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

Don DeLillo: The Man behind the Curtain in Mao II

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Cover of Mao II by Don DeLillo showing a collage including a picture of MaoA novel is a fiction, necessarily orchestrated to form a cohesive story. In Mao II, Don DeLillo creates a fictional world structured around specific historical events. The reader suspends disbelief and goes along with the author on the journey he set in motion. However, DeLillo seems to resist the submission by the reader to the story. He creates a world that feels cinematic instead of authentic. Then DeLillo slips in moments that feel so true, they pull back the curtain, show the two-dimensionality of the façade, and remind the reader of the fictional contrivances of the rest of the book.

Cinematic Fiction

DeLillo crafted one scene in the book so masterfully it felt cinematic. When Brita is photographing Bill in his writing room, DeLillo writes: “Bill looked for matches now, clearing papers off the desktop.” Through this action, I could see exactly the jumble of his room and the mess of his thoughts. Then DeLillo goes on: “[h]e struck the match and then forgot it.” It was beautiful. I was enthralled. I knew Bill completely through that one gesture. I could see him distractedly cogitating on his relationship with the world outside his house. I felt like I was watching the scene on screen and I didn’t mind that it felt cinematic rather than real. But then DeLillo takes it too far as Brita is taking the last pictures of Bill: “[Brita] moved in closer and refocused, she shot and shot, and he stood their looking into the lens, soft eyes shining.” DeLillo has carefully placed the reader in the position of seeing Bill through the lens of that camera to further the point he is trying to make about images. But at the same time, he is forcing the reader to step outside of the narrative and help construct the fiction. He took me from my seat in the theater and put me behind the camera. I felt forced to participate in the contrivance of the image.

A Series of Unlikely Events

DeLillo also kept me on the outside of the book looking in by throwing together too many unlikely events. If it were just the story of a man (Scott) who is led by fate (we are to believe) to his reclusive idol’s (Bill’s) doorstep, a photographer (Brita) who has sought out this idol, and the idol and his relationship with his editor (Charles) and family, I can weave together the threads and follow the story without complaint. But DeLillo ads in a myriad of disparate and improbable characters: a girl (Karen, a girl so spaced out she knows Warhol’s hair color but can’t remember his name) who was married at Yankee Stadium by the Reverend Moon and who somehow runs into Scott; Arafat; and a poet who was kidnapped at exactly the right moment to become a vehicle for Bill’s come-back. The story was too big for me, and even with a strong belief in fate, I had difficulty making the leaps DeLillo wanted me to make to believe that these characters could ever come together at precisely the right times without divine intervention. It felt like he was reminding me this was a fiction.

Moments of Truth

In sharp contrast to the contrivances DeLillo presented, there were two moments in the book that felt heartbreakingly true. One was when Bill is speaking about his childhood: “I used to announce ballgames to myself….I was the players, the announcers, the crowd, the listening audience and the radio. There hasn’t been a moment since those days when I’ve felt nearly so good.” Having read enough DeLillo to recognize his fascination with baseball, I felt like this was him ascribing his own childhood to Bill. It was so humbly written and so shockingly revealing of an author’s desire to be an entire world, this moment stood out glaringly from the rest of the text. I felt for the first time that I was reading something true. The other sentence where I felt like I could touch the author was: “[a] woman knows how to want something.” It was so cryptic and yet so universally applicable. It seemed like one of those moments where an author throws in an observation he has made that speaks more to a greater truth than to the characters. Again, I felt I was taken out of the narrative, but this time by truths rather than fictions.

