May 2, 2007
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
In the midst of Divisadero, when I was asked if it was a good book, I wasn’t sure how to answer. “It’s a good book,” I supposed, “because I’m not sure Michael Ondaatje is not in the habit of writing bad books.” But I was not convinced from where I stood. Which is not to say that reading Divisadero was not an absolute pleasure, but I couldn’t tell where the plot was going. Where the plot eventually went, I could never have foreseen. Even now, having finished the book, I’m still not sure what to make of it, but then my response to that is to want to read it all over again.
Divisadero has a plot– an unconventional family, their ties forever severed by an act of brutal violence. One sister is researching the life of a French writer whose own story becomes the focus of the latter half of the book. Between the siblings’ separate lives and the life of the writer, Ondaatje draws connections through parallelesque plot lines, recurring symbols, characters haunted by their counterparts. But these connections are not in symmetry– symmetry would be too easy. And nothing is easy here. These connections are only suggestions, some of the story was so inaccessible to me (mainly due to my lack of familiarity with matters as divergent as the work of Balzac and the rules of Texas Hold’em), time shifts, narrative shifts, as a reader you are led you know not where.
And yet I trusted this writer completely. Clearly, I felt, I was in competant hands. This was not based solely on the writer’s reputation either, but rather the strength of the prose, the beauty of the imagery, the structure of the novel which demanded my engagement, no matter what else conspired to shut me out of it. Ondaatje’s ending tied up ends, not neatly of course, but in a way that cast the whole novel in a new light, which is why I so want to read it again. That so much can be obscured but made satisfying is a testament to great work. Similarly, that a book can be an abstraction, and yet well and truly solid.
April 30, 2007
Summer
Myself was grappling with the problem of Tolstoy, and how I want to read Anna Karenina, but just not now while I’m returning to the world of 9-5 (which is going to cut into my reading), and I’ve got a too many other books I am dying to read to devote myself to such a big one. Which I guess makes it sound like I don’t really care if I read Anna Karenina at all, which also might be true. But the great thing about self-discipline is that you can give it a break just to keep things fun. And so I am totally cheating for my May Classic. I’m going to read Summer by Edith Wharton, which is so tiny and not even old enough to actually qualify for my Classics Challenge, but oh well. I was inspired to read it after reading about Hermione Lee’s new Wharton bio in the LRB. (As an aside, predictably I am obsessed with the LRB, which so far has led me to read with fascination about things in which I have little to no interest– case in point Colm Tóibín on Beckett’s Irish Actors). And so that is that, which is all she said.
April 29, 2007
Summer by your side
So far, it’s been weekend most glorious.
Saturday Stuart and I went to afternoon tea at The Four Seasons, which was my treat for finishing school. We tried to savour everything for at least four bites, the scones were oishi, perfect jam, and we absolutely fell in love with pear tree green tea. Nothing short of delightful.
We were thrilled to accept an BBQ invitation last night by the Brown-Smiths, and we enjoyed our city rooftop summer night, until it got cold and we had to go in. It’s only April after all. But even indoors, the night continued in hilarity. Carolyn and Steve are wonderful company, and our glasses kept magically refilling themselves.
Today was fun in Trinity Bellwoods with Curtis. Tealish refills, Type Books birthday party (we had a piece of a cake shaped like a typewriter), fish and chips, and a fabulous game of frisbee.
Later I wandered lonely as a cloud.
And as if you needed any more proof…
All we need now are leaves on the trees– but then shade is overrated.
April 27, 2007
California
My only problem with Joan Didion is that when I think about her too much, I start singing “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” with her name in place of Lydia’s. Otherwise I feel about Joan Didion something just short of worship, on the right side of sane. From that magical day four years ago when I first picked up Slouching Toward Bethlehem, I’ve had her voice in my head. I will reread her forever, but it thrills me that there is new reading still in the meantime.
All of this because I’ve just began Divisadero and I find myself in Didion’s California. And so how can I not read my new copy of Where I Was From next? I love the way one book suggests another.
I am concerned though, as Anna Karenina is lined up to be my May Classic and I have this terrible suspicion that I might not get to it….
April 27, 2007
Persephone Books
A recent reference by Maud Newton and another by dovergreyreader scribbles was enough to pique my interest in Persephone Books. Persephone Books are “revived” twentieth century novels, usually by women writers, and often now-forgotten texts. With their look they appear to be as branded as Penguins (a good thing), and absolutely lovely. And it perfectly breaks my heart that I don’t live in England, and nor will we be in London when we go in June so that I can pop into the shop and just pick up one, two, or ten. But then again I’ll get there someday, and it’s nice to know that such a lovely thing exists.
April 27, 2007
Never never never salt
Up here at the cottage there is no line between inside and out; the domestic is only barely tamed. We will wake up with windows dripping on the inside, and grit underfoot. Newspapers are kindling. Bat’s wings flap in the rafters while we sleep out under the stars. The old board games have missing pieces, mismatched dice, and mice have ravaged the Monopoly money, leaving their droppings behind. And the screen door is ripped, which is how the flies get in, but if the hole was patched, the bugs would only find another way.
