Carolyn See (1934–2016)

I'm making my way through Carolyn See's books (this is my fourth) and I hope I can persuade others to discover her.

The best way to read the Handyman is to read the front section first--which is a fictional grant proposal written about an artist of cultural significance in the future. Then the book switches to the first person narrative of the young man who will become the artist. He lands in Paris to study art, but then immediately packs it all in and heads back to his home in Southern show more California. He picks up work as a handyman for the summer while waiting to return to school. He isn't the best handyman but he is good at fixing the lives of the people and families he encounters doing his work. He also discovers his own style of art as he works through the summer.

You might be tempted to go back and read the front section again while reading the main narrative, but my advice is don't do that. Wait until you've finished the book, and THEN go back and read the grant proposal. I did that and found the prologue to be delightful.

Pick up this book if you enjoy art, reading about California, and can enjoy the ways in which See can take a trope (young Handyman encountering housewives) and can bend the theme and make it something deeper. I can almost see Carolyn See winking at her editor and agent as she proposes a book with this title. show less

Her eyes were wide. She gazed at me with terrific concentration. "Yes, she said, "I understand what you are saying. I get it. But isn't it true--that your fear of nuclear war is a metaphor for all the other fears that plague us today?"
My mind had never been exactly fine. But sometimes it has been good. "No," I said. I may have shouted it out through the beautiful, sheltered room. "It's my view that the other fears, all those of which we have spoken, are a metaphor for my fear of nuclear show more war."

The threat of nuclear annihilation seems in some ways a memory of a by-gone era. Back in the eighties, and especially in California we lived in the shadow of our many Air Bases that could go on alert at any time. At some point you just had to stop thinking about it. I suppose in some ways it is still very much there and real, but it seems much less in our faces than global warming or terrorist attacks or even just a gunman showing up one day. Or maybe those fears have just replaced that one.

This book is in some ways very strange. In the first 85% of the book our heroine is a divorced single mom making her way through a man's world in the California lifestyle of the eighties. She takes husbands and lovers, raises two daughters, creates a bank and teaches wealthy housewives how to invest and create their own wealth. She sees all the craziness of California excess and success in the form of pseudo religion and success gurus. We learn her views on men and feminism. We meet her best friend who eventually becomes one of those success hucksters. Carolyn See captures California wonderfully.

And then BOOM. 85% of the way in--the world ends.

Very unsettling book but the prose is wonderful. I hope the author Carolyn See was able to exorcise some of her own fears in this writing exercise.

I learned about this book from an article in the Guardian on Reading American cities: books about Los Angeles. It is also a part of a series of reprints from the University of California Press on California Fiction. All of the books included in the series have been selected for "their literary merit and their illumination of California history and culture." show less

Edith Langley, the narrator in Carolyn See’s novel, Golden Days, has a golden-girl enthusiasm that can make her believe. She’s also a ready-to-judge-you citizen of Los Angeles, President of the Woman’s Bank, and a satirical, sardonic, and sarcastic observer of everything around her. It all comes in handy when apocalypse is a-coming.

Our sphere of influence here—the City of Angels 1970s-1980s la-la land sphere (it’s sure not South Central)—is one where guru-led semi-spiritual show more seminars on getting one’s desires turn out to supply miracles of a sort for believers by teaching them “outflowing” and “sourcing.” Is it ersatz faith or the real thing? Whatever could the difference be if that act of believing is the act that saves? It’s Paradise, baby! Though it won’t be forever.

See’s energy, sense of humor, intelligence, and skill propel her characters through the rituals of life to reach what will come—a nuclear “End of Days” that man* has created, and if some of them come out of it alive they do so with reason to believe that despite the fears and horrors it is a good thing indeed—the “Light Ages,” she calls it. The paperback I read has a cover illustration showing a mushroom cloud exploding out of a champagne bottle, a perfect image for the book. As Edith remarks, in the long lead-in to catastrophe, “all of us, even then, never gave up our faith in a good party.”

You see, if apocalypse is to happen, the thought that there might be survivors matters. And if that is true then the idea that there must also be “Golden Days” to discover or create will be what saves the survivors. In these contemplations of the un-contemplatable, Carolyn See has written an original and fun tale to give her ideas air.

* Edith, venting her frustration with men’s warring ways, exclaims, “Who did think up [poison] gas…It must have been a guy…Why don’t we know his name? Do men know his name, just like they always know the name of the new Dodgers shortstop?”
She deserves an answer: Yeah, I know. Fritz Haber’s the dude. And the Dodgers shortstop? Yeah, I know that too. This information would not, of course, conciliate her at all. show less

If my wife read this book, she would probably exclaim, "This is an AWful book!" And then tell me I have to read it. Because she wouldn't really mean it's "awful." She would mean that all this stuff that happens in Carolyn See's family memoir is pretty mind-bogglingly horrible - all that drinking and drugging and serial marriages and divorces and downright meanness that has gone on in See's family for 3-4 generations now. And I would have to agree. Because sometimes people really do treat show more those who should mean the most to the - the ones they should LOVE - in vile and unspeakable ways. I was reminded of another memoir I read not too long ago, about a childhood in England and Canada, called Once in a House on Fire, by Andrea Ashworth. I've known about Carolyn See, as an author, for forty years or more now, but I never dreamed she'd lived such an up-and-down kind of life, with an alcoholic, crazy (yeah, I think she really WAS!), abusive mother and a alcoholic father who left when See was a kid, and married a few more times, as did both of See's own husbands. I mean there was this awful pattern of familial quirkiness and general unhappiness throughout much of Carolyn See's life. And yet she somehow managed to rise above all of it (well, SOME of the time), and even got through grad school and became a rather respected writer - something her mother never acknowledged, and even continued to publicly embarrass See on occasion with an inherent nastiness and rudeness, usually fueled by intoxication.

While the story that's told here really is pretty awful, the writing is excellent, and I began to see early in the narrative that it was undoubtedly Carolyn See's odd sense of humor that probably kept her sane and able to shake off some of the worst of the bad times she endured - humor and several years of therapy, that is. The book's been around for over fifteen years now, so I'm kinda curious what's happened to her since. Maybe she'll write another memoir. Or maybe I'll have to scrounge up one of her several novels, because she is a damn fine writer. If you want to read a good book about a mostly AWFUL family life, then try this one, DREAMING. You'll close this book and keep thinking about it for a while, thinking, "How AWful!" show less