What I've Been Reading and Thinking

There's a funny thing that happens to me when I read great literature. I wonder if it happens to anyone else. I become mute. I feel incapable of communicating with other people in any meaningful way. I live in my head and I immerse myself in more literary work that knocks me out. The author who first got to me this way was Marcel Proust, but David Foster Wallace just about finished me off.

I want to come back to this blog and to be present here and so to kick start myself, I'm going to try and make a little sense of the literary trip I've been on. The list of books I've read since I last posted has gotten too long to go into much detail about each book, so rather than do that I'm going to give a single thought on each. Let's see if my recent foray into Twittering can help me cut to the chase.

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

This is the third of the seven volumes of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. The more I've read of him, the easier he is to read and the more awe inspiring he becomes. Once I finish Sodom and Gomorrah I'll be a little antsy because only the first four volumes of the newest translation have been published. I recently acquired Lectures on Literature by Vladmir Nabokov and among the seven fabulous lectures published from Nabokov's nearly twenty years teaching at Wellesley and Cornell is one on Swann's Way, complete with photos of the marked up book and class notes. Reading the notes of one master on another is exhilarating.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

I'd not read any Muriel Spark but after reading this story, I'm a devotee. Fortunately, Muriel Spark was prolific and left many novels and short stories behind. Her work is funny and she was a woman ahead of her time who lead a fascinating life.

Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

Mike Henry from Lighthouse Writers Workshop once said that Humboldt's Gift made him want to become a writer. I now know why. I read this book after reading The Adventures of Augie March, a novel that is now one of my favorites of all time. Saul Bellow was one of the finest American novelists who ever lived.

Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill

I loved Mary Gaitskill's novel, Veronica and I thought her story collection, Bad Behavior was brilliant. This new collection of short stories had a couple I loved, but it was a little uneven. Mary Gaitskill is a writer who makes my stomach tighten up into a knot. Her characters are damaged and the stories are raw. She scares me a little and I like that.

The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles

Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus -- all surprisingly engaging and readable. The plays help to fill in my educational gaps and they help me to finally understand all the references in Woody Allen movies.

The Iliad by Homer

I confess to putting this one down at about the halfway point, which was still quite a bit of reading. I've seen "Troy" and I get the gist of the story. Don't get me wrong, it is a great story and it too helps to fill in referential gaps, but at times it reads like a gigantic inventory of the names of every character involved in the Trojan War.

Columbine: A True Crime Story by Jeff Kass

This book (and another with a similar title) came out in April, ten years after the Columbine High School shootings. With distance and perspective, it's clear there were some inaccuracies that colored the original reporting on the killers. They weren't the victims of bullying they were first made out to be. Could anyone have predicted what they did? Based on what I read, I don't think so. I was surprised to learn that Harris and Klebold were actively planning the details of their attack on Columbine for over a year, which was ultimately what I found most chilling.

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton has a way of making sophisticated topics accessible to anyone, which I suppose is my way of saying that he can dumb down a discussion about Proust or philosophy and make them interesting to me. In this book, he's taken the problems of unpopularity, not having enough money, frustration, inadequacy, a broken heart and difficulties and offered consolation via the teachings of Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The Consolations of Philosophy is an entertaining and educational form of CliffsNotes for the aspiring philosophy student.

Love My Rifle More Than You by Kayla Williams

This memoir was written by an Iraq veteran and Arabic translator who wrote the book while still in her twenties. Much of Williams' story is told around her frustration at the enlisted chain of command, frequently feeling she was taking orders from people who weren't very smart and about the sexual dynamics within the military. Any woman who has ever worn a uniform knows that to most of young male co-workers, she's either a bitch or a slut. The author talks about her experiences in Iraq, witnessing death and carnage and the toll that it takes, but it was her struggles as a woman that broke me down. I cried. The woman who wrote this book doesn't have perspective on her experiences yet and although she doesn't know it, she's got a lot of growing up left to do. She comes across as smart, tough, strong and a little cocky at times. I know her. I was her.

