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

The Calculus of Grief in Enon by Paul Harding

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enon-paul hardingI picked up Enon by Paul Harding on a rare trip to the bookstore in the first few weeks of my son’s life. I did not know then what the book was about, but I had so enjoyed Tinkers that I was glad to take a chance on what I knew would be a solidly written piece of fiction. I did not know that it was going to make me question how emotion is and should be conveyed in literature.

The Structure of Loss

Three sentences into reading Enon, we already know that Charlie Crosby has lost his only child, thirteen-year-old Kate. Killed while riding her bicycle, we’re quickly immersed in the downward spiral of Charlie’s grief as he pushes away his wife and begins to lose himself.

The book is very well structured. Harding weaves together the progression of time with flashbacks from Charlie’s life, insights into the history of the town of Enon, and ever more intimate looks at Charlie’s guilt—both the destruction he’s currently wreaking on himself and flashes of how he might have prevented Kate’s accident—so that with each page the reader is drawn deeper into Charlie’s world and the experience of losing a child.

Intellectualizing Grief

There is only one thing missing from Enon—emotional connection. You’d think with a first person narrative and a subject as wrought as the death of a child that it would be easy to connect with Charlie. As a new mother who basically worries every second that something will happen to my child, I was actually terrified to read beyond the first page of this book because I thought I’d be devastated by it.

Instead, because our experience of the events relies entirely on Charlie and Charlie wants nothing more than to escape the pain of grief, I felt distant and cold while reading this book. I could intellectually engage with the horrors of losing a child, I could conceive of how the path Charlie was on could ruin his life even further, but I could not feel much of anything about any of it. Which turned out to be a disappointment and my mind wandered a lot as I read the book.

Imparting Emotion in Narrative

So how was it that Harding failed to create an emotional connection between the reader and Charlie? The last thing Charlie wants to do is feel the loss of his daughter. Pulling back from that kind of horror is a natural human coping mechanism, but by running us through every thought in Charlie’s head, we don’t get to make jumps, leaps, and emotions on our own. It becomes difficult to engage with Charlie and the situation. And when Charlie is describing the feeling of loss, it’s still difficult to connect because we see what Kate’s death is doing to him, but he wants to self destruct and provides no entree into reaching out to him. It feels as though Harding is pushing us away as much as Charlie pushes away his wife.

Could it be any other way?

If Harding wanted us as readers to empathize with Charlie on an emotional level, he could have interspersed third person perspective. If we witnessed Kate’s death without the filter of Charlie’s distance, it would be impossible not to feel his pain. We would travel down that emotional spiral with him and his actions seem inevitable. It would be harder to judge him and wish he would make different choices. If we saw how neighbors saw him—again without the filter of Charlie’s rationalizing—we might pity the poor wretch he becomes.

Should it be any other way?

I don’t know. I was horrified by how dead inside I felt while reading this book, but I’m not sure complete emotional devastation would have been the best tack either. I would have preferred a blend of emotional and intellectual appeal. In fact that pulling between our two ways of dealing with life could make for an unequaled depth of engagement.

As a writer, I’d find trying to create that perfect balance between the two a wonderful challenge. Although I know it would not be easy. In fact it’s something I struggled with in writing Polska, 1994 which in early drafts came off as a lament which also kept the reader at a distance—if only because it veered too far in the direction of emotion. And this balance between reason and feeling is something I’d urge you to think carefully about in your own writing—at least in the editing stage.

Harding is a gifted writer and I can only imagine he created the exact level of emotional engagement he wanted. Which only leaves me to wonder—why show me so much of Charlie’s devastation while holding my heart so far away from him?

If you want to unpack Harding’s use of emotion or just see if I’m a cold fish of a reader, pick up a copy of Enon from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Seeking Redemption in The Art of Crash Landing

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the art of crash landing melissa decarloReading the first page of the review copy of Melissa DeCarlo’s The Art of Crash Landing where self-proclaimed “fuckup savant” Mattie Wallace details how long it takes to cram your entire life into plastic garbage bags and outline some of the circumstances that got her there, I cringed. I thought, “Oh, great, a self-indulgent, first-person narrative about how the world done her wrong.” But I could not have been more wrong, and instead The Art of Crash Landing turned into a wild ride through a life wasted where redemption and forgiveness burn on the horizon.

