Detour: To 17th Century Italy

One of the books I read this summer was Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, by Dava Sobel.  It is a book that is part history and part biography of Galileo and his daughter, Sister Maria Celeste, a cloistered nun.  Maria Celeste wrote letters to her father throughout her short life and those letters are translated and included in this well-researched historical account.  The letters help tell the story of Galileo, his career and his times, but they also help to tell Marie Celeste's story and another story that is not well known--what 17th century Italy was like for women, especially women who served the Church.

From Galileo's Daughter I learned an enormous amount about Galileo. Before reading this book I had a general knowledge of Galileo and his contribution to science, but I knew next to nothing about his life and career.  And I certainly didn't know he had five children, all illegitimate, and that two of his daughters became cloistered nuns.

In reading the book I became aware of how very complicated his situation was, and that it wasn't just a matter of the Vatican's punishing him for daring to say that the earth revolved around the sun.  There was much more to it than that; in fact, his problems with the Vatican were more or less minor until late in his career. 

I also learned that Galileo was no rebel in the pure sense. Throughout his career, he tried to address the concerns of the Popes as each came along and to comply with the Vatican's wishes with respect to his published writing. When he had a friend in the Vatican, things worked out pretty well and he was able to carry on his work. But when the political situation changed, he found himself in trouble.

I think what I found most surprising was that Italy (that is, the Vatican) was one of the last holdouts in refusing to accept the Copernican view of the universe.  In other words, Galileo was not telling the world something they didn't know; he was, however, helping to prove what was until then only a theory. What he saw and showed the world through his telescopes made the truth about our solar system hard to deny.  And the fact that his works were available outside of Italy made it possible for everyone to learn of his discoveries and discuss them in learned circles, despite the Vatican's official denial of their validity.

Everything I learned about Galileo was very interesting.  But what I learned about his daughter was even more interesting, because it gave me a window on women of the time.  In her letters, Sister Marie Celeste talks about her life in the monastery, a home she never left, not even for an hour or two, until her death. This was the cloistered life, shut away from the world, spent working and praying. But though the cloister was separated from the world, still the world's concerns were allowed to filter in, through letters, primarily, but also word of mouth. 

Marie Celeste was a pious woman, but she knew what was happening with her father, and she conveyed her opinions about it, however covertly, through her letters.  And though it would seem that a woman in such a situation would be meek and subject to the dictates of her mother superior or the priest in charge, Marie Celeste suggests through her letters that she had some power over her circumscribed world, power she seemed to relish.  Though forced into the convent at a young age because of the circumstances of her birth, she nonetheless made the best of it.  No doubt many other women of her time did the same, but not many of them were able to write of their experiences. We're lucky to have Marie Celeste's letters to give us a glimpse of her times.

Dava Sobel published another book, Letters to Father, which contains all of Marie Celeste's 124 surviving letters covering a ten-year period.  They are translated and edited by Dava Sobel, who also wrote the introduction.  Sometime I'd like to read them all, and if you get the chance, I recommend them along with Galileo's Daughter, a book I enjoyed very much.

The Illusion of Plot

I'm continuing to read the twenty stories in The Best American Short Stories 1990, but so far the story I've enjoyed the most is the one that is most unlike the other stories. "Eisenheim the Illusionist," by Steven Millhauser, is "based on the pseudo-mythical tale of a magician who stunned audiences in Vienna in the latter part of the 19th century" (Wikipedia). 

I liked the story because it kept me reading, eager to find out what was going to happen next; yet it was structured more like a report or a historical essay than a short story.  The characters in it remained opaque, and therefore mysterious, an effect the author was apparently going for, if I'm correctly interpreting his "Contributors' Notes" at the back of the short story collection: "The birth of a story, at least for me, is a genuine mystery" (351).

Since I'd never heard of the author, I looked him up and found that he received a Pulitzer prize for his novel, Martin Dressler.  (Read the Wikipedia article: Millhauser.)  From Wikipedia I learned that the story was made into a movie which I have also seen and liked: The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton.  What's interesting is that I was reminded of that movie while I was reading the story, and with good reason, apparently.

