New Yorker Fiction Podcast

I highly recommend checking out the New Yorker: Fiction podcast. The fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, speaks with an author who picks a short story, then the story is read. It's perfect for distracting oneself on ones long commute (ok, that's when I listen to it). It's a new podcast, and it looks like they only intend to add new stories once a month, which is a bit of a shame. Richard Ford reading a John Cheever story called "Reunion" is really quite amazing, but my favorite is Junot Díaz reading his own 1995 short story “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)." An initial listen might indicate that it's nothing more than a Dominican-American kid talking about how to get in a girl's pants, but it's rather wonderful (and funny) story about race, gender, and diaspora. Also, it's a beautifully produced piece led by Díaz's powerful voice and interspersed with a woman's voice as well. The "guest" author, Edwidge Danticat, defends Díaz's artistic expression to write about a young, latino man who, perhaps lacks some integrity, and how a story like this might be misinterpreted as autobiographical and, paradoxically, about all latino people. "No one assumes," she says, "that John Updike is writing about all white men."

I'm not familiar with Diaz's work, but I'm pretty excited to read more - here's a story online, "Homecoming, with Turtle." Same for Edwidge Danticat, here's another short story from the New Yorker by her.

Cat Getting Out of a Bag

My friends C&D gave me a copy of Jeffrey Brown's Cat Getting Out of a Bag and Other Observations. Brown's a Chicago-based artist with some indie-comic cred for his autobiographical work like Unlikely (the tale of loosing his virginity) and Every Girl is the End of the World for Me. Cat Getting Out of a Bag is less confessional, but a very sweet ode to cats (particularly a kitten named Misty) and the charming and not-so-charming things they do. He does a particularly good job of capturing the wide-eyed excitement of cats. They're both funny and touching, like "Crying" where Brown is sitting on the couch ("sob, sob, sob") and Misty comforts him by purring and gently biting his hand, then curling up on his lab. Dog people who hold that cats are solitary animals without need of companionship might be surprised, but cat lovers won't.

This strip does a great job of summing up, well, one reason Brown wrote the book, and what kind of person I am:
Ever since I read it, I've been laughing at odd moments and saying, "Check out this cat!"

Speaking of...

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I reread Harry Potter book 5 over the weekend in preparation for the movie, which opens tomorrow (yea!) The thing I loved the most about book 5 was how well Rowling captured adolescent angst. All those kids lurking around, ultra-sensitive, getting upset with each other over every little thing - THAT'S what childhood's all about. As a kid, I don't really remember reading any books that came close to the reality of tortured adolescence. Uhm, maybe Blubber (Judy Bloom, 1974) came close. A few years ago a friend told me about a book called A Separate Peace (John Knowles, 1959) about the cruelty of boys toward each other at a boarding school that really touched a nerve with her. Things get tied up a little too neatly in Blubber and are surprisingly violent in A Separate Peace, but Harry Potter finds a happier medium. In the Potter-verse, most characters aren't clearly "good" or "evil" (ok, ok, maybe Voldomort) and the young wizards face conflicts both magical and mundane. When Harry has his first kiss and tries to explain it to his friends, Hermione explains how Cho must be feeling:

"Well, obviously, she's feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she's feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can't work out who she likes best. Then she'll be feeling guilty, thinking it's an insult to Cedric's memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she'll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can't work out what her feelings towards Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that's all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she's afraid she's going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she's been flying so badly."

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, "One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode."

With Hermione in a preternaturally mature role, young readers have a guide to reason and old readers like me sit back and espouse Girl Power. These type of books have a big impact on readers young and old because they address highly emotional situations that affect us all (I mean, do you know anyone whose tween years didn't suck a golden snitch?)

I'm also quite fond of Rowling's set-up for each book - Harry at the Dursley's. I find the Dursley's hilarious, and added benefit of book 5 is that we learn a little bit more about Harry's relatives. Wanna hear something sad? It's my hope that in the final book (coming out the day before my birthday!) the Dursley's tell Harry how much they really love him. But, just like in real life, I might have to acknowledge that things might not work out perfectly for Harry, but I think it's pretty amazing that Rowling's fantastical series is the closest thing to reality I've seen in a long time.

