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.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
YOUR TURN
Now, it's your turn. Please make a comment and share the title of a book you've recently read and enjoyed. Just click on COMMENTS immediately below this post and type your thoughts in the space provided, then click on Post Comment. Thank you! dhs
Sunday, April 10, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear
Like the previous Maisie Dobbs mysteries, this one -- the third of the investigator/psychologist adventures -- again draws readers into World War I and its aftermath.
This book, set in about 1930 as Adolph Hitler was coming to power in Germany and as England and France were still recovering from The Great War, focuses on Dobbs' efforts to confirm that two of her clients' relatives were, in fact, killed during the war as the British government said they were. An unrelated subplot deals with the case of a 14-year-old girl accused of murder, unjustly so in Maisie Dobbs' view.
Author Jacqueline Winspear further develops Maisie's relationship with Dr. Andrew Dene in this novel and has Maisie amd readers wondering whether her trust in her longtime mentor, Maurice Blanche, has been misplaced. The book also delves into the world of those who claim to have a sixth sense and know what others do not. Winspear, through her characters, also explores the question of whether some lies are pardonable and suggests they, indeed, are.
This book, set in about 1930 as Adolph Hitler was coming to power in Germany and as England and France were still recovering from The Great War, focuses on Dobbs' efforts to confirm that two of her clients' relatives were, in fact, killed during the war as the British government said they were. An unrelated subplot deals with the case of a 14-year-old girl accused of murder, unjustly so in Maisie Dobbs' view.
Author Jacqueline Winspear further develops Maisie's relationship with Dr. Andrew Dene in this novel and has Maisie amd readers wondering whether her trust in her longtime mentor, Maurice Blanche, has been misplaced. The book also delves into the world of those who claim to have a sixth sense and know what others do not. Winspear, through her characters, also explores the question of whether some lies are pardonable and suggests they, indeed, are.
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone
If lightning strikes you, your first and correct impulse probably would be to call 911 -- or have someone call for you. And if you're a character in Michele Young-Stone's debut novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, your next impulse might be 1.) learning how to avoid another strike and 2.) how to live with life after lightning.
In Young-Stone's novel, two children of the South -- Becca Burke, who is stricken twice and who also witnesses a beloved dog's death by lightning, and Buckley Pitank, a boy who loses the only person who really loves him, his mother, to a bolt of lightning -- are forever changed emotionally by their experiences. Becca becomes an artist, leaves North Carolina for New York where her artworks reflect her encounters with lightning. Buckley, who grows up in a small, rural community of northwest Arkansas, ultimately flees his selfish grandmother and money-grubbing, preaching step-dad.
Like Becca, Buckley becomes obsessed with lightning, so much so that he tries to set himself up for a non-fatal strike. He writes a book, a manual to help lightning-strike survivors and, through it, has his first contact with Becca. It's not giving away much to say the two characters, who lead separate but similar and lonely lives, will eventually meet. What makes the book so interesting is the paths that lead them together and the paths they take afterward.
The novel is more about loneliness and dysfunctional families than lightning, which ultimately is just the medium that brings their despair to the forefront and that unites the book's main protagonists.
The book is fast-paced and an easy read. It's occasionally sad and full of good, bad and even clueless characters. Check it out; it's a different and enjoyable read.
In Young-Stone's novel, two children of the South -- Becca Burke, who is stricken twice and who also witnesses a beloved dog's death by lightning, and Buckley Pitank, a boy who loses the only person who really loves him, his mother, to a bolt of lightning -- are forever changed emotionally by their experiences. Becca becomes an artist, leaves North Carolina for New York where her artworks reflect her encounters with lightning. Buckley, who grows up in a small, rural community of northwest Arkansas, ultimately flees his selfish grandmother and money-grubbing, preaching step-dad.
Like Becca, Buckley becomes obsessed with lightning, so much so that he tries to set himself up for a non-fatal strike. He writes a book, a manual to help lightning-strike survivors and, through it, has his first contact with Becca. It's not giving away much to say the two characters, who lead separate but similar and lonely lives, will eventually meet. What makes the book so interesting is the paths that lead them together and the paths they take afterward.
The novel is more about loneliness and dysfunctional families than lightning, which ultimately is just the medium that brings their despair to the forefront and that unites the book's main protagonists.
The book is fast-paced and an easy read. It's occasionally sad and full of good, bad and even clueless characters. Check it out; it's a different and enjoyable read.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss' novel The History of Love is a wonderful and mysterious story spanning 60 years, two continents (Europe and North America) and more than a few lonely, confused, even disturbed people. It's also a book in a book. Not surprisingly, the book within the book isn't that good, though only excerpts appear.