"Eisenheim" is in stark contrast to the other stories I've read so far in this collection. In those stories, we are never left in doubt about what the main character is thinking or feeling.  It strikes me that in literary stories, the action is mostly unseen.  Instead of being about events, the stories are about people's interior lives--how they respond to events.  While I enjoy a character-driven story as much as the next English major, I still relish a story with a strong, action-driven plot. But lately those seem in short supply in the average literary collection.

In reading The Best stories, I've started to wonder how we arrived at the place where most of our short fiction (at least what could be judged quality writing) is of this interior type.  Are we to believe that writers cannot produce a well crafted story that is focused on plot rather than character?  I think a story such as "Eisenheim the Illusionist" shows that it can be done, but just isn't--at least not very often.

But perhaps I'm wrong.  Are there really only two kinds of story--the "literary" kind, focused on character and realistic, ambiguous outcomes--and the "popular" kind, focused on plot and outcomes that may seem a bit contrived but are comforting in their satisfying conclusions?  Can a story ever be both?

What do you think?  Have you read stories that have been beautifully written, thought provoking and profound but also can't-put-it-down riveting?

Four Tales, Fairly Hopeful

All is not lost.  My second set of choices from The Best American Short Stories 1990 proved to be more uplifting, if not exactly cheery.  This time I decided to abandon the order altogether and go with writers I knew or knew of.  I started with one of my favorite writers, Alice Munro, probably the most famous of the group. 

Richard Ford included two of Munro's stories in this collection, but I've read only the first so far, "Differently," a story about two women's friendship. The protagonist, Georgia, is rather conventional until she meets Maya, a woman who is pretty wild, but interesting. Under Maya's influence, Georgia changes, not entirely for the worse.  It's one of those stories in which the events of the narrative are not in themselves earth-shattering but serve to point the way toward the main character's realization of some truth, an "accidental clarity" (214) as the narrator puts it.

Elizabeth Tallent's story, "Prowler," is also of that kind. This story is about a man's coming to terms with his ex-wife and his son's feelings about her.  I chose it because Ms. Tallent was once my teacher and I admire her work and her ideas about writing and fiction.  She didn't disappoint me. "Prowler" was a fast read and the most hopeful story I've read so far in this collection.

The other two stories also ended on a hopeful note, I think, if a bit more tentative.  "Finding Natasha," by Madison Smartt Bell (an author I'd heard of but not read), is the story of a recovering addict's search for his girlfriend who's also an addict. As he moves through his old haunts, revealing his past, we worry that he will fall back into his old ways. It's not clear if he learns anything along the way, though, so when he finally finds Natasha, we're not sure what will happen next.  It could go either way.

Much the same is Patricia Henley's story, "The Secret of Cartwheels," about Roxie, a 13-year-old girl whose mother has to go to a mental hospital for a few months, leaving her to cope with the painful upheaval her mother's sudden absence causes.  At the end, her feelings about her mother have changed, but we're not sure if it's a change for the better. Because Henley is the only writer of the four I hadn't heard of, I looked her up and found that the story is largely autobiographical.  It made me wonder whether the author eventually came to terms with her mother's illness.

As I was reading these stories I got to thinking about how different they are from stories that are "action-packed"--adventure stories, mystery stories, spy thrillers--that propel us toward a conclusion that puts everything right. Not realistic, perhaps, but satisfying nonetheless. Often people who like such stories don't like the more interior action of what's sometimes referred to as a "literary" story, the kind usually found in short fiction anthologies. They might see such stories as boring, incomprehensible, or just plain weird. And the reverse also tends to be true: many people who prefer literary stories won't read what to them is "pulp" fiction, shallow stories that don't engage the mind. Negative stereotypes attach to both sides of the divide, it seems.

But some of us, like me, read literary and non-literary stories, finding each type enjoyable in its own way. I draw the line, however, at stories that don't seem to have a plot or a point to make or that are just poorly written.  And there are plenty of stories out there like that, even (maybe especially) in literary anthologies.

