June Is The Cruelest Month

Yes, I did read this month, but I'm not ready to talk about that yet. On June 6, I found out that Val died. She was one of my best friends. I met her while I was living in Korea. She died earlier this year on March 21 in England and news was slow to leak out. She was only 58. 

I don't always remember the first time I meet someone, but I know exactly where I was when I first met Val. I went to a book swap at The Wolfhound, an English pub in Seoul. I was excited about finding a book swap, and was intent on making the most of it. Gradually, I noticed a blonde woman with a pixie-ish haircut at the bar smiling at me. Really smiling, like my delight was her delight. I remember thinking: I want to be friends with her! and I went over and struck up a conversation. When I got home, I sent her a Facebook friend request, and then and there became part of Val's vibrant circle. A couple of years later, we ended up teaching at the same university and living in the same apartment building.

Val was fun. She could make anything into an adventure. One of our last outings before I left Korea in 2015 was a trip to an abandoned mental hospital near Seoul. A few years earlier, we toured an abandoned amusement park. How did she find these places? Strangely, I never thought to ask.

Even something as mundane as a trip to Costco could make you feel as if you were in a 1930s screwball movie. Val decided that she didn't want to travel the toll road, so she drove the long way around, and during this lengthy drive across the city in heavy traffic, she decided that she wasn't going to listen to Siri's instructions, and just started making turns whenever the feeling struck her. Somehow, we finally got to Costco. Katie, the other friend who went with us and I agreed that it was a miracle. On the way back, we accidentally ended up on the toll road, to Val's displeasure. At the toll booth, she sped through, and we were chased by the police. When questioned, Val put on her best innocent face. We paid the toll and were let off with a stern lecture.

Another time we went to Costco, we took the train, and Val decided to set us with a challenge: We would leave the train station, race the few blocks to Costco, do our shopping, check out and race back to the train station in time to catch the next train. This gave us about 40 minutes. Did I mention that there was also a rainstorm brewing? I'd been feeling draggy that day, but how could I say no to such exhilaration? We aced the challenge, breathless, laughing and wringing out our wet hair and clothing while balancing our purchases as the train made its way back.

A few years ago, Val decided to help patch some of the holes in my childhood book reading and introduced me to Enid Blyton. Her conversation with Paul, our friend from Liverpool, about how Blyton influenced their childhoods, they kindly let me reproduce here.http://bybeebooks.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-probably-all-enid-blytons-fault.html

I find it comforting to have this glimpse of Early Val.

When she wasn't on some madcap errand, or organizing convenience store crawls, or teaching, or working on another Masters degree, Val was gathering anecdotes for the two books she wrote. Picky, Sticky or Just Plain Icky? is part one of a series she hoped to write about blind dating in other countries. What's Living in My Knickers? contains stories of medical mishaps and misunderstandings while living abroad. Both can be found on Amazon.

The last time I saw Val was on a Facebook video call, sometime last year. She had been seriously ill during the pandemic and was in the hospital and rehab for many months, but she was finally home again. She held out the computer so I could see all around her flat. I was so sure that I would see it and her in person one day. I was also so purely positive that she would come to the US, and I had some adventures lined up for her.

Val's Twitter handle was/is @FarawayHammer, which came from a complete misunderstanding of her full name. Now she really is far away. From what I understand, her final illness was brief and painful, and I gather that she was somewhat aware that time was running out. What I like to believe is that on March 21, she embarked on one last adventure and jumped into spring, and the solstice probably still has no idea what hit it.

The Guy Who Bought A Dozen Books

In Dollar Tree last Saturday, a middle-aged guy staggered up to the register under the weight of twelve hardcover books. He plopped them down on the counter at the cash register. They were all copies of the same book: HRC, a biography of Hillary Clinton.

