two umbrellas

For some reason I have avoided reading John Updike. I don’t have any real reason other than it just seemed so obvious to read him, like reading Joyce Carol Oates (another confession, I’ve only ever read her essays in the New York Review of Books and none of her fiction for similar reasons: I’m sure she’s good and I’ll get to it someday, maybe). At any rate, I had been realizing how many books on my bookshelves that I haven’t read (I used to be a compulsive buyer; now, I’m a compulsive library patron) and Rabbit, Run was one of them. I have read some of Updike’s short stories but not many and that was quite some time ago. I guess it was time to read something more substantial and I was in the mood for a novel, plain and simple.

I can’t help but talk about where it takes place, the fictional town of Brewer, which was based on Reading, PA. I grew up in Wyomissing, PA, a small suburb about five minutes outside of Reading and a beautiful bike trail away from Updike’s hometown of Shillington, and had family that still lived in the city. I have visited places where many books have taken place but there was something eerily familial about reading Rabbit, Run. I can only imagine how New Yorkers and Londonders feel to have their hometowns constantly immortalized. Reading, PA is no NYC or London; in fact, it’s anywhere (or nowhere), really, as it probably felt to Updike then.

It’s hard to tell whether or not Brewer had a strong influence on Rabbit. It felt that Updike spent a lot of time describing places: the streets – even street/road/route names (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven Rt. 422 to and from Philadelphia), Mt. Judge (or, Mt. Penn, if you could really must call it a mountain – it’s more like a hill, which is a lot easier for me to say now that I have views of both the Cascade and Olympic Mountain Ranges), the golf course, the Pinnacle Hotel, etc.; but, it could have felt that way to me because I have such a strong connection to them. I will admit I was looking for the bits and pieces about my hometown, which certainly put place as a literary function in my reading, but I do believe that a lot of the detail of place was intentional. Rabbit seemed like a man who was caught in the ‘big fish – little pond’ syndrome’: stuck in the past, no real future, hoping the familiar will carry him to a good life. It doesn’t and he gets caught and needs to run. I can appreciate that feeling – the feeling that in order to improve, one must leave and start over.

It is easy for me to say that I didn’t like Rabbit. He was immature, irrational, and simple. I found it hard to sympathize with him but willingly accepted his discontent.There was an intimacy with the characters that I haven’t read in a while – and something I greatly appreciated. It could have been very easy to attempt to elicit pity but I never felt that way. Somehow Updike was able to create enough distance, through intimacy, that I felt no obligation to the characters – even when they needed it the most. I will never forget when Janice gets drunk after she gives birth and she ‘knows that the worst thing that has ever happened to any woman in the world has happened to her.’ How simply put. How tragic.

I find that often intellectual simplicity appeals to my reading sensibility. While Rabbit seems like an immature and simple man, Updike does not tell the story that way. He doesn’t try to capture the moment of what it’s like to be a restless, married, twenty-something, small-town man, which I find plagues some contemporary writing. He attempts to capture how Rabbit is a restless, married, twenty-something, small-town man. I am not sure why I’ve held out on Updike’s novels before because I was truly amazed at how well he framed his characters.

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve even debated whether or not I should continue this blog but I’ve have twoumbrellas for five years now and I just can’t part with it. Besides I really like writing my thoughts down about the books I’ve read and (as I’ve said many times before) I’m forgetful – sometimes even forgetting what I’ve read over the last few months. So on that note, here’s a list of my reading over the past few months (which may or may not be complete):

• Netherland – Joseph O’Neill
• Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann
• The Hospital for Bad Poets – J.C. Hallman
• Look At Me – Jennifer Egan
• Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
• Tender Is the Night* – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Road* – Cormac McCarthy
• Love and Obstacles* – Aleksandar Hemon
• The Master Bedroom* – Tessa Hadley
• The Other City – Michal Ajvaz
• What the World Will Be Like When All the Water Leaves Us – Laura van den Berg
• The Interrogative Mood – Padgett Powell

*unfinished. Seeing that this list has four books that I did not finish, it hasn’t been the most productive few months in reading. I can list excuses: moving across the country, being pregnant, renewing a hobby, and freelance work – but they would just be excuses.