I enjoyed the book. I was caught up in the breadth of the story and the seamless way DeLillo panned back and forth between the thoughts of various characters. The book felt important. He was talking about big ideas and trying to make a point beyond the flow of the story. I liked the thrust of all of that. But in trying to make his point, DeLillo forced the situation (I have to believe consciously) and as a result, the story rang tinny. I think he was making a point about the fallacy of images, but I would have preferred to have the story. DeLillo reminded me that the reader can innately tell the difference between fact and fiction. And if I lie to them, whatever story I am trying to tell or whatever meaning I am trying to get across becomes tainted. I don’t mean that I will write nonfiction–I mean instead that I have to carefully consider whether the characters’ actions and my situations ring true. My novel must be a carefully crafted world, but I have to avoid the feeling of contrivance.

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

Myriad Voices in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse

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Cover of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf showing vintage picnickers on a beach across a bay from a lighthouseI don’t know whether it was that the idea of going to the lighthouse was first proposed to six-year-old James, because the first sentence of To the Lighthouse was in dialogue, or because Virginia Woolf describes James’s “extraordinary joy” at the news, but when his father breaks in with the news (again in dialogue) that the weather will not be good enough, my heart broke for James. And then when James’s mother insists, despite the fact that James has declared his father incapable of untruth, that the possibility still remains of their going, my heart soared for him again.

Shifting Omniscient Perspective

The way the omniscient perspective in the novel dips into the mind of one character and then another with only a paragraph break for separation gives the narration an almost choral effect as character after character muses through their own thoughts and then comments on the action of the novel. The muse, comment, muse pattern in the first chapter opens up space within the novel where the characters come to life even though the action is sparse and takes place over a short period of time. On page 64, the narrator tells us Mrs. Ramsay is knitting and then gives us her thoughts as they wander to “How could any Lord have made this world….With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor” and then the narrator returns us to the image of her as she “knitted with firm composure.”  Then back to musing and back to knitting. As a reader I feel like I know Mrs. Ramsay in a way I would not if I were to see her knitting in a chair. Because the narrator consistently brings the reader back to the action, the piece still feels grounded. This is something I explored in my novel Polska, 1994. I worked to open up spaces inside the narrative where characters can be and show more of themselves.

The Voice of the House

Whereas the first chapter of To the Lighthouse is populated with the various perspectives and internal voices of characters, the second chapter is nearly devoid of them. The narration focuses on the house itself (its rooms, its furnishings, and its environment) and a result the house and the story feel empty and sad. The reader feels that the Ramsay family and in particular Mrs. Ramsay was the soul of the house. The reader feels the loss of Mrs. Ramsay to the extent that the magic of the house cannot be regained even when the Ramsay family returns in the third chapter.

Repetition

Woolf uses repetition as Lily frequently mentally notes something that Mrs. Ramsey has just noted (e.g. that Paul and Minta are engaged). Lily also comes back to the image of the tree in her painting over and over again as dinner progresses and she decides to move it more to the middle. As the tree comes up again and again, the image is more concrete in the reader’s mind. These things that are repeated take on a greater significance than if they were merely mentioned once, and Lily’s echo of Mrs. Ramsay not only enforces the general understanding of the group but it also shows the similarity in character between Mrs. Ramsay and Lily. I worked with repetition in Murmur of the River. There are a few key scenes that happen twice but in two different ways and this repetition shows how the world around Magda is changing and also how Magda’s interaction with her world is changing.

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

Tagalog Words, Filipino Flavor in Dogeaters

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Jessica Hagedorn - DogeatersI’m thinking a lot about the feel of foreign words on the tongue and in print lately, so I want to talk about Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters. She uses Tagalog and Spanish words throughout this novel set in the Phillipines. Most often these phrases are used in dialogue and consist of exclamations, family designations, or food. Hagedorn sets aside the words for the reader by using italics, but it is clear that the intermingling of these words would occur naturally in the characters’ speech. These words lend the story authenticity, but they can also interfere with the reader’s understanding of the story.