Erasure by Percival Everett

Dan Wickett at Emerging Writers Network did an excellent series of posts on each of the many works in Everett's oeuvre. Here is his post on Erasure. Erasure is about a black academic whose novels are obscure and considered inaccessible. In a bout of frustration, in one sitting he writes out a parody of the kind of black novel he disdains. It's full of stereotypical characters and street jargon. He sends it to his agent and to his shock, the publishing industry goes crazy for it. Percival Everett is one of the most prolific postmodern writers you've probably never heard of. Read him.

Halfway House by Katharine Noel

Set in a small town in New Hampshire, Halfway House tells the story of a teenage girl's sudden psychotic break with reality and the turmoil her mental illness brings to each of the four members of her family. Mental illness is treated with compassion and fidelity and Ms. Noel is a gifted writer.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

Of this debut short story collection I will only say that it's superb. If you are a fan of the form you must read this book. Here's what the New York Times Sunday Book Review thought of it.

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore is one of the finest short story writers writing today and in October I'll be fortunate enough to attend a writers studio event with her. Moore's stories are funny and they're sad. They're about ordinary people and they're usually in the midst of tragedy of some sort. Her characters are ordinary people. This interview in the Guardian provides a good sense of Moore and her work.

This Lovely Life by Vicki Forman

This poignant memoir is the most difficult book to write about. Vicki Forman is a writing professor and a blogger I came to know through her words before the book was published. This post at The Rumpus was my favorite of the reviews I read. Vicki gave birth to twins at 23 weeks and the story of what happened is about loss, grief, hope, struggle and ultimately about acceptance and love. There was so much that touched me personally and gave me a second chance with the time and the distance I now how to relive the loss of my own child in 1990. This story is tragedy and it's triumph and it poses questions about medicine and the law. It makes us take a hard look at what medicine can do, what we should do and who makes those decisions.

Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice

I so loved Carleen Brice's debut novel that I wasn't sure how I could love Children of the Waters as much as I did Orange Mint and Honey. After finishing this novel in two sittings, I found there was nothing to worry about. Carleen outdid herself. The book's chapters alternate between two half-sisters with very different experiences and backgrounds. Brice handles both sides of a silent conversation about race that for most of us is remains a one-sided dialog. I feel like I often times am Trish -- the white character who, despite having black friends and family she loves will never be able to experience things from their perspective. Brice forces the sisters to work through the often unrecognized issues that in what some are calling a "post-racial" age, almost everyone continues to struggle with. Brice has again given us the fantastic Denver backdrop that she writes like no one else does. Children of the Waters is a great story that's beautifully written.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

This is Water by David Foster Wallace

The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

It's here that I will cease my brief treatment of books. In my last post, I talked about my decision to join thousands of other readers to read Infinite Jest this summer and read it I did. I finished it within the first two weeks of the event and went on to tackle the remainder of his work (I've still got 2 1/2 books left). Millions of words have been dedicated to discussing Infinite Jest as well as his first novel, Broom of the System, his short story collections, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men and Oblivion, his essay collections, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster and his exploration of the scientific concept of infinity, Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity.

Through Infinite Summer, online friendships have been made and an incredibly brilliant incites made in some of the smartest blog posts I've ever read. I found myself reading so many of them, nodding and saying "yes, I thought that too", but unable to contribute in any more coherent way. You'll note the title, This is Water listed among the books I read. I'd read this in its original form some time ago. You see, it was never intended as a book by Wallace, who took his own life at the age of 46 last September and it was published posthumously. It was originally delivered by Wallace as the commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005 and you can read it in its entirety here. In light of the release of the book, it's quite possible you won't be able to find the speech on line much longer, so if you haven't read it and if you haven't read any of David Foster Wallace's work, I urge you to do so.