Krauss' novel, however, is truly a good read. It leaves the reader wanting more, wondering what lies ahead for certain characters even after the last page. The novel is rather confusing, perhaps intentionally so. After all, the various narrators who tell the story are confused about their own lives, their own history. One seeks proof of his own existence. Another is translating a book for a man who does not really exist. One is unaware that he is a published author. A young boy is building an ark for the next great flood. A young girl, Alma, works to solve the mystery of who everyone is -- including the other Alma for whom she is named.
Leopold Gursky, a Polish immigrant and the novel's main character, is a Holocaust survivor, one who hid in the woods, foraging for food, even eating bugs and rats. Alma, the young woman he loved, pregnant with his child, left Europe amid the Nazi threat. That child grew up to be the acclaimed author Gursky had yearned to be.
The Holocaust is long over, and yet Gurksy is still alone in the woods, a lonely man in a New York apartment with a similar solitary friend, very likely an imaginary friend. Gursky drops things in stores and asks odd questions so that people, at least one person, will notice him each day -- so that he will not die having gone unremembered that day, almost to verify his own existence.
I enjoyed the novel but believe it needs read twice. No doubt a second read would highlight details, names that might go unnoticed in the first read. The novel also is replete with literary allusions, which could be better appreciated on a second read.
The novel is, not a study, but a detailed, mysterious look at human loneliness, human desires, human frailties, human hopes, human memories, humanity's connection. A World War II soldier's oversight, a man's plagiarism, a first name repeated, an old man's curiosity and a young girl's persistence interact in ways no single character ever foresaw and together form The History of Love.
Krauss' novel, however, is truly a good read. It leaves the reader wanting more, wondering what lies ahead for certain characters even after the last page. The novel is rather confusing, perhaps intentionally so. After all, the various narrators who tell the story are confused about their own lives, their own history. One seeks proof of his own existence. Another is translating a book for a man who does not really exist. One is unaware that he is a published author. A young boy is building an ark for the next great flood. A young girl, Alma, works to solve the mystery of who everyone is -- including the other Alma for whom she is named.
Leopold Gursky, a Polish immigrant and the novel's main character, is a Holocaust survivor, one who hid in the woods, foraging for food, even eating bugs and rats. Alma, the young woman he loved, pregnant with his child, left Europe amid the Nazi threat. That child grew up to be the acclaimed author Gursky had yearned to be.
The Holocaust is long over, and yet Gurksy is still alone in the woods, a lonely man in a New York apartment with a similar solitary friend, very likely an imaginary friend. Gursky drops things in stores and asks odd questions so that people, at least one person, will notice him each day -- so that he will not die having gone unremembered that day, almost to verify his own existence.
I enjoyed the novel but believe it needs read twice. No doubt a second read would highlight details, names that might go unnoticed in the first read. The novel also is replete with literary allusions, which could be better appreciated on a second read.
The novel is, not a study, but a detailed, mysterious look at human loneliness, human desires, human frailties, human hopes, human memories, humanity's connection. A World War II soldier's oversight, a man's plagiarism, a first name repeated, an old man's curiosity and a young girl's persistence interact in ways no single character ever foresaw and together form The History of Love.
Memorable Lines
From William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying in a chapter narrated by the dying Addie Bundren: "My father said that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead. I knew at last what he meant and that he could not have known what he meant himself, because a man cannot know anything about cleaning up the house afterward. And so I have cleaned my house."
-0-0-
From the preface to Jacqueline Winspear's Pardonable Lies appears this quotation from Sophocles' Creusa:
"Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;/
but when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
to speak dishonorably is pardonable."
-0-0-
From Nicole Krauss' The History of Love, a novel: "Really, there isn't much to say./He was a great writer./He fell in love. It was his life."
-0-0-
From Audrey Niffenegger's "After Words" in The Night Bookmobile, a graphic novel: "In the same way that perfume captures the essence of a flower, these shelves of books were a distillation of my life."
-0-0-
From A.L. Kennedy's short-story collection, What Becomes, these lines appear in "Edinburgh" -- "She gave him books. The same words that were in her mind, now in yours, still warm."
-0-0-
From "Alex & Me" by Irene Pepperberg, a memoir in which the African Grey parrot's last words to owner and scientist Pepperberg include: "You be good. I love you."
