AVALAND's 2010 literary adventures

HERE'S my 2009, Part I thread. And HERE'S 2009, Part II

My 2008 thread is HERE. I did not keep a log on LT for 2006 and 2007.

NOW READING:



Enlightened Sexism by Susan J. Douglas (nonfiction, cultural/media studies, US, 2010)
Serena by Ron Rash (novel, US)

READ in 2010

Novels & Novellas

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (novel, 2009, US author)
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1992)
First Love by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1996)
The Wilding by Maria McCann (novel, historical, 2010, UK author)
Dark Places by Kate Grenville (novel, 1994, Australian author)
The Beggar by Naguib Mahfouz (novella, 1965, Egyptian author)
The Beacon by Susan Hill (novella, 2008, UK author)
The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates
The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates, included in Transgressions, Vol 4, edited by Ed McBain
Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi
The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind (novella, German author, 1987, translation 1988)
The Rainforest by Alicia Steimberg (Argentine author, 2000, translation 2006)
A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, novella, 2002, translation 2006)
Childwold by Joyce Carol Oates (1976)
The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, novella, translation 2009)
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (Australian author, 2009)
Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser (novella, US author, 2000)
The House of Paper, Carlos María Domínguez (Translation 2004, novella, Uruguay)
I Lock My Door Upon Myself, Joyce Carol Oates (1990, novella, US)
Galore by Michael Crummey (2009 novel, Canadian, Newfoundland)
A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates (2010 novella, US)

Short Fiction Collections & Anthologies

The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease edited by Sarah Eyre & Ra Page
Flesh & Blood by Michael Crummey (Canadian author, 1998)
Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories by Colum McCann (Irish author, 2000)
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Stories by Philip Roth (novella + five stories, US author, 1959)

Poetry:

Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (US, African American, 2009)
Voices by Lucille Clifton (US, African American, 2008)
Dark Things by Novica Tadic (Serbian poet, Translation: 2009)
Selections from Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland (Irish poet)
Selections from The Long Marriage: Poems by Maxine Kumin (US Poet).

Police Procedurals

Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill (2009)
A Cure for all Diseases by Reginald Hill (2008)

Nonfiction

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter (UK, 2010)

Samplings/Essays...etc.

"Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story" in Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon.
"Up Against the Walls of Genre: The Many-Mansions Manifesto" by Eugene Reynolds, published in the New York Review of Science Fiction, February 2010.
"The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter"Through a Text Backwards: The Resurrection of the House of Usher," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter
"The Better to Eat You With," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter
"Ghosts: Hilary Mantel" also from Uncensored.
"On the Composition of I Lock My Door Upon Myself" from Uncensored: Views & (Re) views by Oates.
"Inside the Locked Room: P. D. James" by JCO, same collect as noted below.
"The Aesthetics of Fear" by JCO, same collection noted below.
"In Olden Times When Wishing Was Having...Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales," essay published in Where I've Been and Where I'm Going by Joyce Carol Oates
"The Double Standard of Content" and "False Categorizing," chapters 5 & 6 of How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ
"Bleak House" from Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks by Peter Gay.

*sorry about no touchstones. Every time we edit a list like this we have to reset all the touchstones again which gets to be a royal pain when the list gets long...

I might try to log some of my 'sample' and 'dip in, dip out" reading this year, a subject which has surfaced over on Enrique's thread. Trouble is, I always think I might eventually finish the book I've been dipping into so I always wait to comment. I do this with a fair amount of lit crit, social history, essays, contemporary poetry...

Nothing wrong with commenting while you're in the middle of something, I think! I've actually had a really good time this year writing about my books while I'm reading them--a major advantage for me over my 50 book challenge thread, where I didn't think of writing anything 'til I was finished.

You know sometimes "sampling" for me means reading some pretty incredible individual essays or introductions or prefaces to books (I know this probably sounds incredibly geeky, but there ya go) like William H. Gass' intro to The Recognitions, a re-read for me in '09, actually, it's that good.

You're inspiring me, avaland, to go back and try and remember as many of my '09 "samples" as possible, and perhaps create a "Sampled in 2009 - hope to finish in 2010" list on my thread.

Perhaps I will count as "sampled' the latest collection of author interviews from The Paris Review, The Paris Review Interviews IV, which I started back in November and then stopped. I think I've read all of it I'm going to, at least for now.

So, to train ourselves to include our literary 'dips', do we try to write more often or just train ourselves to note these short excursions. Perhaps we should have a dipping thread:-)

I dipped into the book Denialism by Michael Specter before I wrapped it and put it under the tree for my daughter!

Aha, here you are. *ed

I've also discovered you ... I realized I hadn't trawled through this group yet for starrable threads. Gotcha!

I am hoping to log some of my literary 'dips' as discussed in posts 2-5. So, I begin with:

Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks by Peter Gay. This was on shelf, shoulder-height next to where I was sitting yesterday and well, you know how that goes...

In this book Peter Gay is that the realism in fiction, particularly that in the Realist novels of the 19th century, cannot be taken as a documentary-type truth. The author may be holding up a mirror, but it is a distorting mirror. "But their increasingly prestigious vocation as novelists pushed leading Realists beyond the Reality Principle. They were makers of literature, not mere photographers or stenographers of commonplace life...."

