February 4, 2008

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead by Eugenides

I’ve written before about short stories and their lack of portability. It’s a bit paradoxical then to have found the solution in the form of a big fat anthology. Perhaps it works because the anthology makes no illusion of portability? Anthologies aren’t great books for lugging around, for reading as you go, but the short story works in this context, functions as itself, best to dip into from time to time. Reading the whole book made me hungry for more, and for more short story anthologies (which is why The Penguin Book of Summer Stories is scheduled as an upcoming heart’s desire).

Perhaps the reason I’ve been so struck by My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro is that somehow every story managed “greatness”. Which sounds entirely subjective, I realize, but seemed quite straightforward with each story I finished. Love also the platform from which many “great” stories are launched from anyway, if not necessarily the most romantic ones.

Editor Jeffrey Eugenides writes in the introduction, “Please keep in mind: my subject here isn’t love. My subject is the love story… The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims– these are lucky eventualities but they aren’t love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment… Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.” Which, I suppose, makes for better reading than roses are red, violets are blue…

Eugenides has chosen such a vast array of stories– some translated from Russian, German, Chinese, from such unlikely co-conspirators as Chekhov and Miranda July. From the short story writers I like the very best– Grace Paley and Alice Munro– to those stories so classic, we scarcely give them a second glance– “A Rose For Emily” or “The Dead”. Nabokov’s “Spring in Fialta”. To fall in love with Lorrie Moore for the first time (and yes, I’m lucky indeed). I liked almost every story here, and the few I didn’t, I will still acknowledge are good. This anthology was akin to a party, but crowded with stories instead of people, and I felt privileged to have had them so specially collected, to be able to mix among them.

January 30, 2008

Words I encountered

Words I encountered today whilst reading Nabokov: violaceous; canthus; effluvia; elytra; gouache; basilisk.

January 29, 2008

Must

I’ve been reading bits and pieces lately, but some of it has been incredible. Last night was reading aloud from The New Quarterly 105 “Umbrella” and “Knife” by S. Isabel Burgess who, according to the internet, is also a Ph.D. student in nonlinear physics and pattern formation. Which isn’t all that surprising, actually, and her poems are amazing.

In terms of short fiction, from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead I’ve fallen in love with “Some Other Better Otto” by Deborah Eisenberg, and now her collection Twilight of the Superheroes is a must must. (Today I told RR that some days it is my to-read list that keeps me from jumping out my office window).

Online: 12 or 20 Questions with Lynn Coady (whose Mean Boy you might remember how I loved.)

January 23, 2008

Four Letter Word by Knelman and Porter

Whatever it is that’s just a bit thrilling about despair, it’s the very reason “Long Long Time” has been running through my head for about fifteen years. Linda Ronstadt warbling the entire spectrum of human emotion, with no intention of cheering up anytime soon, and though it’s enough to make tears pool at the brim of your eye, you’re not going to cry. As another song goes, “It’s only love, and that is all… but it’s so hard…”

Only love. As wrong as the most empty conjunction I’ve ever read: “mere happiness.” How much its writer mustn’t know, for there is nothing “mere” about happiness. And there is also nothing “only” about love, but who wishes to be “mere” or “only” anyway? With just a simple injection of despair (“living in the memory of a love that never was”) love is elevated to the stuff of epic drama, or at the very least the stuff of cheesy seventies pop lyrics. Warble warble warble.

Which is not to say that Four Letter Word is the stuff of pop lyrics, warbled or otherwise. Rather than this book has set me thinking about love, what we make of it. And what happens to love when we set it down in letters, here letters in the fictional: an ingenious premise for an anthology. By some absolutely brilliant writers, including some of my favourites, and a dust jacket to die for (I wish you could see the spine and how it’s printed like a whole packet of different sized and coloured letters, all gathered by a ribbon thank you Kelly Hill).

These fictional love letters were collected by editors Rosalind Porter and Joshua Knelman in order to “resurrect [the] dying custom [of the love letter] and to remind us of how seductive words are.” Indeed, these letters manage to seduce us with entire stories, communicated in one voice with limited perspective, often with second-person narration, some in just mere paragraphs. What a literary feat, I think, for what results is not a gimmick, epistolary indulgence, but storied stories, with all the voice, character and plot one would look for in such a thing.

And that it’s not “only love” and very rarely “mere happiness” which run through these stories is unsurprising, considering their form. As romantic as love letter might be, they’re indeed a sign of something gone wrong, for shouldn’t lovers be together? Kept apart by distance, death or fate would bring inevitable despair. Peter Behrens’ soldier writing from the front, traumatized by France 1944. Nick Laid’s Ruth writing to her deceased father: “Do not come back to us. Do not come back.” Joseph Boyden’s husband looking for his wife in post-Katrina New Orleans: “I didn’t want to let go of your hand.”