Howards End

I read Howards End because I was interested in how Zadie Smith used the 1910 novel for her own On Beauty. I'll have to save that comparison for another day. I wasn't expecting to enjoy Howards End, just to read it critically. I gave E.M. Forster's Passage to India a try many years ago and was so bored I couldn't finish. But Howards End was wonderful - it's the story of two women - Margaret and Helen Schlegel, liberal, early-feminists, and another family - the Wilcoxes - different from the women in almost every way. The book is very sympathetic to the women, and I found myself getting so indignant every time the Schlegel's encountered the Wilcox rudeness. Look what Forster has to say about the Wilcoxes:

Day and night the river flows down into England, day after day the sun retreats into the Welsch mountains, and the tower chimes: "See the Conquering Hero." But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sign among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind.

One of the themes of Howards End is the Home. Margaret repeatedly remarks that one of the downfalls of society is that so many people are nomadic - everyone rents, feeling no permanent homestead anywhere. This struck a note with me because several years ago we got ousted from an apartment we loved because it "went condo" as they say these days. The Schlegel's long-term rental also essentially "went condo" and they found themselves in a desperate search for a new home. The Wilcoxes had a home - Howards End, which was loved by the Wilcox matriarch but unappreciated by the rest of the clan.

Marriage had not saved her from the sense of flux. London was but a foretaste of this nomadic civilization which is altering human nature so profoundly, and throws upon personal relations a stress greater than they have ever borne before. Under cosmopolitanism, if it comes, we shall receive no help from the earth. Trees and meadows and mountains will only be a spectacle, and the binding force that they once exercised on character must be entrusted to Love alone. May Love be equal to the task!

Near the end, I feared I was being led through one of those awful, 19th century-ish British morality tales, but ultimately, I saw the book as a progressive look at the modern family and a tribute to the generosity of spirit.

something very dreadful

There's a great article on Salon entitled "I dream of Darcy" by Rebecca Traister. She writes about the renewed interest in Jane Austin - another spurt of movies (following the spurt from about ten years ago - Clueless, BBC's Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones's Diary, Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, Emma...) and another set of books inspired by Austin. Traister lists Laurie Viera Rigler's Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Alexandra Potter's Me and Mr. Darcy and Shannon Hale's Austenland, all of which involve contemporary women somehow being transported back two centuries and finding their own Mr. Darcy (or just the Colin Firth version).

The disturbing thing about these novels, and presumably about the women reading them (and an odd collection of tshirts, see left) is that they rely on the fantasy of finding that perfect man (namely, Mr. Darcy) to solve one's problems (The "problem"? Being Single.) I had a long talk recently with my oldest friend about the stigma she faces as a single woman. I can relate, 10 years married and in my thirties, people are always wondering when we're going to "start having kids." People get so ansty when one doesn't follow society's expectations. But, anyway, back to these books - it's so odd society is experiencing this sort of insane trend, whereby any women would would want to be transported to the 1800s, when marriage was more of a business proposal to desperately save oneself from abject poverty!

Traister writes:

In Regency England, the search for Mr. Right may have taken place at candle-lit balls and in well-appointed drawing rooms, but it was not a game. As Austen wrote, "Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor." Inheritance laws meant that women could not inherit from their fathers, and women lived in real fear of having their homes pulled out from under them if they did not secure a husband of means, who hopefully would not die overseas in the Army, a fate that Jane's sister Cassandra's fiancé suffered. Even if women did marry well, to a clergyman for instance, nothing was secure. Upon his retirement or death, his family would be turned out of their home, as happened to Austen's father when he gave up his Hampshire parish. These are the threats and fears that drive Austen's heroines.

I'm reading Howard's End right now, and wondering if after my Eliot and Forster experience, I dare return to Austin? But from what I understand, Austin is just as critical of accepted social norms as these other two estimable writers. When independent Margaret Schlegel tells her sister about her marriage proposal in Howard's End, the sister breaks down in tears. "Don't!" she cries (just what I was thinking) - don't make this decision out of desperation. But Margaret, called a girl by some and an aging woman by others, is having a crisis of property that could be solved by marriage.

Traister continues:

One of the great pleasures of female life in the 21st century, especially if you're of the class to which Austen belonged and into which she sunk her sharp teeth, is the possibility of earning your own living, of not having to land a man to survive financially, of no longer having to wear your need for a husband on your sleeve ... or tote bag or bumper.

