that's final" is not intelligent, and not a continuation of anything. No place for that here.

So when I "take on" Richard Bach - I do so from the stance of having been an enormous fan of his stuff at one point. I do so from the position of having once loved him, and looked to him for answers. I don't anymore - but I also don't roll my eyes at my younger self for having been into him. And I don't roll my eyes at those who still think he's an inspiration. I would hope that people could express themselves about it without being snotty, like JLS - because it is a very interesting topic, and touches on things that are very personal for many of us. Is there only ONE person out there for everybody? Can you have MULTIPLE soulmates? Etc. I am not interested in a kneejerk response to those questions. I prefer contemplation, discussion, back and forth ... I am saying this because Bach is a sensitive subject and people take him personally. That's totally cool - so did I. I have changed my mind, drastically. That's what my soulmate essays are about. There's quite a bit about his stuff that I still love. I love his writing, in general. (Read the essays. All the background is there).

I think the first book I read of his was Illusions - and I came back to Jonathan Livingston Seagull later. You can read it in about 20 minutes. It was his first major book - he had been writing articles and essays on flying for many years. He was a barnstormer, a pilot - and his writing on aviation is phenomenal. Not as good as St. Ex ... but you can feel that St. Ex is his guiding star. He writes about flight like that. Marvelous. So in Jonathan Livingston Seagull - he goes into the realm of metaphor. All of his themes: breaking through barriers, mind over matter, standing alone, being ahead of the crowd, or unafraid of being different - it's all here.

Here's an excerpt. And interesting - I chose this excerpt because of my strong reaction to it this morning. It makes me realize that I should probably re-open the soulmates conversation again. I am not done with Richard Bach. Not by a long shot. I still have a bone to pick with that man.

But what's interesting to me: is how I USED to look at him, how I USED to read him. I thought he had the key. I looked to him. And now - reading this excerpt - what I see is his flaws, his humanity - his fears - and you know what? That makes him even more interesting to me.

He wants to transcend being human. I relate to that wish. Sometimes I want that myself. But he doesn't seem quite aware of his own avoidance techniques, his own desire to feel nothing, to be ABOVE others ....

This is all very interesting because of his experiences as a pilot - that very specific perspective of being far above the earth, looking down.

And yet old habits die hard. The line "keep working on love" makes me want to weep. My response to Richard Bach is so primal that it borders on muscle memory. Some kind of sensoral memory. Intellectually, I am pissed at him. But when he comes out with a line like "keep working on love" ... I fall in love with him again.

Bastard.



Excerpt from Jonathan Livingston Seagull - by Richard Bach.

A month went by, or something that felt about like a month, and Jonathan learned at a tremendous rate. He always had learned quickly from ordinary experience, and now, the special student of the Elder Himself, he took in new ideas like a streamlined feathered computer.

But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and their practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfect invisible principle of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers went brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull could look upon him.

"Jonathan," he said, and these were the last words that he spoke, "keep working on love."

When they could see again, Chiang was gone.

As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and again of the Earth from which he had come. If he had known there just a tenth, just a hundredth, of what he knew here, how much more life would have meant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back there who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from a rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speaking his truth in the fact of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practiced his kindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, the more he wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past, Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.

Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the others to learn, was doubtful.

"Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of the gulls in your old time would listen to you now? You know the proverb, and it's true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Those gulls where you came from are standing on the ground, squawking and fighting among themselves. They're a thousand miles from heaven - and you say you want to show them heaven from where they stand! Jon, they can't see their own wingtips! Stay here. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are high enough to see what you have to tell them." He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "What if Chiang had gone back to his old worlds? Where would you have been today?"

The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right. The gull sees farthest who flies highest.

Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in, who were all very bright and quick with their lessons. But the old feeling came back, and he couldn't help but think that there might be one or two gulls back on Earth who would be able to learn, too. How much more would he have known by now if Chiang had come to him on the day that he was Outcast!

"Sully, I must go back," he said at last. "Your students are doing well. They can help you bring the newcomers along."

Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. "I think I'll miss you, Jonathan," was all he said.

"Sully, for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, "and don't be foolish! What are we trying to practice every day? If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?"

Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. "You crazy bird!" he said kindly. "If anybody can show someone on the ground how to see a thousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston Seagull." He looked at the sand. "Good-bye, Jon, my friend."

"Good-bye, Sully. We'll meet again." And with that, Jonathan held in thought an image of the great gull-flocks on the shore of another time, and he knew with practiced ease that he was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack

May 3, 2007

The Books: "Pride and Prejudice" (Jane Austen)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

pride%20and%20prej%20pix.gifPride and Prejudice - by Jane Austen. I struggled to choose an excerpt from this book - it's one that I love, and that I never get tired of. The long scenes of intense dialogue - the back and forth, with very little editorializing (until after the conversations end) - are my favorite parts of the book. You don't get a lot of "she felt this" during these long conversations - that comes after. When you're in the middle of it, in the middle of the dialogue - it unfolds organically (albeit very articulately) - and you don't NEED to hear "she felt this", "he thought this". The personalities are there on the page, their needs, prides, prejudices (ahem) ... So here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Pride and Prejudice - by Jane Austen.

While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound of the door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word.

After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus begun:

"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and ahd long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority - of its being a degradation - of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.

In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with representing to her the strength of his attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer, and with expressing his hope that it woudl now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said:

"In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot - I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgement of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcominng it after this explanation."

Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings dreadful. At length, in a voice of forced calmness, he said:

"And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting? I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour or civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance."

"I might as well inquire," replied she, "why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you - had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?"

As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour; but the emotion was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her while she continued:

"I have ever reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. You dare not, you cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other - of exposing one to the ensure of the world for caprice and instability, the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind."

She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse. He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.

"Can you deny that you have done it?" she repeated.

With assumed tranquillity he then replied: "I have no wish of denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself."

Elizabeth disdained the appearance of noticing this civil reflection, but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to conciliate her.

"But it is not merely this affair," she continued, "on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?"

"You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns," said Darcy, in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.

"Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?"

"His misfortunes!" repeated Darcy contemptuously; "yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed."

"And of your infliction," cried Elizabeth with energy. "You have reduced him to his present state of poverty - comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and ridicule."

"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room, "is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps," added he, stopping in his walk, and turning towards her, "these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? -- to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?"

Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said:

"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner."

She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued:

"You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it."

Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on:

"From the very beginning - from the first moment, I may almost say - of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

"You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time,a nd accept my best wishes for your health and happiness."

And with these words he hastily left the room, and Elizabeth heard him the next moment open the front door and quit the house.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack

May 2, 2007

The Books: "Sense and Sensibility" (Jane Austen)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction shelves:

24940451.jpgSense and Sensibility - by Jane Austen.

I know Willoughby is a user. And a weak man. And what he did was unforgivable. And Marianne is well to be rid of him. But for me, this excerpt below is pretty much the most heart-wrenching in the book. Ouch, man. OUCH.

Marianne has had a life-threatening illness. Due to her heartbreak over the loss of Willoughby. Marianne and Elinor are holed up at the Palmers house ... recovering. The cranky (yet kind at heart) Hugh Laurie has given up his mansion to the invalid. And one day, with no warning, Willoughby appears. He has gotten word that Marianne might die. He and Elinor talk. She is not predisposed to think well of him, to forgive him. He tries to explain why, why he did what he did. And then ...

OUCH.

Excerpt from Sense and Sensibility - by Jane Austen.

A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby, first rousing himself, broke it thus:

"Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better, certainly out of danger?"

"We are assured of it."

"Your poor mother too! -- doting on Marianne."

"But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you anything to say about that?"

"Yes, yes, that in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, you know, the very next morning. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the Ellisons'; and her letter, with some others, was brought to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia' eye before it caught mine; and its size, the elegance of the paper, the handwriting, altogether immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in Devonshire, and what had passed within her observation the preceding evening had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting the air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion - her malice - at all events it must be appeased. And in short, what do you think of my wife's style of letter writing? Delicate, tender, truly feminine - was it not?"

"Your wife! The letter was in your own handwriting."

"Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own, her own happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do? We were engaged, everything in preparation, the day almost fixed - but I am talking like a fool. Preparation! Day! In honest words, her money was necessary to me, and in a situation like mine anything was to be done to prevent a rupture. And, after all, what did it signify to my character in the opinion of Marianne and her friends, in what language my answer was couched? It must have been only to one end. My business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance. 'I am ruined for ever in their opinion,' said I to myself; 'I am shut out for ever from their society; they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me a blackguard one.' Such were my reasonings as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my wife's words, and parted with the last relics of Marianne. Her three notes - unluckily they were all in my pocket-book, or I should have denied their existence, and hoarded them for ever; I was forced to put them up, and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hair - that, too, I had always carried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence - the dear lock - all, every memento was torn from me."

"You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blameable," said Elinor, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion; "you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister. You hae made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly, is no atonement to Marianne, nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience."

"Do not talk to me of my wife," said he, with a heavy sigh. "She does not deserve your compassion. She knew I had no regard for her when we married. Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy; and afterwards returned to town to be gay. And, now do you pity me, Miss Dashwood? Or have I said all this to no purpose? Am I - be it only one degree - am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before? My intentions were not always wrong. Have I explained away any part of my guilt?"

"Yes, you have certainly removed something - a little. You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know - the misery that you have inflicted - I hardly know what could have made it worse."

"Would you repeat to your sister, when she is recovered, what I have been telling you? Let me be a little lightened, too, in her opinion as well as in yours. You tell me that she has forgiven me already. Let me be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more gentle, less dignified forgiveness. Tellh er of my misery and my penitence, tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever."

"I will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be called your justification. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness."

"Last night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir John Middleton, and when he saw who I was (for the first time these two months) he spoke to me. That he had cut me ever since my marriage, I had seen without surprise or resentment. Now, however, his good-natured, honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought to, though probably he did not think it would, vex me horribly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Marianne Dashwood was dying of a putrid fever at Cleveland - a letter that morning received from Mrs. Jennings declared her danger most imminent - the Palmers all gone off in a fright, etc. I was too much shocked to be able to pass myself off as insensible, even to the undiscerning Sir John. His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer; and so much of his ill-will was done away, that when we parted, he almost shook me by the hand, while he reminded me of an old promise about a pointer puppy. What I felt on hearing that your sister was dying - and dying, too, believing me the greatest villain upon earth, scorning, hating me in her latest moments - for how could I tell what horried projects might not have been imputed? One person I was sure would represent me as capable of anything. What I felt was dreadful! My resolution was soon made, and at eight o'clock this morning I was in my carriage. Now you know all."

Elinor made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain; extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity, in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment/. The attachment from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature. From a reverie of this kind she was recalled at the end of some minutes by Willoughby, who, rousing himself from a reverie at least equally painful, started up in preparation for going, and said:

"There is no use in staying here; I must be off."

"Are you going back to town?"

"No, to Combe Magna. I have business there; from thence to town in a day or two. Good-bye."

He held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers; he pressed it with affection.

"And you do think something better of me than you did?" said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the mantelpiece, as if forgetting he was to go.

Elinor assured him that she did; that she forgave, pitied him, wished him well - was even interested in his happiness - and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging.

"As to that," said he, "I must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means - it may put me on my guard - at least, it may be something to live for. Marianne, to be sure, is lost to me for ever. Were I even, by any blessed chance, at liberty again --"

Elinor stopped him with a reproof.

"Well," he replied, "once more good-bye. I shall now go away and live in dread of one event."

"What do you mean?"

"Your sister's marriage."

"You are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now."

"But she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he, whom, of all others, I could least bear ----- But I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate good-will by showing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good-bye; God bless you!"

And with these words, he almost ran out of the room.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 1, 2007

The Books: "The Robber Bride" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

books-1.jpegStill on the Margaret Atwood train ... the next book on the shelf is The Robber Bride - by Margaret Atwood. This is around the time when I started turning off Margaret Atwood. Although not for good! Never for good. I still buy all her books but I just can't get into them in the same way. (Her essays and poetry are another story. I still love those). But here I sit and I can't remember one damn thing about The Robber Bride. Atwood fans: should I give it another go? Maybe Cat's Eye was so powerful to me, so unbelievable ... that anything else that came after was sure to be a letdown. I think I felt, too, that she might have been trying to re-create some of the Cat's Eye thing - with the boogey-woman character of Zenia .. but I just didn't get into it. All I remember is that there are a group of women friends, the book is told from different points of view - and this scary man-eating woman who was a friend of theirs - and somehow messed with all of their lives - in profound ways - then died ... and the book begins when she comes back to life. They start to see her on the streets of Toronto and they are all terrified. But seriously that is all I remember. Once I flipped through it certain things did come back to me. Tony (a woman) is a military historian and has maps with pins stuck into them all over her house. Roz is a career woman - and Chasis is a woman whose damaged soul finds relief in all kinds of New Agey things - she works in a shop called Radiance, she's all about love and peace - but it's only because the things that were once done to her were so damaging that she has basically become a split personality. But ... that's all that remains. And Zenia is this gorgeous scary cold Spider Woman.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from The Robber Bride - by Margaret Atwood.

That's what Billy was like, at the time. He was always after her then. In the mornings, in the afternoons, at night, it made no difference. Maybe it was just a sort of nervousness, or boredom, because he didn't have that much to fill up the time; or it might have been the tension of being there illegally. He would wait for her at the ferry dock and walk back to the house with her and grab her before she even had a chance to put the groceries down, pressing her back against the kitchen counter, his hands pulling up her long flimsy skirt. His urgency confused her. God I love you, God I love you, he would say at these times. Sometimes he did things that hurt - slapping her, pinching. Sometimes it hurt anyway, but since she didn't mention this, how was he supposed to know about it?

What had she felt, herself? It's hard to sort out. Maybe if there had been less, less plain old sex - if she had felt less like a trampoline with someone jumping up and down on it - she would have learned to enjoy it more, in time. If she could relax. As it was she merely detached herself, floated her spirit off to one side, filled herself with another essence -- apple, plum -- until he'd finished and it was safe to re-enter her body. She liked being held afterwards, she liked being stroked and kissed and told she was beautiful, a thing Billy sometimes did. Once in a while she cried, which Billy seemed to find normal. Her tears had nothing to do with Billy; he didn't make her sad, he made her happy! She told him that, and he was satisfied and didn't push her for answers. They talked about other things; they never talked about that.

But what was it supposed to be like? What would have been normal? She had no idea. Every so often they smoked dope - not a lot, because they couldn't afford much of it, and when they had some it usually came from one of Billy's friends - and at those times she got an inkling, an intimation, a small flutter. But it hardly counted, because her skin felt like rubber then anyway, like a rubber suit she had on with a grid of tiny electric wires running through it, and Billy's hands were like inflated comic-book gloves, and she would get involved with the convolutions of his ear or the whorl of golden hairs on his chest, and whatever her body was up to was no concern of hers. One of Billy's friends said that there was no sense in wasting good hash on Charis because she was stoned all the time anywya. Charis didn't think that was fair, although it was true that being stoned didn't make as much difference for her as it seemed to make for other people.

Billy wasn't the first man she'd slept with, of course. She'd slept with several, because you were supposed to and she didn't want to be considered uptight, or selfish about her body, and she'd even lived with one man, although it hadn't lasted. He'd ended by calling her a frigid bitch, as if she was doing him some injury or other, which puzzled her. Hadn't she been affectionate enough, hadn't she nodded her head when he talked, hadn't she cooked the meals and laid herself down compliantly whenever he wanted her to, hadn't she washed the sheets afterwards, hadn't she tended him? She was not an ungiving person.

The good part about Billy was that this thing about her, this abnormality - she knew it must be one, because she'd listened to other women talking - didn't bother him. In fact he appeared to expect it. He thought women were like that: without urges, without needs. He didn't pester her about it, he didn't question her, he didn't try to fix her, as the other men had done - tinkering away at her as if she was a lawnmower. He loved her the way she was. Without anything being said, he simply assumed, as she did, that what she felt about it didn't matter. Both of them were agreed on that. They both wanted the same thing: for Billy to be happy.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

April 27, 2007

The Book: "Wilderness Tips" - 'Hairball' (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

51DJ9PHE37L.jpgNext book on the shelf is Wilderness Tips -a pretty much universally spectacular short story collection. One of my favorites of her stories is in this collection - it's called "Hairball" ... and that's what I'll excerpt today. This story is a major freakout. It might be her angriest story - and yet it's also one of her funniest. Atwood never goes the expected way ... This story is a RAGE (and it makes sense that our narrator is a managing editor of a magazine that she originally wanted to call "all the rage" - but that name was nixed - it's now called "The Razor's Edge") - "The Razor's Edge" is a hip edgy Toronto magazine (which is a joke in and of itself, at least in Atwood's caustic view) - and in its pages are columns about S&M clothing, photo layouts of sex toys, reviews of avant garde performance art pieces, edible condoms, you know - the point is to be as confrontational as possible. Kat loves that. She prides herself on her hard-ness, her cynicism - and the fact that people are "shocked". By what she writes and by who she is. She has no earnestness. She scorns sincerity. She is on the cutting edge. The story opens, though, with something completely "sincere" - meaning, there is no way to put a cynical spin on it. She has an ovarian cyst removed. The cyst is the size of a coconut. She asks the doctor if she can see it. It is huge. A huge hairball. With fully formed teeth stuck in it. She is mesmerized by it. She puts it in a jar of formaldehyde, takes it home, and puts it on her mantel. She likes the thought that it will shock people. She refuses to believe that she herself is shocked. That her body produced such a monstrosity. The "hairball" takes on a kind of personality - it sits on the mantel, and she talks to it, confides in it ... she stares at it, hypnotized. Meanwhile, she continues on as though nothing has changed. As though she has not been altered in some way by this surgery ... as though she is not now missing something. Her boyfriend is a dude named Ger - (she re-named him - Kat didn't like his real name) ... and Ger is freaked by the hairball, and ... well, the story comes to an inevitable conclusion. Or - it seems inevitable once you reach the end. I never saw it coming but as it unfolded, I started laughing ... Of course. Of course that is what she would do. Kat's "rage" up to the point of the story was a pose, a cynical "world-weary" pose - in a rage at propriety, bourgeois values, her own country and its pretensions. But once that hairball comes out - Kat starts to discover what real rage is.

Great freakin' story. Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from Wilderness Tips - by Margaret Atwood, "Hairball"

During her childhood she was a romanticized Katherine, dressed by her misty-eyed fussy mother in dresses that looked like ruffled pillow-cases. By high school she'd shed the frills and emerged as a bouncy, round-faced Kathy, with gleaming freshly washed hair and enviable teeth, eager to please and no more interesting than a health-food ad. At university she was Kath, blunt and no-bullshit in her Take-Back-the-Night jeans and checked shirt and her bricklayer-style striped-denim peaked hat. When she ran away to England, she sliced herself down to Kat. It was economical, street-feline, and pointed as a nail. It was also unusual. In England you had to do something to get their attention, especially if you weren't English. Safe in this incarnation, she Ramboed through the eighties.

It was the name, she still thinks, that got her the interview and then the job. The job with an avant-garde magazine, the kind that was printed on matte stock in black and white, with overexposed close-ups of women with hair blowing over their eyes, one nostril prominent: the razor's edge, it was called. Haircuts as art, some real art, film reviews, a little stardust, wardrobes of ideas that were clothes and of clothes that were ideas - the metaphysical shoulder pad. She learned her trade well, hands-on. She learned what worked.

She made her way up the ladder, from layout to design, then to the supervision of whole spreads, and then whole issues. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it. She had become a creator; she created total looks. After a while she could walk down the street in Soho or stand in the lobby at openings and witness her handiwork incarnate, strolling around in outfits she'd put together, spouting her warmed-over pronouncements. It was like being God, only God had never got around to off-the-rack lines.

By that time her face had lost its roundness, though the teeth of course remained: there was something to be said for North American dentistry. She'd shaved off most of her hair, worked on the drop-dead stare, perfected a certain turn of the neck that conveyed an aloof inner authority. What you had to make them believe was that you knew something they didn't know yet. What you also had to make them believe was that they too could know this thing, this thing that would give them eminence and power and sexual allure, that would attract envy to them - but for a price. The price of the magazine. What they could never get through their heads was that it was done entirely with cameras. Frozen light, frozen time. Given the angle, she could make any woman look ugly. Any man as well. She could make anyone look beautiful, or at least interesting. It was all photography, it was all iconography. It was all in the choosing eye. This was the thing that could never be bought, no matter how much of your pitiful monthly wage you blew on snakeskin.

Despite the status, the razor's edge was fairly low-paying. Kat herself could not afford many of the things she contextualized so well. The grottiness and expense of London began to get to her; she got tired of gorging on the canapes at literary launches in order to scrimp on groceries, tired of the fuggy smell of cigarettes ground into the red-and-maroon carpeting of pubs, tired of the pipes bursting every time it froze in winter, and of the Clarissa and Melissas and Penelopes at the magazine rabbiting on about how they had been literally, absolutely, totally freezing all night, and how it literally, absolutely, totally, usually never got that cold. It always got that cold. The pipes always burst. Nobody thought of putting in real pipes, ones that would not burst next time. Burst pipes were an English tradition, like so many others.

Like, for instance, English men. Charm the knickers off you with their mellow vowels and frivolous verbiage, and then, once they'd got them off, panic and run. Or else stay and whinge. The English called it whinging instead of whining. It was better, really. Like a creaking hinge. It was a traditional compliment to be whinged at by an Englishman. It was his way of saying he trusted you, he was conferring upon you the privilege of getting to know the real him. The inner, whining him. That was how they thought of women, secretly: whinge receptacles. Kat could play it, but that didn't mean she liked it.

She had an advantage over the English women, though: she was of no class. She had no class. She was in a class of her own. She could roll around among the English men, all different kinds of them, secure in the knowledge that she was not being measured against the class yardsticks and accent-detectors they carried around in their back pockets, was not subject to the petty snobberies and resentments that lent such richness to their inner lives. The flip side of this freedom was that she was beyond the pale. She was a colonial - how fresh, hoiw vital, how anonymous, how finally of no consequence. Like a hole in the wall, she could be told all secrets and then be abandoned with no guilt.

She was too smart, of course. The English men were very competitive; they liked to win. Several times it hurt. Twice she had abortions, because the men in question were not up for the alternative. She learned to say that she didn't want children anyway, that if she longed for a rug-rat she would buy a gerbil. Her life began to seem long. Her adrenaline was running out. Soon she would be thirty, and all she could see ahead was more of the same.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (6)

April 26, 2007

The Books: "Cat's Eye" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n30451.jpgHere is my last excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood. So much of this book has come back to me in the past week doing these excerpts - the detail, the sweep and scope of it - it is truly a "grand" book, in terms of its intention - and also - the perfection of some of the writing. For example, the following excerpt.

Elaine is now a young mother. She has married a fellow artist, Jon. They struggle. Cordelia is no longer at all in the picture. The two have lost touch completely. Atwood seems to suggest, though, that all roads still lead back to Cordelia (the last line of this excerpt shows that). But it also is interesting because .... whose voice is it? Is it Elaine's voice? I assume it is Cordelia's ... but the internalization of shame and self-loathing that came from her friendship with Cordelia is so all-encompassiong - that those emotions are no longer just a byproduct of a specific experience. They have become her identity. Isn't this so the way - with childhood experiences? We are not separated from what happens to us. We can rise above, get some therapy, try to forgive, forget ... but still: what happens to us IS who we are.

I was always quite struck by the writing here. There's a cliche here: despairing woman, artist, trying to commit suicide.

But it has the Atwood touch.

Excerpt from excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood.

It is winter. The heat goes off, comes on again, goes off, at random. Sarah has a cold. She coughs at night and I get up for her, feeding her spponfuls of cough syrup, bringing her drinks of water. In the daytime we are both exhausted.

I am sick a lot myself this winter. I get her colds. I lie in bed on weekend mornings, looking up at the ceiling, my head clogged and cottony. I want glasses of ginger ale, squeezed orange juice, the sound of distant radios. But these things are gone forever, nothing arrives on a tray. If I want ginger ale I'll have to go to the store or the kitchen, buy it or pour it myself. In the main room Sarah watches cartoons.

I don't paint at all any more. I can't think about painting. Although I've received a junior grant from a government arts program, I can't organize myself enough to lift a brush. I push myself through time, to work, to the bank to get money, to the supermarket to buy food. Sometimes I watch daytime soaps on television, where there are more crises and better clothes than in real life. I tend to Sarah.

I don't do anything else. I no longer go to the meetings of women, because they make me feel worse. Jody phones and says we should get together, but I put her off. She would jolly me along, make bracing and positive suggestions I know I can't live up to. Then I would only feel more like a failure.

I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.


One night Jon does not come back. This is not usual, it isn't our silent agreement: even when he stays out late he is always in by midnight. We haven't had a fight this day; we've hardly spoken. He hasn't phoned to say where he is. His intention is clear: he has left me behind, in the cold.

I crouch in the bedroom, in the dark, wrapped in Jon's old sleeping bag, listening to the wheezing sound of Sarah breathing and the whisper of sleet against the window. Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.

My body is inert, without will. I think I sholud keep moving, to circulate my blood, as you are supposed to do in a snowstorm so you won't feeze to death. I force myself to stand up. I will go to the kitchen and make tea.

Outside the house a car slides by, through the mushy snow, a muffled rushing. The main room is dark, except for the light coming in from the lampposts on the street, through the window. The things on Jon's work table glint in this half-light: the flat blade of a chisel, the head of a hammer. I can feel the pull of the earth on me, the dragging of its dark curve of gravity, the spaces between the atoms you could fall so easily through.

This is when I hear the voice, not inside my head at all but in the room, clearly: Do it. Come on. Do it. This voice doesn't offer a choice; it has the force of an order. It's the difference between jumping and being pushed.

The Exacto knife is what I use, to make a slash. It doesn't even hurt, because right after that there's a whispering sound and space closes in and I'm on the floor. This is how Jon finds me. Blood is black in the darkness, it does not reflect, so he doesn't see until he turns on the light.


I tell the people at Emergency that it was an accident. I am a painter, I say. I was cutting canvas and my hand slipped. It's my left wrist, so this is plausible. I'm frightened, I want to hide the truth: I have no intention of being stuffed into 999 Queen Street, now or ever.

"In the middle of the night?" the doctor says.

"I often work at night," I say.

Jon backs me up. He's just as scared as I am. He tied my wrist up in a tea towel and drove me to the hospital. I leaked through the towel, onto the front seat.

"Sarah," I said, remembering her.

"She's downstairs," Jon said. Downstairs is the landlady, a middle-aged Italian widow.

"What did you tell her?" I asked.

"I said it was your appendix," Jon said. I laughed, a little. "What the hell got into you?"