Certainly there is darkness here, letters by vulnerable children with no idea of the burdens they bear. Letters which we, the readers, know will inevitably go unsent, unreceived or unread. But there is considerable humour too, even amongst the despair. From a lovelorn chimp to “Miss Primatologist Lady in the Bush Sometimes”. Lionel Shriver’s Alisha’s emails, increasingly erratic as she’s not responded to. Tessa Brown’s letters in which a lover scorned critiques her boyfriend’s phone messages are disturbingly amusing (with footnotes).

Interesting that the stories here which come closest to “mere happiness” are not written to people at all: James Robertson’s ode to hillwalking, Jan Morris’s song to her house. The always-impressive Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie does write a letter tinged by possibility rather than loss, and driven by an undercurrent of joy.

Four Letter Word is useful on a variety of levels: being definitely readable, time slipping by like the letters were true and addressed to you. Inspiring thoughts of what love means, today and for always. Providing exposure to a variety of contemporary writers from a variety of locales and even (!!) some in translation. And being completely unlike any anthology I’ve ever encountered before, a whimsical exercise resulting in a collection with literary solidity and truth.

January 22, 2008

Stuff and Links

Now reading Four Letter Word, which is really lovely, and fascinating as anthologies go– more to come on that. I finished reading The Gathering last night, though I’ve not yet formulated my reaction. Too bogged down in hype and expectations for clarity yet, but my sense was that it was very good. Perhaps the story itself was more ordinary than I would have liked, but then: “Because, just at this moment, I find that being part of a family is the most excruciating possible way to be alive.” And challenging language in a way that was most rewarded. Yes then, I think I liked it.

Taking my thoughts about abortion’s inherent boringness and narrative challenge a bit further, Tabatha Southey dares to make it all a comedy with brilliant results. On why we should go back to myths (for it seems that snazzy modern takes do not suffice). My friend K. has a new blog called The Pop Triad. Dictators don’t do it better.

January 18, 2008

The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller

There was a moment whilst reading The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller when I just knew I was not only reading a readable novel, but also a very good one. When Delia Naughton steps into her front hall and is greeted her husband Tom, who calls her “Darling”. What Tom can’t see, however, is their daughter’s friend, already halfway up the stairs, but Delia can. Delia sees the girl turn at Tom’s voice, her face lit up and expectant. “And she knew, she felt it as an undeniable certainty, that something had already begun between them.”

This is the sort of moment upon which stories hang. This is plot, this is life. For it is too easy for revelation to come via google search, a conversation overheard, mis-answered cellphone calls, etc. Very rarely do we find an old tin box hidden under some bed, containing all the answers. Revelation more often does come in a glance, in a breeze, the turn of a head and the expression on one’s face. The sort of thing you can hardly put your finger on, and certainly cannot explain.

And so by such a moment I become confident of this story’s construction. This story about women’s lives, wifedom and motherhood, and that it could be told well. As it is. This is the story of a house, which is always a conceit I enjoy. Two halves of a house, actually, with two families. Meri and Nathan are newly married, new in town. Next door is Delia Naughton, “The Senator’s Wife”, who has been living apart from her husband for some time. A contrast then, between two couples. One together, and another apart (but not wholly), one newlywed and another with a history behind them. Meri finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, and Delia has wisdom to impart from her own years of motherhood. Having missed out on a strong maternal relationship herself, Meri is drawn to her new neighbour. And as Nathan and Meri struggle to adjust to one another and to parenthood, Delia is forced to make her own changes when her husband suffers from a stroke and she must bring him home again to care for him.

There are many fine things going on in this novel, and not just the moments. Here is not just an exercise in contrasts, as Meri and Nathan are so much characters in themselves. First, that Nathan is a nice guy, which is hard to write (for it’s far easier to plot a book with a slimeball). Second, they’re a bit older than average newlyweds. Meri is thirty-seven with her own history behind her, with a job, with experience. Moreover she’s a bit goofy, which you don’t see much with protagonist. As a character she is entirely whole.

It’s a subtle novel, but solid– what you’d imagine of a book about houses. And more than just an exploration of family and marriage, both of which are dealt with beautifully. The Senator’s Wife is not just a rumination, but a story, and with a fine plot to guide it, and an ending that will take you by surprise.

January 17, 2008

Uncommon

My upcoming Descant blog post will be a celebration of the commonness of reading, but I want to briefly celebrate The Uncommon Reader before then. (Which doesn’t seem to be available on Amazon.ca, and I don’t know why, but I am sure it’s out in Canada). Oh, the book is extraordinary and perfect, and not just because of its gorgeous endpapers. Or because Alan Bennett wrote The History Boys (who knew?). Rather I love the book for its acknowledgment and celebration of what I call “serious reading”.

