French Fun, Southern Portraits, Maine Travels

After reading French Fun, I moved on to fiction by Jean Toomer: his signature book, Cane. It has been called a novel, but is really not that organized, being made up of a variety of poems and sketches about fictional African-American people of his era, mostly women, mostly Georgian country folk. 

Toomer was born Nathan Eugene Toomer in 1894, was raised by middle-class grandparents, attended several colleges and later taught at a black college in Georgia before settling into a writing career. It was while he was teaching in Sparta, GA that he wrote the book for which he is still known. Cane was published in 1923, just in time for the Harlem Renaissance, when interest in all-things-negro was at a high. The edition of the book I have was published in 1975, but there is a new addition out with an afterword by Henry Louis Gates. Cane is no doubt still a staple of African American Studies programs, so it will probably continue to stay in print.

Jean Toomer

I'm glad I started with the introduction to the book; it was informative and helpful for understanding the unusual structure of the work.  I enjoyed reading Cane for the most part, but I must admit that although it was well written, I had to fast-forward through parts of it.  All in all, I'm glad I discovered it at last since it's been sitting on my book shelf for quite a few years having been bought while I was still a graduate student at UC Davis, back in the nineties.  I recommend it to those interested in African American literature and history, but do read the introduction first to help you get more out of it.

Next, I want to try to finish reading Henry David Thoreau's The Maine Woods, a collection of his writings about his travels in Maine in the mid-nineteenth century. I started it a while back, but didn't get very far, so I'm hoping this time it will prove more entertaining.

Until then . . .

I've been reading Scott Turow's 1999 novel, Personal Injuries this week. It's pretty good--a mystery, of course, but not a murder mystery. It's a legal thriller not unlike John Grisham's typical effort. Plenty of flawed lawyers, judges, police and suspense keep the reader reading.  Nothing profound, just entertainment. A film of the book was planned but never materialized, though Dustin Hoffman was promoting it back in 2007. What else can I say? I'm enjoying it.

A Humorous Sojourn

This week I began my "T" books, starting with a popular book about punctuation (!) by Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves.  It was very funny and very well written!  I had been given it as a gift years ago (since it came out in 2004, it was probably 9 years), and never gotten around to reading it.  Its audience seems to be puncto-philes (I'm making that word up) or even puncto-fanatics, which means I'm the perfect person to read it.  Fortunately for the publisher, it was, as they claim on the book's jacket, "a runaway bestseller," much to the author's astonishment.

I enjoyed reading about her exasperation at the signs we see every day--supposedly to communicate an important message--that are atrociously punctuated, and at the alarming increase in poorly punctuated emails and other such published writings that should be more carefully composed and proofread. It was heartening to realize I'm not alone!

But if someone were reading it just to learn about punctuation, I think the book would be less than ideal. The author tends to get into the weeds about how words should be punctuated, ending up discussing all the exceptions to the rules, something that, I've learned, confuses puncto-phobic people to the point where they throw up their hands and say, "Well, it doesn't really matter, then, does it?" That's not exactly the result Ms. Truss and I are looking for.

But if you just want a laugh about how language is constantly evolving and sometimes stumbling on its way to communication, you'll enjoy this book as I did.

Since that was a short book, I was able to start another on the "T" list, this time a novel by Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I had read the book many years ago, but don't really remember it.  I've also seen the movie starring Bing Crosby, but don't remember much about it, either, other than that there was singing, as there always is with Bing Crosby movies.  The story involves a factory worker in late-nineteenth-century Hartford, CT who is hit on the head with a crowbar, and when he comes to, finds himself in King Arthur's court. Since the character, Hank Morgan, is a pragmatic sort of fellow, he makes the most of his time-travel.  And since Twain is telling the story, he does it in a very comical way.

In the years since reading the book the first time, I've studied the history of the middle ages, so I'm enjoying the book in a different way this time, appreciating how Twain is making fun of that era as well as his own.  It's a funny thing about Twain: I always forget what a good writer he was! Once I get used to the late nineteenth-century style of writing (rather full and florid, as a rule), I find myself thoroughly entertained by Twain's clever way of looking at the world and its people.

So, two humorous books in a row ain't a bad thing!  I'll let you know how our Connecticut Yankee fares in the next installment.

Detour Abroad

Well, after a short detour to mystery and other fiction I finally finished the letter A with Of Love and Shadows, by Isabel Allende.  It was a good book, but towards the end I think she went overboard a little bit with describing the atrocities of the military junta that dominated Chile for so many years.  It pretty much stopped the narrative, which is not what a writer should do in a work of fiction.  I think Allende should go ahead and write a non-fiction book about that era (if she hasn't already done so), and get it over with.

During my detour I read one of Ruth Rendell's mysteries, Tigerlily's Orchids.  It was quite good and a fast read, fortunately.  Following that, I read J.K. Rowling's latest book, this time for adults, The Casual Vacancy, which reminded me quite a lot of Ruth Rendell, especially in the way Rowling writes of the class warfare that is endemic in English society. It was a very good book, well written and fast paced, if a bit disturbing and sad, especially at the end. Rowling seems to have a mission of presenting the world from an adolescent's point of view.  Not knowing any adolescents in today's society, I can't attest to her accuracy in portraying them, but I do admire her desire to do so.

