My life in books...

It’s been almost two months since I last posted, and my blog silence can mostly be attributed to the fact that I've been reading...and working and just too tired to write. I’ve read about eight since my last post: I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (the author of The Book Thief), One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde, The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, and several young adult books. I am a devoted fan to the first two authors in this list, and my high expectations were, unfortunately, not met.

For those, like myself, who were transformed after reading Zusak’s The Book Thief, Messenger comes across shallow. Although the premise is interesting and different, the book’s progression felt unnatural. The story begins with the narrator, Ed an unmotivated 20-something, stopping a robbery, which he admits is out of his character. Then, he starts to receive playing cards with mysterious instructions. Ultimately, the different cards lead him to people throughout his community whom he must help in some way--from a woman who is raped by her alcoholic husband every night to an old woman who just needs company.  The book progresses in much the same tone, and through much overdone self-reflection and many statements like “I just knew what I had to do,” the narrator calls the reader to question what we would do for a stranger in need. Although this “moral of the story” may sound cheesy, the book and it’s characters are in no way sentimental, which saves the book from being unenjoyable. Most of the book’s attraction lies with the outlying characters, the strangers in need. They are drawn with life, and as they are each saved in their own way, the reader is pulled into the main character’s mission. It’s an easy read if you like Zusak’s style.

Next, for those who were anxiously waiting those two years for the newest installment of the Thursday series, you may be a little disappointed. The book works more like an illustration of the workings of the Bookworld rather than a development in Thursday’s story. It’s clever and full of fun booky allusions just as his other books are fun and clever, but the story never develops into anything.  Most of it seems to set up the groundwork for the next book’s major mystery.  My favorite parts were when he makes fun of literary tropes. To Fforde’s credit though, he really tries to liven up our impression of books, and he explore what it means to create--to create characters, to create worlds, to create ourselves. And, if nothing else his books always inspire me to read and write more.

Finally, I get to my favorite: The Paris Wife. Let me begin by admitting that I am in no way a Hemingway scholar. In fact, despite many attempts, I just don’t like reading Hemingway. I have read several of his novels and have really tried to like his books, but most of the time I end up rolling my eyes at many of his characters...Despite this, I’ve always found his life and his persona fascinating. I’ve visited his childhood home in Chicago, I’ve sat in the back booth at Les Deux Magots in Paris (though it seems much changed since Hemingway was there), and I’ve watched the bulls run in Pampelona. My favorite read of his is A Moveable Feast. I’m drawn to the time period so often romanticized: the smoky cafes in Paris stuffed with struggling artists, the crowded bull fighting arenas in Pamplona.

The Paris Wife chronicles the relationship between him and his first wife, Hadley, and captures that time in Paris. However, more than that, the book focuses more on the creation of Hemingway’s persona through the eyes of a woman. At the book’s beginning  Hemingway is no more than a romantic, lonely young man come back from war. He’s desperate to write and desperate to be in love.  As the story progresses, he slowly creates the myth behind the man, and we meet Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound as we watch him struggle to place himself amongst the literary elite. It is very easy to hate him because he is really such an ass, but somehow the reader cannot help but be drawn to him, just as Hadley and every other woman in his life. It is hard not to admire his success and his talent and the way he gives himself to his art and life.

The book is also, probably even more so, about Hadley, and her struggle to find a place in the literary world, one that is much quicker and tumultuous than she ever wanted. Although at times the book threatens to become a book clubby book, I think it’s saved by its intelligent and unique portrayal of this famous couple. It is not over-stuffed with romance but a simple and realistic portrayal of a marriage the reader know is doomed from the beginning. It’s about the woman who is behind the myth that is behind the man...

There you have it...my past few months in books.

Just Give Me That Ol' Time America....

