I am not really into post-apocalyptic dystopian novels, but considering the bewildering time we are living through this moment, this novel, The Fireman by Joe Hill, and its 752 pages seemed to be just what the sociologist ordered. It was a page-turner despite its intimidating size (and I even read it in hardback!). I found myself shunning television or other distractions to get back to the book. The main character, Harper Grayson (Willowes), is a complex and strong female character -- I sure did appreciate that. The novel is told from a third person limited POV, which I think was a strength, and perhaps, a weakness. I reveled in thinking of the capable nurse who is finding her strength as the world goes to hell, but it also forces other characters to launch into long monologues to provide background. I don't know why, but that always annoys me. It wasn't cringe-worthy in this novel, but I did think it stood out like a sore thumb just a little bit. It is something to think about, right? POV is so important when authors choose to tell a story, yet we hardly consider it sometimes, even as writers of our own fiction.
So, why did I even pick up this novel? I might have said so in the previous post about Save Yourself -- I can't remember. Joe Hill is the son of the infamous Stephen King and the brother-in-law of Kelly Braffit who wrote the aforementioned novel. I heard an interview with Hill on Terri Gross's Fresh Air. I was gripped by how Gross described the "disease" that Hill created for this for this novel is at once both beautiful and terrifying. The spore, commonly known as Dragonscale (the scientific name, Draco Incendia Trychophyton) has this terrible beauty as it smokes its way across the East Coast of the United States and Canada. When Harper first contracts the disease she notices "Two days later her arm is sheet music. Delicate black lines spooled around and around her forearm, bars as thin as the strands of a spiderweb, with what looked like golden notes scattered across them" (58). The frightening part is that several people who contract Dragonscale spontaneously combust. They literary begin to smoke and then explode into flame, yet some do not, but that danger always looms and lingers and puts everyone on edge -- that might be putting it lightly...
It's funny because Hill finished this novel on October 9, 2014. It seems prescient. The aftermath of the Dragonscale rips the world into camps -- those who work together to survive and those who fight to destroy the disease, and therefore, other human beings. I am writing this blog post in the aftermath of the two political conventions -- conventions that echo these same themes: "The Law and Order" candidate versus the idea that "We are Better Together." It freaks me out when science-fiction writers do this kind of thing. I mean Hill even includes little gems like "FOX said the Dragon had been set loose by ISIS using spores that had been invented by the Russians in the 1980s. ... Then Glenn Beck burned to death on his Internet program, right in front of the chalkboard, burned so hot his glasses fused to his face, and after most of the news was less about who did it and more about how not to catch it" (13). When you read this novel of disaster, you will recognize the glimpses of the world that has reared its ugly head in the past couple of months. Yet, why does this surprise me -- writers are observers and these politics are nothing new, right? Writers often just see clearer than we do.
And the allusions. Who are the fans of Fahrenheit 451? Do you get the title now? There's more in there. This is also, undoubtedly, a nod to Stephen King's The Stand.
Monday, August 1, 2016
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Summer 2016 Reading: 1st Blog, 2 books!
I am back. Not sure what the last summer posting hiatus was about, but here I am again. So far this summer I have read two books (along with about 1, 750 AP poetry essays at the AP grading in Louisville, KY): Aiming for One Hundred by Sara D. Toney and Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet. Wow, I hadn't really thought about it before writing the titles together, but these two books are worlds apart. Worlds.
Aiming for One Hundred was written by my mother-in-law's friend, Sally Toney. Sally will be 102 this fall. Yep, 102. She is still sharp and walks every day. This book is a collection of stories, poems, essays that she wrote in the 1980s for a course titled "Finding Your Voice." She tells stories about her childhood, her experiences as a student and athlete at Pembroke College, the women's college of Brown University, and her adult married life. What made reading Sally's musings so poignant for me was that she is the same age as my grandmothers if they were alive. Although, Sally led an amazing life that was much different than the world my grandmothers experienced, witnessing how Sally navigated those times provided a new perspective of the past. Sally certainly has lived an extraordinary life, forging an intellectual path when it was difficult for women to so. Her life was not without trials -- one of the most devastating being the memory of her mother's "lovely face in the dark carriage smiling gently as she rolled away from [her]" This would be the last time Sally saw her mother who died after surgery. If you are interested in the past, wanting to glimpse into one woman's interesting life, this little gem of a book is for you. The vignettes aren't long, easy to fill 10 or 15 minutes of time you might have to savor a morsel of Sally's life.
The second book I burned through. Kelly Braffet is the daughter-in-law of Stephen King. I had not heard of her until I listened to an interview on "Fresh Air" with her brother-in-law, Joe Hill who highly recommended her books. I ran out to purchase Joe Hill's Fireman (my next read I plan on beginning tonight) and grabbed her Save Yourself along with it. I don't even know how to describe this novel. First of all, Braffet's writing is so damned satisfying. Let me see if I can deconstruct why. Her sentence structure is varied in a way that follows a pattern of thought. For instance, I just opened to a random page:
"In the end, Karen Hensley retired. A week later Layla came home from school with her lovely hair chopped to her chin and dyed jet black. Her wardrobe quickly followed suit. Soon she was haunting the dinner table like a snarling, sarcastic ghost. The rapid transformation left Mother and Dad hurt and angry--they called it concern, but it felt like hurt and anger to Verna--and the members of her father's home church baffled. Everyone blamed Layla's new attitude on the corruption of the secular world. But now it seemed that even the secular world disapproved of her, and Verna didn't know what to think" (31).
