Nonsuch Book

fireworks by angela carter

"Angela Carter was a thumber of noses, a defiler of sacred cows. She loved nothing so much as cussed – but also blithe – nonconformity. Her books unshackle us, toppling the statues of the pompous, demolishing the temples and commissariats of righteousness. They draw their strength, their vitality, from all that is unrighteous, illegitimate, low." - Salman Rushdie

Claire of Paperback Reader hosted an Angela Carter Month last year, and I was fascinated by the posts. I had never read anything by Carter.  And then I won a copy of the short story collection Fireworks from Claire. Very excited. But then somehow it kept getting pushed down the list of things to be read. But now thanks to the TBR Dare, it has found its way into my hands. And blown my mind. And this is often considered a lesser work by Carter. Uneven. If that is the case, I cannot wait to read more. Because this "thumber of noses" writes some of the most original and electric prose I have read. Currently beside myself with joy after just putting the finished book down. And not the sort of joy that comes with a sweet, cozy read. The kind of joy that comes from material that uncomfortably wrenches something inside you. The joy of feeling unexpectedly unsettled.

I realized after reading this that I had in fact read a Carter short story before - "The Loves of Lady Purple." A handout in a contemporary literature class some moons ago about a puppeteer who manipulates the movements of his vixen puppet for many years, sleeping with her even. As the puppeteer ages and becomes more physically fragile, the wooden lady's movements become more fluid as if she is gaining a strength all her own. Her final assertion of self is a little campy and predictable but also powerful in its greater message of how a woman might free herself from the restrictions of gender-based societal expectations. In an extreme way.

The stories in the collection that really captured my attention are more subtle but no less powerful. "A Souvenir of Japan" sketches a story of an English woman in Japan who takes a young Japanese lover, and experiences feelings of estrangement between both their respective cultures and genders. Her lover is equated with the feminine - "... his face seemed somehow both too flat and too large for his elegant body which had such curious, androgynous grace with its svelte, elongated spine, wide shoulders and unusually well developed pectorals, almost like the breasts of a girl approaching puberty." She feels like a "female impersonator," feeling the enormity of her size compared to his, afraid of smashing him as he tells her "that when he was in bed with me, he felt like a small boat upon a wide, stormy sea." The gender switch is a reflection of the political positions of their countries but also serves as a constructed appreciation or fixation with the exotic, with the inevitable failure of "otherness."

Another favorite is "The Smile of Winter" where the narrator is alone and offers a self-conscious description of the desolate setting that mirrors her desolate emotional state. Her hyper-awareness of self makes the story more sharp than poignant.

"Do not think I do not realize what I am doing. I am making a composition using the following elements: the winter beach; the winter moon; the ocean; the women; the pine trees; the riders; the driftwood; the shells; the shapes of darkness and the shapes of water; and the refuse. These are all inimical to my loneliness because of their indifference to it. Out of these pieces of inimical indifference, I intend to represent the desolate smile of winter which, as you must have gathered, is the smile I wear."

And now the problem with posting about a collection of short stories. Much must go missing. Nine stories that traverse a wide swath of the bizarre, of magical realism not of the type with which most are familiar but the type where an androgynous cripple caresses her own breasts while her niece and protector holds her aunt's manhood. And autobiographical pieces such as described here, the artistic reaction to the author's own divorce and extended stay in Japan. And most stories full of images of mirrors and other devices and characters that reflect various images of self. Too much to describe well. So I am done. And seeking more titles by Angela Carter. Tell me your favorites?

bread givers by anzia yezierska

Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, a story of a young woman's fight for independence in a world of poor Orthodox Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century, is our first read of the new year for The Wolves, my much-loved online book group. I say much-loved because I really mean it. Not because our choice this month did not really work for me, and I feel the need to kiss up a little.

So here is the short of it. I cruised through this book quickly. It is not challenging. A fairly innocuous read with moments of mild irritation with the writing. I genuinely liked the spunkiness of the narrator, Sara, as she tries to escape a home run of American marginalization in the early parts of the 20th century - immigrant, poor, Jewish, female. I accepted the oft-repeated invitation to hate her tyrannical non-working but god-loving father. Felt for the other women of the book - for the most part. But ultimately could not get beyond the blunt force of the cries for sympathy. I felt that the novel was an excellent start to a conversation about the immigrant experience of the time, especially for women, but that it failed to dig deeply enough into these issues. It dropped topics as quickly as it picked them up. It is a collection of loose threads. Perhaps more suitable for younger readers in middle and high school where it is often read.

