The Way West

I finally got back to the Pulitzer Project with The Way West, the 1950 fiction winner by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. The novel, which takes place in 1845, features Dick Summers, a mountain-man-turned-farmer who was also a character in the prequel, The Big Sky. Summers reminded me a great deal of Woodrow Call from Lonesome Dove, except a little more gregarious. Strong and silent, Summers is the type of character we've come to demand in a novel about the west.

Summers is asked to lead a wagon train from Missouri (near Independence) to Oregon. His wife has just died of fever and he misses his mountain days, so he agrees. The hardships of the pioneers and their conflicts with one another are detailed, as is the vast country through which they travel.

The captain of the wagon train is actually a guy named Tadlock, who is full of self-importance and one putrid idea (shooting all the dogs on the wagon train, wanting to carry on business as usual instead of tending to a dying man) after another. Not too far down the trail, realization dawns on the other pioneers that Tadlock is ill-equipped to lead and Lije Evans, a likable giant of a man is elected to take over and grows in confidence about his leadership ability as he ably handles several life-and-death situations. He and Dick Summers also have a fine bromance.

I was surprised and delighted with Guthrie's flash of sly humor in the chapter where the all-male council of the wagon train gets together and debates whether it's right to ask the womenfolk to cook with buffalo and cow chips. It's a no-brainer because they're crossing the Great Plains and wood as a fuel source is in scant supply but there's still delicacy and formality amongst these rough and travel-weary pioneers. When one of the council, a man named McBee (who is the forerunner of what would one day be "trailer trash") dares to refer to the substance in question as "shit", the others recoil from him like characters in a Jane Austen novel.

Sometimes Guthrie's prose gets a little purply as he gets caught up in describing the scenery on the way to Oregon, but one can hardly blame him since the pioneers are seeing views they'd never seen before. Another tiny complaint that I have is that some of the characters are briefly introduced and followed then only seen again rarely, in passing. However, there are two sharply drawn minor characters. One is Curtis Mack, a philanderer who seduces then abandons the teenaged Mercy McBee. Mack is a spineless, gutless bastard but he knows he's loathsome and struggles mightily with his shame and guilt. The other is Judith Fairman, whose misery from being pregnant and on the trail increases tenfold to include grief and remorse when her understandably overprotective behavior contributes to her small son's fatal accident. By the way, the son's name is Tod, which is the German word for death. Coincidence or Guthrie serving up some grim humor?

My favorite thing about The Way West is the sun-baked (western version of 'hard-boiled') dialogue. Here's the taciturn Dick Summers talking about getting the wagon train across the treacherous Snake River: "It ain't easy, but it ain't beyond doing. We'll get it done."

The ending of the novel was the prose equivalent of the ending of one of those 1950s Cinemascope westerns with a big rousing triumphant narration of Lije Evans' thoughts as he gets his first gander at Oregon. One can almost hear the orchestra music swelling, blaring out Aaron Copeland and see the huge yellow leathery-looking letters of the end credits rolling. It came off a little forced.

I was expecting to like The Way West more than I did, but in retrospect, it might have been better to read The Big Sky and The Way West together as if the two books were one big story. I'm almost sure that Guthrie won the Pulitzer on the strength of both novels combined.

The Way West was made into a movie in 1967 with Robert Mitchum as Summers, Kirk Douglas as Tadlock, Richard Widmark as Lije Evans and a very young Sally Field (pre-Flying Nun) as Mercy McBee and was directed by Andrew V. MacLagen who directed Shenandoah (1965) which is one of my all time-favorites. Although The Way West received rather tepid reviews, I'm intrigued by that casting and would like very much to see it for myself.

Virginia Woolf, Reading and Me

Strange as it may seem, I never really thought of Virginia Woolf as a reader before now. Writer? Yes. Intellectual? Yes. Innovator? Yes. Fragile? Yes. Reader? Not really. I was aware and applauded the fact that she loved Middlemarch and vaguely aware that she wrote essays about books but Virginia Woolf, reader? Wow. I had enough "disconnect" to fill a silo.

According to biographer Hermione Lee, "The confident enjoyment of the intimacy which comes from reading is one of the main sources of happiness in Virginia Woolf's life. Reading, quite as much as writing is her life's pleasure and her life's work. She is always comparing reading to other forms of behavior and experience -- relationships, walking, travelling, dreaming, desire, memory, illness. When she writes about reading she makes it overlap with those other things. Often her female characters...will look up over the pages of a book or a newspaper at the beginning of their train of thought."

Yep, there you have it. That's the litmus test that decides which people merely 'like to read' and which ones are Capital-R-Readers.

I'm going to quote Hermione Lee a great deal in this post because she sums up so beautifully. (Between Lee and Woolf, I need not utter a word, but I'll jump in when I can't contain myself any longer.)

