I guess I took a break from writing about my reading, but I didn't stop reading! After finishing And Their Children After Them, I read a mystery I'd borrowed from one of my coworkers, and then a recent book by Alice Hoffman, The Red Garden. The mystery was a quick read, but not that well written. The Red Garden was very good, and thanks to Word of the Day I now know it to be a Roman-Fleuve, or a river novel, which is an appropriate metaphor for the kind of book it is, the story of a family over the years. In the case of The Red Garden, it's over centuries. As with Alice Hoffman's other books, there was a bit of the supernatural thrown in (always explainable so that you're never quite sure). It was a very interesting book, touching on a few encounters with famous people such as Johnny Appleseed. It was not as good as some of Hoffman's other books I've read, but I would nevertheless recommend it.
Following that book, I tried to read a mystery by Faye Kellerman, Stalker, but found it to be unreadable. There was simply too much talking! Lots of unneeded dialogue that simply served to slow things down, something an author should never do in a mystery novel. So I got rid of it and bought the second in the series by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire, which was 100% better. This is a very good series of novels, although there is a lot of violence and sex. Too bad the author died; he had a great career ahead of him as a mystery novelist.
I'll let you know how things turn out with that one!
Monday, September 26, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The View from Up Here
I'm nearly finished with And Their Children After Them, by writer Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson. At first I found it to be a sad story of the fate, fifty years later, of the three families documented by James Agee and Walker Evans in 1936. It was especially hard to read about the circumstances of cotton tenant farmers in Alabama during the depression. It seemed a life of little joy and much hardship, created in large part by the people who owned the land and held nearly absolute power over their tenants' lives. They participated in a system that was set up, it seems, to keep the farmers using nineteenth-century tools to work land they could never own; diseased, illiterate, barely managing to keep food on the table or a roof over their heads, they were convinced there was no way out.
My first impression of the book was that Maharidge and Williamson (M & W) intended to provide an update to the Agee and Evans book, but as I read on, I saw that they had something more complex in mind for And Their Children After Them. Not only do they bring us up to date on the Gudgers, the Ricketts, and the Woods, but they do so with an up-to-date viewpoint, allowing us a more balanced view of the people and their lives in rural Alabama than was provided by the earlier book.
Not having read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, I can only go by what M & W tell me about the work, but it seems that throughout their time in the South, Agee and Evans maintained their outsiders' viewpoint, seeing the tenant farmers' lives as wretched and their only rational choice escape. Despite Agee's decision to live for a time with one of the families and get involved in their lives, he never seemed to change that opinion.
In contrast, though M & W are also outsiders, they seem to try to see things from the point of view of the people they meet, balancing the story Agee tells with stories from the descendants of the original families who provide not only a different view of their parents and grandparents but a different and at times quite critical view of Agee and Evans as well. The portrait that emerges from the later book is one of respect for the people who manage to survive and even to attain some measure of happiness, despite living through decades of killing poverty.
Yet the story is still largely depressing. I had no idea how bad it really was and still is in places like Centerboro, Alabama. Though cotton is now harvested mechanically and thus more efficiently and economically brought to market, the jobs the crop once generated are now gone and the people who worked the land have been forced to move to a city to take primarily low-wage jobs, when they are available. A few have been lucky enough to get some education or training in better paying work, but even they are living on the edge of poverty, dependent on continued employment in uncertain times.
This book was written in the late 80s when there was a recession similar to ours going on in the U.S., so one can imagine that times are still tough in Alabama for the poor. I'd like to know how these families have fared, twenty years later. I wonder if an update exists? I'll have to check on the internet.
Once I finish this book, I think I'll take another break with a nice mystery: fiction in which good and evil are clear cut and everything works out in the end.
Stay tuned!
My first impression of the book was that Maharidge and Williamson (M & W) intended to provide an update to the Agee and Evans book, but as I read on, I saw that they had something more complex in mind for And Their Children After Them. Not only do they bring us up to date on the Gudgers, the Ricketts, and the Woods, but they do so with an up-to-date viewpoint, allowing us a more balanced view of the people and their lives in rural Alabama than was provided by the earlier book.
