What I’ve Been Reading - October 2008

November 3, 2008


The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Books Acquired:
Deadwood – Pete Dexter
The Space Between Us - Thrity Umrigar

Books Read:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

Incredibly, while I found this month’s reading to be sprawling, at times pointless and often confusing, I was completely sucked in. Completely. It was typically exhaustion that led me to put the book down, not boredom; my eyes unable to hold any more words and my brain threatening to crash. It was as if I was able to see the white words on the back of my eyelids, glowing on a field of blue as my book faded away and all systems prepared for the Blue Screen of Death.

(What? No. Not now.)

Thankfully, I gained some inspiration from the South Dakota Festival of Books – enough, at least, to put a dent in the book budget (however small it’s become) and set me back another several hundred pages. The inspiration didn’t really help me understand the book any better. The inspiration simply reminded me that, sure, I could take forever on this book if I wanted. But that would be silly. Especially since I had just purchased twice as many books as I had read in the past month.

The fact is, a book list never fades. It only grows. You can never catch up, and the faster we all come to that realization, the easier it will be to continue with our egregious hoarding tactics. For instance - I didn’t even read the One Book South Dakota (Louise Erdrich’s The Master Butchers Singing Club) but her discussion on Friday night led me to desperately want the new Marilynn Robinson novel (Home). By not reading one book, I found another to buy. Perfect.

Sometimes it seems like the South Dakota Festival of Books serves more as an excuse to add to my library than an exhibition of authors. The more speakers I see, the more books I purchase. This year, finally, I was able to keep it down to just two, and all were more or less directly influenced by seeing the speaker firsthand. So there you go, aspiring authors. The audience you reach at a book festival is a buying audience.

(Can this wait? We’ll talk about it later.)

It was an audience like this that first steered me toward Murakami, and most specifically, to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I didn’t know much about it aside from the fact that a lot of very intelligent authors thought it to be a masterpiece and an old colleague (who majored in both business and philosophy, as if the two could logically coexist) thought it to be better than, well, anything.

That should have been my first warning. Never trust the high-falutin’ authors and especially never trust a philosophy major (with special apologies to philosophy majors and high faluters.) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle caters to minds that are at ease with that feeling of floaty questioning, like debating in a vacuum – no one can hear you, so you make up your own answers and, most of the time, they are weird and silly.

(Seriously? We have to talk about this now?)

(Fine. Yes. It’s true. I didn’t post a September What I’ve Been Reading. There wasn’t a September What I’ve Been Reading because I didn’t really read anything. I mean, I didn’t finish anything. I read, yes. But finish, no.)

(I can’t blame anyone or anything but myself. I knew it would be difficult to get it done this month – after all, I did choose a 600+ page book. No, it was all me. I just couldn’t do it. Can we drop it? I feel bad enough as it is.)

Ahem.

Where was I? Oh, yeah – I was preparing to take a dump on a book that a lot of people love.

That wouldn’t be fair, though. Because, for all of it’s weirdness, I really really enjoyed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. In the way that I enjoyed Twin Peaks. It’s weird, but there’s a creeping believability to it all. You start believing your own dreams and imagining alternate realities (both play big parts in the book, as do cats, wells, the mundane trivialities of life and prostitutes named after islands). Weird things start making sense. Cats and dogs, living together … you know the rest.

I should make two quick clarifications. I enjoyed Murakami’s style immensely. I think he’s great, and there seems to be little awkwardness in the translation. Also, this isn’t the first time I’ve compared a book to Twin Peaks. The first, Other Electricities by Ander Monson, reminded me through location and characters – winter-dwellers who mourn the loss of a beauty queen by separating themselves even more from reality than they had before. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle reminded me through pure weirdness and dreamy confusion.

There’s no easy way to explain the story of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle except to say that the protagonist’s wife disappears by choice (or not) and a series of chance acquaintances, fortune tellers, war veterans and 16-year-old girls attempt to help him out. A lot of time goes into the set up. You learn everything about both the man and his wife. Then, you learn a lot about the war veteran’s history. And then, you learn a lot about a zoo, and a woman/son team that runs some weird energy/relief/voodoo type of business.

