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

Neil Gaiman Reads A Christmas Carol this Christmas

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We added a new tradition to our Christmas routine last night. Usually our literary Christmas Eve consists of of my husband reading O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” to me (while I weep) and me reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Christ Climbed Down” to him (while he patiently tries to appreciate the Beats). But seeing on Twitter that Neil Gaiman had done a reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was too delicious to resist.

I had a moment of pause when I saw that the reading was nearly an hour and a half long, but this fantastic performance made time fly past and I knew I had to share it with you. What made the reading extra special is that Gaiman is reading from a performance copy of the work that Dickens himself had annotated. So stop right here for now and go enjoy this classic with your family. We can talk about the writing part after the holiday…

The Last Time I Read Dickens

My husband and I were discussing last night that neither one of us has earnestly read anything by Charles Dickens. There were the usual high school tortures of reading excerpted versions of Great Expectations as fast as I could to get the right information to pass the test (we had a teacher who was famous for asking what Pip had for breakfast on his way to London – never did find the damned answer but I know it was symbolic). I think my dad (who is a fabulous reader) also read me Oliver Twist (and maybe more), but my adult experience with Dickens really consists of film adaptations (I watch the Alfonso Cuaron version of Great Expectations at least once a year because it’s so beautiful and so un-Dickens).

How Does the Text Compare with the Films?

What started to emerge last night from listening to Gaiman read A Christmas Carol is a close look at how close (and how different) the text is to the films. So that’s what I’m going to share with you here. Please forgive (and feel free to correct) any inaccurate memories I have of the films. It’s been awhile since I watched either the iconic George C. Scott version or the Scrooge McDuck version of this story.

Three Nights of Visitation

We all remember that there are three ghosts who visit Scrooge, but I was surprised to hear Gaiman read that those ghosts are meant to visit on three separate nights. In the films it’s always compressed to one, which makes total sense from a narrative point of view, because three nights is a long time and you don’t really get to see Scrooge in the day between them (what would be the point?). In fact, and forgive me if I misheard this, but it seems like Dickens himself fudged a bit by having the third night in fact happen after midnight of the second. Regardless, an interesting inconsistency.

Jacob Marley as Character

In the films I feel like we barely get to know Marley. Evil partner, just who Scrooge became in life, has a bandage around his head when he announces (in ghostly form) his regrets to Scrooge, etc. But in the text, there’s a really poignant moment when Scrooge first enters his home after work and before any visitation where we learn that it was Marley’s home and who Marley really was. This allows us to see better what Scrooge’s origins are and it also takes some of the weight of direct meanness off of Scrooge. This becomes important later.

You get to know other characters, too. Especially charming is “watching” the young people chase each other around Fred’s party. Tiny Tim is just as annoying. Sorry about that. Some things never change.

Amazing Description

One of my favorite moments in the animated version of the film is watching Scrooge’s doorknocker turn into the face of Marley. I had no idea that was actually in the book – and so well described, too. I suppose that’s always the way when going from a text medium to a visual one – that you turn that luscious description into actual pictures – but listen closely for some pretty great descriptive moments (like when he compares the smell of pudding to the smell of laundry – favorably).

Story Changes

Perhaps one of the saddest moments for me in the George C. Scott interpretation of this tale is when the young Scrooge is left at school over Christmastime. In the reading I heard, this never happens. Now I’m not sure if that moment actually doesn’t happen in the story or if Dickens decided to cut bits to keep his reading manageable, but without that vignette, Scrooge turns into someone who is a humbug by choice not by circumstance, which is a very important difference.

And later, when Scrooge gets the Christmas spirit, in the text he actually sends the prize turkey to the Cratchit family in secret (am I wrong that George C. Scott made a grand entrance with that bird?), which makes his later torture of Bob over his lateness even more excruciating.

Tone

Perhaps the most important distinction between the text and any of the films is that in the text Scrooge is really and truly ready to change after being visited by the second ghost. He’s seen what everyone else is doing and doesn’t need to see his death – that’s just twisting the knife.

