Isla McKetta, MFA, Author at A Geography of Reading

The Death of Vishnu and the Realities of Life in India

October 11, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

As preparation for this trip to India that I’m on, I gathered as much Indian literature around me as I thought I might be able to carry. I planned to read the books along the journey and then to leave them or share them with other travelers on the way. But one book, The Death of Vishnu called me to read it before I even left for the US and I’m so glad I did.

The Quiet Death of Contemporary Literature

The reason I stopped reading most literary magazines and why I’m very careful about what books I spend my time on is a trend toward complete lifelessness in much contemporary fiction as one character (usually a thinly veiled stand in for the author) contemplates his or her navel as not much happens. It’s all meant to be portentous or something but usually the connections are only in the author’s mind and not the page and the readers are left flat.

The flooding of the literary market with these kinds of stories and books leaves me adrift in a sea where I’m looking for meaning in all this quiet contemplation (a state of being I deeply love) but because the meaning is not actually processed enough to be communicated, most contemporary quiet fiction makes me feel desperately lonely and disconnected from humanity.

The Death of Vishnu is the exact opposite of that experience. Instead, the story of an impoverished man dying on the steps of an apartment building as the building’s residents go about their daily lives is rich in social commentary, quotidian detail (of the informative type), mythological importance, and even humanity. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

Life in India

Mind you, I’ve been out of the enclave that houses the world’s embassies to Delhi for almost one full day, so everything I purport to know about real life in India is deeply flawed, but having read The Death of Vishnu before arriving, I feel like I understand everything better.

In The Death of Vishnu, the households of the apartment are supported by a range of people from the cigarette walla (who brings cigarettes) to the ganga (who brings milk) to Vishnu, the man who washes the families’ dishes. During the few days Vishnu is dying on the steps, we get to know two Hindu families (who are quarreling over such things as the amount of water they can pull from the kitchen they share), a Muslim family (whose son is carrying on a Romeo and Juliet type romance with the daughter of one of the Hindu families and whose father has been exploring enlightenment in other religions), an older man (who lives entirely wrapped in the memory of the woman he loved), and Vishnu (who may or may not be the reincarnation of the god Vishnu).

The details of life I encountered in this book, from the petty squabbles and keeping up with the Joneses of a ladies’ poker party to the way the ambulance system functions (where first the ambulance needs to be paid for and then the payment of resulting medical services guaranteed before the patient can even be removed from the premises) were astounding. I couldn’t believe the way the author packed so much life into so few days. And yes, the story overall is quiet with its petty squabbles and small joys, but the way the author fits the entirety of these characters’ lives into these few pages becomes an amazing reminder that all of these small things are the entirety of life for most of us, no matter where we live.

Halfway around the world from where I belong, I’m finding those small details of the lives of others completely fascinating. From the way the young, thin rickshaw driver pedaled my mom and me around a small section of Old Delhi yesterday—displaying an assuredness that showed how well he could navigate any system and made me imagine how he could (if he would want to) break out of what seemed to me to be a life of hand to mouth existence—to the ingenuity displayed by a group of young men when our bus was blocked into a tight curve by a car—they rocked the car to the point that it was moved out of the way—I feel like there is so much to learn from careful observation of life—both abroad and at home.

Yesterday I saw crazy amounts of wire strewn across tiny streets. I saw crowds of people gathered around watching us watching them. I saw couples on motorbikes and goats staked to the side of the road before they would be eaten. I also saw that this is a country in which things are still repaired rather than being replaced and how many people are employed to do a job that in the US we’d ask one to do. That last bit made me wonder if full employment, or at least the sharing out of some work, doesn’t make everyone happier because the responsibilities are shared and each person in the system is valued. I saw people begging on the streets and hawkers selling everything from washcloths to coconuts in traffic.