Reading Infinite Jest changed the way I look at literature and it made me stop working on the things I was writing so I could start over. Perhaps David Foster Wallace's worldview and his words speak so directly to me because we're of the same era, he born in 1962 and me in 1961. Maybe his unique take on the world, which was not just the dull irony and disdain for modern culture that I fear many of his imitators have given to us, but it was an almost embarrassed exposure of the absurd that was infused with both sadness and compassion and in the end, hope.

Wallace was not an imitator. He approached style and structure in a way that had never been done and that will never be done again. His work was at times the most difficult that I've ever read and at the same time, the most enjoyable. He made me work to read him and it was worth the work. Every person I've spoken to who has read Infinite Jest finished all 1,078 pages and immediately went back and re-read the first chapter. Some people have read the book three and four times. I know I'm likely to be one of them.

Thoughts on what I've been reading? What you've been reading? Recommendations?

Books I Read in December (Part II), January and February

For quite a while, I've been posting about the books I read every month, but in December, I only managed to post thoughts about half of them and I've been delaying subsequent posts ever since.

I needed to really think about what I want to say about these books, which led me to question what I was reading, why and what I hope to find. I've never intended my posts to be reviews. There are scads of places to find a standard synopsis of plot and general impressions about books. I don't want or need to try to replicate that. But in thinking about what I'm trying to get out of the books I read, I've been able to zero in on my choices and read much more closely. I plan to talk more about my reading objectives in my next post.

For now, I want to get this list out and provide a few thoughts about these books. If you've read any of these, I'd love to hear what you thought.

On Beauty, by Zadie Smith This book was the start of my problems in talking about books and I may do a separate post about it. I have not read White Teeth, but I have read a number of articles and essays by and about the author. My expectations were high and this was a very good book. What makes this book (and others that fall into the high expectation category) difficult to talk about is that I read them much more closely and tend to be a tougher critic. Zadie Smith is unquestionably a great talent. On Beauty is filled with richly drawn characters and is dense with plot and subplots. There is a point at about the halfway mark where I sensed fatigue on the author's part. I had the strange notion that the author was under tremendous pressure to finish the book and to live up to the early reputation she'd garnered. I also learned, once I'd finished the book that if one happens to be familiar with the works of E.M. Forster, one might have noticed some parallels. I'm disappointed to have not read any Forster and wish I had. I'm certain it would have further enhanced or even changed my experience with this book entirely.

God Knows, by Blayney Colmore I can never resist reading books written by people I know. By sheer chance I found this book, written by the Episcopal priest (now retired) I best remember from the church I attended through adolescence. I was delighted to find that he's also a blogger and I am very happy to be back in touch with him. I nearly finished this book in one sitting. It captures beautifully many of his thoughts and ideas about life and the nature of the world and what it's all about

Edinburgh, by Alexander Chee When I saw the blurb from Annie Dillard on the cover (I never see Annie Dillard blurbs, so this one I paid attention to), I knew I was in for something special. You can find a short plot synopsis here. Reader reactions about the story itself are conflicted, but I believe the tough subject matter has been a factor. There is no debate about the beauty of Chee's prose. I recently heard that he was a poet before he attempted long form fiction, which would explain the lyric, almost hypnotic effect the book had on me.

"Fifteen. I lose my voice. My new voice sounds like a burned string rubbing. Singing is touching, you bang the air and the air moves something inside you and the thing moved registers, says, That is a sound. When we sing to each other we are touching each other through this sleeve of air between us. When my voice changes I know this new creature is capable of no significant touch, no transformations. This voice cannot erase me, take me over and set me aside. This new voice has no light. It can barely push enough air aside to tell people, Hello, Good Morning, Good Night. I stop talking as much."

Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan This book is about the disappearance of an eighteen year old girl in Ohio and the impact the disappearance has on her family, friends and community over the course of a year. The NYTBR said this. I am sure it's a matter of taste that this book didn't satisfy me, because the reviews have all been very positive. I have no criticisms about the way the book is crafted, I just felt something was missing. Stewart O'Nan is immensely popular and I believe this is his eleventh novel.

