October 20, 2009
Sean Penn
In the last few weeks, I’ve found “Sean Penn” used twice as a metaphor for manic behaviour: in Douglas Coupland’s new novel Generation A and Lorrie Moore’s story “What You Want to do Fine”. This is remarkable because a) didn’t Sean Penn stop self-destructing in about 1989? funny that this remains a touchstone, and b) if I’ve found two, there must be more. I will be on the lookout from here on in. Perhaps he really could end up with his picture in the dictionary under “crazy”.
October 15, 2009
A Tyrannical Poltergeist
“There is a sense in which all novels are ghost stories: fictional characters are translucent phantoms, which readers believe in (or don’t); readers lurk in the presence of characters, spying on their most intimate moments, eavesdropping on their innermost thoughts. And however thoroughly the novelist establishes her characters’ motivations, however robustly she forges her chains of cause and effect everything that happens ultimately does so at the whim of the writer. Certain things have to happen for the narrative to progress… Every novel is haunted by a tyrannical poltergeist, in the form of its plot.” from “Poltergeist: The Little Stranger” by Thomas Jones, London Review of Books 9 July 2009
October 7, 2009
Some links
DoveGreyReader reflects upon reflecting upon reading (after reading Susan Hill’s Howards’ End is on the Landing, which has joined my bookish wishlist and I will probably buy it when we go to England next week, along with all the other books I’ll probably buy when we go to England next week. Too bad everything is my weakness, huh?). At Inklings, the first interesting article in ages I’ve read about e-books. Salon de Refuses lives on in academia! The misadventures of The New Quarterly at Word on the Street. Dionne Brand is Toronto’s new poet laureate. Hilary Mantel on being a social worker.
October 6, 2009
Little Women Report #2
Perhaps I spoke too soon awhile back, because the second half of Little Woman was really wonderful. Though the characters were good, they were good in ways that were true to themselves and the ways in which they strayed beforehand weren’t necessarily obvious and were interesting to read. The chapter where Meg makes jelly that doesn’t set on the day her husband brings home a dinner guest without warning was an incredibly realistic depiction of domestic dynamics. Jo’s experiences as a writer were fascinating and so true. Amy became a wonderful mass of contradictions, and the most interesting sister by the end. I really enjoyed this part of the book and am glad I followed through.
But the second half was so different from the first that I could scarcely believe that the two were published a year apart. I’d figured Alcott must have grown significantly as a writer in the interim. Or perhaps she realized her characters had wider appeal than she’d initially planned?
It’s the tone of the second half that is so very different, as though it’s growing up along with the characters. And that’s something I’ve never found in a book before, an omniscient narrator so in tune with her characters’ perspectives. In the first half of Little Women, there is little going on beneath the surface. Of course, you get the sense that Marmee is wiser than she lets on, but it’s so obvious, and the other characters know it too. But it was distinctly a children’s book, whereas the second half wasn’t.
And maybe that’s what young readers like so much about Little Women, that they begin with something quite geared towards their level but the book takes off on its own speed, and by the end the narrative is quite above them. So that it would be a book one would revisit time and again, to find out what has changed since the last time.
Note: I was so glad that Jo didn’t marry Laurie. The Professor is so lovely, however much German and old. Obviously, Jo hadn’t watched enough Sex and the City to be brainwashed into thinking enacting adolescent drama is an aspiration more worthy than mere happiness.