Not having read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, I can only go by what M & W tell me about the work, but it seems that throughout their time in the South, Agee and Evans maintained their outsiders' viewpoint, seeing the tenant farmers' lives as wretched and their only rational choice escape. Despite Agee's decision to live for a time with one of the families and get involved in their lives, he never seemed to change that opinion.
In contrast, though M & W are also outsiders, they seem to try to see things from the point of view of the people they meet, balancing the story Agee tells with stories from the descendants of the original families who provide not only a different view of their parents and grandparents but a different and at times quite critical view of Agee and Evans as well. The portrait that emerges from the later book is one of respect for the people who manage to survive and even to attain some measure of happiness, despite living through decades of killing poverty.
Yet the story is still largely depressing. I had no idea how bad it really was and still is in places like Centerboro, Alabama. Though cotton is now harvested mechanically and thus more efficiently and economically brought to market, the jobs the crop once generated are now gone and the people who worked the land have been forced to move to a city to take primarily low-wage jobs, when they are available. A few have been lucky enough to get some education or training in better paying work, but even they are living on the edge of poverty, dependent on continued employment in uncertain times.
This book was written in the late 80s when there was a recession similar to ours going on in the U.S., so one can imagine that times are still tough in Alabama for the poor. I'd like to know how these families have fared, twenty years later. I wonder if an update exists? I'll have to check on the internet.
Once I finish this book, I think I'll take another break with a nice mystery: fiction in which good and evil are clear cut and everything works out in the end.
Stay tuned!
Sunday, September 4, 2011
A Week of Fifth Grade, Football, and Farming
Well, I had a very productive week of reading. Not only did I finish Among Schoolchildren, but I breezed through a short novel by John Grisham, Bleachers as well.
Among Schoolchildren had a satisfying ending, in that Mrs. Zajac's students survived the school year mostly better off than when they started. Along the way a few of her students left school because their parents moved for one reason or another. She was particularly unhappy about the departure of her favorite student, Judith, who went back to Puerto Rico. Judith was the smartest pupil in Chris's class and the one she had come to rely on for a kind of moral support when the other students disappointed her.
Clarence, her most disruptive student, also left, but it was because he was finally placed in a special class where he was getting the help he needed. He stopped in to see her at the end of the year to say hello and she seemed satisfied that she did the right thing by getting him reassigned.
For most of the book, I was struck by how different teaching was back then. Teachers seemed to have fewer requirements to include this or that topic in their lessons, and they seemed to be freer to create their own approaches to learning, and even to hug and otherwise express affection for their students. Plus there was only one set of standardized tests per year, and Chris didn't seem to spend all her time getting her students ready for them.
The kids seemed different too--no distracting cell phones and i-pods to screen out the teacher's voice. They had enough to distract them from their studies as it was with all the social drama going on in most of their young lives.
Of course, this was only one man's take on one teacher's class, so it contains only those things Tracy Kidder chose to reveal to us about this woman and her world. But as with any history, we have no choice but to trust what we are getting as relatively truthful, as long as we remember that it's only one side of the story. It would be interesting to talk now with some of the people in this story, to see if they saw things the way Tracy Kidder did back then.
I enjoyed reading this book, and I would definitely recommend it for the insight it gives into the day-to-day work of teaching.
John Grisham's book, Bleachers, is about high school football and its effect on the people who play it, coach it, and watch it. The story seems to be set in Texas, or some other state that takes high school football very seriously. The plot centers on Neely Crenshaw, a former high school quarterback who has come back to his hometown (for the first time in 15 years) to attend the funeral of his coach, with whom he had a love-hate relationship. It's a typical "reunion" plot--think The Big Chill only with football players.