Last evening and this morning I read the chapter on Bleak House. One of the more interesting discussions within the larger BH discussion, perhaps because I've had these discussions before in different circumstances, is of the virtuous and very perfect Esther Summerson, the protagonist. "That is simply too much virtue to pile on a single mortal; such pure creatures exist only in the fantasies of men who have never got over their boyish vision of their mother as a Madonna, and who have carried this idealization into adult life," declares Gay. Mee-ow! (though I have to agree). He proceeds to discuss the roots of Dickens need to idealize women.

I'm not sure if I will continue and read the other chapters. It's been over a decade since I read Madame Bovary and at least two decades since I read Buddenbrooks....

Interesting! I'm already enjoying hearing about your literary dips.

Your lit crit 'dip' sounds really interesting! Especially with things like lit crit, it's fun to hear about an individual essay as opposed to the whole collection.

A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates

Set in a posh New Jersey seaside resort town, this short Oates novel is a modern fairy tale, complete with a three page 'original' fairy tale tucked into the middle of the book (it reads like a classic fairy tale but I haven't been able to find a source for it). Pretty 16 year old Kayta meets the elderly, distinguished, and rich Marcus Kidder while she is checking out the front window display of a local lingerie shop. She is on her way to take her young charges (she's a nanny) to the park. Thus begins a relationship between Katya and Marcus.

There is little more I can say without giving the story away, but suffice it to say, the suspense builds exceedingly (and delightfully) slowly and the story didn't go quite the way I expected and that's a good thing! There is a lot in the book about Katya's working class background and how that makes her susceptible to Marcus Kidder's seduction (or is it a seduction?) and, of course, includes a fair amount of her internal dialogue as the book is told from her viewpoint. Most women, I think, would recognize this internal dialogue.

Although a short book, this is another gem from Oates who I have learned to appreciate more and more with each novel or collection of hers I read.

Hi avaland.
Just a quick fly-by-"hi"!~! And a thank you for all you do!~!
hugs,
belva

Hi Avaland, I'm reading my second Oates book now and have two more in my library yet to read. The one I have read was We Were the Mulvaneys and I really liked it. When I started The Gravedigger's Daughter yesterday they listed her other books at the front (like they do in most books) except hers took up 2 or 3 pages - a prolific writer!

Hi gals! Yes, kiwiflower, she is wonderfully prolific. She has over 50 novels/novellas in print. That doesn't count the short fiction collections, plays, collections of poetry, children and young adult books, and essays...etc.

You can find out more here:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/fansofjoycecaroloate
a JCO group on LT

or on her website:
http://jco.usfca.edu/
An excellent website, updated regularly.

Lois, can you pm me some more details about the Oates story, so I can see if it echoes a myth or fairy tale from my references?

And then you will share with us Tui? Inquiring minds want to know. I have been searching the web and find nothing!~!
hugs,
belva

Coincidentally, I have just ordered a book by Peter Gay - Weimar Culture. Popping in to star your thread, Lois.

Hi Lois
I'm lurking.
Sounds like an interesting Oates! Looking forward to hearing more of your Oates and others adventures.

>16 tiffin:, 17. If I divulge the fairy tale it will give away the story!(the book is under 200 pages) Part of the enjoyment/suspense is that both Katya and the reader doesn't know exactly what Mr. Kidder is looking for; it is not a seduction she recognizes (partially this is a class issue, partially not). The fairy tale is inserted at a spot where it suggests to the reader what might be going on. From that point on, the reader operates on different information than Katya does...and the climax approaches.

I suspect the fairy tale is made up. It has a King and a Fair Maiden. The king sees the Fair Maiden and decides he must have her as his wife and sends his emissaries out to purchase her from her grandmother. Each time a sum of money is offered the Grandmother refuses. Eventually, they up the price so even Gram is willing to sell her granddaughter. The girl goes to the palace to marry the king.... (that's all I'm willing to divulge...)

Hi Pam & Kim! Pam, it is interesting to hear literature discussed by Gay, a social historian. I wondered if, when he wrote this book, if he was responding to a trend by social historians to try to distill accute history from fiction. I'm guessing yes.

I've never read anything by Oates. This sounds like a good place to start as I'm fond of modern-day folk tales.

I haven't read Oates yet either, but thanks to you, Lois, I know I must sooner rather than later. I'm trying to read only from my TBR pile (other than a few exceptions, like Bellestrista :-) ), and I do own We Were the Mulvaneys. Is that one okay to start with? I've never been particularly interested in it just because I can see and hear Oprah standing on her stage yelling that her latest book club read is We Were the Mulvaneys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Somehow, Oprah screaming doesn't make me want to read a book.)

>#22:
Most readers have raved about We Were the Mulvaneys. I thought it good, but not nearly her best. I love all of her short stories that I have read and found her High Lonesome to be superb. That being said, I don't think this author can write a poor book.
belva

I can't believe that your review makes me want to read something by JCO. I'll keep an eye out for A Fair Maiden and read it if I come across it, but then that's it! Unless I like it, in which case my worldview will be seriously shaken and I'll have to give Phillip Roth a third chance as well.