"[Woolf's] reading and re-reading she does in the transitional years between Night And Day and Jacob's Room -- Hardy, Proust, the Russians, Chaucer -- is as important to her life story as any of her relationships. During this time, she evolved a way of writing about her reading somewhere between notebook, diary, fiction and criticism." In her essays, Woolf was very much about having a 'conversation' with her readers rather than just imparting information and her opinion.

.We book bloggers owe a debt of gratitude to Virginia Woolf for pioneering this style. We not only read and review, we notice our patterns of reading and often a playfulness and wonderful expanse of imagination emerges. For example, the memes about reading that we circulate, the twice-a-year Readathon and the Bookword Game in which we coin new words to describe our reading experiences more fully seem to have been influenced by Virginia Woolf who would have loved our community. I know she'd be 128 years old and probably not alive even if she hadn't decided to take that final journey to the Ouse River, but I wish she could come back now with her superb intellect intact and be a hella book blogger. Her delight would be my delight.

Woolf never seemed to tire of examining the act of reading. It was so many things to her: A way to be "steeped in imagination" (trust an Englishwoman to come up with such an evocative phrase that would link reading and tea!), a way to receive "shocks of emotion", escape, release, addiction, erotic rapture (feeling as if she's "getting full" of a book), vigorous exercise (as in reading Shakespeare), sunbathing (which is what she felt reading essays was most like "a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification of life - a basking, with every faculty alert, in the sun of pleasure.") She also enjoyed it when she could find a book to match her mood exactly.

Lee also suggests that "the pleasure of reading was an act of love." Those elements of "longing for loss of self" are present. Also, being a serious reader means always being involved in a book which means "a perpetual marriage, a perpetual union."

Woolf says it best: What a vast fertility of pleasure books hold for me! I went in & found the table laden with books. I looked in & sniffed them all. I could not resist carrying this one off and broaching it. I think I could happily live here and read for ever.

I wish that she had noted which book she carried off so I could have a complete picture of her happily making her way to her study or her garden with the book under her arm. The book-sniffing was nice, too -- so unexpected, so fun, so human and so unlike my preconceptions of the formidable Virginia Woolf.

Getting overwhelmed by such a myriad of emotions and sensations would be so easy, but Virginia Woolf always had the author in her sights. In a 1926 lecture entitled "How To Read A Book", Woolf advises her audience to "track your author down", see him "leaving things out on purpose" or "using certain words." She advises the reader to become "the writer's accomplice."

I was so pleased to learn that Virginia Woolf did not annotate her books. She felt that annotating forced one's reading onto a future reader. Instead, she kept reading notebooks. Lee describes these notebooks lovingly and meticulously: "She ruled margin the the notebooks, put the number of the page she was referring to in the margin and wrote next to that the quotation or comment." Lee also notes that the reading notebooks are "a mixed bag" -- on the backs of pages she might have a map she made planning Mrs. Dalloway's walk in London, notes on writing, sketches for changes to hers and Leonard's house and even paw prints from their pets. The sign of a mess or disorganized mind? Hardly -- another example of how Woolf wanted reading, writing and life to infiltrate each other.

When it comes to discussing the reading process, Virginia Woolf seems so generous in sharing how she made meaning out of her reading. When books were finished, there was the process of "making it whole" in her mind. There would be that moment where there was "a flash of understanding" and another moment when the complete understanding of the book would "float to the top of the mind". After that, "the effort to communicate about the book could begin, and the intimate union between book and reader opened out into comparisons and contexts."

Virginia Woolf's father chose not to send his daughters to school, so Virginia and her sister Vanessa were educated at home in her father's vast library. Throughout her life, Woolf would continue to self-educate and set herself some strenuous reading lists, but she was not a book snob. She argued that reading "The Greats" would be "too isolating" (which is a problem that I have with the slavish following of books like 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die). According to Woolf, we also need trashy novels "obscure memoirs, mediocre biographies...trivial ephemeral books." Woolf added significantly at one point in her journal: "I ransack public libraries & find them full of sunk treasure." I believe she would completely understand and get a kick out of my university library with its quirky English selections.

For Woolf, everything was reading and reading was everything. Books comforted, frustrated, changed and it was all part of one big patchwork. Virginia Woolf probably had to have it that way. For those of us who feel passionate about reading, leaving that world for 'real life' can be an unpleasant jolt. Wouldn't someone as sensitive and finely-grained as Virginia Woolf have felt the strain of going back and forth much more keenly?

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf (biography) - Hermione Lee. 1996.

I was worrying most dreadfully and counter-productively about writing a review of this biography. I always get intimidated when encountering awesomeness. In this case, a genius subject and an equally genius biographer. You know the feeling, right? How dare my slovenly unkempt knuckles-dragging-the-ground-excuse-for-an-intellect DARE even breathe upon these pages or dream of attempting a summing up? Clearly, nothing was happening at the computer, so I went shopping.

Because I live in a studio apartment and my bed is so much in evidence, I'm even more drawn than usual to the linen sections of department stores. Still fretting about the review, I rounded the corner into the housewares section of E-Mart and encountered full-on an endcap display for MRS DALLOWAY -- obviously the name of a bedding designer/manufacturer here in Korea. (Except for the above mentioned name, there was Hangul all over the package, which wasn't really helpful for me.)