I've always had a deep fascination with what is quintessentially "American" -- that pull yourself up by your bootstraps, god-fearing, adventuring spirit that used to be represented so frequently in pop culture.  (In my opinion, today's American spirit is a little harder to define as we have become so fragmented in our views / beliefs).  I also wonder why the appeal of this American image – a lone cowboy standing tall in his dusty jeans and boots, his hat at a rakish angle as he squints off into a distant horizon – has lasted so long.  After all, didn’t we create a world of office buildings and air conditioning to prevent all that effort?  While I’ve talked before about probably not being able to make the grade in frontier agrarian society, I still find the whole concept wildly appealing and so do the writers Jeannette Walls and Wendy McClure.

Jeannette Walls, more famous for her memoir The Glass Castle, also wrote a true-life novel about her grandmother called Half-Broke Horses.  Lily Casey Smith had a wild ride in the American frontier, from living in a mud dugout in Texas and learning to break horses, teaching in rural schools, and working a big ranch with her second husband in Arizona.  She was not a woman to look back at her mistakes or to whine about her situation – Lily just packed up her stuff when the going got impossible and got back on her horse thinking of new ways to make her life work, no matter what the effort required.  It is obvious that Walls deeply respects her grandmother and sets up her story as a model for what Americans could achieve with a lot more elbow grease. 

And yet, rather than make Lily seem like a grunt suited only for work, Walls also gives in to the chance to romanticize the time, to the point where I felt about ready to join in on the long range rides.  When Lily does briefly move to town, Walls specifically emphasizes her distaste of the confined world of the ‘burbs and the dissatisfaction that comes from an office job that leaves a worker without a worn body or a satisfied mind at the end of the day.   

To get a real sense of Walls’ interpretation and glorification of her forbearers, you need go no further than a reflection “Big Jim” (Lily’s second husband) has about the water he’s collected in his manmade pond:

The water you kids were playing in, he said, had probably been to Africa and the North Pole.  Genghis Khan or Saint Peter or even Jesus himself might have drunk it.  Cleopatra might have bathed in it.  Crazy Horse might have watered his pony with it. Sometimes water was liquid.  Sometimes it was rock hard - ice.  Sometimes it was soft - snow.  Sometimes it was visible but weightless - clouds.  And sometimes it was completely invisible - vapor - floating up into the sky like the souls of dead people. There was nothing like water in the world, Jim said.  It made the desert bloom but also turned rich bottomland into swamp.  Without it we'd die, but it could also kill us, and that was why we loved it, even craved it, but also feared it.  Never take water for granted, Jim said.  Always cherish it.  Always beware of it. (148-9)

Now, granted, I’ve never known a real “cowboy” but somehow I think at the end of a long day they aren’t exactly waxing poetic about their water supply.  However, for Walls in a way, that’s the point.  Looking back, we can see the beauty of a simpler life where people focused only on the literal “big picture” – survival and sustenance – and found it to be enough.

This “back to the basics” approach is certainly attracting interest in our time.  Granted, going green in America has been more about lining the pockets of savvy companies who know how to confuse consumers with all sorts of hippie-sounding labels, but this longing for a simpler lifestyle certainly comes from somewhere. 

And that’s where Wendy McClure steps in.  Her book, The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, explores her utter obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, books, and the world that her writing represents.  McClure, along with her incredibly patient husband, spend a year travelling around in “Laura World” and seeing what insights can be culled from seeing the places Wilder lived.  Along the way, McClure churns butter, stays in a covered wagon, and buys enough prairie bonnets to show a fresh accessory every day for at least a month. 

As McClure sees it, her longing is not necessarily for Laura’s situation itself, but more of what it represents.  As she explains:     

Sometimes, Laura's World wasn't a realm of log cabins or prairies, it was a way of being.  Really, a way of being happy.  I wasn't into the flowery sayings, but I was nonetheless in love with the idea of serene rooms full of endless quiet and time, of sky in the windows, of a life comfortably cluttered and yet in some kind of perfect feng shui equilibrium, where all the day were capacious enough to bake bread and write novels and perambulate the wooded hills deep in thought (though truthfully, I'd allow for the occasional Rose - [Wilder’s daughter] style cocktail party as well).  All of it was the stuff of my imaginary Laura lifestyle magazine, my own rendition of sweet and simple. 