>22 Nickelini: Well, to read JCO, one must have the stomach for tragedy, sometimes violence (not gratuitous, imo, she's knows what she's doing with regards to it), oftentimes poverty and everything that accompanies that. A Fair Maiden is no exception. Katya comes from the working class and most of her relatives are pretty borderline. There are two scenes which might fit be considered violent (I'm carefully treading around spoilers here).

People call JCO 'dark' (she does also write modern gothic and horror) and sure, Disney isn't going to be calling her anytime soon. Her poetry is very different from her prose. And she many times writes in the voice of a child or adolescent. I'm really no expert, but I enjoy reading and accumulating her work (it's all over my house). btw, her nonfiction and her journal is as interesting as anything else she has written.

I have not read We Were the Mulvaneys, but I have a copy. I hadn't yet dropped into my JCO jag when that came out, and hype always turns me off a book (if I don't get to read it ahead of the hype)

>23 rainpebble: I would agree, I can't think of a collection of short stories of hers that I have not really enjoyed.

>24 RidgewayGirl: I have not read Philip Roth but rebeccanyc likes him so I have vowed to someday read him. Someday.

I'm not getting much reading done, as I've been working on Belletrista by day and mindlessly watching some television (gasp!) at night. And seasons 3 & 4 of the Dalziel & Pascoe series just arrived in my mailbox (based on the splendid police procedurals written by Reginald Hill)....

Disney isn't going to be calling her anytime soon.

. . . and Joyce Carol Oates skyrockets to the top of my must-read authors list! (Besides, with the name "Joyce," she must be brilliant).

I just kind of stumbled on this thread and love this conversation. I've read several JCO books including We Were the Mulvaney's, I'll Take You There, and The Falls. I'd like to read Blonde this year as it's been sitting on my shelf for quite some time. Very true that almost all she writes is very dark but very good.

touchstone not working for Blonde

From the December 14th issue of Publishers Weekly I recently read an interesting article titled "African-American Books in Today's Marketplace" and also a short author profile on Elif Batuman in "Adventures in Russian Lit". And, of course, the reviews section. Most interesting book noted: "The History of White People" by Nell Painter. Also, "Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won't Do" by Gabriel Thompson. This latter was interesting because there was a picture of the author - a healthy young white man - and I wondered how exactly he went 'undercover' among undocumented workers.

This morning over breakfast, I cracked open Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, a book I haven't looked at for some time. First written in 1982, the book might be considered by some to now be outdated, but that would be a wrong assumption.

I skipped to chapter 5 "the Double Standard of Content" best captured in this quote from Virginia Woolf:

...the values of women differ very often from the values ... {of men} naturally this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are "important"; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes, "trivial." And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room. A scene in a battlefield is more important than a scene in a shop.

How much has changed? I have always said that a woman has a better chance these days to win a literary prize if she writes about a man. Think: Wolf Hall, March, and Gilead. Would McCarthy's The Road have won anything if it had been a similar story about a mother and daughter? This is why a prize winner like Olive Kitteridge is so unusual.

I had time to reread Chapter 6 "False Categorizing" also. Here's a tasty bit from Russ:

"...Here are only two specific areas in which literary re-namings are expecially capable of abuse: the use of the wordregionalism and the idea of genre.
For example, why was Kate Chopin (until rediscovered by feminists) considered a regionalist, and not a realist or a sexual pioneer? Why was Willa Cather described to me twenty years ago in college as a regionalist(whereupon I did not read her) while Sherwood Anderson was not a regionalist? More pointedly, if Cather (who concentrates on several large, western states) is a regionalist, why is Faulkner (who concentrates on one, small Southern country) not a regionalist? What on earth is a regionalist? If 'regionalism' means concentration on one geographical area, is Thomas Wolfe a regionalist for writing so much about New York City?"

I think about a book in my library, American Women Regionalists - a Norton Anthology. There is no corresponding volume: "American Male Regionalists"...

A great book and much of what she has to say is still valid. And now, that that fuel to my fire, I'm off to edit the third issue of Belletrista before it goes live on Friday!

I try to not dismiss an author until I've read at least two books they've written (I do break my own rules, for example, Grisham) and so I've read both American Pastoral and The Human Stain by Roth. I found him to be a writer who cannot write female characters who are anything more than unattractive impediments or there to provide sexual satisfaction (but never intellectual or emotional pleasure). He may not be a misogynist, but he certainly writes like one. I am usually able to overcome this trait in someone who writes well (Hemingway and Orwell remain among my favorite authors), but Roth does not have the excuse of bias because of the era he lived in; he is practically contemporary.

I do think that everyone should read at least something by Roth, Mailer, Updike and Cheever because they exerted so much control over the direction American literature took for decades, but I'll be a little surprised if you take a shine to Roth.

I have reserved a copy of A Fair Maiden and hope to get to read it soon.

Lois, I am not sure whether you would like Roth or not; I think some of his work is marvelous (although taken on its own terms, to be sure, and Roth is who he is), and some is just terrible. I think you have the best chance of liking American Pastoral, which I consider the best of his books that I've read, but I certainly wouldn't suggest you read him just because I like him.

As for your post #30 above, a lot to think about, especially the idea that women are more likely to win prizes if they write about men. I would like to live in an ideal world, where women could write about whatever they want to write about and not have people have expectations for what women should write, but I know we're not there yet and may never be.

30- Interesting stuff, all of it, Lois.

