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Before one more person calls me a book temptress (a title I secretly love), please click on over to Cornflower, and blame her for today's offering. My copy is already on its way to me. Home design book. Practical AND aesthetically pleasing ways to store those paginated loves of your life. Just look at these images. I feel a home improvement project coming on.
Other friends were more forthright: "I'm sick of ethnic lit," one said. "It's full of descriptions of exotic food." Or: "You can't tell if the language is spare because the author intended it that way, or because he didn't have the vocab."I was told about a friend of a friend, a Harvard graduate from Washington, D.C., who had posed in traditional Nigerian garb for his book-jacket photo. I pictured myself standing in a rice paddy, wearing a straw conical hat. Then I pictured my father in the same field, wearing his threadbare fatigues, young and hard-eyed.
"It's a license to bore," my friend said. We were drunk and walking our bikes because both of us, separately, had punctured our tires on the way to the party.
"The characters are always flat, generic. As long as a Chinese writer writes about Chinese people, or a Peruvian writer about Peruvians, or a Russian writer about Russians ..." he said, as though reciting children's doggerel, then stopped, losing his train of thought. His mouth turned up into a doubtful grin. I could tell he was angry about something.
"You could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead, you choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans — and New York painters with hemorrhoids."
All the best of 2009 lists started popping up recently, and although I usually eschew the whole list-making thing, it did set me thinking about my best reads this year. My top four came to mind instantly, but then I had to pause. Unlike many bloggers, I do not keep spreadsheets or review every book I read so I do not really have a reliable record upon which to look back. So I headed to the shelves. And there it was, loved but inexplicably forgotten - The Boat by Nam Le.
This collection of seven short stories is masterful in both its range of subject matter and the author's ability to adapt his prose to that specific subject. As if the words originate not from an individual authorial voice but from the story itself. Each piece in the book seems to warrant a new style of expression. The author's approach is hinted at in the shiniest short story in the book, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice" in which a Vietnamese student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop is urged by his friends to mine his personal experience as refugee for writing material.
The clever thing about having this particular story open the collection is that has some obvious autobiographical elements (the author and protagonist share a first name, same background as Vietnamese emigre turned lawyer turned writing student), and so it provides a novel framework upon which Le can introduce his own philosophy about the craft.
As protagonist Nam wrestles with whether or not to exploit his background for material, his father arrives for a visit, and the quiet conflicts between the two highlight the choice in front of Nam as a writer. Does he embrace the static as exemplified by his father's love of the proverb or does he create something new? The humor shown in the quote above quietly slips away as the relationship between father and son rises to the fore as they seek to define both personal relationship and the ties that bind them to their birth home. Personal story and story about the craft of writing merge in a dramatic and satisfying ending.
The six remaining stories are set in Iowa City, the slums of Colombia, Manhattan, coastal Australia, Hiroshima, Iran and the South China Sea with characters as far afield as these locales. All memorable. Great emotional impact without sentimentality. Filtered through the individual. Lending credence to the belief that great literature often represents the voice of one rather than many. Delivered with such confidence as to propel a reader through the whole book in one fluid, easy movement. Loved it.Check out the book's site for more details.
As much as I love the kids I teach, this is the best school day of the year for me - book fair day. Fundraising for my library programs gets me a seat in my favorite book store, Politics and Prose, for the whole day as I share our school's story with patrons who can present a coupon at the register so that 20% of their purchase goes to our school book purchases. Sweet. So I am currently residing right outside of the children's department in the best remainder section anywhere. The morning rush is ebbing a bit so I am going remainder shopping. Great books for just a little money. Wish you were here. Back in a little while to show you what I am taking home.
Update: The Haul
An hour later, for a comparatively tiny double digit sum:
"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.
"Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo is in the hospital, afflicted with an undiagnosed illness, and unable to stop hiccuping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the Mesmerist Pierre Pain. Pain, a timid bachelor, is in love with the widow Reynaud, and agrees to help. But two mysterious Spanish men follow Pain and bribe him not to treat Vallejo, and Pain takes the money. Ravaged by guilt and anxiety, however, he does not intend to abandon his new patient, but then Pain's access to the hospital is barred and Madame Reynaud leaves Paris.... Another practioner of the occult sciences enters the story (working for Franco, using his Mesmeric expertise to interrogate prisoners)-as do Mme. Curie, tarot cards, an assassination, and nightmares. Meanwhile, Monsieur Pain, haunted and guilty, wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris..."
Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano is due out in January 2010 from New Directions.