Probably most people who came to visit Mansfield had some version in mind, too.  While we could all certainly appreciate the pioneer ordeals, the covered wagons, and the long winters, somehow Sweet and Simple had become our own dream frontier, our Oregon that we'd like to reach someday, always just beyond the horizon.  We were looking for it wherever we could.  Most of us had no use for someone like Rose, whose Bitter and Complicated life was at least as imperfect as our own. (172)

In the end, McClure experiences a sort of emotional exhaustion from chasing after this lifestyle.  She searches so deeply to find meaning in these houses out in the middle of nowhere that she leaves the last few frontier festivals early because she is simply overwhelmed.  However, as in all good books about journeys, in the end she feels Laura has provided her a taste of her own “sweeter” world.  

For me, these dreams of a different life, become just that: dreams.  We may be able to change our external situation to match the description of the book, but the real “pioneer spirit” is something that must be found not in a historical reproduction or bought off a shelf.  Instead, it is discovered, as McClure realizes, in an evaluation of what the American spirit means to each one of us, even if those thoughts are not written out longhand in a cramped little cabin, but typed in a condo in a big city.  Both of these books gave me something to think about, but maybe that’s not the point either.  To find that spirit, one doesn’t need to analyze or evaluate, but just look with fresh eyes, over yet another horizon confident that a different (perhaps better) life will always be out there.     

  

Life's Surprises in Kerouac's On the Road

Okay, I’ll admit it: I prejudged the “Beat” Generation and all of its related literature before reading any of it, and before really knowing too much about it. This is kind of embarrassing to divulge, but I honestly associated them with the’60s hippie subculture; I didn’t really dislike any of it. It was more of an indifference, or the belief that “I know that ‘Beat’ writers and individuals greatly impacted the social, cultural, and literary scene of America during the mid 20th century, but I’m not really interested, so I’m just not going to go there. There are too many other works and movements that I would rather spend my time exploring.” I’ve even visited the Beat Museum in San Francisco with my family, and while I took it all in, I still wasn’t inspired enough to really explore it.


My hesitancy and disinterest was directly associated with some sort of image of the Beat players—Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, etc.—that I had somehow formed in my mind. I saw them clad in all black, in tight black turtlenecks and shades, smoking cigarettes, and spouting off some incoherent poetry. Don’t ask me how this impression of Beats took shape in my mind, but for whatever reason, it did. Obviously, my notion of the Beat Generation was off, which became ever so clear to me when I recently picked up and read Kerouac’s 1957 work On the Road. Now, this is my first foray into Beat literature, so I am by no means any scholar, but I am happy to explain how wrong I was about the Beats, or at least about Jack Kerouac and his 1957 piece.

Like all works of meaningful literature, there are many components that make it important and relevant. In this post, I am just going to focus on one aspect of On the Road that not only touched me, but that also enlightened me about what it means to be “Beat.” Instead of the abstract, alternative text I was expecting, I was pleasantly surprised by the energetic hope and genuine pleasure Sal (the character Kerouac is based on) seeks and has for the experiences his country offers. Whether these experiences involve jazz performances, long, intellectual discussions with Dean (or Cassady), or relishing the beauty and simplicity of the land, Kerouac essentially embraces the genuine and pure moments of life in On the Road. Sal reminds me that all experiences, particularly new experiences, make life more meaningful. Like in life, moments of sadness and pain intermix with moments joy and happiness; there are definitely sad and painful undertones in On the Road, but ultimately, the text is so much more hopeful than I expected it to be. Its excitement in the simplicities of life makes me excited just to be alive, especially with all the freedom I am so lucky to have.

So, I ask you, readers: what text pleasantly surprised you, and why? Also, what about life excites you? Kerouac shared his feelings; what are yours?

Old MacMelville has a farm? Eee-aye-eee-aye-OH?

April is normally known in literary circles as National Poetry Month but unofficially in my mind it has a second, even better title – Read and Grade Outside Month.  I always find that I am less productive in the spring but much more poetic / drowsy (which is not necessarily a bad thing). 

