Looking at ads for the movie based on Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road, Ron and I had a discussion about what we consider a new type of post-apocalyptic fiction, a modern type that has moved away from science fiction and towards horror. The author of this new kind of post-apocalyptic novel is like the torturer on Firefly who says "only in extremity do we see the real you."
But the new post-apocalyptic novel is not about acute pain. It's about the after-effects of such pain. It's about endurance. And just as one long-term effect of chronic pain on a human being is grumpiness, one long-term effect of chronic fear is aggression. The unsettling--yes, even horrifying--thing about a novel like The Road is that readers begin to admire such aggression. We know that the guy who fires first is the one who gets to live.
McCarthy, in his characteristically ruthless way, takes that idea to an extreme to ask whether in a world where aggression is essential for survival, how much meaning is left in survival itself.
In the first hundred pages of The Road, the protagonists, a man and his son, have already pared their existence down to the bare minimum. They walk south because their world is cold and covered with ash from the cataclysm that occurred on the day of the boy's birth. "They used to play quoits in the road with four big steel washers they'd found in a hardware store but these were gone with everything else" in one of their panicked dashes away from the grocery cart in which they push extra canned food and blankets. The cart contained a yellow toy truck, but the boy no longer plays with it. The man wants the boy to have something besides walking south and eating sparely from their scavenged cans of food:
"He'd carved the boy a flute from a piece of roadside cane and he took it from his coat and gave it to him. The boy took it wordlessly. After a while he fell back and after a while the man could hear him playing. A formless music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called up from out of the ashes of its ruin."
The man tells the boy "we're carrying the fire." What that means, in practical terms, is the subject of periodic debate. The boy wants to seek out a barking dog he hears and a little boy he thinks he's seen, but he settles for the man's promise that he won't kill them. The boy wants to give their food away to those few old men they meet who appear to be less fortunate, and the man agrees, at one point, although he makes sure the recipient of their charity knows that it comes from the boy, and not him. He and one old man have a conversation about what it means to be alive:
"Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?
Do you wish you would die?
No. But I might wish I had died. When you're alive you've always got that ahead of you.
Or you might wish you'd never been born.
Well. Beggars cant be choosers.
You think that would be asking too much."
When the man brings up God, the old man tells him "there is no God."
And yet later, when he's alone with the sleeping boy, the man reverts to his belief in a God or gods. He has to believe that his survival has meaning in order to go on:
"I think maybe they are watching, he said. They are watching for a thing that even death cannot undo and if they do not see it they will turn away from us and they will not come back."
The novel ends when the man can no longer physically go on, and with the promise that the boy's life will continue. But there are things that cannot "be made right again," things in his memory that will remain there. The author has walked this fictional boy down the road of torment to see what could be most "real" about such a person, and my conclusion is that if the boy hardens himself to the suffering of others, he will become like his forbears who destroyed the world. It is his weaknesses, those impulses which could jeopardize his survival, that remain the essence of his humanity.
The Road is a movie I know I don't want to see; I don't want to see the aggression and the blood. The horror. Older post-apocalyptic fiction focused on how terrible the idea of the end of the world is, what might have caused it, and sometimes how to start again. This newer kind focuses on the horrific details of surviving the end of the world, what we face if we just can't quit, if our aggression continues to escalate until that's all we are.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The Night Watch
The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters, is a WWII novel which introduces its characters backwards. As a result, I couldn't get to liking them in the usual way, by sympathizing with their fears and celebrating their happiness. I was plunged into their lives in 1947, after the war, when what had shaped them had already occurred. By the time I got to the second section of the novel, 1944, I'd decided that most of their motivations and their decisions were stupid. But in the second section I saw how they had been affected by the war. It was only when I got to the third section, 1941, that I could sympathize with them because I could possibly see myself making some of the same bad choices. It's an interesting narrative technique, but it doesn't work well on the first reading.
Near the beginning of the novel, when a character named Mr. Mundy who suffers from arthritis goes to a Christian Scientist and is told that he should not be taking aspirin because it is a "false remedy....If you will only not believe in the hurt of your leg, that leg will become as negligible to you as wood is," I felt intense sympathy for him (as a former fellow arthritis sufferer). Later, however, I learn that he worked as a prison guard and has provided a home for one of his former prisoners on the condition that this attractive young man will share his bed occasionally. The young man's story is heartbreaking, but it is doled out in such small bits that it is not understandable until the very end, when I finally realize how ludicrous everyone's attitude towards him has been.
Similarly, the repression and helplessness that the central group of lesbian ambulance drivers (the ones who work the "night watch") feel after the war is more comprehensible after seeing the relative freedom they enjoy and the heroic acts they perform in wartime. By the second section, I find out that my sympathy for Helen, who believes her lover Julia has been unfaithful, is misplaced, and that rather than judging Julia harshly for this speech, I should have seen the situation as she does:
"Is there something about affairs? Is it like--I don't know--Catholicism? One only spots the other Romans when one's practiced it oneself?"
The colossal stupidity of Viv, who nearly dies from an abortion because of her affair with a married man, isn't mitigated for me until the final few pages, when I meet Reggie as she does, for the first time, and he tells her within minutes of their meeting that he's married, some minutes after she's already fallen in love. Perhaps I'm not enough of a forgiving sort, because knowing why and how it could happen didn't make the sordidness of the first part of this novel any more palatable to me after the revelations occur.
The promise of first meeting on the last page does not outweigh the sadness of what is left on the first page, the opening image of a woman "whose clocks and wrist-watches have stopped, and who tells the time, instead, by the particular kind of cripple arriving at her landlord's door." The Night Watch weaves together several long, sad stories; I can think of only one good reason for wallowing through its pages, and that's to appreciate the extent to which we've made the lives of people like its homosexual characters marginally less miserable in the 60 years that have passed since the time period in which the events of the novel unfold.
Near the beginning of the novel, when a character named Mr. Mundy who suffers from arthritis goes to a Christian Scientist and is told that he should not be taking aspirin because it is a "false remedy....If you will only not believe in the hurt of your leg, that leg will become as negligible to you as wood is," I felt intense sympathy for him (as a former fellow arthritis sufferer). Later, however, I learn that he worked as a prison guard and has provided a home for one of his former prisoners on the condition that this attractive young man will share his bed occasionally. The young man's story is heartbreaking, but it is doled out in such small bits that it is not understandable until the very end, when I finally realize how ludicrous everyone's attitude towards him has been.
Similarly, the repression and helplessness that the central group of lesbian ambulance drivers (the ones who work the "night watch") feel after the war is more comprehensible after seeing the relative freedom they enjoy and the heroic acts they perform in wartime. By the second section, I find out that my sympathy for Helen, who believes her lover Julia has been unfaithful, is misplaced, and that rather than judging Julia harshly for this speech, I should have seen the situation as she does:
"Is there something about affairs? Is it like--I don't know--Catholicism? One only spots the other Romans when one's practiced it oneself?"
The colossal stupidity of Viv, who nearly dies from an abortion because of her affair with a married man, isn't mitigated for me until the final few pages, when I meet Reggie as she does, for the first time, and he tells her within minutes of their meeting that he's married, some minutes after she's already fallen in love. Perhaps I'm not enough of a forgiving sort, because knowing why and how it could happen didn't make the sordidness of the first part of this novel any more palatable to me after the revelations occur.
The promise of first meeting on the last page does not outweigh the sadness of what is left on the first page, the opening image of a woman "whose clocks and wrist-watches have stopped, and who tells the time, instead, by the particular kind of cripple arriving at her landlord's door." The Night Watch weaves together several long, sad stories; I can think of only one good reason for wallowing through its pages, and that's to appreciate the extent to which we've made the lives of people like its homosexual characters marginally less miserable in the 60 years that have passed since the time period in which the events of the novel unfold.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The Wasp Factory
The Wasp Factory, by Iain Banks, is one of the most repulsive and creepy novels I've ever read. I read it on the recommendation of Elizabeth, and while I don't entirely regret reading it, I will repeat the blurb from The Scotsman that appears on the back of my 1998 paperback edition: "There's nothing to force you, having been warned, to read it; nor do I recommend it." However, The Scotsman more recently reviews a theatrical production of The Wasp Factory, saying it misses the mark set by the novel, a "brilliant, chilling piece of island Scottish horror."
From the beginning, the protagonist of the novel, Frank Cauldhame, doesn't allow me to like him. He is first seen "making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles...sticking one of the mouse heads back on." Although he mentions the Wasp Factory on the very first page, it's not until much later that I find out how it works; any path a wasp chooses once it's caught and put into his maze leads to a different kind of death. Gradually I find out who "Old Saul" was and why Frank keeps his skull. Eventually Frank tells me why he killed three children, one of them his younger brother.
And yet Frank is not totally monstrous, which actually makes the story even more horrible. At one point, for instance, I entirely agree with him that "life has few pleasures to compare with dam-building. Give me a good broad beach with a reasonable slope and not too much seaweed, and a fair-sized stream, and I'll be happy all day, any day." Also the reason he kills the first child is because that child deliberately killed his pet rabbits in their hutches, which doesn't make it right, but makes his impulse a bit more understandable, at least to me.
I see how alone Frank is when he says things like this:
"I've always had a rather ambivalent attitude towards something happening to my father, and it persists. A death is always exciting, always makes you realise how alive you are, how vulnerable but so-far-lucky; but the death of somebody close gives you a good excuse to go a bit crazy for a while and do things that would otherwise be inexcusable. What delight to behave really badly and still get loads of sympathy!"