Hmm, I thought. He either really loves or really hates Hillary. I didn't have to wait long to find out. He announced to the cashier and everyone behind him in line that he was a Republican, but he was buying this book for friends who needed to know the truth.  The last phrase was said with a significant smirk. He paid his 12 dollars plus tax and headed out the door.

Horse's ass, I thought, bristling. Not because he's Republican, but because he doesn't get it. If he were a Democrat brandishing twelve books about Trump, he'd still be a sorry jerk. That is a prime example of how NOT to do books and friends, friends and books.

It's so easy to go wrong when buying books for other people. You love it; they hate it and sneer at your taste. They lived every word of the story; you wonder at the fissures in their brain that make them enjoy such slop. Still, the parties have engaged in a sharing experience. Varying degrees of thoughtfulness have played a part. Although their attempts at connection and communication may have fallen short, they have made themselves vulnerable, which is admirable and touching.

But that guy at Dollar Tree? What's that? His "friends", indeed. I wonder how they will accept his offering. How many of the twelve will go unread and end up being window props and coasters? The noise that those books made as they thudded to the counter sounded like a pile of bricks falling and his intended method of delivery seemed in keeping with that sound.

Florence King

While I was recovering from the shingles Santa put down my back, Mom fell ill with pneumonia, which turned into a plethora of other symptoms. She has been hospitalized since January 2, and is on her way to a short-term stay in a nursing home. While she recovers, family and friends will be orchestrating a move to a new home for the two of us that is set up more for her present needs.

With all of this tumult, I missed the sad news of Florence King's death on January 6, one day after her 80th birthday. For about three decades now, King has been in the top three of my favorite essayists. I am a devoted fan. How devoted? Her column, "The Misanthrope's Corner" ran on the back page of The National Review for many years. I subscribed to The National Review for just that one page and read only that one page and suffered the mailing lists I ended up on. I'm sure you can imagine.

Did I understand everything Florence King would rant about? Not always. Did I agree with her? Often I did not. Did I enjoy her writing? Yes, always. Am I going to miss her like hell? Again, yes, always.

 Oh my God, the writing! Brilliant, steel-sharp, honed to a fine and lethal edge. She has often been compared to H.L. Mencken and Dorothy Parker. I can see that, but Florence King had a perpetual wild hair, a contrarian streak the size of a football field. There was no one like her.

My favorite story about Florence King, which she told on herself in With Charity Towards None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy (my favorite book of hers, second only to her richly comic memoir Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady) is about the time she read a favorable review of her work, but found it so horribly written that she wrote to the author of the review, chewing her out for not writing a proper review. Although she said that her action raised eyebrows in the publishing world, she defended herself by saying that she was in good company, comparing herself to Carlton Fisk, citing  the time that he chewed out Deion Sanders (a player on the team playing against Fisk's) for not hustling to first base after a pop-up.

Although she was a proud and an avowed misanthrope (according to her obituary in The National Review by longtime friend Jack Fowler, after years of living alone, she only lasted one month in an assisted-living facility. I am not surprised for she remarked in With Charity Towards None:"I'd rather rot on my own floor than be found by a bunch of Bingo players in a nursing home." ) Florence King was gracious to her fans and if they wrote to her, she would sit down and reply. I was lucky enough to get two of these replies. In the first case, I wrote in response to one of her columns, talking about how much I agreed with her that Gone with the Wind was  masterpiece and Scarlett was jaw-droppingly bad. She wrote back on a blank postcard, thanking me for my note and saying that Scarlett was "...plagiarism's first cousin, once removed."

The second time, years later, I wrote an excited letter, burbling about how I had finally FINALLY found a copy of The Prodigal Women by Nancy Hale, a 1940s novel that King claimed was her favorite. (I wrote about finding that book here.) King replied, and it was a two-page typewritten letter that time. I no longer have the letter, but it was warm and gossipy and included a juicy tidbit about an incident in the novel being based on an actual incident between Nancy Hale and novelist John O'Hara.