Look at those sentences -- the varying between the long and short and they seem to follow Verna's thinking, the widening of her thinking about her troubled sister.
What also kept me reading is the satellites of conflict Braffet mounted. There are several characters, but the narration follows Verna, Patrick, and Caro. Although there are strange intersections of their lives, I could not figure out what was going to happen--what all the tension was leading toward. Braffet did not let me down, and she grapples with topics that have been rolling around my brain lately given the tragedies in Orlando last week.
These characters also lead lives that I fear living, but that I have been privileged enough to avoid. It also provides a perspective into the lives of young people that we adults are too stultified by the world to see or too much in denial to recognize. Braffet tapped into that pain of not being seen, listened to, understood, considered -- all things that I should keep in mind as a mother and a teacher.
I also have to say that Braffet also knows to write about the raw and gritty. She does not shy away from the darker sides of human nature. That voyeurism also kept me turning the pages.
Aiming for One Hundred was written by my mother-in-law's friend, Sally Toney. Sally will be 102 this fall. Yep, 102. She is still sharp and walks every day. This book is a collection of stories, poems, essays that she wrote in the 1980s for a course titled "Finding Your Voice." She tells stories about her childhood, her experiences as a student and athlete at Pembroke College, the women's college of Brown University, and her adult married life. What made reading Sally's musings so poignant for me was that she is the same age as my grandmothers if they were alive. Although, Sally led an amazing life that was much different than the world my grandmothers experienced, witnessing how Sally navigated those times provided a new perspective of the past. Sally certainly has lived an extraordinary life, forging an intellectual path when it was difficult for women to so. Her life was not without trials -- one of the most devastating being the memory of her mother's "lovely face in the dark carriage smiling gently as she rolled away from [her]" This would be the last time Sally saw her mother who died after surgery. If you are interested in the past, wanting to glimpse into one woman's interesting life, this little gem of a book is for you. The vignettes aren't long, easy to fill 10 or 15 minutes of time you might have to savor a morsel of Sally's life.
The second book I burned through. Kelly Braffet is the daughter-in-law of Stephen King. I had not heard of her until I listened to an interview on "Fresh Air" with her brother-in-law, Joe Hill who highly recommended her books. I ran out to purchase Joe Hill's Fireman (my next read I plan on beginning tonight) and grabbed her Save Yourself along with it. I don't even know how to describe this novel. First of all, Braffet's writing is so damned satisfying. Let me see if I can deconstruct why. Her sentence structure is varied in a way that follows a pattern of thought. For instance, I just opened to a random page:
"In the end, Karen Hensley retired. A week later Layla came home from school with her lovely hair chopped to her chin and dyed jet black. Her wardrobe quickly followed suit. Soon she was haunting the dinner table like a snarling, sarcastic ghost. The rapid transformation left Mother and Dad hurt and angry--they called it concern, but it felt like hurt and anger to Verna--and the members of her father's home church baffled. Everyone blamed Layla's new attitude on the corruption of the secular world. But now it seemed that even the secular world disapproved of her, and Verna didn't know what to think" (31).
Look at those sentences -- the varying between the long and short and they seem to follow Verna's thinking, the widening of her thinking about her troubled sister.
What also kept me reading is the satellites of conflict Braffet mounted. There are several characters, but the narration follows Verna, Patrick, and Caro. Although there are strange intersections of their lives, I could not figure out what was going to happen--what all the tension was leading toward. Braffet did not let me down, and she grapples with topics that have been rolling around my brain lately given the tragedies in Orlando last week.
These characters also lead lives that I fear living, but that I have been privileged enough to avoid. It also provides a perspective into the lives of young people that we adults are too stultified by the world to see or too much in denial to recognize. Braffet tapped into that pain of not being seen, listened to, understood, considered -- all things that I should keep in mind as a mother and a teacher.
I also have to say that Braffet also knows to write about the raw and gritty. She does not shy away from the darker sides of human nature. That voyeurism also kept me turning the pages.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
All the Light We Cannot See
It has been a while...and it’s time to put my money back where my
mouth is.
About three weeks ago I finished All
the Light We Cannot See by
Anthony Doerr. This novel takes its place on my top-ten-favorite-novels
list. Why, you ask, has it taken me three weeks to write about? One
reason is running my children around and managing their summer activities, but
the other is that I went back through the entire novel and wrote down
significant passages in my notebook. My instinct upon finishing the novel was
to go back through and reread the entire novel, which I will do next summer,
but since I had to move on to other books on my summer reading list (about 3/4
the scintillating Sin and
Syntax, which, I have to say, helped me pay attention to some of the
grammatical structures of Doerr's sentences even more than I might have).
Where to begin? First, if you have not read this novel, you must.
It should be next on your reading list. Finish the book you are
reading, then pick this one up. The novel is historical fiction that dips
into isolated moments of time in 1934, June 1940, January 1941, August 1942,
May 1944, 7-12 August 1944, 1945, 1974, 2014. Each section
(there are 13—I don't think I would call them chapters, although they are
numbered) is divided into short titled chapters that capture the moments of one
of the several characters that populate this novel. I am struggling here
to adequately describe the novel's structure. There are two main
characters, Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig. Marie-Laure is a French girl
whose mother died during childbirth, who goes blind when she is six due to
congenital cataracts, and is raised by her father, the master of the locks at
the Museum of Natural History in Paris; Werner Pfennig is an orphan who, along
with his sister Jutta, lives in an orphanage run by the French-speaking
Protestant Nun Frau Elena in the Zollverein coal mining complex outside Essen,
Germany. Around Marie-Laure and Werner orbit characters who are connected
with one (or both) of these two central characters. I do not want to say
too much as to the intricacies of the connections lest I unravel the beautiful
tapestry of this tale. No doubt you have already taken note of the dates
and the ethnicity of the two main characters -- the rise of Hitler, the
occupation of France, and the war itself are central to the plot of the novel.