We talked about regionalism a lot in my PrairieLit class last term. I came away thinking that anything not set in Britain or New York had at one time been considered regionalist (we didn't go into the male-female dichotomy). But once you start asking questions, the idea of regionalism falls apart, doesn't it. I'm almost shocked that Norton would have an anthology like that, but I'm guessing they don't publish that one anymore.

"the Double Standard of Content" - do you think Woolf got it right - about men's and women's values?

I think there is a real male-female divide - in a blurry, overlapping, complicated sort of way. And I think that "war" is actually a pretty good summary of male interests even today. I think "feelings' is maybe going the right direction, but it doesn't neatly capture the female interest - it might even undercut it. But, being male, what do I know about that. ;)

Roth definitely fits in the "male" mentality, even if he doesn't write about war - as far as I know.

>31 RidgewayGirl: I've done Updike, Cheever (on principle I won't do Mailer) but I will get to Roth. I will look forward to hearing what you have to say about the Oates.

>32 rebeccanyc: We of course don't have identical tastes, but I think we often value similar things in a book and that is why we have a nice cross-over. And we now have over three years of cross-over 'history' here on LT, and I value that. While I am not drawn at all to Roth, and not not feel that I am particularly missing anything, I am curious and part of that is because you enjoy his work so much. So, someday.

>As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said last April in response to a question about the Orange Prize: ""Because we live in a world where we're all supposed to believe that everything is fine and all is fair - but it's a big lie....I think there is a sense in most of the world that things are mostly fine; don't complain because at least now women can vote. This is a lot better than when you were considered property. It is. But there's still so much!"

I did just post this on the usual thread for such things but I wanted to include it here with regards to our recent Roth and Oates discussions:

GREAT article by Lauren Miller in Salon.com "Read a Book You Think You'll Hate in 2010"

http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/01/05/resolutions/index.html

I already regularly read books I hate - pretty much everything that people in my book group choose.

Although the one for Feb is True Deceiver by Tove Jansson which I hope will be an exception to the rule!

Very interesting discussion here, including that Salon article. That and Rebecca's comments have convinced me to read American Pastoral, which was destined for my "Discard" list.

I'd be interested to look at the past winners of the Orange Prize, to see if there is a bias toward male central characters, especially in relation to the shortlisted books.

I will have to think about what books I avoid that I might actually end up liking -- usually I have a pretty good sense of what books I'm not going to like. One I might try is one Laura Miller mentioned in the article, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I own because someone who loved it forced it on me but which I've managed to ignore for years.

Sometimes I know I'm really missing out because I don't challenge myself enough to read books that I don't think I'll like. Very interesting article. I also have The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay on a bookshelf somewhere at home and I'm planning on reading it sometime this year. I'm also planning to read more non-fiction this years which is usually my last choice when I have my druthers.

>38 kidzdoc: I should have been more specific: ...a better chance at winning a general literary prize if they write about men...

Trends I've notice while assembling Belletrista's new & notable section: a fair amount of books authored by women written in the voices of children or adolescences; books written about the mentally-ill or challenged, or the disabled; and retold fairytales and myths. Of course, I'm not pulling books out that are written by men, so this is all terribly unscientific, but interesting all the same.

It is indeed interesting. By the way, ever since I was about 10, I always thought that if I ever got published, I'd only use my initials and surname (J S Nickel). Part of that is that I hate my first name, but even as a child I didn't want readers to presume anything about me by my first name, including my gender.

>42 Nickelini: ha! we can still arrange that...

>30 avaland: I love that quote from Woolf. Even though I consider myself a feminist, I used to resist feminist readings of literature. However, as I get older I find myself seeing the disparities more and more often. Over on my own Club Read post, I mentioned an idea that 19th century male authors were, perhaps, blowhards. This was said with tongue firmly in cheek - I'm working my way through Les Miserables, and I seem to be engaged in a love/hate relationship with the narrator, and perhaps Hugo himself. But I must admit, as I return to reading more 19th century literature, I'm starting to realize that I become more engaged in works by women rather than by men. The men sometimes make me feel as if I'm being lectured to or being taught a very overt lesson. The women feel a bit more subtle to me.

Hmmm - quite a ramble, and I'm not sure where I'm going with it. But the comments here are quite fascinating.

Wow, excellent reading in the last 16 messages. The Woolf quote is excellent. Someone pointed me to an article the other day about the relative dearth of women in "best books" lists like the one recently from Publishers Weekly. The article made my blood boil because it used the "Double Standard of Content" to justify why women weren't on the list. And ... the article was written by a woman. I don't even want to go find the link because I'll get riled up again.

I beg to differ in one point - I must say I agree with avaland's comments in #30, but not so much with the Woolf quote - surely that fact that a scene on a battlefield is of more importance than a scene in a shop is not because one is 'masculine' and the other 'feminine', but because in one people are killing each other, while in the other they are maybe arguing, or buying stuff?

Having just done interviews with a handful of young Arab women writers (all under 39) for a forthcoming article in Belletrista, one comment on the challenges that Arab women writers face was that conservative Arab society generally considers women incapable of distinguishing between creative writing and reality. As a result, women's writing tends to be considered biographical in these quarters – talk about suppressing women’s writing!

