two umbrellas

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 recently finished Damion Searls’ What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going**, which I loved. Amazon’s book blog, Omnivoracious, has an interview in two parts. I highly recommend it.

**Update: Here’s my review over at WFTC.

I’ve got another review up at WFTC. It’s Mary Gaitskill’s Don’t Cry. Here’s a bit:

I’ve only ever read two of Mary Gaitskill’s story collections: Bad Behavior, her first (published in 1988), and Don’t Cry, her latest. Both are highly charged works of fiction — strong, full of sexuality, intensity, and intelligence. After reading both of these collections, I have come to the conclusion that if I ever had the chance to meet Mary Gaitskill I would be quite intimidated. Her writing is tough and confident, somehow masculine and feminine at the same time, which doesn’t make it feminist — it makes it authentic.

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.

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.

I am undecided about Sanctuary by William Faulkner. This novel is more plot driven than the other novels of his that I’ve read. It is about a woman who is kidnapped and taken into the Memphis ‘underworld’ and the trial of the man wrongly accused of murdering another man who tried to protect her. It was a little grotesque and a little odd and yet at times, surprisingly, beautiful.

Beneath the bed the dogs made no sound. Temple moved slightly; the dry complaint of mattress and springs died into terrific silence in which they crouched. She thought of them, woolly, shapeless; savage, petulant, spoiled, the flatulent monotony of their sheltered lives snatched up without warning by an incomprehensible moment of terror and fear of bodily annihilation at the very hands which symbolised by ordinary the licensed tranquility of their lives.

I am always impressed by Faulkner’s tendency to blend his descriptions of animals and humans. In this paragraph he is discussing two dogs that are hiding under Temple’s bed but that last sentence could be describing Temple herself before and during her current situation. These passages are a reminder, particularly in this novel – which focuses on human’s more primitive conditions – of our our animal tendencies and that without our moral conscience these animal tendencies can become evil – as illustrated in the character of Popeye.

There were two other things that struck me: the punctuation and the introduction. First, Faulkner really uses the colon in this novel, so much so that I began to recognize when a colon would be approaching. I liked it even if it was overused but it works. Second, the text I read contained the Introduction that Faulkner wrote for the Modern Library edition in 1932. He writes:

I thought again, ‘[Sanctuary] might sell; maybe 10,000 of them will buy it.’ So I tore the galleys down and rewrote the book. It had been already set up once, so I had to pay for the privilege of rewriting it, trying to make out of it something which would not shame The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying too much and I made a fair job and I hope you will buy it and tell your friends and I hope they will buy it too.

The whole Introduction is interesting and entertaining. He discusses how the writing and the attitude towards writing changes when you try to write specifically for money. I was glad I read it last. It helped me understand the direction of the book.

I had just finished Drown before going to see Junot Diaz at the FLP. I had a similar feeling about Drown as I did about Drinking Coffee Elsewhere – there is so much life in Diaz’s writing. Most writers are very good at illuminating characters; but there are some that bring them to life. I can’t say I’ve had a favorite from this collection of short stories. They were all good. They were all vivid. And they were all real.

It’s been about a year since I lived in North Jersey. North Jersey is a region all unto itself.* There are great differences between the North and South. The South is small shore towns built on tourism. To the west there are farms and a little further north there is industry where the larger cities begin (along side a well-known neighboring city). North Jersey is one large suburb of New York, a place that is always unnamed, but always overshadowing. “The city” is seen with starry-eyed resentment. Most of the people that live in North Jersey (let me clarify and say the area where I lived – Bergen County) can afford to live in “the city” and yet they resent the fact that they don’t. There exists an awesome amount of wealth and privilege – a privilege that is devoid of any culture – that begins at an early age. Teenagers have credit cards and luxury cars I still can’t afford. There isn’t much to do other than shop along Route 17 – on a clear day you could see the Empire State Building off in the distance beckoning. Hop onto NJ Transit or the Path and you are there in less than an hour. But there is still that middle area that distinctly separates the North and South – Newark, Patterson, Perth Amboy, East/West Orange, and New Brunswick – that must become the buffer zone for the remainders that cannot fit into the North, the South, and “the city.” This is Junot Diaz’s New Jersey. The stories that take place in New Jersey have a sense of displacement. These places are holding zones until one can reach Nueva York. The remaining stories that take place in Santo Domingo have a sense of unrest – a waiting for the promises of a promised land.