But any scrap of sympathy I might momentarily feel for Frank is methodically eradicated by the next account of his killings or his philosophy: "Both sexes can do one thing specially well; women can give birth and men can kill." Any sympathy I might feel for his predicament in a nearly silent and entirely undemonstrative family is eventually undermined by something like the detailed and sickening description of what drove his half-brother crazy. The final revelation of the novel, while shocking, is almost an anti-climax for me because of the matter-of-fact way my anticipation of horrors to come has been built up throughout the novel.
I don't enjoy being horrified, and yet I took pleasure in the ironic tone of this book.
From the beginning, the protagonist of the novel, Frank Cauldhame, doesn't allow me to like him. He is first seen "making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles...sticking one of the mouse heads back on." Although he mentions the Wasp Factory on the very first page, it's not until much later that I find out how it works; any path a wasp chooses once it's caught and put into his maze leads to a different kind of death. Gradually I find out who "Old Saul" was and why Frank keeps his skull. Eventually Frank tells me why he killed three children, one of them his younger brother.
And yet Frank is not totally monstrous, which actually makes the story even more horrible. At one point, for instance, I entirely agree with him that "life has few pleasures to compare with dam-building. Give me a good broad beach with a reasonable slope and not too much seaweed, and a fair-sized stream, and I'll be happy all day, any day." Also the reason he kills the first child is because that child deliberately killed his pet rabbits in their hutches, which doesn't make it right, but makes his impulse a bit more understandable, at least to me.
I see how alone Frank is when he says things like this:
"I've always had a rather ambivalent attitude towards something happening to my father, and it persists. A death is always exciting, always makes you realise how alive you are, how vulnerable but so-far-lucky; but the death of somebody close gives you a good excuse to go a bit crazy for a while and do things that would otherwise be inexcusable. What delight to behave really badly and still get loads of sympathy!"
But any scrap of sympathy I might momentarily feel for Frank is methodically eradicated by the next account of his killings or his philosophy: "Both sexes can do one thing specially well; women can give birth and men can kill." Any sympathy I might feel for his predicament in a nearly silent and entirely undemonstrative family is eventually undermined by something like the detailed and sickening description of what drove his half-brother crazy. The final revelation of the novel, while shocking, is almost an anti-climax for me because of the matter-of-fact way my anticipation of horrors to come has been built up throughout the novel.
I don't enjoy being horrified, and yet I took pleasure in the ironic tone of this book.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Christmas Day Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers
I looked through one entire deck of cards for the book-lover's trivial pursuit game to find some that had to do with Christmas, since it falls on a Friday this year. I found only one Christmas question, and here it is, at the end:
Children's: What novel centers on a teen from the kingdom of Alagaesia who finds a bright blue dragon egg?
Classics: What novel by Jane Austen concerns Anne Elliot's regrets at being talked out of marrying the love of her life?
Non-Fiction: What 88-year-old historian chatted about death with 60 folks to pen Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Book Club: What Kurosawa film do single mom Sibylla and her six-year-old son watch incessantly, in Helen Dewitt's debut novel, The Last Samurai?
Authors: What prolific children's author has hosted a weekly BBC Radio show called Jakestown for 20 years?
Book Bag: What Yuletide tale finds Santa stuffing beef jerky and Moon Pies into the stockings of trailer-park denizens Bubba and Earlene?
Children's: What novel centers on a teen from the kingdom of Alagaesia who finds a bright blue dragon egg?
Classics: What novel by Jane Austen concerns Anne Elliot's regrets at being talked out of marrying the love of her life?
Non-Fiction: What 88-year-old historian chatted about death with 60 folks to pen Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Book Club: What Kurosawa film do single mom Sibylla and her six-year-old son watch incessantly, in Helen Dewitt's debut novel, The Last Samurai?
Authors: What prolific children's author has hosted a weekly BBC Radio show called Jakestown for 20 years?
Book Bag: What Yuletide tale finds Santa stuffing beef jerky and Moon Pies into the stockings of trailer-park denizens Bubba and Earlene?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Six to Eight Black Men
I was introduced to David Sedaris' essay "Six to Eight Black Men" when my friend Laura sent me a copy of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim with a note saying "if nothing else, read 6 to 8 Black Men." I did, and I laughed so hard (in public) that I literally couldn't stop laughing for a while. Since then I've given countless copies of the volume entitled Holidays on Ice to people who tell me they haven't yet read this wonderful essay.
My son always wants me to recite a paragraph when I say goodnight to him on Christmas Eve: "Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before you go to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared."
So if you haven't read it yet, click on over to Esquire Magazine, where they have a version of it you can read right now!
My son always wants me to recite a paragraph when I say goodnight to him on Christmas Eve: "Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before you go to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared."
So if you haven't read it yet, click on over to Esquire Magazine, where they have a version of it you can read right now!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Great Cathedrals
I love Christmas card photos and newsletters. I love the conventions, the traditional poses, and also the people who send or show me the outtake photos! In the last few years I've been fascinated with holiday photos taken in France, so often posed in front of the Eiffel tower. In reaction, I felt compelled to choose a photo of my family in front of the red carpet entrance to the movie awards auditorium in Cannes. Here's one I took in front of Chartres; I wanted a pose with the scaffolding, because we thought it would be good for our claim that we were there for the rebuilding after the demolition of the cathedral at Chartres.
I also love reading poems by George Bilgere because he's funny, thoughtful, and once had the good taste to give an award to a poem written by my daughter. Here's one of his poems that had me laughing out loud, Great Cathedrals:
Before a date, my college roommate
Used to drive his candy-apple red Camaro
Down to the car wash and spend the afternoon
Washing, waxing, vacuuming it,
Detailing the chrome strips, buffing the fenders,
Spraying the big expensive tires
With their raised white lettering
That said something like Intruder
or Marauder, with a silicone spray
Until they were slick and dark as sex.
He polished that car as if each caress,
Each pass of the chamois, each loving
Stroke of the terry cloth would increase,
By measurable degrees,
The likelihood that in the immaculate
Front seat, with its film of freshly applied
Vinyl cleaner, at the end of a cul-de-sac
Somewhere above the campus,
She would consent to be rubbed
And buffed just as lovingly.
We do what we can,
And if God is no more impressed
By the cathedral at Chartres
Than by a righteously clean and cherry
Camaro, at least He can't say
We haven't tried
With all our might to conceal our fear
That we have little else to offer
Than stained glass or polished chrome,
The elbow grease of our good intentions.
So I'm happy to see
That in the Christmas card photo he sent
Mark stands, balding now,
With a dignified gut, a pretty wife,
And a couple of nice-looking kids, in front
Of the great cathedral
Like the sweet vision of a future
He'd been vouchsafed one day
Long ago, through Turtle Wax
On a gleaming hubcap.
Here's to all of you, that your families may appreciate at least the elbow grease of your good intentions this holiday season!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?
Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me, by Louise Rennison, is subtitled "Final Confessions of Georgia Nicolson." It's the final book in the series (listed in order here):
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
It's OK, I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers (UK) On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (US)
Knocked Out by my Nunga-Nungas
Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants
And That's When It Fell Off in My Hand (UK) Away Laughing on a Fast Camel (US)
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers
Startled By His Furry Shorts
Luuurve is a Many Trousered Thing (UK) Love is a Many Trousered Thing (US)
Stop in the Name of Pants
Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?
Eleanor and I found this last book an entirely satisfactory ending to the series, especially because Georgia ends up with The Right Boy. No, I'm not going to tell you who it is. But I'll bet you'll agree, if you've read any of the previous books!
I was particularly tickled by Georgia's treatment of her parents, this time around, especially this scene with her mother:
"Mum came mumming in, in her knickers. Well, if you can call them that.
Hang on a minute.
I said, "Mum, are you wearing a thong?"
She is. She is wearing a thong!
I said to her, "If you have a road accident, I will not be coming to explain your underwear to the emergency services."
She just looked at me and went off into the bathroom....Well. Then I remembered my new shoes.
I shouted to her, "Mum, could I just borrow..."
Before I could finish, she shouted back, "No!"
What is the point of parents? They wonder why the youth of today goes wrong. If they would merely give us what we wanted and keep away from us, all would be well....
Instead of Mum just lending me her black Chanel stilettos and everything being nice and easy, I am now going to have to sneak into her wardrobe, smuggle them out in my bag, wear them, sneak back into her room, and replace them.
They force us into a life of crime."
Oh, the teenage logic! It's funnier when it's not your own kid.
I laughed my way through Georgia's usual neologisms and the regularly-scheduled antics of her cat, which were amplified, in this book, by the addition of a budgie to her household. Georgia's cat Angus stares at the budgie much the same way our cat Tristan stared at our parakeets:
"Bum-ty seems to have fewer and fewer feathers. And she has gone off her Trill.
I'm not surprised with the twenty-four-hour cat staring that goes on."
The title line is deftly woven in, not only with some of the running jokes of the whole series, but with the particular plot of this novel. I think Rennison's timing is impeccable, and she's left her so-far-most famous creation, Georgia, at the right time, and in the right place.
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
It's OK, I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers (UK) On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (US)
Knocked Out by my Nunga-Nungas
Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants
And That's When It Fell Off in My Hand (UK) Away Laughing on a Fast Camel (US)
Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers
Startled By His Furry Shorts
Luuurve is a Many Trousered Thing (UK) Love is a Many Trousered Thing (US)
Stop in the Name of Pants
Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?