With 450 pages completed, I still hadn’t run into any sort of clear picture. And that’s my biggest complaint. I’m sure there’s a whole ton of intelligent debate about The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and maybe I’m missing some incredibly important theme that would wrap everything up, but it all seemed like a lot of preparation for a 50 page buzz kill. It’s beautifully written, and it’s creative and clever and all of that, but it’s still a disappointing finish for a tome of its size.

It took me nearly two months to read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. That’s just what happens nowadays. And what is most frustrating is that I wasn’t sure what direction I was facing for the first month or so in regards to this story.

Which is too bad. I mean, I should have thought of that at the time.

At least then, I’d have something on which to blame the lack of a September article.

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What I’ve Been Reading, August 2008

September 11, 2008


Aesop's FablesMcSweeney's #28

Books Received:
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue #28 - Dave Eggers (editor)

Books Read:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami (not finished)
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue #28 – Dave Eggers (editor)
Aesop’s Fables – Aesop

Sometimes, we find ourselves drawn to what’s comfortable.

I spent most of the last month fighting through an extra-long book – Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – not because it was difficult or boring (on the contrary, it’s really, really good) but because I have fallen out of the reading routine. The daunting nature of a 500+ page book contributes to an apathetic reading schedule, one that vacation and preparation and childrearing can only heighten.

And then, like a beacon of light, McSweeney’s delivers. Again. With – get this – a collection of fables.

Fables! Ha!

What do you remember about fables? When was the last time you read one? I mean, true fables – the short-form, lesson-teaching kind, chock full of animal personification and solid morals. It’s been a while, probably.

I know it was for me. In fact, it had been since high school. During a bout of Medieval immersion, a time when Malory was as important to my life as is Marx to a Communist, I found myself enthralled with the symbolism and frequency of myth. Not myth in a science fiction sense, but myth in an old bard sense, the telling of tales from one person to another, the epic poem, the British legends; Beowulf, The Odyssey, Canterbury Tales, Le Morte d’Arthur. And through this, I entertained a short child-like fascination with the most basic of tales: Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Aesop’s Fables.

These were the building blocks of children’s literature, the foundation upon Willems and Boynton now tread. But they were also life lessons, the best way to convey a message in the days before mnemonic devices were commonplace and the written word was still foreign.

So fables became legend. And McSweeney’s tackles the subject with gusto, asking eight writers to come up with their own version of the fable, binding them in small, attractive mini-books and arranging them to create a beautiful and artful package of literary wonder. It’s what McSweeney’s does best – find a theme, create beautiful book design, accomplish what’s becoming more and more impossible: a book worth keeping based on look alone, a book worth treasuring because of great content.

The best of these stories are simple, yet surprising. Arthur Bradford’s “Virgil Walker” follows an orphan octopus on his travels through a pet store and beyond, and Sarah Manguso’s “The Box” touches on a person’s ability to harness power through a simple secret. My favorite was Brian Evenson’s “The Book and the Girl,” the love affair between, naturally, a book and a girl, with the book’s need to be loved changing to fit the needs of a terror-stricken little girl.

I finished the entire set in 30 minutes.

And I needed more.

So I ran – nearly literally – downstairs and grabbed Aesop’s Fables. Dusty from two years untouched on the shelf and neglected from over a decade of ignorance, it was like holding a relic, like finding an old school-aged drawing in a box at your parents house. It was familiar, but foreign, as if I couldn’t remember the time it came from but was fully aware of its significance.

I dove in. I took it on the plane and read it in Virginia. Each story was about 100 words, and each held a life lesson, regardless of how relevant.

It’s funny how the same characters always keep popping up. The poor fox, demonized yet cunning, given a bad rap and justifying my fascination with the species in Mammalogy class so many years ago. The lion, a strong and ruthless killer, using its weight and power to get whatever it wants. The donkey, a punching bag; the monkey, a fool. Each animal receives a certain treatment, a certain human quality, and it’s easy to see where those treatments carry through to the rest of literature and modern culture, through every Disney movie and every allegorical work of fiction, from The Lion King to Animal Farm.

