(pub. 2017)
The game of pachinko is little like pinball and little like a slot machine. You don’t need to know much more about the game other than to understand that the machines are manipulated in much the same way the slot machines are programmed. To favor the house at all times but to allow enough winning to make the thing addictive. There is always hope. Continue reading
Category: books (Page 3 of 10)
(pub. 2017)
Two essays published in the London Review of Books in 2014 and 2017
In the Public Voice of Women, Beard shows the depth and breadth of the practice of the silencing of women. She begins with the silencing of Penelope by her son Telemachus in the Odyssey. When Penelope enters the hall to ask that the singer to literally change his tune, her young son Telemachus tells his mother to be quiet and go back up stairs, Continue reading
Fiction:
Artemis — Anthony Weir
From the guy who brought you The Martian, one of the finest sci-fi adventures of the last 20 years, Artemis is another adventure in space. This time on the moon with lots of science: lunar shelters and manufacturing in zero G and more than most of us need to know about welding. It’s competent and amusing, but in the end not nearly as satisfying as The Martian was. In large part because I don’t buy the voice of the narrator. She’s one dimensional, a stereotypical rebellious too smart, smart mouthed early 20-something character at odds with the Man. (Or in this case Woman.) At first I couldn’t figure out what was bothering me about her but then someone pointed out she has the sense of humor of a 12 year-old boy. Any woman that smart and that far out of on the edges of society should have a sharper, more sophisticated sense of humor. The “ho ho I just made a sex joke” thing gets really old, really fast.
I hear that there were some very good short stories released while this book was in the works. I’ll go find them.
* I don’t like girls who sound like they are just boys with different plumbing *
Fresh Complaint — Jeffery Eugenides
Short stories by the author of the wonderful MiddleSex. But these… well many of them don’t hold my attention. In fact I had to go back and look at a summary of the stories to be reminded of which ones were here. They are mostly older stories and the lack of mastery that Eugenides showed in Middlesex is evident.
Am I just being cranky or did these really not meet expectations? I am in retrospect unsettled by the misogyny of several of the stories. Nothing blatant just the feeling that the women in the stories are not only not valued by the male characters but also not valued by the author. And the last story in the bunch about a girl who “ruins” herself and an innocent man to avoid an arranged marriage is just plain creepy because the girl simply gets away with it and feels not a moment of remorse. I suppose you are meant to feel sympathy for the man ruined but all you feel a great deal of antipathy for the girl.
* this collection should have stayed uncollected *
Charming Billy — Alice McDermott
The Charming Billy of the title is a dead guy whose wake is the setting for the revealing tale of his life and loves. The tragedy of the “death” of his first love and his subsequent marriage to a woman who devoted her life to him — drunk as he was. Like all McDermott the Irish Americans and plain old Irish shine out. You even like Billy who objectively was more than a little bit of an asshole. Various points of view add up to an entire story.
* more Irish-American loves, laughter, and tragedy *
NonFiction:
Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir — Amy Tan
A memoir, writer’s guide, and extended philosophical musing on what it means to be a daughter. Through memory and mementos Amy Tan examines the truths and fictions of her childhood and relationship with her family, all with the understanding that these things are what makes her the writer that she is. Some episodes here are frankly terrifying and many others will make you smile or chuckle in recognition. In many ways families are all alike. They create their stories with the often unclear motivations of polishing things up. But the unpolished version are always there underneath directing the family in its way. And that contrast is what allows us to create our fictions and realities.
* a lovely blend of memoir and musings on the muse *
Jane Austen at Home — Lucy Worsley
I rarely read biography — preferring to learn about a person though their creative output.
Austen’s work’s preoccupation with the need to find a home — in particular to make a good marriage is the lens used here to relate her life. Austen’s gradual falling down from the boisterous, comfortable home of her youth to the cramped and stingy home of her later life is shown in opposition of the happy endings that she gives her heroines.
Maybe I’m just not good at reading biography. But I remain unconvinced that I have learned much about Jane Austen but instead heard a story that her biographer wants to tell. Though really — can there be biography without the fingerprints of the biographer?
* recommended to for those with a taste for feminist indignation *
More or less. I’ve got a lot of books to catch up on. Here’s the first batch.