Eleanor and I found this last book an entirely satisfactory ending to the series, especially because Georgia ends up with The Right Boy. No, I'm not going to tell you who it is. But I'll bet you'll agree, if you've read any of the previous books!
I was particularly tickled by Georgia's treatment of her parents, this time around, especially this scene with her mother:
"Mum came mumming in, in her knickers. Well, if you can call them that.
Hang on a minute.
I said, "Mum, are you wearing a thong?"
She is. She is wearing a thong!
I said to her, "If you have a road accident, I will not be coming to explain your underwear to the emergency services."
She just looked at me and went off into the bathroom....Well. Then I remembered my new shoes.
I shouted to her, "Mum, could I just borrow..."
Before I could finish, she shouted back, "No!"
What is the point of parents? They wonder why the youth of today goes wrong. If they would merely give us what we wanted and keep away from us, all would be well....
Instead of Mum just lending me her black Chanel stilettos and everything being nice and easy, I am now going to have to sneak into her wardrobe, smuggle them out in my bag, wear them, sneak back into her room, and replace them.
They force us into a life of crime."
Oh, the teenage logic! It's funnier when it's not your own kid.
I laughed my way through Georgia's usual neologisms and the regularly-scheduled antics of her cat, which were amplified, in this book, by the addition of a budgie to her household. Georgia's cat Angus stares at the budgie much the same way our cat Tristan stared at our parakeets:
"Bum-ty seems to have fewer and fewer feathers. And she has gone off her Trill.
I'm not surprised with the twenty-four-hour cat staring that goes on."
The title line is deftly woven in, not only with some of the running jokes of the whole series, but with the particular plot of this novel. I think Rennison's timing is impeccable, and she's left her so-far-most famous creation, Georgia, at the right time, and in the right place.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers
And now, back by popular demand, the Friday edition of Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers! If you want to play, put your answers in the comments. Correct answers will appear later in the comments.
Children's: What book begins when a compassionate elephant in the jungle of Nool hears "a small noise"?
Classics: What novel by Dashiell Hammet centers on a forgery fobbed off by a Russian named Kemidov?
Non-Fiction (!): What celebrity psychic insisted that Dean Martin was stuck on earth until his son Paul came to fetch him in her book Visits from the Afterlife?
Book Club: What Christopher Moore novel features a whale that lifts its tail to reveal the message "Bite me"?
Favorite authors: What Italian-born author worked for British Intelligence in WWI before penning novels like Scaramouche and Captain Blood?
Book bag: Who can readers accessorize with new tattoos and a bra and panties, in the unauthorized paper doll book Bad As I Wanna Dress?
Children's: What book begins when a compassionate elephant in the jungle of Nool hears "a small noise"?
Classics: What novel by Dashiell Hammet centers on a forgery fobbed off by a Russian named Kemidov?
Non-Fiction (!): What celebrity psychic insisted that Dean Martin was stuck on earth until his son Paul came to fetch him in her book Visits from the Afterlife?
Book Club: What Christopher Moore novel features a whale that lifts its tail to reveal the message "Bite me"?
Favorite authors: What Italian-born author worked for British Intelligence in WWI before penning novels like Scaramouche and Captain Blood?
Book bag: Who can readers accessorize with new tattoos and a bra and panties, in the unauthorized paper doll book Bad As I Wanna Dress?
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Book Blogger Holiday Swap
Yesterday I got a book I didn't even know I wanted yet from my no-longer-secret Santa, Kelly at A Writer's World. It's The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, and I'm looking forward to reading it!
I hope my secret Santa gift, to Cherry Mischievous in the U.K. (Wales, I think) was received with as much excitement and joy.
I hope my secret Santa gift, to Cherry Mischievous in the U.K. (Wales, I think) was received with as much excitement and joy.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Box of Delights
Last December we were reading The Midnight Folk, by John Masefield, at my house, and Harriet was reading Masefield's The Box of Delights at hers, so this December I wanted to read The Box of Delights. Both stories have the same hero, a boy named Kay Harker, but in The Box of Delights (published 1935) he is older than he was in The Midnight Folk (published 1927). The Box of Delights is available as a lovely red and green re-issued volume.
The story begins as Kay takes the train home from school for the Christmas holidays and is kind to a little old man who carries a Punch and Judy show upon his back. As in any fairy tale, his kindness reaps its reward--first in his being entrusted to carry a message--"the wolves are running"--and then in seeing the old man's show, which is not a typical puppet show, but one in which toy soldiers come to life, butterflies fly around the room, and then two dice turn into "a little red shark, snapping after a little white skate; he swam round and round the room after it, always just missing it, and at last, when he had almost caught it, the skate turned into a skylark and went up singing to the ceiling. Instantly the shark turned into a hawk and went after her." There are dangers in Kay's world, and none of them are softened just because he is still only 11 or 12 years old.
The little old man, whose name is Cole Hawlings, needs to escape from his pursuers, the "wolves", so he goes into a picture on the wall in Kay's house. He gives Kay the box of delights so the pursuers won't get it, and Kay uses it to have adventures. Kay is old enough to have considerable freedom around his neighborhood, especially once his guardian, Caroline Louisa, has been called away, but he is still young enough to trust his feelings without too much questioning:
"Kay could not have been long asleep when he woke up feeling certan that there was something very important to be done at King Arthur's Camp. He rolled over, thinking 'Well, it isn't likely that anything is to be done there at this time of night,' and was very soon asleep again. However, his dreams turned to King Arthur's Camp. He saw the place, half woke, then slept and saw it again At this, he woke up wide awake, convinced that he must go there at once."
As Harriet also observes, Kay takes the fantastic things that happen to him in stride. The games he plays at home aren't markedly different from the adventures he has with The Box of Delights, where he meets Herne the Hunter and one of Alexander the Great's biggest fans. When one of his adventures delays his arrival home, he is told "we're not going to wait any longer. We've been waiting simply hours as it is. You've had your chance of being a pirate and you haven't taken it, and now you'll be a merchantman, and you'll be captured and tortured, and then you'll have to walk the plank, and Peter and I are going to be the sharks that will eat you." Later, when the box of delights has taken him to Troy, he ends up on "a merchant ship which has been captured by pirates" and is marooned by the pirates.
Kay is rescued by Herne in a chariot drawn by dolphins: "Kay loved it more than anything that had ever happened to him. It was exquisite to feel the dolphins quivering to the leap, and to surge upwards into the bright light with flying fish sparkling on each side; then to surge down into the water, scattering the spray like bright fire, full of rainbows, then to leap on and on, wave after wave, mile after mile. In the thrill and delight of this leaping journey Kay fell asleep."
In the end, the people taken by the "wolves" are rescued, and just in time for the Christmas Eve service. Although the Bishop initially thinks they won't get there in time, Cole and Kay know that "we needn't give up hope yet," and sure enough, the Lady of the Oak tree arrives in a sleigh drawn by lions and Herne the Hunter arrives in one drawn by unicorns, and everyone gets to church in time to light it up and sing carols.
This is a cozy little fantasy/adventure story for dark December evenings. The shifts between dreaming and waking make it a good bedtime story too, as Harriet attests. What are your favorite December bedtime stories? Here at non-Necromancy headquarters, we've always been fond of The Grinch who Stole Christmas, a William Joyce picture book entitled Santa Calls, and David Sedaris' essay "Six to Eight Black Men."
The story begins as Kay takes the train home from school for the Christmas holidays and is kind to a little old man who carries a Punch and Judy show upon his back. As in any fairy tale, his kindness reaps its reward--first in his being entrusted to carry a message--"the wolves are running"--and then in seeing the old man's show, which is not a typical puppet show, but one in which toy soldiers come to life, butterflies fly around the room, and then two dice turn into "a little red shark, snapping after a little white skate; he swam round and round the room after it, always just missing it, and at last, when he had almost caught it, the skate turned into a skylark and went up singing to the ceiling. Instantly the shark turned into a hawk and went after her." There are dangers in Kay's world, and none of them are softened just because he is still only 11 or 12 years old.
The little old man, whose name is Cole Hawlings, needs to escape from his pursuers, the "wolves", so he goes into a picture on the wall in Kay's house. He gives Kay the box of delights so the pursuers won't get it, and Kay uses it to have adventures. Kay is old enough to have considerable freedom around his neighborhood, especially once his guardian, Caroline Louisa, has been called away, but he is still young enough to trust his feelings without too much questioning:
"Kay could not have been long asleep when he woke up feeling certan that there was something very important to be done at King Arthur's Camp. He rolled over, thinking 'Well, it isn't likely that anything is to be done there at this time of night,' and was very soon asleep again. However, his dreams turned to King Arthur's Camp. He saw the place, half woke, then slept and saw it again At this, he woke up wide awake, convinced that he must go there at once."
As Harriet also observes, Kay takes the fantastic things that happen to him in stride. The games he plays at home aren't markedly different from the adventures he has with The Box of Delights, where he meets Herne the Hunter and one of Alexander the Great's biggest fans. When one of his adventures delays his arrival home, he is told "we're not going to wait any longer. We've been waiting simply hours as it is. You've had your chance of being a pirate and you haven't taken it, and now you'll be a merchantman, and you'll be captured and tortured, and then you'll have to walk the plank, and Peter and I are going to be the sharks that will eat you." Later, when the box of delights has taken him to Troy, he ends up on "a merchant ship which has been captured by pirates" and is marooned by the pirates.
