NOTES TO MYSELF

This is not really a post - I just wanted a place to copy down a couple of passages from the last two books I've read.  The two passages are perhaps polar opposites of ways of looking at our world, and I mysteriously can identify with both of them.  The first is from Michael Cunningham's new and wonderful book:  Specimen Days.  The speaker is a woman who has been driven round the bend by current American society, and who has become part of a curious form of terrorist ring

"Look around," she said.  "Do you see happiness?  Do you see joy?  Americans have never been this prosperous, people have never been this safe.  They've never lived so long, in such good health, ever, in the whole of history.  To someone a hundred years ago, as recently as that, this world would seem like heaven itself.  We can fly.  Our teeth don't rot.  Our children aren't a little feverish one moment and dead the next.  There's no dung in the milk.  There's milk, as much as we want.  The church can't roast us alive over minor differences of opinion.  The elders can't stone us to death because we might have committed adultery.  Our crops never fail.  We can eat raw fish in the middle of the desert, if we want to.  And look at us.  We're so obese we need bigger cemetery plots.  Our ten-year-olds are doing heroin, or they're murdering eight-year-olds, or both.  We're getting divorced faster than we're getting married.  Everything we eat has to be sealed because if it wasn't, somebody would put poison in it, and if they couldn't get poison, they'd put pins in it.  A tenth of us are in jail, and we can't build the new ones fast enough.  We're bombing other countries simply because they make us nervous, and most of us not only couldn't find those countries on a map, we couldn't tell you which continent they're on.  Traces of fire retardant we put in upholstery and carpeting are starting to turn up in women's breast milk.  So tell me.  Would you say this is working out?  Does this seem to you like a story that wants to continue?"

(Note to self:  look up his two books prior to The Hours:  A Home at the End of the World, and Flesh and Blood.)

The second passage is from Ian McEwen's latest book:  Saturday.

Once, on a walk by a river - Eskdale in low reddish sunlight, with a dusting of snow - his daughter quoted to him an opening verse by her favorite poet..."If I were called in / To construct a religion / I should make use of water." ...They stopped to drink coffee from a flask, and Perowne, tracing a line of lichen with a finger, said that if he ever got the call, he'd make use of evolution.  What better creation myth?  An unimaginable sweep of time, numberless generations spawning by infinitesimal steps complex living beauty out of inert matter, driven on by the blind furies of random mutation, natural selection and environmental change, with the tragedy of foms continually dying, and lately the wonder of minds emerging and with them morality, love, art, cities - and the unprecedented bonus of this story happening to be demonstrably true.

So, would this religion be Intelligent Design or Creationism?  Or, simply, science.  These were both books I could not put down, stayed up too late reading, read most of Saturday yesterday (which was itself Saturday!) because I was felled by some mean and nasty sort of flu.   

A THREAD OF GRACE

Classes ended last Friday, then I slept for fourteen hours and finished A Thread of Grace.  It was a long wait between books for Mary Doria Russell, and what a very different book from her first two - but the wait was certainly worth it. 

A belief in grace is all that keeps me from swallowing ground glass most days, and that thread does run through this book.  A difficult but compelling read, a story of great evil and great compassionate goodness existing side by side -  an account I hadn't heard before.  It's the story of Northern Italy at the tail end of WW II, the Italians finished with war, the Germans desperate to hold a front, the Jews who had escaped from occupied Southern France over the Alps hoping to find a safe haven in Italy, the partisans fighting a guerilla warfare against the Germans on their soil.   There's a large number of characters, but once I had time to really settle down and read without constant interruption I had no trouble with the large cast.

It's done without stereotyping - not all the Italian peasants are generous and good, not all the Nazis are unredeemably evil, but don't get too attached to anyone in the story - there is a low survival rate, I must warn you.  Not that it's unexpected, but it is a heartbreaking book.  Heartbreaking but full of the wonders of grace, the miracle of the human spirit.

NOT DEAD YET,EXACTLY

I am not dead, nor do I sleep.  I am teaching two work-intensive, fast-paced classes this summer.  One I have taught several times before, so I am familiar with the material, textbook, etc., but it's a writing class and there's a lot of work coming in very quickly.  It entails a lot of paper-reading for me.  The other class is brand-new to me, and requires learning the equipment in our also brand-new language lab.  The class is a kind of guinea pig all the way around, and I often end up feeling like an idiot.  It's called "Advanced Listening-Speaking" and no one knows what it's supposed to be.  The woman who has been teaching it turned it into a prep class for students who will be going on to take academic classes in the college, basically taking notes on lectures, and also learning to give presentations in front of a class. And that's the texts I'm using.  The head of the dept, who will be teaching it next semester, doesn't like this focus and keeps giving me all kinds of other stuff she wants me to do. Not knowing the equipment means I often have to run to find someone to help me out of a jam - I hate doing this sort of thing in front of students.  All in all I wind up with a massive tension headache every Tues and Thurs afternoon.  Feels like a steel rod is running from the top of my head through my neck. 

So, I'm teaching five hours four days a week, staying afterwards to fool around with the language lab stuff,  get used to what I'm trying to do.  This is an amazing, state-of-the-art system, but we've had no training, won't have any until September.  The system is far smarter than I am. 

Then there's TheBlueVoice, the new political group blog you have possibly heard about already.  Seven other AOL political bloggers (as I often have been in my other AOL Journal, thewindmills) and I got together and decided to take our show on the road.  It's turning out to be a very worthwhile and enjoyable project, but it's The Big Time, and I have been doing a lot of research for the things I write over there, which are mostly pieces on the environment. 

So, where does that leave "real" reading?  By which I usually mean novels. Kind of in the dirt, for the present time I'm afraid.  I read a couple of Ian McEwan books, not the new one yet.  They were okay, but I wasn't really swept off my feet.  All my library books are so overdue I expect the Library Police to arrive at the door any day now.  I started Mary Doria Russell's new book, A Thread of Grace  (If you never read The Sparrow and Children of God I have to say go get them and begin immediately.  They are probably categorized as Science Fiction, but oh, they are so much more than that.  But isn't most Sci Fi more than that, really?  It's why it's one of my favorite forms of fiction.)  a week or so ago, and haven't gotten very far into it.  Gail read it almost without stopping and loved it, so I know I need to stop this obsessing with climate disruption and species extinction, etc, and get back to reading.

As for movies, we haven't seen any recently because we are watching the first season of "The West Wing" on DVD.  Somehow we didn't gear into this show until it won all those Emmies its first year.  We don't watch much TV, and just had no idea how addictively wonderful this was, especially when Aaron Sorkin was its mastermind.  We have two more first season discs to go, then we'll start on last season's "Six Feet Under" on DVD. 

Three more weeks and summer classes will be over.  We'll have a lot of company at the beginning of the month, maybe even all through the month.  I'd love to get to Texas before the fall semester begins, but it may not happen.  In any case, I'll get back to reading in the brief weeks between summer and fall semesters.  Don't give up on me, please!

TWO STRIKES

Just a short report on a couple of book disappointments.  Yes, I have them - and these two were especially disappointing to me because I have loved the authors' previous work so much.  Elizabeth Berg wrote what I still consider to be the best book on women's friendships:  Talk Before Sleep.  She's written many other novels, and some short stories.  I've loved all of her books.  So I was eagerly anticipating her latest one, especially after hearing her interviewed on the Diane Rehm show on NPR.  This one is called The Year of Pleasures, and unlike any of her other books, it often felt false and forced.  It's the story of a recently widowed woman of fifty-five and the year she spends after her husband dies, seeking a new life.  The title may seem odd, given that short synopsis - but it will make sense if you read it.  And it's probably worth reading, it's just not up to Berg's usual standards.