My Christmas and New Year

In a few minutes I’ll snuggle back up with my husband and try to sleep until it’s time for stockings and presents and crepes. But first I wanted to do two things. The first is that I want to wish you a very happy holiday season and new year. Whatever you celebrate, I am so glad to share this literary space with you and I hope we can do so for a good long time.

Which brings us to the second thing. You might have noticed that I’ve been a very erratic blogger lately. First it was India, but now I have a much better (and longer-standing excuse). Sometime around the beginning of August, Clayton and I are going to have our first child. That means we’ll finally have someone else to torture with my literary Christmas traditions. It also means that between morning sickness and general exhaustion I’ve been a poor reader and an even poorer blogger lately. I miss you and I miss writing here, but many days I just can’t.

So count on this blog to be sporadic in the next year or so, but know that I will write when I can.

Thank you again for sharing the world of words with me. Writing this for you and reading your responses enriches my writing and my life. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night (morning).

Rereading Brave New World for Banned Books Week

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brave new world - aldous huxleyIt had been a very long time since I read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I own (and proudly wear) the t-shirt from Out of Print Tees, but I was starting to get embarrassed when people made soma references when they saw me in it and I had no idea what they were talking about. So this week, in honor of Banned Books Week, I reread this classic novel and what I found shocked, impressed, amazed, and disappointed me. But I’m not sorry I read it.

Fighting Utopia

I’ve gotten so far inside dystopias that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to read about a utopian society. In 1984 (as best as I can recall), it’s pretty clear that Big Brother is a bad thing and that society is squeezing the very humanity out of people. Whereas in Brave New World, there are large groups of people who never become dissatisfied throughout the book. And as a reader I was left questioning how bad is the bad, really?

“All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.” – Aldous Huxley

Do I agree with genetically engineering some people to be lesser? No. Breeding a populace of slaves is bad. Not too much grey area there. But when it comes to a populace zoned out on pleasure, I have fewer qualms. I hate that the creative thinkers are exiled, but I kind of wanted to go away to the Falkland Islands with Helmholtz.

Maybe I think we are already in this brave new world and maybe that’s Huxley’s point. But I do not believe that we can force people to engage in the world and care about change. I don’t believe we’re as socially mobile as we pretend. And that’s probably the biggest difference between the younger me who first read this and the me now. I’m now content with my own desire to change the world and I’ve lost the feeling that I can rally others. I’ve lost the drive to make people live up to their own ideals. I feel somewhat disappointed writing those words and yet also pragmatic. Something to think about there…

“Imagine the folly of allowing people to play games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption.” – Aldous Huxley

Introducing a World

The way that Huxley lead the reader straight into this world and gave us a tour (literally) of the London Hatchery is one of the best introductions to a new society that I’ve ever seen in a book. I think, honestly, that it’s part of the reason I had trouble fighting the worldview. Instead of reacting in immediate disgust, because I have a pretty open (suggestible) mind, I was thinking, “Oh, that’s an interesting way of…” and trying to understand what they were doing.

But there were moments that made my blood run cold. And that’s what’s truly effective–like someone pouring a bucket of cold water over you in a hot tub. This starts with the description of the Bokanovsky Process. It was fascinating to see how they grey 96 humans from one egg. But it was also terrifying. The idea of stunting a growth process to get something to “bud” makes sense to me with tomatoes, but when it comes to humans… *shudder*

As a writer, even if you have no interest in this book overall, you must go and read this first chapter carefully. It will change your world building forever. Oh, and read Chapter Three, too. It is the best inter-splicing of narrative I’ve seen since The Land at the End of the World. And the way Huxley builds a crescendo by shortening the passages the farther in you get is mind-bogglingly well done.