31> Philip Roth is definitely misogynistic. He's renowned for misogyny. While I could cite several examples "proving" he's a misogynist, I'll cite this classic blurb on the back cover of a 1960 (Meridian Fiction edition) of Grace Paley's, The Little Disturbances of Man - a wonderful collection of short stories, btw.:

"At last a woman writer who isn't bitchy or precious or honey-and-roses, or all recollections of a gay fetching girlhood. What a pleasure to read Grace Paley!"

So he likes Grace Paley (he'd be stupid not to) but in complimenting her, he feels the need to essentially slam all previous women writers throughout the eons who proceeded her. Jerk.

35> on principle I won't do Mailer

I'll bet I can guess why you won't read him, but I'd love hearing specifically (if you don't mind) your distaste for him, rather than presuming why. I'm not a big fan of his myself, but I thought The Executioners Song one of the best works of non-fiction I've ever read, nevertheless.

>48 absurdeist: Do you mean besides the fact that he stabbed his second wife with a pen knife and nearly killed her? I started working in the law enforcement field when I was 19, so things like this bother me.

>46 ChocolateMuse: and that is indeed a good point, but perhaps Virginia has oversimplified to make her point.

>45 lauralkeet: I haven't looked at many of the 'best of' lists this time around. But I remember seeing a prominent article about the nominees of the National Book Award and the emphasis of the article was around the three male nominees because they were all born outside the US. The two women nominees, apparently, were far less interesting.

>30 avaland: I facilitated a book club reading of Middlemarch a number of years ago and many of the complaints made against George Eliot's writing was the very same you have put forth (the group happened to be all women). They really hated slogging through all that stuff about 'art' and 'science'.

I think some of your resistance probably harkens back to the fact that throughout history women have generally been the passive listener to male conversational lectures, as more recently noted in the observations of Deborah Tannen in You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation. Here's a synopsis of the pertinent chapter from someone's annotated bibliography. Of course, she is speaking generally and there are always exceptions (my oldest daughter for one! She is definitely on the info-dumping side).

Geesh, Mailer, Middlemarch and Tannen all in one post!

Belletrista, Issue 3 is up.

www.belletrista.com/2010/issue3

Enjoy! There are some fab articles, some intriguing reviews, over 50 new & notable books...etc.

edited to add: for those of you on the email list, apologies for the old email...

Now, I probably should do the housekeeping I've been putting off!

I've read 4 of the reviews and the article by Carolyn Kelly so far, Lois. Excellent issue but oh, deadly tempting.

>51 tiffin: Very deadly.

49> Ha! Yeah I figured it had to be that or that other infamous advocating of his for Jack Abbot's parole, only to have Abbot get paroled and commit murder shortly thereafter. Have you seen his interview w/Gore Vidal? Charming fellow, Mailer. I won't mention him again.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the restaurant that Jack Abbot worked at (and where he committed the murder) was one that I frequented at the time, because it was in my old neighborhood.

Seriously though, and I wouldn't necessarily argue for reading Mailer, should we avoid reading authors who behave badly? It's too early in the morning for me to come up with a list of noted writers with shady pasts of one sort or another, but surely there are a lot of then, just as there are artists and musicians. Should we just consider the art, or the man or woman too?

Koestler is the one who immediately jumps to mind. Does his raping women later in life nullify Darkness at Noon?

>54 rebeccanyc: My brain would say to just consider the art, but my heart definitely considers the artist as well. I've always had a difficult time watching Roman Polanski films, even before the recent brouhaha. I'm about to start reading Paradise Lost again, and I can't help but think about Milton's ideas about women, and how he treated his own daughter (poorly, but nothing physical as far as anyone knows) even though she did most of his transcribing for him and basically took care of everything in the household for him. For me, once I know something about an author, I take it into consideration of his/her work.

Would you then rate a book or work of art more favorably if the writer/artist had led an exemplary life and/or held views that you agreed with?

>57 RidgewayGirl: I try not to, but it's difficult to know what happens in the subconscious. I believe (and this is my personal belief only) that everyone is affected by what they know outside the work, and can't help but be. In other words, I may have grown up a New Critic, but am definitely no longer a sole practitioner of New Criticism. A reader may be affected by his/her own personal experiences, geography, culture, etc. - and all this also includes what s/he knows about the author. What I believe is important, though, is the ability to recognize the biases you have, because once you recognize them you can deal with them more effectively.

And besides, no one is perfect, no one holds all the values/views I have, so if I always took that into account, then nothing written - except what was written by me - would ever get a 5-star rating. :-) Just think, Shakespeare mostly didn't live with his wife, just left her a bed in his will, etc. - he doesn't sound like the best of guys, but he is undoubtedly the best English playwright that ever lived.

So, to make a long story short, for me, Paradise Lost is an amazing poetic accomplishment, regardless of Milton's beliefs, and is a 5+ star work.

>Had I already been reading Mailer, I might choose to overlook his 'transgressions", but I hadn't so I won't and I refuse to feel guilty about it:-)

Galore by Michael Crummey

Imagine yourself in an old, damp house near the Atlantic ocean, seated in front of a crackling fire with a hot mug of tea or ale in your hands. Across from you sits your storyteller and he begins with a tale of a whale washing ashore and the Newfoundland community setting out to butcher it.