I laughed and shook my head. The colors and designs were mediocre at best, but I couldn't help feeling a strong pull to buy the best comforter of the bunch and bundle it home. I resisted (for the moment), but at the same time, my apprehension about writing that review mysteriously dropped from me. When I got home, I knew exactly what to do.

Virginia Woolf is a Chunky Monkey, weighing in at almost 900 pages, but the structure is exquisite. Hermione Lee divided the biography into four chronologically ordered parts ranging the length of Woolf's life (1882-1941). In each of those sections are roughly a dozen chapters grouped into subjects, people and events that were important in her life. For example: Houses, Marriage, War, Thoby, Friendship, Leonard, Bloomsbury, Madness, etc.

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In each of these chapters Lee is free to minutely observe aspects of VW's life, often using the same methods Woolf used in her own novels, essays and journals. There is a feeling of looseness and fluidity that is satisfying to Woolf fans, but the chapter headings and the sections provide that overall structure that fussy biography readers need and crave. The arrangement --a compromise, perhaps--? is so simple that it's brilliant. Readers can see Woolf and her world in pieces and all together at the same time. Virginia Woolf enjoyed biographies. Hermione Lee's would not have disappointed her one bit.

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For me, the show-stopping chapter in the biography was the one entitled Reading. Totally beguiled, I read it over and over again at least five times. Reading was an integral part of Woolf's life (maybe that's the reason she's usually looking down in photographs -- she wants to be back at her book!) and her insights are so amazing and fresh. I was stunned at the level of connection I now feel with her. The topic richly deserves a post of its own, which will be coming up soon.

Library Loot: Carpe Libri Maximus

There's something about Monday that makes you want to kick it in the teeth...or lower, take your pick. There's no way of getting around it; you must go through it. I cushioned the impact by taking a little side trip to the library instead of eating lunch. I must have been in sore need of comfort because I came away with 7 books. Here's what I found:

1. A Glossary of Faulkner's South - Calvin S. Brown. A nifty little book that explains all that funny Southern talk in Faulkner's novels. There's also a map of Yoknapatawpha County. I grabbed this to show it to Faulkner Guy, but leafing through the glossary makes me want to put aside my differences with "Brother Bill" and try reading him again.

2. Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own - edited by Sharon Sloan Fiffer and Steve Fiffer. Several writers take a room or a part of a house and write an essay about it. For example, Richard Bausch takes the porch, Jane Smiley takes the bathroom and Lynda Barry takes the teenage boy's bedroom.

3. Muddy Cup: A Dominican Family Comes of Age in a New America - Barbara Fischkin. Pretty much what the title says. Based on a series of feature articles that appeared in Newsday during the late 1980s. Paging through, I noticed that the style was fiction-like, which produced a few glimmers of irritation. Hopefully that will pass.

4. Leaving Pipe Shop: Memories of Kin - Deborah E. McDowell. Deborah McDowell grew up near Birmingham, Alabama during the late 50s and early 60s, but her memoir doesn't focus the civil rights movement or Martin Luther King. Instead, McDowell focuses mainly on her family, neighborhood and church. "Pipe Shop" is the nickname for the part of Birmingham she was from.

5. The Vicar of Wakefield - Oliver Goldsmith. My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm (who should be happy with me, but alas, she never is) led me to this shelf. Yes, she plucked the book, but I read the first page and was charmed by the warm, witty and engaging tone of the narrator, who is presumably the title character. I got kind of a Jane Austen-y vibe. Cool. This should be interesting.

6. Games Authors Play - Peter Hutchinson. Have you ever thought that an author was toying with you? Yanking your chain? Flexing his literary muscles and kicking sand in your 97-pound weakling reader face? I think it all the time! So did Virginia Woolf, by the way. Mindful of Woolf's advice that we should draw a bead on what authors are "up to", I checked out this book.

7. Laughing Matters: Humour in the Language Classroom - Peter Medgyes. A resource book dealing with humo(u)r in the language classroom. There are over 100 activities that allegedly insert some fun into classes while "still being grounded in respected language learning theory". Oh hell, I'll try anything.

A Million Miles From Main Street

Dodsworth, a 1929 novel by Sinclair Lewis made my dreadful DNF list for 2009. I didn't abandon it intentionally; I merely checked out too many books in that first flush of excitement over finally having a library again. After the first couple of chapters life and other books took over. Before I knew it, a month was up and Dodsworth was due for return. Damn.

Fast-forward one year and I've finally got the book read and enjoyed it tremendously. I'm smiting my forehead a bit. How did I ever abandon this terrific novel? Dodsworth is vying with Elmer Gantry for the top spot on my "Sinclair Lewis favorites" list. To my surprise, I'm falling in lit-love all over again with Sinclair Lewis.