I really wish I would have kept up with writing about each of these individually. There is much to say about all of them – even the ones I haven’t (or won’t finish). I will say that my favorite (surprisingly) was The Other City but I think that has to do with my mood. Moving to Seattle, while being pregnant, has become quite an experience – generally positive, sometimes surreal, and utterly different – I’m continually amazed how much the East Coast is ingrained in my psyche. I am constantly evaluating my perspective and The Other City somehow captured these feelings. It was the right book at the right time, as they say.

So I am hoping to get back on track with my current read (Rabbit, Run) and stay that way. I miss writing about reading; in fact, I miss writing in general.

I can’t believe after writing 17 (!) books, I had never read Percival Everett. Where have I been?? What else have I been reading?? And why?? I know I’ve taken myself somewhat out of the literary loop, but, I was really embarrassed to not have read any of his books or, worse, had ever heard (gasp)* of him. Shameful, yes, I know. Fortunately, after reading I Am Not Sydney Poitier I no longer have to admit that.

I Am Not Sydney Poitier tells the story of a boy named Not Sydney Poitier who just happens to look a lot like Sydney Poitier. When his mother dies, he goes to live with Ted Turner and has to struggle with his identity of being Not Sydney**. While I Am Not Sydney Poitier is about Not Sydney’s coming of age, it’s also about race and class, which transcends it from being considered a ‘coming-of-age’ novel.

The best part about this book was that it made me laugh. It’s been a while since a book made me laugh out loud. A few times, I thought to myself: Should I be laughing at this? Everett’s pointed satire always seemed to answer Yes! Here’s a bit of a conversation between Ted Turner and Not Sydney (who Ted Turner calls Nu’ott):

‘You know where the name of the Ouija Board comes from, Nu’ott?’ Ted asked. ‘It’s from the French and German words for yes. Could have easily been called the non-nein. Of course that just one theory. There are probably many. I find it simply strange that the skin they pack sausages in is edible. Edgar Cayce thought they were dangerous.’

‘Sausages?’

‘No, Ouija Boards. Why would Edgar Cayce care about sausages? Maybe he did. He was a weird dude. And sausages are everywhere.’ Ted looked at his bare feet at the end of his chinos. ‘Let me ask it a question. Why can’t the Democrats come up with decent slogans?’

‘I think that might be a long answer,’ I said.

‘My point exactly. Republicans run around chanting ‘America, love it or leave it’ and ‘Freedom isn’t free.’ ‘

‘The board can’t handle that,’ I said.

‘We ought to market a better one. Pigs are really smart, you know.’

The dialogue made this book phenomenal and perhaps I was so taken by it because dialogue is something that I have trouble writing; but, Everett captures idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, which seem accentuated around the unsure Not Sydney, who often just flows along with the strong personalities that surround him.

Everett’s characters stand out. Since this is the first book I’ve read of Everett’s, I don’t know if that’s his style – to create strong characters and let them carry the book – but it works brilliantly. Not surprisingly, Not Sydney is not the most interesting character. The supporting cast: his late mother and his guardian, Ted Turner, and a Percival Everett makes a cameo, too, help to define Not Sydney by being, well, what he is not. Of course, that may be obvious when the main character is trying to make an identity for himself; but, I rarely felt attached to Not Sydney but I was able to completely sympathize with him.

*That is certainly enough parenthetical exclamations for one post.

**Having a strange name is something I can relate to. With a name like Season, it is easy to feel how much simple words can be part of an identity – there are too many associations. When your name is a noun, like mine, you have to compete with those associations, particularly at introductions. I have often wished for a more common name but then realized I couldn’t be named anything else. It’s who I am.

A while back I was doing some book reviewing* and I had heard some buzz about Jesse Ball’s The Way Through Doors (who knows from where at this point) and so I thought I’d put it on the list of books to review. A friend of mine happened to have it so I moved it way up the list and borrowed it. Truthfully, I didn’t know much about it other than the word ’storyteller’ had been used often and positively. I usually prefer my books to be written by a good storyteller so I was certainly excited.