The war, of course, also is central to theme. And perhaps
this is why the novel crept its way into my soul. Doerr presents complex
characters. Perhaps Marie-Laure is beyond reproach, maybe even
Marie-Laure's uncle Etienne's house keeper, Madame Manec, is a moral beacon,
Jutta, Etienne, Monsieur LeBlanc...but Werner, who facilitates the murders of
several partisans, is sympathetic. Doerr reveals the way a society like
Nazi Germany corrupts through fear and intimidation, and also titillates
ambition, and in Werner's case, the desire to escape the colorless life and his
father's fate in the mines of Zollverein. Yet even "the giant"
Volkheimer—the assassin—has a complexity that I found myself shocked that I
acknowledged. It is as if he provides the distance that Werner
needs/deserves from the role he is playing in the ridding of the resistance
radio broadcasts to further Hitler's plan to dominate Europe. He protects
Werner from that harshness, and even before they patrol Poland in the Opel,
Volkheimer is a barrier between the more rabid boys at Schulpforta and Werner's
mechanically inclined mind. It is Volkheimer who says, What you could be, which haunts
Werner later in August 1944. And in 1974 when Volkheimer tracks down
Jutta to return Werner's belongings from his duffel recently returned from an
American POW warehouse, a step he clearly did not have to take, Doerr creates a
scene with Volkheimer flying paper airplanes with Jutta's precocious son, Max,
who "kneels on the patio in the dusk, going over his airplane, checking
the angle of its wings. Volkheimer kneels beside him, nodding, patient”
(504). In the chapter titled "Volkheimer" in the 1974 section
(which parallels a chapter in the August 1942 section), Doerr writes that
Volkheimer, "feels loneliness like a disease" and "on winter
afternoons he moves among the antennas like a sailor through rigging. In the
late blue light, he can watch the people in the streets below hurrying home,
and sometimes gulls soar past, white against the dark. The small, secure weight
of tools along his belt, the smell of intermittent rain, and the crystalline
brilliance of the clouds at dusk: these are the only times Volkheimer feels
marginally whole" (499, 498).
Volkheimer was not my favorite character. I was just struck by my
own feelings of pity for him and how Doerr presented him wholly, which I
admired.
I could go on about this 531-page novel—examining the depth of the
characters the moral complexity of many of them. And when I walk away from the
novel, I am left with so much hope about humanity. Although the war, the
prison camps, the moral depravity of much of humanity looms in this novel, it
is beauty that resonates. The beauty of thought, actions, life, nature,
and even humanity.
And if I were to go on to trace things like I will ask my AP
students to do, there is so much to choose from: snails, spirals, owls/birds,
bees, fire, braille (tactile sense in general, I think), life in miniature,
light (well, of course), water, names, food, antenna, radio waves, locks, 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea (I should go back and read Alex
Gerst's posts on that novel from earlier this year!), chapter titles, the
novel's structure, etc. I do look forward to reading this novel again.
And there are so many passages that I copied into my notebook. He
has some amazing labyrinthine sentences that knock me out, but I don't believe
I have the patience to type them out. I do, however, want to provide a
sample of some of Doerr's writing:
"The brain is locked in total darkness, says the
voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light.
And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It
burns with color and movement. So, how, children, does the brain which lives
without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light? ... Open your
eyes, concludes the man,
and see what you can with them before the close forever and then a piano comes on playing
a lonely song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river,
a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein: the houses turned to
mist, the mines filled in, the smoke stacks fallen, and ancient sea spilling
through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility" (48-49).
"The sun burns away the fog and reveals the first blooms on
the trees. Werner can feel the fever flickering inside him, a stove with its
door latched" (365).
"A great gust of static shears past. The voice is like
something from a long-ago dream" (406).
"She says, 'When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was
brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I
have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?'"
(469).
Along the gravel path boys shout. Someone not far away plays a
saxophone. She stops beside an arbor alive with the sound of bees. The sky
seems high and far away. Somewhere, someone is figuring out how to push back
the hood of grief, but Marie-Laure cannot. Not yet. The truth is
that she is a disabled girl with no home and not parents" (493).
The entirety of the chapter "The Frog Cooks" beginning
on 284 and my favorite passage might just be the chapter from the 1974 section
"Frederick." I will not write out the entire passage but give you
just a taste. This writing raises tears to my eyes for its beauty and truth
and, I am trying not to sound pat or cliché, but the entire chapter reminds of
the consequences of the kind of violence that gripped Nazi Germany, the
complicity of ordinary people, and the interior of human relationships. This,
remember, is only a taste:
"As she sits, looking out through the
line of trees into the great empty parking lot, a dark shape sweeps through the
nimbus of a streetlamp. It disappears and then reemerges, and suddenly
and silently it lands on the deck railing not six feet away.
It is an owl. As big as a child. It
swivels its neck and blinks its yellow eyes and in her head roars a single
thought: you've come for me.
Frederick sits up straight" (522).
I could write so much more. I was enchanted by this novel and
going back to copy down passages from dog-eared pages plunged me back in.
