New Century Reading

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

There's no way someone could have written this as a novel and gotten anyone to read it. We'd all roll our eyes and say, "So over the top! So exaggerated! That would never happen."

As is often the case, however, it did happen.

This is quite a book. It's an account of a slum in Mumbai, the people who live there, how they live, the challenges they face, the bureaucracy and corruption that constricts them, while battle potential destruction from both monsoons and from the government, which threatens to bulldoze the slum to make room for more airport construction.

Author Katherine Boo spent three years exploring this particular slum and getting to know its residents, and she's got a remarkable tale to tell. The story unfolds around the framework of a legal case involving two of the slum's families, one of which claims the other drove Fatima "One Leg" to try and burn herself to death. But it's far more complicated than that sentence implies. Family and neighborhood feuds and alliances, legalities, bribes, the less-than-ideal court system, and the psychological, physical, and financial toll the battle takes on everyone is presented in brutal detail.

Boo is clear and succinct and not romantic about her subject matter:

"What Abdul wanted was this: a wife, innocent of words like pimp and sisterfucker, who didn't much mind how he smelled; and eventually a home somewhere, anywhere, that was not Annawadi. Like most people in the slum, and in the world, for that matter, he believed his own dreams properly aligned to his capacities."

Abdul later says, "I tell Allah I love him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is."

I thought for a bit about sharing the story behind the title, but frankly, if you haven't read the book, it's a wonderful story and very fitting for the book, so I'll leave it to you. I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but this is just a wonderful piece of writing.

 

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...

 

Christmas goodies

Yes! I got me some reading goodies this weekend!

This one really tickles me. My 16-year-old son picked it out himself. As soon as I finish the library book I'm reading that has a waiting list and no renewals allowed, I'll read this. And of course I will love it.

Both teen sons were in wonderment that their mother not only received, but actually wanted a book about zombies for Christmas.

I've heard so many good things about this novel. And I love the cover. 

From my bro and SIL, who know how much I love to cook and to hang out on Twitter.

As someone who likes to travel in the off-season, I'm anxious to read McAlpine's take on it.

But that's not all. Shortly before Christmas, I had tea with a friend who managed to find a way to increase my general Jane Eyre geekiness.

Jane Eyre pencils!!!

A cheeky little button. And....

Jane Eyre, illustrated by Paula Rego! I'd never seen or heard of this edition. It's not the entire book, but sections selected for specific illustrations. And oh, what glorious illustrations they are:

This accompanies a short section where Jane talks about reading Bewick's History of British Birds. This book is really a thing of beauty.

And one last book-related item:

Truer words were never spoken.

Yes, I was spoiled rotten. And you? 

A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses

I'm a sucker for writers' houses. I love to see where they lived and worked. But all too often, they're disappointing.

Author Anne Trubek understands that. In her book, she visits several American authors' houses, with varying response. She notes that our impulse to preserve and visit these places is nothing new; back in the fourteenth century, the town of Arezzo preserved Petrarch's birthplace, even though he did not live there and didn't care about it.

That doesn't stop us, even if the results aren't always what we expect, or want: "For me, writers' houses are by definition melancholy...they aim to do the impossible: to make physical--to make real--acts of literary imagination. Going to a writer's house is a fool's errand. We will never find our favorite characters or admired techniques within these houses."

Worse, the pseudo-furnishings: "This is the site of creative genius, [the curators] tell us with a stragith face, as we stand in kitchens filled with period-appropriate cups and saucers, laid out as if the great man himself had just stepped out for a walk, while a German couple takes pictures of the table with their cell phones."

So why go?

"It has something to do with pilgrimage, the hushed aura of sacredness; it has to do with history; one life preserved. It has something to do with loss, and objects as compensation for loss. And it has something to do with the way literature works, with the longing created by the fact that words separate writers from readers yet create an ineluctable intimacy between the two, structured by marks on paper."

And with that, Trubek takes the reader along on her journeys to visit the homes of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Ernest Hemingway (including a visit to his home in Idaho, which is not open to the public, but is where he shot himself), and Langston Hughes, among others. In some cases the author lived in these "museums" only a short time; in some cases, what was a rural home became part of a city center, and often a poor one. Trubek details how one can track the abject poverty of Edgar Allen Poe by visiting a string of his former homes. She also describes, in heartbreaking detail, how Jack London's final legacy, something he planned so carefully, was destroyed before it could ever begin. She talks about the persistent work of Paul Laurence Dunbar's mother to preserve his literary legacy, even if the world in general was not as interested.