Many parts of the read are enjoyable. And I did feel a little guilty about my annoyance with the language. English is not the first language of the narrator, and she struggles to escape the Yiddish inflections and turns of phrase in her speech and writing. Her "dramas" often appear in line with other cultural expressions in her Lower East Side neighborhood that she writes about in the novel. But there is nothing subtle about this book, and its over-the-top ranting, its repetitions ultimately did not leave me with an inclination to make exceptions for the writing as a necessity of authenticity. It just lacked the depth required to add the dimension I wished for from the material.

Other opinions:

• Richard at Caravana de Recuerdos
• E.L. Fay at This Book and I Could Be Friends
• Shannyn at Libellule
• Wendy at Caribousmom
• Emily at Evening All Afternoon

the lotus eaters by tatjana soli

"... we reached the country of the Lotus-eaters, a race that eat the flowery lotus fruit.... Now these natives had no intention of killing my comrades; what they did was to give them some lotus to taste. Those who ate the honeyed fruit of the plant lost any wish to come back and bring us news. All they now wanted was to stay where they were with the Lotus-eaters, to browse on the lotus, and to forget all thoughts of them." - Homer, The Odyssey

The lotus flowers of literature take all who consume them off course, halt their travels and leave them in a perpetual and pleasantly stoned state. Sometimes the consumer is not aware of the full effect of the influence like in The Odyssey where the men are dragged back to their boat weeping for their loss without fully understanding what they mourn. In other works, the visitors seem to have some vague awareness of what has happened to them but elect to stay put like in Tennyson's "The Lotus Eaters."

They sat them down upon the yellow sand,
Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
Then some one said, “We will return no more;”
And all at once they sang, “Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”

Leopold Bloom wanders the streets in Ulysses in "a mood of drugged surrender to the impression of the moment," his own impressions, and then becomes lost in the scents of the shop where he seeks a diversion from a greater purpose. And in The Lightning Thief (yes, it is a children's book), young Percy Jackson is roused from his altered state at The Lotus Lounge by a call back to duty from the gods. There are certainly many more examples of interpretations of the Lotus-eaters story, but what they all have in common is an escape from an assigned path.

In The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli, Helen Adams is a photojournalist who came to Vietnam in order to better understand her brother and his death in the war, but ends up staying ten years, unable to tear herself away from the violence to which she becomes increasingly desensitized. We meet her at the very end of the war as she compulsively collects images of the atrocities occurring around her. With a loaded camera in her hands that serves as a physical barrier between herself and the unspeakable. The forward trajectory of the violence stopped by the capture of the camera. In an effort to produce images that will be viewed by others at least another step or more removed from the realities of the end of the Vietnam War.

She is numb as one can imagine Homer's lotus eaters are, adrift from any home, any place either personal or professional. But she is also consummately aware of the choices she is making. Complete with love triangle, the enlarged violence of war, the role of a woman in a male-dominated profession, this novel could have been reduced to cliches but Soli's simple and direct prose delivers such consistent voice for her characters, voices without unnecessary drama or a need to shock that can characterize some war novels, that this story becomes all the more moving and disturbing because of its quiet nature.

At the end, I was left feeling that Helen's character had not so much diverged from an assigned path as created a new one for herself that arises from the war experience. It may be solitary and disturbing and unorthodox but it fits the experiences of the woman. A fine read that left me feeling a little empty myself. A little sad.

This book was read for a TLC Book Tour. Other reviews are linked from this page.

book lust: the duel x5

On August 16, the clever cheeky monkeys at Melville House will release five new titles for the Art of the Novella series. All titled "The Duel." Good gimmicky fun. For which I am queuing up of course. I have previously read the Chekhov and Conrad but it has been years, and I look forward to reading all five duels in a row this summer. With descriptive adjectives such as meaningless, ludicrous, and futile held in the descriptions of the novellas, I look forward to beach read denunciations of violence, to the persecution of the innocent, and maybe even a little romance. It seems a long way away.

loitering with intent by muriel spark

"How wonderful to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century" are the words most frequently pulled from Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark, and frequently offered without the irony with which they were originally delivered. The challenge of choosing one identifying quote from this work so replete with insight into both the author and the creative process is nearly an impossible one, but a favorite of mine does say much about the work as a whole - "Fuck the general reader," Solly said, "because in fact the general reader doesn't exist." The task of the author is to break free of the more mundane requests that present from readers and publishers and friends and the like, and to represent their own vision without apology.

Fleur Talbot takes a much-needed job "on the grubby edge of the literary world" as a secretary for the suspect Autobiographical Association in the winter of 1949-50. Sir Quentin leads this group in writing their memoirs but it is immediately apparent that there is something amiss, perhaps a little blackmail by the leader of this nervous and varied group. The re-writes and instructions from Sir Quentin and then the ridiculously hilarious mockery Fleur inserts into the developing stories make for lots of laugh as does Sir Quentin's wily aged mother with her selective riffs of dementia and inconveniently timed decisions to pee on the floor. 

