December 28, 2007
What she was finding also
“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.” –Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
December 28, 2007
Random Illuminations by Eleanor Wachtel
“… I think the more we know about a writer, the more we understood how the novel was put together and why and what it means. And maybe we don’t need to know this. Maybe we don’t need to know anything about the writer. Maybe it’s better for us to enter blindly into the reading of novels, but, of course, I’ve I am always curious about the person behind the voice, behind the writing hand”– Carol Shields, “A Gentle Satirist”
The more about I read about Carol Shields, particularly in her own words, it is clear to me why her friends have been moved to honour her: Blanche Howard’s Memoir of Friendship (which was how I spent the end of June) and now Eleanor Wachtel’s Random Illuminations. Shields’s mutual engagements with fiction and the world (both absolutely intertwined) were so deeply considered, original and brave, that her death left a gaping hole, and not only for those who knew her. Carol Shields’s own generosity of spirit– that which gave her her talent for friendship in particular– meant that her loss would be exponential.
There are some people who’ve never read Carol Shields, which I find baffling. But maybe you have to have read her to know what you aren’t missing. I think, however, that anyone who’s never read her might be surprised by what they find here, by the vastness of her thought, her wisdom, her curiosity, her insight, her embrace of the actual world. In many ways she was a philosopher, which might sound hyperbolic, but this was a woman who was asking singular questions of humanity in even the most ordinary letters to her friends. (Who never actually seemed to write an ordinary letter come to think of it.) Who dared to declare issues of womanhood and motherhood issues of personhood after all, the very fundamentals of personhood: how are we meant to be?
Eleanor Wachtel wrote her essay “Scrapbook of Carol” after Shields’s death for the Canadian journal A Room of One’s Own, and that essay opens Random Illuminations, Wachtel’s collection of letters from and interviews with Shields, who was a friend. This collection reads much like a scrapbook also, chronological, layered, touching back upon the same ideas and taking stock of their development. Like everything Shields touched, it seems, the book is most vibrant and full of joy. Fascinating for writers and readers alike, and I mean readers in general too. How terrible, it underlines the loss of Shields, but also suggests that she chose friends as generous as she was, who are now so willing to share her with the world.
December 27, 2007
I do have quite a bit of faith
“I do have quite a bit of faith in the endurance of love. We always hear about divorce statistics, for example; what we never hear about is the endurance statistics, which are also amazingly impressive. If we look at it the other way around, say, fifty percent of marriages survive. That seems an extraordinary achievement. None of that ever seems to find its way into fiction, the endurance of love. It sounds stunningly boring, of course, when you talk about the endurance of love– maybe there’s a better phrase– and no one pretends that an enduring love is uninterrupted. I think love has always been disrupted and renewed…” –Carol Shields, “Always a Book-Oriented Kid” from Eleanor Wachtel’s Random Illuminations
December 27, 2007
Le Bal Irène Némirovsky
Though quite a slim volume, the latest work by Irène Némirovsky to be translated into English, Le Bal, will be welcomed by all those who so enjoyed Suite Française (which I read earlier this year). Le Bal also provides a new way to approach Némirovsky’s work, which here is less touched by the tragedy of her death (though is still influenced by events and circumstances in her life) and has to stand alone without the trappings of a story like Suite Française‘s amazing rediscovery and publication.
This book comprises two short novellas, “Le Bal” and “Snow in Autumn”. The former is a story to whom I’ll apply the adjective “wicked”– not something I do often to anything. Antoinette’s loathsome mother is an aspiring socialite whose riche is altogether nouveau. She treats terribly Antoinette, who herself is no prize but then Antoinette has the excuse of being 14, the very worst age ever. What happens then, when Antoinette finds herself entrusted with the posting of invitations to her parents’ first ball? What happens when Antoinette throws the invitations into the Seine instead? “Snow in Autumn” is told from the perspective of a servant following the Russian family she’s devoted her whole life to, from their flight from Russia during the Civil War to their exile in Paris. What is her place in this family whose circumstances have so changed?
