Lingual Tremors

Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork

Stephen King is smarter than I am.  He's probably smarter than you.  Stephen King rocks.  And this post is about his brilliance and an unknown novel he didn't write called Fieldwork. 

Regular readers of Entertainment Weekly know that King writes a column for the back page.  Over the summer,  he wrote a review of Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork, calling it the best book you're not reading (well, the column was actually called "How To Bury a Book...)  The column took the publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, to task for not doing the hard work of selling the book.  Among other things, King criticizes both the book's design and the title:

And Fieldwork's cover is a green smear (probably jungle) and a gray smear (probably sky). It communicates nothing.

I have to say:  the longer I'm a writer, the more writers like Stephen King and Michael Chabon (an unlikely match, no?) influence me away from highly stylized academic notions of the literary elite to a more basic question:  what is the purpose of writing?  To both delight and challenge, to entertain and to serve a purpose.  Duh.  People READ for different reasons.  And, the ways in which academia all too often takes reading (and writing!) to new heights of literary snobbery appals me.  Although Stephen King is all too often dismissed in academic literary circles because he writes "horror" or "genre", I've come to highly respect what he has to say about writing.  When Stephen King talks, I listen.  He says, "Under the drab title and the drab cover, there's a story that cooks like a mother. It's called Fieldwork."  So, I bought Fieldwork because I was curious and because I respect King for calling my attention to good writing.

And Berlinski's Fieldwork?  It's a mother.  I loved it.  So, again, LX highly recommends this to your "must read" list.  The fictional narrator "Mischa" is a journalist following the mystery of why cultural anthropologist Martiya murders a missionary in Thailand in a Dyalo community.  It's a story of faith, love gained and lost, of what "home" means, and of the most intimate connections between humans and the earth. It's at once historical, cultural, anthropological, mysterious, and lexical.  It's also a love letter to the lost days of anthropological research, when there were still far flung reaches of the Earth left untouched by civilization and "progress."  It's a novel that explores connections between people and delves deep into the nature of love and friendship.  You can get lost in these pages:  lost in the mysteries of what connects people to the land and to one another, in the exoticism of a new and different land, in the idea that Eden still exists, in the remarkable and disappeared past. 

Mischa becomes friend and lover to Martiya, whom he never truly meets.  It's a novel about ghosts and rice and the passion of trying to claim a small space in the world for yourself and your work.  It's melancholy, beautiful, aching, and in every sense, the "answer" to the culturally insensitive American dolts of Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning.  Oh.  And it's well written.  The characters leap off the page in their ordinary eccentricities.   The jungle and the rice paddies hum with vitality.  Kind of makes me want to buy a plane ticket.

Forget the cover.  Ignore the hype.  Read it and get lost in another world for a little while!

The 4 Legged University--a cool idea!!!

This is an older news item, but it was news to me! 

In Venezuela, a program started by the University of Momboy, brings books to people in the Andes via mule.  Think of it as a bookmobile, rustic style.  They are called, no joke, bibliomulas.  I love them. 

Read On!
BBC

More Book Recommendations: Don't You Wish It Were Still Summer?

If you don't regularly follow the comments on Lingual Tremors, I'd like to highlight 2 book recommendations from readers:

Tumerica recommends a new Fantasy writer, Patrick Rothfuss. His book is The Name of the Wind.  Tumerica says, "Just came out. Life-changing. You'll be depressed when it's finished because he hasn't written his second book yet. Addictive."

and

aVivaSedai recommends Diane Duane's series of Wizard books.  The first is called So You Want to Be a Wizard?  She says, "This series again brings home to me that YA lit doesn't mean simple, it means approachable. The young kids go through difficult decisions, consider life, death, and their place in the middle, family difficulties and younger sisters, 'talking' dogs, parrots and fish..."

So, get busy and start reading!

The Best Book You're Not Reading: Trenton Lee Stewart's The Mysterious Benedict Society

Go to your favorite local bookstore.  Go now.  Do not take time to pass "Go".  Do not take time to collect "$200".  Do not take time to get a cup of coffee first.  RUN!  Once there, proceed directly to the children's section and get a copy of Trenton Lee Stewart's The Mysterious Benedict Society.  I guarantee you, it's the best book you're not reading and it will fill a small hole left in your life with the end of the Harry Potter series.

In the waning days of summer, while everyone else was crowded into Target buying "back to school" supplies, I was steadfastly ignoring the end of summer by cramming in as much end of summer reading as possible.  I came across The Mysterious Benedict Society and I was intrigued by the blurb on the inside jacket.  What a find!

The story follows the intrepid foursome of Reynie, Constance, Sticky, and Kate as they enter the "Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened" (LIVE, or EVIL, spelled backwards) as spies for the Mysterious Benedict Society.  LIVE challenges the kids mentally and physically as they fight to save the world.  And they enter into that challenge without the aid of magic wands, using just good old fashioned muscle and brain power.  And, dear readers, I ask you, who doesn't want to cheer for the salvation of our world?

This is the best of what I love about children's literature.  It doesn't talk down to kids;  it presents them with interesting, engaging, and thoughtful perspectives about the world in which we live; and, it's not afraid to take bold imaginative risks.  Some days, I think kids are the last true readers in our society.