Fiction:
Beartown — Fredrik Backman (2017)
Dropped it after just a couple of chapters. I like hockey but not this much. And I don’t simpatico with the characters. The idea of an entire town’s future resting on the backs of a bunch of high schoolers is just to familiar. Small town football and the predictability of the thing…. Etc. Anyway I didn’t read it past about the 20% point.
* Just didn’t care what happened. *
Paris in the Present Tense — Mark Helprin (2017)
More academics behaving badly. And late life existential crises. There are some lively descriptions of music, a young woman, and Paris. The side kick is helpfully vapid but don’t actually know why I finished this one. It’s been highly praised but I found it predictable. And the ending well, it’s far too pat for me. Though the murder mystery from the murderers point of view is kind of amusing. The writing is nicely competent.
* I read a lot of stories about Paris lately. *
Poetry
On Imagination — Mary Rufle (2017)
I’ve read this twice and will read it again. There is a small goat with a silver bell on a blue ribbon around it’s neck living in Mary Rufle’s attic. How she (he? Rufle never do says if her goat has a gender) got there is the matter of the essay. On creativity, the muse, and what imagination actually means.
Rufle says that asking a poet to describe imagination is like asking a fish to describe the sea. It is that in which the creative swim and it doesn’t ever stop being a part of the thought process if not the entire thought process. She goes on to characterize the relationship between the thinker and imagination in startling deep ways.
It did feel a bit predatory to pay 8 dollars for what amounts to a mid-sized essay But I think that there is enough meat here to make me feel like I got value for the money.
* I might by the paper copy just to have the illustrations done up nicely. *
Audio:
The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds — Micheal Lewis — Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris (2016)
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman invented the field of behavioral economics. This book, sadly, isn’t about that, it’s a biography of an intellectual collaboration that derails in spectacular fashion and frankly it’s a little bit creepy. I’d have rather heard a lot more about the things that they are researching than the gruesome details of their lopsided working relationship. When the end of a relationship between two researchers is characterized as a divorce… And while I appreciate the effect that the Holocaust, the German occupation of France, and their experiences in Israel after WWII had on the two men, I really didn’t need the in-depth history lessons. If you’re looking for a book that will bring you up to speed on the various tricks and illusions that your mind brings to the decision-making process (and that is what these two men were studying) look elsewhere.
* There must be a better resource than this. *
The Graveyard Book — Gaiman — Narrated by the Author (2008)
I love this story of Nobody Owens raised by his Guardian and looked after by the denizens of a cemetery after the (in true fairy tale fashion) grisly death of his family while he is a toddler.
* It magnificently satisfies the urge to be told a story. *
Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders (2017)
Also listened to Lincoln in the Bardo — having read it recently. The audio production includes dozens (hundreds?) of voices and is fun to listen to but if I hadn’t already read the book I would have been utterly lost. This one is best read in the format it’s designed for — the large pages of the hardback edition.
* so many voices, so much fun *
Several books in this issues point to a trend: writers seem to be losing the magic in their work. Is it age, too much writing, or the unbelievably cartoonish reality of the times? Whatever, the magic is gone from a lot of writing at the moment.
* Magical Realism can’t keep up with the zeitgeist. *
Fiction:
Dust: La Belle Sauvage — Philip Pullman (2017)
This is a (pr)equel (that’s Pullman’s term) to the His Dark Materials books. La Bell Sauvage describes how the young Lrya came to be at Jordan College Oxford. This book lacks the surprising grandeur of the Golden Compass but will that ever be topped? If you’re willing to set your sights little lower, then you’re in for enjoyable ride down the flooded, muddy, treacherous Thames river.
LBS is set up in a small village on the Thames above Oxford were we meet Malcolm a mild-mannered, curious child who lives and works in his parents pub. Malcolm meets the infant Lrya while running errands for the sisters at the Godstow nunnery. Known for his curiosity and frankly a bit of a busybody, Malcolm is recruited by an Oxford scholar who is studying the aleithemeter and who works with a secret organization that opposes the Magesterium to use his friendship with the sisters to keep an eye on the coming and goings near Lyra. As things develop the Magestrium, in light of a mysterious prophecy, wants to take control of the infant Lyra.
