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

Love in The Winter Vault with Anne Michaels

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I’ve been thinking about what I could say about The Winter Vault by 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 Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Family Secrets in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

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absalom absalom william faulkner

hit on a truth about Southern families in Absalom, Absalom! Through both the story and the way he tells the story, he demonstrates the ways sensitive information is withheld and talked around but never fully concealed. As Mr. Compson said, “’It just does not explain. Or perhaps that’s it: they dont explain and we are not supposed to know. We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature.’”

Controlling Information

It takes a lot of control for a family to create secrets and there is often tension with the human desire to reach out and share one’s experience. Because of this there is often double-talk around the secrets and moments of slippage where you can’t maintain the secrecy anymore. Faulkner shows this beautifully when he has Judith give her letter to Quentin’s grandmother. She speaks of it like sharing the letter makes it like something happened, “something that might make a mark on something that was once for the reason that it can die someday.” Judith is reaching out and trying to communicate. She is trying to “make a mark” of her own and write her own history outside the history that is prescribed by her family.

After rambling about herself and her relationship with the family, Rosa slips in the vital piece of information that something is living in the Sutpen house only when Quentin’s attention has slipped away from the conversation. It is as though she was trying to get at telling him that all along but he wasn’t getting what she was saying. She then calls his attention directly to it. This is similar to what Faulkner is doing with the structure of the novel as the reader is immersed in oceans of details and familial relationships that are difficult to pin down. Eventually at the end he turns the story over to Shreve and Quentin and their conjecture to sort out the details and tell the reader the “truths” that have been obscured by the many layers of detail that drip from the story like Spanish moss.

Calculated Slips

Faulkner reveals only small dribbles of information at a time. For example, he has Mr. Compson tell Quentin, “’Henry had to kill Bon to keep them from marrying,’” but gives no hint as to why Henry would want to kill Bon. It’s enticing but maddening to read and puts the reader in the position of Quentin who has enough information to be fascinated with this family but not enough information to really understand what happened to them.

We see Henry acting like Bon’s younger brother well before the reader is told this truth. Mr. Compson says, “’Bon who for a year and a half now had been watching Henry ape his clothing and speech, who for a year and a half now had seen himself as the object of that complete and abnegant devotion which only a youth, never a woman, gives to another youth or man.’” Everything has two meanings because while Faulkner is telling the reader that Henry looks up to and adores Bon, he is also telling the reader that Henry looks to Bon like an older brother. He is simultaneously building the character of Henry and conveying hints about the truth of their relationship.

I come from a Southern family and am astounded at how well Faulkner captured the “I’m not going to tell you but the information will slip in anyway” way difficult information is conveyed in the South.

Polska, 1994 revolves around one central family secret: why Magda’s mother left the family. Magda has one answer that she believes to be true, but her instincts are leading her to dig deeper into the story. I found writing around important information to be difficult in terms of knowing how much to withhold and when and am working on my own relationship with doling out information to maintain suspense.

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

How I (Almost) Fell in Love with Hemingway

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I’ve always hated Hemingway—as controversial as that sounds to my generation of writers. I thought his women were insipid—I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it—and he so often wrote of hunting and fishing where I usually read about war and oppression. Most of all, Hemingway is my father’s favorite author.

A Father’s Influence

I was read to as a child by both of my parents and then I learned to read by reading aloud to myself, but it is my father’s voice I hear when I read. Over the years as I’ve impugned Hemingway, my father often responded by quoting Papa’s short, declarative sentences. I hear my father give weight to the proper word. I feel the emotion behind his voice as he imbues the masculine writing with all the feelings boys are taught not to openly express. Perhaps that’s what is really meant by clean prose—a holding back of what is just beneath the surface. I love my father’s voice, but even he could not make me hear the beauty in Catherine’s fear of the rain.