Florence King wrote about a wide variety of subjects in her column. This one about Lizzie Borden, from the early 1990s, is one of my favorites.

Goodbye, Miss (the appellation she preferred) King. I salute you, I thank you for years of entertainment as well as education about what it means to write well, and comfort myself with the thought that you and Herb and Mama and Granny are all together again.

A Blue-Hearted State of Mind

The sides of wet stones cannot console me,/Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

Empty chairs at empty tables.

I've been a truly blue-hearted bookworm this week because of the Sewol ferry disaster here in South Korea.  Like many other people, I'm heartbroken and outraged. My pendulum swings from disgust to sorrow and back again.  It's impossible to live in a country for a decade and spend that time working with the younger segment of the population and not be affected.  So many words have been said and written and will continue to be, but none will ever be adequate.

Book Machine, I Hardly Knew Ye

Sadly, my instincts were right.  The book vending machine at my subway stop has disappeared.

 In its place is a machine that dispenses candy that gives you instant energy and also dispenses several kinds of breath mints and gum. I'm never going to use it, even if I'm so tired I'm having to drag myself onto the train or I'm dying of dyspepsia, or my breath is like sewage, or if my ears are stopped up, or all of those things at once.

Goodbye, little Book Machine.  Even though the language barrier prevented me from buying any of your books, it always made my day to see you there on the platform.  I'll never forget you.

Oh, Kindle. I Hardly Knew Ye :(

It was kind(le) of a rough week in Bookwormlandia.  I was getting to the most dramatic part of Germinal, and my Kindle started acting crazy.  At first, it was small things like not saving pages and frozen screens, but then it grew to more serious matters like instantaneous battery drain and disappearing archives and then vanishing books, including the aforementioned Zola book.  I caught on pretty quickly that my Kindle wasn't just joking around with me.  Troubleshooting efforts failed. Finally, horribly, I was confronted with the blank screen pictured above.

There was also a rough moment in which the Kindle was done for, I was at work, I'd finished my library book (The Game by Jack London) and I couldn't find a thing to read on the subway ride home. Madness!

Although I'd had my Kindle for more than a year, Amazon is sending me a new one that has been generously discounted.  It will arrive sometime this week.  I wish I knew why this one gave out after only 18 months.  I did use it every day, but I was very careful with it and didn't abuse it in any way.  It seems as if it should have lasted a little longer.  Maybe I had too many books loaded on it?  If that's the case, so much for whole library in my hands.  I'm wondering if I do indeed need to invest in another Kindle, a backup Kindle, as my friend Teri suggested.

While waiting for the new Kindle, I've been ransacking my home library as well as the others in the area for shorter books that I can comfortably carry in my bag and read on the subway.  This is also a prime opportunity to get back into audiobooks.  In addition, it's a wake-up call to stock my office with some reading material so I don't get caught short again.

The DNF Files: The Other Side of Eden: Life With John Steinbeck - John Steinbeck IV

John Steinbeck's younger son, John IV, died in 1991 of a heart attack following surgery for a ruptured disk.  His manuscript for this memoir was unfinished, and his former wife, Nancy, completed it and it was published in 2001.  She  added her own chapters about their life together and interspersed them with John's chapters.  There's also a long foreword by someone else followed by a long introduction by Nancy, much of which gets covered again in the chapters ahead.

There were many interesting and even eyebrow-raising sections, especially about John's early life, but there were even more long sections that were repetitive, rambly and disjointed.  John Steinbeck IV could write clearly and had a sharp sense of humor and irony.  I can't help feeling that his unfinished project would have turned out so much better with a different editor.  I hate to say that I didn't like it or finish it, for it was obviously a labor of love for Nancy Steinbeck, but I only managed to get halfway through before giving up.