There are three simple rules you can learn from Aesop’s Fables:
1. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t go for something you’re not, because you will be exploited.
2. Live humbly, if you can. Only the powerful ever seem to get away with being greedy, and even the Lion catches some flak from time to time.
3. Don’t be foolish. Life smart. Cunning will get you a lot, true smarts will get you everywhere.

The stories are humbling, really. Many morals seem to repeat, but at the end, I couldn’t help but thinking I had just read a textbook on rational thinking. Or street smarts. Or how to engage an adversary.

In fact, I felt as if a child-like curiosity had returned, that complex issues could really be boiled down to the bare minimum. It gave me hope that people could understand how their actions affect others, that each action carries with it a reaction. That life wasn’t solitary. That you have to give to get.

Best of all, I felt as if I had read something that bordered on legendary. Fables are simple but they’re striking. They work for eternity not in spite of but because of their simplicity. As Jess Benjamin, a former McSweeney’s intern, writes in the introduction of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #28:
The best of these stories last because their stories last – because they are conveyed in a way that cuts through the illusion of time and age and application. This is why Silverstein’s The Giving Tree will continue to resonate and why Dr. Seuss will keep on inspiring; we are never too old or young to be reminded of our mortality and the nature of our relationships, just as we are never immune to any truly universal message.

In a time where political trends nearly drive me to depression and the changing world leans further and further into demise, simplicity – the ability to focus on the issues that drive us instead of the inconsequential details – is welcome.

Even more, simplicity is necessary.

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What I’ve Been Reading – July 2008

August 5, 2008


Divided Kingdom

Books Purchased:
Three Cups of Tea – Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
On Beautyhttp://www.powells.com/biblio/17-9781594200632-1 – Zadie White

Books Read:
Divided Kingdom – Rupert Thomson

Let’s get used to one thing.

I will probably only be writing about one book per month.

If I’m lucky.

A full twelve-months after bringing Sierra into the world, I find that my reading hasn’t been able to pick up. That’s okay – frankly, it’s not like I’ve been wasting away doing other things. For months she wouldn’t sleep well, so reading at night wasn’t as appetizing as, say, watching television, which could be stopped and started without any loss of momentum. And as she began sleeping a little better, playoff basketball reminded me how fun sports can be, especially when your team is winning.

However, I haven’t been able to embrace the idea of reading magazines instead of books. As I’ve mentioned before, magazines seen so forgettable; so fleeting. Instead, I need the heft of a book, the knowledge that what I just read wasn’t just published, but published VERY THICKLY.

Now that basketball is over, and re-runs have sent me running from the television, I’ve found two more distractions to the natural reading cycle: photography and summer. Most of my post-production work is done at night, during the time I’d otherwise be reading. And summer hits me every night, an urge to sit on the patio with a beer, to watch cars drive by, or to stare into the fire.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from being overly ambitious. I know I’ve been reading less and less, but for some reason I was driven to not only buy more books, but to select the longest books possible to read. We purchased Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (hardcover remainder at the right price) and Three Cups of Tea (Kerrie will be reading this for a book club, and the author is coming to Sioux Falls). Two books, two reasons, add more to the ever growing stack.

Then, in a fit of stupidity, I selected Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, 624 pages of supposedly brilliant literature. I haven’t started reading it yet. If I start now, I would only need to read 23 pages per night to finish it by the end of the month. It seems very doable, but that’s counting on the fact that I’d actually muster up enough energy to actually read every night.

Let’s just assume it’s going to take about 50-75 pages per session.

That’s the future, though. For this past month, let’s talk about the book I actually DID read: Rupert Thomson’s Divided Kingdom, a dystopian novel about the ultimate experience in “separate but equal” laws, set in England, based on the four humours.

The four humours. Yes. I’m spelling that the U.K. way, because that’s how it works.

To begin the book, England is being split apart by violence, apathy and consumerism. To an older wave of people, England has been ruined; to the younger, there’s little to no difference. A special interest group is devised, meetings take place, and it’s determined that the best thing to do would be separate all of the ill will by classifying four separate sections of the country and moving those with similar dispositions into each section.

