two umbrellas

When I was in college I started quilting. I went to a small state school in rural PA and was surrounded by Mennonite and Amish communities. I was always impressed by the simplicity and beauty of their quilts. I never really thought of their lifestyle because I was so used to seeing plain clothed men and women in horse and buggies. They were part of our larger community. It wasn’t until I moved to Philadelphia where I thought more about how they may have felt living with us. In Philadelphia, the Amish would come to Reading Terminal Market with farm fresh food or they would have stands at the city-wide farmers markets. I can’t imagine what it was like for the kids (many of the stands were run by teenagers – or younger) who went from the farm to the city on the weekends.

I was very interested in learning about going from the city to the farm when I saw Sue Bender’s Plain and Simple. It always seemed to me that ‘taking away’ was a harder lifestyle change than ‘adding’. With a second baby on the way, I am in the mindset of taking some lifestyle things away while adding a lot more personal complexity. I wanted a glimpse into a world where people lived with a lot fewer things but still led full, complicated lives. Bender’s was also drawn to this lifestyle through the beauty of Amish quilts. She herself was a quilter and saw some quilts hanging in a store. Something pulled her to them and she continued to visit the quilts until she realized that she needed to go live with the Amish.

I am still amazed that she was able to find an Amish family who would allow her to live with them. Bender grew up in New York City and lived in Berkeley, CA. She knew no Amish people but had some friends that lived near Amish communities. She didn’t know anything about how the Amish lived other than that they live in isolated communities without electricity. At this point, in this short book, I should have begun questioning this woman. What could she have gained by infiltrating the lives of an Amish family? But, then, I really wanted to know, too. Does this unknown culture, that has been living within my known culture, have the secret to a happy life? What can I learn from this woman’s experience, if anything?

Unfortunately, very little. The book was structured in an odd fashion: like a patch-work quilt with little vignettes about her experiences before, during, and after her experience with the Amish. It didn’t read fluently (unlike a patch-work quilt that comes together to form a congruous whole). It read more like pieces of a quilt haphazardly put together in order to show off the more important pieces (in this case, the author). In other words, I got the impression that this book was more about her and not about the Amish. Aren’t memoirs supposed to be about the authors? Yes, but there was a lack of perspective that made the author seem a little too self-absorbed – so much so that I was beginning to dislike her. At one point she criticizes one family she visits for what they eat (lots of sweets, white bread, and butter*) because it wasn’t what she expected even though she based her expectations on little to no knowledge of the Amish lifestyle. Her criticism of this and other small things showed how little tolerance she had for her hosts and revealed how exploitive her journey into the Amish community turned out to be. Truthfully, I think the only reason I finished it was because it was so short and I wouldn’t have felt good about myself for not being able to finish a book that was around 120 pages.

*Being from Pennsylvania Dutch country, this did not come as a surprise to me. Even just one visit to Lancaster, PA (which the author does do) should reveal the region’s love of refined sugar.

It is rare when a book affects me. Yes, each book I read is an experience, per se; there is a relationship between two sensibilities. Often, that relationship fades as time passes as new books are read and new voices heard and some are just, well, forgettable. However, reading William T Vollmann’s Poor People was like getting a good slap in the face. I had a previous experience with Vollmann’s writing before with Rainbow Stories and was not expecting to be this moved.

Before I can even begin about the content, I must address Vollmann’s writing and voice. (I don’t know much about him although I’ve been reading some interviews now that Imperial is out.) WTV pulls you in with his sincerity, keeps you there with his eye for raw subject matter, and then leaves it up to you to judge – if you must. Something seems soft and quiet, even when he’s describing the homeless people that use his building as a toilet or a town – once beautiful and handcrafted with pride – that is soon to be demolished:

“Under the road, where time is slower and cheaper, not only does the division of labor sometimes insist less on itself, but so does the division between labor and art. Well, goodbye, goodbye! Simple, crownlike flowers on short-plucked diagonal stems spread their angled wings and hovered darkly on a house’s pale wall, under-the-road blossoms awaiting the happy day when oil’s thoroughfare, preceded by its herald, the wrecking ball, would uplift everybody into superior normality.”

