And Pass The Brie While You're At It

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For some reason, summer seems to be the time that I start feeling beautifully mad and Frenchified. Was it only three summers ago that I couldn't bear to listen to any music or read about anyone but Edith Piaf?  Anyway, I'm completely on board with this challenge, more than I originally realized.  Taking a fresh look at my shelves, I'm struck by how Gallic they are:

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter - Simone de Beauvoir
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Cousin Bette - Honore de Balzac

You bet I'm ready -- Allons-y!

Hail To The...Goon Squad?

Last night I dreamed that the 2012 elections were finished and the United States of America had finally elected its first female president: Jennifer Egan.

Martin Eden - Jack London

I've always had a secret fondness for eponymous heroes and heroines as well as some affection for Jack London. I read and enjoyed The Call of the Wild about ten years ago and his short story "To Build A Fire" blew me away back in high school. London's place in literary history as a Naturalist gave me that final push to finally read his semi-autobiographical novel Martin Eden, which I found a copy of in my university's library.

Martin Eden, a rough and untutored 20-year-old sailor from the lower class in the San Francisco area, is admitted to the upper-middle class home of Arthur Morse, whom Martin has saved from a mugging. Awkward and ill-at-ease, he is dazzled by the vast array of books in the Morse home. Shortly after he has become acquainted with their library, he meets Arthur's sister, Ruth, and promptly falls in love with her. From that moment, Martin decides that to be worthy of this woman, he must get educated. Soon after that, he decides that his vocation is to become a writer.

Ruth is at first amused by this yokel, then she takes pity on him, suggesting some books that he might read and correcting his slang-ridden and grammatically incorrect speech. Martin is a born student, and as he improves, Ruth falls in love with him and they become engaged, although her parents don't approve of the match.

Ruth is insistent that Martin should finish high school then go to university. He explains that he doesn't have the money for that, and she doesn't know what else to suggest, since that's the only way she knows. She is dubious when he reassures her that he will handle his own education and make a success of it:

"Knowledge seems to me like a chart-room. Whenever I go into the library, I am impressed that way. The part played by teachers is to teach the students the contests of the chart-room in a systematic way. The teachers are guides to the chart-room, that's all. It's not something they have in their own heads. They don't make it up, don't create it. It's all in the chart-room and they know their way about in it and it's their business to show the place to strangers who might else get lost. Now I don't get lost easily. I have the bump of location...Some persons need guides, most persons do, but I can get along without them...and from the way I line it up, I'll explore a whole lot more quickly by myself. The speed of a fleet, you know, is the speed of the slowest ship, and the speed of the teachers is affected the same way. They can't go any faster than the ruck of their scholars, and I can set a faster pace for myself than they set for a whole schoolroom."

As Martin painstakingly educates himself, he begins to outgrow Ruth intellectually, but he still loves her. Ruth is frustrated that their wedding date is repeatedly pushed back because Martin won't give up his dream of being a writer and refuses to get "a real job". In addition, he develops his already innate philosophy of individualism, but since he has picked up the habit of railing against the bourgeoisie at the Morse's dinner table, Ruth's father decides that Martin is a Socialist and is embarrassed at and enraged with his future son-in-law.

Success doesn't come easily for Martin Eden. He is repeatedly rejected by even the most substandard publications, his family is not supportive and from Ruth, seldom is heard an encouraging word before she turns away completely. Martin nearly starves and his one good suit is in the pawn shop more often than not, but he perseveres and slowly starts to become noticed.

Martin's self-education and his infatuation with Ruth make the first few chapters of the novel a real slog. Luckily, he runs out of money and has to stop studying and go work in a laundry for a few weeks. The vivid description of his toil and his friendship with Joe the laundryman who decides to turn hobo was a nice counterbalance to all the intellectual and romantic palaver.

I admired Martin's singleness of purpose, but he often came off as too much of a superman type. No one was as strong or as sensitive and once he educated himself, he passed up everyone in the intellectual department as well. If this was meant to be an autobiographical novel, Jack London gave himself a terrific pat on the back.

The other characters in Martin Eden, whether they are kind or unsympathetic, are rather two-dimensional. Ruth hovers between one and two-dimensional as London portrays her in every possible shade of annoying. First she's Lady Bountiful, being kind to the handsome hick in her midst. Then she's the sweet but strict schoolmarm who cringes and grows faint every time Martin uses even mild slang, as when he repeatedly says he wants to "make good". Then she's the clueless virgin who has no idea why she wants to stroke Martin's neck all the time. After all, he's not their 'kind'! In quick succession, she becomes the uncomprehending girlfriend, the unsupportive fiancee and finally, the bourgeois harpy who turns from him, then back again.