It was interesting, but not as suspenseful as I've come to expect from a John Grisham novel. And it seemed to be lacking closure, somehow. I had the impression that the ending was rushed, like maybe he'd promised it for a certain date and was overdue to his publisher. I enjoyed it, though. It was a fast read, light and easy to understand.
My next book will be another that I've put off reading for quite some time: And Their Children After Them : The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee, Walker Evans, and the Rise and Fall of Cotton in the South, by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, who were both reporters for The Sacramento Bee. This book is a work of history, but also sociology. Published in 1990, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction that year.
The book's authors focus on the people whose lives were chronicled in 1936 by James Agee and Walker Evans, two photographers who were commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to tell the story of the Depression's effect on rural life in the South. The photoessay they produced was the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Maharidge and Williamson, in And Their Children After Them, go back to the families that Agee and Evans visited and find out what happened to the people and their way of life.
I think it's going to be a very interesting book. I've already started reading it and it seems very well written, as I would expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner.
I'll let you know how it goes in my next post!
Among Schoolchildren had a satisfying ending, in that Mrs. Zajac's students survived the school year mostly better off than when they started. Along the way a few of her students left school because their parents moved for one reason or another. She was particularly unhappy about the departure of her favorite student, Judith, who went back to Puerto Rico. Judith was the smartest pupil in Chris's class and the one she had come to rely on for a kind of moral support when the other students disappointed her.
Clarence, her most disruptive student, also left, but it was because he was finally placed in a special class where he was getting the help he needed. He stopped in to see her at the end of the year to say hello and she seemed satisfied that she did the right thing by getting him reassigned.
For most of the book, I was struck by how different teaching was back then. Teachers seemed to have fewer requirements to include this or that topic in their lessons, and they seemed to be freer to create their own approaches to learning, and even to hug and otherwise express affection for their students. Plus there was only one set of standardized tests per year, and Chris didn't seem to spend all her time getting her students ready for them.
The kids seemed different too--no distracting cell phones and i-pods to screen out the teacher's voice. They had enough to distract them from their studies as it was with all the social drama going on in most of their young lives.
Of course, this was only one man's take on one teacher's class, so it contains only those things Tracy Kidder chose to reveal to us about this woman and her world. But as with any history, we have no choice but to trust what we are getting as relatively truthful, as long as we remember that it's only one side of the story. It would be interesting to talk now with some of the people in this story, to see if they saw things the way Tracy Kidder did back then.
I enjoyed reading this book, and I would definitely recommend it for the insight it gives into the day-to-day work of teaching.
John Grisham's book, Bleachers, is about high school football and its effect on the people who play it, coach it, and watch it. The story seems to be set in Texas, or some other state that takes high school football very seriously. The plot centers on Neely Crenshaw, a former high school quarterback who has come back to his hometown (for the first time in 15 years) to attend the funeral of his coach, with whom he had a love-hate relationship. It's a typical "reunion" plot--think The Big Chill only with football players.
It was interesting, but not as suspenseful as I've come to expect from a John Grisham novel. And it seemed to be lacking closure, somehow. I had the impression that the ending was rushed, like maybe he'd promised it for a certain date and was overdue to his publisher. I enjoyed it, though. It was a fast read, light and easy to understand.
My next book will be another that I've put off reading for quite some time: And Their Children After Them : The Legacy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee, Walker Evans, and the Rise and Fall of Cotton in the South, by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, who were both reporters for The Sacramento Bee. This book is a work of history, but also sociology. Published in 1990, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction that year.
The book's authors focus on the people whose lives were chronicled in 1936 by James Agee and Walker Evans, two photographers who were commissioned by the Farm Security Administration to tell the story of the Depression's effect on rural life in the South. The photoessay they produced was the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Maharidge and Williamson, in And Their Children After Them, go back to the families that Agee and Evans visited and find out what happened to the people and their way of life.
I think it's going to be a very interesting book. I've already started reading it and it seems very well written, as I would expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner.
I'll let you know how it goes in my next post!
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