The ugly work went on through the day. Black fires were burning on the beach to render the blubber to oil, and the stench stoppered the harbour, as if they were labouring in a low-ceilinged warehouse. The white underbelly was exposed where the carcass keeled to one side, the stomach's membrane floating free in the shallows. The Toucher triplets were poking idly at the massive gut with splitting knives and prongs, dirt seawater puring from the gash they opened, a crest of blood, a school of undigested capelin and herring, and then the head appeared, the boys screaming and falling away at the sight. it was a human head, the hair bleached white. One pale arm flopped through the ragged incision and dangled into the water.

And so begins a family saga that spans most of the 19th century and some of the 20th. Set in a backwater, medieval community of Newfoundland (Canada). The near albino man who is 'born' of the whale will be named "Judah" but would be known as "the Great White" and it is through his 'birth' that we meet the then matriarch of the Devine family known only as "Devine's widow."

In the tradition of oral storytelling, the story is part oral history, part folklore & fabulation - much in the way things are remembered in times when details are not written down. Crummey is a great storyteller and the place and characters are vivid in the telling. And in the end his narrative circles back to make for a great ending.

I suspect Crummey is Newfoundland's most notable novelist and poet, but I don't know that for sure. I came to him by way of his poetry, but his novel River Thieves won several awards and was longlisted for others, such as the Giller, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and the Impac Dublin Award. His second novel, Wreckage, was longlisted for the Impac Dublin Award. "Galore" is his third novel.

I Lock My Door Upon Myself by Joyce Carol Oates

This novella is the story of "Calla" as told by her granddaughter and begins with the image of a couple in a rowboat. A big black man in rowing and a beautiful white woman with flame-colored hair sits very upright facing him; their knees are touching. People are shouting from the shore, for they are rowing directly and, it seems, deliberately for Tintern Falls. And so begins this turn-of-the-century (19th) tale of passion locked within and passion released.

The narrative is written in short pieces, and quite lyrical in places. Some of it reads like a prose poem. And it's a great story. This is recognizably Oates, yet she has chosen to tell this story of passion through the poetry of her narrative. I found it compelling and found myself rereading lines just for the sound of them. This woman is bloody brilliant.

The House of Paper by Carlos María Domínguez (translation, 2004; Uruguayan author)

A professor has died while reading Emily Dickinson's poetry while crossing the street. A book arrives for her after her death - a volume of Conrad encrusted with cement - and her replacement is intrigued by the mystery it presents and is determined to return it to its owner. As the story unfolds, this novella introduces us to all manner of extreme* bibliophiles and this I thought was the most delightful part of the book. I was a bit disappointed with how it ended though I'm not sure what I expected. Still, it's a quick read that will make you smile, if not chuckle.

* "extreme" - some of these reside on LT...

When I finished the Dominguez novella above, I wasn't ready to get out of the chair yet (which I should mention sits next to the lit crit section of our library), so I grabbed Where I've Been and Where I'm Going: Essays, Reviews, Prose by Joyce Carol Oates and reread the essay " 'In Olden Times, When Wishing Was Having...': Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales". It seems especially interesting to me after reading Oates' fairy tale A Fair Maiden.

I could paraphrase the entire essay, but Oates sums it up nicely with her first and last few lines:

"The fairy tale, as a literary/cultural genre, has traditionally been associated with women; and women have, in different times and in distinctly different ways, impressed on these tales the nature of their deepest fantasies. The fairy tale of tradition has been imaginately transformed, in recent decades, into what might be called the "revisioned" fairy tale, in which the archetype is retained but given, by individual artists, a distinctly contemporary interpretation."

And the ending paragraph:

It is instructive to note that the contemporary fairy tale in its revised, re-imaged form has evolved into an art form that subverts original models; from the woman's (victim's) perspective, the romance of fairy tales is an illusion, to be countered by wit, audacity, skepticism, cynicism, an eloquently rendered rage.

In the piece she discusses work by Angela Carter ("The Bloody Chamber"), Anne Sexton ("Transformations", Margaret Atwood ("The Robber Bride" and "Bluebeard's Egg"), John Crowley ("The Green Child"), Shirley Jackson ("The Honeymoon of Mrs. Smith") and others.... I was surprised at how many of these I had read. And I think I picked up the Sexton recently at a library sale...

The essay was originally published in The Kenyon Review in 1997

30-35: I've even had to take these differences into account when choosing novels for classes. I shifted from 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' to 'Cold Mountain' this semester, for example. Why? Because it involves war (for the males) and romance (for the females). The men were pretty bored by GWAPE.

48> The Roth-Paley comparison is nothing new. I did my disseration on Ben Jonson (ca. 1616). The greatest compliment he gave his female patrons was that they had masculine qualities. See his poems to the Countess of Bedford.

>12 avaland:, Lois, apologies if this has been asked and answered later in the thread, but I'm still catching up. I read an extremely negative review of A Fair Maiden in the Guardian (I think), which called it a poor copy of Lolita. I'm assuming from your post that you do not agree?

>66 fannyprice: Well, I haven't read Lolita* but is every story of an older (in this case, elderly) man obsessed by a younger woman (in this case, 16, not 12) some kind of rip off of Lolita? Certainly Oates would be aware of Lolita, but I think she is working from earlier stuff - fairy tales, but I could be wrong (see #63 above). She's a savvy writer and wouldn't evoke something like Lolita without intent. We have A Fair Maiden from Katya's point of view including her interior life; did Lolita have one?