No thanks to (practically) anyone, Martin finally makes good, hitting the big time with the fiction and essays that were routinely rejected only months before. Seemingly overnight, he is rich and feted, and everyone's arms are open to him. If his theme song up to this point was something along the lines of "My Way", it changes to "Is That All There Is?" as he bitterly ponders and analyzes the implications of his sudden fame. The bleak but powerful ending more than makes up for the author's self-indulgence earlier in the novel.

Martin Eden left me with an appetite for more Jack London, so I'm now reading his 1913 alcoholic memoir, John Barleycorn, which details his nearly lifelong love-hate affair with booze and examines the inevitable conditions that led him there. The book is both shocking and amusing. During the early chapters, it was exciting to perceive that direct and unbroken literary line from Mark Twain to Jack London to Ernest Hemingway. Fun fact: John Barleycorn contains the original usage of the term "Pink elephants" to describe the hallucinatory effects of extreme drunkenness.

Room - Emma Donoghue

I read Room this week for the Canadian Reading Challenge and I can't stop thinking about it. It's brilliant. I circled it for a few months, unsure if I wanted to buy it. My hesitancy was misplaced. Room is the best novel I've read so far this year.

For those who haven't read this book yet, Room is about a young woman (known only as Ma) and her son, Jack, who have lived in captivity since before Jack was born. Seven years before, Ma had been a college student kidnapped by someone she and Jack refer to only as 'Old Nick'. Room is the only home Jack has ever known, and Ma has striven, in spite of her horrific situation and limited resources, to keep Jack safe and healthy, to educate him and to give him routine and a sense of security.

Bravo to author Emma Donoghue for telling the story from 5-year-old Jack's point of view. Most authors would have gone for alternate chapters with Ma and Jack, (and probably one with Old Nick to prove how well they could 'write crazy') which would have diluted the intensity. Part thriller, part psychological study with a dash of satire thrown in, Room and its occupants left me speculating and filling in the spaces of the missing years and wondering about the direction their futures would take.

If you haven't read this book yet, go find it and read it immediately. In this case, any hype you've seen or heard is absolutely deserved.

May 2011: Book Buying

April 30, 2011:

Dear Book Spending Journal,

I am seriously going to hold down my book spending this next month. Enough is enough. Too much is too much.

May 1, 2011:

Dear BSJ,
An early Mother's Day lunch with The Spawn. We went to Outback in Cheonan and tore with hearty appetites into New York strips. Delicious as the food was, I couldn't help being distracted by the glimmering at the edges of my vision. Almost directly across the street was a Kyobo bookstore.

Spawn: Where to now?

Me: You know where.

Spawn: Yeah, the bookstore. I went yesterday, but c'mon.

[at the bookstore]

Me: This selection isn't doing a thing for me.

Spawn: I knew you'd be disappointed.

Me: Except...there's a copy of 127 Hours. I kind of want it.

Spawn: Did you watch the movie?

Me: Not yet. So that's a good reason to buy the book. I could read it first then watch the movie.

Spawn: I guess. Look, someone tore the cover of the Obama book. Do you think it was _______?

Me: No, because Obama's face isn't torn.

Me: [thinking] This Kyobo sucks, but it does exist. What if I couldn't get to Seoul or get online? Also I've lost my library card, so one of my options is gone. I should show this store some appreciation...

Me: [aloud] I've got my discount card. I can get the book for less than 10.


May 9, 2011
Dear Spending Journal:
Val came up with the brilliant idea that Cracked Spinz should read an Enid Blyton book. She was practically raised on EB, and I've never even read one page. Were her books even in the libraries I frequented? Anyway, I charged Val with finding the perfect title, and she came up with Shock For The Secret Seven (1961). What about that publication date? Nice work, eh? After that, it was run, don't walk to abebooks.com for a nice copy that was published in conjunction with the centennial of Blyton's birth.

May 11, 2011
Dear Spendy,
It's all Paul's fault. He lent me Hardboiled Hollywood, which discusses how the book and film versions of certain detective/crime/noir classics differ. I was doing fine until I got to In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes. I saw the movie with Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame years ago and thought it was just OK. Then I read that the book is wildly different. Then I read that Dorothy Hughes was right in there writing noir with Chandler, Hammett, Cain and holding her own at a time when ladies just didn't do that. Then I read that Hughes was from Kansas City. Then I saw the gorgeous Penguin cover, which is a crisp b&w still from the movie. That did it. I'm not made of stone. Back to the internet. The seller hesitated. I can't ship to North Korea, due to postal concerns, she wrote in an email. Can't blame her. It's like I always say: The Republic of Korea sounds like the stern, unfriendly one and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea sounds rather approachable, damn near cuddly if you didn't know better. Happily, I wrote back, I live in South Korea. The book should be here soon, but I'm good for the rest of the month. I've spent enough on books already. This will do me for a while.