All of this is just a means to feed herself while Fleur finishes her first novel, Warrender Chase. The real trouble arises when Sir Quentin steals her manuscript, persuades the publisher to not publish the novel because it is libelous, and then various portions of her novel are played out verbatim in real life by members of the Autobiographical Association. The rest of the novel centers around Fleur's attempts to right the wrong done to her and reclaim her novel, and on a deeper level, to identify herself and commit herself to a life as a writer. 

Having been reading the Muriel Spark biography by Martin Stannard in bits since last year, the autobiographical parts of the novel stuck out to me although in an unobtrusive and pleasing manner. Spark actually wrote a draft of a novel called Warrender Chase. Various people from her youthful encounters appear under other names in the novel. And many statements attributed to Fleur read like excerpts from Spark interviews over the years. 

"I always desired books; nearly all of my bills were for books. I possessed one very rare book which I traded for part of my bill with another bookshop, for I wasn't a bibliophile of any kind; rare books didn't interest me for their rarity but for their content."

"Yes, Dottie, I love him. I love him off and on, when he doesn't interfere with my poetry and so forth. In fact I've started a novel which requires a lot of poetic concentration, because, you see, I conceive everything poetically. So perhaps it will be more off than on with Leslie."

 "Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes and so I felt Maisie had a substantial character. Since the story of my own life is just as much constituted of the secrets of my craft as it is of other events, I might as well remark here that to make a character ring true its needs must be in some way contradictory, somewhere a paradox."

"I knew I wasn't helping the reader to know whose side they were supposed to be on. I simply felt compelled to go on with my story without indicating what the reader should think."

"I wasn't writing poetry and prose so that the reader would think me a nice person, but in order that my sets of words should convey ideas of truth and wonder, as indeed they did to myself as I was composing them. I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work. I am sparing no relevant facts."

"All these years since, the critics have been asking whether Warrender was in love with his nephew. How do I know? Warrender Chase never existed, he is only some hundreds of words, some punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, marks on the page."

"Those people and their Sir Quentin were sheets of paper on which I could write short stories, poems, anything I cared."

And I could go on. But it is not necessary. Inside of this engaging and wickedly funny novel, we find Spark's own story written with the buffer of years between her own experience and Fleur's. Where art is established as the redeeming value of a life, a choice has been made in this regard, and the end product is worth the sacrifice of conventional comforts. But the unsettling part is not that choice itself but the feeling that Spark has re-written her own pain in order to put a shine on her own legacy. Fair enough. She owns both sets of material in question. But there is always something a little sad to me behind her sharp intelligence, her simple, well-phrased bluntness. As if her directness is not intended as bare-faced honesty but an attempt to disarm to discourage a deeper look behind her constructions. On to more Spark. Have become addicted to her work.

book origami

Via Daily Design Discoveries

More like images at Book of Art's photostream

the sweet sixteen

Just before Christmas, I posted on the 2011 Tournament of Books long list here, and welcomed all to let the smack talk reign. Early. What belonged on the list. What did not. Today the short list was released, and any disappointments in that list of sixteen were completely overshadowed by the joy of seeing Nox by Anne Carson included. So deserved but so unlikely. And in such, ahem, interesting company too. Can it win? This is a sweet sixteen for book geeks. Anything is possible.

What is on the list? 

• The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender (gag)
• Nox, by Anne Carson (should win if any justice in world)
• Bad Marie, by Marcy Dermansky (interested)
• Room, by Emma Donoghue (uneven, gimmicky)
• A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (own, unread)
• Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen (own, unread, bristle at thought of reading, allergic to words "family saga")
• Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon (no clue)
• Bloodroot, by Amy Greene (no clue)
• Next, by James Hynes (neuroses and terrorism, will have to ponder)
• The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson (own, unread)
• Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray (own, unread)
• Model Home, by Eric Puchner (not even remotely interested)
• So Much for That, by Lionel Shriver (pass)
• Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (enjoyed but ten steps in a different direction execution of premise could have sucked)
• Kapitoil, by Teddy Wayne (title unforgivably bad so I decided not to read it, gave it away)
• Savages, by Don Winslow (drug dealers, right?)

Attempted to parenthetically express my unfiltered opinions after each title. Because that is part of the fun. You should join in and do the same. Tell me how wrong I am.

