Rainy Day Reading

With the epic rains of January came plenty of time to be cozy with my cat, mug of hot cocoa, and many a fabulous book.  Here are some highlights:

A Cordiall Water - M.F.K. Fisher
It's been years since I read Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, but a friend reminded me of her prolific writings and specifically recommended A Cordiall Water, and it was a truly delightful read, in which Fisher writes about various remedies (and related cultural lore) intended to "assuage the ills of man and beast."  While I doubt I'll be laying a quartered pigeon on my chest any time soon (or making said pigeon into a broth) or putting bacon grease up my nose, I might need to up my honey intake, at a minimum.  All in all, highly entertaining!

A Journey Round My Skull - Frigyes Karinthy
Karinthy, a Hungarian writer, wrote this memoir in 1939 about his experience of having a brain tumor.  It's a riveting account of his thoughts, starting with his intuition that something was very wrong, as well as the doctors he meets with and who ultimately operate on him (not under full anesthesia - now that's an utterly harrowing passage), his relationships with friends and family, and the trial and error along the way, with misdiagnoses, miscommunications, and misanthropic moments, to boot.  Fascinating - I couldn't put it down. 

Jackaby - William Ritter
It's very rare for me to head to the teen section of the library, but that I did, in search of Jackaby, a book that was on display at a bookstore.  The old timey writing and plot caught my attention, and I have to admit, I read it voraciously and contentedly.  It tells the story of a young woman named Abigail Rook who arrives in the port town of New Fiddleham, England in 1892, and ultimately lands a job with R.F. Jackaby, a crime investigator with a unique ability to tap into supernatural elements.  I can't wait to read the sequel, with the appealing title, Beastly Bones! 

House of Liars - Elsa Morante
How does one possibly begin to recover from the post-Ferrante tetralogy blues?  How can such a hole be filled?  As Ferrante mentions in her memoir and collection of interviews, Frantumaglia, one of the writers she admires is Elsa Morante, an Italian novelist.  Therefore, I picked up Morante's House of Liars (published in 1948) and found myself immediately immersed in a novel that reminded me of Garcia Marquez, Allende, and of course, Ferrante.  It's peopled with passionate and stormy characters mired in the messy ties of family, loyalty, love, lust, and jealousy.  Plus, it has one of the most unexpected and creative endings that I've read in some time! 

The Eaten Heart: Unlikely Tales of Love - Giovanni Boccaccio
The Eaten Heart is a collection of stories from Boccaccio's The Decameron, which was written in the mid 1300s over a period of ten years.  The premise of the book is that a group of young Italians are in a secluded villa outside of Florence, where they are attempting to escape the Black Death, and pass the time by telling stories (100 in total) to each other. These stories all focus on love in its various forms - bawd, lustful, nostalgic, unrequited, etc.  This is perhaps the first time I have read literature from the 14th century, so I was struck by how modern and engaging the language is!  I definitely plan to read more tales from The Decameron. 

To Build a Fire and Other Stories - Jack London
Jack London was a prolific writer, and was a master of short stories.  This collection shows his breadth, and includes several of his Klondike stories which are rugged wilderness tales that take place in the Far North.  It also includes stories featuring working men, downtrodden folks, fighters, desperados, and others, in an array of local and exotic locations, largely inspired by London's own experiences and travels.  While I liked some stories more than others, he has a very engaging and crisp writing style overall, and it is a great collection. 

A Burning Flame

I recently re-read James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and I highly recommend you read it as soon as possible.  As I was taking in Baldwin's words, I found myself earmarking multiple passages on every page until I finally just gave up and realized that every single page of this fierce book is filled with powerful, unforgettable, and essential thoughts about race and racism in America, and that it is the kind of book that should be read right now, and then re-read often.  I'm going to re-read this book at least once a year, because it rings as true now as it did in 1963 when it was first published.  It would be interesting to read it in tandem with Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, as Coates' recent memoir discusses similar themes and is written in a similar style to part of Baldwin's book (i.e. in the form of a letter to a young black man).  Bottom line - it is essential that everyone read this book.  Baldwin's message burns as bright as ever.  