Making Meaning of it All

I don’t have the answers to what any of life here, or life in the US, means. And I don’t want to pretend here that I do. But one of the things I learned from reading The Death of Vishnu is that by providing enough pertinent detail, readers can make their own meaning. So when I think that life is missing from much contemporary fiction, maybe what I mean is that detail of experience is missing. Or that we’re so busy listing what’s in a character’s bedroom (a common writing prompt) that we fail to then let him experience life outside of that bedroom—something that would make all of those previous details have import.

Mythological Underpinnings

One thing the author of The Death of Vishnu relies on to add richness to this story is a relationship to the Bhagavad Gita a sacred Hindu text. And I feel like there are aspects of this book I would have cherished all the more if I were at all familiar with that text. But the author does a wonderful job of weaving in enough information that I could follow along, even if I missed a majority of the allusions. I miss this kind of writing, where one story is leveraged on another, older story. It’s something I tried to do in Polska, 1994 by tying aspects of Magda’s journey to moments in Christ’s life. I don’t think most readers will take that from my book, but for those who do, the meaning will be even greater.

On Being Vague in Book Reviews

You’ll notice I’ve named only one character here and not even the author. That’s the perils of being without my books. I made notes somewhere about all of those things so I’d have them with me, but it’s the middle of the night here and I’d probably wake my mom if I went looking for them. Oh, and I don’t have much internet access, so I’m forced to rely on the (not-so) trusty memory bank.

What I hope for you is that if you’re at all interested in life in India or if you want to know how to make a quiet story read loud, you’ll open this book and discover its characters and all the life therein for yourself. I promise it will be worth your time.

Leave of Absence

While I’m very glad that I read The Death of Vishnu in the US and have the book at home in my collection to read and re-read, I’m now back to reading the novels I had little enough confidence in that I thought I could leave them at home. If I get lucky and find enough joy in one of them (and an internet connection to boot), I’ll share them with you here. And if not, I’ll see you all in November. Thanks for sharing books, and the world, with me.

For other perspectives on what I read while in India, read my experiences of Heat and Dust and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall.

Finding Nouf and Peeking Inside the Walls of a Closed Society

October 5, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

If it wasn’t for the semi-annual book swap I attend, I never would have read Finding Nouf by Zoë Ferraris. But someone in that group of fabulously well-traveled and intelligent ladies had read this book and wanted to share it. She’d wrapped it up like a gift and put it in with the other books for selection that night, and my luck was to pick this book from the pile and to keep it despite several rounds of white elephant style takebacksies. Finding Nouf sat on my to-read shelf for only a month or so and even then I picked it up a couple of times every week to see if I was ready to read it. Soon I was and I’m so glad I did.

A Saudi Detective Novel

Finding Nouf is the story of Nouf, a young girl from a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia who has run away from her family compound in Jeddah in the days leading up to her wedding. It is also the story of Nayir, a Palestinian man who is so in tune with the desert that everyone assumes he’s Bedouin. He is hired to find Nouf. And it is the story of Katya, a Saudi woman who is engaged to Nouf’s cousin and who also, surprisingly, works with the coroner.

It might sound like this is just a detective novel, and there is a certain amount (though not too much) of a CSI fix in the book. But what makes the book great is the myriad perspectives into a country I would otherwise never know.

Nouf, who is quickly found dead, is firmly entrenched in the female coterie of her household, but that comes with its fair share of silent rebellions. Nayir is an outsider but he is so devoutly Muslim that in many ways he fits better with Nouf’s family, at least the male side, than Nouf does. And Katya is both respectful of the traditions around her and also, because of circumstance and personal preference, reaching to reinvent traditions to suit her life. Together, these voices form a picture in the round of life in Saudi Arabia. The characters are round and human and interesting and even side characters from other classes and cultures help flesh those perspectives more fully.