From the start, I was pulled in. Yes, they were right, he is a storyteller. This is different, I thought; something new from what I have been reading, refreshing, but only at first. In short, it felt a little like this: Did you ever have a dream that seemed to last all night? Each moment something new, somehow related to the previous moment, yet almost painfully familiar. You then wake up trying to remember all of the details – how was it all connected? Then, after a few minutes of trying to remember, you then wonder what you were doing wasting all that time trying to remember those details. They don’t matter! And really, in the end, you’re glad that the dream is finally over.

The premise is intriguing and seemingly simple enough: a young pamphleteer gets a job at the request of his uncle at the office of the Seventh Ministry as a Municipal Inspector, who’s “authority is both unlimited and nonexistent”; meaning, he can do whatever he wants, which becomes quite convenient. Things are going well for Selah. Then he witnesses a woman being hit by a taxi and takes her to the hospital. She has amnesia and Selah spends the rest of the novel trying to help her discover who she is. Simple, right? Sort of. Ball throws the reader into the story, swiftly and deftly; it isn’t necessary to understand why Selah helps this woman and why he goes through so much trouble to do so. However, it is important to know that most of the events happening in the novel are actually stories that Selah is telling this mystery woman to help discover her identity and help her regain her memory. A clever trick that is not easily deduced (unless, of course, you read the synopsis on the back of the book).

These stories’ plot twists and turns pull the reader along through a maze of tall tales and yarns. At first, I went willingly: I gladly closed my eyes and let Ball lead me through. But it didn’t take long for that trick to get tiring. I felt like each page was another way for me to be shown that Ball is a great storyteller – what could he think of next! Something new is added: another ancient tale, another door, another thinly veiled postmodern attempt at being a traditional story. It gets even more gimmicky: there are no page numbers, just line numbers but they don’t correspond, e.g. lines 560 through 570 could have been 30 lines. Why should any boundaries exist in Ball’s storytelling? Unfortunately, he created his own boundaries by the limits of his storytelling abilities. Each new tale had hints of the previous to the point where, shall I dare say, it became formulaic.

My dislike for The Way Through Doors may seem like traditionalism but I was willing to follow Ball through his doors. I was just more interested in where the doors would lead than who my guide was.

*more on that later…

Here are few interesting links from (as always) much better sources:

• Laila Lalami points to a new(ish) John Cheever story at Five Chapters.
• Black Garterbelt warns us of Eric Carle’s blue horse. Since Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is on the Parasol’s daily reading list, I was very intrigued.
• Over at The Millions an Obama sentence is diagrammed…Thank you, Sister Margaret, for showing me how beautiful a sentence can be.

On the surface, Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project is about a writer, Vladmir Brik, from Sarajevo who is living in Chicago. He is working on writing a book about a Jewish immigrant, Lazarus Averbach, who was killed in Chicago in the early 1900s. (Hemon in real life is a writer from Sarajevo who is living in Chicago.) The novel tells both of their stories and both are quite different.

I was drawn particularly to Brik’s story as he travels back to Sarajevo with his friend Rora, who is an expert story-teller, or rather he is a man of stories – almost mythically so. We become enchanted by them, as Brik does, and we find that we need stories, we can’t wait for the next, whether it’s Rora telling about the war, or the story of Lazarus and his sister, or Brik and his wife, or Brik and Rora’s travels – anything – as long as we are all connected by the stories to something larger than us. As I read the sections with Brik and Rora, I was constantly reminded of the first line of Joan Didion’s “The White Album”: We tell ourselves stories in order to live. It seems that most of life that is in these two characters is in the stories that they tell.

When I first began reading The Lazarus Project I breathed a very deep sigh of relief. In his words and sentences I was comfortable. Each sentence was a full and complete sentence in that no words or phrases were superfluous, everything fit and was necessary and was beautiful. I reached a sense of familiarity as if with an old friend – a good book. While reading Faulkner is reading good books, it doesn’t have that sense of newness and discovery and relaxed enjoyment; in a sense, I often feel like I am working – I am reading with a purpose. I am beginning to think that I should be reading more for enjoyment than for purpose; maybe I would learn just as much or even more.