Kay is rescued by Herne in a chariot drawn by dolphins: "Kay loved it more than anything that had ever happened to him. It was exquisite to feel the dolphins quivering to the leap, and to surge upwards into the bright light with flying fish sparkling on each side; then to surge down into the water, scattering the spray like bright fire, full of rainbows, then to leap on and on, wave after wave, mile after mile. In the thrill and delight of this leaping journey Kay fell asleep."
In the end, the people taken by the "wolves" are rescued, and just in time for the Christmas Eve service. Although the Bishop initially thinks they won't get there in time, Cole and Kay know that "we needn't give up hope yet," and sure enough, the Lady of the Oak tree arrives in a sleigh drawn by lions and Herne the Hunter arrives in one drawn by unicorns, and everyone gets to church in time to light it up and sing carols.
This is a cozy little fantasy/adventure story for dark December evenings. The shifts between dreaming and waking make it a good bedtime story too, as Harriet attests. What are your favorite December bedtime stories? Here at non-Necromancy headquarters, we've always been fond of The Grinch who Stole Christmas, a William Joyce picture book entitled Santa Calls, and David Sedaris' essay "Six to Eight Black Men."
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same
It's oddly quiet in my house this morning. There's a cat in the kitchen, playing with the little plastic piece that comes off the milk carton when I open it. But there's no tinkling of little bells, no burbling or warbling or whistling. There's no rasping sound of beak sharpening. The parakeets are gone.
We got parakeets when we realized that parrots and macaws were too intelligent and needed too much care to live happily in our busy household, and when we read about how long they live and that taking one into your family entails extracting promises from the next generation about their care and feeding for the rest of their long (up to 150 years) life. But good pet owners let the caged animals out for a portion of every day; why else live with an animal that can't roam free? So parakeets and cats were a stupid combination. Even our tamest cat, Sammy, would reach up a desultory paw when our first white parakeet, Jack Sparrow, swooped overhead.
We tried to put the cats outside when we let the birds out, but something always happened. A cat slipped in with a kid. Jack Sparrow swooped too low over Sabrina and had his neck broken in an instant. (Later that day, to distract me in my sorrow, I went to see the movie Elizabethtown, in which a white bird literally goes down in flames.)
Will Turner, our gloriously green companion bird, was called "the bird who lived" because he once survived being taken downstairs in Sabrina's mouth. Will and his white and blue companion bird, Jack the second, lived happily in a cage hung from a high hook in the corner of our dining room for several years, going outside in their cage when it was nice weather; I hung the cage from a high hook on our deck.
But then we got Tristan, whose mission in life was to get the birds. We had to move the hermit crabs out of the dining room and make sure the chairs were always scooted in so he couldn't get a running start at the cage. Despite precautionary measures, he twice managed a great leap that left him hanging on the front of the birdcage, drenched with water from the attached cup. And he found a way to get on the roof of the deck and menace the birdcage from above, making it impossible to hang it outside unless someone was there with it, keeping a continuous eye on it.
Jack the second got sick and expired this fall. Will Turner was so sad that I went to the local pet store looking for something to cheer him up and brought home another green companion bird we named Elizabeth Swan. They seemed very happy together for what turned out to be the last month of Will's life. The bird lady at the pet store told me that 4-5 years was a pretty good lifespan for a caged parakeet, even though the books said it should be 12-15 with the right nutrition-- which I provided daily, chopping up little bits of fruits and vegetables. So with a heavy heart I brought Elizabeth back to the pet store, where I had the small satisfaction of seeing her put back among her siblings.
And now there's no birdsong in my house. Looking for a poem about birds, I found this one by Robert Frost, Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same:
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tune of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Parakeets don't easily learn to talk, even if you keep a male bird alone and give him enough attention that you become his "flock" as the books advise. But they do chirp and twitter the cadences they hear, and second only to hearing my children whistle and sing, which they do almost continuously when they're home, I liked to hear the parakeets' echo of our household noise in the hours that I'm here alone.
Except for four cats and six hermit crabs. And the rabbit. I guess no one is really ever alone at our house.
We got parakeets when we realized that parrots and macaws were too intelligent and needed too much care to live happily in our busy household, and when we read about how long they live and that taking one into your family entails extracting promises from the next generation about their care and feeding for the rest of their long (up to 150 years) life. But good pet owners let the caged animals out for a portion of every day; why else live with an animal that can't roam free? So parakeets and cats were a stupid combination. Even our tamest cat, Sammy, would reach up a desultory paw when our first white parakeet, Jack Sparrow, swooped overhead.
We tried to put the cats outside when we let the birds out, but something always happened. A cat slipped in with a kid. Jack Sparrow swooped too low over Sabrina and had his neck broken in an instant. (Later that day, to distract me in my sorrow, I went to see the movie Elizabethtown, in which a white bird literally goes down in flames.)
Will Turner, our gloriously green companion bird, was called "the bird who lived" because he once survived being taken downstairs in Sabrina's mouth. Will and his white and blue companion bird, Jack the second, lived happily in a cage hung from a high hook in the corner of our dining room for several years, going outside in their cage when it was nice weather; I hung the cage from a high hook on our deck.
But then we got Tristan, whose mission in life was to get the birds. We had to move the hermit crabs out of the dining room and make sure the chairs were always scooted in so he couldn't get a running start at the cage. Despite precautionary measures, he twice managed a great leap that left him hanging on the front of the birdcage, drenched with water from the attached cup. And he found a way to get on the roof of the deck and menace the birdcage from above, making it impossible to hang it outside unless someone was there with it, keeping a continuous eye on it.
Jack the second got sick and expired this fall. Will Turner was so sad that I went to the local pet store looking for something to cheer him up and brought home another green companion bird we named Elizabeth Swan. They seemed very happy together for what turned out to be the last month of Will's life. The bird lady at the pet store told me that 4-5 years was a pretty good lifespan for a caged parakeet, even though the books said it should be 12-15 with the right nutrition-- which I provided daily, chopping up little bits of fruits and vegetables. So with a heavy heart I brought Elizabeth back to the pet store, where I had the small satisfaction of seeing her put back among her siblings.
And now there's no birdsong in my house. Looking for a poem about birds, I found this one by Robert Frost, Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same:
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tune of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Parakeets don't easily learn to talk, even if you keep a male bird alone and give him enough attention that you become his "flock" as the books advise. But they do chirp and twitter the cadences they hear, and second only to hearing my children whistle and sing, which they do almost continuously when they're home, I liked to hear the parakeets' echo of our household noise in the hours that I'm here alone.
Except for four cats and six hermit crabs. And the rabbit. I guess no one is really ever alone at our house.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers: Answers
1. In the "children's" category: Who included a star-studded CD along with her songbook Philadelphia Chickens, hyped as a "too-illogical zoological musical revue"?
Sandra Boynton
2. In the "classics" category: What Arthur Conan Doyle character was based on a shrewd Victorian criminal named Adam Worth?
Professor Moriarty
3. In the "non-fiction" category: What hot-selling 1995 instructional manual was subtitled Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right?
The Rules
4. In the "book club" category: What tearjerker was the first William Styron book ever performed as an opera?
Sophie's Choice
5. In the "authors" category: What best selling novelist was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an "Outstanding American" in 1992?
John Irving
6. In the "book bag" category: What was Janet Evanovich's follow-up to her best-selling thriller One for the Money?
Two for the Dough
PAJ, like me, got all but #3. Harriet got all but #6 (I LIKE those Stephanie Plum novels!). And Florinda got all but #1 (anyone with children under the age of 13 needs to hear Philadelphia Chickens!) Thanks for playing. Should we do this here again, perhaps with a shorter answer time? (Did you notice that Paperback Reader is asking one of these questions every Tuesday?)
Sandra Boynton
2. In the "classics" category: What Arthur Conan Doyle character was based on a shrewd Victorian criminal named Adam Worth?
Professor Moriarty
3. In the "non-fiction" category: What hot-selling 1995 instructional manual was subtitled Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right?
The Rules
4. In the "book club" category: What tearjerker was the first William Styron book ever performed as an opera?
Sophie's Choice
5. In the "authors" category: What best selling novelist was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an "Outstanding American" in 1992?
John Irving
6. In the "book bag" category: What was Janet Evanovich's follow-up to her best-selling thriller One for the Money?
Two for the Dough
PAJ, like me, got all but #3. Harriet got all but #6 (I LIKE those Stephanie Plum novels!). And Florinda got all but #1 (anyone with children under the age of 13 needs to hear Philadelphia Chickens!) Thanks for playing. Should we do this here again, perhaps with a shorter answer time? (Did you notice that Paperback Reader is asking one of these questions every Tuesday?)
Friday, December 11, 2009
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., by Robert J. Hensler, is a novel that I wouldn't ordinarily read, so I'm counting it as a Critical Monkey contest entry. What compelled me to read it? It was found in a rented beach house, and it wasn't even my beach house. FreshHell mailed it to me; it was almost like a dare to read the whole thing.
Published in 1977, this novel, Washington, D.C., has everything. Power! Sex! Sixties-style revolutionaries who want to blow everything up but are too inept!
The power guy is a senator from Connecticut who thinks he can make the world better by exposing corruption in government. He also wears bell-bottom pants. Readers can guess that at the end of the novel, he'll emerge a sadder and wiser man. When he goes to a party full of political movers and shakers, the hostess greets him:
"Oh Royce," she gushed expansively, "it's so chic to have a real folk hero at one of my parties."