I am, however, in need of finishing Sin
and Syntax, I have begun Camus's The
Plague and will be doing some writing of my own this week at the Antioch
Writer's Conference. You better believe this book will be tucked inside
my bag.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
if i stay, final post
I finished if i stay by Gayle Forman on Friday and now I am contemplating whether I should read the sequel, where she went. I will eventually but I think I will explore some other books for now, but where she went will go on my "To Read" list.
I burned through this book -- all 234 pages. As I mentioned in my previous post, I admire how Forman set up the novel that paced the story in a way that I did not want to put it down. I was thinking about this -- was it just that I wanted to know Mia's decision, or was it something else? Wanting to know the outcome was a motivation, yes, but the unwinding of the fabric of Mia's life was also motivating. I wanted to know her past. I wanted to know how everything fit in. I wanted to know what Mia would be leaving and what she would not have anymore if she stayed. So, as Mia contemplated her decision and her life flashed back through her mind, I was right there with her, weighing and balancing the choice. The time counting down, the hospital scenes, and the flashbacks kept the pages turning.
Last week I asked my students about how they might consider passing time in a piece of writing. We briefly looked at an excerpt from Leanne Shapton's Swimming Studies (but then ran out of time, which seems to be a theme at the beginning of this school year that I can't seem to shake) where Shapton, in this stream-of-consciousness way, goes from the present (she's swimming laps), to the past in a hotel "shaving" for a swim meet with her teammates then slips into a description of her race visualizing routine at home (is that the past progressive or past-perfect??) to the longer-ago continuous past where a hospital table in her room reminds her of a poster of Alex Baumann that inspires her to launch into the rivalry and life stories of Baumann and Victor Davis, then back to the hotel room, then weeks later from that hotel moment when she is bored in French class. What? That warp of time has me in awe. I asked students where the clues were -- how did we know time was passing and where we were oriented in time?
Forman's time "chapters" (I guess I can call them that) would also be a place for a study of how to structure a flashback into a narrative. This novel depends on flashback to provide the context for Mia's life, and Forman seamlessly travels from present to past and back. She uses several techniques. Some come naturally with the time chapters and some she uses page breaks that signal a jump into a memory. Now that I am paging through the novel, I am wondering if there is a pattern at all. The page breaks within the time chapters go from the present -- Mia's status in the hospital -- to the stories of her past. I just looked at five examples and they all followed this pattern. Each "time chapter" begins with the the hospital (or en route at the beginning) and then the page breaks signal the leap into the past. Something to share.
I am not going to tell you what Mia chose. You should find out for yourselves. I will tell you that I cried as I read the last two pages. Cried and cried. Forman poked at something so human -- our contemplation of loss and love and our ability to negotiate pain that comes from profound loss. That pain I mentioned in the last post that my dad, his sister, and his mother dealt with (the two siblings still deal with) since that awful night in 1964 when my teenaged-later-to-be-my father answered the phone and was told his dad was killed in a car accident (I am not lying here, by the way; he was told on the phone by a nurse). Some of you undoubtedly know that kind of loss, too. So, if you were Mia, and your immediate family was gone -- you were the sole survivor of an accident -- what would you choose and how would you weigh that choice?
Another thing I think is cool is that there is a little discussion section in the copy I have where Forman talks about her inspiration, etc. You all might get a kick out of an author taking you into her ideas and process. So, come on in and borrow the book. Put it on your "too read" list!
I burned through this book -- all 234 pages. As I mentioned in my previous post, I admire how Forman set up the novel that paced the story in a way that I did not want to put it down. I was thinking about this -- was it just that I wanted to know Mia's decision, or was it something else? Wanting to know the outcome was a motivation, yes, but the unwinding of the fabric of Mia's life was also motivating. I wanted to know her past. I wanted to know how everything fit in. I wanted to know what Mia would be leaving and what she would not have anymore if she stayed. So, as Mia contemplated her decision and her life flashed back through her mind, I was right there with her, weighing and balancing the choice. The time counting down, the hospital scenes, and the flashbacks kept the pages turning.
Last week I asked my students about how they might consider passing time in a piece of writing. We briefly looked at an excerpt from Leanne Shapton's Swimming Studies (but then ran out of time, which seems to be a theme at the beginning of this school year that I can't seem to shake) where Shapton, in this stream-of-consciousness way, goes from the present (she's swimming laps), to the past in a hotel "shaving" for a swim meet with her teammates then slips into a description of her race visualizing routine at home (is that the past progressive or past-perfect??) to the longer-ago continuous past where a hospital table in her room reminds her of a poster of Alex Baumann that inspires her to launch into the rivalry and life stories of Baumann and Victor Davis, then back to the hotel room, then weeks later from that hotel moment when she is bored in French class. What? That warp of time has me in awe. I asked students where the clues were -- how did we know time was passing and where we were oriented in time?
Forman's time "chapters" (I guess I can call them that) would also be a place for a study of how to structure a flashback into a narrative. This novel depends on flashback to provide the context for Mia's life, and Forman seamlessly travels from present to past and back. She uses several techniques. Some come naturally with the time chapters and some she uses page breaks that signal a jump into a memory. Now that I am paging through the novel, I am wondering if there is a pattern at all. The page breaks within the time chapters go from the present -- Mia's status in the hospital -- to the stories of her past. I just looked at five examples and they all followed this pattern. Each "time chapter" begins with the the hospital (or en route at the beginning) and then the page breaks signal the leap into the past. Something to share.