People Go Away But Their Books Stay

People are moving out of my apartment complex in droves this month. Happens every year. It's the expat way. People get that anywhere but here feeling and go in search of their 'real life' which is either beckoning them seductively from a new and mysterious locale or standing on a back porch in their own native country screeching imperatives. People start packing, then they get that other feeling: Damn. Books are heavy. Enter Bybee, with a tear in one eye and a gleam of anticipation in the other. Thanks to my wanderlusty compatriots, I've picked up about 30 books in as many days. Here's my haul from last night:

1. The Pythons Autobiography By The Pythons. All about Monty Python. 359 pages of photos and fun. A must for fans. The best kind of coffee table book. Heavy as hell because of that slick paper, so this won't be going with me on the subway.

2. The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King. Dan K., the previous owner of most of these books, had a lot of King. I was looking for Carrie, but any King is good. There's a lot I haven't read yet.

3. Catch Me If You Can - Frank Abagnale. I liked the movie.

4. Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King. King takes on Vietnam. Hmm...

5. Insomnia - Stephen King. I've been wanting to read this.

6. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert. Maybe time for a reread.

7. Myths and Legends of India. Looks like fun.

8. Aquariums of Pyeongyang: Ten Years in the North Korea Gulag - Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot. Sandra loaned me her copy of this one. I haven't gotten around to it yet, so I can get her copy back to her and keep this one on the TBR.

9. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski. Same thing, except change Sandra to Jill.

10. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene. I really need to read some GG. It's one of my literary gaps.

11. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. About three or four years ago, every single blog was Jane! Jane! Jane! Now that everyone's moved on to the Brontes or Edith Wharton, I can assert my contrarian streak and enjoy Austen's greatest hit again. I like that I found the Oxford edition. All those explanatory notes in the back are great, geeky fun.

12. My War at Home - Masuda Sultan. The author's parents immigrated from Afghanistan to the United States when she was five. At seventeen, they married her off to a doctor. After three years, she was able to get a divorce, which was almost unheard-of. This memoir is about that as well as an examination of being a Muslim in America and her trips back to Afghanistan. The style is really engaging. I'm looking forward to reading this and loaning it to my friends.

13. First, They Killed My Father - Loung Ung. I borrowed this book from one of my coworkers back in 2005. Harrowing reading. I learned a lot about Cambodia and the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. Everyone should read this and also Wild Swans.

14. When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After The White House - Patricia O'Toole. TR had an eventful life. I'm sure his emeritius years were just as fascinating, or maybe more.

15. Confessions of an Econimic Hit Man - John Perkins. I'm not sure why I picked this up. The fever was upon me, no doubt.

16. His Excellency - Joseph J. Ellis. A biography of George Washington. His birthday's coming soon.

17. Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built The Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 - Stephen E. Ambrose. I didn't realize that some of this construction went on during the Civil War.

18. John Adams - David McCullough. I've been circling this one for a while. I want to read it then watch the miniseries starring one of my main crushes, Paul Giamatti.

19. Truman - David McCullough. OH MY GOD YES!!!!!! I'm so happy to find this biography! I started a library copy back in 1997 after visiting the Truman Library in Independence but didn't finish it before it was due. I've seen it in several bookstores here, but even patriotism couldn't induce me to overcome my laziness and tote the 1,117-pager home. Now it's mine and I will finish! Probably not a subway book, though. Of course, it's been so long since my last attempt, I'm going to have to start over.

Thanks so much to Faulkner Guy, Alex, Arlene, Amy and Dan. I'll miss you all like hell, but I've got your books here to comfort me.

RIP Reynolds Price

I need to be more aggressive about searching out news. Being lazy and relying on Yahoo too much is not a good idea. Their idea of book news is shameful. They'd rather report about how Donald Rumsfeld is reflecting about his recently-written memoirs, and as a result, they dropped the ball about Southern American author Reynolds Price passing away last week on January 20 at the age of 77.