Here was a wonderful read. It is a combination of Némirovsky’s uncommonly good writing, and excellent translation by Sandra Smith which has allowed the language to so retain its vibrancy. I also enjoyed the opportunity to read this author performing a closer treatment than Suite Française, which, of course, was exceptional in its sweep, but Némirovsky has more than one trick. She was an incredible writer, I can’t to read more, and I would also welcome more works in translation by other writers being promoted with a similar fervor.
December 27, 2007
When we're both in the same room
“I do like presents. No particular thing, just stuff for me you know. I think what I like best about gifts, letters, anything in the mail, really, is that it is evidence that someone thought about me when I wasn’t around. Something about the image of a loved one standing in a card shop, glaring at one of those Shoebox-silliness cards, thinking really hard–‘Would RR laugh at this?’ That just kills me.”– Rebecca Rosenblum
December 23, 2007
A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam
Like Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie did with Half of A Yellow Sun, Tahmima Anam looks back to not-so ancient history in her novel A Golden Age, which takes place in 1971 during the Bangladesh War of Independence. Anam’s approach also reminded me of Camilla Gibb’s in Sweetness in the Belly, as like Gibb she holds a PhD in Social Anthropology– definitely a valuable background for a creative writer. Which is not to say Anam writes like an academic, for her prose is stunning. Rather, I think, her background serves to underline that she knows well the story she tells.
Adichie and Anam vary greatly in their respective portrayals of war. Whereas Half of a Yellow Sun was exceptional in its multiple points of view, vividness, and unshy brutality, Anam tells a quieter story. Certainly not of a quieter war, of course, but her focus stays with one character– Rehana, a mother. The setting is primarily the family home, through the outside world creeps in inevitably. Rehana’s children, near-grown, are politically active in the fight for an independent Bangladesh, and soon her support for them involves burying munitions in her flower garden, taking care of an injured fighter, giving over her rental house for her son and his friends to use. And though the narrative stays quiet, Anam shows the brutal reality of war in a just a few choice images with an impact that is especially dramatic.
This story twists in the prologue, however. Rehana is a widow, and sooner after her husband died, she allowed her children to be taken away from her. I say “she allowed”, for this was what she felt occurred when Sohail and Maya were sent from their home in East Pakistan to live with Rehana’s late-husband’s brother in Lahore. Rehana gets her children back two years later, having erected a second house on her property to provide her with income and independence. But thereafter she feels indebted to her children for their time away from her, unsure of where to draw the line between their protection and indulgence– a dilemma that is particularly relevant in the heightened atmosphere of war. Further, where does Rehana’s fierce love for them end and selfishness begin?
I enjoyed this story very much, and the writing in particular. Of the Bangladeshi refugees, Anam writes, “And everywhere they went the memories argued for space, so that they forgot to cross the road when the lights were red, or overmilked their tea, or whispered into their newspapers as they scanned hungrily for news of home”.
Of what it was to live in such times: “There was always something… Every hiccup of the political landscape made its way to their door… [and] there was only this time, this life, this fraught and crowded era, to which they were bound without choice, without knowledge, only their passions, their loves, to lead and sustain them.”
Though I would agree that Anam has achieved something remarkable with A Golden Age, I was disappointed not to like it quite as much as the many rave reviews I’ve read of the novel. Though the plot held and the writing was gorgeous, the characters let me down at times. Rehana could be so unsure of her intentions and her feelings that her strength was muted and she could come across as wishy-washy. Also Rehana’s relationship with her daughter more sharply drawn would have illuminated both their characters.
It is notable, however, that Half of a Yellow Sun was Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s second novel, and Sweetness in the Belly was Camilla Gibb’s third. If Tahmima Anam is already so comparable with this novel– her very first– then certainly her career promises a grand future before her.
December 23, 2007
Seeing in the Dark
Evening rolls in early this time of year, and walking home down darkened streets I am attracted to light like a moth is. Or, more specifically, I’m fascinated by lit windows and the rooms I see behind them from my place out on the sidewalk. Windows during the day are blank spaces, reflections at best, but at night when the lights come on, they offer glimpses into a thousand different worlds.