I am not going to tell you what Mia chose. You should find out for yourselves. I will tell you that I cried as I read the last two pages. Cried and cried. Forman poked at something so human -- our contemplation of loss and love and our ability to negotiate pain that comes from profound loss. That pain I mentioned in the last post that my dad, his sister, and his mother dealt with (the two siblings still deal with) since that awful night in 1964 when my teenaged-later-to-be-my father answered the phone and was told his dad was killed in a car accident (I am not lying here, by the way; he was told on the phone by a nurse). Some of you undoubtedly know that kind of loss, too. So, if you were Mia, and your immediate family was gone -- you were the sole survivor of an accident -- what would you choose and how would you weigh that choice?
Another thing I think is cool is that there is a little discussion section in the copy I have where Forman talks about her inspiration, etc. You all might get a kick out of an author taking you into her ideas and process. So, come on in and borrow the book. Put it on your "too read" list!
Thursday, September 12, 2013
if i stay by Gayle Forman
I read about if i stay by Gayle Forman in my friend Penny Kittle's book, Book Love, and the next day I was at the bookstore and there it was, so I picked it up. I started this book on Monday and I am through 152 pages. I can barely put the novel down at night because I want to know what Mia is going to decide. You see, she has been in a serious accident with her family, and it appears she is the only survivor. As she lingers in that invisible in between, observing her body and those gathered at the hospital but feeling nothing, a nurse tells her Gram and Gramps that "She's running the show. Maybe she's just biding her time. So you talk to her. You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back" (82). Mia realizes that she has a decision to make, that living or dying is up to her.
The narrative, broken into increments of time in that first twenty-four hours (as far as I can tell now), bumps between that present and flashbacks that flesh out the fabric of her life up to that point. The scenes with her unconventional and loving immediate family heightens the tension -- the reality that the world she might return to will be void of that same comfort and love. She will have to deal with loss and grief for the rest of her life (I know this: my grandfather was killed in a car accident in 1964 when my dad was 15, and my dad, now 64 years-old, is still processing his grief -- that hole left by his father's absence). Yet, Forman paints the vibrant life that is open to Mia. Her extended family: Gram and Gramps I mentioned above, aunts, uncles, cousins; her close friend, Kim, boyfriend, Adam, and close family friends, Willow and Henry. Mia also has her cello and the possibilities of a serious career in music. Forman places her readers on the seesaw with Mia. The tug and pull between life and death.
The one thing that is bothering me -- the one thing that I can't get out of my head is that I believe we did not know the first-person narrator's name until page twenty-four when in a flashback to her first cello recital her dad calls her "Mia Oh-My-Uh." That detail is foreboding to me. She has no "identity" at that point except for membership in her family. Her cello teacher, Professor Christie, is mentioned by name, Adam, her brother, Teddy, but she is not named until well into the narrative. I know that is not accidental... Why? I am trying to push out the idea that it is because she will have "no identity" at the end. OR, perhaps, I fear I doubt it, it is because Forman wants to highlight all the life and love she has known up to that point, making the world a place she will want to return.
My one critique, and this comes from the place of a forty-two year-old cynic and mother of two young daughters, is that the relationship with Adam seems too perfect. Maybe not the relationship because I do like how Mia doesn't feel comfortable or worthy of the relationship -- she reflects how those doubts I think we all have when we enter a place of intimacy creep into our brain and make us insecure. So, I think it is really the character of Adam himself that bothers me. He is, so far, too good to be true. He loves her unconditionally -- tells her her quirks and insecurities are the things he loves the most. He leaves her flowers on her windowsill every day that she is laid up with the chicken pox. He is mature and even-keeled and a punk-rocker like her father once was. I understand that it is about providing a luring possibility on earth -- something she can return to, but to tell you the truth, I am tired of all the Prince Charmings, who maybe have their surface imperfections but love these girls with their lives ( Peeta and Gale in The Hunger Games, Edward in Twilight, to name a couple recent ones that come to mind and I have been having my fill of Disney princesses and Teen Beach Movie with my two girls as of late). But, then I think of my teenage self and I would have lapped up every single word written about Adam that would have had me daydreaming for hours, and this book is meant for that audience, so I should just shut my trap. AND I don't even know what Forman is going to do with this character and relationship. I should just wait and see. Until next time!
The narrative, broken into increments of time in that first twenty-four hours (as far as I can tell now), bumps between that present and flashbacks that flesh out the fabric of her life up to that point. The scenes with her unconventional and loving immediate family heightens the tension -- the reality that the world she might return to will be void of that same comfort and love. She will have to deal with loss and grief for the rest of her life (I know this: my grandfather was killed in a car accident in 1964 when my dad was 15, and my dad, now 64 years-old, is still processing his grief -- that hole left by his father's absence). Yet, Forman paints the vibrant life that is open to Mia. Her extended family: Gram and Gramps I mentioned above, aunts, uncles, cousins; her close friend, Kim, boyfriend, Adam, and close family friends, Willow and Henry. Mia also has her cello and the possibilities of a serious career in music. Forman places her readers on the seesaw with Mia. The tug and pull between life and death.
