Book club selection

The book club has chosen new titles. Sadly, The Robber Bride has already been pushed back to March for discussion because we are so far into February.

March: The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

March:     The Arrival by Shaun Tan  

April:       Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein (Situation is Hopeless, But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness) by Paul Watzlawik 

May:        The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz 

Everything according to plan...

Acquiring books by chance is something I enjoy as much as when I specifically choose a book. One that I rescued from a lonely sidewalk is The Bridge of San Luis Rey. It is a good book for character development and description as it has vignettes about each character.

Set in Peru, Thornton Wilder opens by narrating the breaking, in 1714, of a rope bridge which spans a deep riverine chasm. Five people were crossing the bridge when it broke and they fell to their deaths. An eye-witness to the break, was Brother Juniper who, being religious, wonders whether the deaths of these five particular people had some meaning or was a random act of nature. To that end Juniper decides to collect the details of their lives. In so doing he hopes to form a picture of each person and understand why they died.

The following four chapters bring these characters to vivid life, though Brother Juniper's question does not really seem to be answered. Though I enjoyed the stories of each character and learning how they intersected with one another, the conclusion appears to be that there was no plan. Brother Juniper's compilation of facts addressing the deaths is burned publicly as is he at the end of the story.

realism

Often, I will judge a book as good or bad by how convinced I am that the world portrayed is realistic. Sometimes books succeed in creating a realistic sense by focusing on the outer environment, sometimes on the inner lives of the characters. What distinguishes A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is the melding of the outer world and inner lives.

The premise of the story is the intersection between a lower middle-class woman, a pair of low-caste migrant tailors, and an upper-caste college student. Or, between a middle-aged woman who has abandoned hope, two young men full of hope, and an older man who still harbors hope for his nephew, if not for himself. Hope can be defined in a variety of ways, and is by each of these individuals. But in each shape it is faith in the world and fellow humans.

Dina, in an effort to maintain financial independence from her overbearing brother, rents a room in her house to Maneck, who is a college student. Simultaneously, she advertises for tailors to work for her home-sewing business. As these individuals get to know each other and fill the roles that were previously empty the world(s) which each individual inhabits seem a little bit brighter and happier. Sadly, this hopeful mood wanes and by the end of the novel hope has shrunk back to the stingy thing it had been at the beginning.

I was very surprised by how sad and isolated each character had become by the end of the novel. It was worth  reading, but only if followed by reading more optimistic writing!

"Protodialectical inquiry" into beliefs about Yam Gods

Oblivion consists of eight short stories by David Foster Wallace. Each story is written in a detailed and complex style. Wallace's writing method is unique because he interweaves the main narration with thoughts, other activity, and irrelevant details. Each sentence has to be understood as belonging or not belonging to the main narrative. This requires more effort on the reader's part than most books.

"Another Pioneer" is one of the shorter stories and the one which matches the content and the manner of writing best. The narrator is never identified, but speaks in a polished, academic, and ironic manner about an incident recounted to him by a friend. This incident was the conversation between two men on a plane which the friend overheard. The story that one of the men recounted to the other described a boy in an unspecified village in South America who single-handedly brought about modernizing changes in his village and acted as a prophet. The story itself is not as interesting as is the narrative voice retelling it which is persuasive and manages to engage the reader in the analysis of the second-hand story:

"Structurally, this scene apparently functions as both the climax of the protasis and the as it were engine of the narrative's rising action, because at just this point we are told that the original exemplum splits or diverges here into at least three main epitatic variants" (p. 126).

It is not the story being told that is inherently interesting, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator's voice is pompously analytical and cohesive. This story contrasts with "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" which has a much less structured theme, but whose narrator is psychologically not a model of health.

Though this collection is worth reading the style is lengthy, and verbose. The Onion has an amusing article about how a "girlfriend" stopped reading Wallace's breakup letter at page 20. Though his writing style takes some getting used to, it is arguably more rewarding to read than most books which are written in more a friendly manner.

The best book ever - for the moment

Freedom, the newest novel from Jonathan Franzen is the book of the moment. It currently has 884 reviews on Amazon.com. The published reviews of the book are similarly numerous and listed on the Wikipedia page for Freedom. The question is what can I add to the critical reviews already available about the book?

Like any book that receives this much critical acclaim, Freedom, contains something that appeals to a wide and disparate group. It resembles Franzen's previous book, The Corrections, in its focus on a dysfunctional family. And when Franzen writes dysfunctional characters there is generally a sexual element to their relational issues. The dysfunction sexual relationships that are the centerpiece of Franzen's writing no doubt contributes to his popularity. Franzen almost had the dubious distinction of winning the Bad Sex in fiction prize for this choice passage.