Although this is a kid's book (aimed at ages 10-12), adult readers will enjoy it as well.  (Like I said, who wouldn't want to cheer for saving the world?  If you're so misanthropic that you can't cheer Reynie and his gang along, then you probably deserve a good old fashioned brain sweeping...) It's a funny, well-written, and engaging romp through the imaginative "what ifs" of the world.  It also serves as a cautionary tale about our media-saturated and terror-induced age of existence.  Think of it as summer's swan song of reading.  Go ahead.  Give yourself one last treat...

Put the Fish Back in the Water! Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, contemporary American women's fiction was often characterized by a feminist reclamation of the bildungsroman, the coming of age story.  Writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldua, Dorothy Allison, Toni Morrison, Sapphire, Sandra Benitez, Julia Alvarez, Cristina Garcia, Esmeralda Santiago and others.  What those novels often did was to reclaim the bildungsroman, a typically male space, for the voice of the woman, the voice of the "other."  To these novelists, and many others, we owe a profound debt of gratitude for exploding the narrow understanding of the American literary canon and deeply enriching readers' understandings of the American literary experience.

At the same time, many readers (myself included) fell into the late 1990s and early 2000s with an ennui about reading, yet again, a feminist bildungsroman.  This probably coincided with the rise of "memoir" publishing which meant that almost every narrative voice--both fictional and real--spoke in the whispering tones of confession about coming of age.

Amy Tan's gorgeous Saving Fish From Drowning (2005), introduces an entirely new dimension to multicultural American women's writing.  Some critics have called Saving Fish a departure from Tan's other books.  I disagree.  Saving Fish does what all novels should do, what all poems should do, what all plays should do:  it takes everything Tan knows about writing and the world and packages it in a new story.  Here, Tan builds on her very complicated notion of mother/daughter relationships and the ways in which ethnic identity and definitions of "home" challenge everyday life.  Tan couldn't have written Saving Fish without first writing The Joy Luck Club or the Kitchen God's Wife.   Still inherent in her writing is the lush, descriptive prose that falls of the page like supple petals of flowering words.  Still inherent in her writing is a challenge to staid notions of American identity.

But what's new in this imperiled age of global terrorism and constant miscommunication and bad translations is this:  a look at the ugly side of American privilege and the ways in which the U.S., as a people and as a nation, need to take a second look at what our actions say.

The plot of Saving Fish follows a small group of Americans on holiday in China and Myanmar.  The story is told in the delightful voice of Bibi, their deceased tour leader.  As the Americans haphazardly follow whim and desire, they create chaos and disaster in their wake and are solely responsible for a rather large and unpleasant international "incident."  You know these Americans.  They are the ones who boldy ask on the tour bus in Mexico, "Are we going to Merry-DAH today?" instead of pronouncing "Merida" with the lyrical, soft "d" and muscial resonance of "e".  These are the Americans who are the answer to the questions "Why do THEY hate US?" 

If I ever take students abroad, I will require this book as pre-trip reading as a way of opening up conversations about cross-cultural learning, about how to enter another culture with respect, about the ways in which our own privilege is all too often invisible to us.   It is about learning to walk softly and listen more and talk less.  It's about learning new ways to communicate.

The novel is also about the fragility and necessity of interdependence in our increasingly complicated world.  Tan suggests that in the same way the characters in the novel come to depend on one another for survival, so too must the countries of the world learn to humble their ambitions to create an interconnected global community.

If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Saving Fish From Drowning.

As if the stack by your bedside wasn't high enough...

The Guardian is featuring a "How Did We Miss These" column with must-read recommends made by writers such as Michael Chabon, Philip Pullman, and Siri Hustvedt.  They recommend a serious stack of good books--none of which I've read.  Oh Master Visa, it's time for an outing....

Check out the list here. 

Harry Potter: A Satisfying Conclusion

I'm not going to write a review right now other than to say as a reader, I'm utterly, totally, and completely satisfied.  Here's a great review from the BBC (caution:  it contains spoilers).  The end of the review says this:

This is no computer game of disposable weapons and endless lives. When a friend dies, they are dead. And their loved ones mourn.

Beyond the Dickensian scenery and names, the Blyton-esque ideal of family and adventure and Tolkien-style monsters, is essentially a tale of vulnerable love.

For all the talk of charms and potions, this is a black-and-white tale about the value of life.

It is a compelling, powerful and entirely fulfilling end to this epic series.

I couldn't agree more.

                   

It Begins...

We are ready.  These photos didn't turn out great, but they will give you the idea.

Here is our Gryffindor banner:

Here is the ceiling of the "Great Hall":

Here is our potions' classroom:

Here is our mandrake root:

Off to stand in line to pick up our copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  We already got our wristbands;  we're Group D, so we should be reading by 1 a.m. or so.

Need I say that blogging will be light until we finish?  (and we're reading outloud, so it will be a while...)

Seriously: Crucio Curse for Ron Charles (or maybe Imperio)

So, in about 10 hours, I will be queuing up, along with the rest of the world, to procure my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  This will be preceded by a day of making pumpkin pasties and butterbeer and decorating our apartment with potions, Mandrake roots, torches, and Gryffindor banners, all in the celebration of reading.  Since the third book, it has been the Lingual household tradition to read the books aloud (so it takes us just a little longer than everyone else...).  Did I mention that we don't have kids? 

In a lovely little piece called "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading" in last Sunday's Washington Post, literary critic Ron Charles takes aim at the popular Harry Potter series. 

