A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

On Being and Nothingness: Why I’d Make a Rotten Philosopher

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Being and Nothingness SartreThough I’m obsessed with philosophy, we have a tortured relationship. The whole concept of discussing an idea and its implications to death is pure heaven for me. But I like to be right (i.e. not WRONG) and I usually feel inadequately prepared to properly discuss important ideas. In reading Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, there were ideas I wanted to share with friends, but I felt like I couldn’t without going to Wikipedia and determining first that I hadn’t misread the book.

The Flawed Way I Read This Book

Sometimes you have to be who you are. I don’t even remember the first 200 pages of this book. I read them too long ago and the language was thick and I never got my head around it. I don’t remember the last 100 either; I was so immersed in the implications of being-for-others. I didn’t skip anything, but I rapidly skimmed entire sections.

My Relationship with the Other

I became obsessed with how I had defined myself in Others. I thought about the Others I acknowledged and the people who did not contribute to my definition of me at all. I started to think about how being-for-others affected each of my relationships and what it all means for my next book.

I took a hard look at friendships I maintained, contact I had severed, and people I had simply let go. In thinking of Others, I climbed entirely within myself. And then I wanted to reach out to friends to discuss the ways in which we had defined each other. I became filled with forgiveness for others and wished for others to forgive me. I very nearly got sidetracked and failed to finish the book at all.

Many Ways of being Right

I think back to times when I have crucified friends because they saw the world differently than I. I want to be open to the world, not in a castle of correct facts, and I am glad for this moment of learning that knowledge is broad. By being imperfect, we can be open. We can learn and risk and grow. We can find the truths beyond the facts. I have no doubt that I would fail any exam on Being and Nothingness. But I am delighted with the knowledge the book helped me create for myself. I am still slightly uncomfortable with not having gotten all I was “supposed to” from the book, but I got what I most needed.

The lesson I will take from reading this book is that I’m not in some seminar where if I misread a sentence I will be taken down by a peer. Any bit of knowledge that I pick up is important and right in that it spurs my thinking and helps me get the places that I needed to go. If I misunderstand Sartre’s interpretation of Heidegger, no lives will be lost. And I don’t have to go back to Heidegger to determine if I agree with that interpretation. Though I will never pass Philosophy 101, I am open to knowledge and a wide expanse of human truth, and I am comfortable with that. Maybe that’s the difference between a philosopher and a student of philosophy.

Opening Up to Explore Truth

In the coming days I will take Sartre’s ideas and I will examine my long-term obsession with the living for the outside world versus living for oneself. I will continue to try to understand how we can take our relationship with an Other and turn it around to define ourselves. I will begin to learn how to forgive myself for my imperfections. And though my understanding is still imperfect, I will finally allow myself to use my new book to explore the relationship between our internal and external lives.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Being and Nothingness from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Silken Anaphora in Hélène by Deborah Poe

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Helene Deborah Poe

It’s obvious to even the most casual reader how much I love novellas. But my love for poetry is something I barely admit to myself (though that may be obvious to you as well). When I had the chance to borrow a novella in verse—Hélène by Deborah Poe—I greedily snatched the book from my co-worker and read it all up in a day.

Poe’s narrative tells of a girl manufacturing silk in 19th century France who imagines the romance of making silk in China instead. The writing is concise and evocative, and while I read the book very quickly, I could have spent months enjoying all the possibilities on the page. I copied down one of the pages so I could unpack it here with you.

The benefactor offered something other than work on farms.

The benefactor set out to board, lodge, and clothe girls as well as give them wages.

The benefactor built the silk factory.

The benefactor taught the art of silk.

No, the benefactor taught the manufacturing of silk.

The benefactor became the hero of the country.

The benefactor found docile bodies.

What I first loved about this page was Poe’s use of anaphora (the repetition of a phrase at the beginning of a sentence). You’ve likely heard me go on and on about anaphora and epistrophe before. These forms of rhetorical repetition are something I use in my own writing and they rarely fail to entrance me.

In this selection, Poe starts (almost) every line with “The benefactor.” This grounds the selection (she does not use this same form on any other page) and provides a strong framework for the reader to explore—the benefactor. As a reader we get used to the idea of having a benefactor even as we begin to understand what the benefactor does. At first he seems benevolent—offering work away from farms where girls are cared for and paid. He creates something new by building a silk factory. He teaches the art of making silk.