I didn’t read Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End until many months after I had worked in an office. I think if I had still been in my work situation I would have a different opinion about the novel. I would have laughed out loud – maybe – and further dug my heels in frustration at the injustices of the corporate hand. I had distance and this distance turned me off to the (sometimes) excruciating minutiae of this book. After my much needed break from Faulkner, I thought this would be just the thing to make me laugh: I’d be part of the group. Isn’t that what it’s all about? I read the first paragraph and I was hooked. This is exactly like working in an office. Ferris has got it.

The problem for me was that pages, chapters later he’s still doing it. I don’t find it interesting what kind of computers or software people are using. Nor do I find it particularly interesting all of the little details, quirks, nervous ticks, and rituals people have while they actually work. I don’t want to read about work. While I do concede that a lot of these details are necessary for creating that office milieu, the first half of the book was mostly exposition. It got tiring.

What was compelling was the use of ‘we’. The ability to sustain the first person plural as a narrator was remarkable. I could become cynical and say that it was an easy choice: there is no commitment to character if we are all the narrator and there is great freedom of omniscience in this elusive voice. But I want to believe that it was used to make us feel like part of the group – like reality TV on the page. We have all been part of the politics/antics of the workplace and we can watch (read) it before our eyes, even feel privy to the characters’ secrets.

Here’s where I think I disliked the book (and I wanted to like it so very much – again, I have fallen victim to too much hype): it feels written to become a movie. It was entertaining, at least enough for me to finish it.

I was really excited to read John Barth’s The Development. I haven’t read much of Barth’s work but I loved Lost in the Funhouse and I needed a break from Faulkner. They are completely different stylistically and I thought the short stories would be a good change of pace. (I am not reading Faulkner’s short stories for my project.) These stories are based in a gated community for older adults in the Maryland suburbs. I can’t personally relate but was interested since there seemed to be potential for social commentary. However, I read the first story about the effect that a peeping tom has on the community and I was disappointed. I felt as though I were reading the writing for a very narrow audience and there was no subtlety to the social commentary that I assumed he was trying to make about the lives of the people who live in gated communities. I often feel, in fiction, that more is said when you’re not saying anything at all. I started the second story in the collection to give it a second chance. I did not finish that story nor did I start any others – a disappointment to be sure.

I had high hopes for Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. Many people wrote about it and many people had good things to say. I was not disappointed but I wasn’t swept away. I expected to escape to Norway. This feeling was based, of course, upon recommendations. Although I wasn’t disappointed with the book: it was well written (I am often hesitant to judge the writing of a translated work – who would I be criticizing: the writer or the translator?) and the story intriguing (despite the somewhat pedestrian ending), I felt it a bit overhyped. This is one of the reasons that I tend to not read reviews of books that I would be interested in reading. I go in with expectations and usually they are not met – I’m not sure if that is a statement about the quality of reviews or my inability to be objective about them. The most compelling part of the book was the narrative about the main character’s memory of the summer of 1948. That part was framed by the story of him moving to a house in the country for the remainder of his years where he is confronted with the past. While it could have easily become a coming of age story (in fact, it could be said that it is – just not the adolescent age), there is much more depth to the characters and their experiences. Something, though, was missing. I think it was Norway. I love stories with a deep rooted sense of place and I wanted more of the Norwegian experience. That is probably an unreasonable request and despite that I rather enjoyed it.

It is an amazing thing: coming back to a novel that you’ve read so many years ago – as an undergraduate, no less, at the height of youthful intellectual study; the time when you thought you knew everything (or at least wanted to, so it was easy to pretend that you did – discovering something was equivalent to understanding) – and realizing that you didn’t know what the hell was going on in that novel. Sure, you could understand it, follow the plot, and get swept away by the writing – but did you really understand what it was saying, at least, to you? Maybe in some slight way. But now as I have finished William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury for the second time, I have a much greater connection with one of the novels that sealed my commitment to Faulkner forever.

