I’m posting from my sister’s office at the Planning Department office of San Francisco. I just arrived and am looking forward to a week of relaxation, food, and wine. I even get to meet up with one of my favorite bloggers Ed. Good times. Good times.
Sorry, I’m tired—I had to catch a flight at 7am.
I like Nick Hornby, but was anyone actually waiting for his permission to read whatever they want? I’d say: Read what you want and develop a thick skin. I like literary fiction, but it doesn’t really ruin my day when Hornby makes a reference to “prose that draws attention to itself, rather than the world it describes.” People aren’t always going to like what you like. Get used to it. Grow up. This Kumbayah it’s-all-good school of criticism doesn’t help anybody; it patronizes half the readers in the world and irritates the shit out of the other half.
I believe there is room for actual negative criticism in the book world without delving into snarkiness for the sake of snarkiness. The belief that negativity “ruins” reviews frankly seems lame. No one wants to get trashed in a review but there is such a thing as healthy criticism. Maybe I just hate all this be nice crap. Or maybe I just don’t want to be told what how to react to what I read by the Believer, who besides their weird “we want one corner of the world where writers don’t get kicked around” stance (Nick Hornby’s interpretation not mine), produce a great magazine.
Thoughts anyone? Disagree?
I read two short-ish books over the weekend, both good in different ways. The first book, The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier, is only 128 pages, yet it makes you pause and think and therefore took longer to read (this is not a complaint). back in 1990, the author receives a phone call from a woman who left him suddenly two years ago and she’s calling not to explain things, but to invite him to a party for a woman he’s never met. In each of the four parts—phone call, preparation, the party, the aftermath—Bouillier uses a combination of earnestness and hyperbolic prose to examine each moment. This true tale seems both absurd and poignant. It’s a book to savor.
In the second book Chinatown Beat by Henry Wang, the author takes us on a tour of the underbelly of Chinatown. Detective Jack Yu has been reassigned to his old neighborhood, where cops are not to be trusted. Using the murder of a high-up gang member Uncle Four, the author paints a portrait of the various inhabitants of Chinatown from the gangsters to the shopkeepers to the fortune tellers. Yu fits in neither the cop world nor the world of Chinatown. His in between status makes him a great observer. I wouldn’t call this book fun, but rather intense and highly enjoyable.
I’ll start off by saying that I loved this book—it’s definitely one of the best I’ve read all year. Readers will devour each of these six short stories as if they were their last meal. Chang, said to have transformed Chinese literature in the 30s and 40s, writes about men, women, and the ways even the smallest actions or words can transform relationships. The cultural divide in Chinese society between ancient patriarchy and the tumultuous modernity forms the vivid background. The stories seem to be about how life never works out. They’re bleak and yet you can’t help but be enchanted by the characters. One of my favorite paragraphs from the title story:
Not until the ship had finally reached the shore did she have a chance to go up on deck and gaze out at the sea. It was a fiery afternoon, and the most striking part of the view was the parade of giant billboards along the dock, their reds, oranges, and pinks mirrored in the lush green water. Below the surface of the water, bars and blots of clashing color plunged in the murderous confusion. Liusu found herself thinking that even just spraining an ankle would be more painful here, in this city of hyperboles, than elsewhere. Her heart began to pound.
Often when a book received the kind of press that Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between has, I’m usually skeptical. Fortunately the book deserves much of the praise it has been getting. Stewart’s account of walking across Afghanistan in January 2002 shortly after the fall of the Taliban is just one part of a larger trip. He spent sixteen months walking across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Stewart had wanted to cross Afghanistan in December of 2000 but had trouble getting into the country after Iran took his visa away. He returned once he learned about the fall of the Taliban to finish his journey. It seems crazy, walking through a country that had been at war for twenty five years and with a new government only two weeks old. Everyone warned him that this trip could end with his death. And the most fascinating aspect to this story to me is that he didn’t do it because of the danger. For him, it was all about finishing his initial trek. He’s not after glory, he wants to understand the places and people. His odyssey seems more like a pilgrimage, but instead of arriving at a sacred place, the trek itself holds the importance.
It’s a fascinating book and Stewart writes well about a land that can seem exotic and backward at the same time. Rather than dismissing some of the people he met who by our Western account would seem ill mannered and politically backward (he meets several former members of the Taliban), he finds common ground between them. Stewart works hard to write about the average Afghani instead of focusing on Taliban bashing. This is a great book to give a human face to an area of the world I know little about.
I’ve spoken before about chick lit and gotten a few angry responses. It’s hard not to talk about this genre without opinions running amok. What brings me to this topic today is the publication of This is Not Chick Lit an anthology edited by Elizabeth Merrick which contains eighteen stories from a wide range of women writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jennifer Egan, and Francine Prose. When the news of this book’s publication came out, tempers flared. “How dare they marginalize our writing” declared writers like Jennifer Weiner, Rachel Pine, and Lauren Baratz-Logsted. The response has been to publish simultaneously a warring anthology called This is Chick Lit, though it’s not out quite yet.
I’m not sure how to feel about this controversy. On the one hand, as part of a marginalized sector already (women), I don’t know that all of this fighting serves us very well period. Sales of chick lit show that people want to read books like these and who am I to look down on anyone’s reading choices. Okay, I admit it, I do look down on reading choices and I can’t help it. But that said, there’s the argument of “at least people are reading something” right? And really I think there are two arguments going on here. One is the argument for or against reading “light” fiction. The secondary argument might be whether or not chick lit should be called “light” fiction—does it deal with real issues or is it escapism? And who’s to say that women work their way towards Mary Gaitskill or Kelly Link, as Ed proposes? A lot of people don’t like to read “out of bounds”, that is outside of their comfort zone. I can’t see the leap from Sophie Kinsellsa’s Confessions of a Shopaholic to A.L. Kennedy’s Paradise, buy maybe I am underestimating people.
