New Century Reading

Our Mutual Friend

Yes, behind again, but still chugging along. Note: if you're behind too, hang in there, especially if you're stuck in the first six chapters. It gets easier. And better!

That said, this section of six raised a question in my mind. We know Dickens serialized this novel for publication. With Great Expectations, it was three chapters at a time. But this section of six ended oddly, with chapter 1 of book 2. The last chapter of book 1 had that tantalizing cliffhanger-y sense to it, and I have to wonder: did Dickens publish three chapters at a time, except for the end of each book section? It makes sense to me to do that. Going forward, let's assume 3 chapters a week, unless we hit the end of one of the books. So next week, let's do five chapters, which will get us through chapter six, and the week following will have six chapters, but the week after that only four, as it reaches the end of book 2. Make sense? I'll remind you again next week.

It seems in this section that Dickens is taking particular aim at the lives of children in Dickensian times. The description of Charley Hexam's schooling is beyond sad--although thank goodness for the interest of Mr. Headstone (what a name!!). That said, Mr. Headstone? Don't be such a snob. Charley should be very proud of his sister and free to visit her whenever he likes. Especially if he can talk her out of living with the Person of the House. Lizzie's life has definitely not improved after Gaffer's suspicious death. But at least she can find a way to survive. The life of orphans or abandoned children is chilling, and it seems like Dickens is very angry in these sections (and who wouldn't be?). By the time Mrs. Boffin finds little Johnny, you can't help but wish she'd just open up her own orphanage and take them all in.

Mr. Dickens also has some very tart commentary on the people who beg for money, and he notes they come from all levels of society:

"These are the corporate beggars. But there are, besides, the individual beggars; and how does the heart of the Secretary fail when he has to cope with them!...Among these correspondents are several daughters of general officers, long accustomed to every luxury of life (except spelling), who little thought, when their gallant fathers waged war in the Peninsula, that they would ever have to appeal to those whom Providence, in its inscrutable wisdom, has blessed with untold gold, and from among whom they select the name of Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, for a maiden effort in this wise, understand that he has such a heart as never was."

Thank goodness for the mysterious Mr. Rokesmith arriving just in time to play intermediary, or I fear Mr. Boffin would soon be out of money altogether.  

And what, exactly, is Mr. Wegg searching for??

Stay tuned!

The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht has been waiting patiently in my TBR stack for some time now and must be awfully happened that the 2012 Tournament of Books shortlisted it, so I became motivated to unearth it and read it.

But I have to confess that I pretty much skimmed the last 50 pages. I feel guilty about that; CB recently had a good discussion on his blog about reviewing books you've skimmed. I only skimmed the last part. Normally I don't skim--I simply give up and toss the book aside. But I do really enjoy the ToB when I've read as many of the books as I can.

By now, you must have guessed that I'm not rooting for this one to win. Nope. Obreht can certainly write, especially evocative description, and the storyline involving the title character was often fascinating, but unfortunately, there were other storylines, and they never really coalesced for me. Nor were some of the other storylines all that interesting. The plots fell flat, the narrator was ultimately not someone I really wanted to spend time with--simply because she wasn't that interesting. 

I have to wonder how this book would have read with some strong editorial guidance, like in the good ol' days. Obreht was only 24 when it was published. There's plenty of talent there; maybe, as someone snarked on Twitter, I'd read another book by her when "she's not, you know, 24 anymore." 

I dunno. This is a book that's gotten a lot of attention and a lot of acclaim, and I have to wonder why. Potential is one thing, but it's not fully realized here. 

So, I've read 3 of the ToB candidates (besides this one, I've read The Sisters Brothers and State of Wonder. Since I also didn't like State of Wonder, I'm not off to a good start. I do have some of the other ToB books languishing around here, so will continue. 

On the other hand, feeling crabby about a particular book can make for an awfully fun ToB...

Our Mutual Friend

Yes, I know, it's Sunday, and I said I would post on Fridays. That's the way life is. Let's just say I will strive to post every weekend. How 'bout that?

So! Now we know who Our Mutual Friend is. But--do we really?? (Wink, wink) No, I haven't read the book before, or any synopsis of it, but am I the only one suspecting that Mr. Rokesmith might be an alias covering the tracks of another recently-thought-to-be-dead young man of great prospects?

See, I don't know if that's a spoiler. Maybe it is. But I don't know! So it's a guess. 