The sex is called "balling" by both men and women. It occurs only between the revolutionaries or the politically corrupt. But don't worry, there are plenty of those, and it's very explicit. The anatomical terms are all correct.
The leader of the inept sixties-style revolutionaries is Leo Phast, a really hep cat who despises almost everyone:
"These kids. Talking revolution. As if revolution was something you talked about. It was more than simple semantics, his mind raced. It was something you did. Revolution was something that took hold of you and filled your mind and body with elation. That force, that letting yourself do it, that was the God-head speaking. Right to you. In terms that your body could understand. Not just your mind."
The writing, wooden throughout, occasionally plunges to this level:
"Sims walked to the parking lot behind Martin's office on Oakleaf Drive in Silver, Spring, Maryland, a short drive from metropolitan Washington. He found his car key in his pocket, opened the Mercedes' door, and slid into the seat. The car was hot, and Sims started the engine and the air conditioner immediately."
Another pleasure of the mid-1970's setting is the up-to-the-minute use of slang:
"Back at the kitchen table, she opened the Herald and turned immediately to Madison Bock's column. Sure enough, she thought to herself as she read, the bum had gigged Lynn."
In the end, Royce, the honest politician, tells his wife that she can't leave him because "I have my plans. I have my career. And you have yours. Your job is being my wife. Being with me. Being mother to Jess and Adam." And there is, finally, some pleasure for me in this novel, in imagining his wife remembering this speech years later, especially the part where he tells her "I have to get in there and hustle my ass off, just to be able to say I'm a man. That's what this Linde affair was all about. And that's what nineteen seventy-six will be about." Okay, maybe so, fella, but it's nice to think that, like the cigarette commercial from your day prophesied, "you've come a long way, baby!"
I'll pass this book on to anyone who's a glutton for punishment--a genuine discard from the 70's that wasn't worth taking home after a beach trip and hasn't been read since.
Published in 1977, this novel, Washington, D.C., has everything. Power! Sex! Sixties-style revolutionaries who want to blow everything up but are too inept!
The power guy is a senator from Connecticut who thinks he can make the world better by exposing corruption in government. He also wears bell-bottom pants. Readers can guess that at the end of the novel, he'll emerge a sadder and wiser man. When he goes to a party full of political movers and shakers, the hostess greets him:
"Oh Royce," she gushed expansively, "it's so chic to have a real folk hero at one of my parties."
The sex is called "balling" by both men and women. It occurs only between the revolutionaries or the politically corrupt. But don't worry, there are plenty of those, and it's very explicit. The anatomical terms are all correct.
The leader of the inept sixties-style revolutionaries is Leo Phast, a really hep cat who despises almost everyone:
"These kids. Talking revolution. As if revolution was something you talked about. It was more than simple semantics, his mind raced. It was something you did. Revolution was something that took hold of you and filled your mind and body with elation. That force, that letting yourself do it, that was the God-head speaking. Right to you. In terms that your body could understand. Not just your mind."
The writing, wooden throughout, occasionally plunges to this level:
"Sims walked to the parking lot behind Martin's office on Oakleaf Drive in Silver, Spring, Maryland, a short drive from metropolitan Washington. He found his car key in his pocket, opened the Mercedes' door, and slid into the seat. The car was hot, and Sims started the engine and the air conditioner immediately."
Another pleasure of the mid-1970's setting is the up-to-the-minute use of slang:
"Back at the kitchen table, she opened the Herald and turned immediately to Madison Bock's column. Sure enough, she thought to herself as she read, the bum had gigged Lynn."
In the end, Royce, the honest politician, tells his wife that she can't leave him because "I have my plans. I have my career. And you have yours. Your job is being my wife. Being with me. Being mother to Jess and Adam." And there is, finally, some pleasure for me in this novel, in imagining his wife remembering this speech years later, especially the part where he tells her "I have to get in there and hustle my ass off, just to be able to say I'm a man. That's what this Linde affair was all about. And that's what nineteen seventy-six will be about." Okay, maybe so, fella, but it's nice to think that, like the cigarette commercial from your day prophesied, "you've come a long way, baby!"
I'll pass this book on to anyone who's a glutton for punishment--a genuine discard from the 70's that wasn't worth taking home after a beach trip and hasn't been read since.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers
My friend Karen, who is a chemistry professor, made a Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers game appear in my mailbox at the local college, saying in the attached card that it was time for it to find a more literary home where the kind of loud, animated games she imagines for it might get played over the holidays.
Well, at Non-Necromancy Headquarters we fully intend to make her dream come true. But first, I thought I'd give you a chance to play. I'll give you all of the questions on one card and you'll attempt to answer as many as you can in the comments. Then the right answers will appear here on Monday (Dec. 14).
Ready?
1. In the "children's" category: Who included a star-studded CD along with her songbook Philadelphia Chickens, hyped as a "too-illogical zoological musical revue"?
2. In the "classics" category: What Arthur Conan Doyle character was based on a shrewd Victorian criminal named Adam Worth?
3. In the "non-fiction" category: What hot-selling 1995 instructional manual was subtitled Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right?
4. In the "book club" category: What tearjerker was the first William Styron book ever performed as an opera?
5. In the "authors" category: What best selling novelist was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an "Outstanding American" in 1992?
6. In the "book bag" category: What was Janet Evanovich's follow-up to her best-selling thriller One for the Money?
Go!
Well, at Non-Necromancy Headquarters we fully intend to make her dream come true. But first, I thought I'd give you a chance to play. I'll give you all of the questions on one card and you'll attempt to answer as many as you can in the comments. Then the right answers will appear here on Monday (Dec. 14).
Ready?
1. In the "children's" category: Who included a star-studded CD along with her songbook Philadelphia Chickens, hyped as a "too-illogical zoological musical revue"?
2. In the "classics" category: What Arthur Conan Doyle character was based on a shrewd Victorian criminal named Adam Worth?
3. In the "non-fiction" category: What hot-selling 1995 instructional manual was subtitled Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right?
4. In the "book club" category: What tearjerker was the first William Styron book ever performed as an opera?
5. In the "authors" category: What best selling novelist was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an "Outstanding American" in 1992?
6. In the "book bag" category: What was Janet Evanovich's follow-up to her best-selling thriller One for the Money?
Go!
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Shoveling Snow with Buddha
This Billy Collins poem is for Andrew, who has been musing on walking meditation and snow shoveling, and who has been getting snowed on already because he lives in the Chicago area. (We aren't getting any of the snow, but we're getting high winds, so I've been making my usual preparations for the almost inevitable power outage later today.)
Shoveling Snow with Buddha
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over the mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.
Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm and slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?
But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.
This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling,
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.
All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside the generous pocket of his silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.
After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?
Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck,
and our boots stand dripping by the door.
Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.
I feel much more Buddha-like than usual, as I've succumbed to a sinus infection. I'm taking codeine cough syrup at night, which gives me weird dreams but makes me feel tranquil in between the coughing fits that go on every time I awaken. I'm taking another cough medicine during the day when I can; it has a drowsiness warning and I'm not supposed to take it when I might have to drive anywhere. But I haven't been driving much of anywhere. I haven't been doing all the Christmas errands. I haven't even done the laundry that's piling up. I'm just sitting here and reading whatever comes to hand, in a tranquil and oddly silent way, since for a few days I had complete laryngitis and now have only an edge of a voice.
I would like it to be vacation already, so there would be someone home to play cards with! It's interesting to feel such calm at such a busy time of year. Who would like some of my calm? Here. Sit down. Look into my i's.
Shoveling Snow with Buddha
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over the mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.
Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm and slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?
But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.
This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling,
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.
All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside the generous pocket of his silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.
After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?
Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck,
and our boots stand dripping by the door.
Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.
I feel much more Buddha-like than usual, as I've succumbed to a sinus infection. I'm taking codeine cough syrup at night, which gives me weird dreams but makes me feel tranquil in between the coughing fits that go on every time I awaken. I'm taking another cough medicine during the day when I can; it has a drowsiness warning and I'm not supposed to take it when I might have to drive anywhere. But I haven't been driving much of anywhere. I haven't been doing all the Christmas errands. I haven't even done the laundry that's piling up. I'm just sitting here and reading whatever comes to hand, in a tranquil and oddly silent way, since for a few days I had complete laryngitis and now have only an edge of a voice.
I would like it to be vacation already, so there would be someone home to play cards with! It's interesting to feel such calm at such a busy time of year. Who would like some of my calm? Here. Sit down. Look into my i's.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Believe Me
I began reading Believe Me, by Nina Killham, with some trepidation. The author initially approached me about reading this novel, and I agreed to let her publicist for Plume Paperbacks (Penguin) sent me a copy. What worried me was the blurb, describing the novel as about a relationship between a mother who is "an atheist and staunch Darwinist" and a son who "is starting to embrace the teachings of the bible and Creationist theory" whose "beliefs are put to the test" when "an unexpected tragedy strikes." What does this sound like to you? To me, it sounds like religion to the rescue. But I was pleasantly surprised by the complications of this novel, which advocates for neither "side," but tells a story showing how difficult it can be to respect the beliefs of others.