May 16, 2011

Dear Spendthrift Journal,

Last month, my co-worker, Megan, recommended a book to me. I almost forgot about it until I walked into her office today and saw a copy of it: Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. Her class is reading it this semester, and there was that one copy left over. I quickly gave Megan the money for it. What if she'd given it away to someone else? I like reason and logic as much as the next person, but that lone copy was there because I was meant to read it.

May 22, 2011
Oh Spendy --
Honestly, I only meant to get one book at What The Book? today. Last night on the EBS late movie, they showed the 1957 version of A Farewell To Arms with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones. It was too Technicolor-y and Cinemascope-y and Jennifer Jones seemed a trifle too old, but it made me want to read Hemingway's novel again, since I can't remember it well enough to know what was left in and what was taken out.

Picking up that one book started a chain reaction. I went a little mad and also picked up Room by Emma Donoghue. I have the impression that I can read Room and count it for the Canadian Challenge. I might have the wrong book. Oh, well. Too late. I started reading it on the train and it's unputdownable. Of course I knew I'd be captivated the way I was in 2004 by her novel Slammerkin.

In addition, I decided to replace my old, beat-up, glued-together mass market copy of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao with a nice trade paperback edition for my Pulitzer shelf. I think I lent the old copy to someone at work who kind of likes to read but not really, so it's gone. I was tired of that forlorn gap between The Road and Olive Kitteridge on the shelves.

Stumbling into the EFL/ESL section of the store, I found the perfect book I need to teach a graduate class of Korean would-be English teachers next semester: How to Teach English by Barry Sesnan. It's got everything the chairman of my department says he wants me to cover. Thanks, Barry-- wherever you are. You've saved me a lot of headaches.

All in all, a good day's work, but spending must end. Really. Enough is enough. I am seriously going to hold down my book spending this next month.

The Western Challenge

May is galloping by and I've only just now gotten started on C.B's Western challenge. This morning, I cracked open Willa Cather's My Antonia. Except for the short story "Paul's Case", I haven't read any of Cather's work. I can't believe my oversight; this is beautiful stuff. I'm her newest fan.

The DNF Files: A Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s

What a disappointment. I really wanted to love this book, but it seems scatty and unfocused. Author Ann Douglas crammed in every single bit of research she had done about the 1920s and the period leading up to that time, but it's too much. There are so many interesting individuals in these 600+ pages, but they are allowed one slim anecdote then she's bounding off to the next and the next. It's like being on an express train going 300 kilometers an hour and you're trying to look out the window at the scenery whipping past.
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A Terrible Honesty is crowded and teeming with life -- much like New York City itself, which was probably Douglas' intent. Since this book was published in 1995, it definitely predates Facebook and Twitter, but that's the feeling I get, like I'm reading my news feed after several days of not logging in. That's OK in that arena, but not so much in this one. I'd rather read several dozen books about this time period that have more focus and are researched in detail and judiciously presented. I appreciate the vast research Douglas put into the book and I plan to photocopy the excellent bibliographic essay at the back and transfer some of this material to my wishlist before returning the book to the library.

Happy Mother's Day To Me, Happy Mother's Day To Me...

This is my Mother's Day gift from The Spawn. How did he know exactly what I wanted???

Author? Title?

Last night, I dreamt I went to Archer City again. Larry McMurtry didn't seem to be anywhere around. Secretly, I was a little relieved. Hero worship was so exhausting and time-consuming. I didn't have much time, and it was best spent looking for books.

While browsing through a particularly lip-smacking stack, I found an older novel with a green hardcover. The plot was about this ordinary guy who was the victim of a set-up. Serious crime or misdemeanor, I don't know, but the set-up was so cruelly and brilliantly executed that there was no chance of this guy ever clearing his name. Flipping through the pages, I understood that the book would detail the rest of his miserable life as a series of harshly slammed doors leading into smaller and smaller rooms. The novel was written in that precise and inexorable manner reminiscent of Edith Wharton, but it also had a gritty underside and was honeycombed with brutality like something by Jim Thompson.

What an incredible read! I had to have this book! I was shaking with the bibliophile version of buck fever. What was the title? Who wrote it? I flailed endlessly through the pages (around 400) until I fumbled onto the title page. Missing! Copyright page? Blurred beyond legibility. The cover? The spine?

I was just turning the book around to read the spine when I woke up in my own bed, thousands of miles from Archer City. My hands were clutching at nothing and yes, it was too dark to read.