It turns out there's a great disparity among these homes, both in terms of literary value and historical accuracy. Rarely are they profitable, and always are they subject to the current literary darling of the moment. But it's not likely they'll go away, or people will stop trying to preserve more homes in this way. Is it worthwhile? Trubek leaves that open for debate.

For me--well, yeah, if I have a chance to see a writer's house, I will probably take it, even if I so often end up disappointed.

Side note: best author home I've ever visited is the Haworth Parsonage, home to the Bronte sisters. Unlike some museums that fill their room with period-appropriate furnishings or reproductions, the Parsonage is full of original materials. You don't see a sofa similar to the one the Brontes had; you see the sofa on which Emily died. It's the best one can hope for if you're trying to "see" or "feel" what these lives were like.

Literary blog hop

Hosted by The Blue Bookcase.

This week's question: Is there such a thing as literary non-fiction? If so, how do you define it? Examples?

I had to put some thought into this, because the vast majority of books I read are fiction, not nonfiction. When I read nonfiction, I lean towards biographies, often of literary people. But occasionally a book of nonfiction will interest me for some obscure reason or other, and I would say yes, there is literary nonfiction. But how to define it?

I'd say: if I feel like I'm reading a novel, a really good one, then I'm reading literary nonfiction. The quality of the writing has to be strong and fitting for the book, just like in fiction. This is a little loosey-goosey, but forgive me, I'm only on day two of antibiotics for a raging sinus infection.

Examples: Savage Beauty, Nancy Milford's bio of Edna St. Vincent Millay; Into the Wild and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer; The Music of Failure by Bill Holm (my review is here); the hysterical Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer.

And I'm pretty sure I'd add The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks if I'd actually moved far enough up the waitlist at the library to have read it yet.

A 9/11 roundup

When the anniversary of 9/11 arrived again this year, I read an article about the best books about 9/11. Some I had read (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the devastating 102 Minutes), while others sounded intriguing enough for me to request them from the library. The library obigingly sent all three requests at once, so this week I've been all about 9/11. Cheery, no?

The books I chose were quite a diverse group.First I read David Halberstam's Firehouse.

Halberstam spent time after 9/11 with Engine 40, Ladder 35, a firehouse near his home that had sent 13 firefighters out on 9/11, to have only one return alive. Halberstam smartly doesn't try to add extra drama and pathos to this story, because there's plenty there already. He spent time with the other staff members of the firehouse, many of whom had more than a little survivor's guilt, especially those who had changed shifts with someone who died, and with the firefighters' families. A short, sad read, but it helps put specific faces and stories to the numbers who died that day.

Long after the original 9/11 Report came out, I'd pick it up at the bookstore, think about how I should read it, but at nearly 800 pages, it proved too daunting. So when I saw that a graphic novel adaptation had been done (with the blessing and oversight of the 9/11 Report committee), I thought that might be a better choice.

I did think it an odd choice--a graphic novel of a government report? But it's much more readable, although I'm sure it's equally depressing, with the summaries of what could have been prevented. Still,if you were curious about the report but didn't want to tackle the full thing, this isn't a bad option.

Finally I read Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Henry by Maira Kalman.

I'm a big fan of Kalman's; I love her whimsical illustrations and tales. Fireboat is the true story of an NYC fireboat launched back in 1931. Retired in 1995, the boat went into private hands and was lovingly refurbished, but not used for its original purpose. On 9/11, the little fireboat was called back into action, initially to help ferry people and then even to fight fires.

This is a charming enough tale, and lavishly illustrated, but to be honest? It's a picture book for kids, and I don't think I would have bought it when my kids were young enough to have it read to them. There are some very intense pictures of the planes heading toward the WTC and the buildings exploding, and the text notes that many lives were lost.

The question it raised for me was--how young is too young for 9/11 literature? I'm thinking that kids who are three or four don't really need this story. Yet the text and pictures make it far too young for older elementary. I noticed this was a concern expressed by some readers on Amazon. One reader defended it, saying he'd read it to his child--but he (the father) had been near the WTC that day and his family had subsequently gone through the misery of worrying about him. That's a little different than, say, a kid in the Midwest who didn't go through it or wasn't even alive then. I dunno. What do you all think? Is 9/11 inappropriate material for a picture book?

The Art of Description

What does it say about the amount of time I spent online that I can't remember where I entered the contest to win this book from Graywolf Press? I've got it narrowed down to Twitter, Facebook, or Goodreads, because I follow Graywolf on all those sites.