But then Poe breaks the anaphora by starting the fifth line with “No.” Our feelings about the benefactor are about to change. The art of making silk and the manufacturing of silk are not the same. The dream is not the same as reality. Now that I’ve seen the benefactor is not exactly as he appears, I will question the statements about him more. The next line where he becomes “the hero of the country” is tainted now because we know there is more to know about him.

Poe brings this duplicity home when the benefactor finds “docile bodies.” They could be docile for working, but it is impossible to ignore the understated implication that he is using his workers for sex. And because it is understated and because we were first impressed with this benefactor as the narrator was, the betrayal is deeper.

Each page in this book is woven in its own pattern, and one of the things I would love about spending more time with it is unraveling the strands of logic that make the larger tapestry. If you read this book, please share with me the pages and stories you love most.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Hélène from Small Press Distribution.

Field Reports from World War Z

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World War ZI’m so excited to finally be reviewing World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. On Saturday, I watched the piling masses of zombies and Brad Pitt in the preview for the film (on the front of Twilight) and rushed home to steal the book from my husband and start reading. The rest of the weekend was me avoiding everyone (including the aforementioned husband) so I could read, read, read.

But a bout of food poisoning led to some really nasty zombie/vampire fever dreams that resulted in an equally nasty cold. And I’ve been unable to write ever since. So you could say that zombies ate my brains. But I’m back and I want to tell you about this book.

Reportage

World War Z is my first foray into the zombie lit genre. Most of my horror novel experience was in my early teens when Satanists and creepy toys were the horror darlings of the day. So I didn’t really know what to expect, but I imagine that Brooks’ decision to tell the story of the zombie war as a collection of field reports surprised many readers.

Reading the introduction, the way Brooks chose to tell these stories struck me as odd, but as a Poli Sci wonk, I found it easy to get into the idea of post-incident reports and was interested in the conceit of stories “too intimate” to include in the official record. Some of the individual stories are the victim stories you might expect. Others provide insight into the bureaucracy and military and civilian corps in exciting and interesting ways. So my concerns rapidly vanished and I got sucked into the book.

Creating Unique Characters

One of the challenges of telling a story from a variety of viewpoints (especially when they are all first person) is making them sound different to the reader. Brooks did a great job of subtly differentiating the voices of his characters through specific vocabulary. For example, military folks called zombies, “Zack.” It’s an effect that could have easily been overdone, but Brooks blended just the right amount of character-specific words with clean prose and it worked.

Stories from Around the Globe

Part of the reason the book felt so immediate, even though it was told from after the war, was that the reports came from around the world. The stories unfold chronologically which should provide order, but because you could be reading about Virginia on one page, Finland the next, and Antarctica a few pages later, the zombie outbreak felt like it was closing in and there was no escape. The stories wove together to form a fascinating picture of the pandemic.

World War Z: The Film

I’m all out of Twilight movies (okay, I still haven’t seen 2 or 4, but I got the gist and I’m over it), but after reading World War Z, I can’t wait to see this movie in theaters. It looks like the story might revolve specifically around Pitt’s family and I can understand why screenwriters Damon Lindelof and Matthew Michael Carnahan might choose a more traditional narrative (getting a star enough lines is only one reason). Still, I think I’ll miss the surprising storytelling of Max Brooks.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Inspiration in Iteration: Italo Calvino and Pixar in La Luna

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Cosmicomics Italo CalvinoAs I was reading Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino this weekend, I felt like the story “The Distance of the Moon” was somehow familiar. I had seen it—with my eyes, not in my imagination. But it wasn’t quite the same story. It took a few hours for me to remember that I was thinking of Pixar’s La Luna, the short film at the front of Brave.

Sometimes I forget how much art and literature feed off one another. I shouldn’t because my writing is often inspired by other art forms. At this very moment, I am watching a random film and taking notes in a separate document on the interactions of the characters to help me understand the characters in my latest novel. But I was surprised (and delighted) to find something I consider to be relatively obscure had inspired a Pixar short.