She's not saying we shouldn't dream about Colin Firth, diving into the water, and better yet, walking out again (repeatedly even, like Bridget Jones) but to leave the fantasy at that, and appreciate our realities.

The Tent

Margaret Atwood's The Tent was released in January 2006, just a few months after The Penelopiad. I'm a big fan of Atwood (although I do confess I found the Booker Prize-winning Blind Assassin impenetrable and didn't like Oryx and Crake) and read The Penelopiad right after it came out. It's excellent - a sort of re-telling of the Iliad from Penelope's point of view. It's told in classic Greek format, complete with a chorus. The Tent is a collection of poems and very short stories (nothing much longer than 4 pages), all previously published. It includes a few drawings by Atwood. Both books a beautifully bound and have wonderful graphic cover art.

My favorite Atwood book is The Handmaid's Tale, and I love anything that comes close to it, and almost all the little stories in The Tent fit the bill. Atwood addresses feminine identity, colonialism, nationalism, politics, disaster... As you might imagine, it can get pretty depressing - one story, "Take Charge" (the title is more of a warning than anything else) is the same 5 conversations between a leader and his underling throughout history. The underling explains that (the ship/the tank/the missile control system/the futuristic makorin/the post-apocalyptic cave) is under attack and the leader does some ineffectual shouting before they surely die.

But other stories are more uplifting - the hilarious "Encouraging the Young":

Here I am, happy to help! I'll pass round the encouragement, a cookie's worth for each. There you are, young! What a big, stupid, clumsy mess like the one you just made - let me rephrase that - what is an understandable human error, but a learning experience? Try again! Follow your dream! You can do it!

Most stories I greedily read two or three times, admiring her story-telling inventiveness and relishing Atwood's brilliant turns of phrase, like this one:

(And consider: It is loss to which everything flows, absence in which everything flowers. It is you, not we, who have always been the children of the gods.)

Here's an excerpt from one of my favorites: Life Stories.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Part of the beauty of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union is how a mystery unravels, so I hate to reveal too much in this review. No review fails to mention that the story takes place in a fictitious Alaska, populated mostly by Jews and natives - inspired by the suggestion in 1939 by then Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, to make Alaska a Jewish state. Although it's hard to even begin describing the book without that bit of knowledge, I kept thinking how fun it would have been to discover that for myself.

Written like an old noir detective story, the Yiddish policeman is Landsman, who finds himself compelled to solve the death of a junkie chessplayer. He's drawn to the case because of an unfinished game of chess set up in his otherwise sparse room. Chabon employes many of the tricks of the genre, a la Dashiell Hammett, with chapters ending as guns go off, drinks being mixed, the detective being knocked unconscious and so on, all of which I found quite entertaining. Most other writers wouldn't have been able to pull it off, but Chabon's expansive yet poetic style makes it fresh. Check this out:

The place is as empty as an off-duty downtown bus and smells twice as bad. Somebody came through recently with a bucket of bleach to paint in some high notes over the Vorsht's steady bass line of sweat and urinals. The keen nose can also detect, above or beneath it all, the coat-lining smell of worn dollar bills.

Yow-za! It should also be understood that, unless otherwise indicated, all dialogue is spoken in Yiddish, and Chabon has peppered the book with more than a few Yiddish words and phrases. In fact, I had to read the book side by side with one of my favorite references, Hooray for Yiddish!: A Book about English by Leo Calvin Rosten. Ah, I love a book that sends me scurrying to the dictionary, but a specialized dictionary: I'm in heaven. If you don't have it, you're gonna need this: YiddishDictionaryOnline.com.

Like all of Chabon's books, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is thematic, challenging, and deals with issues of belonging, sexuality, identity and place. I'm sure any fan of Chabon will enjoy it, especially if you have an interest in Jewish culture and study, like me.

Ch**k lit?

This morning I read Summer Reads on Salon in which the word "chick" was spelled "ch**k". That gave me a bit of a pause. Then, as I was reading my daily blog roll, I saw a link to Ghetto (Not) Fabulous by Erica Jong on HuffPo (via Feministing). Jong criticizes the (US) media and their consistent undervaluing of women writers. The term "chick lit" stands out as a specific way to trivialize novels by women. Jong writes:

Feminists used to say the personal is political. I think we need to consider that message again now. We will never give peace a chance until we start paying as much attention to women as to war. Unless we value the bonds of love as much as male territoriality, we are goners.