The protagonist of the novel is Nic, age 13. That interests me already, as the mother of a 13-year-old boy. And his grandmother spouts the inoculation theory of religion, which I've spouted ever since before I first became a mother (once, memorably, to an Episcopalian priest): "Of course he's going to grow up and join some weird cult. What did you expect? You've got to give him a bit in the beginning so he can grow antibodies to the real crazy stuff." But Nic's mother, Lucy, is an atheist and has raised him as one, while many of the cool kids at his school are fundamentalist Christians. That interests me too, as one inhabitant of a small town where the school board still hasn't managed to fire a teacher (John Freshwater) who has done some of the same kinds of things that a character in this novel, Mr. Branden, does:
"He brought a Bible to class one day. Made this big show of sneaking it out of the drawer....One day Ms White, our principal, came in and sat at the back of the class taking notes. Mr. Branden didn't mention [God] once."
There's also a character in the novel, Mrs. Porter, who I was prepared to dislike, early on, because she "got them to put stickers on the biology books saying that evolution is just a theory." But as the novel goes on, the characters become more real, and Mrs. Porter also does some genuinely thoughtful things for people, including Nic and his mother. She reminds me of the mother of a boy on Walker's soccer team who is an ardent John Freshwater supporter and also one of the nicest people I've ever met.
I thought Nic's mother missed a good chance to explain the difference between a philosophical and a scientific theory when she and Nic discuss some of the young-earth creationist books Mrs. Porter gives Nic. But this is a story about people, and the interest of it is not so much in the ideas, but in hearing about stuff like the 13-year-old's opinions about who God likes (his pretty young friend Sandra Miller) and who God doesn't like (Mrs. Vogler, an old lady whose child was killed in an auto accident). The part where Nic wishes for a mother like Mrs. Porter, who would "probably jump up and offer to make me a sandwich" rings absolutely true to me. Also the part where the 13-year-old blames his mother for the failure of his parents' marriage sounds like genuine young teen ranting: "all she had to do was make some meals, do the laundry, and keep her husband, and she's failed completely." Nic definitely sounds like a real 13-year-old to me when he muses "the more I learn about life the more I realize grownups have no idea what they're talking about. I guess I'm just surprised how much they don't know. Until a couple of years ago I thought they knew everything and it turns out they can't agree on anything."
The fundamentalist Christians are aligned with this 13-year-old way of thinking when Mrs. Porter's son Kevin says to Nic that Lucy got brain cancer because she isn't Christian, making it personal the way Nic had earlier made the ideas about who God likes and who he doesn't. Kevin says to Nic: "God's attacking her brain. Think about it."
What interests me most in this novel are the parts where someone who strikes me--and Nic's mother--as wrong explains his or her point of view. When Nic's Muslim babysitter Layla wears a headscarf, for example, she says it's because "I am treated as a person, not a sex object." When Nic talks to the new "senior pastor" at his church (at the urging of Mrs. Porter), he is asked "Do you know what happens when we think for ourselves?" and told (immediately) that the answer is "moral decay." The most incomprehensible scene, for me, is when Nic's fundamentalist Christian friend Melissa attacks Lucy's research to find out the mass of a planet, saying "God will reveal it to her when He's ready" and then giving a speech about why scientists shouldn't try to find out anything about our world: "Don't you think He has enough problems without people nitpicking the details. Try to refute His story. Coming up with wacky theories of their own. He's exhausted. Here He is trying to conquer Satan and your mom is quibbling about how old His universe is." Finally Melissa works herself into such a frenzy she pulls out Lucy's computer wires, asking him "Do you want her to prove there is no God?"
The fundamentalist theme culminates in a back-and-forth reading Layla and Nic do with the Koran and the Bible, a reading that leaves neither party on a clear moral high ground.
The end of the novel, though, is partly a celebration of the virtues of organized religion. Mrs. Porter is the kindest and one of the most useful people who come to visit Lucy in the hospital. A pastor helps Nic get some perspective on his situation, and afterward Nic thinks there should be a class in "Death and How to Survive It" and "the first thing they'd have to teach you is to never go to an atheist funeral....They are not a hell of a lot of fun. They try to be cheery because they're supposed to be celebrating a person's life, but there's no MC like a pastor or anything so people just wander around with huge craters in their hearts."
Nic reaches a point where he seems better able to answer his own question, posed early in the novel: "why would anybody be good if there wasn't a God?" At the end of the novel, the love Nic and his mother have for each other is stronger than their need to make the other one understand what they believe is true. They learn to respect each other, even if they don't respect each other's beliefs. And it's not just because of Lucy's brain tumor, which is one of the things the blurb made me fear.
It's not a perfect ending. But at the center of this novel is Nic's family, and his family's conflict is resolved, even while the important questions with which the characters struggle will continue to be debated and fought over. It's interesting to see them raised in fiction and to get a little bit of the feeling of how deep and divisive they are for these characters, people who aren't interesting in arguing with any of us readers.
Have you talked to anyone lately who disagrees with you about rationalism or fundamentalism? If not, why not? Do you think we all tend to stick to our own side of the street these days?
The protagonist of the novel is Nic, age 13. That interests me already, as the mother of a 13-year-old boy. And his grandmother spouts the inoculation theory of religion, which I've spouted ever since before I first became a mother (once, memorably, to an Episcopalian priest): "Of course he's going to grow up and join some weird cult. What did you expect? You've got to give him a bit in the beginning so he can grow antibodies to the real crazy stuff." But Nic's mother, Lucy, is an atheist and has raised him as one, while many of the cool kids at his school are fundamentalist Christians. That interests me too, as one inhabitant of a small town where the school board still hasn't managed to fire a teacher (John Freshwater) who has done some of the same kinds of things that a character in this novel, Mr. Branden, does:
"He brought a Bible to class one day. Made this big show of sneaking it out of the drawer....One day Ms White, our principal, came in and sat at the back of the class taking notes. Mr. Branden didn't mention [God] once."
There's also a character in the novel, Mrs. Porter, who I was prepared to dislike, early on, because she "got them to put stickers on the biology books saying that evolution is just a theory." But as the novel goes on, the characters become more real, and Mrs. Porter also does some genuinely thoughtful things for people, including Nic and his mother. She reminds me of the mother of a boy on Walker's soccer team who is an ardent John Freshwater supporter and also one of the nicest people I've ever met.
I thought Nic's mother missed a good chance to explain the difference between a philosophical and a scientific theory when she and Nic discuss some of the young-earth creationist books Mrs. Porter gives Nic. But this is a story about people, and the interest of it is not so much in the ideas, but in hearing about stuff like the 13-year-old's opinions about who God likes (his pretty young friend Sandra Miller) and who God doesn't like (Mrs. Vogler, an old lady whose child was killed in an auto accident). The part where Nic wishes for a mother like Mrs. Porter, who would "probably jump up and offer to make me a sandwich" rings absolutely true to me. Also the part where the 13-year-old blames his mother for the failure of his parents' marriage sounds like genuine young teen ranting: "all she had to do was make some meals, do the laundry, and keep her husband, and she's failed completely." Nic definitely sounds like a real 13-year-old to me when he muses "the more I learn about life the more I realize grownups have no idea what they're talking about. I guess I'm just surprised how much they don't know. Until a couple of years ago I thought they knew everything and it turns out they can't agree on anything."
The fundamentalist Christians are aligned with this 13-year-old way of thinking when Mrs. Porter's son Kevin says to Nic that Lucy got brain cancer because she isn't Christian, making it personal the way Nic had earlier made the ideas about who God likes and who he doesn't. Kevin says to Nic: "God's attacking her brain. Think about it."
What interests me most in this novel are the parts where someone who strikes me--and Nic's mother--as wrong explains his or her point of view. When Nic's Muslim babysitter Layla wears a headscarf, for example, she says it's because "I am treated as a person, not a sex object." When Nic talks to the new "senior pastor" at his church (at the urging of Mrs. Porter), he is asked "Do you know what happens when we think for ourselves?" and told (immediately) that the answer is "moral decay." The most incomprehensible scene, for me, is when Nic's fundamentalist Christian friend Melissa attacks Lucy's research to find out the mass of a planet, saying "God will reveal it to her when He's ready" and then giving a speech about why scientists shouldn't try to find out anything about our world: "Don't you think He has enough problems without people nitpicking the details. Try to refute His story. Coming up with wacky theories of their own. He's exhausted. Here He is trying to conquer Satan and your mom is quibbling about how old His universe is." Finally Melissa works herself into such a frenzy she pulls out Lucy's computer wires, asking him "Do you want her to prove there is no God?"
The fundamentalist theme culminates in a back-and-forth reading Layla and Nic do with the Koran and the Bible, a reading that leaves neither party on a clear moral high ground.
The end of the novel, though, is partly a celebration of the virtues of organized religion. Mrs. Porter is the kindest and one of the most useful people who come to visit Lucy in the hospital. A pastor helps Nic get some perspective on his situation, and afterward Nic thinks there should be a class in "Death and How to Survive It" and "the first thing they'd have to teach you is to never go to an atheist funeral....They are not a hell of a lot of fun. They try to be cheery because they're supposed to be celebrating a person's life, but there's no MC like a pastor or anything so people just wander around with huge craters in their hearts."
Nic reaches a point where he seems better able to answer his own question, posed early in the novel: "why would anybody be good if there wasn't a God?" At the end of the novel, the love Nic and his mother have for each other is stronger than their need to make the other one understand what they believe is true. They learn to respect each other, even if they don't respect each other's beliefs. And it's not just because of Lucy's brain tumor, which is one of the things the blurb made me fear.