Inside a Disaster

Despite my initial misgivings, it’s not long before we gain real insight into where Mattie’s thirty years of living went wrong as she packs up her car and heads on over to the last friend she has in the world—her former stepfather, Queeg. By the time she shows up on his doorstep pregnant, starving, and out of cash and options (page five), Mattie’s voice stopped grating on my nerves and I’ve started to worry for her. Now that’s an art.

There’s something about the way DeCarlo unpacks Mattie’s experiences—including the death of her alcoholic mother—that made me (and Queeg) want to cradle this wounded bird and nurse her into a better life. Part of it is how much Mattie owns everything that’s happened to her—even the things that were way beyond her control. She knows she’s bad news. She also thinks she was bad news when she and her mother first met Queeg seventeen years earlier. She doesn’t feel entitled to this man’s help—she simply has no other choice.

As plots usually go, another choice emerges and Mattie is somewhat shoved by fate to visit the town where her mother was born, raised, and seemingly run out of a long time ago. She runs into characters from her mother’s mysterious past and a few ghosts of what could have been, too. The resulting story, always tinged with Mattie’s over-ownership of the disasters around her, is a poignant unwrapping of how one person’s disaster can take down all their loved ones. It’s also a look at how to escape the life you were given and thrive on your own. Most importantly, it’s a look at how we all have reasons for becoming who we are—our parents, our grandparents, and us—and how to live in the part of that cycle we have control over.

Pacing a Narrative Race

I should have known from DeCarlo’s opening words, “Twenty-seven minutes is, if anyone ever asks, exactly how long it takes to cram everything I own into six giant trash bags” that this book would be fast-paced. What I couldn’t anticipate is that at just over 400 pages what a fast read it would be and that it would cover such a short time period—about a week.

When I saw the day markers dividing sections of this book, I did do the math and worry for a minute that The Art of Crash Landing would be filled with a Proustian level of detail, but thankfully I was wrong. Instead, DeCarlo delves into the myriad threads and subplots of small town life that came to make Mattie’s mother’s life (and consequently Mattie’s) what it is. So while on the surface the narrative covers only that short week, it actually uncovers three generations of secrets and daily life—the things that make us all what we are. I won’t spoil any of that for you here, but the tight narrative does not disappoint and the cast of characters is round and wonderfully nuanced.

The Personal Side

I’ll admit that 86% of my judgment of Mattie comes from the fact that I was watching her wreck her life and the life of her unborn child just weeks after giving birth to my own baby. Plus, coming from a background where I feel responsible for, well, everything, I saw some of myself in Mattie. And I did not like what I saw. Mattie’s story fits perfectly in with the narrative of my generation—a generation that far too often had to shout, “I’m supposed to be the kid not the parent.”

Reading this book helped me let go of some of the responsibility I feel for the entire world and helped me channel that feeling into the appropriate place—taking responsibility for what I do today for myself and for my child. Which, now that I am the parent, is pretty good timing.

Is The Art of Crash Landing a quick read? Yes. Could it be called “chick lit”? Yes again, but in the best of ways. Despite my initial reservations, I really enjoyed reading this book. Most importantly, I learned something from it.

For a fast read with a lot of heart, pick up a copy of The Art of Crash Landing from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Best Pregnancy Books for Writers

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Pregnancy is a time full of joy and wonder. It’s also full of terror and anxiety. If you’re a writer, add to all that the fear that you may never write again. So many famous women writers chose never to have children and I worried I couldn’t balance my all-consuming creative self with creating a whole new life. Sarah Manguso expresses some of this anxiety better than I could in a fantastic essay in Harper’s, but I wanted a baby badly enough to try to balance the two. One of the things that got me through the pregnancy and helped me nourish my creative self while transitioning from baby vessel to writer mama was surrounding myself with excellent and thoughtful books about pregnancy and parenthood by writers I respect and admire.