The second book was an even greater disappointment.  I can't tell you how much I loved Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, her first novel.  I gave it to everyone for gifts, I dreamed about it, I still remember whole chunks of it.  It was a wonder of mystery and blessing, love, spirit, heart and soul.  So, for months now I've been waiting for The Mermaid Chair, her new book.  I was on a long list at the library, but last week it was finally my turn.  Maybe it's bad to have such high expectations for a second novel.  In any case, it certainly fell far short.  The story is basically banal, despite a lovely setting and a few mystical trappings, an affair between a married woman and a monk just short of taking his final vows.  A lot of background tragedy in their lives, a lot of religious angst, but...it's the story of an affair.  The writing is not what I remember from Secret Life, either - it seemed plodding and tedious in places, never the untrodden path that the first book set before me.

I haven't read any reviews of either book - so I'd love to hear from anyone who has read either or both of these.  What did you think - have I just become old and jaded? 

WE'LL MAP MANHATTAN

Thanks to my friend Duane, over at SottoVoce, I have this fun map and article from the NYT to share with you.  The article is "We Mapped Manhattan," and the project is one I wish I'd known about from the start.  But, as the writers themselves say:

"Mapmaking is a process of omission -- if it were not, a map of the United States would be 3,000 miles wide. Our design allowed the display of only 49 books, plus a very nice epigraph from Melville (with thanks to Rob Tally of Durham, N.C.). In deciding what to include, we wanted to represent many genres and many eras, and to be guided by reader preferences. The triage was painful, necessarily excluding many wonderful books and authors."

I'm sure my submissions would have been the same as many others  - Catcher in the Rye, the Eloise books, The Great Gatsby, Stuart Little, Time and Again.  There are many on the list, however, that I haven't read - it makes a nice list of things to look for. 

The resultant map is an interactive toy, you can go from location to location, seeing the actual mise en scène of each book or poem. It is a map of Literary Manhattan..."a place where imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank, walked and looked at ducks."  You may need to sign in to access the article and map, but heavens - who among us is not registered online with the NYT? 

PS - I just checked, and you do have to sign in for the article, but you can access the map just from my link, without registering or signing in.

FIRST LOVES

What were your favorite books when you were a youngster? Your really really favorites, the ones you will never forget? What I'm talking about are books you read yourself, or chapter books that were read to you, rather than small children's picture books, though of course many of those are now among the books I adore and give as gifts. I'd love to hear from people of different ages on this question - as I think that might make a big difference.

It's hard for me to pare the list down to a reasonable number, as I was a voracious reader from the moment I cracked the code. The first book I remember loving was The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read it over and over, mesmerized by the strangeness of India, then by the romantic mystery of the English moors, the walled garden, the group of misfit children deeply involved in a secret project.

Another book I loved was Roller Skates, by Ruth Sawyer. I don't know if this book still captivates girls, but it certainly did me. It's the story, apparently autobiographical, of a ten-year-old's life in New York City during the year her parents go abroad and leave her with a guardian. She travels all over the city on her skates, making friends and having adventures. I haven't read this book in years, but it's still in the bookcase we keep full of kids' books, for the grandchildren, nieces and nephews who come to visit.

A lifelong fascination with anything miniature may have begun with Mary Norton’s Borrowers series, all of them. I wanted there to be an unending number of these books, adventures of the tiny people continuing in every possible environment. Something of the same magic was in P.L. Travers Mary Poppins series, all of which I loved – I wanted to be Mary Poppins, to have those magical abilities totranscend this humdrum world the way she could. P.L. Travers was a student of mythology and religions; she used to be the editor of Parabola in the days when I subscribed to that magazine. There is more than one doctoral thesis in the Mary Poppins books, though I don’t know if any have actually been written.

Mary Poppins could talk to the animals and birds, and it was a power I so longed to have.  The talking animals of The Wind in the Willows enchanted me for years.  They still enchant me.  I can read that book over and over, pick it up and start at any place it opens.  It is full of wonder and wisdom and poetry, much of my love of nature began with the animals and their environments in that book.

Even before I lost my heart to Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's eternal story of a family of four girls and their beloved Marmee, I had fallen in love with the All of a Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor. One reason is that it was a family of five little girls, and I myself was the oldest of a family of five little girls – and one brother. Taylor’s is a Jewish immigrant family on the Lower East Side of New York, and much of my early learning about Judaism, and fascination with it, came from these books. The first book has several sequels, all of which I loved.

I have been unable to interest any of the current children in my life in a book which I adored, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years, by Rachel Field, and I’m not sure why. It does seem rather dense on first glance, and the language is not contemporary – but, oh, the story! A hundred years of history and adventure in this autobiography of a wooden doll. There is a new edition, reworked by two very fine children’s authors and illustrators, Rosemary Wells and Susan Jeffers. But I still treasure my copy of the original, and think maybe I need to read it again soon.

There are many more children’s books that I’ve discovered as an adult – I’m a great fan of kids’ books – but this is a short list of some I experienced as a real child, on real summer days when I used to take a book up into the branches of a tree and spend as long there as I could, lost in dreams, stories, adventures, discovering worlds within worlds, learning the power and wonder of words.

POST SCRIPT

A brief PS to my last post:  another book read during my journal hiatus was John Dunning's The Sign of the Book.  I wrote about Dunning's books last year when I had read the third one in the Bookman series, and I haven't much to add after reading this one.  It was the weakest of the series, as Cliff Janeway, Our Hero, is out in the Colorado mountains scrambling around trying to figure out whodunit.  He is better when the mystery keeps him in Denver, in his antiquarian bookstore and there is more booklore.  The first two books, Booked to Die and The Bookman's Wake, were the best of the series.  Things are getting stretched a little thin now, it seems to me. 

Dunning himself used to have exactly such a bookstore in Denver, The Old Algonquin. He now has only a virtual bookstore, which can be visited here. 

BOOKS ON A THREAD

Well, two weeks since I last put anything in this journal. Two very busy weeks, might I add. End of semester stuff: getting the last papers into writing portfolios, finals given and graded, final grades turned in. Then the ESL graduation ceremony, where this year there were quite a few students whom I've known since they entered the program. This is the first year that's been true, and I felt quite maternal seeing their pride and self-confidence as they stepped up to receive their certificates. It was a joyous occasion, and is a good reminder of why I'm there.

Even with busyness, I've read a few things - nothing of great literary merit, the sort of thing that can be read while eating a sandwich or in those moments before fading into total unconsciousness at night.

Thinking over what I've read recently, I find an unexpected thread linking all of them - they have all been largely concerned with children, in one way or another. Nevada Barr's latest mystery, Hard Truth, was deeply disturbing to me because of its loathsome villain, an abuser of children. I guessed who the vile creep was quite early on, and endured the story to the end anyway. Barr has never had anything quite this difficult to deal with – I don’t read her mysteries for nitty-gritty hard core evil; I read them for the ambiance more than anything else. The National Parks where her hero Anna Pigeon is stationed – a different one in every book – are the focal point for me. As well, of course, as Anna herself. A strong, gutsy, outdoorsy, middle-aged woman is an unusual figure and one I enjoy knowing. I'm sure horrible things happen in national parks, but I didn't expect this. This book left me distressd and depressed. I’m not going to be so eager to pick up the next Anna Pigeon book.

Then I read Sue Miller’s most recent novel, Lost in the Forest, which was quite a compelling read. The story of a family in northern California and their response to the tragedy that happens at the very beginning of the book, it features three very real child protagonists. The middle child, Daisy, bereft at a crucial point in her early teens of the stepfather she loved, is left open to the chaos of the Real World. It is again a story of child abuse, in its way; for Daisy anyhow. We come to know these children much better than the kids in Nevada Barr’s book, as we also come to know their divorced parents and their community of friends. Sue Miller is a wonderful writer, but her books – from The Good Mother on up to this latest novel – always bother me. Her fictional parents seem too detached from their children, too unaware of what they deeply need. I’m sure this is often the case, but nonetheless disturbing.