Of course, I do keep my distance. I don’t linger or stare, and I walk by content with a glance on my way along to somewhere. I’m certainly not out to make trouble, but it’s so difficult to avert my attention altogether. Yellow windows tempt my eyes with their suggestions of home, of warmth, of stories.
It is never especially interesting to encounter actual people at home behind their windows anyway— you will realize this quickly. People too often tend to be watching television, the backs of their heads look like potatoes in the blue light, and no scene could be duller. If you must have people at all, action shots are preferable. Here is a family around a table, silent from where we stand, but we can see what can’t be audible: chatter as they pass the bowls and platters, arguments as somebody throws their hands into the air. Lights are burning brightly, and their togetherness builds a fortress.
Farther along the street, through an upstairs window: an old man in his undershirt is shaving before the mirror on his medicine cabinet. He’s got the window open to keep the mirror from steaming, I suppose, and he’s shaving under his chin now. He’s working carefully. In the room next door three small children are levitating, though they’re probably just bouncing on their beds. Across the street I catch a fortuitous glimpse of two people at the instant of embrace.
But sights like these are so hard to time right, and so my windows mostly tend to be still-lifes. I can only guess at those who might grace the scenes once I’ve passed by, though the guessing is what I like best about glowing windows. I love the allure of whole streets chock full of stories, and each house a private universe.
My head inevitably turns at the sight of a bookshelf rising up behind a glowing pane, whether that shelf be constructed of bricks and boards in a main-floor student flat, or flanking a stone fireplace in some grand living room. To me having books in a home is somehow a symbol of all being right with the world An element of order, of care amidst the chaos. I see books inside a window and I can purport to understand the people that live there.
Of course you can’t judge a person by their things, but on dark nights when I’m halfway home and hungry for company, I can hardly help it. I want to move into those houses whose giant staircases have careful arrangements of framed family photographs marching up and down the wall alongside. I like people with cats on their sills without even knowing them. At the sight of a grand piano, I imagine the woman who plays it, dressed in a floor-length black evening gown perpetually. Her fingers sweep the keys in the usual cliché, and I hear the music in my head. Marching me onward, towards where more bizarre displays abound.
An apartment I pass by daily has one wall stacked entirely with shoe boxes. One house I know has a perfect doll-sized replica of itself in the front window and it lights up at night. A linoleum basement living room furnished with hairdryer chairs from a salon. An illuminated Elvis bust in blue on an otherwise darkened windowsill. You can do with these details what you will.
I’ve taken stock of posters tacked to walls in teenage bedrooms, of knickknacks cluttering kitchen windowsills, and of ugly modern art hanging in ugly modern houses. Gaudy portraits of out-of-date fashion, mounted above the fireplace with their own lighting. Who lives here?
I’ve learned that I love rooms painted red or yellow, no matter what these rooms might hold. That the sight of a kitchen can be uplifting. Blazing fireplaces never fail to warm me as I trudge home through the snow, my breath visible in the air. In December, lit trees intended for display appear in windows and I find that I can stare without compunction.
The world is so wide with most of its stories kept elusive, and so I must be satisfied with clues, with suggestions. I gather my stories from these glances into yellow windows up and down dark avenues, now that winter is nearing and the city has gone indoors. And I assure you that I mean well, no matter how tempted you might be to go and close your curtains. I am drawn to lit windows on my way home, in search of a brief connection from one private universe to another. As a simple acknowledgment of quiet life abundant all around us.
December 21, 2007
Honestly
I have decided to start using “figuratively” in a literal sense.
“No, seriously, I was figuratively frozen on the spot.” Or, “I figuratively died.” “He really is figuratively eighteen feet tall.”
It just seems more honest.
December 20, 2007
Compounded indulgence
“Mrs Simpson took a sharp knife from the drawer, slit the top of the envelope, stealthy as a spy, and withdrew the flimsy sheets. She paused before unfolding them to fetch a bar of chocolate from the fridge, then settled down to the compounded indulgence of devouring sweets and words at once”. –Claire Messud, When the World was Steady