An Oldie, A Goodie

Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, is classic Americana at its best.  I enjoyed all three stories in this collection.  There is a serenity and simplicity to the stories, but also a subtle complexity to the characters and their internal worlds.  Plus, the back drop of the stories is described in beautiful but not overly flowery language.  And, Maclean is funny too.  All in all, its worth taking a few sunny afternoons and settling into these novels, in which the waters flow smoothly on the surface but rumble with depth just under the surface.

Hello again, Columbus

I recently re-read Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, and loved it all over again.  So much wit, complicated relationships, and just great storytelling.  It is a must read!

Seeking Shelter

I have had The Sheltering Sky on my "to read" list for many years.  I finally got around to reading it and found it utterly fascinating.  It tells the story of three American travelers to North Africa after WWII, and focuses on their alienation, isolation, and ultimately, despair as they navigate life in a different culture of which they have little knowledge and much naivete.  The novel takes a shocking turn at the end, highly unexpected.  Definitely a classic and well worth the read, despite somewhat of a slow start. 

The Grass is Always Greener, with Capote

The Grass Harp is classic Capote - wit, quirky characters, tender moments amidst hilarious ones, and immensely fabulous storytelling.  I really don't think it gets much better than this!  Read it.  Period.

A Childhood Classic (but not my childhood)

Sometimes I am really amazed at some classic novels that I simply never read when I was growing up.  It's never too late though!  I found L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables to be smartly written and thoroughly winsome.  Anne, an "outspoken morsel of neglected humanity," is an orphan who comes to live with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert on bucolic Prince Edward Island.  The Cuthberts original set out to raise a boy, but are surprised to discover a girl waiting for them at the train station.  Anne's boundless optimism, imagination, and love for words and honest expression are infectious to both the reader and the characters who populate the novel. 

It's never too late to read Yates

I'm a huge Richard Yates fan, with my favorite of his novels being Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade (see previous blog posts).  I read the behemoth Collected Stories of Richard Yates, which anthologizes all of his short stories, including the stories in Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Liars in Love, and some previously unpublished stories as well.  Yates' stories are so readable and engaging, yet heartbreaking too.  Yates shows the reader his characters' ugliest vulnerabilities, most intimate sufferings, and scarring childhood events.  It is his unflinching insight that draws the reader in, and his straightforward, clear writing that is so quintessentially Yates.  These stories are not uplifting (his story "A Private Possession," ends with, "And when the sobs finally begin they are long, scalding ones, the kind that come again and again.")  And yet, Yates sometimes catches the reader off guard with one or two unexpected hilariously funny lines, which tempers the tragedy with some comedy.  In "Regards at Home," Yates writes, "That was an old failing: she never seemed to realize that if people could see her underpants they might not care what kind of hat she was wearing."  In this same story, the protagonist dislikes his wife when she fills the role of, "dependable typist at Botany Mills, or the grudging potato peeler or the slow, tired woman who frowned over the ironing board to prove how poor we were."

Yates draws on many of his own experiences to create his stories, such as his time in WWII, bout with tuberculosis, and troubled marriages.  These stories are not uplifting, but they are crystalline and illuminating and too good to miss. 

A Smattering of Steinbeck

It was, not surprisingly, an utter delight to read Steinbeck's America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction.  This collection shows off Steinbeck's range and ability to engage readers on a variety of topics, including the lives of California agricultural workers in the 1930s, dogs, Paris, Salinas, war, and ospreys.  Steinbeck had this fabulous ability to write both seriously and humorously, impassioned and lighthearted.  In "Always Something to Do In Salinas," he writes, in describing the social structure with regard to those in the field of agriculture, "Now we had a new set of upstarts:  Lettuce People.  Sugar People joined Cattle People in looking down their noses.  These Lettuce People had Carrot People to look down on and these in turn felt odd about associating with Cauliflower People."  In, "My War with the Ospreys," Steinbeck writes, "Those lousy, slip-shod, larcenous birds , those ingrates, those - those ospreys."  Even though many of the essays in this collection were written over 50 years ago, some of the themes seem very relevant to today.  In "Dear Adlai," he writes, "Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for their soul."  

Other favorite quotes:

From "L'Envoi":  "I do know this - the big and mysterious America is bigger than I thought.  And more mysterious."  
From "America and Americans":  "We are afraid to be awake, afraid to be alone, afraid to be a moment without the noise  and confusion we call entertainment."
"Even businessmen in Texas wear high-heeled boots and big hats, though they ride in air-conditioned Cadillacs and have forgotten the reason for the high heels."  
"Such screwballs are very valuable to us and we would be a duller nation without them, as our economy and our means of production gently shove us nearer and nearer to a dull and single norm."  