October 1, 2009
Why I love the LRB
As a person who loves driving but hates cars, I found Andrew O’Hagan’s “A Car of One’s Own” the very best thing I read today. From the London Review of Books, 11 June 2009. Read the whole thing. Excerpt as follows:
“I could easily say I loved my car – I missed it when I went to bed at night. On that first long drive from London to Wales and thence to Inverness – which took 14 hours – I believe I discovered my autonomy. As with all illusions, I didn’t care that others found the enchantment funny: the feeling was new, and its newness is something that millions of people express rarely but understand fully. In American fiction, a great number of epiphanies – especially male epiphanies – occur while the protagonist is alone and driving his car. There are reasons for that. One may not have a direction but one has a means of getting there. One may not be in control of life but one can progress in a straight line. When your youth is over and definitions become fixed, even if they are wrong, it might turn out that the arrival of a car suddenly feels like the commuting of a sentence. It may seem to give you back your existential mojo. That is the beauty of learning to drive late and learning to drive often: it gives you a sense that life turned out to be freer than it was in your childhood, that time agrees with you, that your own sensitivities found their domain in the end, and that deep in the shell of your inexpensive car you came to know your subjectivity. Of course, one may find these things in the marriage bed or in a gentleman’s club, but those places have rules and your car is your own bed, your own club. Music? Yes. Tears? Yes. Singing? Yes. Stopping under the stars? OK, if you must. And here is Tintern Abbey. And there is Hadrian’s Wall. And should I stop in Glasgow for a drink? If you read the novels of Joan Didion, you will see there can come a time in anybody’s life, women’s as much as men’s, when they climb into their car and feel that they are driving away from an entire kingdom of dependency. The motorways don’t offer a solution: they offer a welcome straitjacket. Your car will get all the credit for bringing you home to yourself, for showing you the only person you can truly depend on is not merely yourself, but yourself-in-your-car, a somatic unity. Those who spend most of their lives being alert to the demands of others – and that’s most employees, most husbands, wives, parents, most believers – will know the rhythmic, sedative pull of the motorways as the road performs its magic, pulling you back by degrees to some forgotten individualism that the joys and vexations of community always threatened to turn into an upholstered void. Virginia Woolf was almost right: all one really needs is a car of one’s own, the funds to keep it on the road and the will to encounter oneself within. Though most of those men aren’t listening to Virginia Woolf – they’re listening to Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited.”
September 26, 2009
Wash the Poodle
“I suspect the real attraction was a large library of fine books, which was left to dust and spiders since Uncle March died. Jo remembered the kind old gentleman, who used to let her build railroads and bridges with his big dictionaries, tell her stories about the queer pictures in his Latin books, and buy her cards of gingerbread whenever he met her in the street. The dim dusty room, with the busts staring down from the tall bookcases, the cozy chairs, the globes, and, best of all, the wilderness of books in which she could wander where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her. The moment Aunt March took her nap, or was busy with company, Jo hurried to this quiet place, and curling herself up in the easy chair, devoured poetry, romance, history, travels and pictures, like a regular bookworm. But, like all happiness, it did not last long; for as sure as she had just reached the heart of the story, the sweetest verse of the song, or the most perilous adventure of her traveler, a shrill voice called, “Josy-phine! Josy-phine!” and she had to leave her paradise to wind yarn, wash the poodle, or read Belsham’s Essays by the hour together.” –from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women
September 23, 2009
Finally getting around to
Am currently suffering from the plight of every avid book-buyer, that is my unread books shelf getting rather crowded. Certain books have been up there for a year, which you think would be a hint that I’ll never get around to them, but for some reason I can’t give up the ghost. And I keep buying irresistable books that sit on that shelf for just a day or two, so that the others get pushed further and further back in line. The Vic Book Sale next week will do nothing to help matters, and so I’m getting around to one of these volumes. As of later today, I’ll be now reading Little Women. I think I found it for free in a box out on some sidewalk, and though I read the book years and years ago, I scarcely remember it at all (except for Beth’s death and Jo’s hair) so I’ll go back there again. I’m not terribly motivated to do so though, perhaps due to the fustiness of my particular novel, and damn, that book is long. We shall see. I’ll let you know how it goes.
September 6, 2009
Springing
I’ve been disappointed by quite a few books lately, which might be because reading doesn’t come so easy these days, ever since breastfeeding got convenient and doesn’t take up my whole life. So a book has really got to be worth my while, seeing as “so little time” has never been more true. I also continue to put books on hold at the library, and have about thirty books waiting to be read on my shelf. All this to say that I’ve got reservations on springing for a hardcover, but I still think I’m going to buy A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, because Lisa Moore’s review made me hungry to read it.
In other acquisitions news, today I bought Harriet Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
August 28, 2009
Books for tactility
Of course, the point of books is exploration, and it was very exciting to see Harriet realizing that this morning. I’ve been helping her “read” her touch and feel books for a while now, but this morning she reached out and did it herself. I read to her all the time, and she seems to listen, and she looks at the pictures, but this was the first active response she’s ever shown to a book, and it made me very happy. Books are for touching indeed, and soon they’ll be for eating, and one day you’ll be reading and have the world in your hands.