Just as the Magersterium gets Lyra in to their clutches, a flood of possibly supernatural origin occurs and Malcolm and Alice (the pot washer at his parents pub) by happenstance find themselves racing down the flooded river in Malcom’s little boat (the Belle Sauvage of the title) with the baby Lyra. There’s thrills and spills and fairies and the scariest villain so far with a hideous maimed hyena daemon.
There were parts of the end of the book that left me literally breathless and made me seriously reconsider what I was reading at bedtime. There were images that I didn’t just need in my brain as I was drifting off to sleep. But I persisted as do Malcolm and Alice and in the end Lyra is safety delivered to Jordan College.
The main characters Malcolm and Alice are comfortable drawn children/teenagers. One thing that did confuse me a bit was the age gap between Malcolm and Alice. At the beginning of the book Malcolm is presented as 12(ish) and Alice as 16. That’s a big gap for kids. Given the age difference, some the later material borders on creepy as they interact.
In the end while it’s a nice book and had some lovely light moments and some real moments of terror. It’s very prequel and the ending is only satisfying because I know how things work out in later books.
* Lyra as MacGuffin *
Practical Magic — Alice Hoffman (2003)
What happens when your sister shows up with a dead body in the trunk of her boyfriend’s car? You help her bury it in the back yard of course. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what I would do. And that’s what Sally Owen does when her sister Gillam shows up with the very dead Jimmy.
The main characters are the Owens sisters Sally and Gillian. Daughters of the witchy Owens family, as children they were alternately shunned and tormented by their classmates. Once old enough they both run as far as they could from the legacy of their mothers, grandmother, and aunties. Sally and Gillian are a bit predictable as the good sister who settles down and strives for normalcy and the bad sister who runs around and has lousy taste in men. Though this predictability leads to the fun of watching solid, stable, desperately normal Sally completely lose her ability to control her world when a certain investigator from Arizona appears looking for Jimmy the backyard denizen.
The characters of the Sally’s two daughters are much more realistic than most portrayals of teenagers as secondary characters. This makes me happy. The ending isn’t as scary as I had hoped it would be.
* Do I remember the movie correctly? Wasn’t Jimmy a zombie in the movie? *
The Refrigerator Monologues — Catherine M. Valente (2017)
Valente takes Gail Simone’s 1999 exploration of the misogyny of the world of comic books and super heroes and builds her own world around it. Simone pointed out that the female characters in most (nearly all) of the world of comics and super heroes are mere plot points, facilitators for the story arc of the male super heroes. This book is a collection of self-narrated stories of these “refrigerated” females. In Valente’s book each of the members of the Hell Hath No club tells her story. There is the plucky heroine who discovers (accidentally of course) the secret formula that transforms the hero from a everyman to a superman and then gets herself killed by the villain looking for the formula for his own uses. The girl whose child is killed so that the hero can shout “for the death of my son” every time he goes onto battle with the villain who killed his son. The girl is of course forgotten as soon as the child is ripped from her arms.
There are the female (semi)villains. A couple of girls who serve as keys — literally — they mostly let/get the real male villains out of some sort of confinement. And the super girl whose fabulous power out strips the guys but who lacks control, turns to evil, and must be destroyed for the greater good. The subtext being that, of course, a male would be able to control these powers but being a girl she can’t.
Each of the tellers of these stories is disguised version of a female character in the world of comics and superheroes. It can be a bit of a party game to name them all.
The stories have Valente’s usual facility with language and the point is well made.
(Though am I the only one who misses her less commercial forays — those brilliant mythopoeic constructions that made up Palimpsest and the Orphans Tales?)
* an Alexander DeWitt festschrift *
In the Midst of Winter — Isabel Allende (2017)
Every year on January 8th Allende starts a new book. One recent year she was a bit behind in coming up with an idea for a book and so she and her family brainstormed the ideas that would become this book. It’s got a bit of the feel of a TV show with individual episodes with the life stories of the characters hanging on the loose overarching plot line of the discovery of a dead woman in the trunk of a “borrowed” car during a NYC blizzard.
There are three characters — Richard Bowman, a stultified 60-something professor, the vivacious older Chilean college instructor, Lucia Maraz, who is living in his basement apartment, and Evelyn Ortega an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant. When Bowman runs into the back of Ortega’s employer’s Lexus during a blizzard, the three characters are thrown together and a caper begins. Each character’s back story is effecting and provides a glimpse into the immigrant or ex-pat experience from a very different perspective.