Then came Meg Wolitzer’s The Position, another family story, another set of parents completely unaware of their children’s real selves, real lives, real needs. It is a terrific book, and did NOT leave me distressed or bothered. These four kids took care of each other and of themselves, and we follow them into adulthood, thus learning how they all turned out. The "position" of the title is a sexual position invented by their parents, the infamous authors of the first ever aboveground sex guide, called Pleasuring: One Couple’s Journey to Fulfillment. I imagine the book as something along the lines of The Joy of Sex, as it is illustrated with drawings of their actual parents in sexual poses and positions. Imagine being a child in fourth or sixth grade, even worse –high school! and having such a book making giant waves everywhere. The horror is unthinkable. The children are affected by the book’s publicity, and then by the subsequent divorce of their parents when Roz, their mother, falls in love with the artist who illustrates the manual. All of the characters were real to me, like people I actually know now, with the exeption of the oldest daughter, Holly. The gay son, Dashiell, was my favorite, even though he ends up as a Log Cabin Republican – in reaction to his ultraliberal parents. I loved this book, and do recommend it highly. I love Meg Wolitzer, and am currently reading an older book of hers which I can’t remember previously reading - Surrender, Dorothy.

The last book in this group is Joyce Maynard’s The Usual Rules. Again about a family, again divorced parents are an important component (this is true for all of the books mentioned here, with the exception of the Nevada Barr – where the children’s family structure is truly strange: a Mormon offshoot group with a stern patriarch and several young wives.), as is the tragedy of parental loss. Here Maynard has taken on the seminal tragedy of our time, the destruction of the WTC. The mother of the two young characters, Wendy and Louie, dies in that attack, leaving them and their father (Wendy’s stepfather, Louie’s birth father) devastated and lost. The story is told through thirteen year old Wendy’s voice and viewpoint, and is quite an affecting one. There are perhaps too many really nice and quirky characters, especially when Wendy gets to California where her own birth father now lives, but they are all there to help Wendy decide that it IS possible to continue living, even through the terrible grief, confusion and guilt she feels. The kids in this book are great, and I totally fell in love with Louie, a very believable four year old. It’s a little too pat, too predictable; it’s a book I could recommend for a kid Wendy’s own age to read, even though it’s written for adults.

So, that’s where I’ve been, bookwise. And I only just realized, as I began to write about my recent reading, what a theme ran through it. There are several books in my stack that I’m reading over a period of time, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Garlic and Sapphires, Plan B – books that don’t come from the library and can be dipped into when the mood strikes.

LOVE THOSE LADIES

I have much to consider in this blog, but for the moment I only have time to pass along this movie review I just read at Salon.com.  That two of my favorite actresses, maybe even my two favorite actresses, are together in a film that sounds so wonderful is reason to continue living - at least until I see it.  And then, I could get the DVD and see it over and over.  It sounds like the sort of film that deserves to be called literature, thus included in a book blog.  Read and rejoice.




Maggie Smith and Judi Dench in "Ladies in Lavender."

"Ladies in Lavender"
Maggie Smith and Judi Dench prove beauty is ageless in this sparklingly lively period piece.

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By Stephanie Zacharek

April 29, 2005  |  "Ladies in Lavender," the directorial debut of actor Charles Dance, is the kind of small, fine-boned English picture that's usually sold with one of those deadly art-house-cinema trailers. You know the kind: The actors' most emotive moments are plucked out of context and put before us against a backdrop of swollen string music. Sometimes there's even a handy voice-over to alert us to significant plot points: "Two lives will be changed forever by a stranger" -- that sort of thing.

Trailers like these are designed to attract the widest and dullest possible audience, but so often they do a disservice to the very movies they're trying to sell. Personally, I'd run a mile from "Ladies in Lavender" if it were the kind of movie its trailer wants us to think it is. But the movie itself, sensitively but sturdily made, with an ear attuned to the most delicate notes of the story, is the sort of small, independent-minded picture that so much of American indie cinema strives, and often fails, to give us. It's a conventional picture, but it feels so deeply alive that it's practically a novelty.

Ursula (Judi Dench) and Janet (Maggie Smith) are two elderly unmarried sisters living together, in the cliff-top home they grew up in, in Cornwall. The story opens in the late '30s; as the picture unfolds we learn that Janet has been married before (her husband died in the Great War), but Ursula doesn't seem to have had many suitors, if any, in her youth. One morning, after a storm, the two women step out into the garden in their nighties to find out how much damage the wind and rain have done to their plants. They look down to the shore and see that a man has washed up there overnight; he lies face-down on the beach. The two women, clutching their dressing gowns around them, rush down to see if he's still alive. ("I suppose the sensible thing would be to turn him over," Janet says.) Finding that he's still breathing, they get help and tuck him into one of their spare beds, waiting anxiously for him to come to.

The young man's name is Andrea (he's played by Daniel Brühl, the expressive, likable young star of 2003's "Good Bye Lenin!"), and he speaks only Polish and German. The story that follows is relatively simple; as we learn more about who Andrea is, and what role he comes to play in the sisters' lives, the picture takes on deeper and more delicate textures.

Dance adapted the script from a short story by a nearly forgotten author named William J. Locke. (Dance was doing a film in Budapest and started flipping through one of the many books that were being used as set dressing; it was a collection of short stories by Locke, which Dance took it upon himself to "liberate.") The picture is simply made with a minimum of gimmickry. In a few places, Dance can't leave well enough alone: He uses some slow-motion and flashback effects that feel superfluous and clichéd. But mostly, he trusts the story, a seemingly simple skill that some filmmakers never get around to learning. And he recognizes that the strong landscape of Cornwall has to be a character in the movie: Its fierce jagged shores look like no other place on earth, and even the light has a rough, vital quality. (The fine cinematography here is by Peter Biziou.)

And beyond all that, we have the pleasure of watching Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. (The solidly entertaining supporting cast includes Miriam Margolyes, David Warner and Natascha McElhone.) Smith plays the sensible sister, the one who's grounded in reality every minute. But she's deeply moving in the way she reveals, scene by scene, the silky-strong quality of the bond she has with Ursula, and the way her annoyance with her sister is bound up with passionate protectiveness. And Dench, hands down one of the most beautiful actresses now working, is so radiant here that you can barely take your eyes off her. There's a strong current of sexual precociousness in the performance. Her Ursula is elfin and flirty, not in a way that's inappropriate but in one that's simply ageless.

While actresses dread, understandably, arriving at that point in their careers when the only thing that's left to them are "old lady" roles, neither Smith nor Dench seem too worried about it. They both understand that the trick lies not in playing an age but in playing a character. Their best years aren't behind them but inside of them.

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About the writer
Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.

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ENCORA RUTH REICHL!

I've just requested a long list of books from the library, most of them new and not yet available - but the book I really want to read is Ruth Reichl's new one, Garlic and Sapphires, the Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise. I want to read it so badly that I think I'm going to make the long trek down to Salisbury this afternoon and buy it at B & N.  Reichle is currently the editor of Gourmet Magazine, so of course she writes on food.  Her two previous books, Tender to the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples, are on my all-time top favorite books list.  The new one is about her adventures as restaurant critic for the NYT, the two earlier ones are from her foodie days in California, Chez Panisse and all that jazz.  Truly though, this woman could write about anything, and I'd read every word.

