February 12, 2014
Our lives can teach us how to read a book
“A book may not tell us exactly how to live our lives, but our own lives can teach us how to read a book. Now when I read the novel in light of Eliot’s life, and in light of my own, I see her experience of unexpected family woven deep into the fabric of the novel–not as part of the book’s obvious pattern, but as part of its tensile strength. Middlemarch seems charged with the question of being a stepmother: of how one might do well by one’s stepchildren, or unwittingly fail them, and of all that might be gained from opening one’s heard wider.” –Rebecca Mead, My Life in Middlemarch
February 10, 2014
Be the Mavis.
Things are busy here. In lieu of a post proper, I bring you Mavis Staples, whom Stuart and I had the great pleasure of seeing in concert on Friday night.
February 5, 2014
On Truth, Justice, and Ramona Quimby: An Appreciation
I have heard rumours here and there that to children raised on Hogwarts and Lemony Snicket, the adventures of Ramona Quimby come across as a little bit dull. Perhaps so, but then the domestic has always been my literary milieu, setting for plenty of magic in its own right. As a child, I was wild about Ramona, about her “wonderful, blunderful” self, as she was referred to at the end of Ramona Forever. In her blundering, I suppose she was a forerunner for chick-lit heroines on shoe-covered books in decades to come, and it’s part of the reason I identified with her, but here is a serious distinction: unlike Bridget Jones on the fireman’s pole, to give an example, Ramona never ever lost her dignity.
To be an adult encountering Ramona again has been absolutely fascinating. First, unlike Rowling, whose magic spells allow us to forgive literary missteps, Beverly Cleary never misses a beat. The pacing, characterization and dialogue in these novels is brilliant. Nothing clunks. These books are really not so dated–I only remember the line in Ramona the Brave, when Mrs. Quimby announces she is going back to work, and Beezus responds with, “Mother! You’re going to be liberated.” I note that on a newer edition of Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Ramona is depicted as wearing a bicycle helmet, which seems bafflingly incongruous (but then I have this theory that “safety” is a conspiracy theory, and that’s another story).
Reading these novels with my daughter, I see they are tremendously useful for educational purposes. For my education, that is, Cleary’s stories reminding me exactly of what it was like to be little in the world. I have forgotten this, the injustices of childhood, which Ramona calls attention to and battles at every turn. And injustice it truly is, to have no say in your comings and goings, to have the ground pulled out from under your feet on a regular basis, to have your fears and worries scoffed at, to be shushed and quieted, shooed away from underfoot. Reading the Ramona books provides with tremendous sympathy for how difficult it is for a child to be in the world. Reading the Ramona books, I think, makes me a better parent.
They’re also useful to my daughter though, not for morals and lessons, but for everything that’s going on in the background. That Ramona’s mother and father are depicted as real people, for one, their experiences providing a whole level of subtext to these stories that I wouldn’t have picked up on as a child, but which I zero in on now. I was reading aloud the Quimby parents’ argument from Ramona and Her Mother recently, and it was so pitch perfect and hilarious:
“Ramona, don’t just stand there,” said Mr. Quimby as he laid the bacon in a frying pan. “Get busy and set the table. As my grandmother used to say, ‘Every kettle must rest on its own bottom,’ so do your part.”
Ramona made a face as she reached for the place mats. “Daddy, I bet your grandmother didn’t really say all the things you say she said.”
“If she did, she must have been a dreadful bore,” said Mrs. Quimby, who was beating batter as if she were angry with it.
Mr. Quimby looked hurt. “You didn’t know my grandmother.”
“If she went around spouting wisdom all the time, I can’t say I’m sorry.” Mrs. Quimby was on her knees, dragging the griddle from behind the pots and pans in the bottom of the cupboard.
It is remarkable how much economics factors into these books, much like how they do in our own family life. Though by no means poor, the Quimby family has to think about costs and expenses. A new bedroom is only built onto their house because Mrs. Quimby returns to work and they have the means to do so. Later, Mr. Quimby loses his job, and when he returns to work, it is to a position that makes him terribly unhappy. This leads to Ramona’s perpetual worrying, and her silent pleading with him via attempted thought control, “Daddy, please like your job. Please like your job.” Her concern as she listens from her bed to the timbre of her parents’ late night discussions in another room.
And don’t you remember that? Anxiety and fear over things of which you have no control? Only hearing patches of the conversation, parts of the story, and filling in the blanks with all your deepest fears? The dawning understanding that your family life is built on unsure foundations, as unsure as is anything I mean, and the terror of thinking it might all come apart?
