New Century Reading

Telegraph Avenue

Well, this is it--the final post. I wrote last week that if it weren't for this read-along, I might never have finished this book. But I did.

I've taken a couple of days to try and figure out how I feel about this book. Definitely there are mixed feelings. The final section improved my overall attitude toward the book, and yet--and yet...

Pros:
Interesting characters
Tough topics (race relations, generational/family interactions and emotional inheritances)
Characters facing difficult situations and responding to and learning from them, even while kicking and screaming
Very ambitious undertaking

Cons:
Bloated text
That Obama cameo that didn't really fit the book and seemed gratuitous
That 12-page sentence that didn't really fit the book and seemed gratuitous
Subplots that detracted rather than added to the story
Some bizarrely wrapped-up things in the ending (I don't want to give spoilers, but I did not really buy the resolution of the lawsuit against Gwen and Aviva)
Some characters deserved more time than they got, apparently in favor of some of the subplots (as in, I'd really rather have spent more time with Nat and Aviva then in Luther Stallings' criminal capers)

I think a lot of people will disagree with me. I think others will nod their heads in agreement. And I think this is going to be one of those books people are talking about at the end of the year, and it could easily show up on the 2013 Tournament of Books. Put up against some of the other 2012 releases that I've read (Arcadia, Gone Girl, The Fault in Our Stars), I'll admit that the Chabon book is more ambitious, but overall I felt that it had more stumbles and left me not loving it, although I didn't hate it.

I guess these are good times for readers when I can afford to be so picky about what I love.

 

The Poetry Project

Heaven for Arden

Back when Arden could still go for a walk--a real walk,

not the twenty yards or so
he stumbles and lurches now--

he used to be anxious and uncertain, looking to me,

stopping awhile, tentatively, to see if I'd agree
to go no further, sometimes whining a bit

in case I'd respond. Sooner or later,

the turn would come; we'd gone far enough
for one day. Joy! As if he'd been afraid all along

this would be the one walk that would turn out to be infinite.

Then he could take comfort
in the certainty of an ending,

and treat the rest of the way as a series of possibilities;
then he could run,

and find pleasure in the woods beside the path.

--Mark Doty

RIP, Gracie (a.k.a. Girlfriend, Stinky, Gracers, Crazy Dog, Goofball)
August 31, 2001 - July 25, 2012

The dog fans among you would do well to also check out Mark Doty's memoir Dog Years.

 

Summer of Shelf Discovery

Chapter 7 of Lizzie Skurnick's Shelf Discovery is all about the supernatural. This was something I loved as a kid. Superhuman abilities, ghosts, UFOs, witches, anything that fell in the category was something I wanted to read. I still have my copy of A Gift of Magic (fortunately, so I didn't have to suffer the updated version). In fact, I have this cover, and if you look closely at the upper right-hand corner, you'll see it cost 75 cents. Wow.

A Gift of Magic is about Nancy Barrett, whose parents are divorcing and she, her brother and sister, are now living with their mother in their grandmother's home in Florida (grandma's been dead for years). Grandma had some interesting qualities, and on her deathbed she made some unique gifts: to Kirby, Nancy's older sister, the gift of dance; to younger brother Brendon (who hadn't even been born then), the gift of music; and to Nancy, who looks like Grandma, the gift of magic.

Nancy doesn't realize she even has a gift. She just thinks it's her way, how she can tell when things are going to happen, who's calling when the phone rings, that sort of thing. But when a guidance counselor at her new school picks up on her ability and wants to test her, she starts doing some research and discovers that her talent is indeed special--and something she wants to keep to herself.

But just that amount of research also leads her to try things she's never tried before--like making things happen to other people. Say to that nice man who's started dating her mother. Or to her sister, whose obsession with dance may take her away from them. And maybe things don't turn out quite the way she thinks they should.

In Shelf Discovery, Skurnick talks about this book as different from many others in the category:

"For Lois Duncan, A Gift of Magic is...all the more striking for eschewing the trademark of her many other beloved novels (namely, being fucking terrifying). Instead, it takes an ordinary character dealing, as most of us were, with the changes of puberty right alongside changes in her family. In A Gift of Magic, there's no evil twin, no menacing stranger--only a girl who can see the past, future, and present far, far away, fighting witha  power she does not yet understand or control."