Here's some intro to her, if you don't already know her.  Read Dave Weich's interview with her at Powell's, for a delicious taste of Ruth.  And here is what Publisher's Weekly has to say about Garlic and Sapphires:

Review:

"As the New York Times's restaurant critic for most of the 1990s, Reichl had what some might consider the best job in town; among her missions were evaluating New York City's steakhouses, deciding whether Le Cirque deserved four stars and tracking down the best place for authentic Chinese cuisine in Queens. Thankfully, the rest of us can live that life vicariously through this vivacious, fascinating memoir. The book — Reichl's third — lifts the lid on the city's storied restaurant culture from the democratic perspective of the everyday diner. Reichl creates wildly innovative getups, becoming Brenda, a red-haired aging hippie, to test the food at Daniel; Chloe, a blonde divorce, to evaluate Lespinasse; and even her deceased mother, Miriam, to dine at 21. Such elaborate disguises — which include wigs, makeup, thrift store finds and even credit cards in other names — help Reichl maintain anonymity in her work, but they also do more than that. 'Every restaurant is a theater,' she explains. Each one 'offer[s] the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. Restaurants free us from mundane reality.' Reichl's ability to experience meals in such a dramatic way brings an infectious passion to her memoir. Reading this work — which also includes the finished reviews that appeared in the newspaper, as well as a few recipes — ensures that the next time readers sit down in a restaurant, they'll notice things they've never noticed before. Agent, Kathy Robbins. (On sale Apr. 11)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

 

MORE BOOKS

In between Pearl and The Ice Queen, by Alice Hoffman, I read a very dark mystery by Robert Wilson – The Blind Man of Seville. I have another of his to read, but I’m not yet sure if I can take another trip through such grim shadows so soon after The Blind Man. The ambiance is wonderful; I loved spending all that time (it’s quite a long book) in Seville and North Africa, despite the fact that most of it was spent plumbing the depths of darkness and moral despair.

But – The Ice Queen, now. I grew impatient with some aspects of the story, and wished she had concentrated more on the brother/sister relationship, and even more I wished she had put Ned’s whole paper on Magic and Chaos Theory into the novel. As an appendix, perhaps. But then, of course, she’d have had to write such a paper. It’s beyond me to summarize this story. If you know Hoffman you know all of her books are touched with magic. One of them, Practical Magic, was made into a movie that had very little of the charm and delicious wickedness of the novel. This one has lots of magic, plenty of passion, many references to fairy tales, and the most wonderful death scene I’ve ever read. One of the central themes of the book is loss, another is change, and they are of course connected. I have to quote a passage from one of the last chapters, about the paper I mentioned: Magic and Chaos Theory:

"At the heart of his paper was the notion that fairy tales relieved us of our need for order and allowed us impossible, irrational desires. Magic was real, that was his thesis. This thesis was at the very center of chaos theory – if the tiniest of actions reverberated throughout the universe in invisible and unexpected ways, changing the weather and the climate, then anything was possible. The girl who sleeps for a hundred years does so because of a single choice to thread a needle. The golden ball that falls down the well rattles the world, changing everything.The bird that drops a feather, the butterfly that moves its wings, all of it drifts across the universe, through the woods, to the other side of the mountain. The dust you breathe in was once breathed out. The person you are, the weather around you, all of it a spell you can’t understand or explain."

Fairy tales have been much on my mind since last month's Artsy Essay Contest at Judi's place.  I didn't enter it, because I found the topic too late to write a story, but I did begin a story.  Which soon became bogged down in everything else I've been doing in the past several weeks.  It's waiting for me, though.   It's in my head, and on my hard drive, waiting and calling to me.  So I was interested in all the fairy tale references in this book. 

PEARL, A DAMN GOOD NOVEL

Well, as I was saying, quite some time ago - Mary Gordon's Pearl, A Novel. I finished it a while back, and Gail is now reading it. She's not as involved in it as I was - I have to think you need some serious down-and-dirty Catholicism in your background to get into any of Gordon's books. It's intrinsic to everything in them. (See my friend Tim's lengthy comment on the linked entry where I first talk about Mary Gordon.) The characters are the focus in her stories, and the characters are always deeply influenced -for better, or usually, for worse- by a Catholic childhood and/or adulthood. I am her audience, I must admit. Cradle Catholic, educated by nuns and priests all the way through undergraduate (and some graduate) school, began my teaching career in Catholic schools, yada yada. As Kate Clinton says, I am now a Recovering Catholic, trying not to react too hugely against my earlier indoctrination. Actually, I did react quite strenuously in the beginning, but have considerably mellowed now. I think.
(the book, girlfriend, talk about the book...oh!  okay, I will...)

But not very much - it's too much of a book to do it justice in a little journal entry. It's a mother-daughter story that roams from Manhattan to Dublin to Italy, the places where the three main characters are located for much of the book. Maria is the mother, Pearl her daughter, Joseph is Maria's lifelong friend and a surrogate father figure for Pearl. Although Pearl is the title character, this book is really Maria’s story. She is a ferocious child of sixties’ politics and anger, now the administrator of day-care centers for underprivileged children.

Her 20 year old daughter is in Ireland, spending a year in Dublin learning the Irish language, at least so her mother believes. In fact Pearl is learning many other Irish things besides the language – centuries of pain and anger as a result of "the troubles," martydom for a cause, the fragility of life, the fact that we are all capable of hurting others and culpable for it. The events of her semester in Ireland have led her to her own martydom, a hunger strike which she intends to end in her death, chained to the American Embassy flagpole.  After the State Department notifies Maria of what is happening in Dublin, she and Joseph get there as soon as they can.  

Okay, listen – I give up.  Here are links to two very good reviews, Rene Loth’s in The Boston Globe, and John Leonard’s in The New York Times. I know it's the cheap way out, but it's late at night and it's been the Week from Deepest Hell.  Read the reviews, then just read the book. It’s a gripping story of moral searching, fierce maternal love, the strangeness of life, love, religion, doubt, and history. And, unlike one of the reviewers (I think it was Roth), I DID notice –right away- the fact that the two main adult characters in the book are named Mary (Maria) and Joseph, and that it takes place at Christmas.

After a Winter's Silence
                     by May Sarton

Along the terrace wall
Snowdrops have pushed through
Hard ice, making a pool.
Delicate stems now show
White bells as though
The force, the thrust to flower
Were nothing at all.
Who gives them the power?

After a winter's silence
I feel the shock of spring.
My breath warms like the sun,
Melts ice, bursts into song.
So when that inner one
Gives life back the power
To rise up and push through,
There's nothing to it.
We simply have to do it,
As snowdrops know
When snowdrops flower.

NO TATS HERE

About tattoos (see this entry if you haven't yet), I just want y'all to know I have no intention of getting the biblio phile tattoo or any others.  I have always wanted one, or several, but do not get them because I am a universal blood donor - and if I get tattoo'd I will no longer be able to donate blood.  So they tell me.  This is one of the few tangible things I can do to help the world, and I do it as often as possible.  So, a dragon curled around a breast is something I'll just have to continue to do without.  Or a line of print down an arm.

Right now I'm reading Mary Gordon's new book, Pearl: A Novel. I am a serious devotée of Gordon's, have read all of her previous books.  The one called The Other Side helped me understand the Irish side of my family, made sense of things that had baffled me most of my life.  It's too bad she didn't write it before most of the baffling people were dead, but still, it was a relief to finally see what the deal had been.  This is perhaps the best one yet, in my opinion.  I've read only one review, some time ago, don't remember where, and it was very cranky.  I am tightly gripped, could barely stand to close the covers of the book last night and put myself under the covers of the bed.  Even knowing I'd have to get up early this morning and resume the life of a teacher.  Spring break spoiled me.  It's a big book, but not big enough.  I can't bear the thought of it ending.  I'll report in once I've finished it.  Any other Gordon readers out there? 