But how much of a surprise is it? I've been wild about Harry (Lewis' first name) since Dr. Larry Shanahan assigned Main Street in his American Novel class many years ago. Believe it or not, I've only just now puzzled out the wherefore of my devotion: I'm firmly convinced that I love him because he's like..well, if Mark Twain and Edith Wharton had gotten together and made a baby it would have been Sinclair Lewis. (Come to think of it, Samuel Clemens and Lewis were both redheads.)

OK, on to the novel: After 20 years of marriage, respected automobile industrialist Sam Dodsworth (Sam? Named after Clemens, perhaps?) succumbs to his beautiful and spoiled wife Fran's pleadings for a long-term trip to Europe. At first the quintessentially American Sam feels gauche and out of place. Fran doesn't do anything to lesson this feeling with her catty comments about his shortcomings and her incessant flirting with European playboys. Gradually, Sam comes to understand that he's experiencing Europe on a deeper, more intellectual level than Fran with her snooty superficial knowledge and her transparent, grasping desire to shake off her Midwestern background and become some sort of titled aristocrat, no matter how tenuous the connection. Sam's ability to perceive things clearly and thoughtfully clashes again and again with the shallow Fran's increasing monomania which is driven in part by her fear of getting older.

Lewis not only explores the breakdown of Sam's and Fran's relationship, he examines every type of expatriate that Sam meets during his travels. Being an expat myself, these types were all immediately recognizable from the newly-arrived who are deliriously happy to find corn fritters in a city like Paris to the jovial types who like to razz the natives in the time-honored tradition of Innocents Abroad to the other end of the spectrum -- those who would like to pretend altogether that they're not even citizens of their native country and enjoy criticizing it harshly. Often, one will see expats going through several of these stages if they're abroad long enough.

Lewis is every bit as good as Edith Wharton when portraying all varieties of expats, but like Mark Twain, he sometimes gets carried away and likes to hyuk it up too much. Also, some of his characters like to make speeches. I was relieved when a journalist acquaintance of Sam's, Ross Ireland disappeared from the novel after a long, tiresome monologue about his reverse culture shock after returning to New York after living in Europe for several years. Another minor complaint: Sam Dodsworth is an intelligent man, certainly "not a Babbitt" like his fellow townsperson of that name, but he's a little too well-read for a businessman from Zenith. Although I enjoyed all of those delectable literature references, it was a little annoying to see Sinclair Lewis peeking through so conspicuously.

Sam's marvelous character and growth is so often overshadowed by his conflict with Fran. He shows an incredible capacity for swallowing the bullshit she serves up to him in humongous portions. Happily, he eventually wakes up and smells it. The waking is slow, but Sam Dodsworth's solid, fair-minded Everyman has the reader rooting for him all the way.

Fran Dodsworth, for all her idiotic villainy, is captivating. I kept reading eagerly to see how she could possibly outdo herself. Of all the characters, she's the most modern, but not in a good way. She'd fit in so well on some of the triter reality shows on television -- something like Paris Hilton's BBF. Clear-eyed, straight talking Edith Cortright, the American widow of an English diplomat in whom Sam finds a kindred spirit seems to be modelled slightly after journalist Dorothy Thompson, Lewis' second wife and to whom Dodsworth is dedicated.

Lewis isn't really the zinger type, so I was pleased and truly tickled when he has Sam (who's starting to get wise to Fran's supposed level of sophistication) thinking this smartassed barb:

"...Fran had an unsurpassed show-window display but not much on the shelves inside."

The following quote is Lewis rather than Dodsworth musing, and it feels like a perfect merging of Twain and Wharton:

"Most of those afflicted with the habit of traveling merely lie about its pleasures and profits. They do not travel to see anything, but to get away from themselves, which they never do...they travel to escape thinking...just as they might play solitaire, work crossword puzzles, look at the cinema or busy themselves with any other dreadful activity."

The ending of Dodsworth is quite satisfying. I really shouldn't spoil anything, but I love the way Sam Dodsworth grows a pair at the eleventh hour and I love the irony of the two main characters ending up where the other envisioned being all along. Speaking of the ending, I don't do this with other authors, but for some reason, I always look to see which character Lewis gives the last word.

Looking at Lewis' canon, I'm disappointed with myself for not having read more. I've read and enjoyed Main Street, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Ann Vickers and now Dodsworth. All are worthy of a reread. I want to keep the love going by cracking open my new copy of It Can't Happen Here. I'm also pretty sure that I can find a copy of Babbitt easily. I hardly ever see his later novels like Kingsblood Royal or Cass Timberlane, but I want to read them as well.

Finally, Dodsworth was filmed in 1936 with Walter Huston in the title role, Ruth Chatterton as Fran and Mary Astor as Edith Cortright. I've read that it's a good adaptation. I'm hoping to track it down soon.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

I find Zora Neale Hurston so fascinating and I loved this novel. It's difficult to know which one to talk about first.