I first became aware of Reynolds Price back when I was all about Anne Tyler in the mid-to-late 1980s. He was her writing professor when she was a student at Duke. That information propelled me to read two of his novels: A Long and Happy Life (1962) and Kate Vaiden (1986). I remember really enjoying the former (his first novel) and feeling so-so about the latter, although I acknowledged that it was extremely well-written. I would gladly read both books again.

Last year, I found one of Reynolds Price's memoirs, Clear Pictures, in the hodgepodge that is my university's library. I checked it out, read it and came away with a renewed favorable impression of Price. He excelled at memoir. He wrote about personal matters thoughtfully and intensely, but he wasn't sloppy about it. His writing was both warm and open but also controlled and skillful.

In addition to his writing talent, I also admired Price for triumphing over his health issues. In the early 1980s, he developed a cancerous tumor that was wrapped around his spine. Radiation cured him, but left him paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It didn't stop him from writing -- quite the contrary. He was always fairly prolific, but the bulk of his writing was done after the cancer. I'm thinking "steel magnolia", but that's used exclusively for gentle but formidable Southern women. I wish there was a male equivalent I could use to pay tribute to Reynolds Price.

John Updike

Today brought surprising and sad news. John Updike died. Updike is one of my "Big Three" (the others are Larry McMurtry and Anne Tyler). Although it was delusional, I let myself think that he would go on forever. I just finished reading Roger's Version, a novel he wrote back in 1986. The most expensive book I own is a Franklin Library copy of Rabbit Run. Yes, I'm babbling. The news doesn't want to sink in. I felt exactly the same way when Rabbit Angstrom died at the end of Rabbit At Rest. I'm lucky that Updike was so prolific -- there's tens of volumes of his -- fiction, nonfiction and poetry -- that I haven't read yet.

Dewey

The bad news just echoes and echoes around in my head. Nothing makes sense. How can that kind of energy filled to the brim with brilliance, creativity and sparkling humor be switched off so suddenly?

Dewey: You gave us an intoxicatingly beautiful bookish universe that we could visit every day. Thank you.

My Father's Ghost

My father died on April 6th of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, complicated by diabetes. He was 70. I was lucky to find out on April 7th. The woman with whom he lived the last decade-plus of his life (I'll call her Dagmar) leaked the news to only one relative, a distant cousin in her 80s. I didn't know he'd been so ill, so the news came as a shock. Only 24 hours earlier, I had received a short letter from him that made no mention of illness.

Dagmar and I share a mutual antipathy. Who could blame me? I met her back in 1988. The second time I ever saw her, she said to me: "Your mother's terrible. She doesn't deserve your father. I'd dearly love for him to be my companion." It took her until 1991, but she waged a steady campaign and in the fall of that year, my father packed his belongings in his van, and drove to Dagmar's house on the other side of town.

I loved my father so much, and I missed his presence. When we were together, we usually had good conversations, but we didn't really need to talk because it was almost as if we could follow each other's thought patterns without missing a beat. (I've always been disappointed that in my love relationships we could never get to this level of communication. Manfred, Sr. found my expectations frustrating and announced on several occasions that he WAS NOT a mind-reader.)

I missed Dad so much, but I just couldn't bring myself to pretend to be civil to Dagmar. Even if I had pretended, she was always on the lookout for even the slightest whiff of dislike. A vain and shallow woman who thrives on drama and conflict, Dagmar is always at odds with one or another of her own five children. "You're disowned" is a phrase that comes easily to her lips. (In contrast, my mother operates more in the vein of: "Disown, hell! I'll be damned if I'll disown you! I'd much rather keep you around and make your ass suffer!")

Although I thought my father's involvement with Dagmar showed an appalling lack of good judgment as well as good taste, I realized that he loved her. What I hoped was that he and I could continue to have a good relationship and I could avoid Dagmar. I wanted us to spend time together, meeting in neutral places. Well, I underestimated Dagmar. She insisted that my father CHOOSE, and he chose Dagmar. I was upset, but kept writing to him at holidays hoping that we would eventually work through our troubles.