If you are pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, or know a creative person who is either, these are the books I recommend to nourish that creative soul while preparing for parenthood.

The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood by Louise Erdrich

the blue jays dance - louise erdrichI’ve written more extensively about this book here. It’s a gorgeous amalgam of thoughts and essays about parenthood and writing by Louise Erdrich. She weaves together narratives from her three pregnancies with glimpses of how this National Book Award winning writer manages to write and parent at the same time. The book is also filled with quiet yet poignant observations of nature. The Blue Jay’s Dance is an excellent meditation and it’s easy to dip in and out of the book as you need inspiration and the comfort of seeing how other writer-parents do it.

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich

of woman born - adrienne richMost famous as a poet, Adrienne Rich is a deliciously rich thinker and this frank look at motherhood and the female experience from a feminist perspective helped me think more deeply about my own life experiences. It helped me understand how to inhabit myself as a woman and it gave me insight into my relationship with my mother. It was a healing book and one that made me think more deeply about the roles all of us play as parents, children, and fellow citizens. I will be a better parent because I read this book. I will also be a better wife and stronger in myself.

While looking at everything from literature to societal norms, Rich doesn’t shy away from difficult topics like abortion, but she also does not thrust an agenda upon the reader. This is an excellent book for any woman (or interested man) to read, it’s a must-read for any pregnant writer to find her own center and feelings about some very important issues.

Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother by Beth Ann Fennelly

great with child - beth ann fennellyOne of the blurbs on this book reads, “The best book ever to give for a baby shower” and I am so grateful that a writer friend gave me a copy at one of my baby showers. Originally written as a series of letters from Beth Ann Fennelly (then a newish parent) to a dear friend, it’s easy to feel like you are the dear friend as you read Fennelly’s stories about parenting and gentle advice. Advice is such a tricky thing for the pregnant woman (it’s everywhere but so rarely does an advisor allow space for the advisee’s experience rather than rehashing theirs) and Fennelly gets it just right. This poet writes beautifully about everything from conception to labor, with the occasional book recommendation along the way.

I actually read this book in the week following the birth of my son and in the reading rediscovered all sorts of memories from my pregnancy that might have gotten lost otherwise.

My Creative Work

He’s not a novel or a book of poems, but my son, Remy Lucas, was (finally) born just over a week ago. I’m realizing that what everyone says is true—nothing I’ve read could have prepared me for this experience. But each of these books opened me up to the experience in their own way and helped me think more deeply about this amazing life change.

early morning reading
Reading, writing, and parenting in the pre-dawn hours

Oh, and I’m still writing. Even with an infant napping in my lap in the hours before dawn. I think, like Manguso, that becoming a parent has deepened the way I experience the world and will continue to do so. It’s certainly changed what I write about for now as I’m working on a series of poems about pregnancy and parenthood. I think, with time, that I’ll get better and better at incorporating the writing me and the parent me so that even when I write about other subjects, I can carry the things Remy teaches me into my writing.

What books have you read that blend parenthood and the creative life? I’m slowly rebuilding my to-read shelf and need your help…

Reading Edith Wharton Against Henry James

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selected short stories of edith whartonHow many times in life do we really get to devote ourselves to tomes anymore? One of the projects I’ve been working on as I prepare to have my first child is getting through my to-read shelf, and, not surprisingly, some of the thickest hardbacks are the very last ones I’m getting to. That includes The Selected Short Stories of Edith Wharton (390 pages) and a collection of five novels by Henry James (Daisy Miller, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, and The Aspern Papers) (892 pages). Admittedly, I’m still working on the James collection, but after facing a truly embarrassing confusion between the two writers, I knew I had to write about it here.

Biographical Comparisons

Both transatlantic writers writing about a certain social class in the northeastern US and in England, I was a little surprised to learn (though I shouldn’t have been) that James (1843-1916) and Wharton (1862-1937) knew each other and that James was a mentor of sorts to Wharton. Both were American and spent considerable time abroad although I would have sworn that James was British. Their writing shares a similar sensibility cultivated by a social class where there are a lot of tacit rules to be followed and this gives the work of both writers a lot of subtext.