BRASS TACKS

Time to get down to them here, brass tacks, that is.  Strange expression isn't it?  Wonder exactly where it comes from, what it means?  The particular tacks I'm thinking of right now are the books I mentioned in the entry I wrote yesterday:  The Memory of Running, and The Secret of Hurricanes.

Ron McLarty's book, The Memory of Running, was first brought out as an audiobook three years ago when he was unable to find a publisher for it.  Which is a complete mystery to me - when one thinks of all the dreck that gets published, day in day out, that this compellingly wonderful book had trouble seeing the light of day, one can only say WTF?   A blurb from Library Journal says this:

Library Journal
Stuck without a publisher for this first novel, actor McLarty did an audio original with Recorded Books that Stephen King raved about in Entertainment Weekly. But how many people know that it was actually librarian Tia Maggio (Middleburg PL, VA) who brought the book to the attention of agent Jeff Kleinman? Maggio fell in love with the tape, used it in a book group (some listeners cried), and even got the author to come and read from the manuscript. "The characters are all so real," she explains of the book's appeal. Eventually, the book was sold to Viking for $2 million, with a Warner's deal and the sale of rights to 12 countries quickly following. Not bad for the gentle tale of washed-up Smithy Ide, who takes an impulsive bike ride across America to search for his sister.

It's the story of Smithy Ide, an overweight chain-smoking living-in-denial drunk.  Smithy is a total loser, who works in a factory in Providence RI, doing quality control on action figures.  At night he drinks, smokes, watches TV and tunes out the world.  The novel begins at the point where this assiduously unexamined life is about to change completely. 

I just wrote a paragraph about that change, then deleted it - I don't want to give away any of the details of this story.  Suffice it to say that Smithy sets out on an extaordinary journey across the country, supposedly on the errand of claiming his long-vanished sister's body. In the sense that it's a novel about one man's journey into reclaiming his life, I suppose it could be called a picaresque novel, among other things.  This is a story of salvation, resurrection, hope in the darkest of situations.  Characters who have been broken in body and soul find redemption, without sentimentality or false expectations, a very human redemption in a world of human flaws, loss, love, and mystery.  Mystery, yes, that's exactly the word I wanted.  Love and redemption are perhaps always, in some way, mysteries.  

Here's a link to the Bookbrowse page on Running.  You can read a long excerpt there, decide for yourself if it doesn't make you need to immediately lay hands on it somehow.  It also has make me decide to get my bicycle out of the garage and get it tuned up. 

Next, Theresa Williams' small lovely novel, The Secret of Hurricanes.  I like a book this size, it reminds me of the format of many of the books published by Algonquin Press of North Carolina.  Yes, I also judge books by their cover, uh huh.  That too.  No, really, I think everything about a book should be pleasing, including the physical format.  I read this book last Sunday, curled up in pillows, almost not moving from beginning page to final page.  Theresa warned me it was a painful story, and I had read some reviews before I started.  Theresa is herself a member of our AOL Journal community, and we have been journal friends for a while now.  I feel very privileged to be able to say that. 

The novel flows in a poetical, almost stream-of-consciousness style from the mind of Pearl Sterling, a woman of 45 living in an old trailer in a small town near the North Carolina coast.  Pearl is unmarried, a loner, and, now, mysteriously pregnant.  During much of the book Pearl is addressing her as-yet-unborn baby, whom she is sure is a girl child.  We see Pearl's current life, and learn about her childhood and teenage years as she talks to the baby and to us.  Her life has been a storm of devastating experiences, loss, abuse, confusion, lovelessness, isolation.  She has weathered them, as her home state has weathered hurricane after hurricane, and has made a life for herself.  Not a life most people would think amounts to much, but she knows it's a kind of miracle.  Pearl weaves rugs for sale to the tourist trade, not anything fancy, but handmade useful things.  She weaves them of scraps of castoffs from other peoples' lives, creating what are called ragrugs.  I find this craft a metaphor for her own life, which she has created out of the bits and pieces she has salvaged from the ruins.  We are also given bits and pieces from Shakespeare and from the troubled lives of the Kennedy clan, lives Pearl studies and scrapbooks.  From the salvaged bits and pieces, new craft, new life.  Life hits us the way hurricanes do, suddenly and drastically, but there's not much we can do to avoid the consequences of either life or hurricanes. I think the secret of hurricanes is to weather them, ride them out.  Take what's left, and when the sun comes out - take it.

Here is Pearl musing at the end of the novel: 

     "You floated past dead pigs and horses, past cedar trees where little drowned children came to rest. You climbed the stairs to attics and roofs as the rivers filled your homes and covered the heads of gods in your churches.  And though you've got your regrets, hands reached for that drifted away, you were saved, and that's your center now.  You hung on to your scant lives.
      Now when you see the sun, take it. And when you see the rain, remember.  The rain's still a blessing when you consider how much water in a lifetime a person drinks.
     Look at the sky.  Think, even as you fear its bigness or its darkness or its noise, one day you may forgive it.
     A little.  Be thankful.  Yes, be thankful!  And, above all, be ernestly kind."

I found a lot of echoes of other southern writers in this book,  Dorothy Allison and Flannery O'Connor in particular.  And when I did some research on Williams as a writer I found this page  with an interview, also this one, and found that she acknowledges both writers as influences.  On the first site you have links to lots of stuff, including an excerpt from the book.  As for Theresa herself, she's right here in our journal pages, come meet her and share her deeply felt journal on writing.

In an odd way, I think these two novels have a common theme.  Both of them find hope and beauty in lives that most would consider fit for nothing but the trash heap.  As an inveterate trash picker, I say - right on!  I have found some amazing treasures set out on the curb, or at the dump. 

TEMPTED TO DO DO IT, TOO

Look what Wil, of the Daily Snooze, sent me the other day!  Is this cool or what? 

Okay, here's what I've read since the last time I blogged about reading at this site.  When WAS the last time I did that?  OMG, it was March 11, over two weeks ago.  I remember when I used to write coherent (I think, anyway), lengthy reviews of what I read.  Within living memory, here, in fact, in this very journal.  How did I have time to do that, I wonder?  Where are the snows of yesteryear, while we're at it?  Où sont les nieges d'antan? 

The Memory of Running,  Ron McLarty
The Forgotten Man,  Robert Crais
The Seduction of Water,  Carol Goodman
The Secret of Hurricanes,  Theresa Williams
Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z,  Debra Weinstein
All the Flowers Are Dying,  Lawrence Block (currently reading)
Plan B, Anne Lamott (currently reading)

A couple of these don't need much reporting on, but a couple of them do - mainly, The Memory of Running, and The Secret of Hurricanes.  Amazing works, both of them.  And if I didn't have to go watch The West Wing in a few minutes, I'd do it right now.  But I think tonight we may find out who the next president will be, and there's no way I can miss that.  If only there were a real Republican who remotely resembled Alan Alda in this show, anywhere in the real world we inhabit.  If only.  Okay, later tonight or else tomorrow for book blogging in serious.   

SUNDAY SIX, OKAY? BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

From Patrick, of course, the Saturday Six, one day late.

1. Do you believe that Terri Schiavo should be allowed to die or that she should be kept alive? 

This is, of course, an agonizing decision.  I cannot speak for her family, or for her.  This is a decision in which an outsider has no business or place.  I cannot take part in the national mass hysteria over this.
 
2. Has the Schiavo case made you take any action towards creating a living will of your own?

I have had a living will of my own for many years.  My family is all aware of my feelings on this matter, and my partner will have the legal authority to make the decisions.
 
3. Let's forget what we know -- or more likely, what we think we know -- about Schiavo's condition.  If you suffered a brain injury that would leave you in a non-responsive vegetative state (whether Schiavo is in this state or not) and your doctors said that there was so much brain damage that there would be no hope of recovery, would you want to be kept alive no matter what?
The short simple answer is "no."

