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

Uprooted by Mauricio Segura’s Eucalyptus

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Imagine a woman, born in the US but who lived for a formative year in Pinochet’s Chile, reading a book by an author born in Chile and living in Canada. The book, originally written in French, is about a Chilean-Canadian man who has returned to his native country to bury his father. Perhaps this international hopscotch begins to describe the magic I felt when opening Eucalyptus by . I’m so far inside it, I can’t even tell. Let me share with you what I loved about this beautiful book.

Literary Language

Segura captured me with the first sentence of the first paragraph: “On the horizon, pools of water vaporized as he advanced.” Writers and writing teachers make a lot of (deserved) fuss about first sentences–so much so that it can be paralyzing for a writer to try and come up with something original but not forced, interesting but not obscure. With this sentence I had no idea what country the characters were in, who they were, or what they were doing except advancing. And I was happy to advance with them. It quickly becomes obvious that Alberto is driving and he’s doing so very determinedly.

“He only came to himself when the pickup crossed the old metal bridge over the Bío Bío, where there was a gaggle of children giddy with laughter bobbing along in the river’s treacherous current.” – Mauricio Segura

This is the first mention of geography and it felled me and grounded me. I remembered driving with my own family across that same river one night to see Halley’s Comet. I remembered the children playing in the river. But even if I didn’t have those memories, this simple sentence begins to open for the reader the world that Alberto is re-entering. The children are gleeful despite the danger. Reading further the parents are watching but not very closely. This is not a world where children live on leashes and Alberto will learn some lessons along the way.

My brother, one of the most faithful readers of this blog, will be interested to know that the story takes place in Temuco. It is on the sidewalks of that town that I remember him earning the nickname “Terremoto” which means earthquake. I’ll spare his dignity a little and not commit to the Internet the other story about him in Temuco. Just know, Tosh, that I haven’t forgotten and I’m using my rights as an older sister to tease you about it for life.

“Yes, it is now that the family is breaking up, decomposing like molecules being brought to the boil, and we are scattering to the four corners of the American continent.” – Mauricio Segura

And then there are the images. This is a simple one–much of the language in this book is simple–but it’s deceptive in its plainness. In one sentence we have a family that is rotting, separating, heating up, and dispersing. In a book of only 150 pages, each word has a lot of work to do and Segura (along with translator Donald Winkler) is doing it well.

Parallels

This is a book to read closely. The story of Alberto returning from Canada for his father’s funeral is closely woven into the story of Roberto (Alberto’s father) returning from Canada for his father’s funeral. You read that right. I wondered if Alberto’s son, Marco, would someday also return…

“‘A few weeks later,’ Carmen said, ‘a policeman came to the farm.’

Opening the door, Roberto saw a youth dressed in a khaki shirt and brown pants.” – Mauricio Segura

What’s especially interesting about this relationship between parallel time periods is that there are often no transitions between them. Carmen is telling the story to Alberto after the death of Roberto but the paragraphs of time just slip into each other. It makes the book a little difficult to follow at times but it also causes this gorgeous overlap where all events feel as though they are occurring in the present. It’s a difficult effect (between that and the bouncing bus, I did a fair amount of re-reading) and not one I’d use lightly but Segura pulls it off.

Foreign Roots

I was attracted to this book first because of the title. The smell of eucalyptus trees can still take me back to long walks up Caracol Hill where I picnicked with my family beneath those fragrant trees. That scent is such a strong part of my memory that when visiting San Francisco I make a beeline for Lafayette Park to be surrounded by it.

What surprised me about this book was finding out that eucalyptus trees are indigenous to Australia, not Chile, and were as much imports to that land as I was. I liked thinking about all the degrees of native heritage that the characters enjoyed from the very native Mapuche people to Marco, a child whose father and grandfather had both bounced back and forth across the continent.

Speaking of the continent, did you catch that moment in the second pull quote on this page where Segura wrote of the “American continent”? When I first learned about the continents as a student in Chile, I memorized the names of all six of them. Imagine my surprise and confusion when I came home to the US where I was then taught that there are seven continents. Amazing how a simple denotation on a map can change your worldview.

Rich Storylines

I’ve already discussed parts of Alberto and Roberto’s stories, but there is a lot more background packed into this book including allusions to the troubled political history of Chile, evolving relationships with indigenous peoples, and a volcano. On top of that are some deeply complicated family and neighborhood relationships. But somehow the book is not at all crowded. In fact, at times there was so much going on at an almost subliminal level that Segura left me questioning whether I had any talent as a writer at all because he was weaving those storytelling threads so well. The best books leave us something to aspire to.