Love book catalogs. Love them. But how often do they look like this? Am head over heels for these Faber folks and their appreciation of superior design. Check out the whole catalog here. Doesn't the cover remind you a little of We Are the Friction? Picked up this info off a tweet yesterday. Seems Faber wants to know what looks good to you here. Are you kidding? What doesn't look good. I would even pay for the catalog. Sad but true. But if I were to be shopping here...
I always go poetry from Faber.
"Kristin was quiet and shy when she was with her betrothed; she found little to talk about with him. One evening when everyone had been sitting and drinking, Simon asked her to go outside with him to get some fresh air. As they stood on the gallery in front of the loft room, he put his arm around her waist and kissed her. After that, he did it often whenever they were alone. She wasn't pleased by this, but she allowed him to do it because she knew there was no escape from the betrothal. Now she thought of her marriage as something she had to do, but not something that she looked forward to. And yet she liked Simon well enough, especially when he was talking to the others and did not touch her or speak to her."
I do not believe that this passage from The Wreath, the first part of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Nobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset, was intended to be funny. But laughing I was, here and in a few other parts as well. This is always what I fear when I hear "historical fiction" or the dreaded word "saga." Characters whose story is not so much reflective of the historical references in which they are couched as they are placed upon an historical staging. Undset's depictions of medieval Norway are often well-rendered, and she tells her story of Kristin's coming of age in The Wreath with skill and a boldness in terms of sexual frankness that must have been cutting edge in its day. But Kristin's story, that of a young woman spurning the well-regarded suitor her parents have brought before her for a spoiled but disgraced knight who, even judged by the patriarchal society of the day, is somewhat of a misogynist, has not drawn me in yet. But in the best of company for this shared read, I will keep reading. This may get better. This is just the first book of three.
This read leaves me questioning so much about the genre of historical fiction. It is easy, as I have done here, to play the snob, and say that this is not normally my cup of tea. To make assumptions based upon a conflation of historical fiction and historical romantic fiction. To equate the genre with reductive anti-feminist works, or novels that infuse a modern female sensibility and empowerment inappropriately for the historical period depicted. But the truth is, I do like some historical fiction. We all do. We may prefer to say we only enjoy postmodern historical fiction. We may prefer not to think of that treasured The Name of the Rose as representative of the genre. But it is. So how do we define historical fiction? How broad? Think I will give it two more parts of Kristin Lavransdatter before I take up this question again.
So what do I like about The Wreath? The descriptions of the natural beauty of Norway. They kept me reading for their simple beauty.
''For those who were waiting for the redemption of spring, it seemed as if it would never come. The days grew long and bright, and the valley lay in a haze of thawing snow while the sun shone. But frost was still in the air, and the heat had no power. At night it froze hard; great cracking sounds came from the ice, a rumbling issued from the mountains, and the wolves howled and the foxes yipped all the way down in the village, as if it were midwinter. . . . Kristin went out on such a day, when the water was trickling in the furrows of the road and the snow glistened like silver across the fields. Facing the sun, the snowdrifts had become hollowed out so that the delicate ice lattice of the crusted snow broke with the gentle ring of silver when she pressed her foot against it. But wherever there was the slightest shadow, the air was sharp with frost and the snow was hard."
Wouldn't mind being there. Just wish Kristin and her ill-chosen husband weren't hanging about. Feel like her father crying into his hands at the thought of it all. And hoping things look up from here.
A few of you reading Proust with me have emailed this week to say that they are in no way ready for The Guermantes Way this week. Guess what? Neither am I. I could cobble something together just to meet our deadline, but what would be the point? Kind of defeats the purpose of that slow, leisurely read of Proust we all crave. So.... Let's try the last day of the year instead - December 31. Maybe that will even prompt a few new readers to join us?
All the talk of Persephone Books of late has intrigued me. Started receiving the catalogue and Biannually magazine but have yet to take the plunge and actually order some titles. When I saw this week that Book Psmith is "dreaming of a grey christmas," I knew that I wanted to receive my first Persephone as part of this holiday gift exchange. Our hostess was even kind enough to email me to say that she envies the person who gets to buy me my first.
So simple. Email the hostess with your contact and blog info and list of Persephones owned. You will be assigned a random person to gift. (And someone will receive your name too of course.) Search their blog, scan their list, and make the best choice for that individual. Full details here. Quickly, friends. The names will be drawn and assigned on November 11.
Now, no more chit chat. Back to that new John Irving. Thought I would be done by now but the finish line was pushed back by one very fun The Woman in Black, kiddo Halloween merriment, and the reading of four great new children's books this week for work. What are you reading in the Sunday Salon today?