"I don't know," I said. "You'll have to get this car clearned." I felt white, drained of blood, cared for, purified. Peaceful.


"Are you sure you don't want to talk to someone?" the doctor in Emergency says.

"I'm fine now," I say. The last thing I want to do is talking. I know what he means by someone: a shrink. Someone who will tell me I'm nuts. I know what kind of people hear voices: people who drink too much, who fry their brains with drugs, who slip off the rails. I feel entirely steady, I'm not even anxious anymore. I've already decided what I will do, afterward, tomorrow. I'll wear my arm in a sling and say I broke my wrist. So I don't have to tell him, or Jon, or anyone else, about the voice.

I know it wasn't really there. Also I know I heard it.

It wasn't a frightening voice, in itself. Not menacing but excited, as if proposing an escapade, a prank, a treat. Something treasured, and secret. The voice of a nine-year-old child.

Posted by sheila Permalink

April 24, 2007

The Books: "Cat's Eye" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n30451.jpgHere is a fourth excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood. Even just flipping through this book right now makes me feel creepy - I haven't read it in years. It's all coming back to me though. How time passes ... how Carol and Grace fade out of the picture ... and how Elaine turns her back on Cordelia ... but then how later, a couple years later, Cordelia comes back into her life, and they are now 13 years old, as opposed to 9 or 10 ... and they start hanging out again, and of course everything is different. Elaine has become a smartass, a wiseass - there's a mean streak in Elaine ... somehow she and Cordelia have switched places. Elaine knows she is smarter than Cordelia, and she uses that knowledge. Yet - these two are connected ... It's something neither of them can walk away from. Cat's Eye, man. It's freakin' haunting.

Atwood has such a good eye. So good.

Excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood.

A girl is found murdered, down in the ravine. Not the ravine near our house, but a larger branch of it, farther south, past the brickworks, where the Don River, willow-bordered, junk-strewn and dingy, winds sluggishly toward the lake. Such things are not supposed to happen in Toronto, where people leave their back doors unlocked, their windows unlatched at night; but they do happen, it seems. It's on the front pages of all the papers.

This girl is our age. Her bicycle has been found near her. She has been strangled, and also molested. We know what molested means. There are photos of her when alive, which already have that haunted look such photos usually take years to acquire, the look of vanished time, unrecoverable, unredeemed. There are extensive descriptions of her clothing. She was wearing an angora sweater, and a little fur collar with pom-poms, of the sort that is currently fashionable. I don't have a collar like this, but would like one. Hers was white but you can get them in mink. She was wearing a pin on the sweater, in the shape of two birds with red glass jewels for eyes. It's what anyone would wear to school. All those details about her clothing strike me as unfair, although I devour them. It doesn't seem right that you can just walk out one day, wearing ordinary clothes, and be murdered without warning, and then have all those people looking at you, examining you. Murder ought to be a more ceremonial occasion.

I have long since dismissed the idea of bad men in the ravine. I've considered them a scarecrow story, put up by mothers. But it appears they exist, despite me.

The murdered girl troubles me. After the first shock, nobody at school says much about her. Even Cordelia does not want to talk about her. It's as if this girl has done something shameful, herself, by being murdered. So she goes to that place where all things go that are not mentionable, taking her blond hair, her angora sweater, her ordinariness with her. She stirs up something, like dead leaves. I think of a doll I had once, with white fur on the border of her skirt. I remember being afraid of this doll. I haven't thought about that in years.


Cordelia and I sit at the dining table doing our homework. I am helping Cordelia, I'm trying to explain the atom to her, but she's refusing to take it seriously. The diagram of the atom has a nucleus, with electrons circling it. The nucleus looks like a raspberry, the electrons and their rings look like the planet Saturn. Cordelia sticks her tongue in the side of her mouth and frowns at the nucleus. "This looks like a raspberry," she says.

"Cordelia," I say. "The exam is tomorrow." Molecules do not interest her, she doesn't seem able to grasp the Periodic Table. She refuses to understand mass, she refuses to understand why atom bombs blow up. There's a picture of one blowing up in the Physics book, mushroom cloud and all. To her it's just another bomb. "Mass and energy are different aspects," I tell her. "That's why E=mc2."

"It would be easier if Percy the Prude weren't such a creep," she says. Percy the Prude is the Physics teacher. He has red hair that stands up at the top like Woody Woodpecker's, and he lisps.

Stephen walks through the room, looks over our shoulders. "So they're still teaching you kiddie Physics," he says indulgently. "They've still got the atom looking like a raspberry."

"See?" says Cordelia.

I feel subverted. "This is the atom that's going to be on the exam, so you'd better learn it," I say to Cordelia. To Stephen I say, "So what does it really look like?"

"A lot of empty space," Stephen says. "It's hardly there at all. It's just a few specks held in place by forces. At the subatomic level, you can't even say that matter exists. You can only say that it has a tendency to exist."

"You're confusing Cordelia," I say. Cordelia has lit a cigarette and is looking out the window, where several squirrels are chasing one another around the lawn. She is paying no attention to any of this.

Stephen considers Cordelia. "Cordelia has a tendency to exist."


Cordelia doesn't go out with boys the way I do, although she does go out with them. Once in a while I arrange double dates, through whatever boy I'm going out with. Cordelia's date is always a boy of lesser value, and she knows this and refuses to approve of him.

Cordelia can't seem to decide what kind of boy she really does approve of. The ones with haircuts like my brother's are drips and pills, but the ones with ducktails are sleazy greaseballs, although sexy. She thinks the boys I go out wiht, who go no further than crewcuts, are too juvenile for her. She's abandoned her ultrared lipstick and nail polish and her turned-up collars and has taken up moderate pinks and going on diets, and grooming. This is what magazines call it: Good Grooming, as in horses. Her hair is shorter, her wardrobe more subdued.

But something about her makes boys uneasy. It's as if she's too attentive to them, too polite, studied and overdone. She laughs when she thinks they've made a joke and says, "That's very witty, Stan." She will say this even when they haven't intended to be funny, and then they aren't sure whether or not she's making fun of them. Sometimes she is, sometimes she isn't. Inappropriate words slip out of her. After we've finished our hamburgers and fries she turns to the boys and says brightly, "Are you sufficiently sophonsified?" and they gape at her. They are not the kind of boys who would have napkin rings.

She asks them leading questions, tries to draw them into conversation, as a grown-up would do, not appearing to know that the best thing, with them, is to let them exist in their own silences, to look at them only out of the corners of the eyes. Cordelia tries to look at them sincerely, head-on; they are blinded by the glare, and freeze like rabbits in a headlight. When she's in the back seat with them I can tell, from the breathing and gasps, that she's going too far in that direction as well. "She's kind of strange, your friend," the boys say to me, but they can't say why. I decide it's because she has no brother, only sisters. She thinks that what matters with boys is what you say; she's never learned the intricacies, the nuances of male silence.

But I know Cordelia isn't really interested in anything the boys themselves have to say, because she tells me so. Mostly she thinks they're dim. Her attempts at conversation with them are a performance, an imitation. Her laugh, when she's with them, is refined and low, like a woman's laugh on the radio, except when she forgets herself. Then it's too loud. She's mimicking something, something in her head, some role or image that only she can see.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

April 23, 2007

The Books: "Cat's Eye" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n30451.jpgHere is a third excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood. Shivers. This section gives me shivers. I honestly don't know if I need to read this book again, even though I keep thinking it would be good to re-visit it. Maybe not. Whatever my response was to the book - it was primal.

Elaine's main friends are Carol and Grace. Then a new girl named Cordelia moves to town. She is smarter, meaner, she knows things (like about menstruation and stuff), and she very quickly becomes Top Dog. Carol and Grace cave to her power - it is just so obvious that they need to succumb or get out of her way. With Elaine it is more complicated.

This section - and the way it is written - really frightened me when I first read it. "The point at which I lost power." Shivers .....

Excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood.

Black cats and paper pumpkins gather on the school windows. On Halloween Grace wears an ordinary lady's dress, Carol a fairy outfit, Cordelia a clown suit. I wear a sheet, because that's what there is. We walk from door to door, our brown paper grocery bags filling with candy apples, popcorn balls, peanut brittle, chanting at each door: Shell out! Shell out! The witches are out! In the front windows, on the porches, the large orange heads of the pumpkins float, glowing, unbodied. The next day we take our pumpkins to the wooden bridge and throw them over the edge, watching them smash open on the ground below. Now it's November.


Cordelia is digging a hole, in her back garden where there's no sod. She has started several holes before, but they have been unsuccessful, they have struck rock. This one is more promising. She digs with a pointed shovel; sometimes we help her. It isn't a small hole but a large, square hole; it gets deeper and deeper as the dirt piles up around it. She says we can use it for a clubhouse, we can put chairs down in the hole and sit on them. When it's deep enough she wants to cover it over with boards, for a roof. She's already collected the boards, scrap boards from the two new houses they're building near her house. She's very wrapped up in this hole, it's hard to get her to play anything else.


On the darkneing streets the poppies blossom, for Remembrance Day. They're made of fuzzy cloth, red like valentine hearts, with a black spot and a pin through the center. We wear them on our coats. We memorize a poem about them:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place.

At eleven o'clock we stand beside our desks in the dust motes of the weak November sunshine for the three minutes of silence. Miss Lumley grim at the front of the room, heads bowed, eyes closed, listening to the hush and rustle of our own bodies and the booming of the guns in the distance. We are the dead. I keep my eyes closed, trying to feel pious and sorry for the dead soldiers, who died for us, whose faces I can't imagine. I have never known any dead people.


Cordelia and Grace and Carol take me to the deep hole in Cordelia's backyard. I'm wearing a black dress and a cloak, from the dress-up cupboard. I'm supposed to be Mary, Queen of Scots, headless already. They pick me up by the underarms and the feet and lower me into the hole. Then they arrange the boards over the top. The daylight air disappears, and there's the sound of dirt hitting the boards, shovelful after shovelful. Inside the hole it's dim and cold and damp and smells like toad burrows.

Up above, outside, I can hear their voices, and then I can't hear them. I lie there wondering when it will be time to come out. Nothing happens. When I was put in the hole I knew it was a game; now I know it is not one. I feel sadness, a sense of betrayal. Then I feel the darkness pressing down on me; then terror.

When I remember back to this time in the hole, I can't really remember what happened to me while I was in it. I can't remember what I really felt. Maybe nothing happened, maybe these emotions I remember are not the right emotions. I know the others came and got me out after a while, and the game or some other game continued. I have no image of myself in the hole; only a black square filled with nothing, a square like a door. Perhaps the square is empty, perhaps it's only a marker, a time marker that separates the time before it from the time after. The point at which I lost power. Was I crying when they took me out of the hole? It seems likely. On the other hand I doubt it. But I can't remember.


Shortly after this I became nine. I can remember my other birthdays, later and earlier ones, but not this one. There must have been a party, my first real one, because who would have come to the others? There must have been a cake, with candles and wishes and a quarter and a dime wrapped in wax paper hidden between the layers for someone to chip a tooth on, and presents. Cordelia would have been there, and Grace and Carol. These things must have occurred, but the only trace they've left on me has been a vague horror of birthday parties, not other people's, my own. I think of pastel icing, pink candles burning in the pale November afternoon light, and there is a sense of shame and failure.

I close my eyes, wait for pictures. I need to fill in the black square of time, go back to see what's in it. It's as if I vanish at that moment and reappear later, but different, not knowing why I have changed. If I could even see the undersides of the boards above my head it might help. I close my eyes, wait for pictures.

At first there's nothing; just a receding darkness, like a tunnel. But after a while something begins to form: a thicket of dark-green leaves with purple blossoms, dark purple, a sad rich color, and clusters of red berries, translucent as water. The vines are intergrown, so tangled over the other plants they're like a hedge. A smell of loam and another, pungent scent rises from among the leaves, a smell of old things, dense and heavy, forgotten. There's no wind but the leaves are in motion, there's a ripple, as of unseen cats, or as if the leaves are moving by themselves.

Nightshade, I think. It's a dark word. There is no nightshade in November. The nightshade is a common weed. You pull it out of the garden and throw it away. The nightshade plant is related to the potato, which accounts for the similar shape of the flowers. Potatoes too can be poisonous, if left in the sun to turn green. This is the sort of thing it's my habit to know.

I can tell it's the wrong memory. But the flowers, the smell, the movement of the leaves persist, rich, mesmerizing, desolating, infused with grief.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 22, 2007

The Books: "Cat's Eye" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n30451.jpgHere is a second excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood.

Grace Smeath's mother (the one with the bad heart) is one of Atwood's most haunting characterizations. I remember my response to her when I first read the book (my only time reading the book) ... I was scared of her. She was so glum, so grotesque - Atwood really points up the disgusting nature of her appearance ... she was just a BLANK. Now what is interesting about the book (and someday I really have to go back and read it) is that ... Atwood describes this person from a child's point of view. Elaine is our "way in" - so we see the world through her eyes. We are afraid of Grace Smeath's dumpy unsmiling mother. She seems like every humorless grownup we have ever known. But then, at some point ... as Elaine gets older, as Elaine becomes an adult - and there's that whole section of the book where everything washes away, and she becomes suicidal - a terrifying section ... anyway, Elaine grows older, has disappointments, setbacks - she loses things, and loses BIG ... and at some point, as an adult woman, she asks the question that she could never have asked as a child: What had happened to Grace Smeath's mother to make her so unhappy? This is the empathic response. This is when you truly become human. When you can look at someone who seems incomprehensible, vehemently unpleasant ... and wonder: Why? But Elaine still has this hatred towards her ... perhaps that is the "no no no that has nothing to do with me" kneejerk response of true identification. She sees herself in Grace Smeath's mother, and it represents everything she despises.

Grace Smeath's mother was a woman. Elaine is a woman, too. There is a similarity of experience with all of us ... that's what the sisterhood is all about. Elaine can no longer put Grace Smeath's mother in a box, labeled: Mean Lady. She feels compassion ... she feels indentification ... she looks back on the image of Grace Smeath's mother lying all day on a couch ... and thinks: Things must have been really awful for that woman.

And I guess as I read the book - I moved from disgust and fear to identification. I could be Grace Smeath's mother. I could be that prone woman, laid low by ... a crushing depression ... unable to cope with life, using the excuse of a bad heart to get me out of living.

It's very moving. But our first meeting with this woman has none of that empathy. Because Elaine is just a little girl.

Excerpt # 2 from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood.

It's the darkest time of the year. Even in the daytime it seems dark; and at night, when the lights are on, this darkness pervades everything, like a fog. Outside there are only a few streetlights, and they're far apart and not very bright. The lamps in people's houses cast a yellowish light, not cold and greenish but a buttery dim yellow with a tinge of brown. The colors of things in houses have a darkness mixed into them: maroon, mushroom beige, a muted green, a dusty rose. These colors look a little dirty, like the squares on a paint box when you forget to rinse the brush.

We have a maroon chesterfield which has come out of storage, with an oriental-style maroon and purple rug in front of it. We have a tri-light floor lamp. The air in the evening lamplight is coagulated, like a custard thickening; heavier sediments of light collect in the corners of the living room. The drapes are kept closed at night, folds and folds of cloth drawn against the winter, hoarding the dim heavy light, keeping it in.

In the light I spread the evening paper out on the polished hardwood floor and rest on my knees and elbows, reading the comics. In the comics there are people with round holes for eyes, others who can hypnotize you instantly, others with secret identities, others who can stretch their faces into any shape at all. Around me is the scet of newsprint and floor wax, the bureau drawer smell of my itchy stockings mingled with that of grimy knees, the scratchy hot smell of wool plaid and the cat box aroma of cotton underpants. Behind me the radio plays square dance music from the Maritimes, Don Messer and His Islanders, in preparation for the six o'clock news. The radio is of dark varnished wood with a single green eye that moes along the dial as you turn the knob. Between the stations this eye makes eerie noises from outer space. Radio waves, says Stephen.

***

Often, now, Grace Smeath asks me over to her house after school without asking Carol. She tells Carol there's a reason why she isn't invited: it's because of her mother. Her mother is tired, so Grace can only have one best friend over that day.

Grace's mother has a bad heart. Grace doesn't treat this as a secret, as Carol would. She says it unemotionally, politely, as if requesting you to wipe your feet on the mat; but also smugly, as if she has something, some privilege or moral superiority that the two of us don't share. It's the attitude she takes toward the rubber plant that stands on the landing halfway up her stairs. This is the only plant in Grace's house, and we aren't allowed to touch it. It's very old and has to be wiped off leaf by leaf with milk. Mrs. Smeath's bad heart is like that. It's because of this heart that we have to tiptoe, walk quietly, stifle our laughter, do what Grace says. Bad hearts have their uses; even I can see that.

Every afternoon Mrs. Smeath has to take a rest. She does this, not in her bedroom, but on the chesterfield in the living room, stretched out with her shoes off and a knitted afghan covering her. That is how she is always to be found when we go there to play after school. We come in through the side door, up the steps to the kitchen, trying to be as quiet as possible, and into the dining room as far as the double French doors, where we peer in through the glass panes, trying to see whether her eyes are open or closed. She's never asleep. But there's always the possibility - put into our heads by Grace, in the same factual way - that on any given day she may be dead.

Mrs. Smeath is not like Mrs. Campbell. For instance, she has no twin sets, and views them with contempt. I know this because once, when Carol was bragging about her mother's twin sets, Mrs. Smeath said, "Is that so," not as a question but as a way of making Carol shut up. She doesn't wear lipstick or face powder, even when she goes out. She has big bones, square teeth witih little gaps between them so that you can see each tooth distinctly, skin that looks rubbed raw as if scrubbed with a potato brush. Her face is rounded and bland, with that white skin of Grace's, though without the freckles. She wears glasses like Grace's too, but hers have steel rims instead of brown ones. Her hair is parted down the middle and graying at the temples, braided and wound over her head into a flat hair crown crisscrossed with hairpins.

She wears print housedresses, not only in the mornings but most of the time. Over the dresses she wears bibbed aprons that sag at the bosom and make it look as if she doesnt' have two breasts but only one, a single breast that goes all the way across her front and continues down until it joins her waist. She wears lisle stockings with seams, which make her legs look stuffed and sewn up the backs. She wears brown Oxfords. Sometimes, instead of the stockings, she has thin cotton socks, above which her legs rise white and sparsely haired, like a woman's mustache. She has a mustache too, though not very much of one, just a sprinkling of hairs around the corners of the mouth. She smiles a lot, with her lips closed over her large teeth; but, like Grace, she does not laugh.

She has big hands, knuckly and red from the wash. There's a lot of wash, because Grace has two younger sisters who get her skirts and blouses and also her underpants passed down to them. I'm used to getting my brother's jerseys, but not his underpants. It's these underpants, thin and gray with use, that hang dripping on the line over our heads as we sit in Grace's cellar pretending to be schoolchildren.


Before Valentine's Day we have to cut out hearts of red construction paper at school and decorate them with pieces of paper doily to stick on the tall thin windows. While I am cutting mine I think about Mrs. Smeath's bad heart. What exactly is wrong with it? I picture it hidden, underneath her woolen afghan and the billow of her apron bib, pumping in the thick fleshy darkness of the inside of her body: something taboo, intimate. It would be red, but with a reddish-black patch on it, like rot in an apple or a bruise. It hurts when I think about it. A little sharp wince of pain goes through me, as it did when I watched my brother cut his finger once on a pane of glass. But the bad heart is also compelling. It's a curiosity, a deformity. A horrible treasure.

Day after day I press my nose against the glass of the French doors, trying to see if Mrs. Smeath is still alive. This is how I will see her forever: lying unmoving, like something in a museum, with her head on the antimacassar pinned to the arm of the chesterfield, a bed pillow under her neck, the rubber plant on the landing visible behind her, turning her head to look at us, her scrubbed face, without her glasses, white and strangely luminouse in the dim space, like a phosphorescent mushroom. She is ten years younger than I am now. Why do I hate her so much? Why do I care, in any way, what went on in her head?

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

April 21, 2007

The Books: "Cat's Eye" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n30451.jpgHere is an excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood. I've actually been dreading this moment, because I love this book so much. I don't know how to talk about it. I'm also going to post multiple excerpts because there is no way I can pick just one. This book is a tour de force. I have a feeling that when Atwood passes on, she will be known mainly as "the author of The Handmaid's Tale and other books ..." Maybe I'm wrong about that, I don't know - but to my taste, this is her greatest book. Handmaid's Tale was a scary book, an important book, a "zeitgeist moment" book - it tapped into fears that still exist today and will continue to exist tomorrow, as long as there are fundamentalists who want to curb the lives of women. But I wouldn't call it a "great" book. Cat's Eye is. God, is it great. But how do I talk about it?? I had (and still have) an intensely personal response to this book - because although Atwood is writing about a time that pretty much pre-dates me - she is writing about stuff that is universal. Before Mean Girls, there was Margaret Atwood. But that's minimizing this book. To say what it's about - is to do it a disservice. It's about so many things. And on another level: the writing!! Atwood warms up a bit here - and also parts of this book are truly funny. She has such a good eye for detail, for social mores - ridiculous and not ... her comments on the Toronto "art" scene (sorry - those quotations are necessary - and I'm just picking up on Atwood's gentle mockery) - the feeling of Toronto not being important or cosmopolitan enough ... and "trying too hard" - Atwood describes that exquisitely.

Like many of her books - this is not a strictly linear narrative. We go back and forth in time Elaine Risley is a middle-aged painter, who has come back to Toronto to attend a retrospective of her work at a prominent gallery. It's a big deal for her, a big moment in her career - the acknowledgement of her country for her art. So there's THAT part of the story - the present-day. Elaine preparing for her event. And then we go back in time. And the entire book is a sweeping saga of Elaine's life - and this is Atwood's most autobiographical novel. Her father was an entomologist - and Atwood spent the majority of her childhood traveling through the wildest reaches of Canada with her parents, living in log cabins in the middle of the woods - as her father did his work. It was not a "civilized" world ... she grew up wild, a nature girl ... so her confrontation with civilization was that much more vivid. She didn't "fit". She wasn't "domesticated", like other little girls. She loved bugs, and moss, and creepy crawly things under rocks, she loved mud, and freezing cold baths in remote lakes ... Her confrontation with the world of girls, which came later, was jarring. Cat's Eye is about that. Elaine's family moves to Toronto when she's about 8 or 9 ... and she says in the book "Until then I was happy." She befriends a couple of other little girls ... and they pal around ... and the main one, the main girl, is Cordelia.

In the present-day sections of the book - we hear about Cordelia. There is unfinished business with this old childhood friend. We get the sense that Elaine and Cordelia have lost touch. But why?

Back and forth, back and forth ... the Cordelia story comes out in patches, spots ... By the end of the book, we are drained. Devastated. Hopeful? Maybe. Atwood leaves it up to us.

Sorry to be vague - this book is so important to me. I'll think more about it, and try to be clearer about it.

Here's an excerpt in the beginning of the book. Elaine is in Toronto, it's one of the present-day sections ... everywhere she goes, she is haunted by ghosts. Herself as a youngster, her friends, and also: the old Toronto, the prim vicious small town she once knew ... Now it's gleaming and cosmopolitan ... but underneath that surface, Elaine knows nothing has changed. At this point in the book - we do not know who Cordelia is. We have not "met" her in the past sections of the narrative ... she is a mystery. We are not set up for her. But she is here, nonetheless.

Excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood.

I get up off the duvet, feeling as if I haven't slept. I riffle through the herbal tea bags in the kitchenette, Lemon Mist, Morning Thunder, and bypass them in favor of some thick, jolting, poisonous coffee. I find myself standing in the middle of the main room, not knowing exactly how I got in here from the kitchenette. A little time jump, a little static on the screen, probably jet lag: up too late at night, drugged in the morning. Early Alzheimer's.

I sit at the window, drinking my coffee, biting my fingers, looking down the five stories. From this angle the pedestrians appear squashed from above, like deformed children. All around are flat-roofed, boxy warehouse buildings, and beyond them the flat railroad lands where the trains used to shunt back and forth, once the only entertainment available here on Sundays. Beyond that is flat Lake Ontario, a zero at the beginning and a zero at the end, slate-gray and brimming with venoms. Even the rain from it is carcinogenic.

I wash in Jon's tiny, greasy bathroom, resisting the medicine cabinet. The bathroom is smeared with fingerprints and painted dingy white, not the most flattering light. Jon wouldn't feel like an artist without a certain amount of dinge around. I squint into the mirror, preparing my face: with my contact lenses in I'm too close to the mirror, without them I'm too far away. I've taken to doing these mirror things with one lens in my mouth, glassy and thin like the tag end of a lemon drop. I could choke on it by mistake, an undignified way to die. I should get bifocals. But then I'd look like an old biddy.


I pull on my powder-blue sweatsuit, my disguise as a non-artist, and go down the four flights of stairs, tryiing to look brisk and purposeful. I could be a businesswoman out jogging. I could be a bank manager, on her day off. I head north, then east along Queen Street, which is another place we never used to go. It was rumored to be the haunt of grubby drunks, rubby-dubs we called them; they were said to drink rubbing alcohol and sleep in telephone booths and vomit on your shoes in the streetcar. But now it's art galleries and bookshops, boutiques filled with black clothing and weird footgear, the saw-toothed edge of trend.

I decide I'll go and have a look at the gallery, which I have never seen because all of this has been arranged by phone and mail. I don't intend to go in, make myself known, not yet. I just want to look at it from the outside. I'll walk past, glance casually, pretending to be a housewife, a tourist, someone window-shopping. Galleries are frightening places, places of evaluation, of judgment. I have to work up to them.

But before I reach the gallery I come to a wall of plywood, concealing a demolition. On it is spray-painted, in defiance of squeaky-clean Toronto: It's Bacon or Me, Babe. And underneath: What Is This Bacon and Where Can I Get Some? Beside this there's a poster. Or not a poster, more like a flier: a violent shade of purple, with green accents and black lettering: RISLEY IN RETROSPECT, it says; just the last name, like a boy. The name is mine and so is the face, more or less. It's the photo I sent the gallery. Except that now I have a mustache.

Whoever drew this mustache knew what he was doing. Or she: nothing precludes that. It's a curled, flowing mustache, like a cavalier's, with a graceful goatee to match. It goes with my hair.

I suppose I should be worried about this mustache. Is it just doodling, or is it political commentary, an act of aggression? Is it more like Kilroy Was Here or more like Fuck Off? I can remember drawing such mustaches myself, and the spite that went into them, the desire to ridicule, to deflate, and the feeling of power. It was defacing, it was taking away somebody's face. If I were younger I'd resent it.

As it is, I study the mustache and think: That looks sort of good. The mustache is like a costume. I examine it from several angles, as if I'm considering buying one for myself. It casts a different light. I think about men and their facial hair, and the opportunities for disguise and concealment they have always at their disposal. I think about mustache-covered men, and about how naked they must feel with the thing shaved off. How diminished. A lot of people would look better in a mustache.