I would like to see the talented new breed of American women writers -- my daughter's generation -- protest their ghettoization. We need a new wave of feminism to set things right. But we'd better find a new name for it because like all words evoking women, the term feminism has been debased and discarded. Let's celebrate our femaleness rather than fear it. And let's mock the old-fashioned critics who dismiss us for thinking love matters. It does.

I've got a few issues with Jong's statements about needing a "new wave of feminism" - it's true that the term "feminism" gets a bad rap, but that's because of perception of feminism, not feminism itself. And while we're being sensitive about language, how about not using the word "ghetto" to describe, like, the worst place in the whole wide world?

But, yes, we do need to pay attention to women as much (more than!) war. Giving the work by women the diminutive title of "chick lit" implies that subjects important to (some) women writers are less important than those addressed by (some) males. I will not here imply that women and men's writings are diametrically opposed, nor will I pretend that I have no idea what specific type of literature is being referred to as "chick lit." But this goes deeper than the actual books, the words on the page - it has to do with how we value women.

After a recent trip to a bookstore, I met some friends for lunch. They asked me what books I got, and I happily produced them. My friend (a man), looked at all three and put them aside. "Oh, I know all about them. They're chick lit. Just girl stuff." He hadn't heard of the authors, he didn't know the books, but he saw they were written by women, and he dismissed them.

Hamlet said, "Words, words, words" as if they were meaningless, but I know they're not. People used to quote "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" at me, but what could be more untrue? In essence, we are nothing but language, everything I am or think is expressed with words. So let's be careful what we say.

Middlemarch

OMG, I don't think it's ever taken me so long to read a book in my life. Five months, people. FIVE. MONTHS! But, it was all worth it. Actually, sometimes when I read a great book and I finish it in a week, I get a little sad, because it's over too fast. So, it's nice, every once in a while, to really sink into a book for long time.

Middlemarch is on a bunch of Top 100 Books (of all time!) lists, which is one of the reasons I wanted to read it, but also I love George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans). What I love about Eliot is the complexity of her characters. My impression of a lot of pre-20th century lit. is that the characters are frequently one dimensional. Evans' not afraid to give her characters flaws. But what I really love is her persistent focus on gender and social issues, which (unfortunately!) remain as relevant today as they were in 1871.

I don't think I'll ruin it for you by discussing the epilogue. Evans includes a clearly self-referential passage at once humorous and a bitter nod toward the necessity of her nom de plum:

But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories of Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had it printed and published by Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the University, "where the ancients were studied," and might have been a clergyman if he had chosen.

In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived, and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was always done by somebody else.

Evans continues to break out of the third person narrative as she does throughout the book, to speak not only of herself, but, surprisingly, beautifully, of the reader. It reminded me of Dave Eggars/Valentino Achak Deng's brilliant What is the What, and this sentence:

How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.

Evans writes:

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

This acknowledgement is so generous, drawing the reader (Me! You!) into the trust of the writer, including them in the process of stories being told, and, as a result, change being made, encouraging all of us to strive toward a better world.

The Wright 3

I'm a big fan of YA fiction, and this little series by Blue Balliett, The Wright 3, the follow-up to Chasing Vermeer. The stories feature two Chicago kids who solve mysteries - in Chasing Vermeer they, I forget, solve some mystery involving a Vermeer painting, and in this one, they “save” the Robie House (by Frank Lloyd Wright) from destruction. Both scenarios are fictional, which Balliett is careful to point out in the extensive reader's guide in the back. She does not explain that her name and the illustrator's name (Brett Helquist) are also fictional, though they clearly are.

The characters are charming, the themes are interesting, and, most of all, I love that they are placed in Chicago, around one of the city's most beautiful neighborhoods, Hyde Park. Sure, there are some lame aspects, like a heavy focus on the theme of coincidence (huh?) but, come on, it's YA fiction. Both of the books, despite being written for kids, have introduced me to some mathematical-type concepts, like pentominoes and Fibonacci numbers (although, she explains that the interval for each number is 1 to 1.618 [the golden ratio, which I am familiar with] and that doesn't make any sense, right?*)

If I were a kid, I know I'd be inspired by the ideas presented in these books - especially regarding art. They remind me of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, not just one of my favorite kids books, probably one of my favorite books, period. I don't know of these Balliett books have the staying-power of E.L. Konigsburg's 1967 Newbery winner, but they're written in the same spirit, and likely to please readers both young and old.