This set of chapters flew right along for me, as we returned to many of the characters we met in the first six chapters. How adorable are the Boffins? I love them. And while I suspect they're up to absolutely no good, I'm quite intrigued with those charming newlyweds, the Lammles. I just hope that their true targets, the wannabe Veneerings (that name still makes me giggle), are the ones who pay the price, and not the disastrously hapless Miss Georgiana Podsnap, who, for heaven's sake, desperately needs a real friend to snatch her out of the claws of her horrendously misguided parents. 

And what about Mr. Riderhood and his pious desire to tell the truth about Gaffer and get everything documented in an Alfred David? A large part of me is assuming he's lying to get the reward. But on the other hand, his unceremonious dismissal from the Six Jolly Felowships might have made him reluctant to come forward on his own. Is he on the up-and-up, or just a conniver?

Oh, Mr. Dickens, you are so very entertaining. The whole scene where the Veneerings start mentioning all their dear friends, and poor Mr. Twemlow mentally calculates how many there are. ("Oh! There's only two of us, and he's the other.") The whole luscious chapter detailing the marriage--and truth-unveiling--of the Lammles.

I suspect Mr. Dickens is making a considerable amount of commentary on Victorian society and sensibilities, but this early in, I don't want to hazard too many guesses. I'll just merrily continue into the next six chapters. 

Our Mutual Friend

All righty then, back on track. So! Mr. Dickens' last novel, which I have never read before, nor have I read anything about it. It's interesting going into a classic blind. 

On the one hand, as much as I enjoyed Great Expectations, this book feels even stronger and more masterly. Dickens is (so far) really at the top of his game: the characters are thoroughly presented, the scenery is wonderfully present, the humor is sly, and lordy, the names--"Veneering" to describe the newly rich and fairly vacuous family? Lord Snigsworth? Mrs. Podsnap? Hilarious. 

But on the other hand, I found the first six chapters a bit slow going. Not because they bored me--not at all--but there's so much going on, and so many characters to keep track of. Each chapter introduces a whole new batch of people to get to know, which, as entertaining as they are, takes time. Unlike Great Expectations, where we had Pip as the unifying character, so far we haven't had one person jump out as a person who will guide us through the novel.

I also ended up abandoning the copy shown above for a more traditional edition with end notes, because I was pretty sure I was missing out by not having those notes. The edition I'm working with now (Wordsworth) charmed me by having this in the opening to the introduction: "In the same spirit, because the pleasures of reading are inseparable from the surprises, secrets and revelations that all narratives contain, we strongly advise you to enjoy this book before turning to the Introduction."

I approve of that. Thanks for the warning, and I skipped the intro and went straight to the novel. We could spend some time pondering whether or not introductions should be introductions at all, since they usually contain copious amounts of spoilers, or whether they should be at the end of the book as your reward for having arrived there. Whatever. Getting straight to the book brings you to these gems:

"No one can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot."

"He was shy, and unwilling to own to the name of Reginald, as being too aspiring and self-assertive a name. In his signature he used only the initial R., and imparted what it really stood for to none but chosen friends, under the seal of confidence. Out of this, the facetious habit had arisen in the neighborhood surrounding Mincing Lane [again with the awesome naming] of making Christian names for him of adjectives and participles beginning with R. Some of these were more or less appropriate: as Rusty, Retiring, Ruddy, Round, Ripe, Ridiculous, Ruminative; others derived their point from their want of application: as Raging, Rattling, Roaring, Raffish."

"'For when a person comes to grind off poetry night after night, it is but right he should expect to be paid for its weakening effect on his mind.'"

So, in some ways a slow start for me, but overall? Can't wait for the next six chapters.

Our Mutual Friend

My apologies--it's been a crazy week, and I still have a chapter left to read. Bad, bad, read-along leader. Bad. 

I will be back with my thoughts later today or tomorrow for sure. And then I will endeavor to stay forever on track. I promise.

The Family Fang

"Hobart had tuaght him what was important. Art, if you loved it, was worth any amount of unhappiness and pain. If you had to hurt someone to achieve those ends, so be it. If the outcome was beautiful enough, strange enough, memorable enough, it did not matter. It was worth it."

This is pretty much the manifesto of Caleb and Camille Fang, performance artists who have become wealthy and infamous with seemingly insane stunts, like have their young son dress up as a girl in a little girls' pageant, just to test the public response. They worked on their art long before children came along, and when the kids (called A and B by Caleb and Camille, or occasionally Annie and Buster) did arrive, they became an integral part of the larger performance, whether they wanted to or not.

What happens when those kids grow up? What kind of psychological scars might they have?