No matter. I entered a contest, I won the book.

I was tickled to win, because I have some of the other books in The Art Of series that Graywolf publishes. These are wonderful books, slim volumes by a variety of writers on a narrowly focused topic pertaining to writing. The Art of Description is, fittingly, by a poet, Mark Doty.

Now, Mark Doty and I have a bit of history. A few years ago he published a memoir called Dog Years, about the role his dogs played in his life following the slow and sad death of his partner. As often happens with books about dogs, they don't get to live forever. I've read enough of these kinds of books to be prepared. And I'm not one to cry when I read--I guess I need more visual clues--but Dog Years had me dissolved into puddles. Seriously, one of the most moving books I've ever read.

When I began reading The Art of Description, I couldn't shake the sadness of Dog Years at first. How stupid! These books have nothing to do with each other! But I had to put it down a couple of times before I could really clear Dog Years out of my brain and focus.

In retrospect, that's not such a bad thing. It tells me that Doty's writing made a strong impression on me, and part of that had to do with description. Let's face it--a man and his dog can be the worst kind of schlock imaginable, and yet, in Doty's hands, it wasn't. So what can we learn from Doty about writing description?

Quite a lot. Doty approaches the topic seriously and thoughtfully. Part of it is a conscious decision process: "Perception is simultaneous and layered, and to single out any aspect of it for naming is to turn your attention away from myriad other things." Part of it is filtered through each individual: "It's incomplete to say that description describes consciousness; it's more like a balance between terms, saying what you see and saying what you see."

Doty chooses examples carefully. Elizabeth Bishop's poem The Fish is examined thoroughly and enlighteningly--even as a writer myself I don't always think about the care and precision writers use when choosing their words. Later, he looks at William Blake's Ah! Sunflower, and then contrasts it with Alan Shapiro's poem Sunflower, which is a direct response to the Blake poem, and how description operates in each of them.

The last half of the book is called Description's Alphabet. Each letter stands for an aspect of description, such as the letter A: "Description is an ART to the degree that it gives us not just the world but the inner life of the witness."

Some of the letter, like A, have very short passages. Others, like C, get longer discussions. C stands for color, and Doty makes clear what needs to happen: "When we refer to leaves as green or bark as brown, we reduce language to a debasing perceptual shorthand. Every leaf is made up of a complex interaction of shades, tones that shift as light does."

And tones that shift according to the perception of the viewer, the writer, and the reader.

This book didn't make me cry :-) but it did make me think. Thanks, Graywolf Press!

 

The Music of Failure

I reviewed this book over on my other blog today; click on over and read what I had to say. Or better yet, just read the book. It's good. Really, really good.

The 15/15/15 Project--day 15

Done! I did it! Thanks, Girl Detective, for a fun challenge that pushed me into reading a different way!

My final book was The Art of Time in Fiction by Joan Silber. This is part of a series published by Graywolf Press, with each slim volume covering a specific topic in writing. I've been meaning to read this for quite a while, and this was a good final book. Interesting, thoughtful, and made me more appreciative of how authors use time to tell their stories. Specifically, I loved her discussion of Alice Munro's work, since I love Munro but often wonder how she arrived at her framework and timing decisions (wonder in a good way, as in, "wow, that's amazing, how'd she do that??").

So, a good challenge. I'd definitely sign up again if Girl Detective does it again. What did I read?

Library books - 3
Borrowed - 1
Owned - 11
Novel - 3
Memoir - 2
Poetry - 2
General nonfiction - 2
Young adult - 2
Short stories - 2
Graphic novels - 2

Not a bad mix.

And now I'm off to sink back into Wolf Hall.

The 15/15/15 Project--Day 14

Almost to the end!!

A Short History of Myth. One big gap in my education has been in the realm of myths. They're at the root of so much of the world's art and literature, yet I know very little. This is a pretty good introduction, although it wasn't quite what I was expecting--I was thinking it would be more specifics about different myths, but instead it's a rapid overview of different historical time periods, how myths in those time periods came to be, and what it all might mean.

Although it wasn't quite what I was looking for, it was interesting and persuasive, especially the last chapter, where she brings up the role 20th- and 21st-century artists play in creating and sustaining mythology in a highly scientific, logical world:

"Mythology, we have seen, is an art form. Any powerful work of art invades our being and changes it forever...

"If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest."

Makes me want to learn even more about mythology, which I would say was a desirable outcome for the author.