But all around me, I see adults reading J.K. Rowling's books to themselves: perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over "Harry Potter" with nary a child in sight. Waterstone's, a British book chain, predicts that the seventh and (supposedly) final volume, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," may be read by more adults than children. Rowling's U.K. publisher has even been releasing "adult editions." That has an alarmingly illicit sound to it, but don't worry. They're the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets -- Cap'n Crunch in a Gucci bag.

I'd like to think that this is a romantic return to youth, but it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism. And when we're not horning in on our kids' favorite books, most of us aren't reading anything at all.

Now Charles' op ed has a larger point:  he's worried about the future of writing and publishing in the face of corporate media in the 21st century.  And, I would argue that all of us who are writers, readers, and thinkers, share a similar concern.  As a working poet, I can testify to the fact that I never, ever thought I would be able to make it financially as a writer.  So, into academe I went.  Call it poetry as a profession, with a little academe on the side. 

But, Charles' op ed would have convinced me more if he hadn't struck such a low blow.  His piece is filled with the kind of literary snobbery that drives me wild.  Charles is hoping for the American & British public to read higher literary fare;  although at the end of his piece he talks about books like Jonathan Strange and Mrs. Norrell, the work of Philip Pullman, and other high end fantasy and fiction, I think he's being disingenuous.  In the hallowed halls of literary academe, Strange & Norrell didn't get a second glance.  It was dismissed at "Harry Potter for adults."  In short, it's not the "stuff" of literature.  In fact, nothing that smacks of genre is (one need only to look at the derisive early reception of magical realists in this country to see the ways in which American literature is more the realm of Steinbeck and Hemingway than of Borges).  No, instead, I'd hazard a guess that Charles' is actually the stuff of deeply dark and sorrowful contemporary American literature in which a sadly troubled protagonist comes to some larger epiphany about the harrows of contemporary life.  Or, as Harold Bloom would have us read, the stuff of the literary "masters."

But here's the thing:  these critiques overlook one of the oldest obligations of literature--the giving of pleasure.  Rowling truly offers something that those writers don't.  She builds a world that different and exciting.  I've written before about the wonders of writer Michael Chabon (who, I would argue, is the best contemporary American writer) and artist Matthew Barney for their incredible world-building.  Rowling does the same.  Hers is a world, call it the "alternative real," that readers want to enter and explore.  She creates a world by naming and description that is enthralling and captivating.  Haven't butterbeer and Hippogriffs and the "crucio" curse all become a part of the Harry Potter lexicon and something just a little bit "real" in your imagination?  Who hasn't dreamed of their own four poster bed in Hogwarts?  And to me, the mark of a good book is one that takes you away from everyday life.  And when you leave it, you feel just a little bit homesick.  Rowling does that for her readers.  Or maybe I'm just the victim of a 10 year love potion.

The thing is, a lot of contemporary "literature" just isn't good at that kind of world building and myth creation.  While I am a HUGE fan of contemporary American literature (and in my day job, also a scholar of said field), much of it is stuck in the stultifying present.  There are of course many exceptions to this statement, but by and large, a lot of contemporary literary fiction pushes its readers towards wider revelations about a character or place (anything that makes a political or social revelation is still dismissed in elite circles as some kind of muckraking) and it doesn't speak of any sense of wonder (and remember, here critics of Rowling aren't talking about any kind of genre, pulp-fiction.  They talk about "literature."  That's capital "L" with no room for the likes of pot boilers or derivative fiction).  I've long held that American literature has a lot to learn from Latin American magical realism in its truest sense.  Many (not all) contemporary American writers dread straying from the oppressive real.  The most recent novels of Tom Wolfe to Philip Roth to Jonathan Franzen to Jeffrey Eugenides to Cormac McCarthy (wow--that's a surprisingly male list!) all reveal a kind of deep, morose and desperate contemporary moment.  And not that we're not in a deep and desperate moment.  I believe deeply in literature's important role as social commentary.  I also believe in the beauty of language and prosody.  (Quick side note:  I would like to also say that I think this lack is precisely the void that women writers like Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Julia Alvarez, Carole Maso, Michael Chabon, and others have filled.  Charles also bemoans the loss of "biodiversity" in literature. But, that's been the whole point in the struggles for multiculturalism in the literary canon in the 1980s and 1990s.  Give me a break: nothing says homogeneous like the male, white writers who overwhelm American literary studies [not to mention Western European literature].  It's been hard for anyone else to get a place at the literary table).

It's more than just world building and myth creation with Rowling, however.  She's also a master of character development.  Anyone studying fiction writing today should be required to read the series to learn how to deftly "grow" characters from childhood into adolescence.  The changes in Harry and his friends have been remarkable.  Rowling has captured them, and those around them, with a deft and compellingly compassionate pen.  In the last book, who knew that we might feel sympathetic towards Snape or Malfoy?  Rowling has not only taken the most celebrated boy of her universe--Harry--and made us all fans, but she has also rescued the least and the last of her own world--outcasts like Lupin and Dobby and Black--and made us love them.  When Dumbledore died at the end of the last book, readers truly grieved the loss.  When was the last time you cried when reading a book?  There's a lot to be said for a writer who is so skilled at the affective.  There's also something remarkable about a writer who can command her readers' devotion to such a host of characters.   Rowling has created something akin to a "collective" hero in her books, making Harry a protagonist whose success is always linked to those around him.  (I seriously wish that I cared about any one of Philip K. Roth's characters as much as I care about Ron, Hermione, Harry, Dumbledore and the gang.  Instead, I usually want to slap his characters into a stupor.)