I will now get back to reading my book collection, starting this time with the letter T.  There are a number of books in this group, some fiction, some non-fiction.  I'm not sure yet which I will begin with, but I'll be sure to report on it here.

Stay tuned . . .

From Molecules to Magic

Well, I finished The Year of the Flood this week and I must say I was somewhat disappointed.  I never did understand all that was happening to the people in scientific terms.  Who perpetrated the "flood"?  I think it was done deliberately, but I'm not sure, because Atwood did not really make it clear.  The story surrounding the characters was interesting, and I did care about what happened to them.  But the rest of it was pretty incomprehensible. 

I don't know if Atwood researches the science before she writes a book like this, but I found the descriptions and explanations for how things got the way they are kind of vague and sometimes confusing.  It reminded me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where the information about how the not-so-good doctor managed to bring his patched-together person to life is never provided.  (Movies made from the book simply make up that part.)  Since Shelley's was one of the first science fiction novels, I suppose Atwood is in good company.  But today's readers expect more realism in their sci-fi, or at least more plausibility, and that comes from being specific about how the science works (or could work in the future).

I don't recommend this book unless you must know what happened to the characters in Oryx and Crake.

After Atwood, instead of leaping into the "T" collection, I decided to finish off the "A"s with the second novel I have by Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows.  It was made into a movie, apparently, starring Antonio Banderas.  It takes place in Chile, as most of her novels do, during the rule of Pinochet.  As usual, there is the spirit world familiar to magic realism fans, as well as the super-real world of life under a ruthless dictator. 

In contrast to Atwood, Allende doesn't leave you guessing about anything.  Her lush description is legendary and always compelling.  So far I'm enjoying it.

In between the two novels, I read a short book, John A. Roebling, about the man who designed both the Cincinnati and the Brooklyn bridges.  It was somewhat informative, but lacking information about the building of the bridge, I thought, especially of the deaths of the workers.  It was a quick read, though, and was written by Don H. Tolzmann, which satisfies the "T" requirement of my next list.

Until next time . . .

Ordinary Maltese

I don't have much more to say about Telling the Truth About History.  The authors spent the final chapters detailing what they believe to be a better approach to teaching and studying history. I didn't retain much of that, but it did get me thinking about why people enjoy reading about history.

Since this book was published in 1996, there has been a trend in publishing historical accounts that are more like fiction than scholarship.  Since they are meant for the general public, this is appropriate, I think.  I've enjoyed reading quite a few of those popular histories, despite their sometimes lack of documentation. 

People do like to learn about the past, and I think the authors of Telling the Truth are right in saying that we want to know about past lives in order to give meaning to our own present existence.  The authors also warn, though, that accounts of what happened in the past can be used to manipulate perceptions of people in power and their decisions.  For instance, the westward migration of European immigrants in 19th century America can be characterized as heroic or as horrific, depending on how the stories are told, and who tells them. 

It has been said that the victors of conflicts are the ones who write the histories, but that doesn't mean that stories about the events of the past are erased.  As long as some people remember and pass along what that time was like for them, then the complexity of the past can be preserved and perhaps brought to light at some future time.

I guess that's one reason I like genealogy research.  What I can find out about my forebears is interesting because they are related to me, however distantly, but also because they are ordinary people and what they thought about or did is a small piece of the fabric of the past and gives meaning to it, even if only in that small way.  Imagining what it was like for them to live in 1864 or 1910 or 1795 allows me to see the past as connected to the present and their lives as connected to mine.  How were they affected by the Civil War or the Industrial Revolution or the coming of the railroad?  Those are answers I may never get, but knowing the people a little allows me to at least imagine their responses.

I've now moved on to the next "A" book, this time a novel by Trezza Azzopardi, a Welsh writer or Maltese descent, entitled The Hiding Place. It is about a Maltese family who live in Cardiff, Wales.  There are five daughters, one of whom is the main character in the story. So far I find it interesting and well written, but a bit depressing because the people are so dysfunctional, especially the father who has a gambling problem that causes financial ruin for his family. I am enjoying it, however.

The book is Ms. Azzopardi's first novel, published in 2001; it was shortlisted for the Booker prize. I found a little bit of information about the name Azzopardi in an article which also tells a bit about the history of Malta; I also found an article about the migration of the Maltese people to Britain here.

Well, there are only three "A" books left unread.  But once I'm done with this letter, instead of going on to "B" books, I plan to mix things up by picking the next letter from a hat!

Until next time.

American Wars, South and North

I finished The House of the Spirits last week and did finally get the answers to my questions posed in the last post.  The other "I" of the story turned out to be the granddaughter of the main character, Esteban.  And I decided that we occasionally get Esteban's narration to provide some perspective on a character who might otherwise be seen as wholly negative. For those who might read the book, I won't reveal what happens at the end, but for me it ended satisfactorily, if not entirely happily.