If you want to explore a little piece of Chile, pick up a copy of Eucalyptus from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

On Writing and Loneliness with Clarice Lispector

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Clarice Lispector The Hour of the StarI’ve been fussy lately. Nothing I’ve read since Antunes has really pleased me. I spent most of the long weekend making must-do lists and then wandering from room to room to avoid them. I haven’t been out, but I haven’t rested either. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.

Then last night I started writing a letter to a beloved friend and writer – someone with whom I am honest about my process – more honest than I am with myself – and who is also constantly seeking her center. And I realized how much I have let the outside world get in the way of my writing. So today I’m going back to the basics and re-reading Clarice Lispector, a writer to whom I can return again and again and always find something new and who also reminds me of how I fell in love with her the first time. In the process, I learned something about the balance of living outside and inside myself.

How I Came to Lispector

“I am forced to seek a truth that transcends me.” – Clarice Lispector

My advisor, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, first introduced me to Lispector. We read snippets of her breathtaking short fictions in class. I remember feeling deliciously lost in those stories that were not what I expected stories to be – in a writer who was at once writing a narrative about a character and writing about writing. She was breaking all the rules and yet here she was introduced to me as a model. Micheline freed me with that recommendation (and so many others, she also introduced me to Antunes).

So although I was surprised this morning to find a recording of Micheline reading Lispector aloud, I wasn’t surprised that it would be an echo of Micheline that would gently lead me back to where I needed to be.

The Hour of the Star

I wasn’t at all particular which book by Lispector I would choose for my hermitage this morning, so it’s interesting that my hand settled on The Hour of the Star, a novella, rather than one of the stories that Micheline read from. I was surprised when I opened the book that I hadn’t marked it up at all the first time I read it. Normally my books are wildly annotated with different colors of ink and my own system of symbols. I think I didn’t appreciate this book the first time I read it.

How could I have missed the allegory of artist and muse? Much of the first part of the book is taken up with the narrator trying to tell us about this innocent creature (Macabea) who has imprisoned his thoughts. The juxtaposition between his overly self-aware state and her blissful ignorance is instructive and compelling. The writing has so much in common with Fernando Pessoa’s insightful fragments that I began to wonder why the Portuguese are calling to me right now in their language that is at once familiar and foreign.

“The question ‘Who am I?’ creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.” – Clarice Lispector

The Hour of the Star is a story of beginning to want and how desires make us human. I could identify Macabea’s first forays into wanting something for herself – they were akin to how I felt when I first saw words that described my inner being on the page. And like Macabea, I was willing to identify myself in those others for awhile. The trouble and the wonder began when I started to realize that I could create those words for myself – when the world opened up to me and I had to start making my own choices.

It’s a tiny and yet wild little book. There is none of the restraint I love so much in writers like Ishiguro. But I love this book for its chaos. And it’s as much about letting go of our characters as it is about embracing ourselves. Watching the lonely artist narrator live through solitary Macabea as she grew into a creature with wants and needs, I saw some of my own trials and faults as a writer and a person.

On Loneliness and Writing

“I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work. And then I’m happy.” – Orhan Pamuk

I try not to think about loneliness too much in my daily life. Instead I fill my days with anything that could possibly keep it at bay. But I read Stephen Fry’s essay on loneliness recently and I saw in his restlessness my own. Growing up I learned that if I felt lonely, I was failing to appreciate the wealth of people around me. But I think it’s really the opposite. When I am most lonely is when I am failing to appreciate the wealth inside of me. And the more alone I feel, the more I reach outside of myself hoping that my beloved friends can console me – when really only I can console myself. Like Pamuk, the loneliness actually feeds me as a writer. But only when I let it.

“My strength undoubtedly resides in solitude. I am not afraid of tempestuous storms or violent gales for I am also the night’s darkness.” – Clarice Lispector

So I am learning from Pamuk, Lispector, and Fry to embrace the solitude and to cherish the people who respect it. When I do emerge from my office and my fog, I’m a far more interesting and kind person. After taking that time to invest in myself I have more to offer as an artist and a friend.

The Life of a Working Writer

“So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.” – Clarice Lispector

I can’t devote all my time to reading and to writing, I have to work and this, like so many, is a big week. In some ways I resent the time spent away from my passions, but I also know that the framework of constraints (combined with a reliable income) are things that can fuel my work, when I let them. So in a way I feel like I wasted these four days, but I also feel like by allowing myself the space to do nothing I managed to clean my office and my mind and get myself back on the track of writing.

And next weekend, if I have the energy, I will seek out the place where I began as a human and as a writer. I’ll go back to Port Townsend where I was conceived and visit Goddard, the school where I started to accept myself as an artist. I might pop into some student readings, but I know the space where I existed was as much a time and a confluence of people as it was a place. Still, that peninsula holds magic for me. And I might seek out Micheline or I might simply enjoy escaping to the hill and immersing myself in her newest book. I might run into friends new and old, but for the first time I won’t be planning around them.