Which brings me to my last point.  Rowling has also achieved something extraordinary in her writing.  She has created a generation of readers linked by their love of Harry Potter, and because of the changes in our modern world, with the auspices of Net 2.0, she has created a Harry Potter community.  Before, the idea of communities devoted to a writer was the stuff of the most elite academic circles.  Think Shakespeare scholars and the Folger library.  Think of Victorian literary scholarship.

While children's books have often served to make children fans of a particular character (Nancy Drew, Junie B. Jones, Encyclopedia Brown, etc.), the Harry Potter phenomenon is something altogether distinct and I think it has something to do with that previous idea of world building.  People so desperately want to be a part of the Harry Potter world that they are finding more ways than ever before (yes, yes, I know fan fiction preceded Potter) to extend Harry's world into our own.

To wit:  last night I had an extraordinary experience.  The Harry Potter Alliance, which aims to connect the idea of "doing good" in Harry's world to fighting injustices like Darfur in our own world, hosted "Wizard Rock" at the Bohemian Hall in Astoria, Queens.  Three bands, paying homage to all things Harry, played book-inspired songs in celebration of Harry Potter.  We heard Harry and the Potters, Draco & the Malfoys, and The Hungarian Horntails. What a hoot!   

Draco & the Malfoys:  (Press photo from Evil Wizard Rock)

It was a raucous evening, reliving the different episodes in each book from 3 different perspectives.  Fans from 3 to 80 showed up with hats, wands, scars, school colors, and a rambunctious attitude.  Despite a threatening summer storm, the crowd braved the rain to "Party Like You're Evil" and to celebrate the love that fans hope will bring Harry through the next book.

Now, I know that many sci-fi and fantasy writers have their own followers (ever been to a Trekkie convention?).  But, this is something different and larger because it cuts across so many different kinds of readers and ages in our society.  Think about it:  how many other books do we share as a society?  While the much embattled literary canon sets out a list of writers that people "should" read and we are exposed to in our schooling, how many kids have opted out via Cliff or Spark notes?  Harry Potter is a literary phenomenon because so many people have willingly sought it out on their own.  And what's more, as a testament to Rowling's creation, they've stayed through 7 books.  Critics like Charles want to accuse the literary public of some kind of capitalistic stupidity.  Buy an iPhone, buy your Harry Potter, drink your Starbucks.  But really:  marketing doesn't account for everything.  There are millions of products, including books, that we're told to buy everyday and we don't, or that we do buy and then we're disappointed about having given into the hype.

But tonight, millions of readers are showing up at midnight not because they are stupid, not because someone told them to, not because they don't know anything about literature.  They are showing up in droves, dressed like wizards and muggles alike, because Rowling has achieved something extraordinary for her readers.  She's created a world where they want to be and that they care desperately about.  Tonight, millions of readers around the world, myself included, are lining up to go home to the enchanting world of Hogwarts and the world of Harry Potter.  We've been homesick for two years.  And, we will relish the journey, live each step with Harry, and dread the inevitable end of what has been one of the most amazing, epic literary journeys any writer has ever invited us on. 

A Little More on Wizard Rock

• Wizard Rock (with a complete list of all bands--I just highlight a few below)
• Harry and the Potters
• Whomping Willows
• Draco and the Malfoys (Hilarious!  My definitive favorite.  Listen to "Party Like You're Evil" and "Voldemort is Awesome)
• The Remus Lupins
• The Mudbloods
• The Moaning Myrtles
• Harry Potter Alliance
• The Weird Sisters/Switchblade Kittens

Other posts on reading Potter

• Amanda at Pandagon on leisure time

Talking Trash...

Experiencing Dan Brown withdrawl?  May I suggest Steve Berry?  I am through 4 of his 5 novels.  Two plots involve Russian history (the disappearance of the Amber Room and the Romanov dynasty) and two involve the secrets of the Catholic Church (the Templar legacy and the "third mystery" of the Virgin's messages to the faithful).  They are fast, interesting, well-paced reads.  They aren't "great" literature, falling into what I call "trash reading," but they are fun!  If you're looking for an action/thriller diversion, I recommend them.  Plus, it's always fun to dally in the "what if" of  historical mysteries.

Everyday Orwellian: The Iraqi War, Again

4 years is 4 years too long.  1984's replacement of Eastasia with Eurasia is slightly reminiscent of today's Iraq/Iran debauchle.  Orwell reminds us:

Oceania was at war with Eastasia:  Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.  A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete.  Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound tracks, photographs--all had to be rectified at lightening speed.  Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere.

Lisa See: Authorial Intentions

I just finished Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.  At the end of the book, See offers an extended discussion of how she was inspired by her visits to China to write a book that featured nu shu, women's "secret" writing.  See discusses her research.  What's problematic is that her research and her author's note are better than the book itself.  The book has some good moments and it's an interesting premise, but it never fully delivers.  The book moves too quickly and doesn't really delve into the beautiful possibilities of the story.

I don't know if it's the pressures of the publishing world (write quicker, smaller novels that are cheaper to produce), but I suspect it is.  See can obviously write, but the book just didn't have enough time to unfold.  So, the idea for the book is better than the book itself.