Although generally I liked my supernatural novels to be scary (even though the net result was often me hiding in terrorunder the covers late at night, wondering about that sound in the attic or that skittering in the walls), I loved this one, and found it a joy to revisit. I think I set aside my desire to be scared and replaced it with "what if this happened to me?" No scares, just turmoil, confusion, and fear of a different nature.

Telegraph Avenue

So, here we are, on to sections 3 and 4 of Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. As I mentioned last week, I'd been having mixed feelings as I moved forward into the book, especially with the Obama cameo.

So it did nothing to assuage my concerns when I dug into section 3, which is the shortest section of the book, only 12 pages. And only 1 sentence.

A 12-page sentence.

When I finished reading it, I sat back and thought long and hard about why Chabon might have chosen to do that. I thought about the PowerPoint chapter in Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. I know that was a polarizing chapter, but I fell into the camp of those who loved it. I could completely believe in a teen girl using that program to tell her story, experimenting with it, and I found it very moving.

Then I thought about Virginia Woolf's beautiful To the Lighthouse, with its short center section, Time Passes, which acts as a bridge between two distinctly different periods of time in the life of the Ramsay family (and includes a major plot development). Woolf carries it off most beautifully.

So, then, how can I interpret Chabon's 12-page sentence? Is it supposed to be a take on jazz, which is an underlying concept in the book? Is it supposed to serve like Woolf's transition, using the bird Fifty-Eight as a way to fly us through certain plot points? Is it supposed to be like Egan, using a unique form of storytelling to create a different point of view?

Sadly, in the end, I came to the conclusion that the reason Chabon did this 12-page sentence was: because he could. And that's not a good enough reason to do that in a book.

I'm guessing that this book is going to be one of those polarizing novels that everyone talks about and has an opinion on, like Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. I'm still not to the end of the book, but the 12-page sentence caused something to snap inside me, and I am just. Not. Excited.

Section 4 returned to the previous form of storytelling, and after a while the near-constant use of metaphors and similes, and the bouncing back and forth between various characters, some of whom I care about and others I don't, is wearing me down. I'm enjoying watching Archy prepare for Cochise's funeral; I found Aviva's commitment to her chosen profession of midwife to be movingly heartfelt; I worry about Gwen's impetuousness and her marriage to Archy. I wish we saw more of Nat and Aviva. And the subplot with Archy's father, Luther, is beginning to feel like a red herring to me.

I guess the bottom line is, if I hadn't committed to reading the whole book, I'd probably have quit by now. But the final section is short, so I'll find out if there's something in those last 80 pages that will redeem the book for me.

 

Go Ask Alice redux

Better Book Titles takes on Go Ask Alice today, and it's about perfect.

Summer of Shelf Discovery

Another delightful entry for the Shelf Discovery summer reading project. Kit Tyler, raised on the island of Barbados, becomes an orphan and ships herself off to Connecticut to find the only relatives she has left. This is in the pre-Revolutionary War era, and Connecticut turns out to be a far cry from the life she left behind in Barbados. It is also, unfortunately, an era of witchcraft accusations and trials.I went through a period of fascination with the early witch trials when I was in my teens, re-read The Crucible over and over, etc., so it's no surprise this was an early favorite. But it's still a pleasure to read again years later, even when that particular fascination has faded.

Girl Detective, as the host of this project, wrote about this book yesterday, and I don't have a lot to add. As she notes, there were some conventional and predictable plot points, but overall, it's so well done that I don't care. And it's a bit more sophisticated than I realized, especially in terms of characterization. Elizabeth George Speare took great care in developing some of her characters, especially Kit herself and her uncle Matthew, who seems to be an awful Puritanical type, but as we get to know him, we realize (as does Kit) the stressors and disappointments that make him the way that he is.

Speare does an excellent good job of creating Kit's culture shock:

"She didn't want to admit how disappointing she found this first glimpse of America. The bleak line of shore surrounding the gray harbor was a disheartening contrast to the shimmering green and white that fringed the turquoise bay of Barbados which was her home. The earthen wall of the fortification that faced the river was bare and ugly, and the houses beyond were no more than plain wooden boxes."