I have a little work to do to be ready for March Madness. But won't read them all. Because I am certain that reading some of them would be painful for me. Looking forward to Skippy Dies, and hope that if Nox falls off the list, Skippy lives again and crushes others. Have no idea why I feel this way. Have not even read the book.

a novel bookstore by laurence cosse

Let me start by saying that I devoured this book. I am sitting here looking at an extensive list of books I want to read this year, all scribbled down on my favorite neon yellow index cards as I read through A Novel Bookstore gathering reading suggestion after suggestion. The works of Guy de Maupassant (as previously discussed), Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, a revisit of the works of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen, La Princesse de Cleves by Madame de Lafayette, The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, Le Livre des Nuits by Sylvie Germain - and the list goes on and on. The book was an addictive reminder of all there is still in front of me to read. It was thrilling to both collect a list of books I have long wanted to read and books of which I have never heard but wish to know better now. The whole thing made me near manic with book lust.

The premise of the book is a simple one as expressed on the official site for the novel:

Rebelling against the business of bestsellers and in search of an ideal place where our literary dreams could come true, The Good Novel bookstore, where the passion for literature is given free reign, was opened in 2004. Tucked away in a corner of Paris, the store offers its clientele a selection of literary masterpieces chosen by a top-secret committee of likeminded literary connoisseurs. We have no time for sloppy, hurried books. We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are here to please. We want books that cost their authors a great deal. We want books that are written for those of us who doubt everything. We want splendid books.

This was enough to draw me in, but then coupled with a promise of an Agatha Christie like mystery when the members of the secret committee begin to be threatened by violence and the store is constantly fending off charges of elitism, this book seemed the perfect match for me. But this is in fact not worthy of a Christie comparison at all, the mystery seemingly offering only a structure on which a profound love of literature is hung. I imagine that for a true mystery fan, this book could be a profound disappointment. And a long one at that at over 400 pages.

There is an oddly placed occasional first person narrator not revealed until the end. And whose revelation is a bit of a ho-hum moment when it arrives. The background information on the story and the mystery are supposedly being delivered to a policeman to whom the case is being reported, but is so drawn out that one can imagine this single afternoon interview actually occurred over a week's time. And Cosse is occasionally less than subtle and more than repetitive in her visits to literary discourse and debate.

And so this post is becoming as cluttered as the book. It sounds like I loved it, but then I trash it a bit. So which is it? Well, both. While acknowledging that it is highly flawed, that it could have been so much more if certain focuses had shifted just slightly, I also have to acknowledge that Cosse created a very appealing nook for a book lover to read in for a while. More than what she dwells on, what she suggests carries the day from book suggestions to distinctions between storytellers and stylists to a comparison of those who interpret life through novels versus those who interpret novels through life, those also known as people with wee imaginations. I found my mind wandering to defining standards of taste, to popular versus supposedly elite literature, to words with multiple meanings. Rich for what it suggests rather than what it delivers. I really enjoyed it.

For those not willing to commit their reading time to the flawed, check out the very clever dedicated site complete with partial lists of novels sold at The Good Novel. You might find that you actually already know a bookstore similar to this one. I do.

with many thanks

You have all overwhelmed me! I made a sheepish request for help with my Donors Choose project yesterday in my Sunday Salon post, and it has already been completely funded. And almost entirely by book bloggers, a group deservedly known for big hearts and generous natures. Many, many thanks to you all! I will let you know how my middle school kids enjoy The Hunger Games. Amazing. Really. Still happily shaking my head.

Photo credit.

sunday salon: end of a long read and a project at donors choose

Today I will finish the book that has occupied the first two weeks of the year for me - The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. It is not often that a read extends this long but the novel led me to points everywhere so there were many not what I would call reading distractions but enhancements - fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers and Perrault, Peter Pan, a mass of literature on Edwardian England, background on the Victoria and Albert Museum, miscellaneous works by William Morris and a renewed hunt for new copies of two books I have read and searched for about Morris (here and here). My original intention was to post a little here and there as I went but I gave up on that after two quick posts. Too immersed in the reading. Now how to synthesize the experience into something coherent here? Hmmm. An incredibly satisfying two weeks of reading.

And on a completely unrelated note, many of you know that I work at a high-poverty public school in DC. One of the ways in which we fill some of the many needs we have is by posting small grant requirements on the fabulous Donors Choose, an organization that matches donors to Title 1 schools in need of a little boost. Projects, field trips, materials and the like are posted on the Donors Choose website, and people stop by and donate whatever they want to that need. It can be $5, it can be the whole amount of the request. Now my middle school kids have been begging to read The Hunger Games. And we have been driving them pretty hard all year, and they could use a little motivation. But we need a classroom set. So as this is a title that has been embraced by much of the book blogging community, I thought I might (she asks sheepishly), just this once, reach out to all of you to check out the project and help if you can? I know a bunch of great kids that would be very grateful. The project can be found here.

Hope that your Sunday is full with a great book.