The one thing that is bothering me -- the one thing that I can't get out of my head is that I believe we did not know the first-person narrator's name until page twenty-four when in a flashback to her first cello recital her dad calls her "Mia Oh-My-Uh." That detail is foreboding to me. She has no "identity" at that point except for membership in her family. Her cello teacher, Professor Christie, is mentioned by name, Adam, her brother, Teddy, but she is not named until well into the narrative. I know that is not accidental... Why? I am trying to push out the idea that it is because she will have "no identity" at the end. OR, perhaps, I fear I doubt it, it is because Forman wants to highlight all the life and love she has known up to that point, making the world a place she will want to return.
My one critique, and this comes from the place of a forty-two year-old cynic and mother of two young daughters, is that the relationship with Adam seems too perfect. Maybe not the relationship because I do like how Mia doesn't feel comfortable or worthy of the relationship -- she reflects how those doubts I think we all have when we enter a place of intimacy creep into our brain and make us insecure. So, I think it is really the character of Adam himself that bothers me. He is, so far, too good to be true. He loves her unconditionally -- tells her her quirks and insecurities are the things he loves the most. He leaves her flowers on her windowsill every day that she is laid up with the chicken pox. He is mature and even-keeled and a punk-rocker like her father once was. I understand that it is about providing a luring possibility on earth -- something she can return to, but to tell you the truth, I am tired of all the Prince Charmings, who maybe have their surface imperfections but love these girls with their lives ( Peeta and Gale in The Hunger Games, Edward in Twilight, to name a couple recent ones that come to mind and I have been having my fill of Disney princesses and Teen Beach Movie with my two girls as of late). But, then I think of my teenage self and I would have lapped up every single word written about Adam that would have had me daydreaming for hours, and this book is meant for that audience, so I should just shut my trap. AND I don't even know what Forman is going to do with this character and relationship. I should just wait and see. Until next time!
Monday, August 19, 2013
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Earlier in the summer I also devoured the 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (who also won the MacArthur Genius Grant). It had been on my "to read" list, but after reading "Miss Lora" (winner of the Sunday Times Short Story Award) from Diaz's latest short story collection, This Is How You Lose Her, I had ample motivation. That short story knocked me flat. The narrative point of view, the subject, the voice... (I have read some commentary from people who hated it, but I will politely disagree.) Anyway, when my grading was done for school, I hunkered down.
The beginning was rough going -- not because the writing was not fine, but I had to get used to the massive footnotes. I couldn't decide when to read them: right when the footnote appeared, at the end of the sentence, end of the paragraph, end of chapter? I found my rhythm and I enjoyed the pithy history (I had missed my "mandatory two seconds of Dominican history") and cultural mythology explanations.
Just yesterday I was talking to my dad about these footnotes and he commented that this was much like Melville's footnotes in Moby Dick. I hadn't read that since high school (when I actually did enjoy it), and as I said, "Oh, yeah..." I remembered that Diaz had alluded to Moby Dick somewhere in the novel (let me also say that Diaz has so many allusions to so many things, science fiction and fantasy, in particular). Then, later yesterday I found a, I don't know what to call it, "promo video" of Diaz on the MacArthur website and in this "interview" he mentions... wait for it... Moby Dick! Why? Diaz explains how he is interested in the "particular granular" experiences and for him it is a certain narrator, Yunior de Las Casas, a young Dominican immigrant who grows up in New Jersey. Although this is a small, particular experience, he believes, there is power in this story that transcends it's uniqueness. This is when Diaz brings up Melville who wrote about whaling -- not many whalers in the mid-19th century, yet, Diaz argues, the novel is able to capture the American experience and the human experience by putting men out on this whaling ship. Why do I bring this up? You know (or you will know) that I am always harping on the idea of the mentor text (or mentor author?) -- the idea that when we read we either consciously (which I ask you to do) or unconsciously (which I hope you do in this semester of reading widely) pick up the "trade secrets" of writing. Do you think it is an accident that Diaz uses footnotes like Melville did and then alludes to Moby Dick specifically in both his novel and then an interview four years later? I think not.
Aside from a good lesson in mentor texts, my students would enjoy this novel for many reasons. The vernacular, the feel that the narrator is telling the story directly to them, the idea that Oscar is an outcast, the blunt sexuality in the story. And I liked it for all those reasons, but I was thinking about what had me flying through those pages? The idea of a long story -- a long immigrant story -- appeals to me. I am the granddaughter of an immigrant. Yes, an immigrant of a different time and place; an immigrant not running from such violence (although I have read arguments about the absolute corruption of the Catholic church in southern Italy and its particular brand of exploitation), but there is that idea of how this "other culture" shapes the experience of the next generations that I have felt throughout my life. For me it's the wanting to blend in and not be seen as an interloper, the idea that hard work is the way to succeed, the drive to not violate my grandfather's sacrifices and ensure that my life matches his legacy. Some of these are apparent in this immigrant story, but not exactly. Yunior's explanation of the evolution of Fuku in the beginning of the novel that then is appropriated by the Dominican Republic's despotic dictator, Trujillo, illustrates the idea that history has a strangle-hold on its people and their descendants. This idea that history, particularly violent history and history of fleeing a homeland because of violence, can traumatize future generations is called something...transgenerational effects?