Then, suddenly, I feel wonder. I have achieved, finally, a face that a mustache can be drawn on, a face that attracts mustaches. A public face, a face worth defacing. This is an accomplishment. I have made something of myself, something or other, after all.

I wonder if Cordelia will see this poster. I wonder if she'll recognize me, despite the mustache. Maybe she'll come to the opening. She'll walk through the door and I will turn, wearing black as a painter should, looking successful, holding a glass of only moderately bad wine. I won't spill a drop.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack

April 20, 2007

The Books: "Bluebeard's Egg" - 'Two Stories About Emma' (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

0385491042.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg.gifHere is an excerpt from another story from Bluebeard's Egg - by Margaret Atwood. This one is called "Two Stories About Emma". I won't preface this one. I'll just say that this is the kind of writing I love. It just satisfies me.

Excerpt from another story from Bluebeard's Egg - by Margaret Atwood. "Two Stories About Emma".

You may think from what I've said that Emma is a sort of tomboy, willing to exchange cigarettes and backslaps with men, but otherwise impervious to them. On the contrary, Emma, although tall, is always falling in love, a venture that for her seems to be a lot like skydiving: you leap impulsively into thin air, and trust that your parachute will open.

The men she falls in love with are usually married, and awful as well, or this is what Emma's friends think. We try to produce nice men for her, men with whom she could settle down, as she keeps saying with what may be fake wistfulness that she would like to do. But these kindly or courteous or even solvent men don't interest Emma. She wants exceptional men, she says, men she can look up to, and so she adores, one after another, men who have excelled in their fields, frequently through ruthless egoism, back-stabbing and what Emma calls dedication, which often means that when the chips are down they have no real time for anyone else, including Emma. Why she can't spot this kind of man a mile off, especially after all that practice, I don't know. But as I've said, she's fearless. The rest of us have more self-protection.

At this time of her life - the world-travel time - Emma was in love with Robbie, who had been her professor at college. Robbie was twenty years older than Emma, a stocky red-bearded Scot whose grumpiness was legendary. Emma mistook it for shyness. She thought he was more spiritually mature than she was, and therefore difficult to understand. She also thought that Robbie, sooner or later, would realize that Emma, and not his wife of fifteen years, mother of his two sons, was his true soul mate. This was towards the beginning of Emma's career. Later she dropped the marriage motif, or at least did not say so much about it. But the men did not become any less awful.

Robbie was a leading man in his field, which was not large. He was an archaeologist, specializing in burials. In fact he was writing a book on comparative tombs, which took him here and there about the world. This was convenient for Emma. Robbie was never averse to having her join him, as long as she paid her own way. Among Robbie's other sins, the rest of us felt, was his exploitation of the liberated woman theme. He was always lecturing Emma about how she could be more liberated. But Emma loved him despite this.

Posted by sheila Permalink

April 19, 2007

The Books: "Bluebeard's Egg" - 'Significant Moments in the Life of my Mother' (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

0385491042.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg.gifHere is an excerpt from Bluebeard's Egg - by Margaret Atwood. Another story collection - this came out in 1983. I'm trying to do this chronologically but I messed up. This one came out before Handmaid's Tale. I LOVE this short story collection. Every story is a little Atwood-ian world, perfectly expressed ... each one different - all of them (of course) kind of chilling. Atwood has that effect. She's a "chilly mortal". She doesn't seem to be using chilliness as a device (at least not until recently - when her books seem to be imitating herself - my opinion) ... it seems to be the truest expression of her artistic sensibility. That's why it's good. I can think of other writers who either imitate Atwood - or who try to get that cold clear ruthlessness into their writing ... but it doesn't come naturally. It's a facsimile, it's pretentious. Atwood never comes off that way.

The first story in the collection is called "Significant Moments in the Life of my Mother". The narrator's mother loves to tell stories - and so, from a perspective of distance (is the mother now dead? It seems like she is) - the narrator relates her mother's tales. But there's something upsetting here - something between the lines ... The narrator doesn't know what it is exactly, because her mother wouldn't divulge it. The mother likes to tell stories about fun she had, funny moments - she casts herself as a clown, a clutz, someone who makes inappropriate scenes ... But the narrator wonders what else is there, what did she NOT tell? What did her mother's smile hide?

Here's an excerpt. This passage haunts me - I haven't read this collection in years but I remember vividly the story of the cat. Maybe because I know I've had an experience like this in my own life - not exactly, of course - but the feeling is what I'm talking about. Shivers. One of the things Atwood is driving at here in this story (and she gets into it in this excerpt) - is that the generation gap between these two women, mother and daughter, is so huge (as it is quite often) - but here in particular, because the narrator came of age in the 70s - when suddenly women could talk to each other with more openness and honesty. What was it like for you? How did you feel? The ugly stories were just as welcome as the happy ones. It was part of feminist movement - one of the most important parts, I'd say. (Atwood goes way more into this in Cat's Eye.) Reducing the isolation between women. So although the daughter senses ugliness in her mother's stories - (an ugliness that she sees as the truth) - it's left unsaid. This leaves the daughter feeling lonely, isolated ... she cannot really know her mother. Anyway - here's the story with the cat. You'll see what I mean.

excerpt from Bluebeard's Egg - "Significant Moments in the Life of my Mother" - by Margaret Atwood.

At the age of seventeen my mother went to the Normal School in Truro. This name - "Normal School" - once held a certain magic for me. I thought it had something to do with learning to be normal, which possibly it did, because really it was where you used to go to learn how to be a schoolteacher. Subsequently my mother taught in a one-room school house not far from her home. She rode her horse to and from the school house every day, and saved up the money she earned and sent herrself to university with it. My grandfather wouldn't send her: he said she was too frivolous-minded. She liked ice-skating and dancing too much for his taste.

At Normal School my mother boarded with a family that contained several sons in more or less the same age group as the girl boarders. They all are around a huge dining-room table (which I pictured as being of dark wood, with heavy carved legs, but covered always with a white linen tablecloth), with the mother and father presiding, one at each end. I saw them both as large and pink and beaming.

"The boys were great jokers," says my mother. "They were always up to something." This was desirable in boys: to be great jokers, to be always up to something. My mother adds a key sentence: "We had a lot of fun."

Having fun has always been high on my mother's agenda. She has as much fun as possible, but what she means by this phrase cannot be understood without making an adjustment, an allowance for the great gulf across which this phrase must travel before it reaches us. It comes from another world, which, like the stars that originally sent out the light we see hesitating in the sky above us these nights, may be or is already gone. It is possible to reconstruct the facts of this world - the furniture, the clothing, the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the jugs and basins and even the chamber pots in the bedrooms, but not the emotions, not with the same exactness. So much that is now known and felt must be excluded.

This was a world in which guileless flirtation was possible, because there were many things that were simply not done by nice girls, and more girls were nice then. To fall from niceness was to fall not only from grace: sexual acts, by girls at any rate, had financial consequences. Life was more joyful and innocent thn, and at the same time permeated with guilt and terror, or at least the occasions for them, on the most daily level. It was like the Japanese haiku: a limited form, rigid in its parameters, within which an astonishing freedom was possible.

There are photographs of my mother at this time, taken with three or four other girls, linked arm in arm or with their arms thrown jestingly around each other's necks. Behind them, beyond the sea or the hills or whatever is in the background, is a world already hurtling towards ruin, unknown to them: the theory of relativity has been discovered, acid is accumulating at the roots of trees, the bull-frogs are doomed. But they smile with something that from this distance you could almost call gallantry, their right legs thrust forward in parody of a chorus line.

One of the great amusements for the girl boarders and the sons of the family was amateur theatre. Young people - they were called "young people" - frequently performed in plays which were put on in the church basement. My mother was a regular actor. (I have a stack of the scripts somewhere about the house, yellowing little booklets with my mother's parts checked in pencil. They are all comedies, and all impenetrable.) "There was no television then," says my mother. "You made your own fun."

For one of these plays a cat was required, and my mother and one of the sons borrowed the family cat. They put it into a canvas bag and drove to the rehearsal (there were cars by then), with my mother holding the cat on her lap. The cat, which must have been frightened, wet itself copiously, through the canvas bag and all over my mother's skirt. At the same time it made the most astonishingly bad smell.

"I was ready to sink through the floorboards," says my mother. "But what could I do? All I could do was sit there. In those days things like that" -- she means cat pee, or pee of any sort -- "were not mentioned." She means in mixed company.

I think of my mother driven through the night, skirts dripping, overcome with shame, the young man beside her staring straight ahead, pretending not to notice anything. They both feel that this act of unmentionable urination has been done, not by the cat, but by my mother. And so they continue, in a straight line that takes them over the Atlantic and past the curvature of the earth, out through the moon's orbit and into the dark reaches beyond.

Meanwhile, back on earth, my mother says: "I had to throw the skirt out. It was a good skirt, too, but nothing could get rid of the smell."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3)

April 18, 2007

The Books: "Dancing Girls" - 'When It Happens' (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

c5974.jpgHere is an excerpt from Dancing Girls - by Margaret Atwood. This is her earliest short story collection - I think it was published in 1979 ... and then re-issued after the huge international success of Handmaid's Tale. I read all of the stories (she's wonderful in the shorter format) - but it was years ago. I'll just quote from the one that really burned itself into my memory - it's called "When It Happens". I highly recommend this short story collection, if you haven't read it already. They're raw, many of them - the young writer - the young angry writer - she's in great form here. Where Edible Woman and Surfacing fail - these short stories blaze with success. "When It Happens" is fascinating - just in terms of her use of verb tenses ... because it is disorienting ... (and it's meant to be disorienting.) Is this GOING to happen? Has it already happened? Or is it just a fantasy of a bored housewife? Where are we in time?? Atwood does not mean to answer those questions definitively. Because when we go off into fantasies ... they are real. I have fantasized many things in my life - I have lived the life of an international spy, I've lived the life of an aviatrix in the early days of flying, I have lived the life of a harem-member in medieval Arabia, I have lived the life of a martini-drinking bored 1950s housewife, I have lived the life of a serial killer. When I'm in my fantasies, I don't have the rational part of my mind going, "Now ... please remember that none of this is real ..." No. Because what good is a fantasy if you can't lose yourself in it? "When It Happens" occurs on multiple levels of consciousness: Mrs. Burridge (we never know her first name, so there's already a formality here in the writing) is pickling her tomatoes for the winter. She is taken up wtih her task. The story opens with the details of this activity. But soon ... we become aware that something else is going on ... but is it real? There has been an apocalyptic event. A military coup. A nuclear blast. A war. Something unforeseen and terrifying. Soon everything will change. Mrs. Burridge, as she pickles her tomatoes, wishes that her husband had taught her how to shoot their gun. She feels she might need to go underground for a while. She seems an unlikely revolutionary. She's domestic, calm, a busy hausfrau ... but ... again, we don't know: is it a fantasy? Is she imagining an alternative life for herself? One where she wears a black bandana around her head, and camo-pants, and lives in the woods, on the run from the authorities? Or ... is this actually occurring?

I love this story. It's my favorite of the collection. Here's an excerpt. You'll see what I mean about the tenses.

Excerpt from Dancing Girls - 'When It Happens' - by Margaret Atwood.

Nothing has changed outside the window, so she turns away and sits down at the kitchen table to make out her shopping list. Tomorrow is their day for going into town. She tries to plan the day so she can sit down at intervals; otherwise her feet start swelling up. That began with Sarah and got worse with the other two children and it's never really gone away. All her life, ever since she got married, she has made lists of things that have to be bought, sewed, planted, cooked, stored; she already has her list made for next Christmas, all the names and the gift she will buy for each, and the list of what she needs for Christmas dinner. But she can't seem to get interested in it, it's too far away. She can't believe in a distant future that is orderly like the past, she no longer seems to have the energy; it's as if she is saving it up for when she will have to use it.

She is even having trouble with the shopping list. Instead of concentrating on the paper - she writes on the backs of the used-up days off the page-a-day calendar Frank gives her every New Year's - she is gazing around the kitchen, looking at all the things she will have to leave behind when she goes. That will be the hardest part. Her mother's china, her silver, even though it is an old-fashioned pattern and the silver is wearing off, the egg timer in the shape of a chicken Sarah gave her when she was twelve, the ceramic salt and pepper shakers, green horses with perforated heads, that one of the other children brought back from the Ex. She thinks of walking up the stairs, the sheets folded in the chest, the towels stacked neatly on the shelves, the beds made, the quilt that was her grandmother's, it makes her want to cry. On her bureau, the wedding picture, herself in a shiny satin gown (the satin was a mistake, it emphasized her hips), Frank in the suit he has not worn since except to funerals, his hair cut too short on the sides and a surprising tuft at the top, like a woodpecker's. The children when they were babies. She thinks of her girls now and hopes they will not have babies; it is no longer the right time for it.

Mrs. Burridge wishes someone would be more precise, so she could make better plans. Everyone knows something is going to happen, you can tell by reading the newspapers and watching the television, but nobody is sure what it will be, nobody can be exact. She has her own ideas about it though. At first it will simply become quieter. She will have an odd feeling that something is wrong but it will be a few days before she is able to pin it down. Then she will notice that the planes are no longer flying over on their way to the Malton Airport, and that the noise from the highway two miles away, which is quite distinct when the leaves are off the trees, has almost disappeared. The television will be non-committal about it; in fact, the television, which right now is filled with bad news, of strikes, shortages, famines, layoffs and price increases, will become sweet-tempered and placating, and long intervals of classical music will appear on the radio. About this time Mrs. Burridge will realize that the news is being censored as it was during the war.

Mrs. Burridge is not positive about what will happen next; that is, she knows what will happen but she is not positive about the order. She expects it will be the gas and oil: the oil delivery man will simply not turn up at his usual time,a nd one morning the corner filling station wil be closed. Just that, no explanations, because of course they - she does not know who "they" are, but she has always believed in their existence - they do not want people to panic. They are trying to keep things looking normal, possibly they have already started on this program and that is in fact why things still do look normal. Luckily she and Frank have the diesel fuel tank in the shed, it is three-quarters full, and they don't use the filling station anyway, they have their own gas pump. She has Frank bring in the old wood stove, the one they stored under the barn when they had the furnace and the electricity put in, and for once she blesses Frank's habit of putting things off. She was after him for years to take that stove to the dump. He cuts down the dead elms, finally, and they burn them in the stove.

The telephone wires are blown down in a storm and no one comes to fix them; or this is what Mrs. Burridge deduces. At any rate, the phone goes dead. Mrs. Burridge doesn't particularly mind, she never liked using the phone much anyway, but it does make her feel cut off.

About now men begin to appear on the back road, the gravel road that goes past the gate, walking usually by themselves, sometimes in pairs. They seem to be heading north. Most of them are young, in their twenties, Mrs. Burridge would guess. They are not dressed like the men around here. It's been so long since she has seen anyone walking along this road that she becomes alarmed. She begins leaving the dogs off their chains, she has kept them chained at night ever since one of them bit a Jehovah's Witness early one Sunday morning. Mrs. Burridge doesn't hold with the Witnesses - she is United - but she respects their persevernce, at least they have the courage of their convictions which is more than you can say for some members of her own church, and she always buys a Watchtower. Maybe they have been right all along.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

April 17, 2007

The Books: "The Handmaid's Tale" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

038549081X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgHere is an excerpt from The Handmaid's Tale - by Margaret Atwood. This is the book that put Margaret Atwood on the map. It was also my introduction to her. It was published in 1985 but I didn't read it until a couple of years later. I remember I read it on my brother's recommendation. He had read it in an English class in college - and was raving about it to me. I also remember that he and I stood in the dining room of Mitchell's house in Cranston during some late-night party, and he was talking about the book to me and how I HAD to read it. I did and for a while there it changed my life. I bounced back to my old self eventually - but it rocked my world view. It made me angry in such a universal way - that anger threatened to take over my entire personality. I trembled with anger. That's how I feel reading Anne Frank's diary, too - it's a rage that shimmers. It's an annhilating sensation, it's so big that you want to tear everything down ... just as a gesture. Even the good things. Because if there is a world that can lock up a little girl ike Anne Frank ... and then murder her ... then who the fuck cares about the good things? Good things can GO TO HELL. Like I mentioned in another Atwood post - Atwood is not a warm writer. She's not affirming, or positive. She's clear, cold, and unemotional. The Handmaid's Tale is where she takes that rather odd voice of hers - unique - the voice that had been finding its outlet in books not quite equal to the rage underneath - and busts out of the prison. Not that her earlier books are unworthy - but when you read The Handmaid's Tale you can feel the break with the past that it is. No more Mr. Nice Girl. This is what I am REALLY thinking.

I've read it since - many times - and I have to say it doesn't really hold up, although there is much of it that does. But the book's main impact is the one of first impression. I'll never forget what it was like to read that book for the first time.

I am baffled by the "coda" at the end. Entire scholarly papers have been written about that coda - and I get the point, intellectually - It just so does not work for me. Like - not at ALL. In my opinion (and I remember talking about this with my brother way back when) - it completely weakens the entire book. Brendan had another view of it - he said, "Go back and read it again - and watch how they treat the chairwoman. It's subtle - but it's there. They treat her like an idiot." And this is true. It's very depressing, especially after the book you've just read - of a Saudi Arabian type world, only they're Christians instead of Muslims, and women are either useless, or only valued for their wombs. The coda gives historical context ... like: "let us study this world that is now gone away ... " But that, to me, was the problem. The book is so pessimistic, it's one of the bleakest books I've ever read ... and to have this coda tacked on, letting us know that the regime did fall and women were freed ... It just didn't work for me. The last line of the narrator's part of the book - "And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light" ... leaves you in a state of suspended animation, and hope - but hope that is so strong it is akin to despair. Does she get away?? What happens??? I think the book is far more powerful when it does NOT answer those questions. I just do not like the coda.

Atwood fans - I would LOVE to hear your responses to this. Did it work for you? And why?

The story is well-known. An extreme Christian fundamentalist group - very well-organized - has taken over America in what amounts to a military coup. Congress killed, the President killed - and a new regime installed. Women categorized as either useless (menopausal) - and those women are shuffled off to concentration camps to do manual labor - or useful (child-bearing age) - and the women who are useful are assigned to couples high up in the regime who are childless for whatever reason. The handmaid's job is to sleep with the husband - and have a child. Many children. If it turns out that you are infertile - you will be sent off to a camp to die. It's never the fault of the male ... there is no such thing as sterile men. Only useless women.

The whole book is narrated by a nameless woman - women take the names of the man they are assigned to: Offred (of Fred), Ofjohn (of John) - and we never learn her name from before. She is in the transitional generation - she remembers the time before. She had a daughter - and a husband - but because it was his second marriage, their union is invalidated by the new regime. The daughter is taken away from them. He is hunted down and eventually disappears. They had tried to escape into Canada but they were trapped at the border. So now this woman - who has no idea what happened to her little girl, her husband - now lives with The Commander and his wife Serena Joy (who, in the time before, was a Tammy Faye type - an evangelical television personality) - and just tries to survive. She tries to keep her mind intact. She tries to remember who she is ... even though the entire world has wiped her out. There are other plot-lines ... her best friend from "before" was a hot-shit funny wise-cracking lesbian named Moira ... what happened to Moira? Where is Moira? She eventually finds out ... but it is a tragic story. To me, the story of Moira is the saddest in the book.

Women are separated from one another by design ... you can be hauled off as a spy if you try to reach out, and complain to someone, or even if you just try to talk like a human being, and not a Christian automaton. There are accepted modes of behavior now - rigid - it's a totalitarian world. The secret police are everywhere ... and the ironic thing is that those who are "handmaid's" are supposed to be grateful. Because they have been "allowed" to live. They are supposed to praise God every day for the chance to be of use.

Anyhoo, that's Handmaid's Tale. It's what brought me to Atwood.

In terms of writing mastery - nothing can touch Cat's Eye - which comes later - not only is it a great Atwood book, it's a great book period. Handmaid's Tale doesn't have that complexity - but then again, it's not meant to. This is a stripped-down world, a black and white world ... where people, with all their grey areas, all their foibles, struggle to maintain their humanity.

One of the things that is interesting here is that "the Commander" - the military dude she is assigned to - is a cold and frightening presence. She sleeps with him repeatedly - and it's awful ... and you never get to know him. Until ..... Late one night he summons her to his study. She goes. This is strictly forbidden. "Fraternizig" is forbidden. Her job is not to be a mistress, or to have a love affair, or to join the family she is assigned to. Her job is to sit in her room and wait until the ovulation period ... not moving, not speaking, not reading, nothing ... and then try to get pregnant. So anyway - The Commander summons her. It is about 2 in the morning. She is terrified. She goes into his study ... and there he sits ... and he asks if she would like to play Scrabble. This is such a shock, such an odd odd moment ... The world she lives in is not a world that values leisure time. Also, all language has been wiped out. Signs are now in pictures. So to see a Scrabble board ... it's against the law ... He asks her to play. Terrified, she obeys. But eventually ... it becomes this nightly secret "date" they have. They barely talk - they just play Scrabble. Atwood describes the love of words ... how voracious our narrator feels just seeing LETTERS again ... the thrill of putting letters together ... It's almost sexual. Very moving. What's interesting here is that even though the two of them barely speak ... you get the sense that this world, this new world, where he is at the top of the heap, is no great shakes for him either. Male privilege is isolating - for both genders. He never says that ... and she never comments on it ... but just the fact that in the middle of the night this cold man, who holds her entire life in his hands - yearns to play a nice game of Scrabble ... says it all.

Here's an excerpt.

Excerpt from The Handmaid's Tale - by Margaret Atwood.

Now there's a space to be filled, in the too-warm air of my room, and a time also; a space-time, between here and now and there and then, punctuated by dinner. The arrival of the tray, carried up the stairs as if for an invalid. An invalid, one who has been invalidated. No valid passport. No exit.


That was what happened, the day we tried to cross at the border, with our fresh passports that said we were not who we were: that Luke, for instance, had never been divorced, that we were therefore lawful, under the law.

The man went inside with our passports, after we'd explained about the picnic and he'd glanced into the car and seen our daughter asleep, in her zoo of mangy animals. Luke patted my arm and got out of the car as if to stretch his legs and watched the man through the window of the immigration building. I stayed in the car. I lit a cigarette, to steady myself, and drew the smoke in, a long breath of counterfeit relaxation. I was watching two soldiers in the unfamiliar uniforms that were beginning, by then, to be familiar; they were standing idly beside the yellow-and-black-striped lift-up barrier. They weren't doing much. One of them was watching a flock of birds, gulls, lifting and eddying and landing on the bridge railing beyond. Watching him, I watched them too. Everything was the color it usually is, only brighter.

It's going to be all right, I said, prayed in my head. Oh let it. Let us cross, let us across. Just this once and I'll do anything. What I thought I could do for whoever was listening that would be of the least use or even interest I'll never know.

Then Luke got back into the car, too fast, and turned the key and reversed. He was picking up the phone, he said. And then he began to drive very quickly, and after that there was the dirt road and the woods and we jumped out of the car and began to run. A cottage, to hide in, a boat, I don't know what we thought. He said the passports were foolproof, and we had so little time to plan. Maybe he had a plan, a map of some kind in his head. As for me, I was only running: away, away.

I don't want to be telling this story.


I don't have to tell it. I don't have to tell anything, to myself or to anyone else. I could just sit here, peacefully. I could withdraw. It's possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you out.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Fat lot of good it did her.

Why fight?


That will never do.

* * *

Love? said the Commander.

That's better. That's something I know about. We can talk about that.

Falling in love, I said. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another. How could he have made such light of it? Sneered even. As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim. It was, on the contrary, heavy going. It was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself; if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space. Everyone knew that.

Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.

And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.

There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.

Or sometimes, even when you were still loving, still falling, you'd wake up in the middle of the night, when the moonlight was coming through the window onto his sleeping face, making the shadows in the sockets of his eyes darker and more cavernous than in daytime, and you'd think, Who knows what they do, on their own or with other men? Who knows what they say or where they are likely to go? Who can tell what they really are? Under their daily-ness.

Likely you would think at those times: What if he doesn't love me?

Or you'd remember stories you'd read, in the newspapers, about women who had been found - often women but sometimes they would be men, or children, that was the worst - in ditches or forests or refrigerators in abandoned rented rooms, with their clothes on or off, sexually abused or not; at any rate killed. There were places you didn't want to walk, precautions you took that you had to do with locks on windows and doors, drawing the curtains, leaving on lights. These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.

But all of that was pertinent only in the night, and had nothing to do with the man you loved, at least in daylight. With that man you wanted it to work, to work out. Working out was also something you did to keep your body in shape, for th eman. If you worked out enough, maybe the man woudl too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.

If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.

It's strange to remember how we used to think, as if everything was available to us, as if there were no contingencies, no boundaries; as if we were free to shape and reshape forever the ever-expanding perimeter of our lives. I was like that too, I did that too. Luke was not the first man for me, and he might not have been the last. If he hadn't been frozen that way. Stopped dead in time, in midair, among the trees back there, in the act of falling.

In former times they would send you a little package, of the belongings: what he had with him when he died. That's what they would do, in wartime, my mother said. How long were you supposed to mourn, and what did they say? Make your life a tribute ot the loved one. And he was, the loved. One.

Is, I say. Is, is, only two letters, you stupid shit, can't you manage to remember it, even a short word like that?


I wipe my sleeve across my face. Once I wouldn't have done that, for fear of smearing, but now nothing comes off. Whatever expression is there, unseen by me, is real.

You'll have to forgive me. I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it. Like a White Russian drinking tea in Paris, marooned in the twentieth century, I wander back, try to regain those distant pathways; I become too maudlin, lose myself. Weep. Weeping is what it is, not crying. I sit in this chair and ooze like a sponge.

So. More waiting. Lady in waiting: that's what they used to call those stores where you could buy maternity clothes. Woman in waiting sounds more like someone in a train station. Waiting is also a place: it is wherever you wait. For me it's this room. I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people.


The knock comes at my door. Cora, with the tray.

But it isn't Cora. "I've brought this for you," sayus Serena Joy.

And then I look up and around, and get out of my chair and come towards her. She's holding it, a Polaroid print, square and glossy. So they still make them, cameras like that. And there will be family albums, too, with all the children in them; no Handmaids though. From the point of view of future history, this kind, we'll be invisible. But the children will be in them all right, something for the Wives to look at, downstairs, nibbling at the buffet and waiting for the Birth.

"You can only have it for a minute," Serena Joy says, her voice low and conspiratorial. "I have to return it, before they know it's missing."

It must have been a Martha who got it for her. There's a network of the Marthas, then, with something in it for them. That's nice to know.