The separations are based on the four humours – blood, yellow bile, black bile and mucus. Red, Yellow, Blue and Green. Confident and strong, angry and vindictive, melancholic and sad, worried and weak.

Naturally, the separations cause rifts, with entire nations developing differently, relations becoming strained and suspicions heightening. Life for the red area is clean and clear and privileged, while that in the yellow is dangerous and poverty-stricken. Only officials are allowed to cross, and even then it’s rare. But the urge is always there, and one top official, torn away from his family at a young age and raised in the Red Quarter, uses a convenient distraction to break away and discover the world he’s been sheltered from.

It’s an interesting premise, to say the least – an instantly memorable plot, one that nearly forced the book into my hands. Of course, as with any story as far fetched as this, the plausibility is thin, like a bubble. If this kind of extreme gentrification was attempted in real life, you’d find yourself in the midst of riots, with even the privileged fighting for their right to keep their Yellow-leaning son or daughter.

It’s one of the problems I have as a reader. At times, I have trouble suspending reality, allowing the story to take over, enjoying the product instead of focusing on the How. If a teenager doesn’t talk like he’s supposed to, I have a problem with that. If a concept seems flawed from the beginning, I have a hard time focusing on what’s working.

So I spent a good deal at the beginning wondering how this relocation would have even worked. The logistics seem impossible, the methods incorrigible.

And then it all seemed okay. I was caught up in the run from quarter to quarter, from VIP to convict and, eventually, nomad.

It all ended a little too cleanly, a little to Deus Ex Machina. And it began too flimsily, without the proper set up. But in the middle, you’ve got a case study in how different personalities interact, and how each of us have a little bit of each humour, and how keeping differing personalities apart does just as much to foster hatred and suspicion as mixing them together.

It’s a story about the roots of discrimination, but it’s also an interesting novel about a man on the run.

On the run. Like what I could be facing next month. The first month in the 3+ years of What I’ve Been Reading that comes and goes without a book, without a column, without even a peep about reading or literature or whatever it is.

If you’re missing me, you know where I’ll be. Huddled in a corner, with the covers up over my head, a flashlight beamed at my book, frantically trying to get something read.

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What I’ve Been Reading - June 2008

July 3, 2008


McSweeney's #26 McSweeney's #27

Books Acquired
Arthur & George – Julian Barnes
The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

Books Read
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue #26 – Dave Eggers (editor)
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Issue #27 – Dave Eggers (editor)

I regularly heap buckets of praise on the McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern literary journal/book series. Not because I’m some kind of Eggers fanboy – far from it, I find him to be, at times, grating and arrogant – but because I genuinely enjoy the journal for its originality and content.

Through the series, I’ve discovered a handful of writers I’d have otherwise probably never have stumbled upon. And, in the meantime, I amassed a collection of wonderfully designed books to adorn my shelves at home. In fact, the McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern shelf – now featuring nine issues of the quarterly and a handful of other graphic novels – is one of my favorites, a kaleidoscope of color and design, of discovery and promise.

Discovery. Promise. These are the things you look for when flipping through a set of short stories – especially when those short stories are by authors you’ve never heard of. Novels are big and weighty, and I’ve rarely just picked up a random novel by an author I’ve never heard of and read it (Toward the End of the Morning by Michael Frayn notwithstanding). Instead, I rely on the word of others, or on a familiarity of author or storyline.

It’s just a time thing. Novels take time. Short stories don’t, so discovering new writing talent is so much easier when combined in a short story anthology.

Sorry, I should explain myself. I talk about this because June’s reading, while not as fruitless as May’s, consisted of just two short story collections; McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Issues #26 and #27.

The original premise of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern – much like the original premise of The Believer magazine – was to take good writing that had been passed on by the bigger publishers and collect them in one place. In doing so, McSweeney’s became the publishing version of Bonnaroo, a place for independent writers to gain some traction and, as time went on, a place for larger acts to reach a smaller, more intimate audience.

