Nonsuch Book

sunday salon: in defense of food & giveaway reminder

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” 

Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma was a fascinating read for me, an exposition of the degradation of our natural resources to fuel and supply a food chain that has left a large share of Americans overweight and suffering from an array of preventable health problems. Pollan says that he then wrote In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto in response to the large number of readers that subsequently asked what they should be eating. How appealing is it to think that the answer is as simple as the catch phrase that wraps the lettuce on the book cover? "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." But of course, if that was the extent of the answer, there would be no book.

Pollan asserts that we have lost our way nutritionally because we have become bogged down in what the author calls "nutritionism," an ideology that contends that the value of food lies in the nutrients it contains rather than the food itself. We select and consume food based upon the assertions of a huge marketing machine designed by the food manufacturing industry. Manufacturing. That's right - too many of us eat manufactured rather than whole foods. Because it boasts words on its labels like "fat-free," "no cholesterol," "whole grains," to name but a few. As Pollan comments about that wasteland of additives that exists in the aisles of the middle of most grocery stores:

"Yet as a general rule it's a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their newfound " whole- grain goodness" to the rafters. Watch out for those health claims."

Pollan traces the source of this faulty system back to government regulations in the seventies. Demonizes the FDA in the most level-headed terms. Discusses the "Western diseases" and the effects an Americanized diet on recent immigrants to the country. Examines the environmental effects of transporting food across the globe. And then jumps forward to extol the practices of eating locally, of avoiding the supermarket or at the very least shopping the periphery of the stores, of not eating purchased food with numerous ingredients that you can't pronounce, and of possibly growing your own food, a topic much in the media this week as Michelle Obama and DC school children turned over the soil at the White House.

Some of this may sound like things you have heard or read before, but much of it is different, and the material is transformed into a page-turner by Pollan's precise journalistic prose. No extra fat in the book, so to speak. Pollan is criticized by some for his elitist approach to the food consumption habits of the individual rather than taking on, and encouraging others to challlenge the food manufacturing industry as a whole. He is gently mocked for his suggestions of taking to the woods for yeast spores to make bread or having a freezer at home that can hold the whole hog you just obtained. However, I (and tons of others) believe that the way to change our consumption habits and the nature of food manufacturing in this country is to make different choices as individual consumers that impact the bottom lines of these companies when huge numbers subscribe to the same beliefs and practices. It is all about the money after all.

Another reason I enjoyed this book so much was that I tried to see its contents through the eyes of my son, Sebastian. The greenest eight year old on the planet. He gives smokers dirty looks (many talks about good manners follow but he insists that it is bad manners to pollute his planet). He wants a car that has no exhaust coming out the back. He takes plastic bottles out of the trash for recycling. He is always quick to remind others of running water and unnecessary lights with his favorite question - "Ever hear of global warming?" And he won't eat anything that had a face. "Mom, is this healthy?" he asks several times each day. I want him to be able to pick up any food in his house, and eat it knowing that it is. Getting there. It takes time and effort. Time I have to spend scrubbing the green man clean when he paints himself while I am on the phone.

Reminder: Enter my David Foster Wallace giveaway by March 31.

Now back to The Post Office Girl. What are you other Sunday Salon participants reading today?

swann's way: beginning

Some of us are starting In Search of Lost Time together. We will post on our own blogs and/or comment here on Sunday, April 19 about the first volume, Swann's Way. Please join us if the spirit moves you. Today's post is just reading impressions - organized randomness in a way. Would love to hear your opinions.

The left sidebar here read "First Reading Notes 3/25" for a week or so. Plan was to have read through all of the first section by then - "Combray" in the Lydia Davis translation I have settled on, but perhaps "Overture" and "Combray" in your text. But a few things happened to slow my progress. I spent quite a while spot-reading through the various translations before picking one. And yesterday was my birthday, and despite all good intentions, snuck over to the computer mid-celebrations, and quickly changed the date to 3/26. Sober reflections called for.

Reading through the introductions to the various texts, I found that there is a divide between those that view the work as autobiographical (life transformed into art or life informing art) and those that suggest the more subtle interpretation of what Davis refers to as "art's transformation of life" - a life transformed  through the eyes of the artist. Do you think a prior knowledge of the author is required for reading this book? Irrelevant?

What translation are you reading and why?