Book Meme for 2007

I was skimming through The Happy Feminist's old posts the other day and I stumbled on this book meme which I decided to assign to myself!  The problem with questions like these is that my answers change depending on my mood, but here's a rough go at answering these!

1. One book that changed your life?

Carolyn Forche's The Country Between Us;  specifically, the poem "The Colonel."  This was the first time I really understood the relationship between literature and politics.  It was also the first time I fully understood the power of the written word.  "The Colonel" marks the time in my own writing career when I began to shed my early Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton ideal of poetry for something less romantic.

2. One book you have read more than once?

Michael Harper's Dear John, Dear Coltrane and Luisa Valenzuela's Lizard's Tale.  I have a poet brain and a writer brain and so I don't really think this is cheating :-).  Dear John, Dear Coltrane is one of the classic poetry collections of the late 20th century.  It embodies the best of poetry and pushes the reader hard on issues of race and class.  Harper's language is so musical that I begin twitching when I pick up the book.  Valenzuela, on the other hand, captivates my imagination more than anyone I can imagine.  I appreciate a fiction writer who challenges me and makes me do work when I'm reading.  Valenzuela is the pleasure of a hard day's work and the fascination of a dark, twisted, and gloriously gender-questioning work.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude:  if I were on a desert island and I could have only one book, I would want the book that continues to inspire me today.  Garcia-Marquez was the original George Lucas.  I love the building of an original mythology.  I love the complete and total world-building that he does.  I get lost in his books and I wish I could step through the pages to that time and place.  I want to meet his characters.  Stuck on a desert island, Macun is where I would like to spend my days dreaming.

4. One book that made you laugh?

This is the easiest to answer--Richard Russo's Straight Man.  I read that right after I got tenure as part of my "academic fiction" self-prescription.  It's a hilarious send up of academia and well worth the read.

5. One book that made you cry?

I'm cheating here--2 books for very different reasons:  I, Rigoberta Menchu and Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow.  I almost never get emotionally engaged in a book enough to cry.  So, when a writer makes me cry, I consider it to be a major accomplishment.  These are the last two books that really made me cry and left me with a profound sadness for days after I finished reading them.

6. One book you wish had been written?

Tory Dent's next book of poetry, but with her death last year, that can't happen.  Black Milk, her last collection, is sheer brilliance.

7. One book you wish had never been written?

Larry Kramer's Reports from the Holocaust:  I may change my mind about this later, but of late, I feel like we haven't learned anything about ourselves and our society because of the AIDS epidemic.  I feel like, in some ways, our society is just as ugly as when Kramer first began writing about the AIDS epidemic.  And, I wish AIDS hadn't happened.  So, I wish Kramer wouldn't have had to chronicle the ugliness of society and the ways we exposed that ugliness while people around us were dying.  But, since AIDS happened, and since that period needed to be chronicled, I'm glad people like Kramer were brave enough to take on the task.

8. One book you are currently reading?

Zadie Smith's On Beauty--beautiful writing. 

9. One Book you have been meaning to read?

Ha Jin's War Trash--never enough time in the day to read everything I want to!

Personal Note to the Quixotic Tremor:  Oh sage of all things lingual, I am very well aware that Menchu, Garcia-Marquez and Forche all need accent marks, so don't tell me that!  I couldn't get the accent function to work this morning!!!

Tillie Olsen dies at 94

Sad news today.  Tillie Olsen, beloved writer and feminist-mother to generations of feminists, activists, and writers, died on January 1st at 94.  What a sad loss, the end of an era.  The Guardian has a nice obituary.  And, take a few moments to reread "I Stand Here Ironing" in memory. 

Janet Fitch: The Anti-Feminist Feminist

I finally gave up on Janet Fitch's Paint it Black.  I bought it the day it came out, hungry for the kind of prose and heart-stopping narrative that kept me engrossed in White Oleander from the first page to the last.  I ended up getting 3/4 of the way into Paint it Black and I just couldn't connect with the main character, Josie.  She spends too much time flaking out on life and responsibility. 

And it led me to wonder:  what does it mean when an author celebrated for her feminist writing, like Fitch, consistently writes women who can't cope with their lives?  Both books are like 21st century versions of Olsen's I Stand Here Ironing, but I'm not sure what greater social truth they reveal.  While Olsen's work was a testament to working-class women during the depression, both protagonists in Fitch's work are self-absorbed.   They don't have perfect lives--in fact Fitch's oeuvre is based on lives that are far from perfect.  What saved White Oleander was Astrid, of whom we could also hope for more.

But there's something self-indulgent about Josie (Paint it Black) and Ingrid's (White Oleander) misery that I don't get from a writer like Olsen.  Olsen's characters can't choose happiness;  the system is too against them.  I feel like Fitch's characters could choose different lives.  In fact, as I write this, I think Fitch's characters are more like Hemingway's Bret with her beautiful, self-destructive drive.  But what's the point?  Hemingway was a mysogynist who couldn't (or wouldn't!) write women any differently.  Perhaps it's sexist on my part, but I expect more from Fitch.  I want her characters to make different choices, to care about their lives in different ways.  I want them to be the kind of women I care about.  But in the end, I just stopped reading Paint it Black.

Enticing Political Literature Reads...