Nothing much else happens. Which is the very point of being here, fortunately and unfortunately. I picture cottage days constructed of blocks, only the same shapes, patterns and colours. Once or twice we’ll go into town for a diversion, but diversions get in the way of hours spent hot and sunburnt, prune-skinned and water-logged. Evenings are warmed round the fire always, with marshmallows burning on the pointy ends of sticks, and warbly old songs everybody else knows the wrong words to.
Fish and chips and vinegar, never never never salt
April 26, 2007
Cake or Death by Heather Mallick
My favourite thing is when irate readers respond to Heather Mallick’s column with accusations of hypocrisy or contradiction as though the world were so straightforward that consistency for the sake of itself was a virtue instead of a limit. Heather Mallick’s new book Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life is absolutely riddled with contradictions and Mallick is well aware of this. In her introduction she answers her titular proposal with cake and death– a somewhat morbid extension of having your cake and eating it too, but morbid is just the way Mallick is feeling these days. Justifiably so really, and why should it mean she remains cake-free? If you’ve got a cake, you might as well eat it. I mean, what kind of a moron wouldn’t?
Cake or Death is a wonderful book of essays. Not because I usually admire Mallick’s writing, and not because the book references Margaret Drabble at least twice, but because the reading was just a pleasure. Even with the death, because Mallick’s got the necessary humour (which the irate readers don’t seem to understand). I liked this book so much that I read it all the way home yesterday, and I was walking. I liked this book so much that I read four of the essays last night to my husband. He liked those four essays so much, he wants to read the rest of the book now. Heather Mallick is witty, and she is intelligent, bookish, critical, preposterous, unflinching and brave. If you take her too seriously she can be offensive in that way men are much more likely to get away with. Heather Mallick is a voice in a sometimes awful wilderness, and this book is a terrific accomplishment.
Heather Mallick knows the Woolfian essay. In an unfair review, the essays were criticized for “not having a point”, but if an essay can be summed up in a point, then why write it? Indeed the journey is the point, as Mallick’s digressions, seasoned with cultural references and details from her own life, take her readers where they need to go. And yes, along the journey Heather Mallick often contradicts herself, but I would suggest that your thought processes must be awfully limited if yours don’t. As Woolf does in her essays, Mallick follows the mind, the eye, wherever it goes. And this is interesting. It’s not easy, quick, or classifiable, but neither is life.
What is life are these trips: “Fear Festival”, which illuminates everything in the world which is liable to kill you; “How to Ignore Things” which uses Jackie O’s example as an alternative to therapy; “Born Ugly” which she concludes with “You are not beautiful. Almost no one is. We start with the race already halfway run and then we age to boot, so get used to it. Try to be interesting, and work on the content of your character, not the pallor of your skin”; “The People I Detest” subset “bookhaters”; her essay on Doris Lessing made me decide to take the plunge. I liked every single one of these.
There are so many bad books and here is a good one. And this is about all that I know that is so simple.
April 26, 2007
Rainy Thursday
As I return to the world of work next week, I’ve spent my second-last free weekday properly. I was pleased that it was raining so I could do so. Reworking a short story of mine, and reading two little books. I loved The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald, and After the Quake by Haruki Murakami. I loved watching the rain come down, sipping too many cups of tea to count, and being here to receive my first copy of the London Review of Books. I have such a crush on the postman. And am I ever going to miss this lovely life of mine.
Next up (and aren’t I lucky?): Divisadero, the brand new novel by Michael Ondaatje.
April 25, 2007
Encountering the great unread
“People shouldn’t worryabout disliking books widely accepted as great, or avoiding them for decades. They should wait for that stage when they are ready for the book, for it will come. I have read with such excess all my life that I could always use the excuse that I had another book on the go. I didn’t know this when I was young, but I would still have plenty of time to encounter the great unread.” -Heather Mallick, “Lessing is More”
April 25, 2007
Righting wrongs
Like it or not, books aren’t meant in general. Most people are predisposed to disliking some kind of book, which is to say nothing about the people or the books except that the world is large and people are varied. Happily you can always find something else to read. And so then I wonder why so many people don’t. Why do people persist in reading books they are predisposed to disliking? Further, why do people persist in reviewing books they are predisposed to disliking? This is not to say that genre is resolute, that horizons shant be broadened, but I just think that I would be the person least inclined to judge a fantasy novel, for example, or a computer science textbook to take it further. Similarly the writer of this review, who professes to being driven mad by columnists such as Heather Mallick, probably wasn’t the best choice to review Mallick’s new book Cake or Death. Heather Mallick is an altogether devisive character, and so wouldn’t it have been fair to assign her book to a writer who, I don’t know, doesn’t detest her?
(Though of course the G&M does have its axe to grind. How petty.)
I, however, am perfectly qualified to review Heather Mallick’s new book. I adore Heather Mallick, but yet I was objective enough to admit that her previous book had problems. But her new book is absolutely brilliant. I’m about 2/3 through and I just reread the Globe review and the unfairness of it made me so angry I had to stop (see? it’s easy). And so get ready for some great excerpts, and a review tonight or tomorrow. And then we can consider a blatant wrong just a little bit righted.