The uncommon reader in question is Queen Elizabeth, who stumbles upon a mobile library by mistake. Not much of a reader is she, but she soon finds that one book leads to another. That books can inform the whole wide world, rendering it more complicated, perhaps. Reading, she finds, is a muscle, and she exercises it by reading with a pencil in hand (which you might recall is my New Year’s resolution). And as a reader she becomes “uncommon” not by her pedigree, but by her devotion to bookishness. By treating reading as a most serious task, not reading willy-nilly, by exploring through the doors books open for her, thinking about connections, ideas, suggestions that books bring forth, and indulging the curiosity towards the world that books awaken within her.

There are so many of us “uncommon readers”, at various levels of uncommonness– with our books clubs, book logs, book blogs, reading challenges etc. Though Steve Jobs may suggest otherwise, in my experience uncommon reading is remarkably common. But then this, of course, is a post for another time.

January 17, 2008

What is the What by Dave Eggers

There is so much to say about Dave Eggers’s novel What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. First: read it, it’s good for you. Good by the fact of being extraordinarily well-written, well-plotted, challenging, long long but you won’t bemoan that, tragic but not so much that you’re put off the story. For the very point is the story, the story of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the fabled “Lost Boys of Sudan.” Good for the reason that you’ve probably heard of the “Lost Boys” and Sudan, and it’s all mixed up with Darfur, and when you think of Africa anyway, you think of Africa. You think “over there.”

Or at least I thought for a long time, until I started seeking books and stories that would make the stories clearer, make the places and people of this vast and varied continent distinct. What is the What was good for me because I came away with an education. An incredible story too that perhaps allowed the lessons to “take” so well, but the very best thing for me about the book was not its point, its story, but its didacticism. I’ve come away with the facts, and I know a little bit more about the world.

But then the story is by no means incidental. And how well it is spun, beginning in the present and going back to the past, setting up a circular pattern, and then moving back and forth in and out of time. It’s a giant story, nearly twenty years in Deng’s life, and I respected its length. Perhaps one could have cut a few hundred pages to no great narrative loss, except to undermine the fact of this life. Talk about length, try spending ten years in a refugee camp. The shape of the narrative suits its content incredibly well, and makes for a gripping read.

Beginning with Deng in his apartment in Atlanta and a knock on the door just before his home is invaded by thieves and he is assaulted. Certainly not the standard set-up for such a story, “refugee boy makes good etc. happily ever after”. What is the What shows how hard it is to make good, how elusive is “ever after”. Ever after what?

Deng’s early life is established beautifully with an idea given to him as a young boy marching across Sudan with an army of boys. A march upon which armies, rebels and lions are a threat, as well as hunger, sickness, and exhaustion. Imagine your favourite day, he is told by their guide. A collection of all the perfect memories he’s ever known, and Achak remembers his loving family, his village, his friends, a brand new bicycle. Certainly, there is a “before”. Until Civil War breaks out in Southern Sudan, young Achak witnesses unimaginable horror, and, unsure what has happened to his family, joins the other boys on their walk toward some sort of safety in first Ethiopia, then Kenya, and then later to America.

Certainly when we talk about What is the What, we must mention Dave Eggers, but then it’s hard to even find him here. Eggers has stated that the reason he wrote a novel rather than a non-fiction book was that Deng’s voice was the great strength of the story, and the voice Eggers has recreated here certainly underlines that. One could only recreate a voice like this by listening intently, projecting nothing, and clearly this is what Eggers has done. Capturing the rhythms of this particular speaker, the trajectory of his stories, the kinds of lessons he cares to impart.

What I find so incredible about Dave Eggers, and what I respect about him, is that he’s never done the same thing twice. (He’s also an admirable philanthropist, but we shall stick to literary matters.) With all his early success, he wasn’t required to do what he’s done. But he has challenged himself, taken risks, proved his literary chops. The proof is here– the once-ironic indulgently-self-aware memoirist has written an epic tale, and all that remains of him here is the warmth, the humour, the generosity of spirit and insight.

Of course I do wonder about the political implications. What does it mean that this African man has had his story told by someone else? Why couldn’t Deng have told it himself? What is lost as we smudge the bounds of a literary life, and I am curious to see what history makes of all this. For this is a hugely significant work, and I am sure what it means will change with time, but in the meantime I would hope that the power of the novel addresses some of these concerns. That Deng’s voice wasn’t “stolen”, rather he sought out Eggers to tell the story, acknowledging that he wasn’t a writer. That Eggers tells the story masterfully, in a way a simple memoir by a lesser writer mightn’t have done. That Eggers’ name catches attention, directs it towards a worthy cause, and Deng receives the proceeds from the novel, which he is using towards his foundation.