Then there is the idea I found in this novel that transcends the immigrant experience and I think resonates in so many of our families. It is the idea that our mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers have these pasts, and often times they leave them behind and then keep them hidden from their children and grandchildren. I don't want to say that these are "secrets," but I guess they are. Secrets that I do not begrudge individuals for keeping, but, but, but... As I mentioned above, Fuku, as Yunior explains it, is wrapped up in historical exploitation of people of color by the white man, but by the end I couldn't help wondering if we all perpetuate Fuku in our own lives through our secret keeping. There is liberation in having Yunior tell this story -- putting his friend, Oscar de Leon, into a larger context to memorialize his life. In the parallel stories of Oscar's mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral, and then later Oscar's own experiences in the Dominican Republic, history repeats itself and it made me wonder, what if she would have told this story before Yunior needed to set the record straight? That maybe, just maybe, things would have been different. I am fascinated by this struggle between the past and the present. How much do we keep secret, how much do we tell? How those things that we think we shouldn't tell might be the very stories our children and grandchildren need to hear so they understand us better; so that maybe they can avoid the mistakes of our pasts or go into their own experiences with their eyes wide open. Yet, it is human nature to hold back -- to keep those secrets of the things which traumatized us and make us ashamed. Yet, story, the telling of our experiences -- the good, bad, and ugly -- could maybe set us free from the past.
The beginning was rough going -- not because the writing was not fine, but I had to get used to the massive footnotes. I couldn't decide when to read them: right when the footnote appeared, at the end of the sentence, end of the paragraph, end of chapter? I found my rhythm and I enjoyed the pithy history (I had missed my "mandatory two seconds of Dominican history") and cultural mythology explanations.
Just yesterday I was talking to my dad about these footnotes and he commented that this was much like Melville's footnotes in Moby Dick. I hadn't read that since high school (when I actually did enjoy it), and as I said, "Oh, yeah..." I remembered that Diaz had alluded to Moby Dick somewhere in the novel (let me also say that Diaz has so many allusions to so many things, science fiction and fantasy, in particular). Then, later yesterday I found a, I don't know what to call it, "promo video" of Diaz on the MacArthur website and in this "interview" he mentions... wait for it... Moby Dick! Why? Diaz explains how he is interested in the "particular granular" experiences and for him it is a certain narrator, Yunior de Las Casas, a young Dominican immigrant who grows up in New Jersey. Although this is a small, particular experience, he believes, there is power in this story that transcends it's uniqueness. This is when Diaz brings up Melville who wrote about whaling -- not many whalers in the mid-19th century, yet, Diaz argues, the novel is able to capture the American experience and the human experience by putting men out on this whaling ship. Why do I bring this up? You know (or you will know) that I am always harping on the idea of the mentor text (or mentor author?) -- the idea that when we read we either consciously (which I ask you to do) or unconsciously (which I hope you do in this semester of reading widely) pick up the "trade secrets" of writing. Do you think it is an accident that Diaz uses footnotes like Melville did and then alludes to Moby Dick specifically in both his novel and then an interview four years later? I think not.
Aside from a good lesson in mentor texts, my students would enjoy this novel for many reasons. The vernacular, the feel that the narrator is telling the story directly to them, the idea that Oscar is an outcast, the blunt sexuality in the story. And I liked it for all those reasons, but I was thinking about what had me flying through those pages? The idea of a long story -- a long immigrant story -- appeals to me. I am the granddaughter of an immigrant. Yes, an immigrant of a different time and place; an immigrant not running from such violence (although I have read arguments about the absolute corruption of the Catholic church in southern Italy and its particular brand of exploitation), but there is that idea of how this "other culture" shapes the experience of the next generations that I have felt throughout my life. For me it's the wanting to blend in and not be seen as an interloper, the idea that hard work is the way to succeed, the drive to not violate my grandfather's sacrifices and ensure that my life matches his legacy. Some of these are apparent in this immigrant story, but not exactly. Yunior's explanation of the evolution of Fuku in the beginning of the novel that then is appropriated by the Dominican Republic's despotic dictator, Trujillo, illustrates the idea that history has a strangle-hold on its people and their descendants. This idea that history, particularly violent history and history of fleeing a homeland because of violence, can traumatize future generations is called something...transgenerational effects?
Then there is the idea I found in this novel that transcends the immigrant experience and I think resonates in so many of our families. It is the idea that our mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers have these pasts, and often times they leave them behind and then keep them hidden from their children and grandchildren. I don't want to say that these are "secrets," but I guess they are. Secrets that I do not begrudge individuals for keeping, but, but, but... As I mentioned above, Fuku, as Yunior explains it, is wrapped up in historical exploitation of people of color by the white man, but by the end I couldn't help wondering if we all perpetuate Fuku in our own lives through our secret keeping. There is liberation in having Yunior tell this story -- putting his friend, Oscar de Leon, into a larger context to memorialize his life. In the parallel stories of Oscar's mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral, and then later Oscar's own experiences in the Dominican Republic, history repeats itself and it made me wonder, what if she would have told this story before Yunior needed to set the record straight? That maybe, just maybe, things would have been different. I am fascinated by this struggle between the past and the present. How much do we keep secret, how much do we tell? How those things that we think we shouldn't tell might be the very stories our children and grandchildren need to hear so they understand us better; so that maybe they can avoid the mistakes of our pasts or go into their own experiences with their eyes wide open. Yet, it is human nature to hold back -- to keep those secrets of the things which traumatized us and make us ashamed. Yet, story, the telling of our experiences -- the good, bad, and ugly -- could maybe set us free from the past.
Friday, August 9, 2013
The Interestings
A couple nights ago I finished The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. For some reason I couldn't write about it immediately. I digested and reflected and then finally sat down to write.