I love the fact that Proust introduces us to almost all the characters of his work in this first volume. As Davis quotes Proust from his collected letters, "There are a great many characters; they are "prepared" in this first volume, in such a way that in the second they will do exactly the opposite of what one would have expected from the first." This book gives one every reason to keep reading as it transports us from one time to another almost effortlessly, hinting at what will come as well as leaving the reader hungry and expectant for more details when a touched upon story line vanishes for the time being. It left me feeling as needy as young Marcel on the stairs gauging his mother's arrival by the progress of the shadow of her candle. I want more than I know I should have in that moment.

In Search of Lost Time is often reduced in the imagination to the cliches attached to it - tea and madeleines, privilege and class divide, love and yearning. At least these were some of the things I brought with me into this first reading only to find something much more satisfying and elegant within the text, occasionally stirring or touching.

I am finding the reading experience similar to the beginnings of the novel where time is bent in the world of sleep, where we float in and out of one story and another, where we question if something is real or imagined just as we question whether or not we are awake or asleep. For me, there is a dreamlike quality to the text punctuated by the jarring presence of the elderly women of Marcel's household. There is also something silky, pleasing, and elusive here. A story I need more of, a story I can get lost in.

"Now, in fact, the pastoral novels of George Sand that she was giving me for my saint's day were, like an old piece of furniture, full of expressions that had fallen into disuse and turned figurative again, the sort you no longer find anywhere but in the country. And my grandmother had bought them in preference to others just as she would sooner have rented an estate on which there was a Gothic dovecote or another of those old things that exercise such a happy influence on the mind by filling it with longing for impossible voyages through time."

How is your reading going?

flannery, drood, dictation & more in the birthday haul

Today is Flannery O'Connor's birthday (and mine as well) so I decided to indulge myself with this new biography of one of my favorite authors. And I love the cover design.

"The landscape of American literature was fundamentally changed when Flannery O'Connor stepped onto the scene with her first published book, Wise Blood, in 1952. Her fierce, sometimes comic novels and stories reflected the darkly funny, vibrant, and theologically sophisticated woman who wrote them. Brad Gooch brings to life O'Connor's significant friendships - with Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, Walker Percy, and James Dickey among others - and her deeply felt convictions, as expressed in her communications with Thomas Merton, Elizabeth Bishop, and Betty Hester. Hester was famously known as "A" in O'Connor's collected letters, The Habit of Being, and a large cache of correspondence to her from O'Connor was made available to scholars, including Brad Gooch, in 2006. O'Connor's capacity to live fully - despite the chronic disease that eventually confined her to her mother's farm in Georgia - is illuminated in this engaging and authoritative biography." (from the publisher)

So I'm still in the bookstore with gift certificates in hand (hardly anyone feels comfortable selecting books for me anymore), and there is a uniform stack of bibliomonsters within reach - Drood by Dan Simmons. Hmm. Sure I can squeeze this read in somewhere - at least by summer's end.

"On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens - at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world - hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever. 

Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research . . . or something more terrifying?

Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), Drood explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, Drood is Dan Simmons at his powerful best." (from the publisher)

  

And have been getting to Dictation ever since - where did I read that review - The Elegant Variation? Must have that too. It's in paperback now.

"Ozick’s latest work of fiction brings together four long stories, including the novella-length "Dictation," that showcases this incomparable writer’s sly humor and piercing insight into the human heart. Each starts in the comic mode, with heroes who suffer from willful self-deceit. From self-deception, these not-so-innocents proceed to deceive others, who don’t take it lightly. Revenge is the consequence—and for the reader, a delicious if dark recognition of emotional truth. 

The glorious novella "Dictation" imagines a fateful meeting between the secretaries to Henry James and Joseph Conrad at the peak of those authors’ fame. Timid Miss Hallowes, who types for Conrad, comes under the influence of James’s Miss Bosanquet, high-spirited, flirtatious, and scheming. In a masterstroke of genius, Ozick hatches a plot between them to insert themselves into posterity. 

Ozick is at her most devious, delightful best in these four works, illuminating the ease with which comedy can glide into calamity." (from the publisher)

The register is not more than ten feet away and there is no line. Make a break for it not because a line is any great annoyance, but because waiting and looking always increases the size of my purchase. Behind the desk though they are looking through a new shipment of The Prospector, last year's Nobel Prize winner that was so hard to obtain in translation for a while. OK, just one more.

