December 18, 2007
Words I don't know
A wonderful piece in the Guardian Review about (bothering to go about) looking up all those unknown words we encounter all the time. James Meek writes, “For some reason that I have never fully grasped, it is easy for those in the word business to admit any degree of innumeracy (“I’m hopeless with arithmetic”), or helplessness with the daily machinery of their trade (“I don’t know anything about computers”), but difficult to speak frankly about not knowing what a word means.” Though I suspect it’s for the same reason mathematicians don’t like to voice their frustrations with long division.
Oh, but there are so many words I don’t know. As I’ve written here before, I decided to collect unknown words once upon a time, to keep them and tame them. It was while I was living in Japan and devouring battered paperbacks by Margaret Drabble, whose vocabulary still far surpasses mine. Inspired by my ESL students, I started writing down new English words in a little black notebook and the list grew and grew. I was hoping for admission to graduate school within the year and my minuscule vocabulary (consisting too much of “fuck” and “cool”) seemed like it might be an impediment. So I learned: “sybaritic”, “quondam”, “recalcitrant”, “bathetic”, “avuncular”. These are words I know, and whenever I see them, I remember I didn’t always.
But I stopped collecting– I don’t remember why or when. Probably when we moved to Canada, for it is easier to collect English in a land where it is scarce. I think the why also had something to do with leaving our tiny apartment where pencils (and the walls for that matter) were never out of arm’s length–namely I am lazy. But this article by James Meek has inspired me to start again– really. I’m not anticipating grad school, but it’s behind me, which is as good a reason as any to take responsibility for my education now.
Meek writes, “For clarity, we need common, current words; but, used alone, these are commonplace, and as ephemeral as everyday talk. For distinction, we need words not heard every minute, unusual words, large words, foreign words, metaphors; but, used alone, these become bogs, vapours, or at worst, gibberish. What we need is a diction that weds the popular with the dignified, the clear current with the sedgy margins of language and thought.”
“Sedge. n. 1. any of various grasslike plants of the family Cyperaceae, esp of the genus Carex with triangular stems, usu. growing in wet areas. 2. an expanse of this plant.”– though actually I can’t fathom what he means in this context– anyone?
December 18, 2007
The Dirt on Clean by Katherine Ashenburg
There are many marvelous things about Katherine Ashenburg’s new book The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History, not least of all the brilliant design. Outside the book resembles a bar of soap, while the text inside is laid out beautifully, scattered with small graphics and quotations. The book is artful in style and content, the graphics ranging from Greek and Roman images of bathing to 2oth Century soap advertisements. That Ashenburg uses these images and literary evidence as her sources, as well as more traditional historical record, suggests a rich resource. Ashenburg’s prose is compelling and enjoyable to read, the subject matter fascinating and full of illumination, and here we have a book on a most unlikely subject which a wide range of readers is bound to appreciate.
Where I do find fault, though, I do unfairly. For it is unfair to fault a book for being exactly what it purports to be. Simply a history of cleanliness, focusing on the Western world, and arguing that a people’s view of cleanliness tells you much about who those people are. And there is so much stuff with which to work on this subject, as Ashenburg makes clear, but I couldn’t help wishing that she’d worked it a little more. Even the ubiquitous quotations and factoids suggest to me that so overwhelmed was she by the richness of her facts, she could neither harness them completely nor let any of them go. So we get a compendium of miscellanies instead of a book, the kind of trivia so fashionable these days, the kind which gets pulled out at parties whenever knowledge is called for. That changing one’s shirt was once all that was required by way of hygiene, how disgusting Europeans seemed to the rest of the world, and how clean must have been Odysseus considering that the Greeks bathed upon their departures and arrivals.
Have you heard about”Knol”– the the new Google version of Wikipedia? I think they made up “knol”, but the term is supposed to stand for the smaller bits that knowledge can be broken down into. The idea bothers me, for I don’t think that knowledge can really be broken down. Knowledge is the sum of its parts, synthesis being required for an assemblage of facts to mean anything, and such synthesis was what was missing as I read The Dirt on Clean.
But I am being doubly unfair, I realize. For I cannot claim to be so knowledgeable as much as merely “knolly” myself, and if Katherine Ashenburg had written a book called, for example, “An Academic Treatise on European Bathing Practices and Society in the 16th Century” and said book had not been designed to look like a bar of soap, I probably would never have even read it. Ashenburg’s book is undeniably charming, and though its facts left me with questions, I can seek the answers elsewhere. That the book raised questions at all makes it more useful than a “knol” and could well set me on a path toward knowledge after all. Being a popularization of history does not taint that history, and though I maintain that Ashenburg could have pressed her analysis further, that she has written such a good book with such wide appeal is probably healthy for everybody.
December 17, 2007
Diamond sharp
The Globe books pages were exciting this weekend. Rebecca Rosenblum’s story in The Journey Stories 19 is called “diamond-sharp”. A great review of When To Walk which I enjoyed reading this Fall. And a review of a new by book by Andrea Barrett whose Servants of the Map I so adored.