That life isn’t fair is such a cliche, but in her stories, Cleary makes this idea endlessly interesting. Her situations are always sometimes unbearably true to life–the frustrations of trying to sew a pair of pants for a toy elephant, for example. Or the problems of a not-so-great teacher. Not a bad teacher, but just one generally lacking in appeal. There are teachers like this, and while in other novels, her student might discover her actual heart of gold, in Ramona, such teachers are trials to be borne. Because life is like that. Life is unfair. Sometimes your cat dies and you’ve got to bury it and you get blisters on your fingers.
But life is also rich in its smallest details—the squelch of boots in the mud, the appeal of a banana sticker, the sounds of kids riding bikes outside, a haircut that transforms you into a pixie for a while. That the foundation of family can be surer than you think. And that when you’re wonderful and blunderful, you’re a lot like life is. Which is something that’s good to know.
February 2, 2014
Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk
While I loved Keavy Martin’s review of the Inuit novel Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk (transliterated and translated from Inuktitut to French by Bernard Saladin d’Anglure, and translated from French to English by Peter Frost in this new edition by University of Manitoba Press), a review which placed the novel in its context but also took it beyond the context—this is not “merely” a novel written by somebody who’d never read one, but a work of literature onto itself, something to be understood or even just experienced rather than contextualized—, I do think she overstated the challenge this book poses for the inexperienced reader. All set for a challenge was I, but instead I found myself enjoying myself, not so lost in an unfamiliar environment. The novel comes with a glossary of terms, but I could deduce most words by how they were used. The novel’s foreword by Bernard Saladin d’Anglure set the story up well for me, and in terms of the novel’s episodic nature? Well, obviously this was just an Inuit version of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City (I am only being half facetious here), so I knew what I was getting into.
Sanaaq is a young widow with a little daughter living as part of a semi-nomadic community in Northern Quebec. The novel’s 48 episodes show the rhythms of their daily life and its seasons, with all the usual drama implied–marriage, love, familial strife, hardship and loss, tragedy, and happiness. Oh, and tea. These characters are as preoccupied with tea, its having and its making, as characters in any English noel I’ve ever read, so I actually felt quite at home. For the reader unfamiliar with Inuit culture and traditions, the stories contained in this novel are rife with interesting details–about the hunting and storage of food, for example, or how the women in the book are always sewing and repairing their boots, and the logistics of Igloo-building. It’s not a portrayal of an Arctic idyll—life can be difficult and dangerous; I found it interesting to see how the dogs were regarded as pests, forever getting into food supplies and causing trouble, having items thrown at them. At one point in the story, Sanaaq is a victim of spousal violence, injured so badly by her husband that she must be flown to the south for medical treatment, and this is treated in the text with unflinching detail of the emotional complexity of the matter. But there is humour here too, and genuine human connections.
As we move through the novel’s 48 episodes, changes in Inuit life become apparent through contact with the qallunaat (non-Inuit people), which begins first with the sound of an airplane overhead, and then becomes more regular and embedded in ordinary experiences—Sanaaq’s husband is taken away to the south for work, her daughter becomes a Catholic convert, old people begin receiving social security payments.
The narrative skirts omniscience in a way that seems curious to the reader who is accustomed to the English novel. There is a matter-of-factness to the telling, perhaps related to its origins—it was written in a shorthand that can be written as quickly as it is spoken, and so this written novel has an oral nature. There is also a simplicity to its delivery that only comes across as such because a whole layer of the narrative is inaccessible to me as a reader (and I think that this is the challenge for this reader that Martin was writing about in her review). Saladin d’Anglure’s foreword makes clear that the apparent simplicity of Nappaaluk’s novel is undermined by the Inuit symbols and stories referenced, as well as details of Nappaaluk’s own life and members of her community. In short, this is only a straightforward story because I’m not smart enough to know it isn’t otherwise.
Sanaaq can and should be discussed beyond the story of how it was written, but the story is still pretty fascinating—Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk was asked by a missionary to write down phrases of the Inuktitut language so that he could develop his vocabulary, and what she delivered him instead was his long work of fiction, which she completed over many years. As Martin writes, “Mitiarjuk’s work has long been celebrated in Inuit communities, and… she received major honours before her death in 2007—she was awarded an honorary doctorate from McGill and was named a Member of the Order of Canada.” And now finally her work has been made available to be read by English readers, for pleasure just as much as enlightenment.