I wouldn't be too excited about leaving Barbados for that either.

Definitely happy I had the chance to revisit this book, and it's definitely a keeper.

Telegraph Avenue

As part of Emily's pre-publication read-along, here we are, now looking at part 2 of Telegraph Avenue.

I liked the first part, but I have mixed feelings about part 2. The point at which my affection for the book started to slide came during an event where Gwen starts talking with a young black man who turns out to be a new-ish Senator from Illinois. In 2004. Work out the timeframe. Yup--none other than Barack Obama.

The scene bothered me on more than one level. First, it seemed gratuitous, and not at all necessary for the book. Second, I realize that a large part of this story is about race relations, but Obama's not even through his first term as president yet. Yes, the fact that he is president is important, but it's far too soon to predict the full effect of that on race relations going forward. The narrative started to break down for me at that point. The scene didn't feel like it was "organic" (sorry to use a buzzword), but was strong-armed into the book.

I also realized I'm far more interested in the women than the men, and this section had a lot to do with Archy Stallings, a man I'm finding less sympathetic and fascinating. I'm more intrigued with his wife, Gwen.

And I'm not at all sure what I think of a scene where a white man prepares fried chicken and collard greens for a black man, to convince the black man to attend a mostly white group that's getting riled up about the arrival of the big-box Dogpile Thang, owned by the fifth-richest black man in America. I get that that might be ironic, but not in the way that good irony makes me gleeful. It seemed strained.

Finally, Chabon is a very lush writer, and given that music (much of it jazz) is an important part of Nat and Archy's lives, it's not surprising that he's using his skills to play with rhythm and flow of language. But sometimes that started to feel off to me to, not--sorry--organic.

So. We'll see. There's still half the book left, and I do want to know what happens. Will Gwen forgive Archy? What about the babies? What about Brokeland Records? What about Julius and Titus, the latter having proven himself to not be a perfect gentleman after all?

Summer of Shelf Discovery

Well, this was a much-needed antidote to the horrors of Go Ask Alice.

Chapter 6 of Shelf Discovery is all about girls gone wild--but not in the spring break dodgy video way, but in the "girls left behind, or girls experiencing the wild world of nature on their own/for the first time, or experiencing a severe change of environment."

This is a sweet little story of Elizabeth Ann, raised by spinster aunts who love her, but treat her like a fragile specimen that might shatter if tapped too gently. When the older aunt becomes ill, the younger aunt sends Elizabeth Ann away while she nurses the elder. To Elizabeth Ann's horror, she's sent to the awful Putney cousins in Vermont, a family her aunt shudders to speak of.

But of course, the Putney cousins are delightfully down to earth and the horrors that Aunt Frances referred to ("The children had chores to do...as though they had been hired men!") turn out to be a world of wonder for the rechristened Betsy. She learns she's not nearly so fragile as previously supposed, and she learns about the joys of country life. Especially school, where her lack of math skills is not a huge concern for the teacher.

It's a charming book, predictable, but the charm overcomes that. And it's an anomaly in the books I've read so far in that the author, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, regularly inserts herself in as narrator. Her fondness for the foibles of all the characters, from the well-meaning aunts to the sometimes laconic Putneys, gives the book a warm and cozy feeling, much like Betsy's kitten Eleanor.

Recommended for anyone needing a palate cleanser after a distasteful book. Yes, I'm talking about you, Go Ask Alice.

The Poetry Project

So, Lu and Kelly are hosting the Poetry Project.

I am one of those people who reads poetry, who buys poetry, and who even attempts to write poetry. (Brag--I had a poem published in Alimentum this year!) It seems like it's time for me to get more serious about my enjoyment of poetry.

This month, the only requirement is a quick meme.

Why do you want to join for the Poetry Project?
For the reasons I stated above--I do read poetry and want to read more of it.

Do you have a favourite poet?
Many. Sylvia Plath (especially the poems she wrote to her children), Sharon Olds, Naomi Shahib Nye, Jude Nutter.

Hopefully this will go longer than a year. Do you have any suggestions for themes?
Mmm, no. Guess I'm too new to this project.