4. Has anyone outside of your immediate family ever asked you to be their "personal representative" to make such a decision on their behalf if they ever suffer a severe injury?  Do you think you could really make the decision?

The only one outside my family is my partner, and of course I think of her as family.  With several of my siblings I had to make this decision for my mother, and it was the hardest situation I've ever been in.

5. Do you have a special outfit ready for Easter Sunday?  Does your family have any special Easter traditions?

The short simple answer to the first part of the question is "no."  The answer to the second part is that my partner is Jewish, I practice no religion, so in this family we just eat a lot of chocolate eggs.  My family of origin has the usual baskets, egg hunt, etc.
 
6. What room of your house is the absolute messiest?  Would you ever let a house guest see it?

At the present time there is no part of my house that a guest would be permitted to see.  I would bar the door with my body, to the death, to keep houseguests from crossing the threshold.  This bears a large similarity to my answer to your first question last week, which I didn't post, as it was too late. This house is at its depth of unspeakable awfulness, brimming with pet fur and dust bunnies, piles of books and papers, heaps of laundry, etc.  There are times I myself don't know how I can bear it one more day.  And the only solution will be the imminent arrival of company.  This is not due to happen until June.  Heaven help us all.

ALAS, IT'S PROBABLY TRUE

The Monk
You scored 28% Cardinal, 58% Monk, 35% Lady, and 21% Knight!

You live a peaceful, quiet life. Very little danger comes you way and you live a long time. You are wise and modest, but also stagnant. You have little comfort, little food and have taken a vow of silence. But who needs chatter when just sitting in the cloister of your abbey with The Good Book makes you perfectly content.


My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Cardinal You scored higher than 99% on Monk You scored higher than 99% on Lady You scored higher than 99% on Knight

Link: The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test written by KnightlyKnave on Ok Cupid

Quiz found first on MidlifeMatters, who got it from Sister CDR.  I believe this is actually an accurate assessment of my current state of mind.  Stagnant, somewhat depressed, sunk in a life I really don't like.  So, who would YOU be in 1400 AD?

ALIVE ALIVE-O

Oh, poor lonely book journal.  Not that I haven't been reading, in the interstices of time mostly between getting into bed and eyelids slamming shut.  Or while I eat, another moment available to reading.  All I want to do right now is put a few titles in here, about which I can hope to comment later.

St. Dale, Sharyn McCrumb.  I made my way through the whole thing, but I wish she'd go back to the Appalachian mysteries, frankly.

Brief Moments of Horrible Sanity, Elizabeth Gold.  Well, I can't resist just a comment on this one.  In a word, fantastic.  A poet's year as a ninth grade "English teacher" in an urban progressive school in Queens.  She's a very funny writer, but the proportions of the tragedy that is overtaking public education are very clear, one laughs through one's tears.  Or cries through one's constant laughter.  Or something.  Best book so far this year.

The Lake of Dead Languages, Carol Goodman.  Jury's still out on this one.  Good writing, ridiculous plot.

Finishing School, Muriel Spark.  Ah, Muriel, you couldn't write a bad book if someone held a gun to your head.  I'm almost to the end of this little volume, and really hate for it to end.

Spring break in two more weeks.  I should live so long! 

LATE WINTER DOLDRUMS

In a bit of a bookish slump lately, sorry to say.  I see I haven't blogged here for almost a week.  The book I mentioned in the last entry, Mosaic, was a disappointment.  Yes, I read the whole thing (there's that difficulty with putting a book down unless it's truly entirely awful), but now I wonder why.  The story was gripping through part of the book, a woman's children taken by her husband back to his family in Jordan, his intent to raise them there by Muslim values, her attempts to get them back.  The writing was plebian, and in the end the whole story was facile.  Happy ending, nice and tidy.  Don't bother looking for it. 

Now I'm reading St. Dale, Sharyn McCrumb's latest, but in widely separated fits and starts.  I have been too busy to read it with any continuity.  I am therefore giving it the benefit of the doubt.  I will say that thus far I find it not up to her usual standards. 

Yesterday I ordered several things from the library, so perhaps the slump will end soon.

There is so much wonderful poetry in the world, don't you think?  I can't give up hope entirely while this is true.  Practically every day I discover a new writer, and a whole new vision opens up before me.  Today it's Timothy Walsh, thanks to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.  This poem is the perfect expression of the experience of going to PrimeHook on a late winter day, everything encapsulated in these few lines:

The Marsh in Winter

If you stand and listen,
you will hear the voice.
Reeds sharp as rapiers rasp the wind.
Frost creaks in the trees.
Sunlight, ice-bright, falls from the sky.
Scattered cedars and junipers loom like shadows.
Sheathed in ice, a willow droops heavily
Across the path.
Driven snow packs the creviced bark of cottonwoods.
Once-hidden bird nests now plainly marked
by a white cap of snow...

Out on the marsh, blue water shows through shifting ice.
Tall brown reeds, slim as dancers, bend in the breeze.
A hundred thousand cattails, each one lit
by the low-angled light of awestering sun,
each brown seed head blazing
like the head of a saint.

Timothy Walsh, from Wild Apples

My own photo, Terrapin Nature Preserve

Now I must find this volume of poetry, see if the rest is as good.  The title holds promise.  Nature poetry is what always grabs my heart.  My endlessly romantic (in the literary/art, not the Hearts & Flowers, sense) heart.

MANY BOOKS, LITTLE TIME

Finally finished The Briar King (Greg Keyes) several nights ago - what a relief.  The second volume is out, called The Charnal Prince, but I think I won't continue reading this series.  Far too much beheading, impaling, evisceration, etc. for my reading pleasure.  Alas, because the story is really quite good.  And I have to admit I'd like to know what happens to the few characters who remain standing at the end of this, the first, volume.  There's a lot that bewilders me about this story, mainly the fact that the royal family in this strange time and place traces its lineage back to someone named Virginia Dare.  Call me crazy, but I think that was the name of the baby born to the English colonists in what was called The Lost Colony, on Roanoke Island in Virginia.  The first English baby born in the New World.  Yes?  And in this book there is a place called Virgenia, and a language ditto.  So, when and where is the setting of this fantasy?  Okay, I may eventually have to pick it back up just to see if this question is ever answered.  Has anyone else ready any of this?  I wouldn't mind getting the answer to my bafflement the easy way. 

I went in to return Briar King, also pay my hefty late fees, and picked up two promising books.  Sharyn McCrumb is one of my favorite writers - her series of Appalachian mysteries based on folk ballads is outstanding for plot, characters, but most of all for place.  The Tennessee mountains are alive in these novels, written about with great personal affection.  One of my favorite contemporary characters comes from these books - Nora Bonesteel, an elderly woman with The Gift of seeing the past, sometimes also the future.  So, anyway, when I found a new Sharon McCrumb on the New Books shelves, I snagged it.  Even if it IS about NASCAR.  Yes, you heard me, NASCAR.  It's a novel, probably a mystery, and it shows you that I'm willing to read just about anything McCrumb puts her hand to.   It's called St. Dale, so there you go. 

Gail grabbed it first, however, so I'm reading the other one, Mosaic, by Soheir Khashoggi. I don't know this author, but it looked interesting, had a good cover (yes, I do, often), and is about a very contemporary problem - the clash of cultures and religions.  Here they clash in a microcosm of the larger world, a marriage.  I'll say more when I have read the book.                      

 

It occurs to me that during the snow days, the sick days, I read several books that I never mentioned here.  The one I remember most clearly is Anita Shreve's Light on Snow.  Though she's written a whole slew of novels, this is the first one I've read.  They have seemed to be too much in the Oprah Winfrey Mature Chick Lit vein previously.  I don't know if they are or not.  This one was an easy and pleasant read, especially for someone who had trouble keeping her eyes open with the flu.  Not great literature, but a good story with believable characters. She's not Neil Gaiman, but then - who is?  Except Neil Gaiman.  I don't pretend to be a reader of Great Literature, don't get me wrong.  I'll read more Anita Shreve, in all probability.