Those larger acts certainly turn up, too. The list of authors seemingly too big for an independent publisher reads like an issue of the New Yorker. Here’s a sampling, stolen from Wikipedia: Denis Johnson, William T. Vollmann, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Susan Straight, Roddy Doyle, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Steven Millhauser, Robert Coover, Ann Beattie…

…and Stephen King.

Whoa. Wait. Stephen King? The King of Horror? The most famous author in the world that doesn’t use initials in his or her name?

Seriously.

Okay. To put this into perspective, let’s first take a look at the steps to reading an issue of McSweeney’s.

The first thing I do upon grabbing an issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is admire the cover. I consider the theme, and make a snap judgment on whether or not it’s cool. This weighs heavily into the readability of the issue – if it’s well designed and interesting, I’m more likely to pick it up sooner, less likely to leave it on the shelf while I slam through other novels.

Issue #26 was actually three books: a book edited by Stephen Elliot named Where to Invade Next (a frightening account of all of the countries that have a problem with us, their motives and their likelihood of invasion, based on Secret Service documents) and two half-sized short story collections designed in the style of war-time troop reading material. Issue #27 consisted of three books as well: a wonderfully designed story collection, a collection of Art Spiegelman’s daily drawings and one of the often included art-books that McSweeney’s produces – this one a collection of art with words and humor or something. Both issues featured interesting binding and themes, though Issue #26 was rather ugly.

Once I’ve decided the validity of the design, I open up to the list of authors. I scan for names I recognize. The excitement of reading the newest issue is almost identical with the speed in which I return to it. For example, I recognized no one from Issue #26, so I let it sit for nearly three months before finally committing to it.

Issue #27, however, is a different story. There’s that name. STEPHEN KING.

Growing up, I devoured every Stephen King book I could. My favorite was The Stand, and I loved the Dark Tower series. My mother helped in her own way by being an avid collector of Stephen King books, owning each one up until The Tommyknockers (a book that annoyed her so much that she simply swore off of King altogether, never buying another book until buying me Insomnia for Christmas).

For a few years, I poo-pooed King’s work. This was during an ill-fated college period when I fancied myself an intellectual, too learned to stoop to King’s level. No, I don’t read Koontz or Grisham or anything popular. I simply wouldn’t do that. It’s not literary.

Then, just like that, I realized that Stephen King, just like J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tokein or Janet Evanovich, has a valid place in today’s literature market, and that it didn’t matter whether or not the book was critically acclaimed but more that I liked it. So Stephen King was welcomed back, a sheepish look on my face as he shook his head knowingly. “I knew you’d come back,” I could hear him say. “I’m not a bad author because I’m popular. I’m just a rich one.”

It seems as though King himself feels the sting of popularity. His book on writing (cleverly called On Writing) came at a time when the literary world was beginning to write him off, and a recent turn toward smaller audiences and more literary novels has been viewed as a change of ideals. He’s no longer banking on horror to bring in the money – hell, he hardly needs money anymore – so he’s writing what he wants. When he wants.

Look at The Green Mile. Look at Insomnia. Look at the end of the Dark Tower series. Look at this story in McSweeney’s. This isn’t a horror writer we’re talking bout. This is a writer. And, this is someone who’s never going to be acclaimed like Updike or Roth, but this is someone who’s going to keep writing what he wants. Because he can. Because he’s good enough to do it.

When it comes down to it, this is the best part about McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. It’s design and authors and writing selections and themes are so good. They’re unknowingly arrogant in their combination of great binding and great writing. But they do it without pretentiousness, or at least, any that I can see. They’re not too indie for the big names. Sure, they’ve got Stephen King. So? You get the feeling Dan Brown could submit a story and no one would blink.

So it’s always a pleasure to open up those pages and see what big name is included. Or, if the spirit is a little askew, no big names at all. Sometimes you’ll get seventeen fractured novels, other times you’ll get an entire issue of comic love. It’s always a surprise. And that’s why I keep subscribing – one of the only things I’ve subscribed to for longer than two years.

After all, you never know what you’ll miss if you stop.