It is the story of a core group of four teenagers, Jules, Ash, Ethan, and Jonah, who meet at an arts summer camp in the 1970s. The novel follows their lives through randomly shifting chapters of 3rd person focus until one of their group dies from cancer in 2007. It is a fascinating ride and I have struggled to think about why I was so absorbed. There is some central drama -- and intrigue that makes you wonder -- but that is not what propelled me through the book, not what had me gobbling page after page. The characters weren't always likeable, and I think that is what resonated for me, the truth of it.
Wolitzer painted honest portraits of human foibles and folly, jealousy and self-doubt, longing and regret that ebb and flow as we age. I think the most fascinating was thinking about how many people's identity becomes solidified in the late teens and early 20s -- the way we see and conceive of ourselves (I think I was somewhere between 17-21, and sometimes, my dears, I look in the mirror and feel shocked by what is reflected back because it doesn't jive with the way I "see" myself) -- yet we have all this life -- years and years -- to live after that. Wolitzer explores how this identity can help and hinder us as we age.
I also think that Woltizer is a master writer. The way she moves time forward -- she covers over thirty years in these four lives (and the lives of some others). New sections beginning, "Over that next year, the changes among them were all subtle instead of striking" (125) or "It did not seem so strange, three weeks later, for Jonah Bay to find himself selling dyed pink and blue flowers out of a plastic bucket on a street corner in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont" (285). These leaps in time move the narrative forward through the vast timeline of this story.
She also uses some of the best foreshadowing I have ever encountered that kept me turning pages. I don't mean the masterful subtle kind that you might not notice until you are rereading one of those canonical texts, but the kind that places a provocative detail about the future that gets you wondering how the story will get from where it is at that moment to this place in the future. For instance, on page 125 she writes, "She wished she could make Goodman do that this year, which would be the last full year that all of them would be together. Even not knowing that yet, she felt an intuitive urgency." I couldn't help but think, "well, what is going to happen that they won't all be together?!" It was like a delicious piece of candy promised in the future, so I kept inhaling her words.
Time also folds back on itself as the story shifts narrative perspective (although always remaining in the third person) to follow the lives of one of the central characters. The story flows in and out of time, reminds us of details from the past and connects it with the future. Although as I am writing this something is dawning on me that I had not realized before (and I could be wrong) but the story mostly tells the lives of Jules, Jonah, and Ethan -- Goodman and Ash Wolf (brother and sister) are central to the story, but the perspective is from those who orbit around them. Huh. That distance lens seems to be there, which makes sense when I think about it -- the rest of them feel somehow honored to be included in beams that shoot from the Wolf's posh apartment on Central Park West in Manhattan (referred to as "The Labyrinth").
I think some of my students might like this novel, but I bet it would be best saved for the future. I do think, however, that many of them will like the book I finished earlier this summer (which I will write my next post on), The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Stay tuned!
It is the story of a core group of four teenagers, Jules, Ash, Ethan, and Jonah, who meet at an arts summer camp in the 1970s. The novel follows their lives through randomly shifting chapters of 3rd person focus until one of their group dies from cancer in 2007. It is a fascinating ride and I have struggled to think about why I was so absorbed. There is some central drama -- and intrigue that makes you wonder -- but that is not what propelled me through the book, not what had me gobbling page after page. The characters weren't always likeable, and I think that is what resonated for me, the truth of it.
Wolitzer painted honest portraits of human foibles and folly, jealousy and self-doubt, longing and regret that ebb and flow as we age. I think the most fascinating was thinking about how many people's identity becomes solidified in the late teens and early 20s -- the way we see and conceive of ourselves (I think I was somewhere between 17-21, and sometimes, my dears, I look in the mirror and feel shocked by what is reflected back because it doesn't jive with the way I "see" myself) -- yet we have all this life -- years and years -- to live after that. Wolitzer explores how this identity can help and hinder us as we age.
I also think that Woltizer is a master writer. The way she moves time forward -- she covers over thirty years in these four lives (and the lives of some others). New sections beginning, "Over that next year, the changes among them were all subtle instead of striking" (125) or "It did not seem so strange, three weeks later, for Jonah Bay to find himself selling dyed pink and blue flowers out of a plastic bucket on a street corner in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont" (285). These leaps in time move the narrative forward through the vast timeline of this story.
She also uses some of the best foreshadowing I have ever encountered that kept me turning pages. I don't mean the masterful subtle kind that you might not notice until you are rereading one of those canonical texts, but the kind that places a provocative detail about the future that gets you wondering how the story will get from where it is at that moment to this place in the future. For instance, on page 125 she writes, "She wished she could make Goodman do that this year, which would be the last full year that all of them would be together. Even not knowing that yet, she felt an intuitive urgency." I couldn't help but think, "well, what is going to happen that they won't all be together?!" It was like a delicious piece of candy promised in the future, so I kept inhaling her words.
Time also folds back on itself as the story shifts narrative perspective (although always remaining in the third person) to follow the lives of one of the central characters. The story flows in and out of time, reminds us of details from the past and connects it with the future. Although as I am writing this something is dawning on me that I had not realized before (and I could be wrong) but the story mostly tells the lives of Jules, Jonah, and Ethan -- Goodman and Ash Wolf (brother and sister) are central to the story, but the perspective is from those who orbit around them. Huh. That distance lens seems to be there, which makes sense when I think about it -- the rest of them feel somehow honored to be included in beams that shoot from the Wolf's posh apartment on Central Park West in Manhattan (referred to as "The Labyrinth").
I think some of my students might like this novel, but I bet it would be best saved for the future. I do think, however, that many of them will like the book I finished earlier this summer (which I will write my next post on), The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Stay tuned!
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