The Missing Perspective

Because the lifestyle in Saudi Arabia is so very foreign to me, I was very sensitive to getting an unbiased view, which is, of course, impossible from just one source. So while I absolutely loved the cultural details Ferraris wove in (details so fine they could only have been written by someone who had been there) and the fact that the plot was just the right amount of plotted, I was always sensitive to the fact that the book is written by an American. An American who lived in Saudi with her then husband for a time, but an American nonetheless. (And yes, as an American author whose first novel is about Poland, I understand the irony of even making this argument).

Where this becomes really important is that when Nouf or Katya pushed against the limitations put on them because of their gender by driving, going to work, or even flipping up a burqa, I kept wondering why the whole group of women doesn’t overthrow those conventions. So what was missing for me was a deeper insight into the women who want to live their lives that way and whether they are a part of reenforcing the norms westerners consider limiting.

I fully acknowledge that there might be a feeling of powerlessness that would make women who want to rebel unable to do so, but I believe there is also a contingent of women who want to live the way they do. It’s a balance that was better struck in A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea, likely because that author came from within Iran. I really cannot say either way, but the time I spent wondering about the power dynamics in Saudi Arabia did distract me from the book.

I was also grateful for that distraction because it made me look more closely at the world around me. I live near a mosque in Seattle and I’d say that the number of women I see on the bus who either cover their hair or wear a full abaya has increased dramatically in the last decade. I’d often considered that those women were forced by tradition or family to dress that way. But reading this book and wondering so much about Saudi culture (and Muslim culture overall) I realized I was being an idiot and that some women choose to cover themselves in the way that I choose not to wear anything shorter than mid thigh. I knew that, kind of, from the debate about French laws against the hijab, but Finding Nouf opened me up to better understand my own world, too.

My Own Circle of Women

I’m off to book swap again tonight for more book inspiration and to get advice on my trip to India. I have no idea what book I’ll come home with, but I’m certain the books and the company will stretch my thinking and open me up to books and ways of thinking I hadn’t yet considered. It’s an evening full of literature and female wisdom and I can’t wait.

If you want to use literature to catch a glimpse of life inside Saudi Arabia, pick up a copy of Finding Nouf from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Opening up Language with Aureole by Carole Maso

September 29, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I started reading Aureole by Carole Maso because Goodreads told me that Gwendolyn Jerris wanted to read it and I needed the kind of book that Gwen loves—lyrical literature like Inner China that falls somewhere between poetry and prose. It’s a type of writing that echoes that of our shared advisor, Micheline Marcom, and one I think we both aspire to in our own way. I started reading this book because I needed to get lost in language—to see again what some of its outer limits are.

What I didn’t realize until I opened the book and started reading the introduction was how very perfect this book would be for stretching my language and my thinking. To start with, it turns out that Maso is, like I, a prose writer writing poetry. Longtime readers of this blog will have seen me fall in love with all kinds of writers who dance along that line (most notably Anne Michaels and Michael Ondaatje). But when Maso started describing her process for writing this book—for the way she was deliberately reinventing her language—I was hooked. She writes “If I felt I was doing something I already knew how to do well, the rule was to start again.”

Part of my struggle is that I’ve been doing a lot of blogging lately. And I don’t mean for this blog. At work, I’m writing about content marketing and other forms of digital marketing where the very best thing I can do for the audience is write simply and clearly as I try to demystify aspects of the topic. What that’s left for this writer, though, is a large hole in my creativity where I want to be mysterious. I want to be oblique. I want to stretch pull tease and twist language until it does my bidding and my readers can learn about how to reinvent their worlds along with their words rather than following expected paths to get measurable results.