I take it from her, turn it around so I can see it right-side-up. Is this her, is this what she's like? My treasure.

So tall and changed. Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as if for an olden-days First Communion.

Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph. A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become. You can see it in her eyes: I am not there.

But she exists, in her white dress. She grows and lives. Isn't that a good thing? A blessing?

Still, I can't bear it, to have been erased like that. Better she'd brought me nothing.


I sit at the little table, eating creamed corn with a fork. I have a fork and a spoon, but never a knife. When there's meat they cut it up for me ahead of time, as if I'm lacking manual skills or teeth. I have both, however. That's why I'm not allowed a knife.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (29)

April 16, 2007

The Books: "Bodily Harm" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

0385491077.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgHere is an excerpt from Bodily Harm - by Margaret Atwood. This is her fifth novel and seriously - this book FREAKED. ME. OUT. The only other person I knew who had read it was my friend Kate and we have had MANY conversations about it ... it had the same effect on her as it did on me. Handmaid's Tale is scary - but in a way this book is even scarier. I read this book years ago - and certain sections of it come back to me, nearly word for word. The opening of the book is spectacular. Unforgettable. It's amazing I even kept reading after that.

She flips back and forth between points of view - as well as narrative voice. Sometimes Rennie speaks in an "I" voice ... intermittently we will get long first-person monologues from her - and it's not clear who she is speaking to ... and when you realize, at the end of the book, what those monologues are about ... and where she is when she says them ... it's like your mind just goes blank with horror. But the reveal doesn't come until the end. Then there are far past sections - where we hear about Rennie's childhood in a town called Griswold - and this is the first real indication of Atwood's unbelievable BITCHINESS when it comes to certain aspects of Canadian culture. She is ruthless. This really comes to a head in Cat's Eye - but Cat's Eye is more humorous about it. Toronto's pretensions, the self-righteous prudish populace beneath the "Oh, look at us being cosmopolitan now" ...Atwood is Canadian, so she can get away with it. But in Bodily Harm, Atwood takes the gloves off. Griswold - Rennie's hometown - is almost like another character in this book. A malignant evil small-minded character.

The book is not chronological. There are many different threads: Rennie is a "lifestyles" writer for a Toronto newspaper. Her life is spent writing stupid fluff pieces. She lives with a wolfish guy named Jake - who comes off as a total asshole - and Rennie somehow puts up with it. The book opens, though, after Jake has moved out. He moved out because Rennie had a breast removed, and he couldn't deal with it. Rennie comes home one day, in the opening scene, her scar still pulling at her - and finds her door broken open - and there are two cops in her kitchen. And also - on her bed - is a coil of rope. This is a mystery that is never solved. The cops had heard of a break-in so they came over. Rennie stares at the coil of rope, mesmerized. The intruder had obviously been interrupted in whatever he had planned for her. But that sense of ominous doom hovers over the whole book. The intruder is out there. Somewhere. Always.

Rennie decides she needs to get away. She had fallen madly in love with the kindly doctor who did her surgery. But he was married ... and she made a fool of herself. So she asks her editor if she can go away for a while - maybe do a fluff travel piece in the Caribbean or something. So off she goes to a little island in the Caribbean - not one of the touristy ones - this is more of a third world country. Her sense of dissociation continues - and basically, while she is there, a military coup occurs. She is slow to figure out what is going on - and slow to understand the danger she is in - as a Canadian (the Canadian government had supported the overthrown government, if I'm remembering correctly) ... and she meets a couple of other people there - and it's like she has been completely disconnected from her life before. Who is she now? Will she be able to return to normal? And not even to normal ... will she be able to get off the island and get back to Canada?

Interspersed with all of this narrative (and the whole book goes back and forth between the different story lines - Rennie's breast, her unrequited love of the doctor, her relationship with Jake, her career, her time on the island) are the long monologues - the long first-person monologues, where Rennie is talking (to whom??) about her upbringing, sharing memories, telling stories.

It's a terrifying book - I'm making it sound very prosaic and normal - but there is horror here. On every level. I need to read it again.

I'm going to excerpt from one of the monologues. The last section - the last image of the grandmother - haunts me to this day.

Excerpt from Bodily Harm - by Margaret Atwood.

I grew up surrounded by old people: my grandfather and my grandmother, and my great-aunts and great-uncles, who came to visit after church. I thought of my mother as old too. She wasn't, but being around them all the time made her seem old. On the street she walked slowly so they could keep up with her, she raised her voice the way they did, she was anxious about details. She wore clothes like theirs too, dark dresses with high collars and small innocuous patterns, dots or sprigs of flowers.

As a child I learned three things well: how to be quiet, what not to say, and how to look at things without touching them. When I think of that house I think of objects and silences. The silences are almost visible; I pictured them as grey, hanging in the air like smoke. I learned to listen for what wasn't being said, because it was usually more important than what was. My grandmother was the best at silences. According to her, it was bad manners to ask direct questions.

The objects in the house were another form of silence. Clocks, vases, end-tables, cabinets, figurines, cruet sets, cranberry glasses, china plates. They were considered important because they had once belonged to someone else. They were both overpowering and frail: overpowering because threatening. What they threatened you with was their frailty; they were always on the verge of breaking. These objects had to be cleaned and polished once a week, by my grandmother when she was still well enough and afterwards by my mother. It was understood that you could never sell these objects or give them away. The only way you could ever get rid of them was to will them to someone else and then die.

The objects weren't beautiful, most of them. They weren't supposed to be. They were only supposed to be of the right kind: the standard aimed at was not beauty but decency. That was the word, too, among my mother and my aunts, when they came to visit. "Are you decent?" they would call gaily to one another before opening bedroom or bathroom doors. Decency was having your clothes on, in every way possible.

If you were a girl it was a lot safer to be decent than to be beautiful. If you were a boy, the question didn't arise; the choice was whether or not you were a fool. Clothes could be decent or indecent. Mine were always decent, and they smelled decent too, a wool smell, mothballs and a hint of furniture polish. Other girls, from families considered shoddy and loose, wore questionable clothes and smelled like violets. The opposite of decent wasn't beautiful, but flashy or cheap. Flashy, cheap people drank and smoked, and who knew what else? Everyone knew. In Griswold, everyone knew everything, sooner or later.

So you had your choice, you could decide whether people would respect you or not. It was harder if your family wasn't respectable but it could be done. If your family was respectable, though, you could choose not to disgrace it. The best way to keep from disgracing it was to do nothing unusual.

The respectability of my family came from my grandfather, who had once been the doctor. Not a doctor, the doctor: they had territories then, like tomcats. In the stories my grandmother told me about him, he drove a cutter and team through blizzards to tear babies out through holes he cut in women's stomachs and then sewed up again, he amputated a man's leg with an ordinary saw, knocking the man out with his fist because no one could hold him down and there wasn't enough whiskey, he risked his life by walking into a farmhouse where a man had gone crazy and was holding a shotgun on him the whole time, he'd blown the head off one of his children and was threatening to blow the heads off the other ones too. My grandmother blamed the wife, who had run away months before. My grandfather saved the lives of the remaining children, who were then put in an orphanage. No one wanted to adopt children who had such a crazy father and mother everyone knew such things ran in the blood. The man was sent to what they called the loony bin. When they were being formal they called it an institution.

My grandmother worshiped my grandfather, or so everyone said. When I was little I thought of him as a hero, and I guess he was, he was about the closest thing you could get in Griswold unless you'd been in the war. I wanted to be like him, but after a few years at school I forgot about that. Men were doctors, women were nurses; men were heroes, and what were women? Women rolled the bandages and that was about all anyone ever said about that.

The stories my mother and aunts told about my grandfather were different, though they never told these stories when my grandmother was there. They were mostly about his violent temper. When they were girls, whenever they skirted what he felt to be the edges of decency, he would threaten to horsewhip them, though he never did. He thought he was lenient because he didn't make his children sit on a bench all Sunday as his own father had. I found it very difficult to connect these stories, or my grandmother's either, with the frail old man who could not be disturbed during his afternoon nap and who had to be protected like the clocks and figurines. My mother and my grandmother tended him the same way they tended me, efficiently and with a lot of attention to dirt; only more cheerfully. Perhaps they really were cheerful. Perhaps it made them cheerful to have him under their control at last. They cried a lot at his funeral.

My grandmother had been amazing for a woman of her age; everyone told me that. But after my grandfather's death she began to deteriorate. That's how my mother would put it when her sisters would come to visit. They were both married, which was hot they'd got away from Griswold. I was in high school by then so I didn't spend as much time hanging around the kitchen as I used to, but one day I walked in on them and all three of them were laughing, stifled breathless laughs, as if they were in a church or at a funeral: they knew they were being sacrilegious and they didn't want my grandmother to hear them. They hardly saw me, they were so intent on their laughter.

She wouldn't give me a key to the house, my mother said. Thought I'd lose it. This started them off again. Last week she finally let me have one, and I dropped it down the hot air register. They patted their eyes, exhausted as if they'd been running.

Foolishness, said my aunt from Winnipeg. This was my grandmother's word for anything she didn't approve of. I'd never seen my mother laugh like that before.

Don't mind us, my aunt said to me.

You laugh or you cry, said my other aunt.

You laugh or you go bats, said my mother, injecting a little guilt, as she always did. This sobered them up. They knew that her life, her absence of a life, was permitting them their own.

After that my grandmother began to lose her sense of balance. She would climb up on chairs and stools to get things down, things that were too heavy for her, and then she would fall. She usually did this when my mother was out, and my mother would return to find her sprawled on the floor, surrounded by broken china.

Then her memory began to go. She would wander around the house at night, opening and shutting doors, trying tof ind her way back to her room. Sometimes she wouldn't remember who she was or who we were. Once she frightened me badly by coming into the kitchen, in broad daylight, as I was making myself a peanut-butter sandwich after school.

My hands, she said. I've left them somewhere and now I can't find them. She was holding her hands in the air, helplessly, as if she couldn't move them.

They're right there, I said. On the ends of your arms.

No, no, she said impatiently. Not those, those are no good any more. My other hands, the ones I had before, the ones I touch things with.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1)

April 15, 2007

The Books: "Life Before Man" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n3110.jpgHere is an excerpt from Life Before Man - by Margaret Atwood. This is her fourth novel. I should read it again - I remember just loving it the first time around, and I was a young woman then - 20, 21 ... and I'm sure much of it was either lost to me, or just ahead of my time. But I adored the writing. The plot escapes me, though. Here is what I remember: there are 4 main characters - and the chapters alternate between points of view. We don't get first-person narrative, but the third-person voice definitely takes sides, depending on the chapter. Atwood is awesome here - because these are all very different people - and she just goes into their psychologies, and their issues - with such accuracy ... It's almost like she's doing surgery. Atwood is not what I would call a warm writer. She's human - but not warm. This really comes to fruition in Handmaid's Tale - which is stark, bald, unblinking. We have some of that kind of writing here, although the setting is more prosaic. Elizabeth is one of the main characters here. She is such an Atwood creation: a self-absorbed cold woman - rather dark, humorless - someone who calmly strolls thru life, leaving wreckage in her wake. Then there is Lesje - an archaeologist who works at a museum - and she is more openly a mess. She's in a relationship that isn't really working, she's easily distracted, and there are needs there - needs which could also ruin other people's lives if she acted on them. Nate is married to Elizabeth. Their marriage is in the toilet. You really feel for Nate. He has been emasculated by his wife - who has had an affair - and if I'm remembering right - the guy committed suicide. So Elizabeth is in mourning for her lover - while married to somebody. Nobody can reach each other. Connection is not possible. Or - you can connect, but it will be inherently temporary. It's a cold cold world. Somehow these lives all intersect ... I really need to read it again.

Here is Lesje's first chapter.

Excerpt from Life Before Man - by Margaret Atwood.

Lesje is wandering in prehistory. Under a sun more orange than her own has ever been, in the middle of a swampy plain lush with thick-stalked plants and oversized frens, a group of bony-plated stegosaurs is grazing. Around the edges of this group, protected by its presence but unrelated to it, are a few taller, more delicate camptosaurs. Cautious, nervous, they lift their small heads from time to time, raising themselves on their hind legs to sniff at the air. If there is danger they will give the alarm first. Closer to her, a flock of medium-sized pterosaurs glides from one giant tree-fern to another. Lesje crouches in the topmost frond-cluster of one of these trees, watching through binoculars, blissful, uninvolved. None of the dinosaurs takes the slightest interest in her. If they do happen to see or smell her, they will not notice her. She is something so totally alien to them that they will not be able to focus on her. When the aborigines sighted Captain Cook's ships, they ignored them because they knew such things could not exist. It's the next best thing to being invisible.

Lesje knows, when she thinks about it, that this is probably not everyone's idea of a restful fantasy. Nevertheless it's hers; especially since in it she allows herself to violate shamelessly whatever official version of paleontological reality she chooses. In general she is clear-eyed, objective, and doctrinaire enough during business hours, which is all the more reason, she feels, for her extravagance here in the Jurassic swamps. She mixes eras, adds colors: why not a metallic blue stegosaurus with red and yellow dots instead of the dull greys and browns postulated by the experts? Of which she, in a minor way, is one. Across the flanks of the camptosaurs pastel flushes of color come and go, reddish pink, purple, light pink, reflecting emotions like the contracting and expanding chromatophores in the skins of octopuses. Only when the camptosaurs are dead do they turn grey.

After all it's not so fanciful; she's familiar with the coloration of some of the more exotic modern lizards, not to mention mammalian variations such as the rumps of mandrills. These bizarre tendencies must have developed from somewhere.

Lesje knows she's regressing. She's been doing that a lot lately. This is a daydream left over from her childhood and early adolesence, shelved some time ago in favor of other speculations. Men replaced dinosaurs, true, in her head as in geologic time; but thinking about men has become too unrewarding. Anyway, that part of her life is settled for the time being. Settled, as in: the fault settled. Right now men means William. William regards them both as settled. He sees no reason why anything should ever change. Neither does Lesje, when she considers it. Except that she can no longer daydream about William, even when she tries; nor can she remember what the daydreams were like when she did have them. A daydream about William is somehow a contradiction in terms. She doesn't attach much importance to this fact.

In prehistory there are no men, no other human beings, unless it's the occasional lone watcher like herself; tourist or refugee, hunched in his private fern with his binoculars, minding his own business.


The phone rings and Lesje jumps. Her eyes spring open, the hand holding her coffee mug flies into the air, fending off. She's one of those people unduly startled by sudden noises, she tells her friends. She sees herself as a timorous person, a herbivore. She jumps when people come up behind her and when the subway guard blows his whistle, even when she knows the people are there or the whistle will be blown. Some of her friends find this endearing but she's aware that others find it merely irritating.

But she doesn't like being irritating, so she tries to control herself even when nobody else is with her. She puts her coffee mug down on the table - she'll wipe up the spill later - and goes to answer the phone. She doesn't know who she expects it to be, who she wants it to be. She realizes that these are two different things.


By the time she picks up the phone the line is already open. The hum on the phone is the city's hum, reverberating outside the plate glass, amplified by the cement cliffs that face her and in which she herself lives. A cliff dweller, cliff hanger. The fourteenth level.

Lesje holds the phone for a minute, listening to the hum as if to a voice. Then she puts it down. Not William in any case. He's never phoned her without having something to say, some pragmatic message. I'm coming over. Mett me at. I can't make it at. Let's go to. And lately, I won't be back until. Lesje considers it a sign of the maturity of the relationship that his absences do not disturb her. She knows he's working on an important project. Sewage disposal. She respects his work. They've always promised to give each other a lot of room.


This is the third time. Twice last week and now. This morning she mentioned it, just as a piece of conversation to the girls at work, women at work, flashing her teeth in a quick smile to show she wasn't worried about it, then covering her mouth immediately with her hand. She thinks of her teeth as too large for her face: they make her look skeletal, hungry.

Elizabeth Schoenhof was there, in the cafeteria where they always went at ten-thirty if they weren't working too hard. She's from Special Projects. Lesje sees a fair amount of her because fossils are one of the more popular museum features and Elizabeth likes to work them in. This time she'd come over to their table to say she needed a little of Lesje's material for a display-case series. She wanted to juxtapose some of the small items from Canadiana with natural objects from the same geographical regions. Artifact and Environment, she was calling it. She could use some stuffed animals to go with the pioneer axes and traps, and a few fossil bones for atmosphere.

"This is an old country," she said. "We want people to see that."

Lesje is against this eclectic sort of promotion, though she sees the need for it. The general public. Still, it trivializesm, and Lesje registered an inner objection when Elizabeth asked, in that competent maternal manner of hers, whether Lesje couldn't find her some really interesting fossils. Weren't all fossils interesting? Lesje said politely that she would see what she could do.

Elizabeth, adept at cataloguing the reactions of others, which Lesje holds her in some awe - she herself, she feels, cannot do this - explained carefully that she meant visually interesting. She really would appreciate it,s he said.

Lesje, always responsive to appreciation, warmed. IF Elizabeth wanted some outsize phalanges and a cranium or two she was welcome to them. Besides, Elizabeth looked terrible, white as a sheet, though everyone said she was coping marvelously. Lesje can't imagine herself in that situation, so she can't predict how she herself would cope. Of course everyone knew, it had been in the papers, and Elizabeth had not made much of an effort to hide the facts while it was going on.

They all scrupullously avoided mentioning Chris or anything relating to him in front of Elizabeth. Lesje caught herself blinking when Elizabeth said she wanted to use a flintlock in the display. She herself wouldn't have chosen guns. But perhaps these blind spots were necessary, were part of coping marvelously. Without them, how could you do it?

To change the subject she said brightly, "Guess what? I've been getting anonymous phone calls."

"Obscene?" Marianne asked.

Lesje said no. "Whoever it is just lets the phone ring and then when I answer he hangs up."

"Wrong number, probably," Marianne said, her interest flagging.

"How do you know it's a he?" Trish asked.

Elizabeth said, "Excuse me." She stood up, paused for a moment, then turned and walked steadily as a somnambulist across the floor towards the door.

"It's awful," Trish said. "She must feel terrible."

"Did I say something wrong?" Lesje asked. She hadn't meant to.

"Didn't you know?" Marianne said. "He used to phone her like that. At least once a night, for the last month. After he quit here. She told Philip Burroughs, oh, quite a while before it happened. You'd think she would've known it was building up to something."

Lesje blushed and brought her hand up to the side of her face. There were always things she didn't know. Now Elizabeth would think she'd done that on purpose and would dislike her. She couldn't figure out how that particular piece of gossip had slipped by her. They'd probably talked about it right here at this table and she hadn't been paying attention.


Lesje goes back to the living room, sits down in the chair beside her spilled coffee, and lights a cigarette. When she smokes she doesn't inhale. Instead she holds her right hand in front of her mouth with the cigarette between the first two fingers, thumb along the jawbone. That way she can talk and laugh in safety, blinking through the smoke that rises into her eyes. Her eyes are her good point. She can see why they wore veils, half-veils, in those Middle Eastern countries. It had nothing to do with modesty. Sometimes when she's alone she holds one of her flowered pillowcases across the lower half of her face, over the bridge of her nose, that nose just a little too long, a little too curved for this country. Her eyes, dark, almost black, look back at her in the bathroom mirror, enigmatic above the blue and purple flowers.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3)

April 14, 2007

The Books: "Lady Oracle" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

0385491085.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpgHere is an excerpt from Lady Oracle - by Margaret Atwood.

This is her third novel - and in my opinion this is when Atwood really starts to become herself. She has written about the breakthru that was this book ... she said (and I'm paraphrasing) that her first 2 books had been very clear and linear - with that pared-down language she is so good at. But she decided to make this book one long tangent ... and the writing reflects that. The narrator (I love this character) is a romance-writer - she's obese - she is funny - and even from the first paragraph, you can feel how easily distracted she gets. She's all over the place. There are parts of this book that are laugh out loud funny - and that's another breakthru. There isn't a funny moment in Edible Woman or Surfacing - so Atwood here is letting the three-dimensionality of her artistry come out. Like the narrator in Lady Oracle eventually gets involved with a bunch of Toronto anarchists - they all live in the same apartment - they're trying to build bombs - and they wear black turtlenecks, and are all earnest and humorless -- and Atwood's descriptions of these people are freakin' HILARIOUS. I love it when she gets into social commentary - it really takes off in Cat's Eye - but Lady Oracle is the start of that. Or ... when she really starts to cement her position as a great writer. Her observations, the details ...

It's been years since I read this book so I can't remember all of the intricacies - but I know that the narrator eventually ends up faking her own death. The book starts at the end of the story ... and then she backtracks. She's a lonely woman, a fat woman, writing bodice-rippers - and not dealing with her misery. She has unhappy marriages ... and eventually, in a huge break with her own writing style - she writes this intensely feminist book called Lady Oracle - she writes it under an assumed name - because she's already successful writing bodice-rippers ... and nobody wants to read a bodice-ripper by an angry feminist. Atwood's book ends up being about identity, and the fracturing thereof. Can people be two things at one time?? Of course they can, but society often treats such people as freaks, or as somehow suspicious. Labels abound, classification is required ... and so to escape all of that - (and there's more to it, I just can't remember) - the narrator of this novel fakes her own death and moves to a small Greek island, to completely reinvent herself.

I love this book - or I remember loving it. I should read it again.

Here is an excerpt where she describes her childhood experiences in the Brownies. Anyone who has read and loved Cat's Eye will recognize the themes here ... even some of the images ... Atwood is putting her own interior landscape into words ... These are things she will return to again and again ... The meanness of girls, the sneakiness of girls, the isolation of girls ... the pack mentality ... the loneliness ... and the long-lasting effects of childhood social experiences on all of us. This is Atwood's milieu.

Excerpt from Lady Oracle - by Margaret Atwood.

I worshiped Brownies, even more than I had worshiped dancing classes. At Miss Flegg's you were supposed to try to be better than everyone else, but at Brownies you were supposed to try to be the same, and I was beginning to find this idea quite attractive. So I liked wearing the same bagy uniform with its odd military beret and tie, learning the same ritual rhymes, handshakes and salutes, and chanting in unison with the others,

A Brownie gives in to the older folkd;
A Brownie does NOT give in to herself!

There was even some dancing involved. At the beginning of every session, when the slightly dilapidated papier-mache toadstool which was the group fetish had been set in place on its grassy-green felt mat, and the gray-haired woman in the blue Guide uniform had said, with a twinkle in her eye, "Hoot! Hoot!" the Brownies would hurtle from the four corners of the room, six at a time, and perform a whirling, frenzied dance, screeching out the words to their group songs as loud as they could. Mine was:

Here you see the laughing Gnomes,
Helping mothers in our homes.

This was not strictly true; I didn't help my mother. I wasn't allowed to. On the few occasions I'd attempted it, the results had not pleased her. The only way I could have helped her to her satisfaction would have been to change into someone else, but I didn't know this yet. My mother didn't approve of my freeform style of making beds, nor of the crashes and fragments when I dried the dishes. She didn't like scraping charcoal off the bottoms of pots when I tried to cook ("a cooked dessert" was one Brownie test requirement), or having to reset the table after I'd done it backwards. At first I tried to surprise her with sudden Good Turns, as suggested in the Brownie handbook. One Sunday I brought her breakfast in bed on a tray, tripped, and covered her with wet cornflakes. I polished her good navy-blue suede shoes with black boot polish. And once I carried out the garbage can, which was too heavy for me, and tipped it down the back steps. She wasn't a very patient woman; she told me quite soon that she would rather do things right herself the first time than have to do them over again for me. She used the word "clumsy," which made me cry; but I was excused from household chores, which I saw as an advantage only much later. I sang out the words unflinchingly though, as I stomped around the toadstool in clouds of church-basement dust,with a damp Gnome hand clutched in each of mine.

The lady who ran the pack was known as Brown Owl; owls, we were told, meant wisdom. I always remembered what she looked like: the dried-apple face, the silvery gray hair, the snapping blue eyes, quick to stop a patch of tarnish on the brass fairy pin or a dirty fingernail or a poorly tied shoelace. Unlike my mother, she was impartial and kind, and she gave points for good intentions. I was entranced by her. It was hard to believe that an adult, older than my mother even, would actually squat on the floor and say things like, "Tu-whit, Tu-whoo" and "When Brownies make their fairy ring, They can magic everything!" Brown Owl acted as though she believed all this, and thought that we did too. This was the novelty: someone even more gullible than I was. Occasionally I felt sorry for her, because I knew how much pinching, shoving and mudging went on during Thinking Time and who made faces behind Brown Owl's back when we were saying, "I promise to do my duty to God and the King and to help others every day, especially those at home." Brown Owl had a younger sidekick known as Tawny Owl. Like vice-principals everywhere, she was less deceivable and less beloved.

The three girls with whom I crossed the ravine each Brownie day were called Elizabeth, Marlene and Lynne. They were ten, and almost ready to join the Girl Guides; "flying up" it was called if you had obtained your Golden Wings. Otherwise you had to walk up. Elizabeth was going to fly, no doubt about it: she was plastered with badges like a diplomat's suitcase. Marlene probably would, and Lynne probably wouldn't. Elizabeth was a Sixer and had two stripes on her arm to prove it. Marlene was a Pixie and I can't remember what Lynne was. I admired Elizabeth and feared the other two, who competed for her attention in more or less sinister ways.

At first they tolerated me, on those long perilous walks to the streetcar stop. I had to walk a little behind, but that was a small enough price to pay for protection from the invisible bad men. That went on through September and October, while the leaves turned yellow and fell and were burned in the sidewalk fires that were not yet illegal, during roller skating and skipping, past knee socks and into long stockings and winter coats. The days became shorter, we walked home in the dark across the bridge, which was lit only by one feeble bulb at either end. When it began to snow we had to go into leggings, heavy lined pants that were pulled on over our skirts, causing them to bunch into the crotch, and held up by elastic shoulder straps. In those days girls were not allowed to wear slacks to school.

The memory of this darkness, this winter, the leggins, and the soft snow weighing down the branches of the willow trees in the ravine so that they made a bluish arch over the bridge, the white vista from its edge that should have been so beautiful, I associate with misery. Because by that time Elizabeth and her troop had discovered my secret: they had discovered how easy it was to make me cry. At our school young girls weren't supposed to hit each other or fight or rub snow in each other's faces, and they didn't. During recess they stayed in the Girls' Yard, where everything was whispering and conspiracy. Words were not a prelude to war but the war itself, a devious, subterranean war that was unending because there were no decisive acts, no knockdown blows that could be delivered, no point at which you could say I give in. She who cried first was lost.