His ability to juxtapose this soft sincerity with the harsh realities of poor people’s lives paradoxically takes WTV himself off of the page and yet makes it strikingly personal: Will it be a ‘happy day when oil’s thoroughfare, preceded by its herald, the wrecking ball, would uplift everybody into superior normality“? It depends on who you ask.

I almost forgot Poor People is a very long essay. It doesn’t feel like editorializing but that’s what it is. He deftly states: here is the situation and (with paragraphs like the one above) subtly asks: now what do you think of that? However, there is never a time when he asks: what are you going to do about it? In fact, he states that he is not writing to tell people how to fix the problem of poverty. He is writing to tell you about poverty and what makes someone poor.

WTV chooses to write about poverty that most people never see and rarely understand. If you know WTV’s writing, then you know the prostitutes, the drug addicts, the downtrodden, the drunks, the sick, the forgotten. Somehow, in Poor People he is also able to find compelling stories – but, then, with this subject matter, maybe they all are. I can’t help but think he finds the compelling stories because he seems to look for them without fear. In Japan, he searches for the elusive and extremely dangerous Snakeheads (people involved in human trafficking), knowing that knocking on certain doors could get him killed – fortunately, and even he recognizes this, these doors are not answered. There is story of the Thai woman who works to get drunk and take care of her daughter. There is the story of the two beggars in Russia: one an epileptic and one who is in her eighties, supporting her family. (I found this story amazing: the son-in-law was sent to work to clean up Chernobyl – when he started they were initially only allowed to work 5 seconds a day due to the radiation. Now he is too sick to work. His exposure was so great he has the potential to make the rest of his family sick by being around them – his two daughters rarely leave the house due to illness.) There is the story of the oil town in Kazakhstan whose town officials are ordering everyone to move – there are rumors that the refinery is making everyone sick and that the entire town has anemia. There are the stories of Afghan women who are poor but invisible under the strong arm of the Taliban (it is illegal for women to beg, among many other things). So many stories. So much poverty.

The beauty of WTV’s book is that I didn’t find myself pitying these people. He was able to make them human. Of course, they are human! However, I find that often when people write about these kinds of stories they patronize and pity to the point where these stories become sentimental simulacra of themselves – almost cartoonish, as if it couldn’t/doesn’t really happen. (The best example I can think of is most of the Katrina coverage.) WTV writes in such away that you don’t want to turn away, you are not embarrassed, or nervous, or scared of (most of) these people. Some are just like us. Just poorer. A lot poorer.

But are they? That is, I think, what WTV really wanted to know. What makes someone poor? Is it how much they have? How much money they have? Or is it something else? For each person it is different, a different story, a different sadness, a different hope. And hope is what WTV thinks is the best thing you can give these people. Let them drink, smoke, do drugs, as long as it gives them hope and makes their lives a little better. I am not sure I agree with this at all times, especially when the behavior can affect others. But, hope, in itself, I can believe in.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read some non-fiction until I recently read Mary Roach’s Bonk. Well, I shouldn’t say ‘read’ because I didn’t finish it. This was a recent find at my local library and I thought, “What the hell. I’ve heard of Mary Roach. I like sex. This could be interesting.” I realized three library renewals into it that I was then saying, “What the hell was I thinking?!?” After the ‘Penis’ chapter, I called it quits.

This book has so much potential: “The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex” reads the subtitle. I am a curious person. I enjoy sex. Maybe I could enjoy it on another, possibly objective, level. Not that I had any great expectations – I wasn’t expecting Anais Nin or anything – there would be science involved after all. However, I was not expecting to be grossed out (and I do not consider myself a prude). Nor was I expecting to feel like Roach was at my bedside.

I think it was the aforementioned ‘Penis’ chapter that did me in. I wish I had quotes (I’ve long since returned the book to the library) but, really, on second thought it’s probably better that I didn’t. Let’s just say she witnesses a penile implant and let’s also just say I’m so glad I don’t have a penis. (To be fair, I didn’t read the ‘Vagina’ chapter so maybe I wouldn’t want to have one of those either.) I now know too much how penile implants work and the how much physical agony those guys have to go through to get one.