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According to the introduction to the novel by Henry Louis Gates, Zora Neale Hurston was a well-known and respected novelist and essayist for a couple of decades, but the top male writers of that time like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison were critical of her work. It didn't help that many of her male characters weren't portrayed in a flattering light. Furthermore, Hurston dared to mention that prejudice about skin color existed among blacks. These things certainly rankled, and Wright took Hurston to task for writing the shuck and jive kind of stuff that condescending white readers might expect from African-American writers while he and Ellison and others were writing seriously about the horror of being a person of color in America.

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What Wright & Co. failed to grasp was that Hurston's work had a scholarly basis. She was an ethnographer -- an anthropologist specializing in dialects and folklore. She studied at Columbia University with Franz Boas, one of the pioneers of anthropology. One of Hurston's classmates was Margaret Mead, who would go on to do some noteworthy cultural studies. Hurston would go on to do research in the south and in places like Haiti, where she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937.

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Unfortunately, Hurston and her work fell into obscurity, probably because she didn't fit in with writers like Wright, Ellison and James Baldwin. Late in her life, she wrote freelance articles and worked as a maid and at other odd jobs. She died penniless in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave. About 15 years later, Alice Walker, who viewed Hurston as a spiritual mentor and muse found the grave and put up a marker. (It's interesting to note that another Harlem Renaissance writer, Nella Larsen, suffered a similar fate and has only recently been rediscovered.)

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Their Eyes Were Watching God is told in flashback. A woman named Janie comes walking back into her small hometown after a significant absence. She walks past all the neighbors who are on their front porches gawking at her. She goes into her house and shuts the door and her best friend, Phoeby goes to check on Janie, bring her some supper and yes, find out what's been going on. Janie uses this opportunity to tell Phoeby her life story. (This device seemed a little artificial, but it really works.)

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From the first, Janie had an idea that marriage could be love, romance, sharing mutual adventures, etc. Her grandmother who brought her up and has had an impossibly hard life tries to discourage that type of thinking. When she realizes that her death is imminent, she "protects" Janie by marrying her off to an older man who basically just wants her as a farm hand. After a year or so, Janie runs off with an admirer, Joe, just as the husband asks for help in moving a manure pile.

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Joe and Janie move to Eatonville where Joe opens a store. Hurston's portrayal of the culture in that town is rich and humorous and quite attractive to Janie, but Joe wants her to be his trophy wife and no joining in the chat and fun that goes on right outside the store. After 20 grim years of marriage, Joe dies, leaving Janie well-off. Many men want to marry her, or as she tartly notes, her bank account, but she takes up with Tea Cake, a young harmonica-playing drifter 10 or 12 years her junior.

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Even though the couple have several problems -- Tea Cake gambles, drinks, occasionally beats Janie and both have jealousy issues -- Janie finally feels she's found the marriage she always wanted, and she's got a co-adventurer as well as a lover. Janie and Tea Cake go "on the muck" in the Florida Everglades. Everything goes well until the Okeechobee hurricane. During this part of the novel that Hurston's dramatic storytelling gifts are magnificently showcased.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God is a powerful book. There are one or two scenes in Eatonville in which I felt that Hurston the ethnographer got the better of Hurston the storyteller and it slowed the story down a bit, but that's a very minor gripe.

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Reading this novel makes me so glad that it (and its author) was rescued from near-obscurity and raised to its proper place as a classic American novel during the late 1960s and early 70s. I was also pleased to see how profoundly Alice Walker was influenced by Zora Neale Hurston. The Color Purple with its rich use of dialect, strong female characters (as well as some scoundrelly male characters) and epic storytelling is a perfect homage to Zora Neale Hurston.

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Would I read more of Hurston? I'm almost sure that nothing could top Their Eyes Were Watching God but I'm eager to read more, especially some of her essays and Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston's 1942 autobiography.

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Because I read this book during the week of February 14, I'll always associate Their Eyes Were Watching God with Valentine's Day and count Janie and Tea Cake among my favorite couples in literature.

It's Tuesday, Where Are You?

Actually, it's well into Wednesday here, but I think there's still a few small drops of Tuesday left in the US and Canada.

I always follow this feature at An Adventure In Reading and post my answer in the comment section. This is the first time I've featured it here. Why now? Work (wearing hobnailed boots and pungent socks) is kicking my bookwormy, bloggy ass. I can't seem to finish any of the three books I've got going or put together a halfway decent review of what I have finished lately. Then there's also the ongoing internet service problem I'm having at home which will be funny someday, but Not. Right. Now.

OK, enough whining. This isn't about me. As most of you know, the answer to "It's Tuesday...Where are you?" is: Where are your characters? What are they doing? I'm not sure, but I think I can pull myself together enough to report on what's going on with them:

1. The Way West (novel) -A.B. Guthrie, Jr. So far, a bunch of townspeople (mostly men) are standing in front of a general store somewhere in Missouri, weighing the pros and cons of hitting the trail for Oregon...wonder how that's gonna turn out?