I am learning to look inside myself for the things I have asked for from others. I still cherish my friends and need their companionship and gentle reminders when I’m off track. I watch them and learn from them as I think they do me, but I am learning to sustain myself as an artist and as a person.

I don’t know what the balance is between immersion and letting go, between me and you, but I am learning. Better yet, I am writing.

If this review made you want to read Lispector, pick up a copy of The Hour of the Star from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission. Consider also picking up a copy of Micheline’s latest book A Brief History of Yes. My copy arrives on Wednesday and I can’t wait to discuss it with you.

Gabriela and the Widow: Jack Remick Teaches Writing through Writing

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The old adage, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach” does not at all apply to Jack Remick. Before I read Gabriela and the Widow, Jack taught me about writing with the insightful questions he’d ask after we read our work aloud during the long-standing writing group at Louisa’s Café in Seattle. Reading Gabriela was even more of an education in the subtleties of craft.

Significant Detail

Driven from her village in Mexico by a civil war that kills her family, young Gabriela faces many hardships. Remick uses details like a “cotton blouse embroidered by hand in the faint light of the evening fire” to convey tender allusions to what Gabriela’s life must have been like before the war. When La Patrona, a woman who has “rescued” Gabriela, then takes this blouse and says she will burn it, the reader has a deeper understanding of how fully the woman is stripping away the essence of Gabriela.

When Gabriela craves a pair of white Nikes, it is easy to see that what she is really craving is a life like the Norteñas who wear these shoes. Later, Gabriela will be coaxed into other shoes, but even then the Nikes serve as a grounding point to indicate how much Gabriela is changing.

Objective Correlative

Terrible things happened to Gabriela when the war came to her village. Remick could have detailed them and we’d be struck by the horror without ever really getting inside Gabriela’s experience. Instead, Remick creates a correlation in Gabriela’s mind between toads and the horrible events—events that she refuses to quite remember. The reader sees her visceral reaction over and over anytime toads cross her path and in this way learns to empathize with her.

Remick builds on Gabriela’s reaction to toads throughout the story. What makes this relationship for me is when Gabriela begins remembering times of innocence that involved toads as well. The glimpse at what life was like before is heartbreaking and the tension between the dark and light memories makes both exponentially more touching.

Myths Retold

Gabriela finds safety in the North where she takes care of an ailing widow whose memory is failing. Gabriela helps her work on a list of objects and photographs and what they meant in the woman’s life. In return, La Viuda teaches Gabriela about what it means to be a woman. Though La Viuda has a somewhat colored view of the experience of womanhood, she doesn’t let her life turn her into a Miss Havisham. Instead, La Viuda intersperses myths and stories of great women with her own stories. Through tales about everyone from Helen of Troy to Xipe Totec, she helps Gabriela create an identity based on strength and womanhood as she transfers her life force to the young girl.

There are hundreds of things I could say about the reasons I loved this book—like the way Gabriela and La Viuda seamlessly slip from English to Spanish and back in their conversations, the magical realism (especially in relation to mirrors), or how in answer to La Viuda’s aging forgetfulness, Remick creates a shifting repetition that grounds the reader and also builds the narrative. What you need to know is the elegant craft reveals just the right amount of information to engage you, the reader, in telling the story.

Jack Remick can teach and he can sure as hell write. Read Gabriela and the Widow and find the things that speak to your writing. You’ll fall in love with the story and you’ll be a better writer for it. Although my work schedule doesn’t allow for weekday afternoons at Louisa’s anymore, I am grateful I can pick up Gabriela and learn from her and from Jack any old time.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Gabriela and the Widow from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Haunted by Pedro Páramo

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pedro paramo - juan rulfoPedro Páramo is the spookiest book I’ve read in a long time. Juan Rulfo created a world where the living interact with the dead in such a way that the reader can’t immediately be certain who is living and who is dead, which creates this suspicion that everyone is dead. Because the stories told about the lives of the dead are much more detailed and intricate than the stories of Juan Preciado, who is alive at the start of the book, the world of the dead seems more real than the world of the living.

Spoilers Ahead

Rulfo does not immediately tell the reader that most of the ghosts Juan encounters are in fact dead, but on some level you can tell. Simple lines like “I saw a woman wrapped in her rebozo; she disappeared as if she had never existed” are easily read over and dismissed. Eduviges has had word from Juan’s dead mother that he is coming—perhaps she is sensitive to the spirit world. Later, Eduviges tells Juan that Abundio with whom he traveled to town is in fact long dead. Then Damiana says Eduviges is long dead.

My mind started stripping away the stories I had rationalized for myself and I started to see everyone as dead. I was so immersed in this novel that when a mentally ill woman perched next to me on a bench at lunch, I kept looking in her eyes to see if she was a ghost.