It's not a perfect ending. But at the center of this novel is Nic's family, and his family's conflict is resolved, even while the important questions with which the characters struggle will continue to be debated and fought over. It's interesting to see them raised in fiction and to get a little bit of the feeling of how deep and divisive they are for these characters, people who aren't interesting in arguing with any of us readers.
Have you talked to anyone lately who disagrees with you about rationalism or fundamentalism? If not, why not? Do you think we all tend to stick to our own side of the street these days?
Monday, December 7, 2009
The Children Star contest
I reviewed The Children Star by Joan Slonczewski earlier this fall, and today a new edition is available at Amazon. The author is offering a chance at a prize--a signed first edition of A Door Into Ocean (winner of the John Campbell award in 1986)--to anyone who buys this new edition of The Children Star. If you want a chance at this prize, tell me you've bought The Children Star and leave your email address in the comments.
The new cover art is by Nathan Silver:
The new cover art is by Nathan Silver:
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Book Review Blog Carnival #32
Welcome to the thirty-second edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival!
Book reviews
The "hall monitor" presents Book Review: Youth in a Suspect Society posted at DetentionSlip.org, saying, "Find out how our schools started to resemble prisons."
Jim Murdoch presents Death of a Superhero by Anthony McCarten posted at The Truth About Lies, saying, "Donald Delpe is your typical 14 year-old, obsessed by sex and not getting any. He's also not your typical 14 year-old in that he's dying of cancer. How he copes with this is by drawing superhero comics but like nothing DC or Marvel would touch with a bargepole. An odd book - part narrative, part script, part comic-book outline – but also a painfully funny book when it's not being tragic. Donald's main concern is not his impending death but whether or not he'll get laid before he goes. Currently being made into a film, due for release in 2010 starring Freddie Highmore."
Sparky Bates presents You've Been Warned - by James Patterson & Howard Roughan posted at Accidental Reads, saying "Although thoroughly engaging and enjoyable, this book was a little bit on the 'weird' side."
Jim presents So What? by Mark Magnacca posted at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, saying that it's "a book about how to change your mindset so that you become a more effective communicator and salesperson."
Dan MacKinnon presents mathematical lapses posted at mathrecreation, saying, "A short post about the mathematical humor in Stephen Leacock's Literary Lapses."
Steven Bush presents The Good Men Project: Real Stories From the Front Lines of Modern Manhood posted at Book Dads: Fathers That Read!, saying, "The Good Men Project: honest and compelling true stories by men writing about being Fathers, Sons, Husbands, and Workers."
Jim Murdoch presents Seeing Things posted at The Truth About Lies, saying, "The Clangers, Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog – these beloved children's programmes all flowed from the pen of Oliver Postgate and yet his work in animation only made up part of a fascinating life which is opened up for us in his autobiography, 'Seeing Things' which includes his time as an inventor (he built a solar-powered house long before 'green' became popular) and also his anti-nuclear campaigning. The chapter covering his time in the army is pure Spike Milligan. A great read."
Bart's Bookshelf presents The Magicians by Lev Grossman posted at Bart's Bookshelf, saying "There’s an elephant in this room, and it is one that it is impossible for this book to get away from. Teenagers. Going to a magical boarding school. Complete with quirky teachers. And a weird game involving magic…"
Bart's Bookshelf presents Review: Kiss of Death by Marcus Sedgwick posted at Bart's Bookshelf, describing it as the companion/follow-up vampire novel to My Swordhand is Singing."
Vishal k Bharadwaj presents Book Review - Perdido Street Station posted at allVishal.com, saying, "Finally read a book I'd been looking forward to reading for a long, long time. I liked it enough to come up with a fake book cover (the paperback's is hideous), but as with most books, that's not the whole story..."
Swapnil Warang presents "Midnight's Children" posted at switch2life saying that the novel "covers various topics from the Indian independence, partition, Pakistan’s militarization, birth of Bangladesh, to emergency period in India. But does it really deserve the popularity it got? I would say no. The book just had too many things happening in it."
Morgan Schwartz presents My Snowman wants a Kindle posted at Omaha.net - Local Writing from the Heartland.
BWL presents The New Savage Number | Review posted at Christian Personal Finance, saying, "A short, but sweet, review of Terry Savage's "The New Savage Number."
Children's books
NathanKP presents “The Tale of Despereaux,” by Kate DiCamillo posted at Books For Sale?, saying, "“The Tale of Despereaux,” by Kate DiCamillo is a Newbery Award Medal winning tale about a young mouse who is in love with a human princess."
Keira, a guest blogger, presents 9 Ways to Get Kids to Read, saying in the last one: "Above all don’t force reading. If you do, reading will be forever associated with bad memories. It’s like root canal that way." Posted at Literature Young Adult Fictions.
Steven Bush presents Testing the Ice: A True Story About Jackie Robinson posted at Book Dads: Fathers That Read!, saying, "Testing the Ice offers a unique insight into a man who changed the face of American sports and helped launch the civil rights movement, by portraying him as a father from the view of one of his own children."
Fiction
Clark Bjorke presents Oryx and Crake posted at I'll Never Forget the Day I Read a Book!, saying, "Pigoons, rakunks, snats and wolvogs, no it's not Edgar rice Burroughs, it's Margaret Atwood."
KerrieS presents Review: A SHILLING FOR CANDLES, Josephine Tey posted at MYSTERIES in PARADISE, saying, "The discovery of the body of a popular screen actress washed up on a beach on the southern coast of England sparks an investigation headed by Scotland Yard's top detective, Inspector Alan Grant. Christine Clay's death hits the headlines, has a global impact, "society" dusts off its mourning blacks in hope of an invitation to her funeral, and yet what comes out is that almost no-one knew who she really was. A clairvoyant claims to have foretold her death, and her estranged brother seems to have disappeared."
KerrieS presents Review: TOO CLOSE TO HOME, Linwood Barclay posted at MYSTERIES in PARADISE, saying, "17 year old Derek Cutter has it all worked out. When his neighbours the Langleys go on a week's holiday, their house will provide a perfect lovenest for him and his girlfriend Penny. All he has to do is hide in their house, wait for them to leave, and then persuade Penny to come over. Except things go wrong. Donna Langley takes ill a short way from home and they come home soon after leaving. Derek is trapped in the house and has to wait for them to go to sleep. Within minutes all three Langleys are dead, killed by a gunman."
Ms. Smarty Pants presents No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez posted at Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All, saying, "a short and focused work from the Nobel winner."
Non fiction
ARJ presents "A Year On the Wing" Enthralls posted at Science On Tap, saying, "Book review of an absolutely great read from British first-time author Tim Dee, "A Year On the Wing: Four Seasons in a Life With Birds." One of the best pieces of nature-writing in a long while.
Alyce presents Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown posted at At Home With Books. This is a review of a new illustrated edition, and Alyce says "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee documents many, many tragedies, but does a good job of providing the information in chronological order so that you can see the progression of events; the cause and effect. The stories of massacres are not limited to those inflicted on the Native Americans, but also tell of those for which the Native Americans were responsible."
The editorial blog at the self-help site Your Best Library recommends The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, saying "Have you ever wondered why some people are more successful than others? What is it that makes or breaks the business deals, friendship, or romance? What is the top priority employers consider when they are hiring, firing, or promoting? Intelligence? Education? Looks?"
Angel R. Rivera presents Booknote: Working for You Isn't Working For Me posted at The Itinerant Librarian, saying, "From the review, "The book is not perfect, but if you are dealing in a workplace with a toxic boss, then this is a good book to read in order to help you deal with the situation.""
Jeanne presents Manhood for Amateurs posted at Necromancy Never Pays, saying, "These essays are not only for men. They're for any contemplative person who wants some ideas presented in short bits, like little pieces of brain candy to pop in and suck on from time to time."
Novel
Grant McCreary presents In Hovering Flight posted at The Birder's Library, saying that the author is "obviously interested in birds, but I don’t know if she would consider herself a birder. But if not, she definitely did her homework, as she got the little details right."
Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
A denunciation of necromancy
ReadersGuide posted this photo for me today. Isn't it lovely? She says it belongs to the church right across the street from her house!
Friday, December 4, 2009
Buying poems for the holidays
I've been making a list of poetry books for Buy Books for the Holidays, because giving someone a book of poems as a gift can be romantic, or at least different. I've checked to see that all of the books on my list are available new, and have only included two that seem to be currently available only in used editions.
for children:
Starting a child out with a love of rhyme and rhythm can give that child a love of language for life. One of the books I read to my children from infancy on was
Jan Pienkowski's Little Monsters.
You should also be reading books by Dr. Seuss to babies, of course. And
Mother Goose.
Toddlers should have A Child's Garden of Verses, by R.L. Stevenson, read to them.
Also A.A. Milne's Now We Are Six.
Children from toddlers to 5th grade will like Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic.
Elementary-age kids will like Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children and
Edward Gorey's rhyming ABC book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies.
Sometime during the elementary years, you should get your children reading poetry out loud, and Fleischman and Beddow's Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices is good for that.
Also to read out loud to children:
Robert Service, Collected Poems
101 Famous Poems, Roy Cook
a book that my children and I loved is, sadly, no longer easily available except in used editions, Roy Blount Jr.'s Soup Songs.
Here is one of my favorites from it:
Green Pea Lover's Sad Song
I tried to eat my English peas.