Kevin Wilson takes a darkly humorous, sometimes painful, always clear-eyed look at that question in The Family Fang. Annie and Buster have fled the art-intensive world they grew up in for their own, more conventional forms of art (Annie's a movie actress, Buster a writer and teacher). But when their parents disappear and leave behind a bloody van, Annie and Buster are left with the difficult task of trying to figure out if Caleb and Camille have really disappeared, or is this just another grand-scale performance?

There's so much to like about this book--as I said, it's often very funny, it's thought-provoking in terms of what is art, what is family, what do kids owe their parents and vice versa. The chapters that detailed the performances were wonderful, and Wilson did a great job of showing how Fangs Senior thought through their art--the performances could have seemed campy or slapdash, but Wilson treated them just about as seriously as the Fangs did, and I could see their logic, even if I didn't agree with it. I flew right along and loved everything--until I got to the end.

Since I really hate doing spoilers, I'm not going to spoil it, but I just didn't buy it 100%. Am I alone in that? Leave a comment with your email. Let's chat.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu

Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams is a hugely fun read. The author, an office-bound editor at various outdoor and adventure magazines, takes it into his head to retrace the steps of Hiram Bingham, the man who (allegedly) discovered Machu Picchu in 1911. So he hires a highly experienced and well-regarded guide and gets to work.

I love books about adventure. I don't know why; I have no desire to, say, climb a mountain or trek through Amazonian jungles. But I sure love to read about others who do. This book is right up my alley, then, but here's a surprising thing: unlike other adventure books I've read, which I've enjoyed but had no desire to emulate, Adams' account made me wish I could hire a personal trainer, get in shape, and then retrace his entire trip. That's quite an accomplishment on Adams' part. 

A great part of that is Adams' humorous, often self-deprecating tales of his own lack of experience. When he meets with guide John Leivers, Leivers talks dismissively of "martini explorers"--people who want to be adventurous but can't cope without the luxuries of life. Adams thinks with trepidation that, compared to Bingham or Leivers, he himself is a white wine spritzer explorer. But he's determined to suck it up and complete the journey.

Leivers himself is an interesting character, with plenty to say about the way people live today. He laments the days when travelers were really travelers, wanting to immerse themselves in a trip to Machu Picchu rather than viewing it as just another item to tick off the bucket list: "'It used to take three weeks to get people in the right frame of mind, to un-brainwash them. Now it would take three months just to get people's heads straightened out. A lot of times, with women especially, these trips would change their lives. They'd go back to London, quit their jobs and sack their awful boyfriends. It's a real problem now--people don't know how to enjoy life. They want hedonism, short-term thrills.'"

And so the tale goes, with chapters of Adams' adventures interspersed with historical highlights and controversies over Bingham's work. You know what this book is like? It's like the movie Julie & Julia, except that the Julie parts are as entertaining, if not more so, than the Julia parts.

Along the way, Adams meets some kids who have never heard of the U.S., but ask him if it's true that Michael Jackson is dead: "I tried, and failed, to come up with the Spanish words to say, 'The King of Pop will live forever in our hearts.' So I just nodded yes and tried to look sad."

While poking gentle fun at the Peruvian way of getting things done--in which time means nothing, and truth is hazy--Adams still manages to display a huge amount of respect for the people and the sites. The photos that accompany the book are far too few; I pored over them again and again and wished there were more.

Maybe...if I just got in better shape...and saved some money...

 

Private Demons

After reading Shirley Jackson's novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle last fall, I wanted to learn more about Jackson herself. Hence, Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson by Judy Oppenheimer.

As far as I can tell, this is the only book covering Jackson's life, originally published in 1988. While interesting, and at times enlightening (not surprisingly, Jackson had a strong interest in magic and the occult; unknown to me was the difficult relationship she had with her mother, and the nearly stereotypical marriage she had to Stanley Hyman, who adored her, but just slightly more than most females within his gaze). Difficult childhood, dysfunctional marriage--this is nothing new in the literary world. 

(Although one has to rear back with astonishment when reading a particularly venomous letter Jackson's mother wrote to her late in Jackson's life, after seeing her daughter's photo in Time magazine: "Why oh why do you allow the magazines to print such awful pictures of you?...I would sue them for libel. Your children love you for your achievements but they also want you to be worth looking at too. If you don't care what you look like or care about your appearance why don't you do something about it for your children's sake and your husband's. I do not know if the book review is good or not--and I have been so sad all morning about what you have allowed yourself to look like.")

Still, there are things in the book that bothered me. I would have loved more in-depth analyses of Jackson's writing; some of the bigger pieces are covered, like The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House. Still, given Jackson's history, more attention would have been merited. 