Elizabeth, Marlene and Lynne were in other grades or they would have found out about me sooner. I was a public sniveller still, at the age of eight; my feelings were easily hurt, despite my mother, who by this time was telling me sharply to act my age. She herself was flint-eyed, distinct, never wavery or moist; it was not until later that I was able to reduce her to tears, a triumph when I finally managed it.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3)

April 13, 2007

The Books: "Surfacing" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n3109.jpgSurfacing - by Margaret Atwood. This is her second novel. I don't remember much of it. She starts to get clearer to me, as a writer, in her third novel. This one basically is about this neurotic mildly passive woman - whose father has disappeared - and she goes on a camping trip with her boyfriend and another couple - they go to an old cabin in the woods, where she used to camp with her family as a young girl - maybe it's even owned by her family - and all hell breaks loose - and she ends up staying behind when they go back to civilization and she takes off her clothes and lives in the woods like an animal. Why she does this I do not know. I remember my friend Jackie read it, and her summing up of the whole thing was: "Your father's dead. Put your clothes on." hahahaha

It has something to do with the woman's need to resist the structures that have been put into place for her in society without her permission. This woman not only resists the structures - well, at the beginning of the book - she accepts them. At the end of the book, she huddles in the woods, lying in a bed of leaves, and she has totally rejected society. She's communing with ancestors, ghosts ...they begin to "tell" her what to accept, what to reject, what is "forbidden" (that's a big word in this last section) - it's like she wants to become one of them ... no more rules, no more passive acceptance ...

This is all I remember. Weird.

I'll post an excerpt from the "naked in the woods" section. Even though I can't remember the details of this book - just looking at this excerpt, I can feel the Margaret Atwood of Cat's Eye, Bodily Harm ... she's in there. The entelechy of Cat's Eye is present, in these earlier books. Like the little section here about the frog.

Excerpt from Surfacing - by Margaret Atwood.

The light wakes me, speckled through the roof branches. My bones ache, hunger is loose in me, belly a balloon, floating shark stomach. It's hot, the sun is almost at noon, I've slept most of the morning. I crawl outside and run towards the garden where the food is.

The gate stops me. Yesterday I could go in but not today: they are doing it gradually. I lean against the fence, my feet pawprinting th emud damp from the rain, the dew, the lake oozing up through the ground. Then my belly cramps and I step to one side and lie down in the long grass. A frog is there, leopard frog with green spots and gold-rimmed eyes, ancestor. It includes me, it shines, nothing moves but its throat breathing.

I rest on the ground, head propped on hands, trying to forget the hunger, looking through the wire hexagons at the garden: rows, squares, stakes, markers. The plants are flourishing, they grow almost visibly, sucking moisture up through the roots and succulent stems, their leaves sweating, flushed in the sunrays to a violent green, weeds and legitimate plants alike, there is no difference. Under the ground the worms twine, pink veins.

The fence is impregnable; it can keep out everything but weed seeds, birds, insects and the weather. Beneath is a two-foot-deep moat, paved with broken glass, smashed jars and bottles, and covered with gravel and earth, the woodchucks and skunks can't burrow under. Frogs and snakes get through but they are permitted.

The garden is a stunt, a trick. It could not exist without the fence.

Now I understand the rule. They can't be anywhere that's marked out, enclosed: even if I opened the doors and fences they could not pass in, to houses and cages, they can move only in the spaces between them, they are against borders. To talk with them I must approach the condition they themselves have entered; in spite of my hunger I must resist the fence, I'm too close now to turn back.

But there must be something else I can eat, something that is not forbidden. I think of what I might catch, crayfish, leeches, no not yet. Along the trail the edible plants, the mushrooms, I know the poisonous kinds and the ones we used to collect, some of them can be eaten raw.

There are raspberries on the canes, shriveled and not many but they are red. I suck those, their sweetness, sourness, piercing in my mouth, teeth crackling on the seeds. Into the trail, tunnel, cool of the trees, as I walk I search the ground for shapes I can eat, anything. Provisions, they will provide, they have always favored survival.

I find the six-leaved plants again, two of them, and dig up the crisp white roots and chew them, not waiting to take them back to the lake to wash them. Earth caked beneath my jagged nails.

The mushrooms are still there, the deadly white one, I'll save that till I'm immune, ready, and the yellow food, yellow fingers. By now many of them are too old, wrinkled, but I break off the softer ones. I hold them in my mouth a long time before swallowing, they taste musty, mildewed canvas, I'm not sure of them.

What else, what else? Enough for a while. I sit down, wrapping myself in the blanket which is damp from the grass, my feet have gone cold. I will need other things, perhaps I can catch a bird or a fish, with my hands, that will be fair. Inside me it is growing, they take what they require, if I don't feed it it will absorb my teeth, bones, my hair will thin, come out in handfuls. But I put it there, I invoked it, the fur god with tail and horns, already forming. The mothers of gods, how do they feel, voices and light glaring from the belly, do they feel sick, dizzy? Pain squeezes my stomach, I bend, head pressed against knees.


Slowly I retrace the trail. Something has happened to my eyes, my feet are released, they alternate, several inches from the ground. I'm ice-clear, transparent, my bones and the child inside me showing through the green webs of my flesh, the ribs are shadows, the muscles jelly, the trees are like this too, they shimmer, their cores glow through the wood and bark.

The forest leaps upward, enormous, the way it was before they cut it, columns of sunlight frozen; the boulders float, melt, everything is made of water, even the rocks. In one of the languages there are no nouns, only verbs held for a longer moment.

The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.

I lean against a tree, I am a tree leaning.


I break out again into the bright sun and crumple, head against the ground.

I am not an animal or a tree, I am the thing in which the trees and animals move and grow, I am a place


I have to get up, I get up. Through the ground, break surface, I'm standing now; separate again. I pull the blanket over my shoulders, head forward.

I can hear the jays, crying and crying as if they've found an enemy or food. They are near the cabin, I walk toward them up the hill. I see them in the trees and swooping between the trees, the air forming itself into birds, they continue to call.

Then I see her. She is standing in front of the cabin, her hand stretched out, she is wearing her gray leather jacket; her hair is long, down to her shoulders in the style of thirty years ago, before I was born; she is turned half away from me, I can see only the side of her face. She doesn't move, she is feeding them: one perches on her wrist, another on her shoulder.

I've stopped walking. At first I feel nothing except a lack of surprise: that is where she would be, she has been standing there all along. Then as I watch and it doesn't change I'm afraid, I'm cold with fear, I'm afraid it isn't real, paper doll cut by my eyes, burnt picture, if I blink she will vanish.

She must have sensed it, my fear. She turns her head quietly and looks at me, past me, as though she knows something is there but she can't quite see it. The jays cry again, they fly up from her, the shadows of their wings ripple over the ground and she's gone.

I go up to where she was. The jays are there in the trees, cawing at me; there are a few scraps on the feeding tray still, they've knocked some to the ground. I squint up at them, trying to see her, trying to see which one she is; they hop, twitch their feathers, turn their heads, fixing me first with one eye, then the other.

Posted by sheila Permalink

April 12, 2007

The Books: "The Edible Woman" (Margaret Atwood)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

n3108.jpgThe Edible Woman - by Margaret Atwood (her first novel). I got into Atwood in college when I read The Handmaid's Tale, which blew me away. So I quickly went out and read her other published books. Cat's Eye was still in the future at that point- that is, hands down, her best book - and one of my favorite novels of all time. But still - there are some other GEMS in her repertoire. The Edible Woman, however, is not one of them. I don't remember a thing about it - except that the narrator works at some kind of cake company - and the references to food sprinkled throughout are really disgusting - almost like The Thief, The Cook, The Wife and Her Lover. After I saw that movie, I never wanted to eat again. Consumption looked disgusting. Atwood's point in this book - the overriding theme - is the objectification of women, and how women are seen as things to be consumed. By whatever - your work, your husband, children ... there is no autonomous self. Or - it is very difficult to maintain an autonomous self when you are seen as just another version of a birthday cake. But honestly, I don't remember any of it. It's a first novel - so it has the flaws of a beginner - but still: you can feel Atwood in there. You can feel the embryo of Atwood's brilliance - her coldness, her ruthlessness, her unblinking stare at reality as she sees it. There's no soft pedal in her books. I flipped through The Edible Woman just now and I seriously remember none of it - it's been decades since I read it ... but I did find one excerpt near the beginning that rang a bell, so I'll post that here today. The narrator - who seems kind of a lost and passive person (a typical Atwood narrator) - has gone to visit her old friend Clara - who is married with a bunch of kids. Atwood is so good when she is describing a certain TYPE of woman - the type of woman who doesn't fit into an easily classified box. Like - it is assumed that motherhood comes naturally to women. Atwood has never felt that way - at least not across the board. It might come naturally to SOME women, but Atwood isn't interested in those women. She's interested in the ones who struggle with it, who maybe do not have the soft-focus glow of maternal glory running in their veins - who LOVE their kids - but who really have a hard time settling in to new roles, and giving up their old ones. This is Atwood's milieu. This book was published in 1969. And Atwood's still here, still writing, still challenging herself - she's not always successful - but that's her job as a writer. She's on the edge. I love that about her. And she was on the edge here, with Edible Woman.

Also - Atwood talks a lot in Cat's Eye about the isolation of women. Being holed up in our own glass boxes - soundproof - bulletproof - unable to touch each other, hear each other. Men can get in there with us, but women can't get to each other. She writes about that a lot. You can feel her working on that theme in the following excerpt. Clara has gone off into motherhood - and our narrator is trapped in her soundproof box of singledom - and Clara is trapped in her own box - and their friendship has suffered. And notice that it's Joe - Clara's husband - who sees this, and speaks it out (his last line). Which is interesting - and also very Atwood-esque. Men - baffled by their depressed womenfolk - trying to make things better.

Oh - and notice the description of who Clara used to be. It SEEMS like she would be the kind of person who would "take" to motherhood ... yet it seems to overwhelm and confuse her. Atwood always does stuff like that - which makes her a good writer, sometimes a great writer. She doesn't truck in stereotypes - although she deals with them all the time - because don't we all?

Another example of her complexity (and I keep bringing it up - because I think sometimes Atwood is tarred with WAY too wide a brush - she writes about that generation of women - who were children in the 50s, and young women in the 60s - and what a transition it was ... and because of that she sometimes is seen as "anti-male" or "femi-nazi" or any of those other stupid terms that don't really mean anything - at least not where she is concerned.) But anyway - another example is that after the excerpt below - the narrator and her kind of worldly sexy friend Aisley, who was with her, walk away - and Ainsley keeps saying, "How can Clara let her husband just wait on her like that? She's flourishing - he's all wiped out ... why doesn't she get off her ass and DO something??"

Her people end up feeling human - rather than ciphers - because she always knows that the surface isn't the whole story.

Excerpt from The Edible Woman - by Margaret Atwood

Arthur had reached us and stood beside his mother's chair, still frowning, and Clara said to him, "Why have you got that funny look, you little deon?" She reached down behind him and felt his diaper. "I should have known," she sighed, "he was so quiet. Husband, your son has shat again. I don't know where, it isn't in his diaper."

Joe handed round the drinks, then knelt and said to Arthur firmly but kindly, "Show Daddy where you put it." Arthur gazed up at him, not sure whether to whimper or smile. Finally he stalked portentously to the side of the garden, where he squatted down near a clump of dusty red chrysanthemums and stared with concentration at a patch of ground.

"That's a good boy," Joe said, and went back into the house.

"He's a real nature-child, he just loves to shit in the garden," Clara said to us. "He thinks he's a fertility-god. If we didn't clean it up this place would be one big manure field. I don't know what he's going to do when it snows." She closed her eyes. "We've been trying to toilet-train him, though according to some of the books it's too early, and we got him one of those plastic potties. He hasn't the least idea what it's for: he goes around wearing it on his head. I guess he thinks it's a crash-helmet."

We watched, sipping our beer, as Joe crossed the garden and returned with a folded piece of newspaper. "After this one I'm going on the pill," said Clara.

When Joe had finally finished cooking the dinner we went into the house and ate it, seated around the heavy table in the dining-room. The baby had been fed and exiled to the carriage on the front porch, but Arthur sat in a high-chair, where he evaded with spastic contortions of his body the spoonfuls of food Clara poked in the direction of his mouth. Dinner was wizened meat balls and noodles from a noodle mix, with lettuce. For dessert we had something I recognized.

"This is that new canned rice pudding; it saves a lot of time," Clara said defensively. "It's not too bad with cream, and Arthur loves it."

"Yes," I said. "Pretty soon they'll be having Orange and Caramel too."

"Oh?" Clara deftly intercepted a long drool of pudding and returned it to Arthur's mouth.

Ainsley got out a cigarette and held it for Joe to light. "Tell me," she said to him, "do you know this friend of theirs - Leonard Slank? They're being so mysterious about him."

Joe had been up and down all during the meal, taking off the plates and tending things in the kitchen. He looked dizzy. "Oh, yes. I remember him," he said, "though he's really a friend of Clara's." He finished his pudding quickly and asked Clara whether she needed any help, but she didn't hear him. Arthur had just thrown his bowl on the floor.

"But what do you think of him?" Ainsley asked, as though appealing to his superior intelligence.

Joe stared at the wall, thinking. He didn't like giving negative judgments, I knew, but I also knew he wasn't fond of Len. "He's not ethical," he said at last. Joe is an Instructor in Philosophy.

"Oh, that's not quite fair," I said. Len had never been unethical toward me.

Joe frowned at me. He doesn't know Ainsley very well, and tends anyway to think of all unmarried girls as easily victimized and needing protection. He had several times volunteered fatherly advice to me, and now he emphasized his point, "He's not someone to get ... mixed up with," he said sternly. Ainsley gave a short laugh and blew out smoke, unperturbed.

"That reminds me," I said, "you'd better give me his phone number."

After dinner we went to sit in the littered living-room while Joe cleared the table. I offered to help, but Joe said that was all right, he would rather I talked to Clara. Clara had settled herself on the chesterfield in a nest of crumpled newspapers with her eyes closed; again I could think of little to say. I sat staring up at the centre of the ceiling where there was an elaborately-scrolled plaster decoration, once perhaps the setting for a chandelier, remembering Clara at highschool: a tall fragile girl who was always getting exempted from Physical Educaton. She'd sit on the sidelines watching the rest of us in our blue-bloomered gymsuits as though anything so sweaty and ungainly was foreign enough to her to be a mildly-amusing entertainment. In that classroom full of oily potato-chip-fattened adolescents she was everyone's ideal of translucent perfume-advertisement femininity. At university she had been a little healthier, but had grown her blonde hair long, which made her look more medieval than ever: I had thought of her in connection with the ladies sitting in rose-gardens on tapestries. Of course her mind wasn't like that, but I've always been influenced by appearances.

She married Joe Bates at the end of our second year, and at first I thought it was an ideal match. Joe was then a graduate student, almost seven years older than she was, a tall shaggy man with a slight stoop and a protective attitude towards Clara. Their worship of each other before the wedding was sometimes ridiculously idealistic; one kept expecting Joe to spread his overcoat on mud puddles or drop to his knees to kiss Clara's rubber boots. The babies had been unplanned: Clara greeted her first pregnancy with astonishment that such a thing could happen to her, and her second with dismay; now, during her third, she had subsided into a grim but inert fatalism. Her metaphors for ehr children included barnacles encrusting a ship and limpets clinging to a rock.

I looked at her, feeling a wave of embarrassed pity sweep over me; what could I do? Perhaps I could offer to come over some day and clean up the house. Clara simply had no practicality, she wasn't able to control the more mundane aspects of life, like money or getting to lectures on time. When we lived in residence together she used to become hopelessly entangled in her room at intervals, unable to find matching shoes or enough clean clothes to wear, and I would have to dig her out of the junk pile she had allowed to accumulate around her. Her messiness wasn't actively creative like Ainsley's, who could devastate a room in five minutes if she was feeling chaotic; it was passive. She simply stood helpless while the tide of dirt rose round her, unable to stop it or evade it. The babies were like that too; her own body seemed somehow beyond her, going its own way without reference to any direction of hers. I studied the pattern of bright flowers on the maternity smock she was wearing; the stylized petals and tendrils moved with her breathing, as though they were coming alive.

We left early, after Arthur had been carried off to bed screaming after what Joe called "an accident" behind the living-room door.

"It was no accident," Clara remarked, opening her eyes. "He just loves peeing behind doors. I wonder what it is. He's going to be secretive when he grows up, an undercover agent or a diplomat or something. The furtive little bastard."

Joe saw us to the door, a pile of dirty laundry in his arms. "You must come and see us again soon," he said, "Clara has so few people she can really talk to."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

April 11, 2007

The Books: "Little Women" (Louisa May Alcott)

Next up in my daily book excerpt: ... Adult fiction:

LittleWomenY.jpgLouisa May Alcott's Little Women is next on the shelf. The book doesn't even need an introduction. My only issue here is: what excerpt to pick??? I flipped thru it just now and each and every chapter (well, not the ones with the German dude, bah) called out to me with its greatness, and vividness. Beth and the piano! Jo cutting off her hair! The ball where Jo and Laurie dance in the hallway! The newspaper they put out! Sigh. But I'm going to go with what has to be my personal favorite section of the book. I re-read it just now and, for the gazillionth time, felt my throat clog up with emotion. I CAN'T EVEN TAKE IT.

Mrs. March has been called off to Washington with a terrifying telegram that her husband is very ill. This is when Jo sells her hair for 25 dollars. Mrs. March leaves - and the girls are left alone. Dark days. And then - Beth falls ill. The girls are afraid to telegram their mother - who already has her hands full with her ill husband - so they bear the illness themselves, praying and watching and waiting ... Beth is not getting better, though. She is sinking.

I just read this next part and ... don't these people just LIVE? They are not on the page. They are up off the page, they breathe, live .... This is one of Laurie's finest moments. I love him.

Excerpt from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

The first of December was a wintry day indeed to them, for a bitter wind blew, snow fell fast, and the year seemed getting ready for its death. When Dr. Bangs came that morning, he looked long at Beth, held the hot hand in both his own a minute, and laid it gently down, saying, in a low tone, to Hannah, --

"If Mrs. March can leave her husband, she'd better be sent for."

Hannah nodded without speaking, for her lips twitched nervously; Meg dropped down into a chair as the strength seemed to go out of her limbs at the sound of those words, and Jo, after standing with a pale face for a minute, ran to the parlor, snatched up the telegram, and, throwing on her things, rushed out into the storm. She was soon back, and, while noiselessly taking off her cloak, Laurie came in with a letter, saying that Mr. March was mending again. Jo read it thankfully, but the heavy weight did not seem lifted off her heart, and her face was so full of misery that Laurie asked, quickly, --

"What is it? is Beth worse?"

"I've sent for mother," said Jo, tugging at her rubber boots with a tragical expression.

"Good for you, Jo! Did you do it on your own responsibility?" asked Laurie, as he seated her in the hall chair and took off the rebellious boots, seeing how her hands shook.

"No, the doctor told us to."

"Oh, Jo, it's not so bad as that?" cried Laurie, with a startled face.

"Yes, it is; she don't know us, she don't even talk about the flocks of green doves, as she calls the vine leaves on the wall; she don't look like my Beth, and there's nobody to help us bear it; mother and father both gone, and God seems so far away I can't find Him."

As the tears streamed fast down poor Jo's cheeks, she stretched out her hand in a helpless sort of way, as if groping in the dark, and Laurie took it in his, whispering, as well as he could, with a lump in his throat, --

"I'm here, hold on to me, Jo, dear!"

She could not speak, but she did "hold on", and the warm grasp of the friendly human hand comforted her sore heart, and seemed to lead her nearer to the Divine arm which alone could uphold her in her trouble. Laurie longed to say something tender and comfortable, but no fitting words came to him, so he stood silent, gently stroking her bent head as her mother used to do. It was the best thing he could have done; far more soothing than the most eloquent words, for Jo felt the unspoken sympathy, and, in the silence, learned the sweet solace which affection administers to sorrow. Soon she dried the tears which had relieved her, and looked up with a grateful face.

"Thank you, Teddy, I'm better now; I don't feel so forlorn, and will try to bear it if it comes."

"Keep hoping for the best; that will help you lots, Jo. Soon your mother will be here, and everything will be right."

"I'm so glad father is better; now she won't feel so bad about leaving him. Oh, me! it does seem as if all the troubles came in a heap, and I got the heaviest part on my shoulders," sighed Jo, spreading her wet handkerchief over her knees to dry.

"Don't Meg pull fair?" asked Laurie, looking indignant.

"Oh, yes; she tries to, but she don't love Bethy as I do; and she won't miss her as I shall. Beth is my conscience, and I can't give her up; I can't! I can't!"

Down went Jo's face into the wet handkerchief, and she cried despairingly; for she had kept up bravely till now, and never shed a tear. Laurie drew his hand across his eyes, but could not speak till he had subdued the choky feeling in his throat, and steadied his lips. It might be unmanly, but he couldn't help it, and I am glad of it. Presently, as Jo's sobs quieted, he said, hopefully, "I don't think she will die; she's so good, and we all love her so much, I don't believe God will take her away yet."

"The good and dear people always do die," groaned Jo, but she stopped crying, for her friend's words cheered her up, in spite of her own doubts and fears.

"Poor girl! you're worn out. It isn't like you to be forlorn. Stop a bit; I'll hearten you up in a jiffy."

Laurie went off two stairs at a time, and Jo laid her wearied head down on Beth's little brown hood, which no one had thought of moving from the table where she left it. It must have possessed some magic, for the submissive spirit of its gentle owner seemed to enter into Jo; and, when Laurie came running down with a glass of wine, she took it with a smile, and said, bravely, "I drink -- Health to my Beth! You are a good doctor, Teddy, and such a comfortable friend; how can I ever pay you?" she added, as the wine refreshed her body, as the kind words had done her troubled mine.

"I'll send in my bill, by and by; and to-night I'll give you something that will warm the cockles of your heart better than quarts of wine," said Laurie, beaming at her with a face of suppressed satisfaction at something.

"What is it?" cried Jo, forgetting her woes for a minute, in her wonder.

"I telegraphed to your mother yesterday, and Brooke answered she'd come at once, and she'll be here to-night, and everything will be all right. Aren't you glad I did it?"

Laurie spoke very fast, and turned red and excited all in a minute, for he had kept his plot a secret, for fear of disappointing the girls or harming Beth. Jo grew quite white, flew out of her chair, and the moment he stopped speaking she electrified him by throwing her arms round his neck, and crying out, with a joyful cry, "Oh, Laurie! oh, mother! I am so glad!" She did not weep again, but laughed hysterically, and trembled, and clung to her friend as if she was a little bewildered by the sudden news. Laurie, though decidedly amazed, behaved with great presence of mind; he patted her back soothingly, and, finding that she was recovering, followed it up by a bashful kiss or two, which brought Jo round at once. Holding on to the banisters, she put him gently away, saying, breathless, "Oh, don't! I didn't mean to; it was dreadful of me; but you were such a dear to go and do it in spite of Hannah, that I couldn't help flying at you. Tell me all about it, and don't give me wine again; it makes me act so."

"I don't mind!" laughed Laurie, as he settled his tie. "Why, you see I got fidgety, and so did grandpa. We thought Hannah was overdoing the authority business, and your mother ought to know. She'd never forgive us if Beth, -- well, if anything happened, you know. So I got grandpa to say it was high time we did something, and off I pelted to the office yesterday, for the doctor looked sober, and Hannah took my head off when I proposed a telegram. I never can bear to be 'marmed over;' so that settled my mind, and I did it. Your mother will come, I know, and the late train is in at two a.m. I shall go for her; and you've only got to bottle up your rapture, and keep Beth quiet, till that blessed lady gets here."

"Laurie, you're an angel! How shall I ever thank you?"

"Fly at me again; I rather like it," said Laurie, looking mischievous - a thing he had not done for a fortnight.

"No, thank you. I'll do it by proxy, when your grandpa comes. Don't tease, but go home and rest, for you'll be up half the night. Bless you, Teddy, bless you!"

Jo had backed into a corner; and, as she finished her speech, she vanished precipitately into the kitchen, where she sat down upon a dresser, and told the assembled cats that she was "happy, oh, so happy!" while Laurie departed, feeling that he had made a rather neat thing of it.

"That's the interferingest chap I ever see; but I forgive him, and do hope Mrs. March is coming on right away," said Hannah, with an air of relief, when Jo told the good news.

Meg had a quiet rapture, and then brooded over the letter, while Jo set the sick room in order, and Hannah "knocked up a couple of pies in case of company unexpected." A breath of fresh air seemed to blow through the house, and something better than sunshine brightened the quiet rooms; everything appeared to feel the hopeful change; Beth's bird began to chirp again, and a half-blown rose was discovered on Amy's bush in the window; the fires seemed to burn with unusual cheeriness, and every time the girls met their pale faces broke into smiles as they hugged one another, whispering, encouragingly, "Mother's coming, dear! mother's coming!" Every one rejoiced but Beth; she lay in that heavy stupor, alike unconscious of hope and joy, doubt and danber. It was a piteous sight, -- the once rosy face so changed and vacant, -- the once busy hands so weak and wasted, -- the once smiling lips quite dumb, -- and the once pretty, well-kept hair scattered rough and tangled on the pillow. All day she lay so, only rousing now and then to mutter, "Water!" with lips so parched they could hardly shape the word; all day Jo and Meg hovered over her, watching, waiting, hoping, and trusting in God and mother; and all day the snow fell, the bitter wind raged, and the hours dragged slowly by. But night came at last; and every time the clock struck the sisters, still sitting on either side of the bed, looking at each other with brightening eyes, for each hour brought help nearer. The doctor had been in to say that some change for better or worse would probably take place about midnight, at which time he would return.

Hannah, quite worn out, lay down on the sofa at the bed's floor, and fell fast asleep. Mr. Laurence marched to and fro in the parlor, feeling that he would rather face a rebel battery than Mrs. March's anxious countenance as she entered; Laurie lay on the rug, pretending to rest, but staring into the fire with the thoughtful look which made his black eyes beautifully soft and clear.

The girls never forgot that night, for no sleep came to them as they kept their watch, with that dreadful sense of powerlessness which comes to us in hours like those.

"If God spares Beth I will never complain again," whispered Meg earnestly.

"If God spares Beth I'll try to love and serve Him all my life," answered Jo, with equal fervor.

"I wish I had no heart, it aches so," sighed Meg, after a pause.

"If life is often as hard as this, I don't see how we shall ever get through it," added her sister, despondently.

Here the clock struck twelve, and both forgot themselves in watching Beth, for they fancied a change passed over her wan face. The house was still as death, and nothing but the wailing of the wind broke the deep hush. Weary Hannah slept on, and no one but the sisters saw the pale shadow which seemed to fall upon the little bed. An hour went by, and nothing happened except Laurie's quiet departure for the station. Another hour, -- still no one came; and anxious fears of delay in the storm, or accidents by the way, or, worst of all, a great grief at Washington, haunted the poor girls.