Spanish

The Spanish words Hagedorn uses are easily intelligible and familiar, I imagine, even to many readers who don’t speak Spanish. Words like “abuelita,” “hija,” and “prima” are all family designations and are used with varying regularity in novels set in America. Hagedorn uses the Spanish “abuelita” to differentiate between Rio’s two grandmothers. Both women are Filipina, but one has moved to Spain and considers herself more Spanish. Rio’s Filipina grandmother, Narcisa, is addressed as “Lola” while her grandmother with Spanish pretensions, Socorro, is addressed as “abuelita.”

Tagalog

Some of the Tagalog words Hagedorn uses are easily understandable based on the context clues around them: “[i]t is merienda time at the popular Cafe España.” It is clear that “merienda” has something to do with eating. As the novel progresses, Hagedorn uses the word over and over and the reader’s understanding of the word is enriched. Although I never fully understood the word, I came to understand “merienda” happens in the morning and may be akin to brunch. I was able to substitute “brunch” for “merienda” and at least understand what was going on in the scenes. A similar thing happened with “tsismis.”  At first I had no idea what the characters were talking about, but by the time I read Rio’s father saying to her mother: “what do you do all day for exercise, except move your mouth up, down, and sideways, making tsismis with your queers,” I understood it meant gossip.

Defining Words in the Text

There were two instances where the non-English words were described by the characters themselves. In the first, Rio is describing her family and says: “Uncle Cristobal flies a Falangista flag above his front door to show his allegiance to Franco.” While I have no idea what the flag looks like, I completely understand its meaning and how it might pigeonhole Cristobal politically. The second instance is while Rio’s mother and father are discussing the difference between “putok” and “spiritik,” both of which mean fake. Rio’s father says: “Congressman Abad spiritiks when he plays golf, but General Ledesma rewards his army with cases of putok liquor.” I learn the nuance of the connotations of the two words, but Hagedorn also weaves in some of the flavor of local politics at the same time.

There are phrases that I never even quite got the gist of throughout the novel. Many of these seemed like interjections. One of these was “di ba” and another was “puwede ba.” They occurred frequently in conversation, often followed by an exclamation point, but with context clues. I interpreted them as exclamations, and I didn’t feel like I lost a major point of the sentence by not understanding them, but I never did get the full flavor of the sentence.

I am used to understanding even foreign words in novels, and it was a switch for me to not be able to understand exactly what was going on at all times. Hagedorn’s use of Tagalog made me more conscious of my use of Polish in my novel, Polska, 1994. Because Polish is, like Tagalog, not widely spoken outside of its native country (and expat communities), Hagedorn is teaching me to use context clues to help the non-Polish speaker understand the words. These foreign words and phrases need to be at least intelligible to an English-speaking reader, even if they convey a deeper meaning to a Polish-speaking reader.

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

The Language of Culture in Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God

In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston writes in a language so rich it is sometimes nearly unintelligible. The dialogue is expressed in dialect and the imagery is culturally specific which immerses the reader into a fully-realized world.

Appreciating the Small Things

When the protagonist Janie is leaving the home of her first husband, a man she never loved, to follow smooth-talking Joe, the narrator observes: “The morning road air was like a new dress.” The image is striking in that it pulls together two simple but disparate items, air and a dress. This simile gives the reader a completely fresh image which is difficult to do, and the originality is intoxicating. The image also gives the reader a better understanding of Janie’s world. These are not rich people and a new dress is a fine, rare thing. The newness of the dress also points to the possibility that lies ahead for Janie as she leaves what was a stifling relationship. In passing through that morning road air, she is shedding her old clothes and moving into a new life—maybe even a life where she can have new things.

After Janie has spent years of her life as Joe’s wife working in his store and stifling herself when he wants her to, the narrator comments: “The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul.” This reminds the reader that fight was once in her face and that she was a spirited woman. It also implies that submission is a bad thing and that Janie had to give up a part of herself, even if only temporarily, to be with this man. In Janie’s world submission equals being worn down which means that the fighting spirit is something of value.