* Because the sequence goes like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on, but the ratio between 1 and 1 is nothing, right? And the ratio between 2 and 1 is 50, right? So, I don't get it, but who cares?

Kansas City Man Burns Books

Just read this story about a man who had about 20,000 books he tried to give away, but when he was turned away from "libraries and thrift stores" (according to the article) he decided to burn them.

His website tells a slightly different story - there it says the book burning was performance art, in response to decreasing sales in his used book store. Two quotes seem to indicate that he's waggling his finger (as well as burning his books) at non-readers.

There are worse crimes than burning books, one is not reading them. ~ Joseph Brodskey

The individual who won’t read has nothing over the individual who cannot read. ~ Mark Twain

I've had trouble donating my books before too - when we moved I had a lot of books to give away - about 20 - and when I called the library, they said they were so stocked up that they wouldn't be accepting books any time in the foreseeable future (If I'm remembering correctly, that was for at least the entire north-side of Chicago.) Kudos to the library for having all the books they can handle (although, wouldn't it be great if they had so much space they could just keep taking more and more books?). But, it didn't take me long to find someone who would take the books (women's prisons!) and I'm a big fan of Book Crossing, so, it's easy enough to leave a stack of books on a park bench. I find it hard to believe a real Book Lover could ever burn a book.

A Field Guide to Sprawl

Went to the Strand, my perhaps favorite bookstore In The World, over the weekend. Picked up some interesting looking fiction for myself and M. bought a book called A Field Guide to Sprawl by Dolores Hayden. At first I thought it was really stupid, but then I couldn't put it down. It describes architectural terms for urban sprawl (some terms we all know, like "big box" or "gridlock", then there's "duck: a building that replicates and serves as an advertisement for the product sold within it.") Each term is accompanied by a horrifying picture of, say, a trashland of cars or tires, or, just miles and miles of concrete earth ("Impervious Surface".) We read it together as we flew home, and had perhaps the most enlightened landing I've ever experienced ("Oh, look at all the pods! There's a pork chop lot! That looks like a streetcar buildout!"

Hanwell Senior

I read a great short story by Zadie Smith in the May 14th New Yorker called Hanwell Senior. It's available online if you don't get the magazine (it might not be available long). She references Middlemarch, which I'm currently obsessed with, so I was pretty excited about that. She also uses this really interesting narrative devise where she breaks out of the 3rd person and refers to herself, and to the process of writing.
Here's a section to illustrate:

In the novel “Middlemarch,” we find the old adage of a man’s charity growing in direct proportion to its distance from his own door. This is reminiscent of all the dutiful grandchildren and great-grandchildren lingering over deathbeds with digital recorders, or else manically pursuing their ancestors through the online genealogy sites at three in the morning, so very eager to reconstitute the lives and thoughts of dead and soon-to-be-dead men, though they may regularly screen the phone calls of their own mothers. I am of that generation. I will do anything for my family except see them.

I thought the story was so moving - hope you have a chance to read it! (Let me know if you do.)

Middlemarch - first half

I'm about half-way through Middlemarch, by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). Something I love about Eliot is how funny she is, and sarcastic - and I find myself laughing out loud all the time.

"Oh, my dear, you are so hard on your brothers! It is the only fault I have to find with you. You are the sweetest temper in the world, but you are so tetchy with your brothers."
- "Not tetchy, mamma: you never hear me speak in an unladylike way."
- "Well, but you want to deny them things."
- "Brothers are so unpleasant."

Middlemarch is a small town, and the book follows the stories of several families within the town, as well as some political issues regarding, if I'm not mistaken, landlords and renters. The political aspect is the only part that's not really holding my attention. My favorite story line is of Dorothea, who finds herself in an unhappy marriage to Mr. Casaubon. What I find most interesting about Dorothea (Dodo - how perfect!) is that she constantly doubts her own intelligence - no doubt due to being raised by her fond but misogynistic Uncle, who consistently reinforces the idea that women are frail and less inclined toward serious thought.