The peas they had their own ideas.
and here is my other, slightly longer, favorite (it comes with an illustration and a related quotation):
Song to Catsup
If every food your parents hatsup
Tastes like something to matsup
With something not even a buzzard would snatsup,
Add catsup.
Catsup will fix up all kinds of yuck.
You'll find a way to pour it on your turnips with luck.
And if you can't--
Since children can't
Turn turnips down--
Find a way to pour
Your turnips on the floor.
And if your mother sees you, move to another town.
Catsup makes you well.
It's tangy, gooey, red.
Pour it on your shirt and tell
Your parents you are dead.
for young adults:
There are book versions of Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins, and also
180 more. These offer short, easily understandable poems appropriate for most people of middle and high school age.
Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, edited by Neil Astley, offers a mix of new, translated, and classic poems. Recommended for the teen girl, mostly because the cover photo shows a female face.
Various short poems that tell a book-length story are available; my daughter's hands-down favorite since she was in sixth grade is
What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones.
for adults:
If you think a person might like a particular poet, get the Collected Poems.
The Norton Introduction to Poetry provides a wide-ranging selection of mostly British and American poetry.
Great Sonnets, edited by Paul Negri and available in a cheap Dover edition, is a selection of famous short (14 line) poems.
For some fun with poetry, try the Norton Book of Light Verse
or, for the recent swine flu victim, The Pig Poets by Henry Hogge.
One of my favorite fun collections is now only available used,
Unauthorized Versions: Poems and their Parodies, edited by Kenneth Baker.
Here's a sample:
Original poem: Robert Browning's Home-Thoughts, from Abroad (quoted in Noel Streatfeild's British children's story Apple Bough)
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffink sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the best spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups the little children's dower
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!
Unauthorized version, entitled Home Truths from Abroad:
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees some morning, in despair,
There's a horrible fog i' the heart o' the town,
And the greasy pavement is damp and brown;
While the rain-drop falls from the laden bough,
In England--now!
And after April when May follows,
How foolish seem the returning swallows.
Hark! how the east wind sweeps along the street,
And how we give one universal sneeze!
The hapless lambs at thought of mint-sauce bleat,
And ducks are conscious of the coming peas.
Lest you should think the Spring is really present,
A biting frost will come to make things pleasant,
And though the reckless flowers begin to blow,
They'd better far have nestled down below;
And English spring sets men and women frowning,
Despite the rhapsodies of Robert Browning.
Those are my ideas for some poems you could give as gifts. If the person you're shopping for has definite tastes in poetry and you're not sure which poets he or she particularly likes, there's always Poetry Comics (Dave Morice) or magnetic poetry, which are sure to produce a grin from all but the most pompous poetry-lovers!
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Strange as this Weather Has Been
Every year the college I commute to has a "common book" provided free to all first-year students and discussed in the first-year writing class. This year it's Strange as this Weather Has Been, by Ann Pancake. Now, I love the idea of a common book. I always read it enthusiastically and enjoy using it to demonstrate the difference between leading a discussion on a novel I've read once and don't necessarily agree with or love, versus the more usual discussions on novels I've read twice or more and love enough to assign. This one was on a topic wholly unfamiliar to me, mountaintop removal mining for coal in West Virginia.
Ann Pancake is against mountaintop removal mining, and the purpose of her novel is to make you feel the pain of the people whose land is being destroyed by it. So it has a didactic tone from the start, plus recommendations for protest websites in the acknowledgments at the end. (Pancake's own website provides additional links.)
The story is told in alternating chapters by various characters, mostly Lace, a W.VA native who quit college after her first semester because she was homesick and got pregnant by a local boy on her first visit home ("don't try this, first-years"), and her children, Bant, Dane, and Corey. Lace and Bant spend most of their time coming to terms with the idea that mining has destroyed the environment of their home and trying to come up with a response. They educate themselves about the local mining operations, but they don't know enough about science to tell propaganda from truth. Their version of the truth is local; it doesn't go beyond identifying and using plants and animals native to the area. Bant utters the title phrase, trying to link global warming to the mining operations on nearby mountains:
"Anymore, seemed there was either too much water or too little, the temperature too high or too low. 'Strange as this weather has been,' people would say, or 'With this crazy weather we've been having.' And I knew Lace believed the weather was linked to the rest of this mess, but I wasn't sure how."
Corey, who has grown up with machinery rather than nature, is attracted to the mining machinery:
"finally he'd scale Big John. That vast mountain-handling piece of gorgeous machinery. And as Corey climbs it, the smell of its fluids the good grease he'd get on his clothes. And maybe he'd cut himself a little on something. Maybe he'd bleed a little there. He'd crawl in, settle in the seat, take a look at how it ran, push his legs to the pedals, grip sticks and handles. That giant, his body in that gigantic body, his body running that body, and the size, the power of that machine: inside Big John, Corey can change the shape of the world. Corey can."
But Corey's attraction to machinery eventually results in his doom, and even though I'm sympathetic to the environmental message of this novel, that irritates me. It seems heavy-handed, although perhaps it's a tribute to the power of Pancake's characterization that I care.
The character of Avery, a neighbor of Lace's who left W. Va. for college and a job in Cleveland, irritates me too, because he seems to be invented solely for the purpose of showing what is lost when someone learns to speak "standard" English and value anything outside his mountain home. (What an anti-education novel this is, to assign to college students who are just starting out!) Avery also serves as a mouthpiece for the author, as he studies and describes various mining disasters and tells his own personal (and horrifying) story of surviving one.
Despite the heavy-handed propagandizing and the occasional mouthpiece character, though, this novel succeeds in getting me interested in the characters and, through them, a subject I had no interest in before. As Lace says, late in the novel,
"It hurt to learn it, it did. It was easier to half-ignore it, pretend it wasn't that bad, anyway, or if it was, couldn't do nothing about it so why get worked up, that's how a lot of people lived. But I realized to at least know part of what was going on made you feel like you had a particle of control instead of none at all."
As an adult, I've always been a proponent of nuclear energy, but reading a novel like this one gives me new impetus to vote against the use of coal wherever I can. That's going to have to be enough, at least for now. Because I want to feel that particle of control, rather than ignore something once it's been brought to my attention. Have you ever heard of mountaintop removal mining before this? Does it give you that fatalistic feeling that it's yet another thing you should be doing something about but you're not ready to get worked up about it now when there are so many other things that seem more urgent?
Ann Pancake is against mountaintop removal mining, and the purpose of her novel is to make you feel the pain of the people whose land is being destroyed by it. So it has a didactic tone from the start, plus recommendations for protest websites in the acknowledgments at the end. (Pancake's own website provides additional links.)
The story is told in alternating chapters by various characters, mostly Lace, a W.VA native who quit college after her first semester because she was homesick and got pregnant by a local boy on her first visit home ("don't try this, first-years"), and her children, Bant, Dane, and Corey. Lace and Bant spend most of their time coming to terms with the idea that mining has destroyed the environment of their home and trying to come up with a response. They educate themselves about the local mining operations, but they don't know enough about science to tell propaganda from truth. Their version of the truth is local; it doesn't go beyond identifying and using plants and animals native to the area. Bant utters the title phrase, trying to link global warming to the mining operations on nearby mountains:
"Anymore, seemed there was either too much water or too little, the temperature too high or too low. 'Strange as this weather has been,' people would say, or 'With this crazy weather we've been having.' And I knew Lace believed the weather was linked to the rest of this mess, but I wasn't sure how."
Corey, who has grown up with machinery rather than nature, is attracted to the mining machinery:
"finally he'd scale Big John. That vast mountain-handling piece of gorgeous machinery. And as Corey climbs it, the smell of its fluids the good grease he'd get on his clothes. And maybe he'd cut himself a little on something. Maybe he'd bleed a little there. He'd crawl in, settle in the seat, take a look at how it ran, push his legs to the pedals, grip sticks and handles. That giant, his body in that gigantic body, his body running that body, and the size, the power of that machine: inside Big John, Corey can change the shape of the world. Corey can."
But Corey's attraction to machinery eventually results in his doom, and even though I'm sympathetic to the environmental message of this novel, that irritates me. It seems heavy-handed, although perhaps it's a tribute to the power of Pancake's characterization that I care.
The character of Avery, a neighbor of Lace's who left W. Va. for college and a job in Cleveland, irritates me too, because he seems to be invented solely for the purpose of showing what is lost when someone learns to speak "standard" English and value anything outside his mountain home. (What an anti-education novel this is, to assign to college students who are just starting out!) Avery also serves as a mouthpiece for the author, as he studies and describes various mining disasters and tells his own personal (and horrifying) story of surviving one.
Despite the heavy-handed propagandizing and the occasional mouthpiece character, though, this novel succeeds in getting me interested in the characters and, through them, a subject I had no interest in before. As Lace says, late in the novel,
"It hurt to learn it, it did. It was easier to half-ignore it, pretend it wasn't that bad, anyway, or if it was, couldn't do nothing about it so why get worked up, that's how a lot of people lived. But I realized to at least know part of what was going on made you feel like you had a particle of control instead of none at all."
As an adult, I've always been a proponent of nuclear energy, but reading a novel like this one gives me new impetus to vote against the use of coal wherever I can. That's going to have to be enough, at least for now. Because I want to feel that particle of control, rather than ignore something once it's been brought to my attention. Have you ever heard of mountaintop removal mining before this? Does it give you that fatalistic feeling that it's yet another thing you should be doing something about but you're not ready to get worked up about it now when there are so many other things that seem more urgent?
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