"The Prospector is the crowning achievement from one of France's preeminent contemporary novelists and a work rich with sensuality and haunting resonance. It is the turn of the century on the island of Mauritius, and young Alexis L'Etang enjoys an idyllic existence with his parents and beloved sister: sampling the pleasures of privilege, exploring the constellations and tropical flora, and dreaming of treasure buried long ago by the legendary Unknown Corsair. But with his father's death, Alexis must leave his childhood paradise and enter the harsh world of privation and shame. Years later, Alexis has become obsessed with the idea of finding the Corsair's treasure and, through it, the lost magic and opulence of his youth. He abandons job and family, setting off on a quest that will take him from remote tropical islands to the hell of World War I, and from a love affair with the elusive Ouma to a momentous confrontation with the search that has consumed his life. By turns harsh and lyrical, pointed and nostalgic, The Prospector is "a parable of the human condition" (Le Mond) by one of the most significant literary figures in Europe today." (from the publisher)

The last copy they have in stock of the new graphic novel based upon The Picture of Dorian Gray. Still have not written about this recent read so why don't I pick this up in the hope of doing something novel with the two together. And call it a day here in the store of seemingly endless temptations. And save the rest of my birthday buying power for another day.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray is a graphic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic work, stunningly re-imagined by writer Ian Edginton and artist I.N.J. Culbard. This Gothic morality tale is the story of a man who, taken by his own beauty, pledges his soul in a desperate bid for eternal youth. But when his wish is granted, things go terribly wrong. A painting of Dorian begins to age in his place, while Dorian himself becomes a dangerous narcissist who destroys everyone standing in his way until the day he is forced to come face to face with the ugliness of his own conscience." (from the publisher)

this is water by david foster wallace: thoughts and giveaway

Good things do come in small packages. In this case, from an expansive mind. This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace is a transcript of Wallace's one public address - his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. 

One sentence per page (and not sentences of the staggering length of some of Wallace's fictional product), one platitude and cliche proof thought at a time, this slim volume delivers a simple yet profound message about living the well-examined life. Wallace takes up the traditional stuff of commencement addresses, and transforms it into an original, funny, moving, and occasionally challenging query as to how to think about the world we inhabit.

One of my favorite parts of the book: 

"But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. 

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. 

That is real freedom. 

That is being taught to think."

This speech was widely quoted after Wallace's death last fall as it contains many insightful distillations of American life and thought - our politics, our various faiths, the occasional arrogance of our presumptions. And it speaks to us from Wallace's unique and agile mind. And aside from a not yet published final work, a voice we will not hear from again.

"How do we keep from going through their adult life unconsciously, comfortably entrenched in habit? 

How do we remove ourselves from the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion?"

Comment here by March 31 to win one of three copies of the book. US and Canada only this time. To be published in April. 

the lake isle of innisfree by w.b. yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, 

And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 

There midnight's all aglimmer, and noon a purple glow, 

And evening full of the linnet's wings. 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

 - W.B. Yeats

no time for a sign: george orwell out of nowhere

Is it my imagination or is there a certain George Orwell buzz since the beginning of March? First I read that George Orwell's love letters will be up for sale soon. Then the number one book UK residents lie about having read is 1984. The Orwell Trust is presenting the author's diaries via Twitter feed. George Orwell's son speaks about his father for the first time at the Oxford Literary Festival. One of my favorite blogs, Mookse and Gripes, reviews 1984 today. All in sixteen short days. All at least moderately interesting. And there is a lot more than just these few examples. Have I missed something?

There was a day when I would have perceived this Orwellian (that can't be a word?) deluge as a sign that I needed to pick up Orwell again with a set of fresh eyes. But my eyes are now middle-aged and occasionally blurry, and my shelves are full of books that I obtained by reason of undeniable signs, some still unread. If I am honest with myself, I do not really feel like reading Orwell again, but all the hype set me in motion, at least for a few minutes. How often has this happened to you? Signed up for too many challenges? Bought more books than you know you can realistically read this year? Agreed to read thousands of pages of Proust with some slightly off-kilter Orwell re-read resistor? 

What I really want out of this was featured in the Washington Post this past Sunday. Orwell's source of hope - Barnhill, the farmhouse that served as his writing retreat. Not as a part of a literary pilgrimage as suggested by the article, but just for me and my fantasy life where I write undisturbed and wander the environs. More in the mind for impractical musings today than setting new tasks for myself. My apologies, Mr. Orwell. Another day I will find you irresistible. 

sunday salon: the game's afoot

Have met the nicest people in the blogosphere this week as I posted on Proust for seven consecutive days, inviting all to read Swann's Way with me and chime in here on April 19. One of those new acquaintances is Ruth at Bookish Ruth. When I wandered over to her blog, I discovered she is hosting a Sherlock Holmes reading fest known as The Baker Street Challenge. Now I have loved Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes stories since I was a teenager. Not so difficult to understand. Don't all adolescents adore drug-addicted, brilliant amateur pugilists? Jokes aside, Holmes has a far-reaching appeal, and I suspect many might like to revisit some of the original stories as well as some Holmes inspired books as well.