I won’t dwell too much on what the book is about – that has been done many times over, particularly in the Norton Critical Edition that I own. While some of the essays are interesting, I try to stay away from too much criticism. I did, however, read the Appendix that Faulkner wrote for The Portable Faulkner in 1946, which outlines the characters from 1699-1945 in the novel: “I should have done this when I wrote the book,” Faulkner wrote. “Then the whole thing would have fallen into pattern like a jigsaw puzzle when the magician’s wand touched it.” I read it to try to refresh my reading memory (which is very, very poor and one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place) and I’ll admit it did become a jigsaw puzzle but it didn’t fall into pattern right away. Although it’s an Appendix, I read it first. Maybe it was cheating, but it didn’t matter. The Appendix is a bit of novella in its own right and there were moments I had to double-back to place what happened in the novel proper or if it happened in the Appendix. At any rate, I could take or leave the critical essays and I try to experience the novels as I read them.

The novel is split into for sections each representing a different day in the lives of the Compson family. Throughout my reading there were a few questions I had about the order of the sections: April 7, 1928; June 2, 1910; April 6, 1928; and April 8, 1928. Each day has its own idiosyncrasies and could stand alone yet they could never stand alone. I often found asking ‘How would the novel be different if the sections were ordered differently?…Could they be ordered differently?” I was often reminded of the famous quote from Macbeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in the petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I didn’t return to the quote until I finished the novel and I had forgotten the significance of those first few lines – “the petty pace from day to day” – and how it leads to the end of the quote “Signifying nothing.” I realize that my question is most likely moot (even if it could be an interesting experiment to see how the novel could change if ordered differently) and taking each ‘day’ as it comes until each day is both significant and meaningless.

While it could be easy to fall into the trap of taking the novel too superficially in using this quote as a ‘key’, it does allow me, especially in my second reading, to experience the novel’s superb execution rather than the significance of time, chivalry, race, family, tragedy, etc… What I found most interesting is how quickly and easily I can forgive Faulkner for his style. The first section is told from the point of view of Benjy, an ‘idiot’, whose narrative has no ties to linear time. (It would also be interesting to see what the novel would look like if it were printed in different colors, each representing a change in time, as Faulkner once suggested.) The June 2, 1910 section is a huge leap into the intellectualism of Quentin, Benjy’s brother, where – again – time doesn’t quite follow a linear pattern but we are also given pages of italics and prose poems. The final two sections are more traditionally told. Each section perfectly executed. I am able to experience the writing without getting caught in the language. There is no disconnect between the writing on the page and what is being said.

Why then, do I have less tolerance for writers today who have similar styles? And what is the difference between style and voice? I may have answered my question with that question. I find that I am less forgiving of contemporary writers who try to write with writing in mind – or writing with visuals in mind. I am not opposed to new styles but I can’t help but think that novels are still about reading and listening to what’s on the page rather than visualizing the page itself. I will try to be more open to contemporary and experimental styles of writing but I know I will always go back to Faulkner’s definitive voice.

aside As I await the impending birth of my daughter, I had to take a break from Faulkner. Next on the list would have been As I Lay Dying, which is not quite the material for a oversensitive, hyper-hormoned, first-time mom to re-read. So, I decided on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. What a great choice considering my questions of style and voice. I am almost finished with the book and Diaz has a similar ability to execute voice unlike many (of course, not all) of his peers.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett . Pure entertainment. A fast paced detective story set in 1930s-ish San Francisco. Sam Spade is a deliberate character that you can’t help but root for. It is the kind of detective story that you may not be able to figure out all of the twists and turns but you know that everything is going to be set right in the world when it’s all over. The violence and crime are quaint compared to today’s plot lines, but that doesn’t take away from the compelling story. One reason I stayed hooked was the writing. Hammett does a fantastic job of moving the plot along quickly but not abruptly. Nothing is left out but only what is necessary is left in. Sam Spade is a man of action and there is no internal monologue clutter. Action, action, action tells this story.

The Maltese Falcon is the first selection for the book club that I recently joined. I have yet to go to a meeting so I’ll see how that goes. Next month’s selection is Howard’s End, which I’ve never read. Although I probably wouldn’t have picked either of these books, I appreciate that we are reading books that I haven’t read and that I am at least interested in.