Checking out the previous link today, looking at pictures of Deng’s visits back to Sudan and the work he is doing in his village of Marial Bai, I was moved by the beauty of the place. The greenness, the vastness, the vibrancy were not what came to mind before when I thought of Sudan, of a country that had been wracked by war for years and years. My perspective has been coloured, indelibly I would hope. And this is what reading can do, fiction in particular with all universality it implies. It’s quite simple (though not much else is)– I read this book, and it was good for me.

January 9, 2008

We all prefer the magical explanation

Have been reading/catching up. Penelope’s Way by Blanche Howard. Am just about to start What is the What by Dave Eggers, which I’ve been putting off for too long. Put off by prospect of the headiness, perhaps. Though Dave Eggers has never let me down before, and certainly the book has been buzzed about by many people I respect. I suspect I will be incredibly impressed.

And speaking of fictional autobiographies, I’ve just finished reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion. “Speaking of…” I say, for Joan Didion’s fiction similarly seems to challenge the fic/non-fic divide. Now I am such a fan of Joan Didion, and partly because she’s a bit preposterous. I don’t enjoy preposterousity universally, but I adore any woman who can embody the trait and still come off as brilliant. (This caveat thus explaining why I don’t love that Coulter person). I love Didion’s migraines, and that she went to the supermarket in a bikini and wanted a baby, and cried in Chinese laundries. And if one more person tells me that although they like her non-fiction, her fiction is disappointing, I will yawn.

Not because they’re entirely wrong– I’m not sure about that. Certainly I’ve never read a Joan Didion novel that stirred in me anything like what I felt for Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but that to me is beside the point. Which it might not be. It is distinctly possible instead that I am just feeling awfully protective of Didion, but still, I think, to dismiss her fiction is tiresome.

Whether or not her fiction is enjoyable (and it can be, but in a slightly uncomfortable way) something fascinating is going on with it. Joan Didion is the one writer who completely defies my theories of fiction’s truth having more bearing on reality than that of non-fiction. I am not sure I fully understand it, but it’s something in her coldness, her acuity. In her non-fiction Joan Didion assembles the world and lets it speak for itself and it’s in this speaking that the life creeps in. Whereas in her fiction when she attempts the very same thing (for this is what she does), the made-upness is pervasive. When she assembles these made-up things, whatever speaks is more an echo than a voice. An echo of what, I don’t know. All of which is really odd. And doesn’t necessarily mean that her fiction is unsuccessful; Didion is too smart for that. Rather I think of her as treating fiction as a project I’ve still not got my head around.

January 4, 2008

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips

Ultimately, Marie Phillips’s God Behaving Badly is a very silly novel. Which I do not mean as a dismissal, as, for two reasons in particular, it is also a very useful novel.

First, because silliness has its uses. Silly is not the same as stupid, nor stupid-making. What Phillips has set out to do in this, her first novel, she has accomplished with aplomb. Imagine the ancient gods and goddesses of Greece alive and, though not-so-well, living in modern-day London. Apollo, the god of the sun, turning into trees those women who won’t satisfy his sexual whims, and, with whatever is left of his dwindling powers, causing the sun to rise and set each day. Artemis is a dog-walker, Aphrodite a phone-sex worker, they’ve locked Zeus in the attic, and Demeter just tends her garden– though her clematis has died. No one can understands a word Athena says, and their house is absolutely filthy. Clearly the gods have come down in the world, and indeed, they’re behaving badly.

Silliness transpires, inevitably. When Apollo falls for their cleaner (thanks to a trick played by Eros, who incidentally is trying to be a Christian), cleaner ends up dead (struck by lightening), her sometime-boyfriend must go down to the Underworld (via Angel Tube Station) to bring her back. Premise is key here– there is no room for character development. Even plot is not the point (particularly in a world where characters can simply be “inexplicably drawn” towards their destiny, thanks to some kind of spell). But premise alone manages to be enough to sustain this novel, which is a snappy, funny, light read.

Gods Behaving Badly is useful for more didactic reasons however, though I know many classicists will pour scorn on my theory. But silliness aside, Marie Phillip’s project is enormously well-executed. Her story of these gods and their own stories is positively bursting with facts, details. However irreverently, she has made thousand-year-old stories relevant to modern-day readers. And I realize this book has got nothing on the texts from whence it sprang, but the thing is that I’ve never read those texts. There are massive gaps in my education, which is my own problem of course, but I didn’t really know about Artemis. Certainly not that she was Apollo’s twin, and I’d forgotten about Ares since I learned about him in my grade nine mythology unit.

Which means that the next book I read now in which these timeless tropes are used (albeit with subtlety) I will pick up on the allusion. I felt similarly when I read Orpheus Lost: grateful that a writer has seen fit to bring these stories (back) to life for me. And it means that the original stories (which for so long have seemed to me from so far back as to be arcane) are now accessible– so close I could actually pick one up and read it. And perhaps I just might.