Finding Sense in Nonsense

“When they are French, which they often are, especially in bed they say dérangement. When they are French, and this is Paris, which it often is—so beautiful, so light-dappled, such light—the window opening up onto everything, everything: the tree-lined boulevard, the stars, the Tour Eiffel, she says, it’s like a cliché, only beautiful: croissant, vin rouge, fromage, French poodles, polka dots. When they are French.” – Carole Maso

Actually, the passage above is hardly nonsense, at least not in a Steinian sort of way (though I know Maso was reading Stein when she wrote this). But there is a certain amount of arbitrariness and randomness to the connection of the thoughts. When they are French? Usually Frenchness is more of a permanent state than that. This allowance that it’s an identity the two characters can put on or take off is playful and perhaps something they put on when they are in France. As this story evolves, “When they are French” also starts to mean when they are lovers or in bed. I absolutely adore the openness of this and the fact that some of the meaning I’ve just imparted comes from my head and that if you read this story, you might have an entirely different (and equally valid) meaning.

That openness of meaning is so much what I crave reading and also writing. A work that only achieves its full meaning through interaction with a reader just seems like magic to me. And although I bring my own feelings and experiences into a reading of Madame Bovary, you and I are much less likely to be able to build castles of our own interpretations of it because the narrative and language are much more conventional.

Sound

“A dream of sucking, akimbo.” – Maso

Now would probably be a good time to mention that this book is mostly comprised of erotic adventures both hetero- and homosexual. In case erotica isn’t your thing. In many places Maso exploits the softer vowel sounds so well as the crescendo of each act builds that I didn’t even see what she was doing until she interposed a different, harder sound. At some point I’d really like to re-read this book aloud just to feel her mastery of sound.

Rhythm of Language

“And she opens her hand, her life to him: a blur of wings.

And desperately.

And desperately then.” – Maso

Another thing that really makes me want to read this book aloud is the way that Maso uses the rhythm of the words. Imagine after reading an entire chapter of foreplay and play and allusions to the act of sex, reaching this peak…

You Can’t Push All the Time

All of this fabulous word play and invention of syntax and crazy sensuous juxtaposition so pushed my thinking of what words can do that when I reached a line that read “threshold of all possibility,” the mundanity of those words only highlighted how wonderful the rest of the book is. What this means for me and my writing is that if I’m going to push the limits, I’m going to have to really go for it, because the moments that I flinch or get lazy will be obvious to the careful reader. And worse, they will disappoint me if I catch myself doing it.

The Next Journey

A completely unexpected moment in this book is when Maso references India. I’m actually leaving for India in just over a week and suddenly it’s everywhere, including in A Mapmaker’s Dream, another book I read this weekend.

That sounds like a complete and total non sequitur, but I had to find some way to drop in the fact that my blogging might be a bit sporadic in October. I’ve bought all of these books:

(Two of which I’ve since read) and I plan to pack as many of them in my luggage as I can and to write when I can. Maso described a character’s “ink-stained hands (the measure of her day)” and I plan to get some of that in as well. Maybe I can find my own language in the interstices of poetry and prose. I’m sure as hell going to try.

If you want to open up the boundaries of the way you use language, pick up a copy of Aureole from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Rereading Brave New World for Banned Books Week

September 21, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA 6 Comments

It had been a very long time since I read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I own (and proudly wear) the t-shirt from Out of Print Tees, but I was starting to get embarrassed when people made soma references when they saw me in it and I had no idea what they were talking about. So this week, in honor of Banned Books Week, I reread this classic novel and what I found shocked, impressed, amazed, and disappointed me. But I’m not sorry I read it.

Fighting Utopia

I’ve gotten so far inside dystopias that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to read about a utopian society. In 1984 (as best as I can recall), it’s pretty clear that Big Brother is a bad thing and that society is squeezing the very humanity out of people. Whereas in Brave New World, there are large groups of people who never become dissatisfied throughout the book. And as a reader I was left questioning how bad is the bad, really?

“All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” – Aldous Huxley

Do I agree with genetically engineering some people to be lesser? No. Breeding a populace of slaves is bad. Not too much grey area there. But when it comes to a populace zoned out on pleasure, I have fewer qualms. I hate that the creative thinkers are exiled, but I kind of wanted to go away to the Falkland Islands with Helmholtz.