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What I’ve Been Reading - May 2008

June 3, 2008


1 dead in attic Purple cow

Books Acquired:
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #27 – Dave Eggers (editor)

Books Read:
Purple Cow – Seth Godin
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #26 – Dave Eggers (editor) (not finished)
1 Dead in Attic – Chris Rose

You’ll have to forgive my bi-polar rambling this month.

I’m going through two extremes when it comes to reading, it seems. I’ve split time this month reading a book that was either utterly commercial and work-related or filled with heartbreaking cries for a restore to order. The superficial and the worthwhile, the work life and real life, something spectacular and something horrific.

What’s strange is that both extremes are non-fiction. I mean, I’m actually considering reading some political books (Obama’s The Audacity of Hope and Paul Wellstone’s The Conscience of a Liberal both spring to mind).

Someone stop this madness!

However, the fiction drought may end soon. I found myself a little disconnected from the usual McSweeney’s short fiction, I’ll admit, and so I fell behind in my McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern reading. But with the arrival of the newest McSQC (Issue 27) I’m ready to take them on again. And with two books I’ve been waiting too long to read (Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Michael Savage’s Firmin) sitting in the wings, ready to spring out at a moment’s notice my interest in fiction has been piqued again.

That’s next month, though. For now, it’s all of this Real Life nonsense. Maybe it’s he upcoming election. Maybe it’s a need to ground my brain in reality. Maybe it’s just an easier way to get some reading done, especially with the NBA Finals approaching, the summer keeping me out later and a sick little girl keeping me up at night.

Seth Godin is a brilliant marketer – one of those guys that points out the obvious daily, much to the chagrin of those who are thinking too hard about more complex techniques. Reading Godin is like listening to Nirvana or grilling a perfect salmon steak – you always find yourself drawn to something complex, but in reality it’s the most simple ideas that hold the most weight.

(Yes, I just compared Godin to Nirvana. But only in that sense. Nirvana was an amazing band that changed the landscape of modern music. Seth Godin is a marketer – he hasn’t changed the face of anything, yet, though he’s very knowledgeable. And, Nirvana rocked a lot harder than Godin ever will.)

Okay, that’s all I have to say about Godin. He’s nice, but I feel like I’m talking about work, here. Ugh. Whatever. Let’s move on to something a little more serious.

Katrina.

Oh, what?

Wait, where did you come from?

I’ll admit. I have forgotten about New Orleans. At least, in the sense of the city as a ruin. I have moved on, as many of us have, preferring to think that New Orleans is recovering perfectly, that all we need to know of progress is the sudden success of the city’s sports teams and Bourbon Street parties.

1 Dead in Attic thinks otherwise. Written by New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose throughout the year and a half following Katrina, the book is really just a collection of Rose’s immediate thoughts on the city he grew to love. The city he could never think of leaving. The city that crumbled around him, still struggling to get to its feet after a prolonged ten-count.

Rose’s Time-Picayune columns are at times raw, unbridled rage. At times, sarcastic humor. At times, longing reverence for what life was like before The Thing. It looks at the city from a perspective most of us can’t claim – a perspective born from tradition, fueled by witness, hardened by a knowledge of what’s right and frustration in the fact that “what’s right” wasn’t happening.

We’ve seen the footage. We’ve heard the stories. But we really haven’t gained insight into what was really happening down there, at least not unless we were present, helping people cope or cleaning up the mess. 1 Dead in Attic helps us bridge our thoughts, between what we remember and what we missed.

Like Spike Lee’s When The Levee’s Broke, 1 Dead in Attic shows us what happened after Katrina was the news of the day. Each column seems to be a retrospective – about what should have happened, what really happened and how it relates to the way things used to be.

It’s not a sappy call for remembrance. It’s hardly a eulogy. It’s a spark, a look at what New Orleans had become in the year after Katrina and a promise – one of hope, of a fire deep inside – written by one of New Orleans’s own.

Most of all, it’s a primer on how to be a resident of New Orleans. Live life. Buck tradition. Forge ahead. Most importantly, rebuild the dream.

Thanks, Chris. For being there, and for reminding us of what we keep forgetting.