As I learned to become a writer, I was surrounded by Papa—starting with the Nick Adams stories and their brilliant setting. Someone wrote an imitation of “The Hills Like White Elephants” and I pretended to get it. My father continued to quote Hemingway. I read and fell for authors like Calvino who themselves loved Hemingway. I loved them for their clean prose—the very thing they were imitating from Hemingway—and I started to see I would have to face Papa someday, but I wanted to do it on my own terms. I worried my father would have to die before I could do that.

Midnight in Paris

When I watched Midnight in Paris, I fell in love with Woody Allen’s Hemingway and with his manner of speech. I wanted to listen all night to his trailing tangents. My father argued that he was merely a caricature, but there was a glimmer of self-awareness in the actor or the portrayal that made me love what I had considered to be cheese.

A Farewell to Arms

I’ve been feeling Papa draw closer as I exhausted my supply of Calvino and Pavese. My husband and I planned a trip to Croatia and Slovenia—places that from the American travel blogs you would think had never existed before Hemingway—even if his presence there was greatly exaggerated. So I picked up A Farewell to Arms and I danced around it for weeks. But then I read McMurtry’s treatment of ’s letters in Harper’s and I saw the human. I wanted to be near Papa.

How can I describe those opening paragraphs without using the words “there were.” The cadence was there—my father’s and Woody Allen’s and Hemingway’s. The reportage of scenery in simple language. I felt its weight. I brought meaning to his simple, clean sentences. I came to love that style and by page three I was crying at their beauty. I was afraid to turn each page because I didn’t want to lose my awe. I wanted to call my father and read to him, but I also wanted Papa all to myself.

And then came Catherine. And the rain. I know from his letters that Hemingway truly loved the real-life Catherine and maybe he respected her more than I am giving him credit for. I dreaded every mention of the rain. The simple sentences that had carried so much import became cloying with their symbolism. The war sections were still beautiful and strong, and I know from friends that I’m not the only one who loves the war and hates the romance, but I am left deeply divided. He was capable of so much and then it feels like he simply phoned it in.

I know now that I have a lot to learn from Hemingway. I also know that he is not a god. I am not ready to read the complete works and who knows what I will find when I do. I respect my father’s love for Papa. I wish I could devote myself as fully.

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

Livability in Literature: From Jane Austen to Jon Raymond

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“Livability” has been an urban buzzword since at least the 1980’s. Hundreds and maybe thousands of studies have been published on what makes a city more livable. But did you know the word “livable” originated in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park?

Livability in Context

I work at a membership organization for architects, and when architects use the word “livability,” they are referring to the built environment and how the structures and systems we build affect our quality of life at a societal level. Livability by is a collection of stories that look at quality of life from an individual point of view. Just as Austen uses the eyes of poor Fanny Price to describe the life of the landed gentry in 19th Century England, Raymond’s characters show us what it is like to live on the fringes around Portland, Oregon.

Train Choir

In “Train Choir,” Verna awakes in the vast parking lot of a shopping center to the tap of a security guard on her car window. Raymond is making a statement on how unlivable Verna’s newly homeless life is. As she loses her dog, Lucy, to a series of bureaucratic snafus stemming from Verna’s transience, the reader is relieved to find Lucy fostered in a neighborhood of small bungalows with yards. In a sense the reader too has found a home, and though it is not a multi-family residence with easy transit access and a corner store, for Lucy, it is a big step toward a more livable life—a life Verna cannot yet achieve.

The Wind

Place is character in these stories and Raymond covers a range of environments (built and unbuilt) from strip mall suburbias to dense urban cores and even the deep woods. “The Wind” tells the story of “the creek,” a place where groups of teens meet. The daily lives of these teens are separated by geography: the rich kids over the hill, the girls on Stowe Lane, and Joe in a house with tire tracks in the grass. This interstitial space could not exist in Mansfield Park; it belongs only to the teens—unchaperoned—and the story becomes one of how people activate space.