The Ideological Tangent

I thought I was done with ideological rants after Ayn Rand. I still haven’t read all 70 or so pages of John Galt’s rant in Atlas Shrugged. So when I got to the conversation between Mustapha Mond and the Savage in Brave New World, I was surprised to see that this was the only section younger me had highlighted. Some of the things I highlighted, like, “You can’t play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy” were clearly in-jokes that I thought would make me sound smarter if I ever had the chance to quote them.

Others, like “You can’t have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices” and “truth’s a menace” were things that still spark something in my brain. In some ways they ring true, and in others they do not, and it’s that bridge between the two spaces that I find really fascinating.

The Savage Past

What I found most disappointing about this book was the shock and awe of the savage past. Bernard and Lenina’s reaction to it didn’t impress anything upon me and I simply didn’t care. The book waned overall for me from then on because I was not invested in that dichotomy.

Banning Books

I’m flat out against censorship and the banning of books so I was very curious as I read this book why it would be banned or challenged. Turns out the reasons are myriad: sexuality, anti-religious views, depictions of indigenous peoples. I was bothered by parts of the book, sure, but they made me think and I always appreciate that. I suppose people challenge and ban books from fear. Fear that people aren’t smart/civilized enough to make their own decisions, fear of new or different ideas, fear for the children.

In my utopia we can hold a multitude of contrasting ideas. We can be open to new worldviews and inputs because we trust in our ability to think and reason. We can learn new ways of doing things and hold fast to some old ones that work. We are not afraid of what the world will become once we taste that forbidden fruit because we believe that our humanity will keep pushing us to be better as individuals even when we cannot affect the whole. And by that token, the whole gets stronger, smarter, kinder, more human. In that way, I have not given up on my optimism or on the world around me at all.

If you want to test out your own version of utopia, pick up a copy of Brave New World from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Art of Writing: Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino

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Under the Jaguar Sun - Italo Calvino

There are a very few authors whose work I love so much that I covet and then hide their books away so I don’t read all of them at once. Italo Calvino is at the top of that list. So when my husband gave me Under the Jaguar Sun for Christmas, I thought I’d stumble on it some day in the future when I really needed a good read.

But something he said about the title story and love and adventure made me read the book just a few days later, and I’m so glad I did. I was performing final edits on two manuscripts at the time and if there is ever a time in a writer’s life that she needs a good book, it’s during those final edits when you think you’ve done everything you can to a book and need a little boost. I’ve always loved Calvino, but what he showed me in just a few pages made my work infinitely better.

Be warned: I’m going to spoil (a little) some plots in this review, but I don’t think that will take very much away from the pleasure of reading this book for the first time. If you’re worried, though, stop reading here and come back and chat with me when you’ve read the book. It’s only 86 pages so don’t be too long.

Writing for All Senses

This book was conceived as a series of stories that each focus on one sense. Although Calvino worked on it over a period of 13 years, he only completed three. I’m somewhat embarrassed to say I didn’t realize that was the conceit of the book until the end, but that also tells you a bit about how I surrender to Calvino and just let him do whatever he wants with my brain.

It’s not uncommon in writing workshops to draft a story that focuses on a sense. I wish I could do it as well as Calvino does and I love the way that his focus shapes the very nature of the story. “Under the Jaguar Sun” is a relatively traditional narrative about a couple visiting Mexico that focuses on taste. The story is gorgeous and well-written, which I’ll go into more in a moment, but it didn’t prepare me at all for “A King Listens.” That second story is a monologue told in second person to you, the reader, the king. The way the focus of the narration shifts from quotidian advice to implications of rumor that breed suspicion and paranoia is flat-out brilliant. It played with the fleeting nature of hearing and how we interpret the implications of what people tell us.

“Epigraphs in an undecipherable language, half their letters rubbed away y the sand-laden wind: this is what you will be, O parfumeries, for the noseless man of the future.” – Italo Calvino, “The Name, the Nose.”

