What to read?

Dear Readers,

Please visit my new blog for the next edition of my reading recommendations. I'll be back in a few days with more good books.

--Esme

JD Salinger 1919-2010*

I never really understood what was so great about JD Salinger's fiction. When I was a teen in the early 80's all the conventional wisdom pointed right at Catcher in the Rye. Groundbreaking! Shocking! Revolutionary! I picked it up at the library and read it quickly and prepared to be blown away. I was pretty disapointed.

"What's the big deal?" I thought. It probably was pretty revolutionary in 1951 when it was published, but I had already read the complete cannon of Judy Blume in which she writes quite frankly about all kinds of maturation issues and sexually explicit coming of age situations. I gobbled up Go Ask Alice an anonymous diary of a drug addicted teen. Holden Caulfield could hardly hold a candle to any of the heroines in my teen library.

In looking back, I realize that Holden Caulfield is a decidedly male protagonist with a male point of view written by a very male author. Most women comment that they did not particularly care for Catcher in the Rye either. I could not relate especially when I was 15.

What fascinated me about this book is the story of the author, JD Salinger. He hated publicity and after making it big with Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey (which I couldn't get into either.) he disappeared and became something of a recluse. After a story in the New Yorker in 1965, he never published again. Who was this enigmatic man and why did he choose a life of seclusion?

His recent death and NY times obituary made mention of two memoirs published by two different women in his life. Joyce Maynard, writer and novelist, quit college at Yale and moved in with him at age 18 (while he was 53!). The affair lasted a mere 10 months and took Ms. Maynard 20 years from which to recover. She apparently saw the light and published At Home in the World which is her memoir of growing up in a dysfunctional family which led her to form a relationship with this unusual and controlling man.

Maragaret "Peggy" Salinger, his daughter, published her own memoir shortly after Ms. Maynard's hit the bookshelves. Peggy's coming of age saga Dreamcatcher was less focused on JD Salinger, but he haunted the background of her story throughout. Obviously Peggy has a much different perspective on her father and their relationship than Joyce, but the two women's stories are not incompatible and together make for a fascinating study of an eccentric man and a gifted writer.

At Home in the World is the more interesting of the two memoirs. Ms. Maynard is clearly a professional writer and knows how to tell a story and tells it well. I was fairly mesmerized by her and her life through the whole thing. Her JD was controlling and manipulative, but she was also quite stunted and ready to be controlled. It took her many years to recover. I think the most striking aspect of this story was Ms Maynard's own rise to fame as a reporter, writer and novelist. She lives the life I would love to live. She clearly has a gift, but no where in the book does she discuss a love of words and writing. For her it is always something of a burden or a chore. She can write, she is prompted and encouraged to write at a very young age (think stage parents for budding writers) and thus her career rises around her with some fanfare, but with no joy. I never felt like this path to the writing life was one I would ever take. Writing became simply her career and a means to an end. I doubt if the muse ever visited her. I learned a lot about writing and life simply from watching her live this forced march to writing fame.

Ms Salinger is clearly not the writer. She is compelled to tell her story in the same way Ms Maynard was but her story is awkward and changes styles frequently throughout. It fluctuated between an academic essay of her father's writing and how it parallels his life, and her own diary entries and letters. The first 100 pages or so were an explication of her father before she knew him: how the war and virulent anti-semitism must have shaped him. This part of the book will be especially appealing to you if you are familiar with his stories and novels, especially his early ones.

The next 200 or so pages are a blow by blow of all the steps and mis steps she took as a small child growing up in a recluse's home and the effects it had on her. The last 100 pages are how she got to where she is now. While her version has some merit, it is the most interesting when it intersects with Joyce's story. Somehow the two of them together can weave the tale of the enigmatic and troubled man.

For some reason critics have really bashed Joyce Maynard's memoir, accusing her of trying to cash in. In my opinion, so what? She has a tale to tell and she knows how to tell it. If that bothered JD Salinger maybe he needed to try a bit harder at being a recluse. Both these women have created timely narratives that should shed some light on Mr. Salinger and his life and work and also might teach a thing or two about writing memories.

*The editor is well aware that it is Women's History month and writing about JD Salinger is not exactly in keeping with the theme of the month. However, I do not particularly believe in marginalizing the history of women. It should be taught every month...just as African American History should be taught every month. So, given that JD Salinger is on my mind--he gets the first blog post of the month.

Guest Blogger: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Review by Rebekah.

In honor of Fiction February and One Book One Bloomington I have invited friend and fellow writer Rebekah to be my guest blogger. Enjoy, Esme.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

(Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Had I been left to my own devices The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is most likely not a book I would have picked up. For me, covers and or titles can make or break a sale. The book title was in a red and yellow combination of block letters with the word Cavalier spelled with a K, like Kulture and Kute. Not a fan. But when I scan down further on the cover, there is the Empire State Building. Fan. At the bottom is the author’s name, Michael Chabon. Fan. So at this point the score would be two pro and one big con.

