As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

I don't know why I waited so many years to read William Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness novel, As I Lay Daying. But it spoke to me in ways it likely would not have when I was in my 20s or 30s.

In my 30s, I had not been married, had no children and lived in Chicago even though I grew up in rural Arkansas. I worked in a job where I generally was surrounded by intelligent people. None of us seemed old -- not even those of us who were. We lived.

Now, though, I am married. Like many marriages, it's had good and bad times. I now have a 10-year-old daughter, adopted late in life during a trip to China. I now live in the South, in a town less rural and more educated than Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. I work alone, but just yesterday a man who might have easily been Anse Bundren walked into my office. He smelled, he hated, he was clearly the boss in his family -- one where a little girl's head was shaved rather than spend money on a good haircut and lice shampoo. For a time, he was Anse Bundren. I suspect he always will be.

I've seen Addie Bundren, too. She's in Chicago, Conway, everywhere. But I do think she's more common in the South, where women and children are quickly put down if they stand up too much to male authority, even when the man is of Anse Bundren's quality. She suffers; she endures; she seeks happiness but never finds it. She is married but neither loves nor is loved by her spouse. Never has been. She knows "that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead."

If you're young, read this book. But read it again in 20 or 40 years. It's as timely now as it was when Faulkner wrote it in 1930.

YOUR TURN

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Just Kids by Patti Smith

Patti Smith's memoir of her time with the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe is a love story. The book tells of the young couple's love and passion for each other and for art.

While the pair's love at first is a romantic, sexual one, the relationship changes as Maplethorpe becomes interested in other men and as Smith slowly accepts his homosexuality. Her acceptance is somewhat of a reluctant one, allowing for the pair's love to transcend sex and become a platonic one.

Smith's memoir also reflects the changes in Maplethorpe's art and photography, from religious works to what many would view as sacreligeous works. My own view is that Maplethorpe likely saw his art neither as religious nor sacreligeous; to him, the works, no matter how offensive to others, were just art, albeit often with a shock value and eventually a hefty price tag.

The book has plenty of name-dropping, from Janis Joplin to Jimi Hendrix to Sam Shepard. In each case, Smith is remembering her time with the famous, whether for only a few moments or for much longer as with Shepard, already a successful playwright in the 70s. At the time, Smith was young and in awe of these talented, already-successful artists, so her memories of their encounters are vivid.

The edition I read includes some photographs of Smith and Maplethorpe as well as photographs by Maplethorpe. It also includes an addendum of sorts with a picture of Maplethorpe's desk and a summary of what happened to it after his death in 1989 from AIDS.

Smith is not only a talented musician and artist but also an excellent writer. Her words seem to flow freely, naturally -- at times seriously and at other times with a slight laugh at her and Robert's youth.

The book reminded me of my own college years during the Vietnam era. I didn't have the controversy in my life that Mapplethorpe and Smith did. But I did have the idealism and the view that, with others, I could effect political and social change. And we did.

If you like this book as much as I did, you may want to check out Smith's website.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

This little book says more in its 197 pages than most of the 300- and 400-page books I have read. Set during Mao's Cultural Revolution, which was at its height in the 1960s and 70s, Dai Sijie's simply yet wonderfully written novel tells the story of two young men -- a violinist and a prominent dentist's son -- who are ordered to leave their comfortable and cultural lives in the city for a remote mountain community where they will be "re-educated." Their job there is to haul human and animal manure.

But while there, the two find a suitcase packed with books by Western authors from Balzac to Flaubert to Dickens. Because knowledge is power and a sign of rebellion against Mao, the boys must handle the books carefully, for the novels are not only treasures but also the equivalent of contraband in China.

While on Phoenix Mountain the boys also get to know a pretty young woman known simply as the little seamstress. They tell her and her aging father stories from the books they have read and re-read, The Count of Monte Crisco, Madame Bovary and more.

As a result, the little seamstress learns of Western ways and, hence, gains knowledge and power, too.

The author, a filmmaker, was born in China in 1954. He was "re-educated" between 1971 and 1974 and left China for France in 1984. He wrote this first novel in French. Ina Rilke translated it.

As I read this book, I realized two things. First, I shall save it for my daughter, who was born in China in 2001. I hope she will read this book when she is older to learn more about her homeland's history. I also realized more than ever how many Westerners, including myself, do not realize the treasure, the freedom we hold in our hands each time we read a novel, a poem or other works of literature.