What are your experiences with poetry in the past? Have they been positive or negative?
Both. In college, it was somewhat tormenting--I majored in English, and oh, the agonies of dissecting a poem. At least back in my day (yes, I am old enough to say that), there was no emphasis or interest in just enjoying the sound of a poem. It had to be analyzed, word by word. There are plenty of poems that benefit from that, of course, but they don't all need to be treated that way. As an adult, rediscovering poetry has enhanced my overall reading and writing life. There is no more compact form of communication.

Tell us about a poem or poet that has had a profound effect on you. If you can't think of a poem, how about a song? Or a line from a story?
I've probably told this story before, but bear with me. Growing up in rural northern Minnesota, I read what the typical teenager of the time read, forgettable YA romance books with titles like Betty Jean Prom Queen. When I was 14 or so, some new people bought the house near ours for use as a summer home. They were impossibly exotic--from New York City! Good heavens. They had a dog named Gamila, and sometimes they would ask me to care for Gamila when they were gone on side trips. Once, as payment, they gave me a copy of Sylvia Plath's Ariel. There was certainly no going back to Betty Jean Prom Queen after that.

What frustrates you about poetry or the way we talk about poetry?
As if it's all or nothing. Either you like all poetry, or you don't like any. We don't treat any other form of literature that way--I love literary fiction, but not everything in that category is going to appeal to me. Same with any other kind of writing--sci fi, essays, memoir, whatever. Readers should be willing to try different poets and different forms of poetry before writing it off.

Tell us something about yourself that has nothing to do with poetry!
What do you want to know? Ask me in the comments and I'll answer.

The Fault in our Stars

This would be the perfect book for an updated Shelf Discovery in a few years, in the "Read 'em and Weep" chapter.

Seriously, I have got to stop reading books that make me cry. It used to be no book ever caused tears to well up. Is it because I'm getting older? Or is it these books about kids who die are more than I can handle as a parent? I don't know, but this book required kleenex at hand, even when it made me laugh at times.

But I do have to give props to author John Green for taking a difficult subject (kids with cancer) and not giving into schmaltz and sentimentality. There were points when I thought, oh no, he's not going to go down that cliched path, is he? And he didn't. It's clear that not all kids with cancer are perfect angels, nor are all the people who mourn them online completely genuine. Hazel sees all of this, just as she says how her parents are affected by her diagnosis, emotionally and financially.

This is not just a story of kids with cancer, it's about how families cope with a terminal diagnosis, and about how kids react to it and to each other. It's also about the very human need to matter and to be remembered--a big topic for a YA book, but Green handles it admirably.

The narrator, Hazel, has stage IV cancer ("Thyroid originally but with an impressive and long-settled satellite colony in my lungs"), but an experimental treatment has bought her some time--not a lifetime, but a little extra. She's got a darkly humorous personality, and having finished her high school via GED, she takes classes at a community college and has become very well read.

Still, she's weak, needs to use an oxygen tank, and has pretty much given up the idea of a social life until her mother forces her to attend a cancer support group at church. It's an excruciating exercise in seeing the positive, and Hazel begs to quit, until Augustus Waters joins the group.

It's a cliche to say that Augustus changes Hazel's life, but it's true, in unexpected ways. How he changes her life, I won't tell you--no spoilers. Let's just say that although this is a YA book, it's over 300 pages, and I read it in one day. Tears and all.

Hazel is at times a brave trooper, but other times she's overwhelmed. While visiting the Anne Frank Museum, she pores over a list of Holocaust victims:

"The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. Four. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around. (Maybe some people need to believe in a proper and omnipotent God to pray, but I don't.)"

There are little throwaway lines that are full of wry sadness, such as: "His mom and dad wheeled the chair downstairs...bouncing down crazily in a way that would have been dangerous if danger retained its relevance."

The other touching thing about this book, whether the author meant it to be or not, is the Author's Note at the beginning:

"This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.

"Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species."

An interesting contrast to the opening of Go Ask Alice, especially in light of the acknowledgements at the end, which pay tribute to Esther Earl. It's hard not to imagine this book might have been inspired by her, especially when it turns out they had a connection. This article describes Esther as having some similarities to Hazel (as well as the same middle name, Grace). But Hazel is her own character. Inspired or not, it's still a work of fiction. But a work of fiction that packs a wallop.