The Portrait of a Lady vs. The Age of Innocence

henry james novelsWas that biographical snippet included here just to absolve myself of the embarrassment I’m still feeling over conflating the two writers? Maybe. What happened was that late one night I started reading The Portrait of a Lady and, having watched more film adaptations of the work of Wharton and James than there could ever be books, I assigned Winona Ryder to the character of Isabel Archer. I was a little confused that the story was taking place on the wrong continent (in England) and eventually started to get annoyed that the introduction was so very long and became impatient to see the character of Countess Olenska.

I had completely conflated The Portrait of a Lady and The Age of Innocence.

My excuse (besides the fact that I’m sometimes a very poor reader) is that I strongly remember Ryder saying “Archer” a lot in the film (which makes sense because it’s her husband Newland’s last name). But it’s a pretty poor excuse considering I actually have read The Age of Innocence (though it’s been nearly a decade).

Not surprisingly, my relationship with The Portrait of a Lady changed a bit once I started reading it for itself. The book still feels overly long (I’m still reading it), although it’s a relief to read for what is happening on the page rather than what I think will happen. I can’t quite place Nicole Kidman in the book (that’s one adaptation I actually haven’t seen), and maybe that’s for the best.

I haven’t completely learned my lesson, though. I “watched” the miniseries for The Buccaneers this weekend while needlepointing a stocking for my son. God help us all if I ever pick that book up and try to remember if I’ve read it 🙂

Roman Fever

If I were to write a dissertation on James and Wharton, I’d no doubt find countless similarities (and differences) in their work. What struck me most, though, in reading these books so closely together is when they both brought up Roman Fever. I’d never heard of this curious thing before, but it seems to have been a fear that tourists had of Rome and particularly the area near the Colosseum that could prove deadly.

James wrote about the phenomenon in Daisy Miller, but Wharton’s treatment of it in “Roman Fever” is even more interesting where the fever has multiple meanings. The story really is quite wicked (in the most wonderful ways) and merits a re-read when I’m finally done with all these Jamesian novels.

Scary Stories

Both Wharton and  James wrote ghost stories, they lived in a time where mediumship and the supernatural were part of high society. James is of course famous for The Turn of the Screw which I have not read but I’ve seen at least one film of. Wharton wrote enough ghostly short stories to devote an entire collection to them and while reading The Selected Stories I have to say that those ghost stories were still some of my favorites. “Mr. Jones” in particular chills me every time.

My Real Love

I’m probably always going to be team Wharton. Although both writers carefully observed the manners of their time, there’s something warmer and perhaps more human about the way Wharton portrays her characters. I believe she actually has sympathy for them, whereas I don’t think James always does.

It’s funny, I actually wrote about Wharton in my graduate school application essay because I so admired her work. I thought in my reading of all of this contemporary fiction since that I’d moved on from my somewhat archaic tastes, but in re-reading Wharton I found I still love and relate to her work whereas reading James feels more to me like wandering through a show of John Singer Sargent portraits—there’s beauty and I can relate to the pictures a little, but the characters and their time seem so far away.

I’m officially on maternity leave right now and it’s about 90 degrees in Seattle, so while I have loads of time (at least until the little one decides he’s ready), I can’t really go outside and no excuse not to read. I might actually finish this James collection. Although I’m not sure I’ll make it through that Peter Nadas book I’ve been looking forward to (1100+pages)…

If this review made you want to read turn of the last century literature, pick up a copy of the Henry James collection or The Selected Short Stories of Edith Wharton from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Spiraling through The Incredible Sestina Anthology

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the-incredible-sestina-anthologyI have a confession to make. I’m only halfway through The Incredible Sestina Anthology so I really shouldn’t be reviewing it here yet, but my brain is so wrapped up in the book and the form that I wanted to share my feelings about it now both so I don’t lose the threads of what’s so exciting and so I can delve deeper into understanding the nature of that excitement. Since it’s a book of poetry, let’s bend the rules a little today, shall we? At least I know the plot won’t shift radically when I turn the next page.

What’s a Sestina?