About 9 years after my father moved in with Dagmar, she kicked him out one day. She drove him to a motel and dropped him off. The first person he wanted to contact was me. I could scarcely believe this turn of events. Suddenly, he was back in the family, living nearby, going on trips with my mother and showing up at holiday dinners. I was so happy, but I had the constant sensation of holding my breath, thinking it was all too good to be true.

It was all too good to be true.

Dagmar decided she'd made a mistake, and started working her way back to my father. That time, it took one-and-a-half years. He moved back in with Dagmar in the spring of 2002.

I begged him not to go back:
Me: "She won't let me see you, Dad."
Dad: "This time it'll be different."

It was different, all right. It was worse. From that time, I only saw him when I chanced to meet him out in public. He summoned me over to Dagmar's house once, but I wasn't allowed in the house. Instead, we talked in the garage for a short time. I didn't stay long; it was December, and really cold. We were shivering as we talked, and our breaths came out frosty.

A few months after the garage encounter, I read a memoir by science-fiction and fantasy writer Suzy McKee Charnas called My Father's Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances. Charnas' father, Robin McKee, had left his wife and child when Suzy was very young, to pursue his dream of being a successful artist. This dream was never realized. Years later, when Suzy was middle-aged, she realized that her father couldn't live independently anymore. He was in New York, and she was in New Mexico, and she couldn't afford constant plane trips to check on him, so with some trepidation, she invited Robin to come live in the "mother-in-law" cottage next to her house, and slowly, sometimes frustratingly -- Robin was strong-willed and eccentric -- father and daughter got to know each other again before Robin died a few years later in a nearby nursing home. He went there only after Suzy was completely unable to care for him unassisted anymore. In his last days, he found happiness with a fellow resident of the nursing home, a warm and wonderful woman named Jane.

There's a part in Marilynne Robinson's novel, Gilead, in which the narrator says that his wife was reading a copy of The Trail of The Lonesome Pine, and she was so engrossed she "just melted into the book." That was how I felt; I just melted into My Father's Ghost. For me, it was the sweetest of fairy tales as well as a blueprint for the future. This is how it'll be, I thought. Dagmar will get another wild hair and kick Dad out again, and he can come live with me. Furthermore, our situation would be better than Robin and Suzy's because my father's and my personalities were both easygoing and peace-loving. Finally, if he went to a nursing home, maybe he'd meet a nice woman. Even better, he could hook up with my mother again!

I was confident that we had plenty of time to acheive this scenario. After all, my father's father had lived to be 83! Using that as measurement, it seemed as if my own father was light-years away from death. Sure, he had CLL, but hadn't the oncologist told him that the disease would annoy him for decades rather than kill him? As for me, I had plenty of time to go off to South Korea -- a country in which my father had also lived and absolutely loved -- and teach for a few years.

I was mistaken. Even back when I read Charnas' memoir, we were already running out of time. When I got on the plane to go to Korea almost a year-and-a-half ago, the clock was ticking ominously. I had no idea.

Finally, time ran out, and I didn't even know. Twelve hours after my father died, 4 hours before I got the news, I was standing in line at the post office, holding a postcard addressed to him, and imagining a day far off in the future when we'd be sitting at my kitchen table together, drinking coffee and swapping stories about life in Korea. Talking, and even better, not talking, just keeping company with our thoughts.

I keep thinking of My Father's Ghost. I really loved that book. Would I be able to stand reading it again? The experience could not possibly be the same. Before, I found it reassuring. Now, I think every page would be painful, but perversely, I want to feel pain. I think I fucked up. I was a bad daughter. I want my heart to break.

I'm still holding my breath, waiting for my father to return, and trying to strike a bizarre bargain: If I suffer x amount, can you come back? No, he can't come back. I really need to stop holding my breath once and for all, but if I breathe anytime soon, it's going to hurt too damn much.