I did chase down the review you mention and I don't agree with it and am disappointed in Jim Crace (he only mentions Lolita at the very end with no other comment assuming the reader will understand his suggestion. Coward.) I was rather offended by his belittling of the narrative which, as I noted above in my original comments, that "most women would recognize".

*when I had my Russian lit jag in the 90s, I read other Nabokovs and avoided Lolita because I had young daughters...

"The Aesthetics of Fear", an essay by JCO appearing in the same collection noted in #63

In this essay, Oates discusses the differences between real fear and 'aesthetic' fear and why we might wish to experience the latter. She first discusses the horror in Homer and Ovid's work and then skips ahead to a "more modern sensibility, post-Ovid, imbued with a Manchean/Christian metaphysics" - and discusses Dracula and the vampire legend at length.

I thought this an interesting essay - first published in 1997 - and thought about its applications - yea or nay - our current vampire/werewolf mania.

"The phenomenon of Dracula and the vampire legend generally can only be understood as a melding of ancient, that is pagan, and more modern, Christian anxieties: not simply that we are the hapless victims of absurd, violent, dehumanizing, and dismembering fates, to be devoured and dissolved back into brainless nature, but that, succumbing to the vampire's temptation, we are complicit in our own fate. Something in us wants to be seduced, violated, transformed; our innocence, like our virginity, torn from us. The ancient world posits atrocities out there; the Christianized world posits atrocities in here, in the soul..."

She does make some delicious observations about Dracula including comparisons with him, Satan, and Bluebeard. She also talks about how, in the story, our own ethical behavior is suspended - everything goes in the good Christian cause - to kill the vampire.

Another intriguing bit:

"In the Gothic imagination, the unconscious has erupted and has seeped out into 'the world.' As if our most disturbing, unacknowledged dreams had broken their restraints, claiming autonomy."

--------------------

I followed this essay with a nice 11-page essay from the same collection: "Inside the Locked Room: P. D. James" Having just read James' short book on detective fiction, I thought the essay interesting.

I've been thinking about your comment that you heard about Mailer's history before you read any of his books and it so affected you that you are now unable to read him (I have probably paraphrased you oddly). I read my first Oates when I was fourteen or fifteen and certainly too young to understand it (I read The Edible Woman and a bunch of Margaret Atwood's short stories that year as well and can remember only the cyst with teeth and hair). It was the one that featured the runaway balloon, somewhat gothic in tone.

Years later, I heard her speak at a California college in the course of which she was unkind to an undergraduate who asked her a question. It was not well done of her and I hope there were circumstances that caused her outburst unknown to members of the audience, but it has, I think, strongly influenced my reaction to her. Having remembered this, I think I now understand a little your feelings toward Mailer. I wonder, is it impossible to separate the work from its creator? Should we strive to avoid any knowledge of writers' personal lives because it will cause us to evaluate their work more or less favorably than it should be? Or should we move in the opposite direction and shun books by writers whose political views or personal lives we find distasteful?

I've read two articles this week about new biographies, one on Koestler and one on Highsmith. Both led personal lives that were generally icky. Should I take that into consideration when I debate reading Darkness at Noon or Ripley's Game?

Lois - you've given us so much to think about.

I have this romantic image of writing as coming from an intense passion. In this view, that passion is the kind of thing that might knock someone off balance - a psychological pushing of limits. And, turning that passion into a good work of literature - it doesn't take a moral compass. The one we despise can churn out a powerful work of literature and wow us - and, they are only able to do so because they have become someone we despise.

This is just a notion, not a real belief I'm trying to prove. There may an aspect of truth to it.

ps - I'm trying to read Milton at the moment and have him in mind while writing this. If I recall correctly, it's not just his views on women that are dubious. Isn't he thought to have been a pretty quirky all around jerk?

Interesting thoughts here. Just to offer another example, I'm greatly enjoying Les Miserables, but learning more about Hugo's personal life (given what little I already know) is probably best left for a time when I've finished the book. Hugo might well fit your "romantic image" example somewhat, dchaikin.

>69 RidgewayGirl:, 70 Actually, with regards to literature I like, I enjoy knowing a little about an author's life. Considering the vast amounts of literature published in any given year, we all make judgments using a variety of criteria when deciding what to read: this one sounds too dark, this one got tepid reviews, that one is by so-and-so (isn't she that romance writer?), my friend liked this, or the cover art is awesome, or simply everyone is reading this one....and so on.

I'm not claiming to judge Mailer's literature, just explaining why I can't be bothered to read him at this point in my life (there are hundreds of authors I have not read). So, I can certainly agree, theoretically, that we should (?) separate art from its the very human creator. But I would also add that generally, making moral judgments from what they know about an author or a book's content is, for some people, just another of the many factors considered in choosing what they read (I suppose here I have take a populist viewpoint)

69-72> I think I'm with Thea -- I think I'd rather read something by an author before I know much about his/her life -- let the text speak before the biography. I'm far less apt to read a book by someone that turns me off than by a writer about whom I know nothing. And I probably would have missed some good reading along the way. I haven't read Mailer because his machismo turned me off a long time ago (OK, I have read some of his articles, but none of his novels). I read Koestler a long time ago and remember being very moved by Darkness at Noon. Paradise Lost is brilliant despite the misogyny. I LOVE Christa Wolf, but early knowledge of her involvement with the Stasi probably would have eliminated her from my reading lists had I known about it before I started reading her work. I must say after reading the review of Highsmith's biography, I have no desire to read her work, and that doesn't seem quite fair to Highsmith.