"But there is a lightness about the feminine mind - a touch and go - music, the fine arts, that kind of thing - they should study those up to a certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know. A woman should be able to sit down and play you or sing you a good old English tune."

I hate to say those sentiments are not unfamiliar to me or the small community in which I was raised. A few posts ago I joked about writing an homage to Middlemarch, and more lately I've been thinking seriously about doing it. I think after I finish, I'll read Howard's End and try to figure out how Zadie Smith did it for On Beauty. Middlemartinsville? I think something's there... Anyway, I have such high hopes for Dorothea, and want to see her explore the possibilities of her mind (if you've read it, don't give it away!)

Another theme I'm enjoying is the acknowledgement of change. Two young men argue about whether painting or literature is the higher art:

"Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague. After all, the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection. I feel that especially about representations of women. As if a woman were a mere coloured superficies! You must wait for movement and tone. There is a difference in their very breathing; they change from moment to moment."

Eliot seeks to prove the impossibility of capturing anything - just a breathe changes everything.

The Other Side of You

This book started out pretty good, but got worse an worse 'til I could barely finish it. It's about a psychiatrist who ends up spending seven hours in a session with this suicidal woman, she tells her lame-ass lost-love story and how that led her to attempt to kill herself and he sort of falls in love with her. The author, Salley Vickers, has clearly never been to a therapist in her entire life - she presents our hero as just that - a sensitive, thoughtful man - when, clearly, he's a nightmare of a mental health professional - he has no boundaries, he gets improperly involved with his patients, and he gossips about his clients over dinner at parties. Also, he's homophobic.

I think it's the rare author who can pull off writing in the voice of the opposite sex. and Vickers does, to borrow an English phrase, a piss-poor job at it. But The Other Side of You suffers more from a weak plot and one awkward turn of phrase after another:
"Thank you for listening to me. And for telling me the truth."
"Thank you for telling me what you have told me. And for telling me to tell you the truth." Yelch.

Vickers attempts to jump on the bandwagon of best-selling books that allude to or depend on a relationship to famous paintings (like Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Da Vinci Code, and my favorite: The World to Come). Her characters find a bond over their shared admiration of Caravaggio's work - but the repeated references to Caravaggio are one-dimensional and do nothing to move the plot forward or provide insight into his life and work. The story pales next to the heightened drama that is found in nearly every one of Caravaggio's paintings.

The title, by the way, is pulled from a TS Eliot poem:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
...
-But who is that on the other side of you?

I guess what bugs me the most about the book, and is summed up in the Eliot poem, is that the characters are defined by their relationship to others - and the characters also define each other by their third-party relationships as well - those "on the other side" - in life, and art, I'm interested in the real thing.

Remembering Kurt Vonnegut

Far be it from me to be the only book blogger not to book blog about Kurt Vonnegut. I haven't read much of his work - Slaughterhouse Five, and it's been awhile, so I can't really write intelligently about it. I remember Player Piano better - very good dystopian future stuff. I saw him speak once when I was at Indiana University. I was dating this guy who was kind of all into appearances. And he had something else to do, but he wanted to pop in to the lecture by Vonnegut, probably just to say he'd been there. And I wanted to hang out with him, so even though I didn't know who Vonnegut was, I went along. It was in the IU auditorium, which is quite large, and Vonnegut (a Hoosier!) was up on stage all alone, all tweedy and beardy - he couldn't look more like a writer if he tried. The audience was packed. The appearances boyfriend got up to leave after five or ten minutes, but I was so enthralled with Vonnegut I hardly noticed him leave.

I'm putting Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle on my mental to-read list.

Here's an audio of one of his lectures - this is from around the time I saw him speak. And here's a more recent lecture where he lays the hammer down on conservatives.

In other book news - just heard today that Michael Chabon has a new book coming out (May 1, 2007), The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I hope it's half as good as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

I've been reading Middlemarch since - oh - December. I don't know when it's taken me so long to read one book. In my defence, it's dense, it's over 800 pages, and it was written two centuries ago. I'm loving it, but I keep thinking, wow, there's so many books to read, and this one's taking so long. It reminds me of this thing I heard Zadie Smith say once, that she thought it was better to know one book really well than to have read tons of books. That book for her was Howard's End, upon which she based On Beauty. Maybe one day I'll write a masterpiece based on Middlemarch.