Changing Notions of Livability

Our notion of livable communities has changed over time. Certainly Austen’s heroines longed for the excitement of London, but after finding husbands, they retired to places like Pemberley, Highbury, and Mansfield Park. A more modern dream is to live in a Spartan apartment in a glass tower merely feet from the nearest train, market, and collective living room. Yet urbanism remains a distant dream for Verna, Joe and many like them—it is these Americans whose stories Raymond tells.

Though not yet as frequently filmed as Mansfield Park, stories from this collection serve as the basis for the films Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy.

I originally wrote this post when I thought I would be doing book reviews for the architects, but I think it is important for all of us to think about how livable our environments are and what we are doing to shape that feeling. Livability also provides an interesting angle through which to view setting—something Austen and Raymond already know.

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

Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying in Pen and Ink

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William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying

In Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, the title character tells Hana to read Kipling slowly because he “is a writer who used pen and ink…Think about the speed of his pen.  What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.”  William Faulkner writes as though he was using pen and ink—creating gnarled sentences that unfold when read slowly.  In reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner slowly, the voices of the characters become distinct and they reveal information about themselves and each other through the observations they make.

Darl

In a section narrated by Darl, Faulkner writes, “I could lie with my shirt-tail up…feeling myself without touching myself.”  This is a quiet passage, one that I overlooked on the first couple of readings, but it sexualizes Darl.  Because this passage follows shortly after Cora observing Eula’s attraction to Darl, an entire relationship blossomed in my mind.

Cora

I loved the way Cora’s commentary changed my understanding of characters I had already formed opinions about.  For example, Darl spoke of Jewel as though he was protective of Addie and upset over the noise Cash was making in building her coffin.  To Darl he was “a little boy in the dark.”  Cora takes a much harsher view of Jewel, saying that he wouldn’t “miss a chance to make that extra three dollars at the price of his mother’s goodbye kiss.”  Because of the choral way Faulkner constructed this novel, it is easy to have the reader’s understanding of the characters grow as each new character beholds them.  This observation also speaks to the nature of the observer.  Although Cora was not able to lash out in anger at the woman who reneged on her promise to buy cakes, Cora does have ill feelings toward Jewel.  She is not as saintly as she might have us believe.  In the first person narration of my novel, it is more difficult to get a myriad of views on a particular character.  However, I can better use my dialogue to this effect.

Cora’s character is further developed as she rants against transporting Addie’s body to bury her, “She lived, a lonely woman, lonely with her pride, trying to make folks believe different, hiding the fact that they just suffered her, because she was not cold in the coffin before they were carting her forty miles away to bury her, flouting the will of God to do it.  Refusing to let her lie in the same earth as those Bundrens.” It seems as though Cora is spiteful against Addie and against the Bundrens. Addie lies dying in the upstairs bedroom and in one sentence Cora talks about how the woman has isolated herself and that people didn’t want to be around her. In the same sentence she foreshadows that God’s vengeance will be wrought on this family (although the degree of flood, putrefaction, and other disasters isn’t even hinted at).  And of course the language that Faulkner uses speaks to Cora’s background and upbringing (each of the characters has a slightly different manner of speech).  In fact each of the characters has their own speech patterns—something else that escapes immediate notice—when read quickly the novel can come off as merely difficult rather than intricately crafted.

Reading Slowly

I am a modern girl: I write and think at a hundred miles an hour, but I also like to muse and rethink and ponder. This novel (and The English Patient) reminded me that good writing takes time and should be savored over time. I am certain that in spending more time with As I Lay Dying, I would see more and more layers in it and come to appreciate Faulkner’s craft all the more. As is, it serves as a good reminder for me to slow down in my own writing and take the time I need to in order to get the details and feel right.  And if I want a reader to ponder slowly, I can craft my own gnarled sentences.

If this review made you want to read the book, support indie booksellers (and reviewers—I get a commission) by picking up a copy of As I Lay Dying from Powell’s Books.