2. Virginia Woolf (biography) - Hermione Lee. Virginia Stephen has just married Leonard Woolf and she's hard at work on the nth draft of her first novel, The Voyage Out, but she's feeling a little stressed out and run-down. Here comes her nineteenth nervous breakdown.

3. Dodsworth (novel) - Sinclair Lewis. Automobile magnate Sam Dodsworth is in Spain with his fortysomething wife, Fran, who is morphing in front of his startled eyes from a respectable Midwestern matron into a status-hungry trollop with a penchant for gigolos.

What's up with your characters today?

Blogiversary

Happy Birthday, Blob!

Oh Henry

This day brings you a reformed bookworm. I'm never going to say bad things about Henry James again.

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Last weekend, I read The Turn of the Screw and it was amazingly, jaw-droppingly good. It was brilliant. I'm practically on my knees in bookworm reverence at how one can read this short novel with "double vision". James wrote it so neatly that it can be read as a ghost story or a psychological novel. Very cool! I keep dipping into it again and again to examine different scenes, reading them one way and another. It's like having a new (educational) toy, or one of those optical illusion pictures in which you see the old lady one way and the young lady another way.

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Henry James' brambly sentences are what make it all work perfectly. He creates a kind of sickening (vertiginousness, claustrophobic) atmosphere that I've also experienced while reading another great horror novel, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. (I'm almost positive now that she had James in mind when writing that book.) Also, the reader is cutting through that thicket of words, trying to make sense of what's going on just as the main character is and while that's going on, James has been busy leaving little clues...oh, it's too marvelous. If you haven't read it yet, you must. Even if you're intimidated by Henry James -- like I've been all these years.

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Nothing beats that singular bookworm rush of falling in LitLove again.

Can't Count This?

During the first week of school, I visited Faulkner Guy's office to chat with him and see all the great books, posters and games he picked up during his winter vacation in the United States. During this visit, I "read" an intriguing book titled Zoom by Hungarian-born illustrator Istvan Banyai.

The word "read" is in quotation marks because Zoom is a picture book in its purest form. No words whatsoever. The concept is a camera that zooms out and out and out. I hope I'm not spoiler-ing when I tell you that the first image is a close-up of a rooster's comb and the last image is outer space.

Right before I left, I rummaged for a pen in my bag. "Who's the author of Zoom, again? I need to add this to my list."

Faulkner Guy gave me a puzzled look. "Your 'books read' list for the year?"

"Yes."

"You can't count that!"

"Sure, I can! It's a book, isn't it?"

"It doesn't have any words."

"But it's cool! The coolness factor makes up for the wordless factor!"

"You can't count a book that has no words. You read it in about 5 minutes."

The argument ended because I had to go to my Intermediate Conversation class, but it still rankles. Gertrude Stein famously said "A rose is a rose is a rose," but I'm sure that if she'd been thinking clearly and soberly that day she would have said "A book is a book is a book."

I didn't add Zoom to my reading journal. Not yet. Maybe Faulkner Guy has a point. It doesn't have any words, so I didn't really read it.

Of course, I didn't "read" (or "re-read") Great Expectations last month. But it has words which the entirely crushworthy Hugh Laurie read so engagingly.

What about my reading list? Do I really mean "books read" or "books consumed"?

Am I too eager to inflate my totals and reach triple digits by December? Am I too greedy about wanting to add another international author to my reading stats?

Last evening, I discussed this with Alex from the Cracked Spinz book group. After listening thoughtfully and asking a couple of questions, he reminded me of the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words and said that I should certainly count Zoom. Of course, he was in the process of admiring my bookshelves and picking out a few to borrow, so was he truly objective?

I've decided to take this reading experience and put it to a vote. Shall I count it or not? Who's right -- Faulkner Guy or me?

I suppose if I get no comments at all, then that counts as wordlessness -- which, given the nature of this debate, might be interpreted as one for my side. Take that, Faulkner Guy!

February: Reading But Not Loving

In the case of these two reads, I felt love quite often, but it was like the love in tennis. Zero.

The Foreign Student - Susan Choi. The story takes place in 1955 in a small southern university town. The title character, Chuck (Chang) Ahn, has just come from Korea to be a university student. Determined to succeed, he is also afflicted with dark memories of the recent war in his country. He is also inexplicably drawn to Katherine who is dealing with her own past.

Choi's explanation of how the Korean Conflict began is as lucid as any I've read in fiction or even nonfiction. Her research was thorough and well-done. One of the characters, Charles Addison, could have justly been presented as an unsympathetic monster, but he emerges as human, sometimes kind and even has a likable, slightly rakish charm. There's another minor character -- Chang's best friend who becomes a Communist -- that is written interestingly, but he disappears from the novel fairly quickly. There's also a chapter in which Chuck is employed at a book bindery in Chicago that is grimly funny. A batty old woman who works with Chuck always tells him to be on the lookout for money hidden in books. When he fails to find any, she accuses him of quietly pocketing his findings, so he has to plant a few bills here and there himself to keep from falling under suspicion.