Layering Experiences

The way Rulfo intersperses short sections with glimpses of characters interacting with Juan and then follows up with a second more detailed section (sometimes then a third or even fourth) of the character in the past makes these spirits feel as alive as Juan Preciado is at the beginning of the novel. When Juan dies midway through the novel, I already felt like the majority of the story was in the flashbacks. I felt like I had been gradually led deeper and deeper into the spirit world until I was left there like Juan was.

I loved this book. I can learn a lot from the way Rulfo managed information so that he only revealed what was absolutely necessary to draw me further into the story. The mystery and suspense he created by mentioning Pedro Páramo’s name, then mentioning he was Abundio’s father also, “living bile,” and then later telling us he was dead. I hadn’t met this character and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but he was immensely intriguing. I wondered if I could do something similar with Jacek in Polska, 1994 by building a reputation first and then introducing the character. I decided not to go that particular direction, but it definitely shapes a reader’s expectations. Every action Pedro Páramo took was tainted for me by Abundio’s preconceptions. Not that his actions, except in the case of his wife Susana were at all laudable.

Atmosphere and Mood

I also like what Rulfo did with the atmospheric descriptions. From walls “stained red by the setting sun” to lines like “February when the mornings are filled with wind and sparrows and blue light,” the description creates the mood of the story and impacts the reader’s understanding of it. The detail of the red stains recurs as Eduviges says goodbye to her sister who is also stained “by the dusk filling the sky with blood.” Whereas when Dorotea remembers the “February wind that used to snap the fern stalks before they died from neglect” and the “little whirlwinds [that swept] across the earth,” it feels like the air in Comala is still and has been for some time. There is no cleansing wind. There is no blue light. There is only heat and stillness and death. In annotating the book, it was actually difficult to decide which atmospheric details to choose because they were everywhere. However, Rulfo’s details blended so seamlessly into the story that they were at once omnipresent and sitting comfortably in the background.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Pedro Páramo from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Poetic Narrative of Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs

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memoirs - pablo nerudaPablo Neruda had a fascinating life and met all sorts of interesting people from Che Guevara to Federico García Lorca. But in reading his Memoirs, I felt like he was recounting all of these stories to me as opposed to letting me relive them with him. Although Neruda uses some dialogue, he rarely ventures into full-blown scene. The closest he gets are little vignettes like:

“A few hours later I was buying some apples in a fruit store when a horse-drawn carriage halted at the door. A tall, ungainly character dressed in black got out of it. He, too, was going to buy apples. On his shoulder he carried an all-green parrot, which immediately flew over to me and perched on my head without even looking where it was going.”

This section proceeds for three more paragraphs in ten lines as Neruda inquires about the man’s identity. The last paragraph is, “I didn’t know him and I never saw him again. But I accompanied him into the street with due respect, silently opened the carriage door for him and his basket of fruit to get in, and solemnly placed the bird and the sword in his hands.” It is interesting for certain, but it seems as though Neruda is ascribing meaning to the interaction that the reader does not necessarily have access to.

Neruda utilizes a lot of description in his summary and his language is quite poetic, but it is always presented to the reader rather than experienced. There are passages of pure narration that are quite pleasant, “I am writing in Isla Negra, on the coast, near Valparaíso. The powerful winds that whipped the shore have just blown themselves out. The ocean—rather than my watching it from my window, it watches me with a thousand eyes of foam…” At the end of many chapters he includes passages of commentary so descriptive and without chronology or incident that it may be a poem and seem better understood by the soul than the mind: “…How many works of art…There’s not enough room in the world for them anymore…They have to hang outside the rooms…How many books…”

The effect is that the reader is completely at Neruda’s mercy. When something historical or salient emerges, I expect scene and get summary. When he is musing on mundane details, Neruda comes closer to scene than anywhere else in the narrative. It is difficult to engage in a normal fashion with the book for this reason. But he did lead a fascinating life.

I find I am increasingly drawn to books with strong narrators, like Pynchon, Kundera, and Duras, who can weave a spell for me and let me surrender to the narrative. What this book shows me is that a strong narrator is not enough. The narrator has to let me into the world, to give me the keys as it were, otherwise I feel like I am watching Last Year at Marienbad—interesting, but I don’t necessarily understand it enough to engage with it. Most of Neruda’s writing is intelligible, but the lack of sensory detail in the vignettes kept me separate from the narrative. I want to be careful of this in my own work. I am learning it is alright to tend towards summary rather than scene, but if I do, then I have to be very careful about engaging the reader. Otherwise it becomes an oration, not a narration. Readers often pick up a memoir because of who wrote it. Fiction writers need to first build trust with a reader before the reader will follow them.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Memoirs from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.