It was past two, when Jo, who stood at the window thinking how dreary the world looked in its winding-sheet of snow, heard a movement by the bed, and, turning quickly, saw Meg kneeling before their mother's easy-chair, with her face hidden. A dreadful fear passed coldly over Jo, as she thought, "Beth is dead, and Meg is afraid to tell me."

She was back at her post in an instant, and to her excited eyes a great change seemed to have taken place. The fever flush, and the look of pain, were gone, and the beloved little face looked so pale and peaceful in its utter repose, that Jo felt no desire to weep or lament. Leaning low over this dearest of her sisters, she kissed the damp forehead with her heart on her lips, and softly whispered, "Good-by, my Beth; good-by!"

As if waked by the stir, Hannah started out of her sleep, hurried to the bed, looked at Beth, felt her hands, listened at her lips, and then, throwing her apron over her head, sat down to rock to and fro, exclaiming under her breath, "The fever's turned; she's sleepin' nat'ral; her skin's damp, and she breathes easy. Praise be given! Oh, my goodness me!"

Before the girls could believe the happy truth, the doctor came to confirm it. He was a homely man, but they thought his face quite heavenly when he smiled, and said, with a fatherly look at them, "Yes, my dears; I think the little girl will pull through this time. Keep the house quiet; let her sleep, and when she wakes, give her --"

What they were to give, neither heard; for both crept into the dark hall, and, sitting on the stairs, held each other close, rejoicing with hearts too full for words. When they went back to be kissed and cuddled by faithful Hannah, they found Beth lying, as she used to do, with her cheek pillowed on her hand, the dreadful pallor gone, and breathing quietly, as if just fallen asleep.

"If mother would only come now!" said Jo, as the winter night began to wane.

"See," said Meg, coming up wiht a white, half-opened rose, "I thought this would hardly be ready to lay in Beth's hand tomorrow if she -- went away from us. But it has blossomed in the night, and now I mean to put it in my vase here, so that when the darling wakes, the first thing she sees will be the little rose, and mother's face."

Never had the sun risen so beautifully, and never had the world seemed so lovely, as it did to the heavy eyes of Meg and Jo, as they looked out in the early morning, when their long, sad vigil was done.

"It looks like a fairy world," said Meg, smiling to herself, as she stood behind the curtain watching the dazzling sight.

"Hark!" cried Jo, starting to her feet.

Yes, there was a sound of bells at the door below, a cry from Hannah, and then Laurie's voice, saying, in a joyful whisper, "Girls! she's come! she's come!"

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (5)

April 10, 2007

The Books: "A Death in the Family" (James Agee)

Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:

514RAQ0NW3L.jpgJames Agee's haunting evocative posthumously published novel A Death in the Family is next on the shelf.

I have a long history with this book. I remember when I was in high school seeing some program on PBS - a filming of a play production, at Lincoln Center, maybe? I can't remember - but it was starring Sally Field and William Hurt - and I was young enough that this was my first encounter with these amazing actors. And to see them on stage? They were brilliant. It's the story of a young boy whose father dies. Unexpectedly. It's 1915 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Agee is a genius - if you've read the book you will know what I mean. The little boy can barely understand what has happened ... but then again: the entire family can barely understand the tragedy that has befallen them. There is an ancient grandmother, lost to the world - there's an ancient uncle, who has to have people shout into an enormous ear-horn in order for him to hear them. And suddenly - BOOM - their entire lives have changed. Agee, in such emotional detail, describes, moment to moment to moment ... the reactions - some are logical, some are not ... there's a great section where the family sits up all night, waiting for news (they don't know yet whether he is alive or not). Even though they are upstanding Christians of a certain era, someone has a bottle of whiskey - and it is thought that Mary could use some, to calm herself. There's an incredible section (and I so remember this from the PBS production) where something random happens during this long night of waiting - and it strikes Mary funny (Agee, in the book, describes it perfectly - one of those tiny convergences of moments that end up being outrageously funny, even in the middle of a somber event - the devil is in charge of comedy, remember?) ... and Mary starts to laugh, and once she starts to laugh - she cannot stop. She literally stalks around the room, slapping the walls, snorting, heaving, HOWLING - and you get the sense that this is so out of character - everyone is kind of afraid - is she losing it?

My second experience with this book is a production of this play that I did in Chicago - a play I will always look on fondly, for so many reasons. It's the reason I met my now dear friend Kate. Kate played Mary, the soon-to-be widow. I played "Aunt Hannah" - the beloved aunt who sits up with Mary all night, waiting. It was the last show I did in Chicago before moving here. Theres a poignancy to Agee's language that hurts ... it's like he dips into some collective memory pot - where all childhoods reside - and pulls it out, and turns it into poetry. It is nostalgic, but not sappy. It is full of the heart, but it is not sentimental.

James Agee had died suddenly in 1955 - he had been working on Death in the Family for a couple of years - and so the version of it that is published is exactly as it was found. This could probably be considered a pretty well-finished third draft. Nothing was re-written, or taken out. So there is a kind of non-linear structure to the book: we have the narrative, the story of the family waiting to hear whether or not Jay (the husband) is alive. And then - interjected - are poetic flights of memory - first-person narrative - you aren't sure who is speaking but you're pretty sure it is Agee himself - long passages describing summer, twilight, childhood, Tennessee - that very specific ambience of being a kid, in the country, during summer ... these are separated from the actual narrative ... but they add to the book immeasurably.


This excerpt is, to my mind, one of the most extraordinary sections of the book. Hannah - a pious good woman is trying to comfort Mary ... and suddenly, out of nowhere, Hannah makes an internal realization. (The book is told from all different points of view - this chapter is Hannah's.) I think the writing here can't be beat. Check out how Agee just excavates emotions. Unbelievable. So specific. He makes me want to work harder.

But there's something very scary here. Very personal, deep, and horrifying. Agee, a man of many demons, gets that - and not only does he get that, he can describe it.

Excerpt from Death in the Family by James Agee

"Certainly be very soon now, he should phone," Mary said. "Unless he's had an accident!" she laughed sharply.

"Oh, soon, I'm sure," Hannah said. Long before now, she said to herself, if it were anything but the worst. She squeezed Mary's clasped hands, patted them, and withdrew her own hand, feeling, there's no little comfort anyone can give, it'd better be saved for when it's needed most.

Mary did not speak, and Hannah could not think of a word to say. It was absurd, she realized, but along with everything else, she felt almost a kind of social embarrassment under her speechlessness.

But after all, she thought, what is there to say? What earthly help am I, or anyone else?

She felt so heavy, all of a sudden, and so deeply tired, that she wished she might lean her forehead against the edge of the table.

"We've simply got to wait," Mary said.

"Yes," Hannah sighed.

I'd better drink some tea, she thought, and did so. Lukewarm and rather bitter, somehow it made her feel even more tired.

They sat without speaking for fully two minutes.

"At least we're given the mercy of a little time," Mary said slowly, "awful as it is to have to wait. To try to prepare ourselves for whatever it may be." She was gazing studiously into her empty cup.

Hannah felt unable to say anything.

"Whatever is," Mary went on, "it's already over and done with." She was speaking virtually without emotion; she was absorbed beyond feeling, Hannah became sure, it what she was beginning to find out and to face. Now she looked up at Hannah and they looked steadily into each other's eyes.

"One of three things," Mary said slowly. "Either he's badly hurt but he'll live, and at best even get thoroughly well, and at worst be a helpless cripple or an invalid or his mind impaired." Hannah wished that she might look away, but she knew that she must not. "Or he is so terribly hurt that he will die of it, maybe quite soon, maybe after a long terrible struggle, maybe breathing his last at this very minute and wondering where I am, why I am not beside him." She set her teeth for a moment and tightened her lips, and spoke again, evently: "Or he was gone already when the man called and he couldn't bear to be the one to tell me, poor thing.

"One, or the other, or the other. And no matter what, there's not one thing in this world or the next that we can do or hope or guess at or wish or pray that can change it or help it one iota. Because whatever is, is. That's all. And all there is now is to be ready for it, strong enough for it, whatever it may be. That's all. That's all that matters. It's all that matters because it's all that's possible. Isn't that so?"

While she was speaking, she was with her voice, her eyes and with each word opening in Hannah those all but forgotten hours, almost thirty years past, during which the cross of living had first nakedly borne in upon her being, and she had made the first beginnings of learning how to endure and accept it. Your turn now, poor child, she thought; she felt as if a prodigious page were being silently turned, and the breath of its turning touched her heart with cold and tender awe. Her soul is beginning to come of age, she thought; and within those moments she herself became much older, much nearer her own death, and was content to be. Her heart lifted up in a kind of pride in Mary, in every sorrow she could remember, her own or that of others (and the remembrancs rushed upon her); in all existence and endurance. She wanted to cry out Yes! Exactly! Yes. Yes. Begin to see. Your turn now. She wanted to hold her niece at arms' length and to turn and admire this blossoming. She wanted to take her in her arms and groan unto God for what it meant to be alive. But chiefly she wanted to keep stillness and to hear the young woman's voice and to watch her eyes and her round forehead while she spoke, and to accept and experience this repetition of her younger experience, which bore her high and pierced like music.

"Isn't that so?" Mary repeated.

"That and much more," she said.

"You mean God's mercy?" Mary asked softly.

"Nothing of the kind," Hannah replied sharply. "What I mean, I'd best not try to say." (I've begun, though, she reflected; and I startled her, I hurt her, almost as if I'd spoken against God.) "Only because it's better if you learn it for yourself. By yourself."

"What do you mean?"

"Whatever we hear, learn, Mary, it's almost certain to be hard. Tragically hard. You're beginning to know that and to face it: very bravely. What I mean is that this is only the beginning. You'll learn much more. Beginning very soon now."

"Whatever it is, I want so much to be worthy of it," Mary said, her eyes shining.

"Don't try too hard to be worthy of it, Mary. Don't think of it that way. Just do your best to endure it and let any question of worthiness take care of itself. That's more than enough."

"I feel so utterly unprepared. So little time to prepare in."

"I don't think it's a kind of thing that can be prepared for; it just has to be lived through."

There was a kind of ambition there, Hannah felt, a kind of pride or poetry, which was very mistaken and very dangerous. But she was not yet quite sure what she meant; and of all the times to become beguiled by such a matter, to try to argue it, or warm about it! She's so young, she told herself. She'll learn, poor soul, she'll learn.

Even while Hannah watched her, Mary's face became diffuse and humble. Oh, not yet, Hannah whispered desperately to herself. Not yet. But Mary said, shyly, "Aunt Hannah, can we kneel down for a minute?"

Not yet, she wanted to say. For the first time in her life she suspected how mistakenly prayer can be used, but she was unsure why. What can I say, she thought, almost in panic. How can I judge? She was waiting too long; Mary smiled at her, timidly, and in a beginning of bewilderment; and in compassion and self-doubt Hannah came around the table and they knelt side by side. We can be seen, Hannah realized; for the shades were up. Let us, she told herself angrily.

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen," Mary said in a low voice.

"Amen," Hannah trailed.

They were silent and they could hear the ticking of the clock, the shuffling of fire, and the yammering of the big kettle.

God is not here, Hannah said to herself; and made a small cross upon her breastbone, against her blasphemy.

"O God," Mary whispered, "strengthen me to accept Thy will, whatever it may be." Then she stayed silent.

God hear her, Hannah said to herself. God forgive me. God forgive me.

What can I know of the prpoer time for her, she said to herself. God forgive me.

Yet she could not rid herself: something mistaken, unbearably piteous, infinitely malign was at large within that faithfulness; she was helpless to forfend it or even to know its nature.

Suddenly there opened within her a chasm of infinite depth and from it flowed the paralyzing breath of eternal darkness.

I believe nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

"Our Father," she heard herself say, in a strange voice; and Mary, innocent of her terror, joined in the prayer. And as they continued, and Hannah heard more and more clearly than her own the young, warm, earnest, faithful, heartsick voice, her moment of terrifying unbelief became a remembrance, a temptation successfully resisted through God's grace

Deliver us from evil, she repeated silently, several times after their prayer was finished. But the malign was still there, as well as the mercifulness.

They got to their feet.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

April 9, 2007

The Books: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (Douglas Adams)

Buh-bye Lucy Maud! And buh-bye (for now) my children's bookshelves! Hello, adult fiction! I'm excited for this! I love to see people's comments on books - it's so cool.

6a00c2252b54078e1d00cd972530804cd5-500pi.jpgSo. First book on my "adult fiction" shelf is Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I first read this in high school - and I think I read it because my brother was SO into it. He was really the impetus for me to pick it up and I'm so glad. These books are so fun, so rollickingly fun - with a kind of Catch 22-esque commitment to utter chaos and bedlam. I love the sensibility of the books. If you haven't read them, all I can say is: Do yourself a favor. They are a blast.

Here's an excerpt. This one is for my good friend Emily - who flew to New York City to see the premiere of Hitchhiker's Guide - and a huge group of us all convened ... all bloggers from the tri-state area (and Emily) ... and it was SUCH a fun night. I am posting this, too, because dear Emily brought a towel to the movie theatre, and laid it on her lap. She's die-hard, man.

Excerpt from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. by Douglas Adams

On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds. They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing,

The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for th emoment. The huge yellow something went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them, which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years,

The only place they registered at all was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which winked away quietly to itself. It nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect habitually wore slung around his neck. The contents of Ford Prefect's satchel were quiet interesting in fact and would have made any Earth physicist's eyes pop out of his head, which is why he always concealed them by keeping a couple of dogeared scripts for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stuffed in the top. Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and the scripts he had an Electronic Thumb - a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of flat switches and dials at one end; he also had a device that looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON'T PANIC printed on it in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in,

Beneath that in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few ballpoints, a notepad and a largish bath towel from Marks and Spencer.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: nonhitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit, etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happiily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect's satchel, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan out. At Jodrell Bank, someone decided it was time for a nice relaxing cup of tea.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (20)

August 24, 2006

The Books: "A Severed Wasp" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on my adult fiction shelf is:

0374517835.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg.gifNext book on the shelf is A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle.

Yeah, whatever, this is my first post using MY NEW MAC. Whatever. It's not a big deal to me, or anything like that. I am totally OVER my NEW MAC. Yawn. It's just like any other day over here in Sheila's world. Time to do a new book excerpt. So I have a new Mac, so what?? Whatevs.

I'm just trying to pretend everything is normal when I know in my heart that everything has changed.

But: today's book excerpt is from A Severed Wasp - and this will be, sadly, my last Madeleine L'Engle excerpt. I have no more of her books. I think the only things I am missing are her volumes of poetry (I have no interest in those) - and maybe some of her children's books. I know she did an illustrated version of Jonah and the Whale. I don't have that. But I know I have all her major works ... and Severed Wasp is the last one on the shelf.

It is a sequel to her first novel - written 40 years after that first book was published. Which is kind of amazing, if you think about it. Katherine Forrester was 22 at the end of Small Rain, and when Severed Wasp opens she's in her 70s, I believe. What has happened to her over the intervening 50 some odd years? We find out in Severed Wasp. It goes back and forth between the present and all these different events in Katherine's life. Her marriage to Justin Vigneras (the piano teacher in the excerpt from yesterday). Their horrific experiences during WWII. Vigneras put in a concentration camp. He survived - but his hands had been broken - so that he no longer could play the piano - and I believe he sustained some sort of injury that had rendered him impotent. He emerged, after the war, a broken man. I haven't read the book in a long time so I can't remember the ins and outs of this whole thing - but I know that he encourages Katherine to sleep with other men - and also - to choose men well, men who could get her pregnant - so that she and Justin could then have children to raise. This is so against who Katherine is, her values, her morals- she hates Justin for even asking ... but eventually, she gives in - and they do eventually have children, fathered by a couple different men. Men who know what they're getting into, by the way. It's awful in a way, and life-affirming in another way. This whole book is full of stuff like that. Horrible events ... alongside transcendent ones.

Katherine in her 70 year old present-day - has finally given up her concert career - and has retired. She has moved back to Manhattan, and moved into her old apartment on Tenth Street, the one she lived in when she was in her 20s. Somehow - she runs into an old old OLD friend - (from the first book) - Felix somebody. Felix was a flighty bohemian dude in Small Rain - kind of corrupt - fun to be around, but not trustworthy at all. Felix is now in his 70s as well, and is a Bishop. A Bishop!! Anyway, through reconnecting with Felix, Katherine becomes ensconced in the world of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Felix convinces her to give a charity concert, even though she is not a charity concert kind of person. She begins to make new friends - in her 70s. And Katherine is kind of a prickly personality - always has been. She needs solitude. She has her own private sorrows (which we learn about in the flashbacks - a son who died, and more horrors) - stuff which she does not share - and the jostle of a social life is not for her. But here she is in her 70s - coming out of her comfort zone - because life never stops challenging you, or never SHOULD ... and doing things which seem completely against her nature. She goes to dinner parties. She babysits. She befriends a young sullen girl named Emily who is supposedly a good musician. She is asked to speak about her long life and career at various events. She is old, she is set in her ways, but she finds herself saying "yes" to all of these requests.

The Cathedral is so lovingly and beautifully rendered in this book - it is definitely another character in the story. I used to live up in that neighborhood, too, and believe me: the Cathedral is ever-present. It is a part of the landscape at all times, and you always sense its presence.

There's way more to this book than just the plot and I probably haven't done a good job making this sound like a good read - but I'll just say this: I believe this is one of her best books. Plain and simple. It's very different from the books that have made her FAMOUS - it's not science fiction - and also; there are 50 characters to keep track of, as opposed to 5 or 6, like in her other books. But she manages it. We go back and forth in time effortlessly - the characters are consistent, and they have the breath of life in them ... Everyone is flawed, everyone is doing their best (which sometimes is ... just not good enough) ... and everyone has their little quirks and foibles. Even minor characters. L'Engle has NEVER been in such good form.

It's a great read. I highly recommend it.

Here's an excerpt from the book. Emily is a young girl, maybe a teenager - whose deepest goal in life is to be a pianist. (Oh - and her mother?? Is Suzy Austin, Vicky's younger sister. Suzy Austin is now a doctor.) Actually, wait: Emily's first goal in life (or vocation) was ballet. Member how I said L'Engle is best with people who have vocations, even if they are small children?? It's totally true. Anyway, Emily was a ballerina. This isn't just like kids ballet recitals - this is like - she was on her way to being Anna Pavlova. It was that serious, and she was that gifted. And then - hmmmm. I think she was hit by a car. And lost the use of her legs. She was 11, 12 years old - and she had to give up the dearest dream of her life. She is a different kind of child, because of that heartbreak. She has now switched her passion to being a piano player - something she works her ass off at ... and her idol is the great Katherine Vigneras - and lo and behold - suddenly Vigneras comes into her life, peripherally, and omigod, she is her idol, etc. Emily is not a likable child. That's flat out the truth. She's way too serious, she's awkward, she's way too intense ... People feel protective of her, rather than love her. There is something fragile in her intensity - and it makes people uncomfortable. Including Katherine Vigneras - who senses this girl's idolatry of her - and wants to put a stop to it pronto. Katherine is afraid to hear the girl play ... what if Emily is bad? How will she critique the girl? And you just know Katherine by this point ... you know that she would be physically unable to praise someone (especially a pianist) if they didn't deserve it. No mollycoddling in Katherine's serious world. But then comes the moment .... -

The way the scene unfolds is typical L'Engle beauty, in my opinion. Just sit back and enjoy. Lovely excerpt. It makes me want to cry. L'Engle gets that for some people - art is "Life-and-death". Even if you are only 11 years old.

Excerpt from A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle.

As she passed St. Martin's chapel, which Felix had said was always open for prayer, she paused, sensing a sound. Huddled in one of the chairs was Topaze, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with sobs. She hesitated, wondering if she should go in to him, and then decided that whatever caused it, his grief was private. He could hear her at the piano; if he wanted her he could, and probably would, come to her. She returned to the Bosendorfer.

When she played the Hammerklavier Sonata she could always hear Justin's voice, sometimes gentle, sometimes shouting at her in excitement, crying out that a single note could be, all by itself, a crescendo. "You are part of the piano," he often said. "Each movement of your head, of your body, is as much a part of what you are playing as your hands on the keys. You never saw Rachmaninoff play. He counteracted the most erotically emotional of his work by sitting at the piano as still as marble, no movement of torso, or head. That balance was part of his playing, part of his music.:

He took her to the ballet. "Your movements must be one millionth of a millimetere of what you are seeing, but it must be indicated. Every slightest movement of your head, your neck, says something."

For a while he had her take ballet lessons. "You are not comfortable with your body, and the things I had hoped to teach you I cannot teach you." She studied with a friend of Justin's at the Ballet Russe and learned quickly to take delight in the disciplines given her body. The ballet lessons stood her in good stead. She was not slumped.

They made friends with many of the dancers in the company and Justin began to compose music for the ballet. He made a quick success with a ballet to Moliere's La Malade Imaginaire, but comedy was not his forte, and both he and the company were happier with the music he composed for Sophocles' Antigone.

The study of ballet was reflected in Katherine's playing. She acquired a new understanding of cross-rhythms with syncopations and sudden sforzando, but the old problem with her hip caused the actual dance lessons to cease.

"You have learned what you needed to know," Justin said with no sympathy. "You are comfortable with your body; you are beginning to understand it. Stop being sorry for yourself. You were born to be a pianist, not a ballet dancer. Now pay attention to the crescendo. You are not listening, you are not understanding. Where are your ears? Don't you hear that the crescendo doesnt' lead to a fortissimo but to a pianissimo? Play it, and let me hear."

He never stopped teaching her, she thought, sittin gin the shadows of St. Ansgar's chapel, striving to push her as close to perfection as the human musician can get.

A movement disturbed her and she looked toward the pews to see Emily Davidson, eyes tightly closed, her expression one of intense concentration. When the music did not continue, she opened her eyes. Katherine fluttered her fingers in the child's direction. "How long have you been there, little mouse?"

"Oh, a while. When I used to watch ballet - especially the prima ballerinas - I saw what they were doing, and why, and how. I think I hear what you're playing, but I'm not sure why or how. When a ballet dancer does something unexpected, I expect it. I understand it has to be that way. But you do things and I don't expect them. I know they're right, but I don't expect them." She spoke with unselfconscious intensity.

"How do you know they're right?" Katherine asked with curiosity.

"Because they are right. Do you know anything about ballet?"

"A little."

"Sometimes you'll see a dancer move up into the air so slowly you wouldn't think anything that slow could be up; and then the coming down is even slower. You do that with your music. Especially in - I think it was Le Tombeau de Couperin."

"Close," Katherine said. "It was some of the original music Ravel used in Le Tombeau."

"Oh. But then you'll do something I don't understand at all, and I wonder if I'm just fooling myself when I think I can give up being a dancer, just like that, and be a pianist instead."

It was not just living in New York, as Dorcas had suggested, that made Emily need to be something. The child had not only exotic beauty but extraordinary determination and drive. Katherine said, "Talent in any one of the arts usually indicates understanding and talent in other branches. You've just shown that you have real understanding of music. Why don't you play for me now?"

The color drained from Emily's bronze skin. In the odd lighting of St. Ansgar's, her face took on a greenish hue. She murmured, "Maybe it's better this way, before I have time to work up a panic."

Katherine rose from the piano and Emily took her place. She played with technical competence a fairly simple Handel minuet. Then a Beethoven sonatina. She played well, as she had played when she accompanied the family. She listened to the music. Her wrists and her fingers were well placed. But the quality which John displayed when he merely picked up the violin was missing.

Katherine's heart sank as she stood by the piano. She could not lie to the child. Neither could she destroy her. What could she say?

Emily began a new piece, something Katherine did not recognize. It started out sounding like a piano rendition of one of the songs Yolande had sung, but then, instead of going into fear and sadness, it became lilting, merry, then dropped into wistfulness, and ended suddenly with a major arpeggio which flew all the way up and off the keyboard.

"What was that?" Katherine asked sharply.

Now color flooded Emiliy's cheeks. "Oh. It's one of Mrs. Undercroft's songs. Tory has a tape of it and plays it till I could scream. I like the beginning, but then it does things that give me the heebie-jeebies, so I changed it around so it says something I like to hear, and then I let it dance off the piano."

"You mean it's your own composition?"

"Well, it starts off with something Mrs. Undercroft--"

"Have you composed anything else?"

"Oh, sure."

"Play me something, then."

Emily hovered her hands over the keyboard as though thinking through her fingers, very differently from when she was about to start something from the classical repertoire, and then played what began as a derivative seventeenth-century minuet, and suddenly changed rhythm and dashed into extraordinary leaps up and down the keyboard as she modulated from one key to another and finally dropped back into the prim little minuet.

Emily's playing of her own compositions had a freedom it totally lacked in the pieces she had obviously studied with a piano teacher.

Trying to hold down, for a moment, her enthusiasm and relief at Emily's talent as a composer, Katherine said, "Does your teacher encourage you to write your own music?"

"Oh, no, he doesn't like it. But I thought maybe you would."

"And your parents?"

"Oh, they like it, all right, but they're both so busy they don't have much time for --"

"First of all," Katherine said in her most authoritative voice, "you will change piano teachers. Whoever you have is all wrong for you. Then you will learn harmony and counterpoint. The more you know of the old disciplines, the freer you will be to go off on your own. I'm not sure about you as a pianist, Emily. Your teacher has taught you some dreadful habits. Thank God you break them when you play your own music. But you are a composer. On the other hand, you need exposure to every kind of music possible. When I think of what you did with Yolande's--"

Emily interrupted. "You think I have talent?"

"I know you have talent." Katherine looked at her watch. "It's time for Llew or somebody to come and take me home. Are your parents going to be in this evening?"

"I think so. Unless one of them has an emergency."

"I'll call them. As for the piano lessons themselves -- would you like to study with me?"

Emily's voice was small. "I'm already sitting down."

Katherine made a conscious effort to keep her tone level. "I'm a hard taskmaster."

"Madame Vigneras, I'm not afraid of work."

"I know you're not. But you have a lot to unlearn, and that will be very hard work."

"Do you really mean it?"

"Hard work? Yes."

"That you will teach me?"

"I'll speak to your parents and if they can arrange transportation for you to come to me, we'll start at once."

"Madame Vigneras --" There were no dramatics in Emily's voice. "This was life-and-death for me."

Katherine spoke softly. "I know, my child."

"I could have been dead, and you've made me alive."

"It's your own talent, Emily. All I can do is help it grow."

"I can't say thank you. It's too--"

"You'll thank me by working." It was too intense. Katherine turned in relief as someone said, "Madame Vigneras," and she saw Mother Cat coming in. Emily gave a small curtsy, and Katherine marveled that she made so little concession to her artificial leg.