Now where’s that McSweeney’s collection? There’s got to be something a little lighter around here somewhere.

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What I’ve Been Reading – April 2008

May 7, 2008


The Things They Carried

Books Acquired:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences – Lawrence Weschler

Books Read:
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien

Here I am, seven days late, frantically trying to figure out what I’m going to write about. It’s as if, for this month at least, this column has turned into an albatross around my neck – a weight dragging me down, a job I wish I could just pass on.

But that’s not how I work. I have a meticulous personality that expects nothing less than consistency. A What I’ve Been Reading column every month and a chicken in every pot. I can’t fail the fans, right? Wait – these columns are too long to read anyway? They’re just a sort of literary masturbation? A fit of intolerant rhetoric on why the books I read are worth mentioning and torturing you with?

All kidding aside, I only read one book this month: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.

“Just one?” you might say. “And I thought you considered yourself a reader!”

I do. Leave me alone. It just so happens that sometimes life doesn’t want me to read. That’s fine. I’m okay. Sure, there’s this itching in my mind from being bled to death by the diodes of a television screen, but it’ll pass. At least, that’s what the guys on television say.

It’s NBA Playoff season, and reading has taken a few steps back while I watch somewhere between a quarter to a half of each playoff game. I’ve taken the Celtics on as my pet playoff team (I’m warming to them as a new favorite team altogether, especially considering my penchant for the early to mid-80s Larry Bird) and have been thrilled to watch tons of great players that I often don’t get to see during the regular season.

Of course, on those days when basketball isn’t the focus, I find myself enjoying the outdoors. Or recovering several weeks of sleepless nights thanks to Sierra. Or monitoring election turnouts. Or visiting friends. Hey, I’m a busy person, and where the winter allows me seemingly thousands of hours of available reading time, a warm weather front pushes that idle page flipping to the back of the room, causing it to crowd with blogging and other computer-related activities.

The Things They Carried isn’t a book that’s difficult to get through. It’s not a dense or overcomplicated story by any means. Quite the contrary – it’s a series of short stories that move from half-fiction to faux-autobiography, simple and easy to read, about a subject that we’re all familiar with in one way or another – war, specifically the Vietnam war.

The Things They Carried was a finalist for the Pulitzer, and I can see why. It’s a no-holds-barred look at the war and how it affected those who were a part of it. And while some stories focus on the crazy darkness of Vietnam’s trenches, The Things They Carried takes care to fill us in on the more positive traits of war – the brotherhood, the stories, the fellowship and the relief of find yourself safe, suddenly, without warning.

Don’t get me wrong - the looming shadow of death is always present. But it’s not the driving factor like many novels about Vietnam seem to think.

There’s a voice that filters through the entire book – the voice of a man who feels fortunate to have made it out alive. Tim O’Brien is not shy about admitting that his stories blur the line between what really happened and what makes the story more memorable – not only for dramatic effect, but also for personal salvation; he changes part of the story because he’s not able to take it on himself.

Admittedly, The Things They Carried is fiction that is based on Tim’s own experiences. But the interjections by the author help make it seem more real. You get the feeling that each death really happened – and probably did happen – with the names and places changed to protect the dead and buried. He talks about the difference between real truth and story truth – the idea that what happens in the heat of the moment is skewed, is remembered in a way that no one else can experience, adding a larger-than-life image to a darkly human story.

These exaggerations aren’t lying, O’Brien explains, but are simply a “happening truth.” They happen to you on another plane of being. If you imagine the bullet slowing down, curving around in midair, striking the head of a friend in a fury of laughter; if the sky darkens as if an eclipse, and the trees bend away from the scene of action – these are all true, because they happened to you. They are part of your story. They are not an exaggeration.

What it creates is a fictional representation that better illustrates the war than the pure facts would. It’s a way to, in his words, “the correct way to clear his conscience and tell the story of thousands of soldiers who were forever silenced by society.”

I only read one book this month. It took me forever, even though it was easy. I seriously wasn’t sure I’d even have it finished by the end of the month.

But it was powerful. And I know this for sure – I’ll barely remember any of the playoff games I’ve watched this month. The Things They Carried? That I’ll be able to keep in my mind for years to come.