Local Vernacular

The characters are African American and large portions of the story are set in Florida during a time when segregation was de rigueur. Most of the people are poor and barely scraping by and they are not by and large educated. This is reflected in their dialogue as in this segment from a conversation between two peripheral characters: “‘Ah’m uh bitch’s baby round lady people.’” For a white, educated, northern ear, it takes a concerted effort to completely understand the meaning behind the sentence. A bitch’s baby would be a puppy. Does that mean the character is lagging around behind women like a puppy?  And although this imagery is less fresh that the new dress, it is colorful and descriptive. I didn’t necessarily understand everything the characters spoke of during the dialogue in the novel, but Hurston’s way of rendering speech gives insight into the world Janie lives in. I could hear the characters in their native tongue. Because the diction is unusual, I understood more fully the differences between the world in this novel and my world.

Free Indirect Style

Hurston also uses free indirect style, breaking away from the narrative slightly to slip into a comment that sounds like it is coming from Janie. This happens as Janie is considering Tea Cake’s advances: “Must be around twenty-five and here she was around forty…Fact is, she decided to treat him so cold if he ever did foot the place that he’d be sure not to come hanging around there again.”  For a moment we are inside Janie’s head and she is sassy. She is judging herself but she is also intrigued by this young man. The sentences are not complete and the syntax is Southern with the “if he ever did” and the “treat him so cold.”  This gives the reader a fresh take on the inner workings of Janie, but it is also a bridge between the dialect of the dialogue and the clearer diction of the narrator.

Language is specific to culture and reveals everything that is important about everything worth talking about. For my novel, Polska, 1994, I worked with the language of my characters to denote their backgrounds and their experiences. Language can also be a barrier to understanding. I used some Polish words in my novel and I thought long and hard about each one. In some cases, the Polish was the best possible word because there is not an English equivalent. In others, I wanted the feeling of the Polish word, as with Jacek. I used more Polish in introducing Jacek than I had with other characters because of his intense nationalism. In either case, I rarely translate the word and some understanding will be lost for the non-Polish reader. Hurston’s rich language easily sucked me into her world, but often, especially during passages of dialogue, I was lost in terms of what was going on. I had to spend additional time looking at the language and it took me out of the story and took away from my experience of it. I personally have difficulty understanding novels written in dialect, but I understand is different for every reader. Some readers will find my novel more difficult too. But I hope even in the difficult reads they can love it as much as I loved Their Eyes Were Watching God.

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

Love in The Winter Vault with Anne Michaels

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Cover of The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels showing men on camels in a flooding EgyptI’ve been thinking about what I could say about The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels that would express how much I loved it. The only way to start is with my own story. Five months ago I married the man I have loved for sixteen years and I thought marriage would be a capstone on our relationship. I didn’t realize our marriage would be the beginning of a new phase of love. Reading about Jean and Avery falling in love, I saw a closeness and intimacy that mirrored ours. I remembered what it was like to fall in love with my husband so long ago and that helped me understand the beauty and fullness of what was happening in this new phase of our relationship. I’ve heard it said that no marriage in literature can be a happy one, and Avery and Jean are confronted with a loss that divides them, but it does not divide the book and the ways they continue to relate and to love are an equally important part of the story.

Building on recurring themes of creation and simulacra in the wake of destruction, this novel created for me a sensation of deepening understanding as I encountered loud thematic echoes and subtler inferences throughout. Even tiny technical details of the transplantation of Abu Simbel, though woven into a beautiful story, reinforce these themes.

Michaels is first a poet and she re-imagines each sentence so that it is at once unique and seemingly effortless. It is a joy to read about new and familiar subjects and to follow her curious mind as she describes the genesis of wheat and the varieties of palms.

Portions of this book and the general structure recall Fugitive Pieces, which I also loved, but The Winter Vault is in most ways a very different story and perhaps one with a wider audience. This is a good book for the curious mind and for anyone who has ever loved deeply and lost. I’m not ready to part with it yet. Perhaps as I read it again I will fall even more deeply in love. If so, I’ll spare you the details.

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