This is a book to have on the shelf, with engaging, funny, smart, informed, witty, opinionated essays to be read again and again. 

Prim and Proper

Jane Austen's classic novel Pride and Prejudice was published 200 years ago in 1813.  The novel centers around the Bennett family and the marrying off of their daughters, in particular, Elizabeth Bennett, who warms up to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy over time.  Reading Pride and Prejudice was kind of like watching Downton Abbey, but with none of the dramas outside of the romance plot lines.  Pride and Prejudice is particularly insular, focusing on the restrained interactions between the Bennetts, their neighbors, immediate family, and potential suitors.  While I don't think a 200 year old book need be stodgy, I found that to be so in this case.  Austen was no doubt a master of her time, but this is not a book that provoked much thought for me or caught my interest. 

Favorite quotes:

"'My dear, dear aunt,' she rapturously cried, what delight!  what felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour.  Adieu to disappointment and spleen.  What are men to rocks and mountains?""

"This is a most unfortunate affair; and will probably be much talked of.  But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other, the balm of sisterly consolation."

Satirical Steinbeck

Having traveled to France in the early 1950s, Steinbeck wrote The Short Reign of Pippin IV in 1957, which is a satirical tale of a chaotic French government at the time of the French Revolution.  France finds itself in need of a king, and the unsuspecting Pippin Heristal, based on his lineage, is recruited for the task.  While Pippin would rather be left alone to his hobby, astronomy, he must inherit the throne and try to bring peace and prosperity to his nation.  Pippin's wife Marie accepts her queendom with a sense of duty, and his precocious and rather wild daughter Clotilde becomes intrigued with an "egg king" hailing from Petaluma, CA.  As I am not an expert on French history, I'm sure that many of the satire and jokes were somewhat lost on me, and I didn't find the antics that hilarious or over the top.  All in all, this was not my favorite Steinbeck novel by a long shot, but I do admire his versatility, and he still remains one of my favorite authors of all time, with my favorite books being To a God Unknown, East of Eden, and The Grapes of Wrath. 

Some memorable quotes:

"In the salon she told her husband, 'Closed the window over the cheese - a full kilogram of cheese suffocating all night with the window closed.  And do you know what her excuse was?  She was cold.  For her own comfort the cheese must strangle.  You can't trust servants anymore."

"I want my little house, my wife, and my telescope.  Nothing more.  If they had not forced me to be king I would not have been forced to be kingly."

Pre-"Twilight"-era Vampires

Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, was published in 1897, and features the most famous vampire of them all, Count Dracula.  Told in a unique format which combines diary entries, letters, and ship log entries, the story starts out with a solicitor named Jonathan Harker who travels to a remote and ominous castle in Transylvania to settle some business matters with Count Dracula.  He slowly realizes that he is imprisoned by a very strange character, and eventually is able to escape.  Count Dracula sets his sharpened teeth on course to try to suck the blood of Harker's new wife Mina and her friend Lucy.  Harker and some of his colleagues band together to try to rid the earth of Dracula, which of course involves piercing him in the heart, no easy task for a Count that can become a bat, or wolf, or other incarnation.  Considered a classic gothic tale, even a horror novel, the story moves along swiftly at the beginning and then tends to drag.  I enjoyed the novel, but not nearly as much as I enjoyed a different gothic novel, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which is told from Frankenstein's perspective and explores his loneliness.  In contrast, in Dracula we only hear from him on one page out of over four hundred pages, so we don't get to know his inner workings or understand him other than from other perspectives. 