If I had been able to get past my aversion to the “K” issue and flipped the book over and read the blurb, I would have added another point to the pro column when I read that Joe Kavalier had smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague. I might have even given the pro side two points. (I can do this, it’s my own system.) Anything that has to do with the evil solution of the “Jewish problem” is of endless interest to me. Next I spot the words magic and the phrase comic book super heroes. Now we’re sitting on top of a very slippery slope.

Magic: Ugh.

Comic super heroes: take or leave.

Final score: 4.5 to 2.5.

Not a landslide victory for the pro side.

Quite luckily for me I didn’t have to go through this arduous process. My friends and trusted book recommenders, Jennie and David Orr, heavily suggested I read this book. They didn’t’ steer me wrong. It’s quite often a good thing that I’m not left to my own devices.

I want this to be more than a typical book review. I want this to be about opening up the process of choosing what to read, about growing as a reader and as a result growing as a writer. It’s not always about following the pack of readers; I’ve read some other Pulitzer Prize winners that I thought were stinkers. It’s not about following a mathematical pro and con formula; it’s about branching out from what you would normally read, trying something different and looking beyond what ever book you are reading is “about”.

I read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay over a year ago and I’m still reaping the benefits of Michael Chabon’s gift of this book. I pledged to myself and to witnesses that 2010 would be the year I would begin writing fearlessly. This book has inspired me and keeps on inspiring me to do so.

I imagine Michael pitching this book and can hear his agent or publisher saying, “Huh-uh, limited appeal.” I think he wrote this book for himself. And with that thought, comes the realization that most of my best writing has come when I write for my self, not for an audience. When I get down to the dark and dirty side of life that needs me as a writer to expose the shadow side of life to the light, that’s when I’m really writing fearlessly.

And Michael Chabon can really write fearlessly. He made me fall in love with Sam Clay, Joe Kavalier and Rosa Saks because he made them human so his readers could identify with all the life choices that are put in front of them. He made them so real to me that when they were in danger, my heart raced and I held my breath. It doesn’t matter what the time, place and setting was, or what the book is “about”. What matters is we get to relive our own moments of pivotal decisions and sometimes disastrous mistakes, mistakes we may or may not recover from. I relived lessons learned, like why I chose to marry one person, but not another, why I let others take advantage of me and how I instinctively knew I had to make my own family of choice when my birth family let me down. Michael Chabon took his building blocks of words and constructed friendships, love and bonds that we all wish for in our own lives. And who doesn’t wish for a talent that we can earn our living with? He gives them all talent and money and an odd fame. And sometimes all of that is not enough, sometimes Everything is not enough. That is the glaring, heart-breaking beauty of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

Rebekah Spivey

Check out Rebekah's Blog!

February Fiction V: Apparition and Late Fictions by Thomas Lynch

Thomas Lynch is better known in literary circles as the poet-undertaker. Mr. Lynch has written several collections of poetry and books of essays about his life's work--the town undertaker, in small town Michigan.

I have always been drawn to poets who turn their attention to prose. The writing always seems perfect, as if poets know better than the rest of us how to place words so they sing and make sense. Poets have an excellent sense of rhyme and meter in all they attempt to portray on paper. Add this to his interesting life's work, and it was a collection I had to read. Published in January 2010, I was the first one to check it out of the local library.

Apparition consisted of 4 short stories and a novella. I couldn't help but shake the feeling that while well written, they were all fairly similar. They were from the point of view of middle-aged white men, sort of sad and lonely and disappointed by life. The one exception would be the story narrated by a middle-aged white women sort of sad and lonely and dissatisfied with life.

They all have stories of death and tragedy woven in and this strange sort of mouth agape puzzlement about how they ended up where they did. Life held so much promise and now look.

The first story, Catch and Release, about a son setting his father's ashes down the river was the most beautiful: an elegy for a beautiful relationship between father and son. The novella, (which in general I find hard to read) Apparition, was also very good. It had elements, as they all did, of being a sweeping story. The tales of whole lives summed up in patient metaphors. This was no minimalist fiction.

I would recommend this if you like short sad epic stories and are curious about undertakers who write. Mr. Lynch knows how to write about death in all it's iterations.

Fiction February Part IV: Water by Alyce Miller

I took a class at IU recently from Ms. Miller, and was surprised when it was over that after all we had talked about and critiqued and discussed, I had never thought to read something she had written. In honor of Fiction February and her fabulous writing class, I picked up her recent award winning collection of short stories called Water.