Toward the end of the book I was starting to get impatient with the narrative's many, many rich and evocative details.  Though I found them enjoyable throughout most of the novel, I got a bit bogged down by them when the narrative reached modern times.  Maybe because much of what was being described was the country's political turmoil, I wanted to move through those grisly details more quickly.  I had no idea Chile was going through so much; I want to read more about this country's history when I get the chance.

It's an odd experience, though, reading novels that incorporate real history, especially when it's history I'm not aware of.  The descriptions of the terror, corruption, torture, and other shocking events seem almost cartoonish in The House of the Spirits.  I had the same reaction to a book I read that was set in India, Six Suspects. (See my blog  8/14/11.)  It makes me think that this style of presenting terrifyingly real details in a comic light is frequently employed, probably to make the subject more palatable to those who would otherwise be repulsed by it.  It reminds me of how Native American writers jokingly tell of the despair that continues to haunt their people.  The ability to rise above suffering through humor not only reveals the suffering, but also shows the bravery of those who suffer.

Interestingly, in her novel Allende does not seem to take sides.  She presents each side of the socialism vs republicanism debate (and the negative consequences of each type of government) from multiple perspectives, primarily through the eyes or voices of the characters, while the omniscient narrator stays mostly neutral, except to condemn dictatorship.

As I said, I enjoyed the book but was ready to move to non-fiction for a while, so I jumped the alphabetical list a little bit to choose the next non-fiction book, When Presidents Lie, by Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation and author of many books about politics and history.  Though published in 2004, When Presidents Lie does not take up George W. Bush's lying to start a war with Iraq, but past instances of presidential lying about international conflicts that had, Alterman believes, grave consequences.

At the moment I'm in the section about Kennedy's lies during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The book is not a story, but an analysis, and for that reason is a bit dry, but it is interesting since it discusses events I know very little about.

I'll let you know how it goes. Stay tuned!

Worth Dying For Worth Reading?

This week I read Lee Child's Worth Dying For, and though I enjoyed it while I was reading it, disturbing questions about it changed my ultimate judgement.  It turned out to be a story in the revenge genre.  People who are evil get their just deserts, delivered at the hands of the avenging angel from out of town, Jack Reacher.  And although I disapprove of vengeance and vigilantism, in fiction I can tolerate it to some extent because I know it's not real.  It also has to be well done.

It seems to me that a revenge story has to draw clear lines between good and evil.  The evil people need to be really evil so the avenger's actions make sense and are fully justified.  Otherwise the reader might start to wonder if a less lethal alternative might have worked just as well to stop the evildoer and bring him to justice in our courts.

Worth Dying For did not meet these criteria, in my opinion.  When I finished the book and all the bad people were dead, for some strange reason the writer chose not to show us the "unretouched photo" of their evil deeds, preferring to hint at the horror instead of describing it, demurring that the details were too ghastly to reveal.  This was a major mistake, I think, since it was necessary for us to "see" the horror so that when Reacher murders all the perpetrators, we would feel he was justified. 

Not only does he murder a number of baddies (with the help of a few of their victims), he also does it in a very cold, efficient, skillful way that does not show his outrage and anger at their inhuman actions over the course of twenty years. (I'm not revealing their deeds now because someone might want to read this book.) 

Added to that was the general implausibility of his campaign.  He starts out meddling in something he doesn't understand, then ends up getting caught by the bad guys and hurt a few times, mostly because of bad luck.  But then his luck turns and his foes are all themselves caught and fairly easily dispatched.  It's a bit anti-climactic by this time, really, because we can see they're no match for our hero.

At that point the book is not over, though, and what follows is as unbelievable as it is morally ambiguous.  Our hero, after littering the countryside with bodies (without the county sheriff finding out), then leaves his accomplices, the inhabitants of the little town, to clean up the mess, which they do without compunction or worrying about cops carting them off to jail. Apparently, we're to believe they get away with it.  But I thought, "Nah, I'm not buying that." 

That's not the way I want to feel at the end of a thriller/murder mystery novel; I want to feel that justice has triumphed and evildoers will answer to the law.  But lately I've noticed a trend in mysteries toward ambiguous endings and the lack of moral neatness. Perhaps it's what writers think readers want these days--hit-man heroes, high body counts and no reason to believe law enforcement will intervene or care.

I'm not one of those readers, obviously, so I can't recommend this book. And I won't be reading any more of Lee Child's novels, either.

After Worth Dying For, I was going to move to a non-fiction book, but I'd promised myself that I would devote the first week of every month to reading my magazines, which have been piling up for years unread.  So this week I've been reading American Heritage and Smithsonian. The American Heritage had several articles of interest; one of them involved the pre-Civil War panoramic daguerreotype of Cincinnati that has been restored and enhanced and is currently on display at the Cincinnati library. John and I went to see it there recently so the article was very timely for us.  There were other interesting articles that I won't describe here but if you look at the link you can see what they were.

Since last week was a short week, I'm going to devote a few more days to magazines before turning back to non-fiction books, this time Seabiscuit.

Join me next week!

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!

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.

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!