Okay, that's everything I liked about the book. Now here comes the loathing:

• The dramatic story of Chang Ahn's experiences during the war are told in chunked-up flashbacks that are buried under an Anne Rivers Siddons-like present-day story. The effect is muffled and annoying. It's like some of those later Elvis Presley recordings in which they bury The King's vocals way down in the mix underneath the cheap blare of instrumental brass and shrill background singers.
  
• The situation between Charles Addison and Katherine is more icky than dramatic.
  
• Katherine and Chuck don't seem to have any chemistry at all. Their scenes together feel like sausage being forced through the grinder and into the casing that constitutes the plot and setting.
  
• Katherine and Chuck are too much in their own heads for too long at a stretch to make for interesting reading.
  
• Glee, Katherine's southern belle mother starts out as a giddy Amanda Wingfield type, then after she falls ill, she drops the dizzy act and morphs into something straight out of Steel Magnolias. I'd already built up a huge cache of contempt for her because of the way she treated the younger Katherine, so when she showed up in the novel again after a long interval, I was resistant to her new, slightly more sympathetic personality.
  
• There's no feeling of being in a foreign country during the scenes when Chang is in Korea. The author never mixes in Korean words. This would have come in handy at one point when she's bumbling all over herself trying to describe hanbok, the traditional Korean costume. I'm pretty sure that most Koreans wouldn't describe this garment as "loose pajama-like trousers".
  
• I don't know if Choi was trying to be profound or cute or what, but both of the men that Katherine loves (Charles Addison, Chuck/Chang Ahn) have the same initials. I half-dreaded all the way through the book that one of the characters would notice this and lapse into deep philosophical thought, but mercifully, Choi just let it lay there.
  
• Finally, (this isn't the author's fault) the cover for this copy isn't captivating at all. It's pretty in a prim, middle-aged sort of way. It made me think of Jan Karon and I don't want to.
  
  
  Wicked - Gregory Maguire. A parallel novel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz about the life of Elphaba, better known as the Wicked Witch of the West. There is also a great deal of political and social commentary about the state of things in Oz. In addition, there are numerous discussions about what constitutes good and evil.
  
  
  
  
  I would like very much to see the musical of the same name based on this book. I believe that I would enjoy it in that form immensely. I would rather watch this musical every day of the week than have to read the book ever again -- except for the first 150 pages. During that part of the novel which describes Elphaba's early life, I was entertained. After that, the fun packed its bags and my reading experience began to resemble wading through partially dried concrete.

......................................

• For reasons that no one in the story could fathom, Elphaba was born with green skin. In case you forgot that detail, Maguire reminds the reader on almost every page. Guess what? She's green! Her skin is green. She's green-skinned. Emerald. Celadon. Jade. Kiwi. By the way...she's GREEN!!! I have an idea for a drinking game...Wicked is available on audiobook, isn't it?

• I hope I'm not scarred for life after reading that one uh, romantic scene between Elphaba and her Winkie paramour, Fiyero, but if I am, I guess it's a good thing that I'm at midlife. Arrgh. Ewww. Bad visuals. I need to go scrub my brain.
  
• There are too many long and boring philosophical and political discussions among the characters. Zzzzzzzz. Worse yet, Maguire simply pressed "repeat". This is one of the reasons I believe the musical would be superior to the book.
  
• I find it difficult to reconcile the Witch with which we're all familiar with the one presented in the novel. It feels like pieces from two different puzzles in the same box, but Maguire seems to think that if he keeps valiantly bashing away he's going to create a full, cohesive picture.
  
• Maguire has that tin ear for dialogue that I noticed with James Cameron's script while watching Titanic. For example, the latter part of this novel is set in the first years of the 20th century. One minute, the characters are speaking in a stiff, mannered style. In the next minute, someone uses a phrase from a later time. I'm only complaining a little, though. The rest of the narrative and dialogue was so boring that the anachronisms gave me something to help me regain focus -- even if only for a second -- before I began nodding and drooling again.
  
• Except for Elphaba, it's difficult to distinguish which character is speaking. They're all pretty full of hot wind -- more than enough to get Dorothy and Toto back to Kansas.

Happy Loot Year

I hadn't visited my library since the end of December and I missed it so much. I made a point of visiting on the first day back to work. Good move -- it was a sane little island in the frenzy, chaos and cluster...stuff that is all part of a new semester.


Such a long break from my beloved doh-suh-gwan was actually a bad idea because I'm slated to read 50 library books this year in J. Kaye's challenge. I should have sense enough to be worried but it's the new year and I'm all shiny-new optimistic that I can get it back to good by December 31. (I'm also keeping it real. I'm keeping in mind that if I fall short in the waning hours, there's a nice assortment of picture books nestled on those shelves.)


No picture books yet, though. Here's what I kicked off the year with:


1. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James. My Tough & Cool Inner Bookworm frogmarched me past the 19th century guys. Hiya, Melville. Hiya, Dickens. Guess what I did on my winter vacation?