The details:

Challenge Rules 

1. Choose a goal of 3, 4, 5, or 7 books and add your name to the sign up page. 

2. The challenge will run from January 1 to December 31, 2009. You can sign up for the challenge any time before December 21, 2009. 

2. You do not have to choose your books in advance. You may change your reading list at any point in the challenge. 

3. Overlapping with other challenges is fine. 

4. Audio books and eBooks are allowed. 

5. Feel free to post reviews or general thoughts about your reading to the Baker Street Challenge blog. Please e-mail [email protected] to be added as a contributor. 

Reading Tiers 

Three Pipe Problem: 3 books 

Sign of the Four: 4 books 

Five Orange Pips: 5 books 

Seven Percent Solution: 7 books

To make this even easier, the books you choose may be anything Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, other Holmes fiction, nonfiction works about the Holmes phenomenon or the original author, pretty much anything Holmes goes. Check out the dedicated page for more details including reading suggestions.

     

If you have little ones who might like an introduction to Holmes, or you just like reading children's books, think about the relatively new series of Enola Holmes books for 9-12 year old readers. The much, much younger sister of Sherlock Holmes displays all of the intelligence and pluck of her older brother.

Received more blogger love this week as Sandy at You've Gotta Read This! and Gavin at Page247 both sent this award my way. Many thanks you two! The instructions state to post and tap seven new recipients (blogs that you love), but I cannot possibly narrow this to seven sooooo...... If you are on my biblioblogs list, consider yourself well-loved, and please pass the love around.

As far as reading for today, I have several short stories I would like to get through as well as finishing this beautiful edition of Dorian Gray I received for Christmas last. And of course I will check around The Sunday Salon to see what everyone else is up to. And then on to Proust.

weekly geeks: quote a day friday

“Life is extraordinarily suave and sweet with certain natural, witty, affectionate people who have unusual distinction and are capable of every vice, but who make a display of none in public and about whom no one can affirm they have a single one. There is something supple and secret about them. Besides, their perversity gives spice to their most innocent occupations, such as taking a walk in the garden at night.” Marcel Proust

(Photo from The Garden at Night from Chronicle Books)

paintings in proust: a visual companion

“This lavishly illustrated and comprehensive guide celebrates the close relationship between the visual and literary arts in Proust’s masterpiece. With over two hundred beautifully reproduced paintings, drawings and engravings, and accompanying texts drawn from the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation, this book is an essential addition to the libraries of Proustians worldwide and a handsome volume in its own right. _

Eric Karpeles has identified and located all of the paintings to which the book makes exact reference. Where only a painter’s name is mentioned, he has chosen a representative work to illustrate the impression that Proust sought to evoke. Botticelli’s angels, Manet’s courtesans, Mantegna’s warriors, and Carpaccio’s saints are here, as well as Monet’s water lilies and Piranesi’s engravings of Rome, while Karpeles’s insightful essay and contextual commentary explain their significance to Proust. 

Extensive notes and a comprehensive index of all painters and paintings mentioned in the novel provide an invaluable resource for the reader navigating In Search of Lost Time for the first time or the fifth.” (from the publisher)

Difficult to find right now for less than a hundred dollars or more, but the publisher, Thames and Hudson, has promised delivery of a reprint soon. Should have bought one when I had the chance. She who hesitates...

One excerpt from the book:

"One Sunday, while I was reading in the garden, I was interrupted by Swann, who had come to call upon my parents. 

“What are you reading? May I look? Why, it’s Bergotte! Who has been telling you about him?” 

I said it was Bloch. 

“Oh, yes, that boy I saw here once, who looks so like the Bellini portrait of Mahomet II. It’s an astonishing likeness; he has the same arched eyebrows and hooked nose and prominent cheekbones. When he has a little beard he’ll be Mahomet himself.” 

...Swann felt a very cordial sympathy with the sultan Mahomet II whose portrait by Bellini he admired, who, on finding he had fallen madly in love with one of his wives, stabbed her to death in order, as his Venetian biographer artlessly relates, to recover his peace of mind."  - Marcel Proust (Swann’s Way)

weekly geeks: quote a day wednesday

 

“When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface that arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other's feelings and which charms us more then on its outward journey because we do not recognize it as having originated in ourselves.” 

Marcel Proust