Steinbeck's Last Novel

The last novel that John Steinbeck wrote was The Winter of Our Discontent, which highlights the lives of the working class in the 1960s against the backdrop of the fictional New Baytown, largely based on Steinbeck's own experience living in Sag Harbor in his later years.  The story's protagonist is Ethan Hawley, a man educated at Harvard where he  "lodged in the old, the beautiful, the obscure, indulged myself with knowledge utterly useless in running a grocery store..."  And yet, because his father lost the family fortune by "investing wildly," Ethan finds himself doing exactly that -spending his days as the clerk of the grocery store that his family used to own, philosophizing to an audience of canned goods. Ethan has a wife and two kids, and feels discontent and resentment about his job, and explores his own conflicted relationship with his dislike for the money but his fear of not having money to support his family.   This fear drives him to consider some rather unscrupulous possibilities.  As in most Steinbeck novels, the dialogue is swift and witty.  A list of my favorite pet names that Ethan has for his wife Mary include 1) cottontail, 2) my rumpled duck, 3) pin curl, and 4) pigeon-flake.  Steinbeck went no to win the Nobel Prize in 1962.  That said, this is one of my least favorite of his books, and for me, doesn't compare to East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, and To a God Unknown.  Still, there are some memorable quotes:

"We can shoots rocket into space but we can't cure anger or discontent."

"It was a day as different from other days as dogs are from cats and both of them from crhysanthemums or tidal waves or scarlet fever."

Troubled Bridge Over Water

It all comes full circle for me with my beloved Willa Cather!  Alexander's Bridge, Cather's first novel, was published in 1912, and it was one of the last of her novels that I have read.  Ironically, I read this book in one sitting just a stone's throw away from a bridge that crosses the great Stanislaus River.  The story's protagonist is Bartley Alexander, an engineer who builds bridges.  Torn between his love for his wife Winifred in Boston and his lover Hilda in London who makes him feel alive and youthful, Alexander must navigate these relationships and becomes increasingly tormented.  Perhaps, given all the weight on his shoulders and his inability to move forward in either direction, life comes crashing down on him, literally, when his newest bridge collapses, despite the description earlier in the book as a man who had shoulders that "looked strong enough in themselves to support a span of any one of his ten great bridges...."  Perhaps some heavy handed metaphor here, but for a first novel, it still showed signs of Cather's greatness.  One of my favorite descriptions in the book is how Cather writes of how Winifred's face suggested "stormy possibilities."  One of her better shorter works, but still not comparable to the wonderful My Antonia.

Obscure Cather

Willa Cather's collection of three stories of the West, Obscure Destinies, was published in 1932.  The first story, "Neighbor Rosicky," tells the story of the patriarch of the farm, Rosicky, who cares for his land and his family in Nebraska.  It is a simple story, but a really warmhearted one.  My favorite scene is when old man Rosicky visits his son Rudolph and his daughter-in-law Polly. Worried about how Polly, a city girl, will take to farming life, he goes over to give them his car to borrow so they can go out to a night on the town.  Rosicky takes an apron off a hook and gently pushes Polly out of the way.  Cather writes, "That kind, reassuring grip on her elbows, the old man's funny bright eyes, made Polly want to drop her head on his shoulder for a second."  Cather finds such tenderness in the smallest moments.  The second story, "Old Mrs. Harris," follows the life of Grandma Harris, who is often stoic except when she beams with love for her grandchildren.  The neighbor, Mrs. Rosen often brings over coffee cake and tries to bring Mrs. Harris out of her shell.  As Cather writes, the house in which the Harris family lived was small and "Mrs. Harris and her 'things' were almost required to be invisible."  While Mrs. Harris may not take up very much space figuratively, she doesn't need more than her grandchildren to make her "perfectly happy."  Cather writes of Grandma Harris and her grandsons, "She and the twins were the same age; they had in common all the realest and truest things."  This sentiment really reminds me of Capote's short story, "A Christmas Memory" which follows the friendship of young Buddy and his older cousin Sook.  The final story, "Two Friends" is told from the perspective of a young boy who looks up to two older men in his small town, who "led more varied lives than the other men in our town."  These stories are classic Cather - not my favorites of hers, but still worth reading. 

Don't Pass By McMurtry

 

Larry McMurtry is a prolific writer who spins stories of the American West, many of which take place in Texas.  Having read his Pulitzer prize-winning epic novel Lonesome Dove earlier this year, I was curious to read his earliest (and much slimmer) novel, Horseman, Pass By, written in 1961.  An unsentimental, gritty, atmospheric work, Horseman, Pass By is set against the backdrop of a cattle ranch in post World War II Texas.  Lonnie Brannon is the teenage grandson of Homer Brannon, an honest and hardworking old time cattle man who has owned the ranch for many years.  Homer's stepson Hud also lives at the ranch, and Lonnie is both repulsed by and intrigued by Hud's selfish, ruthless and "mean" ways.  McMurtry brings the tale to life with his description of the ranch landscape, the open sky, and the way a small town can make a person yearn to see the wider world. 