The nun smiled at them in greeting. "Madame Vigneras, a special chapter meeting has been called, something to do with Bishop Juxon's death, so Llew can't drive you home - the organist is part of the chapter. But Sister Isobel is waiting outside with the car. Are you planning to come to us on Sunday?"

"Yes, of course."

"One of us -- I hope I'll be the one, but I'm not positive -- will be down for you around four-thirty. I hope that will be convenient."

"Fine."

"And we'll get you home at a reasonable hour. We need to sleep, too. Will you be all right on your own, now?"

"Of course."

"The steps don't bother you? I should get back to the meeting, but --"

"I'll help her down the steps," Emily said.

The nun nodded. "Thanks, Emily. And then go on home, please."

"Yes, ma'am." Emily bobbed again. Perhaps manners were coming back at last.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (4)

August 23, 2006

The Books: "The Small Rain" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on my adult fiction shelf is:

1212900.gifNext book on the shelf is The Small Rain by Madeleine L'Engle.

At last I can stop bitch-slapping one of my favorite authors!! It's okay, Madeleine - you wrote, what, 150 books? It's okay if a couple of 'em are stinkers.

The Small Rain is L'Engle's first novel - and for a first novel it is rather extraordinary. She has a firm hand, it's a sweeping story covering many years, and she never seems to be self-indulgent or showing off or lingering on her own good prose. It's quite marvelous. She was in her early 20s when this was published - an actress, touring the country in plays - she wrote most of this book sitting backstage in many theatres. I love that. You can feel the atmosphere in the book - at least I can.

There are some issues with the book - it probably could be broken up into a series - like her other books - We follow her heroine, Katherine Forrester - from when she's 8 to when she's 24 or something like that. It's a bit much. But still - that's a quibble. Katherine is interesting enough to spend all that time with. AND - many many years later -in the 1980s (Small Rain was published in 1945) L'Engle wrote a sequel - which is called The Severed Wasp - Katherine Forrester now in her late 70s or 80s - and that book is one of my favorites of all of L'Engle's books. It's an amazing accomplishment.

Katherine Forrester is the child of two accomplished musicians. She grows up sitting backstage at Carnegie Hall. She is a serious child, who is a musical prodigy herself. L'Engle writes about people who have a VOCATION so so well. Whether they are scientists, priests, mothers (yes, I see that as a vocation - and some have more of a CALLING for it than others), actors, writers - whatever. L'Engle understands people who have grand passions that sweep away all else. People who are serious artists are often not understood by the larger population - (as in: "Do you need to practice 4 hours a day? Can't you come out and play?" or "Why are you staying in on a Friday night to write? Everyone needs downtime!" Etc.) L'Engle writes about learning how to balance the demands of real life with the demands of art (or your vocation) - and how you just can't worry too much about making people happy. She writes about that in her own life as well. She was HAPPY when she took time out of mothering to write - locked her door - let the kids fend for themselves for a couple of hours. Without that time writing, L'Engle would have been no good to anybody. Someone who doesn't have that OTHER vocation - would look at that as neglect, would look at L'Engle's behavior as selfish. And you know what? It is. Nobody ever said being an artist was a SOCIAL thing to do. It is blatantly anti-social - and artists for the most part are okay with that. Katherine Forrester is, from the very beginning, kind of anti-social. Music is her only love. She gets lost in it. She sits at the piano and just GOES ... wherever it is that she goes.

The intricacies of the plot are lost to me - it's been a while since I read it - but I know that eventually her mother loses the ability to play piano (her hands are ruined?? In an accident?) and eventually, she dies - (argh - sorry, can't remember) - and it is such a loss, and so horrible - that Katherine is sent away to boarding school. Which is HORRIFIC for her. She has no privacy. She is not a social girl. She also has a slightly deformed hip - which means she has a limp - This is immediately noticeable to people and the girls in the school tease her about it. She is only "allowed" to play piano for an hour a day. Which is agony for her. It's like cutting her off from the wellspring of life! In a way, it ends up being a blessing - because eventually - Katherine makes a friend (Sarah) - and Sarah too has a vocation - she wants to be an actress - so she doesn't think it weird at all that Katherine would rather sit at the piano than play ping-pong or just sit around reading magazines. Sarah ends up betraying Katherine in a big BIG way (I remember being kind of devastated when I first read it ... like: how could she do that???) - but that's what happens sometimes between girls. When a man comes into the picture. It sucks.

Uhm - not sure what else happens. Katherine loses her virginity to a childhood friend named Charlot - a sweet character - She's 17, 18, something like that. He asks her to marry him and she is basically like, "Uhm, no." Finally, her term at boarding school ends, she's 18 - and she's able to be on her own. So she moves to Greenwich Village - into her mother's old apartment (I love L'Engle's description of that apartment on 10th Street - beautiful) - and begins her serious work as an independent artist. She practices for hours a day. She ends up meeting a group of real bohemians (and remember - this takes place in the late 30s - a very different New York back then) - actors, artists, playwrights - and the world of Greenwich Village, and its nightclubs, and night life opens up to her. She runs into Sarah again (this is before the betrayal - which basically ends the book). Sarah is in New York, trying to be an actress. Katherine begins to date Pete - something's not quite RIGHT there, though ... I like how L'Engle refuses to let things be NEAT. Because life isn't neat. Pete seems perfect. But you just know that something is not quite right ...

The book ends with Katherine alone again, with her music. Sarah has chosen Pete - and it's a betrayal - but as long as there is still music to play, Katherine will survive.

Now the beauty of all of this is; if you have gotten into this whole plot, if you have really invested in Katherine's journey (which I did) - to then go and read the stupendous Severed Wasp - and find out what happened to Katherine is just unbelievably satisfying. World War II, her children, her marriage, her career ... It really works. I am so glad that L'Engle decided to close that circle of her first novel.

Small Rain is a lovely book, full of well-drawn characters - and I love what it has to say about dedication to your art, whatever your art may be. I found this reader review on Amazon which pretty much sums it up:

As a pianist, I was deeply inspired by Katherine's sheer determination and drive. She is a very admirable character, and by the end of the book, I felt like I had made a new friend. I read the book two years ago for the first time, and was amazed at the depth and understanding that Madeleine wrote with--she seemed to fully understand the feelings and struggles of the musician, I felt that I could empathise with Katherine, and to me that is very important in a book. I've started reading it again, and was totally inspired to work and work with my music. I have been going through a dry period with my music and have not felt much like practicing. Upon reading this book for the second time, that has changed. I am now inspired, and have been practicing 3 hours a day. I feel like I am a born again musician. It's a thrill. I recommend this book for everyone who really wants to feel and empathise with a character, and especially for those of you who are musicians or artists.

Gorgeous.

Here's an excerpt from the whole boarding school section of the book. Katherine is aching to play more, aching for serious piano study ... It's literally like she has been ripped away from her own oxygen source. And I think maybe her parents intervened? Told the school to let her play more, or get her a good teacher? Can't remember.

Excerpt from The Small Rain by Madeleine L'Engle.

But the next morning Miss Halsey called Katherine up to her desk, told her that her music master was back in Montreux, that his name was Monsieur Justin Michel Vigneras, that her first lesson was to be at five that afternoon - adding crossly that Monsieur Vigneras was the most expensive of music masters and that she hoped Katherine would apply herself to her piano lessons better than she had to her schoolwork.

At five Katherine knocked on his door in the Music and Art building, her heart beating violently, because she was almost sure that it was the door to the studio from which the music had poured so wonderfully the night before. The same pleasant French voice said, "Come in: and she pushed the door open and stood in the doorway.

Monsieur Justin Michel Vigneras did not turn around. He stood leaning against the piano, looking bored and sulky, and this expression seemed even more like Charlot than the composed adult one of the night before. Sheila was at the piano, struggling with a Mozart Sonatina. She looked up in relief as Katherine arrived, jumped up quickly, and ran her fingers through the permanent wave that had become frizzy from the indignant washings of Miss Anderson, the school nurse.

Monsieur Vigneras' mouth set. "Finish," he said.

Sheila pouted, sat down, and began the Sonatina again.

"Not the whole thing." Justin Michel Vigneras raised his eyebrows. "Just from where you left off, please."

"I don't remember where I left off." Sheila stuck her hands out in front of her. The girls were not allowed to have long or lacquered fingernails, but Sheila had managed to keep the little finger of her left hand free from inspection, and the nail curved out from it, long and pointed, in contrast to the short clipped nails on her other fingers.

Justin Michel Vigneras pointed to the music. "Here. Begin here."

Sheila began to play and labored through to the end. "May I go now?"

"You certainly may. And if this term you would kindly practice at least half an hour between lessons, it would be less painful to us both."

"I practice half an hour every day except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - that's the week's end," Sheila said righteously.

"And play at least one scale a week."

"All right," Sheila said, her pout gone and her best smile on, the heavy bands on her teeth in childish contrast to her permanent wave. "Good-bye, monsieur."

"Good-bye. And cut that absurd fingernail." He took a white silk handkerchief with a blue border out of his pocket and blew his nose. Then he turned to Katherine, looking at her for the first time as Sheila went by her and shut the door.

He smiled at her, and she thought -- It must have been an omen, his playing last night, and my hearing him. I'm glad I felt so awful and had to run and run. Otherwise, none of it would have happened --

"Are you my little friend of last night?" he asked.

"Yes. I am."

"Your name, please?"

"Katherine Forrester."

"What age have you?"

"Fifteen."

"You have studied the piano before?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Play something for me. Something not too long. I will probably stop you before you get very far, anyhow."

Katherine sat down at the piano; her hands felt cold and clammy; she was trembling. She reached up and felt for her mother's locket with unsteady fingers. -- I'm behaving like an idiot, a damned idiot -- she said to herself. -- If I let myself get all panicky like this I'll play badly. Mother'd be disgusted with me. -- She clenched her hands tightly together for a moment to steady them, then began a Scarlatti Sonata. Once she had begun to play, the fear left her. Her sureness of the music gave her courage, and she played well. When she had finished, Monsieur Vigneras was no longer leaning against the piano.

But the first thing he said was, "Do you speak French?"

"Yes, a little," Katherine answered, surprised and rather disappointed, because his English was very good and she knew she had played well. "I understand it all right."

He spoke in French. When he spoke his own language, his voice deepened and a new warmth came. "Play something else."

Katherine turned back to the piano and played the Bach Prelude and Fugue in F major.

"Now some Beethoven." When she had finished he asked, "With whom have you studied?"

"With my mother."

"Who is your mother?"

"Julie Forrester."

"Is she a musician?"

"Yes, she --- she --" Katherine's face grew crimson because he didn't know her mother was dead. "She was a very well known pianist in America."

"I will look her up. Where is she?" So he hadn't noticed the past tense.

"She -- she's dead."

"Oh. I'm sorry. When?"

"Last April. The seventeenth."

"She was training you to be a pianist?"

"Yes."

"Then why in God's name are you here?"

"Father wanted me to have some conventional education. I haven't been to school since I was ten. And I don't imagine he and Aunt Manya much wanted me around."

"Who is Aunt Manya?"

"My father's wife ... They love me a lot, both of them, and I love them, I adore them both, but after all, what would they do with me? I'd just be in the way, and Aunt Manya's opening in London ..."

"Opening what?"

"Opening in a play."

"Oh. Well, we'll see what I can do for you. Have you done much Chopin?"

"The Etudes and the F major Ballade. Just because I wanted to, though. I wasn't really ready for it."

"Well, we'll see what I can do for you. You shouldn't be here. Half an hour's practice every day."

"I'll do more. I'll sneak it in somehow."

She was suddenly terribly happy, with that sudden winging up of something inside her breast that seemed like the flight of a bird. She sang as she left the Music and Art building and went back to school, sang as she walked down the corridor, until Miss Halsey stopped her sharply. --I don't care -- she thought angrily, trying to keep the wonderful feeling from going. --I can learn here, the way Mother would have wanted me to. I'll study and make her proud of me. Nothing else matters--

She slipped out of the preparation hall and upstairs to one of the empty practice rooms. It wasn't used because the piano was so bad, but it was better than nothing. She went in and shut the door, standing by the window in the dark. The mountain sloped in terraces down to the lights of Montreux and the lake; and across the lake the mountains of France stood, shadowy in spite of the clear outline the snow gave them against the sky. Two lake steamers were moving slowly on the water in opposite directions, two small bands of gold lights approaching each other and crossing. In a straight line down the mountain ran the funicular, and, winding around, ran the small train. They were the only lights on the mountainside, and they seemed like something magic. Leaning there with her nose pressed against the windowpane, Katherine suddenly felt a sense of peace and strength. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help," she whispered, then withdrew from the window, turned on the unprotected ceiling light that glared down at her, sat down at the dreadful piano with the squeaking pedals and practiced until time for dinner. She went into dinner with a consciousness of her strength, of great indifference to the things that had been making her so miserable -- a consciousness that was too conscious to be real.

Posted by sheila Permalink

August 22, 2006

The Books: "A Live Coal In The Sea" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on my adult fiction shelf is:

n24649.jpgNext book on the shelf is A Live Coal In The Sea by Madeleine L'Engle.

This is L'Engle's last work of fiction - it was published in 1996. Since then, it's been all theological writing, which I think is best. Because, I'm sorry, Live Coal stinks up the field. Her novels have gotten progressively more preachy and - uhm - BAD - with the notable exception of Troubling a Star - the last in the Austin family series. I think her milieu is teenagers - when she tries to write about adult issues, it just doesn't fly. I also think that she is about 200 years old now, and her creativity is no longer looking for its outlet in FICTION. Her theological books are wonderful, I love them ... they are ruminations on the Bible, reflections of lessons learned in her own life ... The Genesis Trilogy is just awesome.

Live Coal is a long-awaited (not) sequel to her book Camilla, written in the 1960s. I don't even remember any of it - but I do remember that there is a big revelation that one of the characters is a "sodomite" - yes, she uses that word - and with that word, I pretty much closed the door on Ms. L'Engle. We all have our deal-breakers. When writing about these "sodomizers" ... L'Engle seemed so out of her depth. I found it offensive - mainly because ignorance offends me. If you don't know any gay people, and yet you feel you have the authority to write about them - then you're ignorant. And I have no time for that, because - uhm - I live in a world full of gay people, and I barely even notice. Oh, he's gay. Oh, she's wearing blue. Now if you don't live in a world with tons of gay people - that's FINE - but then don't pretend to be a fucking authority on what gay people are "like".

I read Live Coal, and I thought: "Man, must be nice living in your bubble, Madeleine." Which is so weird - because her other books SO don't strike me as that!! I think she got tired in the middle of Live Coal (she is, after all, 400 years old) and HAD to finish it. The book feels very obligatory to me. Nobody in it is interesting. She doesn't get inside of it. She has some themes, but they are really obvious - and the whole gay sub-plot, which is tinged with hysteria and ignorance, REALLY turned me off. A-boo-hoo, he's a sodomite, a-boo-hoo-hoo.

Now - not to be totally mean about this - Camilla is now an adult, and a professor of physics, I believe. There's a lot of cool science stuff in the book, things Camilla is working on. Camilla is completely neurotic about the fact that her mother was a big ol' slut - so in retaliation, or in self-defense - she has become a clammed-up celibate. Finally, though, she meets a dude named Mac who helps break down her walls. But - HORRORS - he's religious!!! Camilla is an atheist. She's a rational scientist. WHAT WILL SHE DO??? Again: Madeleine is a bit too on the nose here. Basically, it is up to Camilla to give up her certainty and accept faith into her life. Which - is fine, again - but the preachy and obvious tone of these passages made me want to throw the book across the room. hahahaha

Here's a section where Camilla goes to meet Mac's parents for the first time. Camilla's parents are a nightmare - she falls in love with Mac's parents. Little does Camilla know that Mac's father is, in fact, a-boo-hoo - a SODOMITE! Oh, and Madeleine also uses "sodomize" in its verb form - "they were there, sodomizing ..." I suppose if you're an ignorant person who ONLY reads the Bible that sentence would sound normal. But to L'Engle fans, who are, in general, a widespread group - made up of all KINDS of people - that sentence sounds just ... flat out WEIRD. Gotta be honest. Who's your audience, Madeleine? Your main audience is NOT hardcore take-the-Bible-literally Christians. As a matter of fact, many Christian groups have campaigned against your books, especially Wrinkle in Time, since their publication. Your books have been called dangerous. So anyway: you seem to have lost sight of who your audience is here, Madeleiene. And I guess that's cool, you're 134 years old, you're entitled to be a bit forgetful.

If this sounds a bit harsh, I'm fine with that. A lot of times on this blog - readers (who don't know me) make the mistake of assuming that because I'm - an actress? or ... an artist? ... uhm, I'm still not sure where the assumption comes from ... that I am TOLERANT. Or that they think I SHOULD be. They think that I am willing to hear all sides, that I am open to all sides. I am actually not. I'm like everybody else on the planet, believe it or not. I dislike the word "tolerance' anyway - because it seems to put whoever is being "tolerant" ABOVE the thing they are "tolerating". But anyway: no, there's a lot I am NOT tolerant of. End of story. Closed door. It's funny - cause the people who have assumed I should be tolerant of everything - who want to feel "comfortable" on my blog (yes, one dude emailed me that - he was truly disturbed that he didn't feel "comfortable" at ALL TIMES on my blog - so bizarre ... who feels "comfortable at all times"??? It's not my job to make people feel "comfortable at all times" for God's sake) - But anyway, those people - are usually the same people whose HEADS WOULD FREAKIN' EXPLODE - if I showed up in their comments section on their blog and tried to say, "You know, I actually love some of Maureen Dowd's columns. She can be totally hysterical." Or whatever. You get the point. They would tear me a new asshole. They would slam the door in my face. And they would not even realize that they were behaving in the same "hypocritical" way that I was.

So for me? Madeleine sounds like an ignorant judgmental person in this book, and I do not cut her any slack for that.

If you want to write a theological book, if you want to teach me your beliefs from the Bible - then write a book directly about that (Madeleine's theological books are among my favorite things of hers that she has ever written)- don't try to weave it into a novel. You never pull that shit with your young adult books - and they are FAR superior than your "adult" books.

Excerpt from A Live Coal In The Sea by Madeleine L'Engle.

Mac met her at the airport and drove her to the rectory, a spacious old house of soft-pink brick, a few blocks away from the church. A large screened porch in the back overlooked a green sweep of lawn at the end of which was a small stream. A ceiling fan moved the air so that there was a feeling of coolness. All the rooms were high-ceilinged and many-windowed to catch the breeze. There were marble mantelpieces surmounted by portraits in heavy gold frames.

"My wife's relatives," Mac's father told her, "mostly long gone. The camera has replaced the paintbrush. The present cousins, aunts, and uncles still aren't used to this second-generation usurping Greek American, but they all think Mac is perfect, and they can pretend that his name is really MacArthur instead of Macarios."

"Nonsense. Don't listen to Art," Mac's mother said. "The sun rises and sets on him, and my family is very aware of it, even if one of my cousins insists on calling him Arthur, knowing perfectly well his name is Artaxias. I'm sorry you couldn't come in the spring when this place is a riot of blossom. Right now we're mostly green." She noticed Camilla looking at a portrait. "That's my Great-something-or-other Aunt Olivia. I'm named after her. Isn't she lovely?"

"Lovely," Camilla agreed.

"There are some fascinating family stories about her behaving like a little flibbertigibbet but going behind the lines with messages during the -- what we still call The War. I'm told that her favorite place in all the world was a rambly old cottage up on the dunes in North Florida. I was left a nice piece of land on the beach between Jacksonville and Saint Augustine, and Art and I have built a little cottage, an escape route. I'd like to retire there, rather than Charleston. Art's father came from Florida."

"He was an itinerant peddler," Art said. "But he read classic Greek, which is not usual, and he believed I could do anything I wanted to do. I love the beach house."

"You'll have to see it sometime," Olivia said.

What was Olivia Xanthakos taking for granted?

Camilla had not been prepared - though why not? - to have the Xanthakoses be even shorter than Mac, both delicately-boned, with small hands and feet. But large in love and welcome. She had never been in a household like this before. No tension crackled from the walls. There was laughter, and acceptance.

How had they managed, Mac's parents, to get to the place of radiance in which they lived? Was there a secret? Mac was relaxed, and so was Camilla, far more than she had expected to be able to be. The second night, she helped Olivia prepare dinner, set the table with silver, china, crystal, light the candles.

"Quite a lot of the china is chipped," Olivia said calmly, "but I've never seen the point of saving it for special occasions. Every dinner that has us gathered around the table together is a special occasion and deserves our best. Now I think everything is ready. Let's call our men."

Our men, Camilla thought. Are they?

Art said grace, then turned to Camilla. "What do you know about Thales of Miletus?"

Camilla almost choked on a mouthful of rice and gravy. "He is believed to have calculated the height of a pyramid by measuring its shadow at exactly the moment when the length of his own shadow was the same as his height."

Art Xanthakos clapped his hands. "A mathematician's response!"

Camilla smiled at his enthusiasm. "It's a mistake to underestimate the pre-Platonic philosophers. Anaximander, also of Miletus, thought that our world was only one of an infinite number of worlds."

"Not so dumb, eh?" Art said. "Neither are you, lovey. I'm a Greek, but the average college education doesn't necessarily include the early Greek philosophers."

"And," Olivia said triumphantly, "Camilla likes my okra casserole. Not many Yankees like okra."

Mac smiled. "Camilla has an experimental palate. Not many people of any kind like the coffee I produce in the Church House."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (3)

August 21, 2006

The Books: "Certain Women" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on my adult fiction shelf is:

41WBW18YXHL._SS500_.jpgNext book on the shelf is Certain Women by Madeleine L'Engle.

Now this is really bizarre. I obviously read this book - because I see my tell-tale markings in the margins - but I remember almost NOTHING about it. What I do remember is that it is about a man named David Wheaton - a beloved American stage actor - who is now dying, and his daughter Emma (also a successful actress) has come to be with him. David has decided to die on his boat - the Portia - and so most of the book takes place on this boat. Emma sits with her father, and he reminisces, and we go back and forth in time, and blah blah, but ... why am I supposed to care? The whole device of the book is that David Wheaton is based on King David - and there's an unfinished play he is haunted by - a play about King David - written by Emma's now ex-husband. David Wheaton always had a dream of doing that play with his daughter. David Wheaton had 8 wives and 11 children. The book is a little bit too heavy-handed in the ol' Christian subtext for my taste. L'Engle tries to make it subtext (meaning: subtle, felt but not stated) but she does not succeed. It's a preachy book. I hate preachy books. So ... I honestly don't remember much about it. Wheaton looks back over his long life - his many many marriages - and Emma, who has her own problems to deal with (her own divorce) sits beside him, listens to him reminisce, adds her own details to the stories he tells ... The book is also set up so that each of King David's wives (Bathsheba, Ahinoam, Maacah, etc.) has a contemporary counterpart - and each chapter is set up so we get to know a different wife.

I almost feel like this would have been a better book if it had not been a novel- but if she had made it like her Genesis Trilogy books (And it was Good, A Stone for a Pillow, and Sold Into Egypt) - a rumination on the story of King David, a look at each of the wives and what they have to teach us, the lessons L'Engle herself has drawn from those stories in the Bible ... I love those Genesis Trilogy books - but to try to wrench that stuff into a novel is difficult indeed, and you can't be too obvious about it. This is one of L'Engle's only "obvious" books ... and it suffers for it.

Also - it features yet another one of her adult heroines who seems more like a teenage girl. L'Engle's forte is not adulthood. It's just not. Her best filter is to show us adulthood through the eyes of a teenage narrator. Any time she has an adult as the star (except for A Severed Wasp, in my opinion) - it seems like that adult is suffering from arrested development.

One thing I will say about this book: it's wonderful to read a book about the world of theatre where the author seems to get it right. L'Engle was an actor in her 20s - touring with Chekhov and Shakespeare and Moliere - this was how she met her husband. She worked with some of the greats - Eva Le Gallienne was one of her mentors, who gave her her first break. L'Engle wrote her first novel while doing her first big show, sitting backstage scribbling in a notebook, in between her scenes. Writing eventually took over - but her husband remained an actor, and a very successful one, until the day he died. She is showing us that world - which is also a world that no longer exists - the world of Broadway in the 20s and 30s, when there were true giants of the stage working - when theatre was IT, when movies looked to THEATRE for its inspiration, as opposed to the other way around.

So. Certain Women. Should I read it again?? Anyone else read it out there who can comment?? I obviously read it once but retain almost none of it.

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter.

Excerpt from Certain Women by Madeleine L'Engle.

David had met Ben one year when he dropped anchor at Whittock Island, where Ben and Alice had grown up. Ben had come out onto the beach to see whose boat was nosing into his small bay, and invited David in for coffee and conversation, and thus began what was to become an enduring friendship, which was cemented the year David arrived at Whittock with an agonizing pain in his belly. Ben had taken one look at David, moved to the wheel of the boat, and had run, as fast as the little craft would go, to Prince Rypert, where Alice had taken out an appendix ready to burst. And David, who had thought never to marry again, and Alice, who had thought never to marry at all, had fallen in love. "It was crazy," Alice said. "I was set in my ways, much too old for romance, and there I was, like a silly schoolgirl."

The year after David and Alice were married, and Alice had uprooted herself and moved to New York, Ben shattered his right femur, alone, fishing for salmon. How he got the troller into dock no one ever knew. The leg was set inadequately, and the bone knit slowly, and not well.

So it was natural for Ben to take over the Portia when David could no longer manage it and Ben, with his lame leg, could not spend weeks alone on his troller, fishing. He kept the house on Whittock Island, but the Portia became his real home. Normally, he slept in the forward cabin, where he had his odd collection of books: Shakespeare, the Bible, Water Prey and Game Birds, Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Thoreau's The Maine Woods ... Emma could see them from her bunk, contained in a high-lipped shelf with an elastic cord.

Ben's lack of formal education did not bother him. He had an unselfconscious but firm self-esteem. He was a good fisherman. An adequate logger. He was also perforce a navigator, meteorolgist, astronomer, electrician, carpenter, mechanic, shipwright -- there was nothing Ben could not do, Emma thought. Occasionally he came up with plans for a kelp farm. The Pacific Northwest was in his blood. He was not happy anywhere else. Nor did he feel the need to be anywhere else. He had married when he was in his mid-twenties and within a few years his young wife had died of cancer. After her death, his life had been solitary and, ultimately, contented. He was nearly fifty now, but he looked younger.

"Emma, Emma,"David said. "I'm glad you're here, glad we can share memories. I've hardly had time to give Alice my memories, my stories, and I want her to have them."

Emma looked around at the white salt-washed stones of the shore, the dark green of firs predominating. She looked with loathing at the brown scars, acres of land where the trees had been indiscriminately logged, with only a small fringe of evergreen left at the waterline to disguise the carnage. David was indignant, pointing out ways that logging could bring in good living and not unbalance the precarious ecology. Some of the scars, Ben had observed calmly, were not man-made, but had come from slides, great roarings of trees and rocks and mud, started by wind and rain. Nature can be as brutal as her creatures, Ben said.