The Guatemalan girl — as effecting as her personal story is — is just the mute donkey that carries the two older protagonists towards each other as the story winds down to its inevitable conclusion the old folks fall in love at long last.
* you never know what you’re gong to find in the trunk *
Poetry:
Poetry Toolkit: The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry, 2nd Ed. — Rhian Willimas (2013)
One of the better poetry text books. This is all the stuff about poetry that you need to know to write that essay your instructor asked for. It includes a wider selection of poetry examples than many of its sort.
I still can’t manage the bullshit level necessary for “close reading” in the academic sense. Too much imputing intention to poets for every little thing that the reader can find in a poem. Don’t get me started on how many close readings straitjacket a poem into the reader’s pet set of literary theories.
Still. If you need a backup text to make the one you’ve been assigned this isn’t a bad place to start. It’s hella cheaper than Fussel and lacks some of his more objectionable attitudes.
* logically organized and not too painful *
Rag Pickers Guide to Poetry — eds: Eleanor Wilner and Maurice Manning (2013)
A collection of small essays and samples of poetry from folks who have taught at the Warren Wilson MFA program. Most of these essays consist of: here’s a poem or three and here’s what I think about my own work without proposing a larger idea. There are a handful of good essays here. Among the more worthwhile essays — Chris Forhan suggests removing words like because and although from your vocabulary and seeing where the more declarative and definitive take you. Rick Bardot has interesting ideas on stepping away from the visual. And finally there is this lovely quote from Heather McHugh which I am taking entirely out of context:
“The poem engages in a sort of network’s pleasure, making its cat’s cradle, using the oddest threads it could find, in the spool-rooms or yammer and yarn.”
It is, I think, the truest thing I have read about poetry in quite a while.
* poets talking to themselves about themselves *
The Cuckoo — Peter Streckfus (2004)
One of the poets that I discovered via the Lousie Gluck introductions in her American Originality. These poems are chewy and thick and not at all sweet. There are strands drawn from several traditions, including Chinese legend and the Old West. All woven cunningly into narratives that almost make sense and leave you wondering how you can put in the few missing pieces.
* poems that invite your imagination in.
Audio:
Innocents Abroad: Or the New Pilgrim’s Progress — Mark Twain, Narrated by: Grover Gardner (2011)
Classic Twain — long, detailed, and alternately broadly and slyly funny. Twain’s reports from a 6 month round trip voyage from New York to the Levant. It’s Twain. It’s a classic and many of the attitudes that Twain makes fun of still grate on the soul.
The narration is pitch perfect. The very slight drawl that one associates with Twain’s diction is here. And the thing is read “straight” which makes the satire all that much sharper. There is no winking at the listener on the part of the reader. At least no winks that aren’t in Twain’s original. Good job.
* really, real trip recounted in seriously unreal episodes *
Heartburn — Norah Ephron Narrator: Meryl Streep (2013)
An oldie that stands up well enough other that a couple of anachronisms. ($50 shuttle flights between NYC and DC.) It’s kind of light and has a lovely bitter bite to it. The ending is happily ambiguous. Meryl Streep is the perfect narrator. Her slight accent (from where I’ve never figured out) lends just the right upper class touch to the story. Streep can do bitchy like no one’s business and she applies that perfectly- just a hint in the story of marriage gone comically wrong. Nothing deep here. Just the banal things of marriage and betrayal and cooking. I like having Meryl Streep read to me and I wondered what else she’s read. Answer: a lot of children’s book including Beatrix Potter.
* the recipes aren’t all that, but who reads fiction for the recipes? *
Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood — Trevor Noah narrated by the author (2016)
The stories are effecting and sometimes very funny. The author is after all a comedian. There is no self-pity and no self-aggrandizement. Just the honest stories of one boy/young man growing up in a particular historic time and place. I laughed a lot in that knowing way that lives somewhere between funny and poignant.
Aside from all the rest, (and you can look up any number of deservedly glowing reviews elsewhere) Noah’s take on tribalism and how tribe, race, and language are used to manipulate the emotions and actions of people who is rooted in the workings a complex society formed around many literal tribes. This book gave me much to think about with regards to our own country and it’s issues of race and class.
* maybe I should start watching late night television *