I've been delighting in George Orwell's 1984.  If you haven't read it recently, do return to a good classic.  As I read, I find myself compelled to underline almost every sentence;  Orwell's prose is as insightful and compelling now as it must have been in 1948 (the title is a clever reversal of the year it was published).

At the same time, it is also depressing to consider his dystopian vision and the utter lack of possibility for political change it might indicate.  Things, in short, are quite familiar in the society of Oceania.  So, as Orwell unfolds the horror of Big Brother's rule, and as the book resonates with our current political situation, one could be left to despair.

But then there's Chris Bachelder.  Bachelder's U.S.! is one of the single best books I've read this year.  It's a hilarious tale and, in many respects, the best of what political fiction can offer.  In a contemporary U.S. society, liberals despair because political change is stalled.  What to do?  Resurrect the corpse of Upton Sinclair.  Sinclair, repeatedly resurrected throughout the novel, becomes a hilarious Michael Moore-like character as he writes, and writes, and writes about the social ills he finds each time he is resurrected.  (The cycle of resurrections follow a cycle of assassinations by gun-toting Republicans).  Bachelder's tongue-in-cheek treatment of Sinclair is irreverent at the same time it holds forth the premise that social ills have to be addressed.  So, Sinclair keeps trying to help make U.S. society a better place.

When you're despairing over American politics and the sorry state of the world, read this book & imagine how the world could change if we resurrected all of the great minds of the past.  And then, barring that, consider writing your own political treatise...

Bookslut's interview with Bachelder

Selling Latina: Julia Alvarez Says "Not For Sale"

I just finished Julia Alvarez's Saving The World.  It was a good read, but could have been better.  The novel pairs the story of two women, a contemporary Latina writer with writer's block and Dona Isabel, the rectoress of a Spanish orphanage in 1804.  Dona Isabel supervises  22 of her orphan boys as they travel to the New World as "carriers" for the new smallpox vaccine (literally carrying the vaccine on their skin in pox).  The novel, although it purports to look at both women's relationship to disease as twin stories, gets lost in Dona Isabel's story.  By far the more powerful, Dona Isabel captivates this new novel.  Alma, the contemporary writer, is far less interesting (and much more neurotic).  She becomes obsessed with retelling Dona Isabel's story instead of writing the novel she has received an advance for.

Although the book could have been better, balancing the two stories and concentrating much more on the AIDS epidemic in the Dominican Republic, I still highly recommend it.  (The ending is also highly problematic, as readers of the novel will see, but I leave that to your discovery).  Saving the World is the best thing Alvarez has written since In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), but one of the most interesting moments in the book--and this isn't a spoiler--is her metanarrative on the current state of the publishing industry.  Alma is a "Latina" writer, and she has been largely sold that way.  Her publisher doesn't think of Alma as a writer, but as a Latina.  Throughout the book, Alma comments on her successes as a Latina writer and the schism that has caused with her family and within the larger Latino community.  In the course of the book, she returns to the D.R., a homeland largely without meaning for her.  She has become so Americanized that she can barely relate to what she finds waiting for her.  She is wrestling with a new and altogether different identity.

Alma's writer's block stems from the fact that she is expected to deliver the third in a series of novels that are loose bildungsromans, about her coming of age.   She resists that legacy  because she realizes that she doesn't want to package her ethnic identity for larger consumer consumption.  She doesn't write because she's Latina.  She writes because she's a writer and sometimes, in the course of writing, she writes about stories based in the Latina experience.

I think Alvarez is cleverly playing with the current state of publishing here, talking about the ways that the commodification of Latinos in the publishing industry (and more recently, since 9/11, Arab and Arab-American writers) has sometimes, perhaps, caged writers who are ready to move onto other things.  When we think of Hemingway's history, of course we understand him as a womanizer, alcoholic, and brilliant writer (sorry feministas, I am a fan of Ernest...), we rarely discuss him as a white male writer.  He isn't limited by his race.  Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies are groundbreaking works of Latina fiction that helped to redefine the literary canon in the 1990s.  We owe her a huge debt for trailblazing, along with other feministas.  But Alvarez should have a choice, when approaching the page, about what and how she chooses to write.  If she chooses to write about the Latina experience, then she should do that.  But, if she chooses to tackle a different subject, she should have the room to explore and wonder.  The legacy of a multicultural literary canon shouldn't be a narrow room with only one window.  Multicultural literature should celebrate authors of all different ethnicities and genders and sexualities and abilities, regardless of what they write about.   Although this is a very small part of Saving the World, Alvarez makes a bold and critically significant statement about the publishing industry and her place in it. 

Visit Alvarez's website

In Which Lingual X Again Demonstrates that She's A Naughty Academic...

HAVING A BAD DAY?

I SHOULD be finishing my fellowship application on plagues & epidemics.  However, as delightful as my current reading list is, catching up on all of the lovely new pathogens available (literally!) for your consumption (or maybe that should be available for consuming you...), I'm taking a break from the global travels of HIV/AIDS, the black plague, cholera, and drug-resistant antibiotics to say this:

READ THIS BOOK:  Company by Max Barry and you'll have a better day.