After dinner, they sat in the pilothouse with David, letting the long twilight wash over them like water, listening as David talked about his life in the theatre, until he was ready for sleep. Alice could mimic the call of a loon, and sometimes she was ansered, the long, lovely sound carrying across the water. David sipped a cup of vervain, watching the shadows of the great Douglas firs on the nearby islands deepen and darken. This was the time when he was most ready to talk, to unburden himself to the two women and Ben.

"The world changes," he said. "Behavior which is taken for granted now, in the sixties, which is socially acceptable, would not have been tolerated when I was a young man."

Emma sat in the revolving chair by the wheel and swiveled so that she could look at her father.

"If I'd had affairs, rather than marrying, I'd have been just another immoral actor. Because my wives were legitimate, I get a lot of grief that I could have avoided if I'd merely bedded instead of wedded. Not to excuse myself. I have been an immoral actor."

Alice was sitting beside him on the bunk. She put his hand lightly on his knee. "Not an immoral actor, Dave. You have been a most moral actor."

He laughed again. "An immoral man, then. Self-indulgent. Living all my fantasies instead of being satisfied with acting them on the stage. If I'd just had affairs, it would have been more practical as well as - in some cases - more honest. Forgive me, my dears, I maunder."

Ben folded the chart table to its closed position against the wall. "Tell us more theatre stories, Dave. When did you get your big break?"

"I don't think I had a big break," David said. "I worked into my career gradually. My first featured role was in a series of French one-act plays when Existentialism wasn't even a word. I played a very young Cyrano de Bergerac who didn't much resemble Rostand's hero except in the size of his nose. But the plays made a modest splash and so did I. Some critical acclaim but not very good box office. I met Meredith, who was to be the first of my wives, at the opening-night party. She wanted to know what had happened to my nose. I spent a long time explaining makeup to her, not just how I put the putty nose on and off. She was considerably older than I and had that strange kind of assurance that comes with being born very, very rich. She thought I was adorable, and I didn't understand that she saw me as some kind of exotic animal she could buy and keep on a leash. I loved the clothes she bought me, especially the wildly expensive Chinese robe I still wear in my dressing room. I didn't realize that the clothes came with the purchase, the way some women buy diamond-studded collars for their poodles."

Then he laughed. "But I exaggerate, as usual. We were in love like two animals. No, that's not fair, either. It is a human tendency to rewrite the past. What is true is that after we were married Meredith wanted me to leave the theatre. She had more than enough money for us both, she told me. I could not make her understand that I wasn't an actor for money. For money I'd have stayed in Seattle and worked in my father's bank."

He handed his empty cup to Alice, who put it on the wide shelf above the bunk, and continued, "If Meredith couldn't understand why I was an actor, I didn't understand that, for people in her social class, acting was still unacceptable work, but she liked to be avant-garde. We were obviously not suited, but Meredith was a stickler for the proprieties, so she took me to the altar. I was young and didn't know what I was doiong. My mother, bless her, your Bahama, Emma, begged me not to marry so hastily, to wait. My father threatened. They were right, but I was impetuous and thought I knew everything. Poor Meredith. She had too much money. Her family was terrified that I was going to try to get some of it when we divorced. She never married again." He yawned. "I'm tired now, my dears."

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (2)

August 18, 2006

The Books: "The Love Letters" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf ... (we're in my children's and young adult bookshelves, by the way):

7110VJTZVYL._AA240_.gif.jpegNext book on the shelf is The Love Letters by Madeleine L'Engle.

Okay - so this one was written in 1966, post Wrinkle - and it's one of her "adult" books - I lump together this book, Other Side of the Sun and A Winter's Love ... They have very tenuous connections to the rest of her work (in terms of repeat characters) - while all of her other books have this interwoven thing happening.

I actually enjoyed The Love Letters when I first read it - now I'm not so sure I would like it as much. I think AS Byatt did what L'Engle was attempting here and FAR better in Possession. L'Engle is best with teenagers, I think. Her adult heroines (Cotty in this book, Stella in Other Side of the Sun, and definitely Emily in Winter's Love) feel like adolescents. They don't seem like grown women emotionally. And maybe that's on purpose - but I don't think so. I think L'Engle's adult characters are the most realistically drawn when they are seen through the eyes of teenagers.

So - this book. What I remember is: Charlotte (or Cotty) has fled her marriage - in a panic - and she has gone to Portugal, because she has gotten into her head that she MUST speak to "Violet Napier" - who is a famous harpsichordist, but who is also her husband's mother. Violet is terrifying. A force to be reckoned with. Charlotte has not written ahead telling Violet she is coming - so when she arrives in Beja, she finds that Violet is in Paris. Charlotte is obviously not well (emotionally) - she is devastated by this news. It feels incredibly urgent that she see Violet and NOW. She has it in her head that Violet will tell her what to do.

Charlotte eventually gets a room in a local pensao. She has been wandering about in the rain - and she gets ill - she lies in bed - feverish, waiting - You don't know what the fuck is wrong with this whiny beeyotch. Is she 16? Or 25? Grow up.

Anyway - there's a book on a shelf in her room - the published letters of a Portugese nun - centuries old - a book of love letters. The nun had been in the convent in this small town. Are the letters to Christ? That kind of passionate "I give myself to you" language? Or was there something else going on? Something carnal?

L'Engle then splits her narrative. We have whiny sick feverish Cotty in the present - and we go back in the past - to follow the journey of Mariana, the Portugese nun. And we go back and forth.

It's a nice device - hard to pull off - and Byatt kind of cornered the market in it with Possession - and it makes you see how awkward L'Engle is here, how she struggles to make it work.

BUT - as always - there's some really good writing here. What I remember most about this book is the character of Violet - who is, in my opinion, one of L'Engle's most original creations. You can't forget her. I also remember the opening section - where Charlotte is wandering through the rainy streets of the small Portugese town - she's booked a room in a small pensao - but it's freezing there, she just can't warm up ... Eventually she moves to the convent (I think) - but it's so vividly written, Charlotte's growing fever, her aching limbs, her sense that she will never ever feel well again.

So I'll excerpt a bit from the beginning.

Excerpt from The Love Letters by Madeleine L'Engle.

She turned up a cobblestoned street with narrow sidewalks that were an intricate design of black and pale-gray mosaic. Mosaic at her feet: the colors luminous in the street lamps; ceramic tile on the white houses to her right and left; everywhere a sense of order, of design. But in Charlotte's own chaos she was unable to comprehend order, and she found that her sense of smell was less blunted than her sight. The air was sharp not only with impending rain but with the acrid stink of drains and of rancid oil and damp cold; the smell seemed to seep through her coat along with the night wind.

She went along a street of small shops, dark now for the night, so that their windows were blind expanses of glass, turned down a street of private houses, and then saw on her right a great white building gleaming softly in the dark. As she reached the top of the street, she could see a plaque on the corner of the building. She crossed and peered at the lettering in the dim light of the street lamp: CONVENTO DE NOSSA SENHORA DA CONCEICAO. The convent building faced a large mosaic terrace with marble benches and a life-sized statue of a woman. The building was entirely dark. Of course it would be, at this hour of the night - or morning. It would be time for the nuns to be up, soon. Where was the chapel? There would always be a light in the chapel. But she could see no glimmer of light anywhere, could sense only an empty darkness hanging about the convent. Or was she projecting her own desolation on her surroundings?

Beja.

She was in Beja to see Violet Napier, Patrick's mother, Charlotte's mother-in-law, who was also Dame Violet Napier the harpsichordist. And it was not for nothing that Violet had been nicknamed the Violent.

-- When Violet comes back tomorrow -- no, today -- and I can talk --

What made her think she could talk to Violet, Violet, of all people, Violet who was Patrick's mother?

Antonio de Tieve knew Violet, and this was only logical in a small town, not horrid coincidence. What would Violet think of Antonio's coming to the convent plaza, of his arrogant, blasphemous kiss?

The rain began to fall more heavily. Her pale hair, her coat were soggy. She could not stay here any longer. Would the nuns let her in?

Without thinking she crossed to the arched entrance of the convent. There did not seem to be any bell to the door, so she began to knock. She knocked and no one came, and it was the very lack of response that broke through her unthinking pounding and she withdrew her hand quickly.

If she was this tired, so tired that she could think of trying to rouse the nuns in an unknown convent in the middle of the night - and she was this tired - she might as well accept the fact that she was not thinking coherently, that she was really incapable of thinking at all. She had better return to the pensao and get back into the damp bed that was at least drier than the rain.

But when she had undressed and slid, shivering, under the comfortless weight of blankets, she could not sleep. There had been wine with dinner, and then too much coffee, and alcohol and caffeine warred in her blood. She turned to the dim lamp and sat up in bed, her arms circling her knees, and looked around as though seeking reassurance, as though she might see something the room had not revealed before; but no revelation was forthcoming in this dark, chill rectangle, only a foreboding sense of past time, of lost time, of things sought for and not found. Behind her the heavy carved wood of the bedstead loomed up almost to the ceiling; its very massiveness seemed menacing; there was no comfort to be found in the bed, nor in the great, cumbersome wardrobe that matched it. In the spring of the year, with sunlight brightening the dark chintz of the curtains, the spidery pattern of the wallpaper, the room might have seemed full of Old World charm and atmosphere; the feeling of the past pervading the present might have been a delight. In the dead of winter and the small hours of the night, it filled her with a sense of oppression that was suffocating.

She got out of bed and took her coat down from the wardrobe, pushed into it, through it was still matted with rain and pulled the collar up. The floor was icy under her bare feet. She crouched and opened the door to the night stand: on the bottom shelf was a chamber pot; above it were three books which she pulled out. Despite the inadequate light she would try to read herself to sleep. The first book was a Gideon Bible: even in Beja, Portugal? Essie, her father's housekeeper, beloved Essie, in all times of stress had reached for her Bible, opened it, and pointed a finger at a verse. There she was supposed to find the answer. Charlotte with the certainty of youth had told Essie that this was superstition if not sin, but, as she thrust the Bible aside, she wondered: -- But suppose it could answer me ...

She pulled it back across the covers, opened it, and put her finger down on the page. The psalms. My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy judgments.

-- Well, Charlotte, what did you expect? Serves you right.

She turned to the other two books, both paperbound. The first was French, Lettres d'une Religieuse Portugaise. The second was Portugese, something about Soror Mariana; another nun, then. There seemed to be no escaping them, though nuns were not what Charlotte was fleeing from; more likely to: -- get thee to a nunnery. (Her father had sent her to convent schools not for religion but to learn manners. Or so he had said.) Sje opened the Portugese book and her smattering of Spanish helped her to pick out a few words, but at the end of the page she had made no sense of them, so she turned to the French book. At least it would hold a reasonable safety, because from this distance the years in the convent schools seemed to be haloed with an aura of comfort, if only the comfort of time past, passed through; but at least she had learned what to expect from nuns, so even a Portugese nun would not offer many surprises, would give a kind of familiar childhood reassurance.

She began leafing through the book at random. You made me completely yours with your violence; it was your love that made mine burst into flame; your tenderness melted me, and then your promises completely reassured me. My own awakening passion undid me, and the result of what started with such happiness is tears, and deathly despair, and I see no help anywhere.

Certainly there was no help here! She sighed. The language of the Religious, particularly the Latin Religious, in describing the reaction of the human to the divine love, frequently makes use of the language of secular love, of sexual love; there was nothing really new or startling here, so Charlotte, cold, tired, groping, read on: It's true that in loving you I felt a joy I hadn't known was possible, but I'm paying for it with a pain I didn't know was possible, either. If I had tried to resist your love, or held back out of false modesty; if I'd let my reason be stronger than my love, then you'd have a right to punish me now, and to use your power over me. But it seemed to me that you loved me even before you told me that you did: you made me believe that yours was a great passion. You carried me away and I gave myself entirely to love ...

She sighed again. This stuff was useless as a soporific . When she was twelve she had memorized large quantities of St. John of the Corss, wallowing in a romanticism far from that austere saint's intention. She still remembered much of it. Closing her eyes, she whispered,

Whither hast thou hidden thyself, and hast left me, O Beloved, to my sighing?
Thou didst flee like the hart, having wounded me: I went out after thee, calling, and thou were gone.
Sheperds, ye that go yonder, through the sheepcotes, to the hill.
If perchance ye see him that I most love, Tell ye him that I languish, suffer and die.

Since thou hast wounded this heart, wherefore didst thou not heal it?
And wherefore, having robbed me of it, hast thou left it thus
And takest not the prey that thou hast spoiled?

Well, St. John of the Cross was not only a great mystic, he was a great poet, which this Portugese nun was not.

She turned wearily back to the first of the letters. Oh, my darling, if only you had known when you first came to me what was going to happen! Poor love, you betrayed me, and you betrayed yourself by hoping for the impossible. You expected so much joy from our love, and all that is left is the pain of our parting.

She rejected the nun's letters with the same revulsion with which she had thrown down the Gideon Bible. What kind of answer was this? ... the result of what started with such happiness is tears, and deathly despair, and I see no help anywhere ...

-- What would you have made of that, Essie?

She put the three books down on the nightstand, turned out the light, and, still in the damp fur coat, plunged under the covers.

The strange words of the Portugese nun, the mystical words of St. John of the Cross, the searing words of Patrick whirled in discordant counterpoint in her head. She slid in and out of a half sleep, a sleep riddled with dreams that left her exhausted instead of refreshed. As soon as it was daylight she got up and dressed. Her throat felt raw and hot.

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack

August 17, 2006

The Books: "The Other Side of the Sun" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on the shelf is:

71A30WW3M0L._AA240_.gif.jpegNext book on the shelf is The Other Side of the Sun by Madeleine L'Engle. Another one of L'Engle's novel for adults ... I put it on this shelf because I need all of her books to be together. At least all of her fiction. I remember first reading The Other Side of the Sun and really getting a lot out of it. And now I can barely remember any of it. It's about the sprawling Southern family dynasty of the Renier family (ahem - we meet Simon Renier in Dragons in the Waters - Reniers pop up through all of her books). The Other Side of the Sun is the kind of book that has family trees in it - family trees that you actually need to consult in order to keep everyone straight. L'Engle, while she grew up in Manhattan as well as Europe (she went to a Swiss boarding school) - also has a big sprawling Southern family - her roots are in the south - and she writes eloquently about living with her extended family, the beach house, the food, the nosy aunts, the sound of the waves, the heat ... strong steel magnolia women, eccentric men - this is L'Engle's actual background. The Other Side of the Sun takes place in that world. If you read her Crosswicks Journals - you would even recognize the house the whole thing takes place in. I'm not saying she didn't invent most of this - but the atmosphere, the inspiration ... comes from that section of her life. She mainly writes about families living in old creaky farmhouses in New England. That is L'Engle's reflection of her own adult married life - where they always lived in old creaky farmhouses in New England. But her childhood was urban (Manhattan), European (Switzerland), and also Southern. Kinda wild.

Here's what I remember about this book.

Stella North, a fresh young British woman, has married Theron Renier (who is, like, the 4th Theron Renier in a long line ...) The story is told from Stella's point of view. She's the outsider. The book takes place - uhm - mainly in 1910. Theron works for the US government - in an incredibly secret capacity - so secret that he can't even tell his new wife where he is going on assignment. So he sends her to stay at the Renier family house in ... Savannah? Can't remember where. She's a newlywed, only 19 years old - but her husband has gone off to Africa on intelligent work - so she travels to America, and to ... whereever ... to stay at Illyria - the name of the family house. There are all of these old aunts there awaiting her - thrilled to welcome the new member of the family. They're a bunch of characters - some are spinsters, some are not - They all immediately love Stella, because she is family ... but there are dark clouds around this house. You can feel it. I know that some of it has to do with the spectre of slavery - still hovering on the sidelines in 1910. The Reniers had slaves - and many of the descendants of the slaves still live with and work for them, only as free people now. Everyone in the house has a LONG LONG memory. There's a lot of danger, too ... but what exactly is dangerous I cannot remember. Stella gets caught up in a friendship with a young black man named Ron - and the racism of the time starts to heat up - she cannot be allowed to take walks on the beach with him, and talk about mathematics (which is what they do). Forces that are larger than both of them start to press in. But ... ack ... there's more to it. Can't remember. That'll have to be it for now.

I liked the book because it easily describes the kind of family where the ancestors are almost as real as the living. There is no demarcation line between living and dead. L'Engle really gets that, in this book.

I'll excerpt from the very beginning, when Stella first arrives at Illyria - the childhood home of her husband - a place she has heard so much about. She has never been there, and she has never met any of his family - they got married in England.

Excerpt from The Other Side of the Sun by Madeleine L'Engle.

They were here on the veranda waiting for me when I finally reached Illyria, the four women: Honoria, tall, powerful, purply-black; the two old great-aunts, small and pale; Aunt Irene, half the age of the other three - but when one is nineteen, middle age is old. Honoria stood calmly aside as the others, twittering like birds, palm-leaf fans fluttering, rose to greet me. Aunt Irene held out her plump hands. "Stella! It is Stella, isn't it?

"Who else would it be?" one of the old ladies whispered.

I felt the eyes of all four probing me. I was being measured, judged. I smiled brightly to hide my discomfort.

"Stella, honey, welcome to Illyria. I am your Aunt Irene." She drew me to her. Her voice was bright-pink crushed velvet and she smelled of heliotrope. She called herself "Ant Ah-reen" and, probably because I was so keyed up, I almost giggled.

"And this is your Great-aunt Mary Desborough, and your Great-aunt Olivia."

The two old ladies moved forward. Unlike Aunt Irene, who looked like a fashion plate, they were dressed in rusty and old-fashioned clothes, with their hair parted in the middle, and their ears poking out in the fashion (I learned later) which had been popular during "The War". "Welcome, child," one of them pecked me on the cheek. "We welcome the new Mrs. Theron Renier. I am Aunt Mary Desborough."

"And I'm Aunt Olivia," the other old lady said, and reached to kiss me. She smelled lightly of lemon and lavendar; the old-grey watered silk of her dress rustled as she moved, and her voice was like it, a dry, gentle rustling.

"Clive! Clive! Ronnie!" Aunt Irene called. "Oh, there you are. Please see that Miss Stella's things are taken to her room so that Honoria can unpack them."

The old colored woman moved to me; there was something majestic about her; she took my hands in her very strong ones and looked into my face. I felt like a child instead of a married woman. "We welcome you, Miss Stella."

This, then, was Honoria. I knew that Honoria was important. Immediately after Mado's death it was Honoria who saw to it that her ring came to my Terry for his bride.

The Renier ring. Touching that ring got me through a lot of bad times. Not that I thought it had any magical properties, although I was to find that many people did indeed believe this. It was just that the ring always made me know who I was: Mrs. Theron Renier. I touched it now, a heavy ring, made of two beautifully etched gold serpents, entwined like those on a caduceus, with rubies for eyes.

"It came to Mado from Honoria," Terry had told me when he first showed it to me the night he asked me to be his wife.

"Mado --"

"My grandmother. Marguerite Dominique de la Valeur Renier. She was always called Mado."

"And Honoria?"

He hesitated. "I suppose you might call her Mado's housekeeper. I love her almost as much as I loved Mado. Maybe as much because they belonged together."

My husband, of all the Renier men, was the one who was most full of laughter, but when he took the ring out of its velvet box to give it to me, he was totally serious. "It carries a responsibility," he said, "a responsibility of healing. The serpent isn't always a symbol of evil. You remember that the twined serpent is the doctor's emblem, and my Grandfather Theron was a doctor."

(Doctor Theron, his young son,
There met Mado, loved and won,
But lost the War Between the States ...)

I looked at the ring, fingering the rubies. "How would a housekeeper get a ring like this?"

"Honoria was born in Africa," Terry had said, as though that explained everything.

Posted by sheila Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 16, 2006

The Books: "A Winter's Love" (Madeleine L'Engle)

Next book on my young adult fiction shelf - although this is really adult fiction - but I like to keep all of Madeleine L'Engle's stuff together:

618EWFRMR9L._AA240_.jpgNext book on the shelf is A Winter's Love by Madeleine L'Engle.

Okay - so this is one of L'Engle's "adult" novels - and it was published before Wrinkle in Time - 1957, I believe - and you can feel her struggling to find her way as a writer. Basically, this is a big YAWN of a book. Her first novel was The Small Rain, published when she was 23? Published in 1945. Amazing - anyway, that first novel has much more confidence and interest and good writing than this book, published over 10 years later. L'Engle has written about the dark years before Wrinkle was published - when she struggled to balance her life as a mother of young children, a wife, and a writer ... You can feel that struggle in A Winter's Love. The main theme of the book is giving up on a chance at divine happiness and accepting your duty. Not really uplifting - although, yes, it's quite an adult theme. Adults know that sometimes we just HAVE to do something. But ... dreariness emanates off of this book. Duty has never seemed so dreary.

L'Engle has written extensively about her childhood - and her parents (especially in The Summer of the Great-Grandmother - excerpt here). When L'Engle was a little girl - her parents moved the family to Switzerland. Her father's lungs had been destroyed by the trench warfare in WWI - and he was a writer - and he had been unable to write - and he was also dying - and it was thought the air in Switzerland would do him good. But it was depressing. L'Engle grew up in a house with depressed parents, taken up with other things. She was left to fend for herself. And one day - L'Engle thought she was in the villa by herself, and she walked by her parents bedroom and she saw her mother - her glamorous capable breezy mother - lying on her bed, arms splayed out, weeping with wrenching sobs. It was a horrifying moment for the young L'Engle ... a snapshot of adult misery ... It was also a shattering of the image of her mother. She now knew what her mother was hiding at all times. She realized how strong her mother actually was ... to hide her grief so well.

That incident makes it into A Winter's Love and - I think it has some of the best writing in this preachy YAWN of a book ... so that will be my excerpt.

The plot is similar to L'Engle's childhood experiences. The parents - Emily and Courtney - take the family to live in Switzerland. The father is in a depression. He drinks too much. He has withdrawn. He feels he can no longer write. His depression takes up the entire family. They have a 12 year old daughter Virginia (who actually ends up being one of the participants at the conference in House like a Lotus - so we get to see what happened to Virginia) - Virginia is awkward, prickly, needs her mother right now - but her mother is totally unavailable because poor little Emily is so taken up with poor little Courtney's depression. (I didn't like the names in this book either. They rang false to me. Emily? Courtney? Then there's a guy named Abe. Nope. Not a good name either.) Emily ends up running into an old friend from New York - who is there for a ski vacation - his name is Abe. And a sort of love affair develops ... but in the end Emily picks up the shackles of her marriage and walks away. The whole thing is depressing because I didn't really like Abe all that much anyway. I wasn't DYING for them to commit adultery - I wasn't ACHING for them to kiss - which I guess I wanted. If you're gonna write a book about an affair - and one that's not supposed to be a tawdry coupling of desperate barflies ... then shouldn't you WANT them to commit adultery? Even if they DON'T?? Anyway, I read the whole thing totally indifferently. Whatever, have your affair, or don't ... but please stop whining. I also read it, thinking: Abe??? Ew. I don't like him. I don't like Courtney either. So basically Emily, you're up shit's creek, babe. Deal with it.

The book is written from multiple perspectives - Emily's - Virginia's - but ... it's not handled well. Or - it's not handled gracefully - you feel that L'Engle doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to get "in" to the story - so she needs more than one narrator.

But the book is interesting to read - as a L'Engle fan - in terms of her development as a writer. It's like another writer altogether emerged with Wrinkle in Time. The books before that (except, strangely, for her very first novel - which has a sure and confident tone) seem to be struggling in the dark, hands outstretched. There's some awfully excellent writing in all of them ... but they just don't .... "hit it". They're off the mark, somehow. If she had never written Wrinkle in Time then these books would NEVER be read - they're not worthy enough.

But as lead-ups to Wrinkle, I find them fascinating.

Anyway, here's the excerpt - taken directly from L'Engle's own life. There's something very poignant about that for me.

Excerpt from A Winter's Love by Madeleine L'Engle.

After lunch Virginia went up early to dress for the dansant, running up the stairs silently in the old white moccasins she usually slipiped into after she had pulled off her boots.

-- Mother's amber beads, she thought. I bet she'd let me borrow them for this afternoon.

She stood for a moment at the top of the stairs, listening to the sounds of the house. Downstairs she could hear Mimi talking to Connie, could hear the sounds of her father's typewriter; upstairs, nothing except the sound of her old alarm clock ticking loudly against the silence. She moved, quiet as an Indian in the soft-soled moccasins, to the door of her parents' room. It was pushed to, but not shut tightly, and as she leaned against it it swung open and there upon the bed she saw Emily, lying face downwards, her arms flung out, her body across the bed in an abandonment of despair, her eyes closed but with traces of tears still clinging to lashes and cheeks. Unseen, unheard, Virginia backed out, trembling, and went to her own room.

She stood at the window in the room already beginning to darken with the approach of evening. The garden lay still and white under the snow, only hummocks and ridges showing where there might be bushes and flowers. Stars were already beginning to flicker, disappear, then shine steadily as darkness seeped into the valley. Up the mountains the great hotel lay sprawled in indistinct shadows, above it the sanitorium, and lights were coming on in their windows; and a stranger would not know which was which, which the hotel where there was dancing and champagne and gaiety, and which the sanatorium where there was illness and pain. She stared at the two buildings, trying to blot out with their image that of her mother flung across the bed, staring until the outlines of the buildings blurred, merged into each other, separated, blurred again.

-- I wish I were back at school, she thought.

And then -- My stomach hurts (transferring the pain to something physical).

She took out of her bottom bureau drawer the small pile of Christmas presents she had bought or made, and put them on her bed and stood looking down at them for comfort, each one tied up carefully in a different kind of Christmas paper. She picked up the last present that remained unwrapped, a small bottle of "4711" eau de cologne for her mother, and turned it over and over in her hand, reading and rereading the insciprtion. "No. 4711, Ferd. Mullens, Inc., always the first prize. Jedesmal den ersten preis. Toujours le premier prix." Then she wrapped it up, slowly, and put all the presents away, shutting the drawer as Mimi came in.

While they were dressing, Emily knocked and there she stood with the amber beads, saying, "Vee, I thought these might help with the velvet dress," and her face was freshly powdered and you could not tell that so short a time ago there had been tears on her cheeks.

"I was going to ask you for them," Virginia said.

Emily laughed. "Two minds with a single thought. Obviously they were meant for your dress, but mind you, I'm only lending them to you. I'm very fond of them myself."

"Put on Vee's lipstick for her, will you, Mrs. Bowen?" Mimi asked. "She never puts on enough."

Posted by sheila Permalink | TrackBack