2. Fitzgerald and the Influence of Film: The Language of Cinema in the Novels - Gautam Kundu. I never connected F. Scott with cinema before, although apparently many others have. Should be interesting.


3. Dodsworth - Sinclair Lewis. This was an DNF from 2009. I'm not gonna mistreat old Red any more. Gonna get 'er done.


4. Virginia Woolf - Hermione Lee. All the talk about Woolf on the other blogs has made me ravenous to read this biography. I passed it up for a whole year but no more.


The self-checkout machine has gotten chattier. She used to say Please swipe your ID card and Please place the book as shown but *now* she also says Please press 'continue' or 'end' after I scan each book. I was all smiling and obliging and saying "Okay, here you go!" It's almost like we're getting to be friends. If I only knew her name.

February: Reading & Reviewing Part 1

Because of my little slump, I only read 9 books this month, but I gave myself a double-shot of perspective. Looking at last year's journal entries, I saw that I'd only read 8 books by the end of February. I'm now at 22 books, and I didn't get there until April 17. Triple digits can happen again.

Even though vacation has ended and I'm back to serving up grammar and vocabulary Monday-Friday, March promises to be a great month. I have some inviting gaps in my schedule that dovetail nicely with my plans to get back to procuring library loot. I'm looking out the window now at my library. It's about 6:30 pm as I write this and that weird wedge-shaped thing is glowing with a soft green light as if tenderly beckoning me.

Cracked Spinz will resume meetings after a long hiatus and maybe we'll get some new members. The university hired about 15 new teachers. Here's hoping that some of them will be bookworms. Anyway, here's what I read this month:

1. Wild Swans (memoir) - Jung Chang. Not only is this a memoir, it's a history of 20th century China seen through the eyes of Jung Chang, her mother and her grandmother. It was heartbreaking to read about how fervently her parents believed in the Communist Party and their shock and disbelief at how Mao revealed himself over time to be nothing more than an evil despot. All of their dedication and sacrifice came to deep and profound loss and grief. I knew almost nothing about the Cultural Revolution, so this book was an eye-opener. If you get a chance, read it. You won't find a more incredible or well-told story. I'm really glad that my co-worker Canadian Cool loaned me her copy.

2. Great Expectations (audiobook) - Charles Dickens, Hugh Laurie. I won't say that I'm now an audiobook fan, but I truly enjoyed this one. My dearest crush Hugh Laurie narrates masterfully, and creates a wide and pleasing variety of voices and accents for each of his characters. Surprisingly, his best one (and the most moving) was for Miss Havisham. GE was the book that finally made me fond of Dickens, so I was pleased to revisit Pip and his world.

3. Bud, Not Buddy (novel) - Christopher Paul Curtis. This outstanding 1999 juvenille novel won the 2000 Newbery Award as well as the Coretta Scott King book award. It's 1936 and 10-year-old Bud (not Buddy) Caldwell has been in and out of orphanages and foster homes since his mother died when he was 6 years old. After he's put in another terrible foster home, he runs away and decides to hit the road and look for his real father. Going by a flyer that his mother saved, Bud is under the impression that a musician called Herman E. Calloway, who is the leader of a band called "The Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!!" is his real father.

Curtis based some of the story on his colorful family history, and obviously did some great research about the time period. Bud and the other characters sound authentically 1930s. My favorite scene in the book involves Bud, who is on the road, lining up late at a soup kitchen for a free breakfast and being denied access. A couple with children see his plight and pretend that he's theirs. The scene is written for comedic effect, but there's a poignancy to it, too. I'm eager to read Curtis' other novels, particularly 1963 - The Watsons Go To Birmingham.

To be continued...

February: Buying

4 books this month. Half of January's total, although it could have just as easily been 5 books. Who am I kidding? It could have just as easily been 20 books.

1. Effi Briest - Theodor Fontane. I just read about this 1894 German novel about adultery in The Rough Guide To Classic Novels, one of last month's purchases. New book.

2. The Foreign Student - Susan Choi. The March book for Talya's book group. New book.

3. Who Ate Up All The Shinga? - Park Wan-Seo. Big score! Park's autobiographical novel of growing up during the Japanese occupation had been eluding me for several months and countless bookstores. New book -- hardcover and very expensive, but at least I'll finally find out what "shinga" is. Then I'll go out and eat up some, perhaps all of it. Aren't I lucky to be in Korea?

4. It Can't Happen Here - Sinclair Lewis. There's no way I could leave this book behind. Since 1981, I've had a fairly continuous book crush on Sinclair Lewis. I hope to one day read his entire canon. Even better, this 1935 satirical novel about fascism in the United States was on the bargain rack. New book, yes, but I got out of Bandi & Luni's having spent only 5 bucks, which is almost like getting a book for free over here.

It's just as I suspected. If I have to confess my purchases, I'm much less lightly to trip the lit fantastic all the way to the cash register. Let's see how that theory holds up in the months ahead.