As for these stories, I enjoyed all four. I'd like to check out other work by these writers sometime, especially their novels. You might want to give them a try as well.

All Those Sad, Sad Stories

Whenever I start reading one of the Best American Short Stories volumes, I always like to read the  guest editor's introduction, just to see how he or she managed to pick twenty stories from the 150 or so the series editor had passed along.  In his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 1990, Richard Ford does not explain, exactly, how he chose his twenty.  He spends a great deal of time explaining his disdain for theorizing about short fiction, and then goes on to say that his twenty were the best stories because they were "excellent" or "wonderful" (xiv) or "interesting" (xix), which, he admits, doesn't really explain anything.  So from his introduction I didn't learn very much about the stories I was soon to read, except perhaps that Mr. Ford is a bit prickly, and that I don't really like him very much.  And it made me wonder if I would like his selection of stories.

But I went on to read them anyway, and as of this morning I've read three: Edward Allen's "River of Toys," Richard Bausch's "The Fireman's Wife," and Pam Houston's "How to Talk to a Hunter."  Of the three authors, the only one I've read before is Pam Houston.  I started out determined to read in alphabetical order, the way the stories are arranged, but after the sad Allen story and the depressing Bausch story, I thought I'd skip to someone I know.  A woman, perhaps, would have a more uplifting tale to tell.

But, alas, I was disappointed to find that Houston's story completed the trio of sad stories about failed or failing love affairs.  Richard Ford admits that there isn't much humor in his collection of interesting stories.  I will admit that all three of those I read are interesting.  "River of Toys" uses a river to tell a story about a young man's life; "The Fireman's Wife" has an unexpected ending; "How to Talk to a Hunter" reads like a list of instructions.  And all are well written.  But still depressing.

I wonder if it's the year that's the problem.  Was the sad, interesting story in vogue then?  Maybe.  Or maybe those who write short stories are sad, interesting people?  I guess I'm kind of old fashioned; I want a story that's a "good yarn," as people used to term it.  So far . . . not so much.

But I'm hopeful as I read on.  And I'll let you know what I find!

Next Up: A Collection of Short Stories

I've decided to step back into fiction on my next read, but this time I intend to read a collection of short stories.

The series entitled The Best American Short Stories of [insert a year] brings together what editors (series editor plus guest editor) believe are the best short stories published that year.  I have a number of these collections that I've been meaning to read, so I though I'd read one of those next. 

I've chosen the 1990 collection, guest edited by Richard Ford.  Ford is from Mississippi and has written both novels and short stories.  One of his novels, Independence Day, won a pulitzer prize.  I've never read anything by Richard Ford and in fact had never heard of him before choosing this collection, so I'm interested to see what stories he's chosen as the best.

As always, I'll let you know what I think.

When the World Changed

Waiting for Snow in Havana opens at the pivotal moment in history when Fulgencio Batista flies out of Cuba to exile and Fidel Castro and his rebels take over. Says the author Carlos Eire of that moment, "The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted me" (1).

Eire was one of over 14,000 children who were flown to Miami from Cuba following the Cuban revolution, an event that was called Operation Pedro Pan. Because their parents could not get visas right away, the children had to emigrate alone, whether or not they had relatives or friends waiting for them.

Eire begins his memoir with the success of the Cuban revolution because it is the point around which everything else in the story revolves. From there, the narrative dips into the past, showing the reader what life was like for him before everything changed.  He was an upper-middle-class child of a judge and a stay-at-home mom.  Because of their privileged status, the family escaped most of the brutality of the Batista regime and lived quite comfortable lives.  Eire went to private Catholic schools with other children of his social class, and had a pretty much carefree childhood.  He describes his childhood before the revolution in some detail in the early chapters, presumably so we can see all he lost when Castro took over and he was sent to the United States.

The author was eight years old when the world changed and we see events through his eyes, although he occasionally gives us information from the perspective of the older Eire.  The narrative travels back and forth in time, always returning to the revolution, its aftermath, and his escape to Miami at the end.  But Eire also often flashes forward, describing in brief vignettes how he fared in Miami and then Chicago, and how the trauma of his childhood affects him still, though he is now a distinguished university history professor.