And this brings up a completely different argument. Why is women’s writing marginalized in the first place? Why aren’t more women writer’s books being reviewed? According to Elizabeth Merrick, “there is this golden moment of women writers right now; it’s like a golden age and a blossoming of women fiction writers, and it’s not getting that much attention.” Looking at my own bookshelves, I see more male authors than female. Francine Prose confesses that she does not read women very widely: “I have a terrible confession to make– I have nothing to say about any of the talented women who write today. Out of what is no doubt a fault in me, I do not seem able to read them.”
I’ve thrown several arguments out there I realize, but I find the incongruity between literary fiction and chick lit interesting. And as a woman in the book world, I wonder why the men still dominate the literati.
Addendum:
I meant to add something about the covers of chick lit novels. What’s with the color scheme? I’d be more inclined to pick one up if most of them weren’t pastel with martini glasses and high heel shoes on them. And before anyone accuses me of generalizing, I don’t think I am. I could go down into my store and pull any number of books with this theme. Even This is Chick Lit has a yellow cover with a high heel on the cover. The whole scheme is tacky and I wish they’d just cut it out.
Yes, I made up the word. I’ve been seeing this One Book meme on many other blogs and thought I’d give it a whirl.
One book that changed your life:
Mythology by Edith Hamilton is what started me in Classics. I took Latin for four years in high school because of this book and went on to major in Classics in college. This book started me thinking and reading more about history, language, art, math, etc.
One book that you’ve read more than once:
I’ve read Jane Eyre probably eight or nine times. I loved that book from the first time I read it, in 6th grade I think.
One book you’d want on a desert island:
This is a nerdy answer, but the Iliad. Every time I pick up the book, I discover something new.
One book that made you laugh:
The Sea by John Banville. Just kidding. It’s hard to think of a book that made me laugh all the way through it, but I’d have to go with My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. The account of his unusual upbringing had me laughing periodically and even snorting coffee through my nose once.
One book that made you cry:
Chimamanda Adichie’s quiet Purple Hibiscus had me crying by the end. The desperation of the characters caught in a miserable life not of their choosing made my chest ache.
One book that you wish had been written:
There are so many books in the world that I haven’t read yet that I don’t know a good answer to this one. There are a lot of dead authors who could have produced great works I bet.
One book that you wish had never been written:
Man, I could come up with a whole post based on this question. How about Danielle Steele’s tenth book? I’m not even sure what it is, but I imagine she doesn’t need to keep on writing that same novel about crashing marriages amongst the jetset, each with a new (and lame) title.
One book you’re currently reading:
I’m in the middle of Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn right now. It’s his intense and elegant recounting of the search for relatives murdered by the Nazis.
One book you’ve been meaning to read:
William Gaddis’ The Recognitions—I’ve never made it past page 100. I’m determined to finish that book one day.
Feel free to leave your list in the comments. The lists vary so much already, I’d love to hear other people’s answers.
I’m off to tomorrow morning to the wilds of New Jersey—Lambertville to be exact—for Mr. Bookdwarf’s family reunion. I hope to get some reading done over the weekend as well. I’m bringing a handful of books just in case one doesn’t agree with me.
I’m in the middle of reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma—it’s riveting information. I hate it when people say “this book really makes you think and has changed my life” because it’s usually applied to drivel books like Tuesdays with Morrie. This book however has made a difference for me. Working for an independent bookstore, I’ve already been thinking a great deal about shopping locally and have been trying to apply this approach to my food shopping as much as possible. I buy my food from a variety of places: Whole Foods, Harvest Co-op and a share in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Plus with the numerous farmers’ markets in the area, I can get fresh fruit and bread. So Pollan’s book didn’t share anything new in that regard. I’ve already been thinking about what I eat. The really interesting information in this book for me is how the whole food system works and how monoculture farms have changed the culture of farms. When you read about the “Grass” farmer, as Joel Salatin calls himself, you can see how farms should work compared with the farms that grow just one thing, be it corn or raising chickens, etc. Really, and I know it sounds cheesy, Pollan drives home how we really are what we eat. I hope everyone reads this book and, if nothing else, it makes people think about where their food comes from and its larger impact on the world.
I find short story collections difficult to read. Perhaps because I read quickly, I come to the end of a story and feel unsatisfied. With novels, especially long ones, we’re given a cast of characters that we get to know over the course of time, but with short stories, I feel like I barely know them by the time the story ends. A good collection of stories for me then must make me feel satiated by the end of each story. Luckily, I’ve read two such collections over the past month.
First is Alan DeNiro’s Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. He’s a writer who doesn’t stick to one genre. He infuses some of the stories with science fiction and fantasy usually to delve into larger issues. The title story, set sometime in twenty third century Pennsylvannia, turns out to be the college application essay of the narrator. It also explains why they shouldn’t expect him anytime soon as he tells how he met Jane, who lives in the Lake of the Dead. DeNiro’s stories with elements of the bizarre and the fantastic are original and clever without being overdone.
The second collection I enjoyed was Scott Snyder’s (you may have read this nice review by Andrew Sean Greer in the NYT). Snyder’s imaginative stories deal with people displaced by something in life. Some of them seem sepia toned, set back in the early twentieth century. The last story “The Star Attraction of 1919” beautifully tells the story of a barnstormer who accidentally crashes a wedding. When the bride insists on running away with him, he finds her a marvelous companion. It was my favorite story in the collection. Dark, yet whimsical, the stories and characters capture your imagination.
Bookdwarf 