SPEAK OUT, RAVE ON

An interesting addition to the Ward Churchill thoughts in an earlier post, from John Nichols at The Nation.  Free speech remains alive and well at the Univ. of Wisconsin, even for Prof. Churchill.  The comments on my previous post are as interesting as this whole affair.

BETHANNE PATRICK, GIRL BOOK MAVEN

I just discovered something interesting on the AOL book page - we now have a "Book Maven" here at AOL.  Yes, our very own.  I'm trying not to hate her, because apparently this is a paid job. One where she gets to read books, comment on them, chat about them, and so on.  Okay, she's already a book reviewer and a journalist (she says), so sure, this makes sense.  Sort of.  They could have asked me, couldn't they?  Nah, I'm too leftwing for AOL.  Anyway, check out her journal, lots of book info there.  She apparently also gets to sell books for Barnes and Noble.  She has a book pile entry, and all the book covers will link to B & N.  Never thought of that myself.  Of course I would, if they were paying me.

WARD CHURCHILL

As I prowled the TV channels one night this weekend, I came across this guy giving an impassioned speech in front of a large college crowd on CSPAN.  The guy looked about my age, though retaining his hippie hair and mode of dress, flanked by what seemed to be Indians.  It looked pretty interesting.  Luckily I got in close to the beginning, so I managed to pick up the thread.  The guy is Ward Churchill, the school is the Univ. of Colorado in Boulder, the issue is, quite simply, free speech.  Or, perhaps, specifically, academic freedom. 

Churchill is a Cherokee Indian, has been the Chair of the Ethnic Studies Dept at the U. of CO. in Boulder, is an outspoken critic of, of...well, of just about everything that white corporate America stands for.  Starting way back, with Native genocide in this country.  I stuck with him for the whole thing, including the Q and A session at the end.  This is one controversial human being.  I wanted to find out more about him, so have been spending a little time researching him.  It all began with an article he wrote soon after the airplane attacks on the various sites on Sept. 11, 2001.  Nobody paid much attention to the article at the time, but it got dredged up recently when Churchill was scheduled to speak at Hamilton College in New York State.  The ruckus made it all the way to Faux News, and Bill O'Reilly took up the ball and ran with it.  What I was watching on CSPAN was Churchill defending himself and his position against the board of regents of the university and the governor of the state.  And, of course, Bill O'Reilly.

This is fascinating stuff, and shows what you get as divine retribution if you dare to be controversial and outspoken in today's America.  Or, as we would have spelled it in my younger days, Amerika.  This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education will introduce you a little more thoroughly to the whole story, and then you can go over here andread the piece itself.  Read the interview with Churchill on that same website, and note the news flash announcing that he has resigned his position as Chair of the department, although he will, as a tenured professor, continue to teach.  The guy was unwise to use some of the language he did during a time when emotions ran so high, but...where ARE we, people?  Am I the only one who remembers when academics and others were able to speak out on issues that might spark discussion, disagreement, even - dissension and controversy?  It really seems to me that much of what is going on now is a pogrom against things that began in the sixties, and have rankled in some people's souls ever since.  We thought we had achieved change -  but it seems to be moving backwards now.

 

FRIENDS AND READERS, A VALENTINE

The Sunflowers

Come with me
  into the field of sunflowers.
    Their faces are burnished disks,
       their dry spines

creak like ship masts, 
  their green leaves,
    so heavy and many,
      fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.
  Come with me
     to visit the sunflowers,
       they are shy

but want to be friends;
   they have wonderful stories
     of when they were young -
        the important weather,

the wandering crows.
  Don't be afraid
    to ask them questions!
      Their bright faces,

which follow the sun,
   will listen, and all
      those rows of seeds -
         each one a new life!

hope for a deeper acquaintance;
  each of them, though it stands
     in a crowd of many,
       like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
   of turning their lives
     into a celebration
       is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
   the simple garments of leaves,
      the coarse roots in the earth
        so uprightlyburning.

                                             Mary Oliver

       If I were JudithHeartSong I would paint you a picture,
if I were Deabvt I would write you a poem (actually if I myself had a little more time I would write you a poem).

But sometimes I feel that because there is Mary Oliver, no one ever needs to write any more poems. She says everything, and always says it better than I could ever hope to.

This community of Journal Land is like this field of sunflowers to me: each one of you a new life with a wonderful story, people of whom I am not afraid to ask questions, say what I mean, each of you a separate universe, uprightly burning, with whom I hope for a deeper acquaintnance.

I love each and every one of you, I cherish your friendship, I am grateful to be in this field of bright, modest, upturned faces, telling our stories, listening to one another's, as we try, separately and together, to turn our lives into celebrations.

(Because there are some different readers in my two journals, I have posted the same valentine in both public blogs.  With apologies to those of you who read both.)

DAVID MAMET, ON ARTHUR MILLER

I said I might post more on Arthur Miller, but I am incapable of anything approaching this lovely piece by David Mamet.  He has said it all, perfectly. So, from today's NYT, here is Mamet in an article that brings tears to my eyes.

February 13, 2005

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Attention Must Be Paid

By DAVID MAMET

os Angeles

DUSTIN HOFFMAN was playing Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman." I met Arthur Miller backstage after a performance. "Arthur," I said, "it's the oddest thing, but in the scene between Biff and Willy, it was as if I was listening to a play about my own relationship with my father."

I went on a bit, and looked over to see a small, distracted smile on his face. Of course, I thought. He's not only heard this comment thousands of times, he has probably heard it from every man who ever saw the play.

It is the great American Domestic Tragedy.

And "The Crucible" is the American Political Tragedy.

He wrote it to protest the horror of the McCarthy era. The plays are tragedies as each reasoned step brings the protagonists closer to their inevitable doom. We pity them as they are powerless to escape their fate. We feel fear because we recognize, in them, our own dilemmas. This is the purpose of drama, and particularly of tragedy: to allow us to participate in the repressed.

We are freed, at the end of these two dramas, not because the playwright has arrived at a solution, but because he has reconciled us to the notion that there is no solution - that it is the human lot to try and fail, and that no one is immune from self-deception. We have, through following the course of the drama, laid aside, for two hours, the delusion that we are powerful and wise, and we leave the theater better for the rest.

Bad drama reinforces our prejudices. It informs us of what we knew when we came into the theater - the infirm have rights, homosexuals are people, too, it's difficult to die. It appeals to our sense of self-worth, and, as such, is but old-fashioned melodrama come again in modern clothes (the villain here not black-mustachioed, but opposed to women, gays, racial harmony, etc.).

The good drama survives because it appeals not to the fashion of the moment, but to the problems both universal and eternal, as they are insoluble.

To find beauty in the sad, hope in the midst of loss, and dignity in failure is great poetic art.

Arthur Miller's wonder at his country and his time will redound to America's credit when the supposed accomplishments of the enthusiastic are long forgotten. His work and the example of a life lived with quiet dignity are each an inspiration. I spoke at his 80th birthday celebration, my speech a prayer from Kipling that I will, again, offer here:

One service more we dare to ask -
Pray for us, heroes, pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task
We do not shame the day.

David Mamet, a playwright and screenwriter, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross."