The spiral movement of the memoir--from past to future to present to past again--is what keeps us reading.  Because he starts with the Cuban revolution, we know he will return to it, and that is what we most want to hear about.  Yes, the description of what Cuba was like in the before time is interesting.  I learned a lot about middle-class Cuban culture and I marvelled at some of the differences in how children were raised there and here.  But I felt myself wanting him to skip that part and get to the action of the memoir--what happens after, when the bad stuff starts.

He doesn't disappoint; over the course of the memoir, the author returns--over and over again, more and more frequently--to the after time of Castro's Cuba, and each time he does, it gets a little worse for Carlos.  And that build up of his (and our) anxiety increases the momentum toward the final scenes when he leaves Cuba.  (Since he has written a sequel to this memoir, that seems an appropriate place for Waiting for Snow to stop.)

The effect is to make us remember the past the way Carlos remembers--in bits and pieces, snatches of scenes that repeat in our minds and accumulate meaning over time. One motif that repeats is lizards--they show up in all phases of the memoir, and each time, the writer finds them significant.  They become a kind of touchstone: though things in Carlos' life change drastically, the lizards remain the same, and they help Carlos (and us) put his experiences into perspective.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is a compelling story and a worthwhile read, I think. It taught me a lot about Cuba and made me want to read more, especially about some of the events--such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion--that I was taught only briefly in school. I would definitely recommend it.

Detour: Story Sisters

I've read several books by Alice Hoffman, and they all seem to be about pain.  Her protagonists (nearly always women, often sisters) suffer from devastating loss and spend the novel trying to find a way to heal from it, to get through it or past it somehow.  Some of their suffering is self-inflicted, some dealt out by bad fortune.  The main characters come together and break apart over and over, but generally end in reconciliation. Sometimes supernatural forces are involved, sometimes not.

The Story Sisters repeats this pattern.  It is also about loss and suffering, but though the novel promises the supernatural, it delivers only mortal suffering.  The demons in this story turn out to be all too earthly: drugs, guilt, child abuse, self-destructive urges, despair, fear.

The narrative chronicles the lives of three sisters who enjoy reading and telling stories, but the title is also denotative: Story is their last name.  Though I didn't think of it while I was reading the book, afterward, when I was trying to sum up what I thought,  I was suddenly reminded of three other story sisters: the Brontes--Anne, Emily and Charlotte--19th century authors whose novels are still being read today.

When I started looking more closely, I saw more parallels: the three women, all with different personalities growing up in a single parent household; the imaginary world (the Brontes called their world Angria, the Story sisters Arnelle); the failed attempts at careers; the number of family deaths to mourn; the use of storytelling to cope with trauma.  It made me want to go back and read again about the Bronte sisters to find more connections.  I did that, starting with Wikipedia's article about the family: Bronte Family.

That research made me want to read Anne Bronte's work, something I haven't done before.  So perhaps I'll add The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to my list!

I chose The Story Sisters because of my experience with the author.  I was sure it would be a compelling read, and since I was going to be flying over the holidays, I knew I'd need something to fill up the uncomfortable hours I'd be spending wedged into an airplane seat. It worked quite well--I barely noticed the flight!

I recommend The Story Sisters highly--it's a sad story, but entertaining and rewarding as well. I also recommend learning about the Bronte sisters and reading their work. Both are definitely worth your time.

Havana Boyhood

I've started a new book this week, an autobiography by Carlos Eire entitled Waiting for Snow in Havana, which won a National Book Award in 2003, when it was first published.  I haven't gotten very far yet, but the book seems to be an account of the years the writer spent in Cuba before the revolution, when he was a young boy.  The book is well-written and has a beautiful cover picture of a green lizard on a green leaf, but so far seems to be mostly about what it's like to be a boy, and only partly about what it's like to be boy growing up in pre-revolutionary Cuba. 