A secondary element that makes the book popular, is its being held up as a model of "America," and the benefits and problems of unbridled freedom. It is claimed that it embodies some key American experiences, and to a certain extent this is true. However, due to the focus on a specific time and issues, the writing is limited and the book itself is not likely to be interesting to readers a decade from now.

One serious problem that I had with the book is Franzen's writing which leaves some characters one-dimensional, and gives the impression that they are only written in to move the plot along.

This is an interesting (mostly) readable book, but probably not a good representation of anything specifically "American." It is far more accurate to describe it as simply a flawed novel.

Light writing about heavy subjects

War Dances, by Sherman Alexie, consists of seven short stories and sixteen poems.

The title story, "War Dances," appears to be an autobiographical musing on mortality, focusing on Alexie's learning that he has a brain tumor and his experience with his father's hospitalizations. The structure of the story is unusual in that it is short (only 34 pages long) and divided into sixteen subsections. Each subsection, "My Kafka Baggage," "Symptoms," "The Symptoms Worsen," "Blankets," etc. is a succinct scene that together, cluster around and build up the story of mortality that Alexie wants to tell.

Though mortality is the subject of several of the stories, the telling is very light and humorous. This is an easy to read summer book.

Fathers, sons, and paternity issues

Go Tell it on the Mountain (James Baldwin) and Call it Sleep (Henry Roth) are thematically very similar novels. Both are centered on young boys who must cope with difficult, abusive fathers and poverty.

Call It Sleep (CIS) was published in 1934, but begins in 1907, ending around 1917. The father of the family had immigrated from Germany and the novel opens with the arrival of his wife and son. The story is recounted through the boy, David's eyes. He is very impressionable and sensitive, and his father's animosity aggravates his sensitive nature. Adjusting to life in New York's slums is a challenge. Roth's writing was unique in its use of Yiddish and vernacular speech for dialogue and the scenes that are described are evocative.

David's father has a very belligerent character and doubts that David is actually his own son. Because of this doubt he treats his wife and son cruelly. His cruelty, Roth implies, pushes the mother and son to be unnaturally loving and close. Frequently David's love for his mother seems to cross over into a sexualized feeling. There are frequent references to his mother's bosom, jealousy of a family friend who attempts to seduce her, etc. For example, after an upsetting incident David says: "'Mama! Mama! Mama!' Only the sheltering valley between her breasts muffled his scream of fear to her heart."

Or earlier,
"With knees drawn up, David watched her wipe the linoleum beneath his chair. The shadow between her breasts, how deep! How far it - No! No! Luter! When he looked! That night! Mustn't! Mustn't! Look away! Quick!"

The relationship between David and his mother (who's name, Genya, is used rarely) appears to not be healthy, and until the end of the novel the reader wonders if David will end up having a mental breakdown as he does not seem functional. He also does not seem like a realistic 4-12 year old boy. However, not having been a boy perhaps I am not an authority on the subject.

Go Tell It On The Mountain starts with John, a 14 year old narrating his family story, living in Harlem. His parents had migrated North to New York as young adults and he is the first generation to grow up in the "liberal" North rather than in the "segregated" South.

In contrast to CIS, the narration switches between John, his aunt, his father, and finally his mother. Due to this multiplicity of perspectives the story is recounted in a more realistic way. John's father dislikes him, but the secret to his dislike is hidden from John. Just as David's father doubts his paternity, John's father also has paternity issues. With the four narrative voices of the story the reader understands better what has shaped the characters and life histories of the narrators. John has deep scars from his father's dislike though which emerge when he enters a trance-like religious state in church:

"Then his father was upon him; at his touch there was singing, and fire. John lay on his back in the narrow street, looking up at his father, that burning face beneath the burning towers.

'I'm going to beat it out of you. I'm going to beat it out.' His father raised his hand. The knife came down. John rolled away, down the white, descending street, screaming: 'Father! Father!'"

The father seems to symbolize both John's father and God who is invoked by each character as an overpowering presence who must by appeased, despite uncertainty as to what his wishes are. John's vision seems to be a way of reaching an understanding of his father and his relationship with him.

Both of these novels deal with similar issues of immigration, cultural assimilation, ethnicity, and father-son relationships. Both fathers are violent, rather hateful people, both mothers loving and virtuous. And both fathers hate their sons because they suspect or know that they are not genetically their own. Both sons grow up with a hatred of their "fathers" that is violent.