DEATH OF AN ICON

The playwright Arthur Miller has just died, at the age of 89.  He represents a large chunk of contemporary history and literature to me, in so many ways.  Here is a link to the article on his death, as well as his life, and here the NYT obituary link.  I may post more on this if I have time later.  In the meantime, go read The Crucible.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR ALICE

From Garrison Keillor's daily celebration of things literary, The Writer's Almanac, one of today's birthday pieces, about someone with a high place in my pantheon of inspiring people, beloved authors. With an interesting bit of trivia previously unknown to me, that Muriel Rukeyser was her poetry teacher at Sara Lawrence. 

"It's the birthday of the novelist Alice Walker, born in Eatonton, Georgia (1944). She grew up the youngest of eight children. She grew up listening to the women in her family telling stories about lynching and adultery and struggling to survive. Her parents were sharecroppers who made about $300 a year. Walker would have been spent most of her time helping out in the fields, but when she was four years old a school teacher noticed her and got her new clothes and made sure she went to school every day.

When she was eight years old, her brother shot her in the eye with a BB gun, and a scar covered that eye for six years. She felt like an outcast, and began spending most of her free time alone, hiding in the farm fields, and she began writing in a journal. She said, "I think I started writing just to keep from being so lonely."

She graduated first in her class from high school, but it was because of her partial blindness that she was given a college scholarship for disabled students. Her friends and family helped pay for the $75 dollar bus ticket to Atlanta.

She transferred to Sara Lawrence College, and then took a trip to Africa. When she got back to college she was pregnant and seriously considering suicide. She chose to get an abortion, and then began writing dozens of poems over the course of a week, barely eating or sleeping, and she shoved all the poems under the door of her poetry teacher Muriel Rukeyser. Rukeyser showed the poems to her agent, and they were eventually published as Alice Walker's first book Once (1968).

Walker went on to write several more books of poetry and fiction, none of which got much attention, and then she decided to try writing a novel in the voice of a woman like one of the women she grew up listening to as a child. She started writing letters in that voice, addressed to God, and those letters eventually grew into her novel The Color Purple (1982), which spent more than 25 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and went on to win both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Walker was the first black woman ever to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The Color Purple begins, "Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me."

Walker has gone on to write many other novels. Her next novel, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, will come out this spring."

And, a funky poem by Walker, in case you've only ever read The Color Purple.

I Said to Poetry

I said to Poetry:"I'm finished
with you."
Having to almost die
before some wierd light
comes creeping through
is no fun.
"No thank you, Creation,
no muse need apply.
Im out for good times--
at the very least,
some painless convention."

Poetry laid back
and played dead
until this morning.
I wasn't sad or anything,
only restless.

Poetry said: "You remember
the desert, and how glad you were
that you have an eye
to see it with? You remember
that, if ever so slightly?"
I said: "I didn't hear that.
Besides, it's five o'clock in the a.m.
I'm not getting up
in the dark
to talk to you."

Poetry said: "But think about the time
you saw the moon
over that small canyon
that you liked so much better
than the grand one--and how suprised you were
that the moonlight was green
and you still had
one good eye
to see it with

Think of that!"

"I'll join the church!" I said,
huffily, turning my face to the wall.
"I'll learn how to pray again!"

"Let me askyou," said Poetry.
"When you pray, what do you think
you'll see?"

Poetry had me.

"There's no paper
in this room," I said.
"And that new pen I bought
makes a funny noise."

"Bullshit," said Poetry.
"Bullshit," saidI.

BOOKS DU JOUR

On the weekend I finished Joan Silber's Ideas of Heaven, a Ring of Stories.  It was a beautiful and heart-breaking collection, with the title story as centerpiece.  In this story a young family leaves their Connecticut home to become Christian missionaries in China, shortly before the turn of the last century.  This puts them there just in time for The Boxer Rebellion.  I knew from the start there would be no Happy Ending to this story, and indeed there was not.  There was a time, when I was very much younger, when I thought being a missionary would be oh so romantic, and seriously thought about entering the Maryknoll order, whose whole purpose then was mission.  Now, I'm afraid I see it as the Boxers (the English name for them, they actually called themselves by the much grander name of The Righteous Fists of Harmony) did - just another form of Imperialism.  The characters in the story are so beautifully and gently portrayed, not seeming to be imperialists at all.  At the end of the story I could only sigh for the waste of lives, lives of good and decent people pursuing something totally unfathomable to me.

Most of the rest of the stories are about contemporary lives, with wonderful intertwinings (a "ring" of stories) of characters and themes.  Love, or perhaps more truly - sex, and religion are constant themes in all the stories, as a quote from the last story in the book makes clear:  "I could see that sex and religion were always fighting over the same ground - both with their sweeping claims, their promises of transport - and each ran into the breach left by the other, each tried to fill in for the other's failure.  Forms of devotion, forms of consolation."  There are worlds within worlds in this book, the stories roam from New York to France, to Italy and China, and further - into secret realms of heart and soul that we all can recognize.

Currently I'm reading The Briar King, by Greg Keyes, about which I've read many good things in the past year.  It is straight up epic fantasy fiction, and I'm not yet very far into what is quite a stout little paperback of a novel.  Having to admit to a lot of confusion, perhaps because I haven't much consecutive time to read - picking it up and putting it down much too often.  It's the first of a series entitled The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, so if my confusion doesn't lure me into giving up on it, I may have follow-up adventures ahead.  Those old fairy-tale words, eh?  Briar, thorn, bone, king - hard to deny them.  Anybody else read this, or know of it?

SATURDAY SIX

So, I've never done this particular little thing before, but I always read other people's answers to these Saturday questions.   Exhausted by my constant coughing, and without much inspiration for anything else to do - I'm giving it a try on this Saturday.

1. What is your favorite restaurant to visit for breakfast and what do you order?  

   My favorite restaurant to visit for breakfast is in Austin, TX, Las Manitas Avenue Café, with any one of the Kerby Lane Cafés as a close second choice.  Austin is an eating city, and these are two great places to get a Mexican breakfast or an American one, both fantastic.  In my current real life, however, I live in Delaware, so my favorite breakfast place is called White Caps Café, and is down the road a ways in Oak Orchard.  Great sticky buns, which they heat up on the griddle -oozing butter, covered with pecans. Needless to say, we don't do this very often.  Mostly in the summer with visiting family or friends.  Great crabbing pier there too.

2. Do you have any unique ability like those who appear on David Letterman's "Stupid Human Tricks?"  If so, how did you learn you had this talent?

None whatsoever, I can't even cross my eyes.  Like Cherie, I am able to pick stuff up with my toes, but this just comes from having long toes I think.  And I certainly wouldn't do it on David Letterman.
 
3. There are plenty of sites on the internet for pen pals; some of them are specifically designed for communicating with people in prison.  Have you ever or would you begin corresponding with a stranger who was in prison?

I have thought about this, and yes I would do it.  I have a friend who is a shrink at a women's prison, and I may some day see if she knows a woman or two there for a long time who might like a correspondence with the outside world.  Right now I don't really even correspond with my friends, so this would have to be in the retired future.
 
4. Name two questions you have always wanted to ask a pair of identical twins.

My question would be about a psychic or internal bond with each other - not sure how I would phrase it.  It would begin with asking if they spoke their own private language as small children, before they learned the language spoken by family members, or at the same time.
 
5. If you looked back at your high school yearbook photos, what is more embarrassing?  Your hair, your clothes, your glasses, or your complexion?

Actually, my high school yearbook pictures now look pretty damn good to me.  If I had left my glasses on when the pictures were taken it would definitely have been the glasses.  Big dark nerd frames, as I recall.  But I did take them off, and I really look just fine. 

6. If you had to change the color of one of the following, which would you change and why:  the walls in your living room, your car, or your eyes.

I'd love to have a bright yellow pickup truck.  Right now I have a beat-up old white Mazda pickup, incredibly dirty with birdshit and the recent nasty weather.  But I've got my eye on a little yellow Chevy truck in a used car place down the street.