Maybe I think we are already in this brave new world and maybe that’s Huxley’s point. But I do not believe that we can force people to engage in the world and care about change. I don’t believe we’re as socially mobile as we pretend. And that’s probably the biggest difference between the younger me who first read this and the me now. I’m now content with my own desire to change the world and I’ve lost the feeling that I can rally others. I’ve lost the drive to make people live up to their own ideals. I feel somewhat disappointed writing those words and yet also pragmatic. Something to think about there…

“Imagine the folly of allowing people to play games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption.” – Aldous Huxley

Introducing a World

The way that Huxley lead the reader straight into this world and gave us a tour (literally) of the London Hatchery is one of the best introductions to a new society that I’ve ever seen in a book. I think, honestly, that it’s part of the reason I had trouble fighting the worldview. Instead of reacting in immediate disgust, because I have a pretty open (suggestible) mind, I was thinking, “Oh, that’s an interesting way of…” and trying to understand what they were doing.

But there were moments that made my blood run cold. And that’s what’s truly effective–like someone pouring a bucket of cold water over you in a hot tub. This starts with the description of the Bokanovsky Process. It was fascinating to see how they grey 96 humans from one egg. But it was also terrifying. The idea of stunting a growth process to get something to “bud” makes sense to me with tomatoes, but when it comes to humans… *shudder*

As a writer, even if you have no interest in this book overall, you must go and read this first chapter carefully. It will change your world building forever. Oh, and read Chapter Three, too. It is the best inter-splicing of narrative I’ve seen since The Land at the End of the World. And the way Huxley builds a crescendo by shortening the passages the farther in you get is mind-bogglingly well done.

The Ideological Tangent

I thought I was done with ideological rants after Ayn Rand. I still haven’t read all 70 or so pages of John Galt’s rant in Atlas Shrugged. So when I got to the conversation between Mustapha Mond and the Savage in Brave New World, I was surprised to see that this was the only section younger me had highlighted. Some of the things I highlighted, like, “You can’t play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy” were clearly in-jokes that I thought would make me sound smarter if I ever had the chance to quote them.

Others, like “You can’t have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices” and “truth’s a menace” were things that still spark something in my brain. In some ways they ring true, and in others they do not, and it’s that bridge between the two spaces that I find really fascinating.

The Savage Past

What I found most disappointing about this book was the shock and awe of the savage past. Bernard and Lenina’s reaction to it didn’t impress anything upon me and I simply didn’t care. The book waned overall for me from then on because I was not invested in that dichotomy.

Banning Books

I’m flat out against censorship and the banning of books so I was very curious as I read this book why it would be banned or challenged. Turns out the reasons are myriad: sexuality, anti-religious views, depictions of indigenous peoples. I was bothered by parts of the book, sure, but they made me think and I always appreciate that. I suppose people challenge and ban books from fear. Fear that people aren’t smart/civilized enough to make their own decisions, fear of new or different ideas, fear for the children.

In my utopia we can hold a multitude of contrasting ideas. We can be open to new worldviews and inputs because we trust in our ability to think and reason. We can learn new ways of doing things and hold fast to some old ones that work. We are not afraid of what the world will become once we taste that forbidden fruit because we believe that our humanity will keep pushing us to be better as individuals even when we cannot affect the whole. And by that token, the whole gets stronger, smarter, kinder, more human. In that way, I have not given up on my optimism or on the world around me at all.

If you want to test out your own version of utopia, pick up a copy of Brave New World from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

A Hollow Life For Kings and Planets

September 7, 2014 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Who will we become? Is the longing for something greater in life something we should chase or should we be happy with what we have? When farm boy Orno Tarcher meets the worldly Marshall Emerson on Orno’s first day at Columbia in For Kings and Planets by Ethan Canin, these are the questions that are set in motion. And if the book had lived up to that struggle, I would have been thrilled.