Tags: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading |

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WIBR Tournament - Championship Finals

May 6, 2008


We’re back in business. Now let’s crown a champion.

Click here for the entire bracket.

The What I’ve Been Reading Tournament of Books
CHAMPIONSHIP:

East of Eden - John Steinbeck
vs.
Rabbit Angstrom - John Updike


When you dedicate a novel to your two sons, you tend to pour every ounce of your effort into making it the best.

This was the case with John Steinbeck and East of Eden, a novel that served to capture every ounce of his life in the Salinas Valley in California - every piece of land, every life met, every quirk and blade of grass. He takes the temperature of the area and concludes with an incredibly detailed prescription - a look at what caused every hardship, a plan to recreate the joys, a little something to keep the swelling in his heart at bay lest it break at the notion of losing his home altogether. He didn’t just dedicate it to his sons. He dedicated it to the Salinas Valley itself, writing a love letter to those dusty fields, to that backwater town, to the people he grew up with.

It’s masterfully layered, with each generation’s mistakes piling up on the former, creating a solid foundation of failure - and ultimately, hope - that future generations could build upon; Adam Trask cowered in the memory of his brother and father, Cal and Aron felt the unknown shadow of their long lost mother holding them hostage, each character finding refuge in something unhealthy, in pride and greed and a desire to carve out some sort of legacy among his or her peers.

East of Eden is more than a novel about the Salinas Valley. It’s a veiled attempt at reinterpreting The Bible, a raw and gritty look at the darker side of human nature. It has its fair share of joy. But joy has never made for great drama, and the intertwining lives in East of Eden are filled with a higher level of drama, like the difference between the tension in The Godfather, Part II versus a simple episode of Law and Order.

If Steinbeck ever set out to write the Great American Novel, this was it. In talking about East of Eden, Steinbeck said, “It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years. I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this.”

I say all of this now because I haven’t really had much of a chance to explain my love for East of Eden yet. East of Eden has blown out every book it has faced, leaving me with no need to extrapolate a reasoning from the cause of the destruction. Rabbit Angstrom, on the other hand, has been analyzed and justified for three straight rounds. I’ve had to reason with myself as to why it should make it to the Finals, why it should beat The Road and how I could possibly have taken it over Gilead back in the first match-up.

I took a break in the tournament because I felt the Rabbit Angstrom steam-train was about ready to derail, taking the entire tournament with it and causing every decision to be seen with an air of mockery. With the exception of The Road, these two books are the best I’ve read since writing this column, and East of Eden deserved to put its lackadaisical run to the finals behind it - to curb the momentum of Rabbit Angstrom and see how things match up with a clear head and a logical mind.

A week ago, Rabbit Angstrom would have won.

It deserves it. For it’s importance alone. I’ve thrown around terms like “time capsule” and “voice of the generation,” and they’re all true. Rabbit Angstrom is a chronicle of the turn of each decade since 1960. It’s an amazing case study in the idea of Everyman, a man who lives life with a restless eye turned toward the past, who eats poorly and develops heart disease and experiences the rise and fall of success and divorce and children and death and honor and a confused sense of purpose.

But a week later, with both books battering around my head, with the plots reviewed and the emotions freshened, I can’t look past the fact that East of Eden isn’t just the best book I’ve read in the past three years. The fact is, it could be the best book I’ve ever read. Period. End. That’s it. That’s all she wrote, kids. Stick a knife in everything else, etc.

East of Eden’s path to the Final Four seemed predestined, with a random drawing moving the book into an easy bracket, its closest competitors sitting together in the same quadrant, ready to knock each other off. East of Eden was this year’s Celtics, the best book, but so far ahead that you start to forget about it, start making reasons for its demise and stop believing that it was anything special in the first place.

But it is. Oh, man. It is. The tournament was filled with close match-ups. But when we get down to the end, there was probably only one book that ever had a chance to begin with.

East of Eden

The Winner and WIBR Tournament of Books Champion…
East of Eden – John Steinbeck

Tags: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading |

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