Living by Fiction, by Annie Dillard This book changed my life and was the impetus for a complete change in perspective about reading and writing. I wrote about it briefly here. In Living by Fiction, Annie Dillard talks about the art of literature. She has inspired me to seek out the works of many of the modernists and post-modernists and to study how the best examples work. She has caused me to slow down and study novels, rather than tear through them. Dillard's approach to fiction is scholarly, yet she never takes herself too seriously and in fact, is quite funny at times. Exploring the question of whether or not fiction interprets the world:

"Complexity, subtlety, and breadth are the virtues here. If a writer is going to engage in the intellectual business of assigning meanings and showing relationships, he had better think very well. The novel of ideas had better be good...On the other hand, a novel is not a very long-playing but lightweight television set. We are no longer children, and we no longer enjoy fiction with our eyes only. We seek, as I say, a complex, subtle, and broad set of ideas...And-- importantly -- writers who have only an ear for prose and a taste for subtle surfaces may be credited with having a good deal more. We may actually assume such writers have something on their minds."

I will never see fiction again in the same way, and for that I'm grateful.

Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust I was excited enough about this book while reading it to dedicate a post to it before I was even finished. Committing to reading the whole of In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is to the reader what running the New York Marathon is to the casual jogger. Swann's Way is the first of seven volumes that make up the whole novel and it initially took some time to learn how to read Proust. I read with a highlighter and dictionary at hand and was constantly checking the end notes. Over time, Proust taught me how to read him and to truly love his work. The book was originally self-published and one publisher's rejection was something to the effect of "I don't see why a man should take thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before he goes to sleep." If you've read Proust, you're probably laughing. In contrast to the modern novel's get to the point within fifty words or less approach, this languid style takes some getting used to and I imagine, most people don't have the patience for it. But if you can weather the initial shock of bumping up against Proust's style, there is something wonderful here.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, by Marcel Proust Although I intended to spread the seven volumes of Proust's novel out over a long period of time, I was engrossed enough after Swann's Way to move on to Volume 2.

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell This pop-culture exploration of the Puritans and their journey to America to become John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" could not have been a more radical departure from Proust! Sarah Vowell was best known to me as that quirky voice often heard on NPR's This American Life. The Los Angeles Times Book Review (may it rest in peace) called her "a Madonna of Americana". Despite the unusual style and the humorous insights, The Wordy Shipmates draws an excellent historical picture of early American figures like Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop, Rhode Island's Roger Williams and activist Anne Hutchinson that is informative and surprising. At times, the analogies to pop culture were intrusive -- but that's me. I think this book and this approach have made legitimate history more accessible and palatable to younger readers who might not otherwise be interested in the subject.

The Stranger, by Albert Camus I'd read Camus and Sartre in early adolescence and despite my cigarette-sneaking, black turtle-necked, angsty, brooding nature, I'm afraid the philosophical implications were lost on me at the time. I picked it up again after having watched a series of lectures on DVD about Existentialism and it made much more sense the second time around. For more The Stranger, look here.

Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee After reading Disgrace, I became a fan of the South African born Coetzee. Waiting for the Barbarians is an allegorical tale about oppressors and the oppressed, set in a fictional country in an indeterminate time period. One can't help but wonder about Coetzee's roots in South Africa when reading this story, but it's not long before one's musings about the story become broader even than that.

Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov I'd read Lolita (more than once, actually) and although I'd heard of Pale Fire, I knew nothing about it when I began to read. The novel is structured around a 999 line unpublished poem, written by a recently deceased fictional poet and narrated by his fictional friend and neighbor. This is an amazing example of successful metafiction. I am not a huge fan of metafictional novels because so many are (in my opinion) more style than substance. Not so with Pale Fire. This novel is one of those few where I was dazzled by the concept, the prose and the elegance of it the entire way through. I would imagine there are scholars who've spent entire careers studying and interpreting this work.