During those tentative spring weekends, at the first sign of glorious Bay Area weather, I sprint outdoors, laden with piles of paper, my trusty colorful felt pens and a tall glass of apple juice, vowing that the time away from my computer will turn me into a lean-mean grading machine.  Instead, I morph into some suburban sighing Wordsworth who spends all her time marveling at the flowers blooming, the sound of her neighbor’s wind-chimes tinkling softly in the distance, and the sweet-smelling breeze gently playing with her hair, knocking her long-forgotten papers to the ground.  It takes a good ten minutes of watching a spider crawl up a wall or staring down a squirrel trying to plant a peanut into a flowerbox to realize that my mind has wandered entirely away from my students’ own efforts at creation. 

But more than just grading outside, spring is the time when my reading habits change.  Just as I peel off my thick knitted sweaters to expose my luminescent arms and skim off the serious comments on their essays; once I see that first hint of green, I start searching for that perfect farming / outdoorsy work book to read.  In this mood over the past few years I’ve polished off works like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Kingsolver); Little Heathens (Kalish); The Maine Woods (Thoreau), and well, you get the general picture.  This year it’s been two books for me – The Blueberry Years by Jim Minick (recently finished) and The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball (just arrived today in the mail). 

Now, as much as I love to say my emphasis is eco. lit., anyone who knows me relatively well also realizes that I am not the world’s greatest expert on flora, fauna, camping, or farming, so obviously I’m not looking to brush up on my areas of expertise.  The biggest kitchen garden I’ve worked on so far fit into my parents’ cramped suburban backyard and the most exotic vegetable we ever planted was a string bean.  My idea of hiking is puffing along a beaten dirt path with clearly labeled signs and my favorite stories of “roughing it” involve going to a camp-ground that featured whirlpool tubs in the “rustic” heated cabins.  I couldn’t tell you how to use a fancy piece of farming equipment if my life depended on it, and yet, I can tell you plenty about the wonderful world of farming memoirs. 

I just can’t get enough of these stories of people who have turned their backs on the bland, season-suffering cities to dig their fingers, toes, and souls into the dirt to uncover a more satisfying and meaningful life.  I love to hear about the brush they clear, the acres they plant, the hours and hours of pruning / picking / cleaning / shelling / canning / cooking and selling that they devote to their produce.  The technical details are easily ignorable – the farming jargon, diagrams, and schematics roll past my eyes without even a blink – but I find something so comforting in the telling of these utterly different lives.  I see myself identifying with these “gentlemen farmers” (as one of these memoirists once called he and his fellow farmer-writers) even though I have never once tried one of the recipes so lovingly typed out in the final chapter. 

I think my “spring” love for this very specific genre can be summed up in a very specific story.  Jim Minick in The Blueberry Years reflects about the many people who came to his pick-your-own organic blueberry farm and what the bushes mean to the masses.  In one of his many short chapters, Minick writes about (what seems to be his favorite story) a mother who shows up early one day in the family sedan, breathing in the country air with eager lungs.  She explains to Jim that she drove her young daughter from several states away to his rural Virginia farm so she could have the chance to live out her favorite book – Blueberries for Sal.  He expected them to last quite a while but was surprised when they simply delighted in spending a few minutes losing themselves into this sweet little acreage.  It was enough for them to have a few blueberries, take a few pictures (sans bears), and head back home enriched by the “farm life” with their imagination to fill in the rest.    

Just like that little girl, it’s enough for me to head outside, read a few chapters about rich farmland, grade a few papers, listen to a few birds chirp and be enriched.  Right now, I don’t have the time or the inclination to fully grasp at this lifestyle, but my creativity can push me out of the suburban landscape into the world of bountiful acres and open sky.  After all, in the first signs of spring, what could be better than having the best of the natural / thinking world to fill in my own green space?  As long as I don’t get a farmer’s tan from my lounge-chair plowing, I’ll be perfectly happy; right after I finish this grading…