The third story, “The Name, the Nose” captures the ineffable magic of scent as a man seeks to find the woman who so bewitched him with her perfume. The story plays with the power of our sense of smell to provoke memory and also the way that memory sometimes shifts as we recall it. The way the story unfolds is a huge part of the magic, so that I will not spoil here.

Showing Your Hand

The art of writing, in the hands of masters, is about manipulating the experience of the reader so the words you put on the page evoke what you want them to, even though each person brings his or her lifetime of connotations into their reading of it. Like a magician, one of the ways Calvino does this is by telling you what he’s going to do to you before he does it.

This is most obvious in “Under the Jaguar Sun” when the couple encounters Salustiano who becomes a sort of guide. The narrator describes him thusly:

“It was his way of speaking–or, rather one of his ways; the copious information Salustiano supplied (about the history and customs and nature of his country his erudition was inexhaustible) was either stated emphatically like a war proclamation or slyly insinuated as if it were charged with all sorts of implied meanings.” – Italo Calvino, “Under the Jaguar Sun”

Okay, that’s all a pretty cool description of character. But it’s also the key to what the narrator is interested in about the man and about what he’s just learned from this character and will soon try out on us.

“From one locality to the next the gastronomic lexicon varied, always offering new terms to be recorded and new sensations to be defined. Instead [of chiles en nogada], we found guacamole, to be scooped up with crisp tortillas that snap into many shards and dip like spoons into the thick cream (the fat softness of the aguacate–the Mexican national fruit, known to the rest of the world under the distorted name of “avocado”–is accompanied and underlined by the angular dryness of the tortilla, which, for its part, can have many flavors, pretending to have none)” – Italo Calvino, “Under the Jaguar Sun”

What Calvino is doing here, besides giving me a wicked craving for guacamole, is deconstructing the sensation of encountering these things so that they are new to us by calling attention to the renaming of the avocado. He’s insinuating that the things we encounter that seem bland–the tortilla chips–have a flavor and rich experience all their own. In the context of the story, this passage also has implications about how we fail to appreciate the flavors of our lovers.

Because Calvino is so adept at this sleight of writing, this manipulation expands and enhances the story for me. I enjoy it rather than bucking against it.

Repetition

A friend once told me that things need to be repeated seven times in a book for a reader to really catch on. I’m not sure if that same number holds for a short story, but Calvino definitely uses repetition as emphasis and he does it so subtly that you’re constantly re-encountering information without feeling like you’ve heard that all before.

In the case of “Under the Jaguar Sun,” some of the most powerful repetition revolves around Olivia, the narrator’s lover, and eating. At first he very carefully observes her eating, following as she chewed “the tension as it moved from her lips to her nostrils, flaring one moment, contracting the next.” Later, they are at a temple having just heard about human sacrifice and he focuses on her “strong, sharp teeth and sensed there a restrained desire, an expectation.”

The subtle repetition of theme slowly sinks in as you read, and the way Calvino handles eating, especially in relation to Olivia, evolves very quickly throughout the story. What it ultimately says about her relationship to the narrator made me glad this wasn’t the story of my relationship. But the story is very evocative and I think we’ve all been in that place at least once.

I’ll return to this book, as I plan to return to all my Calvinos, when I need that boost of writing excellence. Who are the writers who speak to the way you write and who teach you with every word they put on paper?

If this review made you want to learn from Calvino, pick up a copy of Under the Jaguar Sun from Bookshop.org. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Red Horses and the Art of the Prequel

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Can you ever read a prequel for its own sake? Reading Red Horses by Donna Lynch, I knew it was a prequel for Lynch’s debut novel Isabel Burning and that it elaborates on the history of the Grace family. But having not read the other book, I was interested to see if Red Horses could be successful on its own merits.

Does the Book Stand on its Own?

The first few pages of the book are very compelling. You are introduced to Anastascia Millerovo, a “carrier of souls” days after her father’s death in Victorian London. She visits his attorney to find that she has inherited a large sum of money, her father’s journal, and a husband should she choose to accept the young Mr. Grace. I presume that’s where this book ties to Isabel Burning in that this is the origins of that family. It feels like Lynch chose for this prequel to go straight to the ancestry without mucking about interweaving this story with the last. I’m grateful for that, because it did allow me to read this book on its own, even though the fact that it is a prequel never left my mind.