I’ll admit there were some interesting bits. There is still a stigma attached to doing sex research, even in this Cialis-in-the-tub age. There are often lots of euphemisms used in presenting research topics for grant moneys and to universities. I guess there can be a fine line between objective and perverted (think Kinsey – also very interesting). However, these few gems were intruded by footnotes and asides that constantly took me away from the original topic – usually something tangentially related to the main text. This happened so often that I felt I was reading two books: the one Roach was writing and the one with random factoids that Roach wanted to write. 

Needless to say that science plus sex should not be disappointing. Roach’s voice is jovial, like a friend is telling you something funny that she read in the tabloids in the grocery line. But I don’t want to constantly read about the boy who was born a bat. I don’t need to be shocked to be entertained – even only mildly. Roach started out with a great topic but didn’t realize that you can have too much of a good thing.

There is something intriguing about delving into the secrets of art. That’s one of the reasons art is so attractive to humans: its inability to be explained. Somehow it has the ability to interpret our surroundings and give some meaning to our reality. Of course, there is also art that completely destroys our notions of reality and challenges us to rethink our perceptions. The creative process breaks down to reinvent. Or does it?

In Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist, certain artists are heralded as being the precursors to scientists. They could feel in their art – whatever form that may be: novels, poetry, food, music, painting – what scientists are struggling to understand: how the brain works and how do we feel. In a sense Lehrer is breaking down the art to recreate the science. This approach is quite alluring. Artists’ secrets revealed! Granted, that is not the premise or promise of the book. The book is really about art and science and how enmeshed they are. Yet, it feels written as though he is revealing secrets and that, to me, lacks authenticity. I lost interest in his interpretations of the artists’ work and his thin transitions between the art and science.

Unfortunately, there were no moments where I thought “Oh, so that’s what happens!” Simplicity, not brevity, are the keys to pop-science. Or, possibly, I just didn’t find neuroscience to be that interesting. The chapters on Auguste Escoffier and Gertrude Stein were the most intriguing because these were the most accessible and practical – why food is delicious and the structure of language. I eat food and use language everyday, well, not like Escoffier or Stein, but I have a particular interest in food and language (sometimes even together).

Lehrer’s book disappoints because he is writing a pop-science book without the practicality of popular science. Neuroscience is interesting, or at least could be. Both art and neuroscience are things most people don’t understand. If you put them together they could equal a beautiful book. However, there was little practicality and a lot of Lehrer.

On an somewhat unrelated note: While the subject has been written about many times, I also was intrigued to read how the William and Henry James weaved themselves into so many aspects of art and science. They are like the Benjamin Franklins* of the 19th century.

aside Living in Philadelphia comes with accepting Ben Franklin as a national hero (besides the Phillies, of course!). If you’re using it; BF invented it! We, Philadelphians, are not short on exaggerated pride.

Times Online excerpts Backwards in High Heels: The Impossible Art of Being Female by Sarah Vine and Tania Kindersley, where they outline five little lies that parents will sometimes say to non- or soon-to-be parents:

1. It doesn’t matter if she gets fat, the weight will drop off afterwards, especially if she breastfeeds.

2. The birth itself isn’t that bad, and anyway your body is biologically programmed to forget the pain.

3. Breastfeeding can be a little tricky to start with, but in the end she’ll get the hang of it.

4. You get used to not having as much sleep as you used to.

5. The experience of looking after a newborn can really bring two people together.

I shouldn’t say they are lies, per se, maybe just not the whole truth…

Over the past several years I have made a transformation in my diet. I learned to love food. Real food. Food that is grown or raised or in some form at some time had been a part of nature. I’ll admit I still like and will eat food that is not quite so natural (I think I’m addicted to breakfast cereal); but, for the most part, I am conscious of what I eat and do my best to eat healthily. There are a few reasons for this. One, of course, is that it’s good for you. We are natural beings and must eat, so we should eat natural food. Second, real food just tastes better. When the farmers’ markets come into the city during the summer (the influx has, thankfully, begun*), there is no question about the quality and taste, even for something as simple as lettuce. Yesterday I bought the most beautiful head of red leaf lettuce (better looking than the cover picture on Pollan’s book) from a teenaged Mennonite from Lancaster County and it still had the taste of soil. My love of food has become not just about authenticity – that is too superficial – it is more about being a natural person.

In Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, he mentions that he is surprised that a book like the one he is writing has to be written at all. Why do we need to defend food? Food is real and food is necessary. How can it be more complicated than that? Unfortunately, it is. He begins to outline how humans (well, mostly those of us who live in the Western world) have made food complicated by putting our faith in industry instead of agriculture – and culture, in general – in Omnivore’s Dilemma. We have lost a sense of food as part of our culture, lost our sense of how food is part of a natural way of life. We have accepted that even farming can become mechanical and have (or have been?) sheltered from how these mechanical processes are affecting the animals involved. A great distance has been created between ourselves and what we eat, despite the fact that we can eat foods that have traveled a great distance: I often do not think of the journeys that must be made in order for me to eat a banana every morning – year round. Pollan continues his argument, what he calls a ‘manifesto’, in his follow up book, In Defense of Food.

I had read excerpts from his book in the NYT Magazine and had an idea of what he would be writing about: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” He starts the book that way and, if you consider yourself to be an informed eater, that may be all you need to read of the book. I would prefer to call this book an extended essay and probably could have been another section of Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan ‘defends’ food by tackling nutritionists who have stripped whole foods down to science. Pollan attacks the scientific way of looking at food by using the flawed science against itself. While I found these arguments interesting – there is a lot of food science history that I didn’t know about, I didn’t find the overall argument compelling. Pollan wants us to stop thinking about food as individual nutrients and yet uses nutrition science as an argument. Granted about two thirds into the book, he admits this; but, admitting a weak argument doesn’t make it stronger. Now, I can look past this (to a degree – I did finish the book, although I couldn’t justify not finishing, considering it’s only a little over one hundred pages) because I agree with his overall premise. However, I could hardly call it a manifesto.

I believe Pollan’s aim is to get many of the general public – those that can afford it – to eat real food (food that’s not overly processed and made mostly of corn and injected with individual nutrients) and to bring culture, which he often identifies as ‘Mom’, back into our diets. It is a great idea and one that I will strive to maintain with my family. It seems as though he wants this to be the crux of his argument but only lightly discusses it. It is easy to gloss over it, considering most of the general public could not afford shopping for whole foods and skipping the bulk, processed, high calorie foods. He’s correct that they are unhealthy and they lack any type of culture. Yet, in a seemingly populist argument, it is hard to focus on an issue that has unfortunate roots in an economic gap. That may not be the reason he skirts the issue; but the issue is skirted nonetheless.

Pollan almost gets to the crux of his argument by highlighting some of the food culture in other countries; but he focuses on the French, which is not a bad thing – the French food culture is one to envy – but I can’t imagine it’s the only one. If his ‘manifesto’ is to bring food into our culture – or recreate a culture of food, than he should have focused on how culture and food can be symbiotic, healthy, and delicious.

*See here for a list of Philadelphia (and surrounding area) farmers’ markets.

aside It is obvious that Pollan is influenced by Wendall Berry and I haven’t read much by him; but I am becoming aware that I am missing out (as usual). There is a very interesting essay in Harper’s, “Faustian Economics”, where he discusses consequences of the presumed limitless of American culture.

In the midst of NaNoWriMo, I’m still (barely) trying to keep up my reading, which – of course – is one of the reasons I write.

I fell in love with Wayne Koestenbaum’s direct style in Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes and could not wait for Hotel Theory. I’ll admit it was a bit heady for me since I have been concentrating mostly on other things as of late; but, there were so many phrases that pulled me back and forced me into this book.

…and why I write: the ritual of composition kills consciousness at the same time as it revives a bleak, faithful attentiveness. Concentrating on my own sentences, converting intuition into phrases – this process feels like staring directly at time…every thought must be apotheosis…

Reading The Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion has taught me once again how to write a paragraph.

I started Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique many, many months ago. I am still only half way through this classic. I have to put it on hold. It is very hard to read. I do not find Friedan’s style engaging or interesting – only the subject matter has kept my attention for over 300 pages. Unfortunately, as I read I am also finding that culture hasn’t quite progressed as far is it probably should have when this first published. I must say it is demoralizing to continue reading at this point but I may continue later. Of course I said that about The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs and I still have not returned to that.