I've long been a fan of Max Barry, because any Gen-Xer who can improve on the Donovan hell of "Jennifer Juniper" by transforming that now ubiquitous, globally evocative, cheerleading name into Jennifer Government, a fierce, capitalism fighting, gun-toting, Nike-busting international agent has my love.  That's a given.  But, beyond that, and the brilliance of his first novel, Syrup, in which a young entrepreneur creates and markets a soda called FUKK (um, yes, FUKK...), beyond the brilliance he brings to Jennifer Government, his second novel (including an on-line game called Nation States), arrives this book, Company, in which people are fired for eating other people's donuts.  Oh, and a whole lot more, but since the book just came out, I won't spoil the plot.

Instead, I'll just say that Max Barry writes love letters to the post-modern generation in which young and dewey eyed characters, with a firm belief in "the system" get K'od into reality as they realize the often incompatibility of reality and their beliefs.  But, instead of creating a cast of slowly jaded characters who "grow up" and learn to cave into the system, Barry's characters show impeccable audaciousness as they come up with increasingly clever ways to fight the systems which denude their youth.  Barry's not cynical, he's an optimist.  This is activism in the 21st century.  You get ready for the fight while listening to your iTunes, but then you dismantle Apple from the inside out.  Oh, and, if you're anything like Barry's characters, you end up creating a free shareware version of iTunes that goes global in less than a day.

Barry's got a thing about capitalism--and who doesn't these days?  His snarky, pop-culture touch make his books a fast read.  They're like a sherbet pop on a hot summer day:  quickly melting in your mouth, leaving you with no regret, and a desire for more, more, more.

This man is bad:
  This man is good:

Read on!

Max Barry's website
Bored?  Read Syrup, Jennifer Government, and Company.  Then, play Nation States and take over the world--your own way

Read it and laugh, weep...

From the publisher:

An open letter of apology from America to the rest of the world.

Some of us - hopefully most of us - are trying to understand and appreciate the effect our recent election will have on you, the citizens of the rest of the world. As our so-called leaders redouble their efforts to screw you over, please remember that some of us - hopefully most of us - are truly, truly sorry. And we'll say we're sorry, even on the behalf of the ones who aren't.

So writes James Zetlen, neuroscience student at University of Southern California and the mastermind behind sorryeverybody.com, the Web site that became the water cooler around which people gathered to share their collective grief about the results of the 2004 Presidential election.

The entries speak for themselves:

“49% of us didn’t vote for him.” “Yo soy apesadumbrado, muy muy apesadumbrado!” “I’m not sure how or why it happened. I thought our country was literate. I’m rather ashamed of the 51%. Honestly. 49% of us will fix it.” -Baffled in Montana “Half of Ohio is really, really sorry Don’t hate us.” “EVERYBODY WE ARE SO SORRY!! IN MINNESOTA WE TRIED SO VERY HARD!”

Fact and Fiction: What's all the Hullaballoo?

I started this yesterday, but gave up in a postmodern haze of fever dreaming and exhaustion.  Yes, dear readers, I have been sidelined by the evil flu, a fever, and a total loss (!) of my voice (!).  So, I have been quarantined by Lingual Y to the couch for 2 days (and counting) of feverish napping, popsicles, and t.v.

Yesterday, I book ended my day with fact and fiction, and was trying to decide if I was living on the edge of a fever dream or if I actually saw what I did...

So, while I settled onto the couch yesterday, I was distraught to find that Ellen's birthday bash was interrupted by a press conference by President Bush for no apparent reason!

During the press conference, Bush weighed in on the now infamous wiretaps calling them "legal" and done "to protect civil rights".  He looked at the camera and said "legal" and "to protect civil rights" without blinking.  Oh, and the legal wiretaps, to protect your civil rights, are also "necessary." 

It was one of those "get down with the President" moments when he tells the American people (whoever is home at 10:30 in the morning) the "truth."

I book-ended my day with the live evisceration of author James Frey on the Oprah Winfrey show as Frey faced accusations (now widely published) that large portions of his memoir are not true.

So, since when have Americans become consumed with the idea of truth? 

Charlotte Simmons: A Feminist Call to Reform Academia

Late this summer, I posted a few amusing quotes from Tom Wolfe's new tome on academia in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, from the perspective of an up-and-coming member of the new intelligentsia, I Am Charlotte Simmons.

I picked up Wolfe's new book because I wanted a fun read before the semester began;  little did I know how the book would haunt me during a semester when I taught my classes bursting with first year students, wondering who among them was a Charlotte in hiding.

Months later, the book continues to resonate with me as I wonder how American public schools are failing young women,  how colleges and universities fail young women, and how basic gender education fails to make its way into our curriculum.  Almost 40 years after the feminist revolution, I can't believe we find ourselves in a place where Charlotte Simmons, bright and shining academic star of Sparta, North Carolina, is undone by a man.

Sexy French Novels: Oooo la la!

Back from Mexico and happy to say:  here's a list you won't find published about American lit!  Check out the Guardian's "Top Sexy French Books."  Oooo la la!  From the The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras to Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos to Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, this list far outweighs Time Magazine's "Top 100 English Language Novels."  Grab some Brie and a nice glass of Bordeaux and get busy reading!  Helena Frith of the Guardian writes, "While the Anglo Saxons were reading Pride and Prejudice by candle-light, this book [Les Liaisons Dangereuses] was teaching French society how to frolic and seduce."  Heh  heh. 

In Memoriam: Rosa Parks

Rita Dove has a wonderful book of poems, On the Bus With Rosa Parks.