I keep wondering why I was so critical of this book as I was reading it. It spoke to a struggle I face every day. The language was pleasant and the central metaphor was mercifully subtle. It featured characters who felt deeply familiar to me. But there’s another, much deeper reason I could not love this book…

My Struggle

I wrote last week about my desire for an unwritten life. But I also want to feel grounded in myself. Throughout their college experience, Marshall pushes Orno to do something more, something greater. And Orno pushes himself to accept his own limitations. Hell, not even limitations. Orno pushes himself to enjoy the more grounded life he’s drawn to. He experiments with Marshall’s kind of life and he loves his friend dearly, but he knows it isn’t right for him.

I don’t know yet what’s right for me. I know I need to create, but in the past month I couldn’t point even to a poem that I’ve started, at least nothing for myself. The dreams and projects are building up inside me but something is holding me back. And while I’d been reading a spate of poetry and hybrid books by women who were experimenting with voice, the last couple of books I’ve been drawn to (after a couple of weeks of barely reading) have been relatively conventional narratives, both by men, that haven’t rung bells in my soul.

So I know I want one aspect of Marshall’s life—the element of seeking something greater and more fulfilling (or more accurately, I can’t escape it)—but I want Orno’s sense of fulfillment. Can I have both? I think so, but some days it’s really slow going.

Language and Metaphor

Remember when the most stressful question on your English test was, “What is the meaning of the title?” The origins of the title of For Kings and Planets aren’t revealed until about halfway through and then it seems like a casual aside. Orno is writing to Marshall that something or other is named much more conventionally, that it’s not named “for kings and planets.” Actually as I’m typing this, I’m realizing that with Marshall’s love for quoting poetry, it must be a quote, likely from Auden, but I’ll let you seek that on your own (poetry is better in context anyway). What I like about the title, though, is that a whole other dimension of it emerges just in the final pages of the book and in a very subtle way and I started to understand who is orbiting whom.

When this book was published, Canin was teaching at The Iowa Writer’s Workshop and the language is suitably beautiful without being at all show-offy. Still, this is a book where I underlined lines more because I recognized something in the characterization than because of a turn of phrase I loved. Speaking of characterization…

Familiar Characters

If I told you that both Marshall and his professor father—men who are hungry for a greater life which sometimes makes casualties of the people around them—seemed familiar, you might think I was talking about you. Because the truth is that most of the people who read this blog are my friends or family. The other truth is that I’m surrounded by seekers and dreamers. Or rather that I surround myself with seekers and dreamers.

The scary truth is I recognized that “making casualties of the people around you” part as something I’m prone to. It’s something I fight against, when I’m aware of it, but sometimes that hunger to become something greater is all-consuming. All. Consuming.

Why I Can’t Love this Book

And this book isn’t consuming at all. It’s distant, not angst-ridden. It’s psychological when I want it to be emotive. And it never acknowledges the place between dreamer and grounded that most of us make our lives in. Which means the characters ultimately lack nuance.

So many times as I was reading this book as Marshall quits school and runs off to Hollywood to read screenplays all the while showering admiration on his more grounded friend, I wanted Marshall to find some element of satisfaction. I wanted Orno to feel some control over his own destiny. But never the twain shall meet. And the book ends up feeling flat in that way that so much contemporary fiction is criticized for.

I hope I haven’t completely spoiled the book for you. But maybe I’ve saved you a little time, too. Because whether you’re a seeker who longs to be grounded or a salt-of-the-earth type who longs to dream, I think you can push yourself harder than Canin will push you with this book. And I’d love to hear about your struggles and triumphs in the comments.

As for me, I’m off to harvest some plums from our back yard. Maybe somewhere in the manual, mindless tasks of picking, washing, peeling, boiling, and preserving, I’ll find the space to dig into my creative self and wrench out whatever’s standing in my way. Because the grounded self and the seeker self are not mutually exclusive. And my destiny is to try to be both at once, or at least in turns.

Wish me luck…

If you want to decide for yourself, pick up a copy of For Kings and Planets from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.