The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow Reading novels written decades ago is sort of like getting off a freeway, driving into a rural village and getting out to stroll. I have an almost visceral change in posture when I pick up one of these older, bigger books and I feel like I have all the time in the world to give to them -- and they generally do need more time and patience.

English-born writers and literary critics Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis have both noted that The Adventures of Augie March is certainly on the short list of Great American Novels if you consider the definition to encompass a story that focuses on life in America within a given time period.

"I am an American, Chicago born -- Chicago, that somber city -- and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus,, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles."

Wikipedia describes the novel this way: "The Adventures of Augie March (1953) is a novel by Saul Bellow. It centers on the eponymous character who grows up during the Great Depression. This picaresque novel is an example of bildungsroman, tracing the development of an individual through a series of encounters, occupations and relationships from boyhood to manhood."

Bellow, like Proust is a writer who demands patience. I read this novel with highlighter in hand, as I do Proust as the author frequently makes references to historical figures and events that aren't necessarily well known (at least not to me). I recently read a quote from Norman Mailer about Saul Bellow where he accused him of reading a million books, but not really having any ideas. I thought was an interesting comment as Bellow's familiarity with a huge body of literature comes through quite clearly in his work, but I don't know that I agree with the second part of his comment.

I kept the highlighter handy for a second reason. Bellow was an incredible writer. I often like to highlight especially fine passages in books I read to refer back to them later, but in the case of this book, I found myself tempted to highlight nearly everything! His descriptions of people, in particular, captivated me.

"He was a beer saufer; droopy, small, a humorist, wry, drawn, weak, his tone nosy and quinchy, his pants in creases under his paunch; his nose curved up and presented offended and timorous nostrils, and he had round, disingenuous eyes in which he showed he was strongly defended. He was a tio listo, a carnival type, a whorehouse visitor. His style was that of a hoofer in the lowest circuit, doing a little cane-swinging and heel-and-toe routine, singing, "I went to school with Maggie Murphy," and telling smokehouse stories while the goofy audience waited for the naked star to come out and begin the grinds. He had a repertory of harmless little jokes, dog yipes, mock farts; his best prank was to come up behind and seize you by the leg with a Pekinese snarl."

Throughout Augie March's journey, he encounters and often returns to dozens of characters. The dialog and discussions between them are full of ideas.

"Boredom starts with useless effort. You have shortcomings and aren't what you should be? Boredom is the conviction that you can't change. You begin to worry about loss of variety in your character and the uncomplimentary comparison with others in your secret mind, and this makes you feel your own tiresomeness. On your social side boredom is a manifestation of the power of society. The stronger society is, the more it expects you to hold yourself in readiness to perform your social duties, the greater your availability, the smaller your significance. On Monday you are justifying yourself by your work. But on Sunday, how are you justified? Hideous Sunday, enemy of humanity. Sunday you're on your own -- free. Free for what? Free to discover what's in your heart, what you feel toward your wife, children, friends, and pastimes. The spirit of man, enslaved, sobs in the silence of boredom, the bitter antagonist. Boredom therefore can arise from the cessation of habitual functions, even though these may be boring too. It is also the shriek of unused capacities, the doom of serving no great end or design, or contributing to no master force. The obedience that is not willingly given because nobody knows how to request it. The harmony that is not accomplished. This lies behind boredom. But you see the endless vistas."

I loved this book and will be reading much more Saul Bellow.

The Easter Parade, by Richard Yates I'm an enormous Woody Allen fan and bought this book some time ago because his characters in "Hannah and Her Sisters" mention it. With all the talk about Revolutionary Road recently, I decided it was time to read Richard Yates.

The Easter Parade is the story of two sisters, who live different, but individually tragic lives and is told over the course of four decades, beginning in the 1930's. The book has one of the best first sentences I've read in a long time:

"Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."

The book is told from the point of view of the younger sister, Emily and I was quite taken with the intimacy and accuracy the author brought to a female character. The writing is spare and beautiful and the story was poignant and painful.

On a separate note, this book is the type of story that I believe people are talking about when they claim that literary fiction is depressing.

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