The Great Western Novel?

At over 800 pages, I was daunted by taking on Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning and legendary tale of the American West, Lonesome Dove.  Filled with heroes and outlaws and "cowboys and Indians," this was a fast moving tale, people with many memorable characters like Lorena, Jack Spoon, July Johnson, and Newt.  Led by Captain August McCrae and W.F. Call, both former Texas Rangers, a group of cowboys band together to organize a cattle drive from Texas to Montana in the late nineteenth century.  Gus McCrae is fun loving, talkative, and adventurous, in comparison to Call's more quiet and serious nature.  This book has it all - plots and sub-plots of love, revenge, loyalty, adventure, hardship, and camaraderie.   It is a consuming, readable, and memorable tale.

High Wind, High Drama

Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica was originally written in 1929, then re-issued by The New York Review of Books (NYRB) in 1999.  Set in late nineteenth century Jamaica, the children of the Thornton family learn that their parents have decided to send them off to England by boat, though they don't understand why, and find it to be "without any particular causation."  Indeed, they can't think of anything that precipitated this, "...for it could hardly be due to the death of the cat, and nothing else of importance occurred lately."  The hurricane has decimated the Jamaican landscape.  Hughes writes, "Then imagine all this luxuriance smashed, as with a pestle and mortar - crushed, pulped, and already growing again!"  Hughes writing is at turns sinister and whimsical, and he invents words such as "energeticalness" and "elaboratish."  The book focuses mainly on the experiences of the children on the high seas and their strange relationships with each other and with the pirates that have taken over the ship.   After the children return safely to England after much trial and tribulation, the oldest child, Emily, reports, "Mother!  I've slept with an alligator!"  Hughes weaves together dark humor, violence, innocence, and adventure in this unique tale. 

A Tale Not so Gayheart-ed

Lucy Gayheart was one of Willa Cather's later novels, written in 1935.  It tells the story of Lucy, who grows up in a small Midwest town, and then moves to Chicago at the age of 18 to study music.  While in Chicago, she discovers her own talent and also falls in love with the great singer Clement Sebastian.  After tragedy strikes, she returns home to her small town, where further tragedy ensues.  While the story line is not riveting, Cather captures small town life in her usual pitch perfect way.  In my opinion, this was not nearly as good as some of her other works that I have previously reviewed. 

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the novel:

"In little towns, lives roll along so close to one another; loves and hates beat about, their wings almost touching.  On the sidewalks along which everybody comes and goes, you must, if you walk abroad at all, at some time pass within a few inches of the man who cheated and betrayed you, or the woman you desire more than anything else in the world.  Her skirt brushes against you.  You say good-morning, and go on.  It is a close shave.  Out in the world the escapes are not so narrow."

A Novel of Contrasts, from Cather

Published in 1925, Willa Cather's The Professor's House is a character study of Professor Godfrey St. Peter, the book's protagonist.  St. Peter is a scholar and a family man with two married daughters, very stuck in his ways.  Even though his family moves into a new house, he continues to work in the study of his old one.  The novel is divided into three sections - the first and last focus on St. Peter and we learn through this lens about one of his most brilliant students, Tom Outland, who was also engaged to one of St. Peter's daughters before Outland's untimely death.  The second section of the novel focuses on Outland's story of discovering the remains of a cliff dwelling city in New Mexico, and for me was the most beautifully written part of the novel.  The themes of the novel are many, but the most interesting to me is the that of embracing modernity and change versus holding on to the beauty of nature's simplicity and a lost era.  While this is a departure from Cather's rural novels mainly set in Nebraska, I enjoyed the exploration of life in a small university town.  For me, this doesn't hold a candle My Antonia, which for me thus far is Cather's greatest masterpiece.  

Some of my favorite quotes:

"...the muscular, many-lined palm, the long, strong fingers with soft ends, the straight little finger, the flexible, beautifully shaped thumb that curved back from the rest of the hand as if it were its own master.  What a hand!  He could see it yet, with the blue stones lying in it."

"St. Peter was so pleased with his flowers that it hadn't occurred to him to get more; but all his life he had regretted that he didn't buy two bunches, and push their fortunes a little further."