I did break down and start reading another book at the same time - The Other Side of You, by Salley Vickers. So far so good, but two things annoy me. 1) It's shrink-sploitation, which I'm not really into and 2) it's written by a woman, but the POV is a man. Yelch. I really didn't intend to start it in the middle of Middlemarch, but I ordered it from England (why do they get paperbacks before we do?) with my Harry Potter, and they mailed it early.

Harry Potter Cover Secrets Revealed!

So, I see in the news that the Harry Potter cover has been revealed, and I read a bit of speculation about what clues the cover might hold. Like, Harry is unable to do laundry and has to borrow a robe from someone two sizes larger than he is? I high-tailed it over to amazon.co.uk to see what the British cover looks like, as well as to place my own order. The British cover provides a lot more clues than the American cover - check it out:

Ah ha! Harry, Hermoine and Ron are clearly going to be attacked by a shower of gold (Zeus?) which they ineffectually try to fight with a sword.


What is that? Hogwarts?

Ah HA! That's Harry's patronis! Maybe there are going to be more dementors?

Short, short sci-fi

Inspired by Hemingway's six word novel ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn."), a bunch of sci-fi writers submit their six word stories - they were published in Wired at the end of last year. I like the Margaret Atwood the best, but the Joss Whedon is really good, also (God help me) William Shatner's!

I like feminist sci-fi - so here's my own six word story:

War rages until women oust men.

Anyone else have a short short story?

Books to Women in Prison

A friend told me about a program called Chicago Books to Women in Prison, they, well, provide books to women in prison. I recently cleaned out my bookshelves so I dropped off some books to them. They accept only paperbacks (?) and especially books "pertaining to parenting, recovery from addiction, self-help, lesbian/queer fiction and non-fiction, Spanish language materials, dictionaries, and fiction by people of color."

The books I donated don't necessarily meet those criteria although I guess one or two are about or by people of color. I sent two books by Amanda Craig, Love in Idleness and In a Dark Wood. Love in Idleness was a modern re-telling of A Midsummer Night's Dream, interesting, but not fabulous. I also sent Anne Ursu's Spilling Clarence, which was lovely. Cervantes Don Quixote, incredible, of course, but I don't see myself revisiting it soon. Monica Ali's Brick Lane, which was big a few years ago and quite good. I read it because it's about a Bangladeshi family living in England. Also, a trashy novel my grandma gave me a few years ago. It's primarily for reading on a beach vacation, but, alas, I don't have one of those in my future. Hmmm... now that I think of it, what if some poor woman in prison isn't interested in reading it for that reason either...

I had some friends in SF that worked for a similar non-profit - they jokingly called their organization Books for Crooks, which I found shocking and hilarious. Don't get me started on the US prison system, but I was happy to make this small donation toward literacy for women.

Iris Murdoch

Last night I watched 2001's Iris. It's as good a movie about books and words as I've ever seen (maybe Adaptation is number 2?) I haven't actually read any of her books (I'll rectify that soon) but I'm writing about the movie here because I was so moved by certain aspects of the movie - particularly the love story of Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, and how their relationship changed after she began to suffer from Alzheimer's disease, but also by the main character's relationship to words and language. The young Iris claimed that words were so important to her because that was how she thought - that words and language literally defined her, and tragically, when she began to lose language, she lost her ability to understand her place in the world. And yet, despite losing language, and the ability to communicate, the character still found ways to enjoy the world on a completely sensory level. I've been spending much of the day wondering what it would be like to be without language, to lose it, like Murdoch, or to be pre-lingual, like a child (like my new nephew, much on my mind!)

I love words, of course (look at this AWAD from last week: omphaloskepsis (om-fuh-lo-SKEP-sis) noun, Contemplation of one's navel - Marvelous!) but I'm also a very visual person, and a tactile person. What if I lived a life just in color? At the risk of being all, if a tree fell... isn't it true that if you nuzzle the nose of a horse, even if you can't process the experience in language, it's still an amazing feeling? Well, that's what I've been thinking about today. Has anyone read Murdoch's work and can recommend one of her books? Otherwise I guess I'll start with Under the Net, selected by the American Modern Library as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. (!)

I also loved the part where Judi Dench quoted Psalms - sometimes I forget that the Bible has some really beautiful passages:
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend unto heaven, thou art there:
If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall thy hand lead me,
and thy right hand shall hold me.