To remember Rosa Parks today, consider picking up a copy of the book;  it's a beautiful, meditative read.  For a few on-line poems from that book, click here.  See especially the entire poem "Lady Freedom Among Us" from which I borrowed these lines:

                   don't think you can ever forget her

                   don't even try

                   she's not going to budge

                   no choice but to grant her space

                   crown her with sky

                   for she is one of the many

                   and she is each of us

Time to Reconsider Time's List

Via A Stitch in Haste:  Sadly, I must report I have only read 30 of Time's Magazine's Top 100 English Language Novels.  However, as a scholar of literature, I have to say (yeah, yeah), I seriously question this list.  Where's  Sandra Cisneros?  Art Spiegelman?   Katherine Dunn?  Alice Walker?  Dorothy Allison?  Carole Maso?  Seriously.  CAROLE MASO.  John Barth?  Jamaica Kincaid?  Edwidge Danticat?  Tillie Olsen?  John Dos Passos?  Charles Johnson?  Rudolfo Anaya?  Michael Chabon?  Margaret Atwood?  Tom Wolfe?  And, I could keep going for a really long time, but I'll stop there. 

And, what do they mean by English language novel?  Because the days of understanding English novels as only those written in the English language, and not those translated into English, are numbered.  World authors whose works have solid English translations--such as Garcia Marquez or Luisa Valenzuela or Isabel Allenda or Jorge Luis Borges or Julio Cortazar, to name a few--are regularly included in courses on the novel.

What We Learn From Writers

American literature often oscillates between the perilous extremes of utile and dulce;  forever locked in a battle over the "use" of literature and the "appropriate" role of poets, writers, playwrights, and other artists in society.  The often immature sibling of older literatures--most notably Eastern European and Latin American literary traditions--American literature falls, even so often, into the firmly apolitical stance.  Literature, the aesthetes claim, should only offer pleasure.

Increasingly, against the 1980s and 1990s backlash against political literature, more and more writers and poets have emerged to claim their literary production as a crucial site of social and cultural critique.  Of course there are many uses for literature, but for me, raising social conscience is among the most important roles that a vibrant literature can offer its society.  A studied consideration--through fiction, poetry, & drama--can often offer a more compelling & affective commentary on historical and contemporary events than non-fiction accounts. 

So, I'd like to acclaim Sharon Olds and Harold Pinter (yes, I know he's British!), both recently in the news, for their firm stance on the relationship between literature and society.

Academia: A Global Disease

Snicker... Snicker...A few global academic moments from Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons...

• At that moment the paranoia factory opened for business, tooled up for a day of capacity output.
• Now, I gather we all agree that Mr. Johanssen's paper was suspiciously far above the rhetorical level of any other work he had submitted.
• Plaudits for what you have achieved.  Strength for the fight ahead.  Never stop battling the fire, which has not died out.  Remember the prison-bound citizens.  Be scrupulous in your academic work.

Oedipus at Palm Springs: What Should Literature Do?

This past weekend, compliments of Female Parental Unit, Ph.D., I went to see Oedipus at Palm Springs, the new play by the Five Lesbian Brothers:  Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey & Lisa Kron.  OPS has been getting excellent local press, including a write up in the New Yorker.

The play centers on a weekend retreat at a lesbian resort.  The 2 couples, engaged in long-term, serious relationships, arrive for some fun to celebrate Terri's birthday.  What begins as a light-hearted comedy, full of nudity, quips, and well-timed humor, turns into one of the most haunting plays I've seen in a long time.

Post-Patriot Act Fun

From ELISE over at Afterschool Snack came my first introduction to a suggestion for a little weekend subversion.  If you haven't heard about Avant Game's Ministry of Reshelving, allow me to suggest that your new weekend plans look something like this....  I like to call the idea Post-Patriot-Act Fun...  Ministry rules:

How to Serve the Ministry of Reshelving

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving" bookmarks and "All copies of 1984 have been relocated" notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell's 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as "Fiction" or "Literature."

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

6. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate them.

7. Please report all reshelving efforts to the Ministry. Email your store name, location, # of 1984 copies reshelved, and any other reshelving activities conducted, to reshelving @ avantgame.com. Photos of your mission can be uploaded to Flickr, tagged as "reshelving", and submitted to the Ministry of Reshelving group.

Our goal is to relocate one thousand nine hundred and eighty-four copies, and to complete successful reshelving of 1984 in all 50 United States. Global contributions are welcome.

Note: this project is not a critique of bookstore culture, the state of the shelving industry, or even of pervasive government surveillance. It is merely an observation that 2 + 2 = 5, and 5 is no longer fiction.

Also check out the "minor statement on avant gaming."  Fun!

I'm Going To Be in a Dorothy Allison novel!

Well okay, maybe I won't be in a Dorothy Allison novel...or a Michael Chabon novel...but THIS IS WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS!!!  Where have I been?  Somebody call Lingual Y and Female Parental Unit, Ph.D. and get it on their lists!!!

The Penis: Something New in Literature?

Because the entire history of Western literature has NOTHING to do with phallus-worship:

Rafael Milo-Amar said Tuesday that his one-man show, "The Holy Phallus," was inspired by a disparaging remark one of the Israeli actresses in the local production of Eve Ensler's celebrated play had made about the male member.

Oh goody.  Another penis production.  Like I'm going to teach that...

Harry Potter Therapy

Need counseling now that you've finished Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince?  Pastor Paul Raushenbush of Riverside Church in New York City offers this advice.