For the first few chapters, it was entertaining hearing about all the mischief he got into and what his perceptions were of his world.  Those parts where the revolution intrudes on the family's otherwise tranquil, middle-class lives were particularly interesting.  But now the descriptions of boyish pranks are starting to repeat, and I'm looking ahead to see if the action will ever involve something other than lizards and blowing things up. (Carlos and his friends seem to find lots of uses for firecrackers and other pyrotechnical devices.)

I'll keep you posted on how things progress.

Building a Story

When I finally finished House, even though I knew where it would end up, I was still glad that we got there safely.  Even with stories where the outcome is known, we still want to find out what happens next.  On House's cover, there are quotes from reviewers. People Magazine said the book was "a suspenseful, gripping tale!" The New York Times declared it "the stuff of real drama." Such comments would seem to describe a novel rather than a non-fiction narrative, but it's the book's novel-like features, I think--the way it's crafted to resemble a fictional narrative with plot, characters, setting, conflict, point of view--that make it compelling reading. 

Crafting shows up in a variety of ways: the author may have changed events to fit a more compelling plot, or he might've manipulated details to present a person in a more or less attractive light.  Often, dialogue that is not recorded or witnessed must be approximated or imagined, and people's feelings and thoughts described as if the author were privy to them the way a fictional narrator would be. Unfortunately, each of these techniques might make a narrative diverge from, as Anita puts it, "the literal truth" (comment to 12/28 post).  So we can't blame the book's real people (whose names, as the author tells us in his acknowledgments, have not been changed) if they fret over how they and their story are portrayed in a book that millions of people will read.

I must say that I think Tracy Kidder has "authored" these people to a certain extent in that he has subtly shaped our perceptions of them as they progress through the construction of the house. The builder Jim Locke opens the first chapter, and indeed, he and his carpenters do seem to be the protagonists of this story.  At the same time, the Souweines and the architect, Bill Rawn, slowly emerge as the antagonists. The conflict between these two opposing groups is what propels the action of the plot, and what keeps us reading. 

And because we are meant to see the builders as the "good" guys and the architect-owners as the "bad" guys, we are not given a balanced view of either group.  Early on, I noticed myself getting irritated with the wealthy owners and their attempts to get the builders to relent on price and materials, while feeling warm and fuzzy about the honest, hard-working builders; I'm sure that was no accident. 

The author helps create that feeling by how he describes the people in the story.  Each person gets a little biography and a description of his or her appearance and personality, habits and philosophy, but I noticed that the builders get more paragraphs, and that what we learn about them is more positive.  Again, not by accident, I believe.  Not until close to the end do we get a little more personal information about the Souweines, some of it quite sympathetic. Perhaps by then Kidder feels confident we are involved in the story and he can risk a bit more compassion for the "enemy."

Of course, that's just my take on the book.  And the bias, once I caught on to it, really didn't detract from my reading pleasure. I still found House a rich, compelling narrative.  And I learned a lot about building a house from scratch, something that isn't done much anymore. Even the giant McMansions that are built today are standardized, not unique, not custom-made just for their owners.  Custom housebuilding could be a dying art, unlike the art of writing, which Tracy Kidder seems to be perfecting with each new book.

Happy New Year!

One thing I like about the holiday of New Year is that it's never too late to say "Happy New Year!" After all, what remains of the year is always before you, even when it's half over, so as long as it's still to come, there's still a chance it could be happy, and your wish could still come true.

So I'm taking the opportunity to say Happy New Year to all of you! I've been away visiting relatives and have neglected my blog, but I haven't neglected my reading.  While I was gone I not only finished House, but started and read another book on my list, The Story Sisters, a novel by Alice Hoffman.  Both were very entertaining, and I'm looking forward to telling you what I thought of them here.

Some of you may have seen the movie, Practical Magic, which was based on the book by the same name.  Alice Hoffman wrote that book and a number of others that have similar themes.  One of them is her latest, The Story Sisters, published last June. (An even newer novel will come out this month.) 

Hoffman's web site has this to say about her work: "In her spellbinding novels, Alice Hoffman weaves magic and fairy tales into plots thick with today’s gritty realism" (Hoffman).  I like that description, but there's more to it than that, and you can rest assured I will elaborate--and soon!