Even more troubling is that Oppenheimer had access to Jackson's children and several of her childhood and adult friends for interviews. That's great, but she often reports their quotes as established facts. Certainly someone looking back many years at a now-dead friend who has become famous may have some very hazy memories, or interpretations of those memories, and they should be taken with a large grain of salt, but Oppenheimer seems to trust them completely. 

While acknowledging the Jackson's and Hyman's household was chaotic and far from the norm of the 1950s, Oppenheimer surprisingly doesn't make much of an effort to show how Jackson's parenting affected the four offspring. They were all adults when interviewed; surely that would have been an interesting topic for this bio.

I guess what it comes down to is: if you're curious about Jackson's life, this isn't a bad read. I just don't think it's up to a rigorous set of biographic standards.

 

Freedom

I feel like I must be one of the last people on earth to read this book. When it first came out, I got a copy from the library, but instead of individual words, all I could see in the text was: HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE. So I sent it back to the library unread, figuring I'd wait for the fuss to die down and try again later. I liked his earlier book, The Corrections, so it seemed like it was worth a later effort.

In a nice bit of timing, Books and Bars chose it for the December book. Indeed, enough time had passed that I could see actual words while reading. Do I need to synopsize? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most anyone reading this blog has heard of or actually read (or tried to read) Freedom. 

So let's cut to the chase: I'm in the camp of those who liked the book. I really liked it. I might even have said that I loved it, if it wasn't for the ending, which to me didn't fit the story or the characters. But until that point, Franzen had me firmly in his camp.

Books and Bars has multiple locations in the Twin Cities now. The first discussion was held in Chanhassen, where I attend. A congenial but talkative crowd of about 25 people, most in their 40s and older, had varying opinions about the book (one woman, when asked if she felt more sympathetic to Patty or Walter, said: "I wanted to shoot them both"). Some loved it, some didn't, some thought the book was too long and too detailed, others thought it was just right. Interestingly, when the same book was discussed at the Minneapolis location a week later, a crowd heavy on 20-somethings apparently panned it quite soundly. They didn't like these characters, didn't believe in them, didn't want to read about them. 

So--is Freedom a generationally polarizing book? In Chanhassen, even the people who didn't like the book or Patty and Walter felt that Franzen had done a very good job showing us *why* Patty and Walter became the people they were, and that was believable. Maybe, even, he created some empathy for them, even if the readers didn't like them (except for the woman who wanted to shoot them). The moderator asked if we knew people like Patty and/or Walter in real life, and nearly every hand went up.

Is it because those of us who are in the 40+ age categories have lived longer and gotten past idealizing people? I don't mean that in a condescending way; I was pretty optimistic about people in my 20s. I don't think I'm any smarter, just, you know, that I'm older and have better insurance. (Points if you got that reference.)

Can I just add that one of the younger attendees in Minneapolis reportedly said that addiction is annoying?

For me, I really liked most of this book because I think Franzen did an excellent job of showing where both Patty and Walter came from and why they are who they are. These are people that, frankly, I wouldn't want to hang around with in real life, but seeing their histories raises some forgiveness in me for the sometimes shitty things they do and say. And he's excellent at showing the way people repeat their own histories, even if they've condemned them. Which is just one of the examples of how the concept of "freedom" is questioned. Or, as Patty and Walter's son says at one point: "'Isn't that what freedom is for? The right to think whatever you want? I mean, I admit, it's a pain in the ass sometimes.'"

Franzen's got a great way of cutting to the bone:

"He strongly disliked the person he'd just demonstrated afresh that he unfortunately was. And this, of course, was the simplest definition of depression that he knew: strongly disliking yourself."

"He'd always understood his strict sobriety in terms of opposition to them--first, of wanting to be as unlike his dad and brother as possible, and then later of wanting to be as unfailingly kind to Patty as she, drunk, could be unkind to him. It was one of the ways that he and Patty had learned to get along: he always sober, she sometimes drunk, neither of them ever suggesting that the other change."

What about you? Did you read Freedom? What did you think?

That End-of-the-Year Post

It's time. What did I read in 2011?

Stats:

Books read: 68
Fiction: 49
Nonfiction: 18
Poetry: 1
Male authors: 31
Female authors: 35
Re-reads: 7

Favorite reads, in no particular order (links are to my reviews):

Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi
In the Woods by Tana French
Nox by Anne Carson
The Empty Family by Colm Toibin
Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
Birds in Our Backyard by Adele Portman
Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Favorite re-reads:

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Books I wished I hadn't bothered to finish and could get those hours of my life back:

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

So...how was your 2011 reading life?