-0-0-
From French writer Muriel Barbery's novel Gourmet Rhapsody about an ailing food critic, his food memories and the last food he craves: "He dies."
-0-0-
-0-0-
From the preface to Jacqueline Winspear's Pardonable Lies appears this quotation from Sophocles' Creusa:
"Truly, to tell lies is not honorable;/
but when the truth entails tremendous ruin,
to speak dishonorably is pardonable."
-0-0-
From Nicole Krauss' The History of Love, a novel: "Really, there isn't much to say./He was a great writer./He fell in love. It was his life."
-0-0-
From Audrey Niffenegger's "After Words" in The Night Bookmobile, a graphic novel: "In the same way that perfume captures the essence of a flower, these shelves of books were a distillation of my life."
-0-0-
From A.L. Kennedy's short-story collection, What Becomes, these lines appear in "Edinburgh" -- "She gave him books. The same words that were in her mind, now in yours, still warm."
-0-0-
From "Alex & Me" by Irene Pepperberg, a memoir in which the African Grey parrot's last words to owner and scientist Pepperberg include: "You be good. I love you."
-0-0-
From French writer Muriel Barbery's novel Gourmet Rhapsody about an ailing food critic, his food memories and the last food he craves: "He dies."
-0-0-
Quickie Reviews And What's Ahead
Books I've read lately:
--Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. I pulled this one off my bookshelf after probably 20 years and regret I waited that long for such a good read. I highly recommend this interesting book that deals with grief and love and how we express -- or don't express -- those emotions.
--Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery. The novel about a dying food critic should appeal to all lovers of literature, not just food writing. The book's two-word last sentence shows how much a good writer can say in few words.
Upcoming:
I'm reading an oldie, Pride and Prejudice, and a contemporary novel, The Handbook for Lightning Survivors. I'm looking forward to my third Maisie Dobbs mystery, to the novel The Spice Necklace and more. I'm also thinking about reading Annie Proulx's memoir, Bird Cloud. I'd like to read one of the two books on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' career as a book editor.
--Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. I pulled this one off my bookshelf after probably 20 years and regret I waited that long for such a good read. I highly recommend this interesting book that deals with grief and love and how we express -- or don't express -- those emotions.
--Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery. The novel about a dying food critic should appeal to all lovers of literature, not just food writing. The book's two-word last sentence shows how much a good writer can say in few words.
Upcoming:
I'm reading an oldie, Pride and Prejudice, and a contemporary novel, The Handbook for Lightning Survivors. I'm looking forward to my third Maisie Dobbs mystery, to the novel The Spice Necklace and more. I'm also thinking about reading Annie Proulx's memoir, Bird Cloud. I'd like to read one of the two books on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' career as a book editor.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin is a novel written as a series of wonderfully crafted and subtly linked stories. The common denominator running throughout the book is the true story of French acrobat Philippe Petit who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in August 1974, not long after it was built.
The stories, though, are not about the acrobat but about the ordinary but extraordinary people 110 stories below, the people whose lives intersect whether through wars, telephone lines, wrecks, charity or simply family. These people are drug-addicted hookers, a Bronx mother who grieves her son who died in Vietnam, a Park Avenue woman who mourns her son who also didn't come home from the war. There is a wealthy judge hearing a series of routine criminal cases until he gets the acrobat's. And there are two very different Irish brothers. One devotes his life to helping prostitutes while the other tends a bar and cannot comprehend his brother's seemingly misguided charity.
McCann takes the reader back to a time when computers were in their infancy, before Richard Nixon had resigned, when the nation was as divided perhaps even more than today. He gives us a realistic glimpse of New York in the 1970s, from Park Avenue to the Bronx. And in so doing, he gives us a truly great work of literature.
The stories, though, are not about the acrobat but about the ordinary but extraordinary people 110 stories below, the people whose lives intersect whether through wars, telephone lines, wrecks, charity or simply family. These people are drug-addicted hookers, a Bronx mother who grieves her son who died in Vietnam, a Park Avenue woman who mourns her son who also didn't come home from the war. There is a wealthy judge hearing a series of routine criminal cases until he gets the acrobat's. And there are two very different Irish brothers. One devotes his life to helping prostitutes while the other tends a bar and cannot comprehend his brother's seemingly misguided charity.
McCann takes the reader back to a time when computers were in their infancy, before Richard Nixon had resigned, when the nation was as divided perhaps even more than today. He gives us a realistic glimpse of New York in the 1970s, from Park Avenue to the Bronx. And in so doing, he gives us a truly great work of literature.
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