When I saw Junot Diaz speak, I didn’t know what to expect. Although, who does know what to expect when attending a reading? Reading does create an imagined relationship with the text and thus a de facto relationship with the author; yet, it is easy and sometimes unwise to expect that person on the stage. However, in Junot Diaz that is exactly what I saw. He doesn’t seem much different than what was on the pages of his stories (I haven’t read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao yet – although there was an excerpt in The New Yorker Fiction Issue. It’s not online; but TNY does have a podcast of Edwidge Danticat discussing “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)” from Drown.) Last Tuesday, he read from “Wildwood” (what was in The New Yorker), took some questions, and then read another excerpt from his novel. Despite the fact that he was on a stage at an elementary school, it felt like a conversation. He’s just a man who loves to read – but also knows how to tell a damn good story.

Diaz didn’t speak of much of New Jersey, although I wanted to ask him about it. (I try not to speak to famous authors anymore after an embarrassing incident with Jeanette Winterson.) Coming to New Jersey from Santo Domingo must have been a surreal experience – of course, that could be said of emigrating to anywhere. But after living there myself, I, too, felt like I moved to another country – one of stark economic extremes – and I have a great appreciation for the title Drown and its eponymous story. I know I often write about “American” storytellers. Diaz has the ability and perspective to be one of the great American storytellers.

aside After living there and having great friends that are from both North and South Jersey, I feel that I am somewhat justified in succumbing to a few New Jersey stereotypes.

Where the hell was I? What could I have possibly been reading when ZZ Packer first published Drinking Coffee Elsewhere? Reading this book (after it had been shelved on my massive tbr pile for years) really made me want to kick myself in the ass for two reasons: one, I have been missing out on ZZ Packer; two, her writing has once again risen the bar far, far, far out of my reach. I have a lot of experience with short stories: they are mostly what I read and they are only what I write – and I can easily say that ZZ Packer is one of the few that really understands the art of storytelling.

So here I am again with the same old problem: I fall in love with a book. I can’t wait to talk about it and then I realize I have nothing to say. I am too emotionally attached. I finished this book weeks ago and it’s still sitting on my desk as a reminder of how inarticulate I am about writing that captivates me. Maybe that’s what makes great art: articulation is unnecessary or unachievable because its beauty is beyond intellectualism? There is certainly something nonintellectual about Packer’s collection. There is so much more life than writing in her writing. Maybe I should stop thinking about it and just enjoy.

My Life in Heavy Metal by Steve Almond is probably not a collection I would randomly choose at a bookstore – considering the cover. But a friend recommended it, so I though I would give it a chance. About twenty pages into the collection (with the the first and title story finished), I decided just to give it the benefit of the doubt. I’m surprised I finished it. There were a few surprises in “Run Away, My Pale Love” and “Pornography” but for the most part I found the raining twelve stories only mildly entertaining but mostly nostalgic for the glory days of the early twenties of a typical male. I agree, that sounds like a quite a stereotype – yet, that’s how the stories are written: I found Almond’s writing similar to Nick Hornby or Tom Perrotta only with raunchier sex scenes.

The collection was steeped in nostalgia for the moments when people have hopes of eternal emotional invincibility – the mindset where the characters believe that the music that they are listening to now could only be the music they will be listening to twenty years on. Almond’s characters are frozen in their own concept of time and they all sound the same (as if Almond, himself, were one narrator dressed in different costumes). The two stories I liked took the characters out of their element and forced the characters to look at the world around them. Unfortunately, the remaining stories were suffering from arrested development.

Once again, the Guardian offers a Summer Fiction Special with new short stories by

• Rose Tremain
• Jeannette Winterson
• Nick Hornby
• Jay McInerney
• Yiyun Li
• AM Homes