Beyond books, Joanna Schneller should be lauded for her article “A Culture Saturated by Sexism”. Though one of Schneller’s most intriguing points was an aside. “In three popular films this year – Knocked Up, Waitress and Juno — women who find themselves accidentally pregnant dismiss the option of abortion almost immediately.” Which is a bit disturbing, but understandable really, and for a most assuring reason: abortion makes for such boring narrative. Or at least everyone I’ve ever known to have had one has just gone on happily with the rest of her life.
December 16, 2007
"The only way to escape this cul-de-sac is invention"
“I know I can’t discover the key to peace in Israel and Palestine. But I want to do justice of some kind, and to make– or find– something of value, of which I will not be unspeakably ashamed. I want to write, and I want the writing not to be a lie.” –Jonathan Garfinkel, Ambivalence
December 16, 2007
Pickle Me This Picks of '07
These are my picks, my favourites, which is why I don’t feel bad that so few were authored by men (though does it count that another author has a man’s name?). I don’t claim that they’re the Best books of 2007 (though they might be) but just my best. I did try to read more books by men this year, by resolution, as I’d so been neglecting that poor gender. And I’m better for it, but still the books women write seem to be the ones I like the very best, however diverse they might be amongst themselves. What follows are such books, listed in the order in which I encountered them.
New Fiction
- Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert (From my review: “a startlingly original novel… What do you do with the past once it’s over?”)
- The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly (From my review: “her achievement is creating a novel so truly beautiful out of some of the ugliest stuff the world has on offer.”)
- Certainty by Madeleine Thien (From my review: “…ultimately it is the sum of these stories which provides the “certainty” amidst uncertainty: meaning is evident, and beauty abounds.”)
- The Ladies’ Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer (From my review: “Here is a summer book through and through, all the while substantial, well-written.”)
- Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida (From my post-review: “has been positively haunting me since I read it.”)
- Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls by Danielle Wood (From my review: ” Rosie Little is “the next Bridget Jones” for which we’ve been longing for ten years.”)
- Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (From my review: “This book feels too whole to have been created… [A]n entity unto itself, its own world, and a truly magnificent literary achievement.”)
- Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani (From my review: “The Stone Diaries without the ghost, but also something original, beautiful, gentle and lovely in its own right.”)
- The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys (From my review: “The Thames freezing is a perfect example of an extraordinary moment in time… and Humphreys links these moments together in this small beautiful book.”)
- The Great Man by Kate Christensen (From my review: “There is joy here, and there’s goodness, and the whole wide world, which is certainly something for a book.”)
New Non-Fiction
- Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
- Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford by Jessica Mitford
- The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
- Cake or Death by Heather Mallick
- 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen
- A Memoir of Friendship: Shields and Howard by Blanche and Allison Howard (eds.)
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
- Beijing Confidential by Jan Wong
- Ambivalence by Jonathan Garfinkel
Not New but Glad I Discovered
- Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
- Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
December 16, 2007
Life in a Northern Town
On this Sunday cars so insistent on not heeding weather warnings have become marooned, abandoned by their drivers, and now they’re buried up to their mirrors in drifts outside my house and I’ve got no place to be but here with my best company, good smoked cheddar cheese, and books and periodicals begging for reading.
December 14, 2007
My almost-absolute failure
Lately it’s been very convenient having an award-winning writer for a friend, for upon the completion of my novel two weeks back, Rebecca was kind enough to read it. And indeed she has offered wonderful encouragement, good advice and insight. (Which I will apply to my manuscript over my Christmas Holiday! How fortunate to have the time when I most need it). The most fascinating of all her feedback though is a note of my almost-absolute failure to use subordinate conjunctions. And and and and and, which I suppose is to be expected from anyone who talks too much (and I’ve been accused of this since I learned to speak). What about the “buts” and “thens” though? Reading through another story this evening I realize my “problem” (which it isn’t, entirely) is completely out of control. Causality where art thou? Fascinating. I will explore this further throughout my revisions, then I will use this awareness to strengthen my work, but I will not cease my ands completely for ands are what I do (so it seems). There.
December 13, 2007
Five years ago
It was five years ago today that I went out on the town with this lady, and met a boy who danced as badly as I do. And so much fun and adventure has ensued ever since then.
The moral of the story is that you might just meet your husband in a crowded bar.
December 13, 2007
People instead of their societies
Now reading Ambivalence by Jonathan Garfinkel, and delighting in people instead of just their societies. Which I think might just be the theme of the book, so that’s fortunate. This is the second-last book of my non-fiction commitment and it has been a good ride. Though probably in the future I won’t non-fic in such a binge. I miss the truth and certainty of fiction, and though I have learned very much, my own writing is starting to suffer from a paucity of inspiration. One needs both worlds, I think. But I resolved to read all these books for they were ones I’d been putting off and putting off, and I had to resolve that now was the time sometime. It’s been good for me I think, though now that the end is in sight, I am longing for a prize– a good novel. But there is still good reading to be had in the meantime. A book is a book is a book.