Is the Writing Good?

Lynch creates some compelling characters in this tortured family saga. Much of the action of the book takes place inside Vladimir Millerovo’s journal as he meets and falls in love with Anastascia’s mother. But it’s not a simple love story and there is as much hate as there is love between the characters. It’s interesting to watch the lovers travel from hardship to hardship across Europe and eventually to the Caribbean. I did wish I got to know Anastacia more throughout the book, because the introduction to her was so compelling.

The description can be a little over the top sometimes with it’s magical moodiness, especially if you’re used to literary fiction, but it doesn’t go too far for my tastes and I enjoyed reading this type of book again for the way that magic opens up a world. Sometimes I even wanted it to be more magical and to really see what Anastascia’s powers could do.

And there were times when I wanted to slap Anastacia’s mother for not taking more control of her life, but it’s never fair to judge a Victorian woman’s circumstances by modern standards.

Will You Want to Read More?

Yes. I’m not quite sure how Isabel fits into this whole scenario. I did want to see if Anastascia’s powers develop more in Isabel Burning and now that I’ve read the backstory, I’m very curious to see where Lynch’s initial inspiration lay.

Red Horses will be released in August, so you have time to read Isabel Burning first if you want to, but it’s not necessary. The book is currently available for pre-order directly from the publisher.

Escape and Learn with Crete: A Notebook by Richard Clark

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No matter what the weather where you live is telling you, summer is almost here. That means it’s time for vacation and at the very least a less onerous reading list. Crete: A Notebook by recalls the best of Peter Mayle. If I told you the book was a memoir/guidebook infused with mythology, history, and geology, I wouldn’t be doing the book justice.

Memoir of an Expat

Richard Clark first moved to Crete to teach in the 1980s and he’s returned time and again. What this does for the book is give a loving portrait through time of the people and places of Crete. He is both part of the culture and not and what could have been a guidebook turns into a personal story. Together with Clark, you get to experience the philoxenia, the kindness of welcoming strangers. He doesn’t tell you about how locals might buy you a drink or offer you water, he shares endearing stories about the many many times it’s happened to him all over the island.

Cretan Mythology

Woven into the narrative are reminders and retellings of your favorite Greek myths and where they happened. Zeus was born on Crete and hid here from his father, Kronos, before he overthrew him. He seduced Europa nearby and fathered King Minos. Remember the minotaur? You’ll feel the story come alive as Clark visits the remains of the palace where that story originated. I even learned some things about Icarus I didn’t know.

History of Crete

From Chania, a town that’s been inhabited continuously for 5,000 years to the ruins of a palace abandoned in 1900 BC, Crete has an incredibly rich history. The island has been under Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman rule and parts of The Odyssey are thought to have been set here. Clark does a nice job of summarizing how these waves of influence have shaped each location and the people at large. There’s even an essay at the end on the current Greek fiscal crisis.

Geology

No less turbulent than the politics, Crete’s geologic history has included a major volcanic eruption, a part of the island that’s sinking, and an upthrust that caused one major port to rise above sea level and become uninhabitable. Reading about these violent changes somehow made the island seem even more enticing to visit.

Travelogue

At it’s heart, this book is a travelogue and you’ll learn words like “ouzerie” (place that serves ouzo) as you salivate over goat salads and Greek coffees. Clark describes the unique aspects of town after town and somehow manages to not make it all repetitive. You’ll get to know local characters like Nikos Kazantzakis and Ross Daly. Clark even touches on a few of the surrounding islands including Santorini for good measure.

If you’re looking to finally plan a trip to Greece or just need to read about someplace else, try Crete: A Notebook. You’ll learn more than you can imagine and be entertained all the way through.