If you’re like me, you did not get much of an education in the forms of poetry in school so “sestina” aside from being a pretty word, could sound a little like gibberish. I feel that way about a lot of poetic forms—especially the ones I haven’t read many examples of yet. A sestina is based on repetition of the last words of a stanza in a particular order. There are six stanzas in which this occurs and then a final, shorter stanza where those end words are mixed up all over again. Cribbing from Daniel Nester’s intro, that form of repetition looks like this:

Stanza 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Stanza 2: 6 1 5 2 4 3
Stanza 3: 3 6 4 1 2 5
Stanza 4: 5 3 2 6 1 4
Stanza 5: 4 5 1 3 6 2
Stanza 6: 2 4 6 5 3 1
Envoi: 2/5 4/3 6/1

But you only really need to know the form in that kind of depth if you’re going to write one. To enjoy sestinas, it’s more essential to understand that the repetition is intentional and that there’s no other set rhyme or rhythm in the form (although most poets find their own rhythm. As with most formal poetry, the fun in being a spectator is seeing what each poet unleashes from within those walls.

Relishing Repetition

Blah blah blah stanzas, right? It’s hard to appreciate the form of a poem without getting inside it so let’s look at the first stanza of “Mother Worries” by Shane Allison:

Lord, how we gon’ pay these bills in this
How we gon’pay these bills,
Lord. How we gon’ pay these bills in
We gon’ pay these
We gon’ pay
Lord how we gon’ pay these bills in this house?

Looking at just the last words of each line, the end words that will repeat (in a different order, of course) in the next stanza are: this, bills, in, these, pay, house. Poets take a lot of leeway in how they repeat their end words and sometimes substitute the noun version for a verb or shift the tense of a word or use a homonym. The lines can be short or long.

What I love about Allison’s piece is that the entire poem is really built on the repetition of the line “How we gon’ pay these bills?” It takes many many forms, but if I counted how many different words he uses in this poem, I wouldn’t guess it’s more than 30, which, in a 39 line poem, is not a lot of words. This total repetition (and the subject matter) lends the most gorgeous lament to this poem.

Variations on a Form

There are poems by sestina purists in this book (Like Ashbery, Auden, and Bishop), and that’s all well and good, but where I started to learn most about the form (and what can be done with language) is from poets like Geoff Bouvier and Casey Camp who redefined the form for themselves. Bouvier’s “Refining Sestina” condenses the entire stanza structure down into six lines where the end words are instead repeated inside the lines. And Camp turns his poem into a graphic sestina where each line of the poem gets its own illustration.

Others, like Denise Duhamel, use a double sestina form where they’re playing with twelve end words. This means they get thirteen stanzas in which to explore their topic. I found, because I’m not the best reader, that I actually lost the end words in these longer sestinas and would sometimes be surprised halfway through with thoughts like “Have I really already read the word ‘seesaw’ six times? How did that fit in.”

There’s also an incredible variation in subject matter in this book. Some poets take their work so seriously as to write ars poeticas – sestinas about writing sestinas. And some, including writers I have admired in other contexts like Steve Almond and Jenny Boully, are obviously playing as they are writing about Elton John and the missed connections part of the newspaper (respectively).

Your Brain on Sestinas

I read about thirty pages of sestinas last night (approximately fifteen separate poems) and another seventy pages this morning. What I can tell you is that those end words, which sometimes feel very random, become embedded in your mind. They suddenly feel very important. And, if you read them before bed, you might compose dreams that pull together all that randomness. It’s a wonderful exercise to shake up those sleeping hours.

In general, reading sestinas is making me pay more attention to the ways language can be worked and how very much can be accomplished within the constraints of form. I suppose that’s why poets across the ages have continued to write in particular forms (at least some of the time).

I don’t know if I’ll be writing a sestina in the near future. But I am carefully thinking about the way I use repetition and enjoying the possibility of writing in a new form. Because The Incredible Sestina Anthology is arranged alphabetically, I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of the poets can surprise me and stretch my thinking.

I’d love to hear about your investigations into form and repetition. Please tell me more about your projects or what you’re reading in the comments.

If this review made you want to read sestinas, pick up a copy of The Incredible Sestina Anthology from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.