Italo Calvino vs. Enrico Casarosa and Pixar

This could become a post about pop culture versus art, but I’d rather not make those distinctions, not today anyway. What interested me about the Calvino/Pixar relationship is that screenwriter Enrico Casarosa and Pixar were bringing this beautiful story of people rowing boats out into the sea to climb ladders onto a low-hanging moon to an audience who would mostly not read Calvino.

Though the setting of “The Distance of the Moon” and La Luna is the same and both are filled with childlike wonder, there are substantial differences between the stories. “The Distance of the Moon” is written for adults and in that wonderfully concise Calvino fashion, contains an undercurrent of sexuality and an allegory for unrequited love. The characters change from the page to the screen and the elements of danger and loss are omitted. Instead, Casarosa presents a film about family relationships and how the brightest ideas sometimes come from the youngest minds.

The Beauty of Variations

Chinese painters repaint masterpieces to learn the strokes of the masters who came before them. But can we ever create the same artwork or do we always leave a piece of ourselves behind?

I started thinking about “The Street of Crocodiles” by Bruno Schulz and the short film by the Brothers Quay (known for making music videos for Tool) of the same name. The story by Schulz is colorful and alive, whereas the film is truly creepy and compelling.

What I love about this process of iterative creation is that each new interpretation feels like rediscovering a story as each artist adds bits of themselves to the project.

Calvino and Schulz are inextricably linked in my reading habits. It’s like I’m locked in some Western European tapestry where Calvino creates the clean yet inventive geometry governing the weft while Schulz weaves and embroiders the warp with his crazy wild descriptions. It’s pretty awesome.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Cosmicomics from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Deconstructing Plot with Alan Brenham’s Price of Justice

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Aristotle would have loved detective novels. He considered a fine-tuned plot more important than characterization. Gustav Freytag, father of the dramatic pyramid would also appreciate the way most modern detective novels make use of his five-part model (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement). Because I write literary fiction, plot is something I sometimes fail at, so I looked closely at Price of Justice by Alan Brenham to see what I could learn.

Exposition

To start a good book, the writer must clue the reader in to what is happening. As this ground situation is set, every detail that will be important throughout the rest of the book is introduced. And like Chekhov’s gun (the idea that a gun introduced in the first act must go off) all the details that are introduced should be important.

Price of Justice is told from two main points of view, Detective Scarsdale’s and Dani Mueller’s. Both have good reason to hate sex offenders. Scarsdale is recovering from losing a case against one and Mueller has a dark secret involving the man who raped and killed her daughter. Brenham expertly outlines the character’s conflicts and all the details readers need to know to navigate the twists and turns of the tightly-woven plot.

Rising Action

Once the reader gets his or her bearings in the fictional world, it’s time to add in complicating details and plot points. And Brenham escalates the action with all kinds of increasingly tense plot complications. These incidents (ranging from workplace politics to a break-in) are closely related to the ground situation. They add richness to the world while propelling the reader through the story.

Climax

This is the point in Freytag’s pyramid where the tension is supposed to be at its height. Although the details add up nicely, Chekhov’s gun goes off, and Brenham does a good job of keeping the story on theme, by the time the climax finally rolled around, I was more than ready for it. There had been so much heavy action leading up to this moment that I wanted even more from the big moment. Instead the climax felt a bit too easy.

Falling Action and Dénouement

Price of Justice is a modern novel, and as such it doesn’t have much action after the climax. Brenham intentionally leaves a few questions unanswered, but the ending is satisfactory.

Characterization

Detective novels on the whole are something I very much enjoy reading for fun. But they often lack the character development that I love. I appreciated that Brenham created more complexity than average in Dani Mueller’s background. Her motivations were unflinchingly straightforward, but the unusual nature of her background allowed for some unexpected turns as the plot unfolded.

Price of Justice is set in Austin, TX, a city I know and love, and I enjoyed how Brenham also used the city as a character.

What I learned from looking closely at the plotting of this book is that it is possible to write much more tension into a book than I usually feel comfortable doing. I need to realize that when I feel anxious writing something, that is not a reason to flinch. Instead it is a reason to follow that feeling and see what I can do to deepen the reader’s experience. I will likely always be a literary writer—mucking around in my character’s psyches instead of their actions, but that’s no excuse for letting the tension in my books lag.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Price of Justice from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.