I don't often read short story collections. I like them and as a fiction writer it is the type of writing that engages me the most. I don't read them because it is too easy to put the book down after one story and move onto something else. The short narratives end and my attention moves somewhere else.

I did leave this and come back to it several times, but finished all nine stories and found every one of them to be interesting and unique. Each story was published previously in other literary reviews. I read them in random order choosing for length depending on what I had time for. Ms. Miller has a spellbinding narrative style. The longer stories were especially captivating and pushed me to read and keep reading, each page turned itself as I was drawn into many different types of life, most rooted firmly in the landscape of the midwest. Several deal squarely with race from the point of view of African American children and young adults which I found really thought provoking.

The strongest stories were the long narratives like My Summer of Love, Friends: An Elegy, and and Hawaii. All of them tore me apart in different ways. They were full of tenderness and confusion about coming of age and straddling disparate worlds. Each story and situation uniquely rendered. If you are looking for short lovely fiction for the coffee shop or the bus ride home, this might be the collection for you. And if you are in the market for a good fiction workshop, I highly recommend her as a teacher as well.

Fiction February Part III-The History of Love

As I finished this book, I realized Part III of my fiction series would be aptly ready for posting on February 14th. It is a work of fiction that you will want to read slowly because the words are like perfect poems. They will beg you to savor them. I couldn't put the book down, but I had to. Each portion of the story makes you gasp a little, and you realize that reading a book like this fast is like chug-a-lugging fine wine. This book is a perfect reflection on the age old tradition of love. It is a story about a story and how it found its way from a corner of Nazi occupied Poland to present day New York.

The characters we meet are sweet and memorable. The writer of the story, Leo Gurskey is an old man with nothing except secrets and memories. The girl seeking him, except she doesn't know she is seeking him, is Alma, the name doppelganger of Leo's long ago lost love. The final meeting of the two main characters at the end made me choke a tear or two. An unsuspecting love story of sorts that crosses the ages.

This is the kind of book that warrants re-reading in places because the names and connections can get tangled and confusing. There are also a few love stories and threads that remain unresolved which broke my heart, but ultimately, this book is about fine and perfect writing. This is the novel we all wish we could write. Nicole Krauss inhabits the psyche of her main characters perfectly. You know and love them all within an instant.

Honor your valentine by giving them a copy of The History of Love or better yet, read it aloud to them. It will take your breath away.

February Fiction Part II: Detective Novel

What I like are books in their homely actuality—the insides of the books, the mysterious movements of characters and situations and the emotions that accompany those movements. The play of sentences, their infinite variety.--Jonthan Lethem on books.

I found this book, oddly, through a true crime story about books. The author wrote about books as objects, things we love, which I can really understand. She made an example of a book called Motherless Brooklyn and told about how her teenage daughter took it to camp with her and dropped it in a river but she could not part with it--even when ruined.

The title was interesting, and that a teenage girl at camp loved it so much that she took it to camp held some intrigue for me, so I requested it from the library. I found myself cracking open the first detective novel I have opened in a long long time for I am not a big fan of mysteries or the detective genre. To sum it up, there are just too many details to keep track of, and I tend to be an impatient reader. What? Who is this guy? I vaguely recall him 100 pages back and now he is the prime suspect?! I am always too lazy to go back and figure it out so there I am stuck in the middle of a crime novel, confused and frustrated.

The description intrigued me though. The main character was a man beset by Tourette’s Syndrome, and I was curious how a man with Tourette’s would behave and how it would affect a detective novel. I have often tried to write about epilepsy and how it effects the brain and behavior, so perhaps I had something to learn.

This book appears to be popular and well known. Jonathan Lethem wrote it in 1999 after he had had several successful science fiction novels (detective science fiction!). He received much praise and awards for this novel including a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a Golden Dagger. It seems I am the last to hear of him and his work.

I waded in carefully. It took me awhile to get hooked in the story and yes, true to my prejudice there were times when I got completely lost. In this sense the plot did not do anything for me. It unfolded much the way any detective novel unfolds: murder, unwitting witness to murder becomes amateur sleuth and meets all sorts of unsavory characters who threaten to kill him until a final showdown with the most unlikely of them.

But, what is remarkable about this novel is the hero, Lionel Essrog, who solves the mystery of the murder of his father figure Frank Minna. I read the book to see how a writer could portray and help a reader to understand the complex neurological problem of Tourette's, and I was not disappointed. Lethem helps us to understand where Tourette's comes from and how it works in someone's brain. Further, we see how the the day to day tics of tourette's guide Lionel through his life, and we witness the humiliation Lionel suffers at the hands of friends and strangers who see him as nothing more than a freak.

Lionel Essrog has become for me a truly memorable and sympathetic character. I would love to read another detective story starring this man. Maybe next time he will even get the girl.

What's your favorite work of detective fiction?