Besides, the media, and many biographers, are so prone to twist author's lives for sensationalistic purposes. Mary Wollstonecraft was almost lost after her husband published her biography -- no one would admit to reading her for decades for fear of being thought immoral. I read a biography of the great Russian poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, a number of years ago that practically ignored the poetry for a psychoanalytical hatchet job. It's really tricky territory.....

#71 theaelizabet - I just finished Les Mis, and there is so much ego coming out of that narrator. I'll have to look up more on about Hugo.

Of course, once I've finished Les Mis, I am so going back to learn more about his life! And what I learn will probably make my experience of him that much more fascinating.

ETA: dchaiken, cueing off Medillia's reading , I took a look at The Temptation of the Impossible by Mario Vargas Llosa. After reading the intro I decided to stop and finish Les Mis first. I also have Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel by Victor Brombert, largely because that was what was available at my local library.

#75 theaelizabet: I took a look at The Temptation of the Impossible by Mario Vargas Llosa. After reading the intro I decided to stop and finish Les Mis first.
Lol, I know what you mean. And I wanted to hit Vargas Llosa over the head for telling us how we must all feel a certain envy at the sheer number of women Hugo slept with (while simultaneously telling the reader that some of those women were servants). Ick.

(Teresa, you'll have to tell me about the Brombert if you read it before I get to it next month I have it checked out from my library as well.)

Well, I am currently reading a Vargas Llosa so I will try to pretend I never read that comment. I think that's why I fall on the side of not knowing much about author's personal lives, and trying to let the books speak for themselves, although I must confess there are some authors I have extreme difficulty reading. largely because of their politics rather than their personal lives.

>67 avaland:, Thanks for your thoughts Lois. Having read neither Lolita nor the book the Guardian critic was savaging, I'm in little position to judge. Lolita has just never appealed to me, no matter what anyone says about it.

>68 avaland:, This JCO essay book sounds fantastic & seeing you mention her so many times recently reminds me that I really really need to get back to sampling High Lonesome more regularly. I have barely cracked the tip of the iceberg, but so far, I have been loving every minute of that collection.

Waaay up in #30, Lois posed the question: Would McCarthy's "The Road" have won prizes had it been about a mother and daughter? It set me to wondering, has there been a post-apocalyptic novel by a woman about women? Atwood's Oryx and Crake isn't about a woman's survival of the Apocalypse. The Handmaid's Tale, which is scarier than most books I've read published as horror, is the closest I can come to such a book.

Help, please. I would like to read something that presumes an apocalyptic end to Western civilization, such as it is, from a female main character's PoV.

The closest I can come up with is not post-apocalyptic but it is dystopian and that would be Jose Saramago's Blindness. However, despite being in a woman's point of view, it is written by a man.

And I'm sure most of you, being so well-read, are already familiar with this work.

Richard, Robert McCammon's Swan Song has several women characters; it's gruesomely post-apocalyptic, a la The Road, though I honestly can't remember who the narrator is, whether male or female. It seems to me, if I remember right, that McCammon jumped around into different people's heads, multiple narratives, multiple male and female perspectives....

Would The Children Of Men count? It doesn't take place after a dramatic apocalypse, but people's actions are certainly influenced by the sense that the (human) world is ending. If I remember rightly though, the narrator/main character is male.

I haven't yet read Parable Of The Sower, but from the reviews it looks like a possible contender.

As I recall, the main protagonist of The Children of Men was male, and he and otherr men were all very protective of the pregnant woman, so it was a pretty male point of view, oddly (?) written by a female author. A little too religious for me, but provocative nonetheless, and way way better than the movie, which didn't even seem to be about the same story.

>74 dchaikin:, 76 (with apologies to avaland for minor thread hijack) I've only read the first chapter of Brombert, but wanted to share an apparently famous Jean Cocteau quote: "Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo."

>79 richardderus: The Year of the Flood is mostly from two women's POV. Also Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Carhullan Army/Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall (I haven't read this one yet, but since it is likened to The Handmaid's Tale, I'm assuming the POV)

All very interesting!

>77 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, seems there was something in A House of Paper about Llosa:

...he told me how hard it was to avoid putting two authors who had quarreled on the same shelf. For example, it was unthinkable to put a book by Borges next to one by García Lorca, whom the Argentine author once described as a "professional Andalusian." And given the dreadful accusations of plagiarism between the two of them, he could not put something by Shakespeare next to a work by Marlowe, even thought this meant not respecting the volume numbers of the sets in his collections. Nor, of course, could he place a book by Martin Amis next to one by Julian Barnes after the two friends had fallen out, or leave Vargas Llosa with García Márquez.

Again, still restless, so I picked another Oates' nonfiction volume out of the bedside bookcase and was delighted to find a piece she wrote about the novella I just read. "On the Composition of I Lock My Door Upon Myself" from Uncensored: Views & (Re) views by Oates.

It was really terrific to read this so close behind my reading of the novella.

"For where works of non-fiction tend to begin with ideas, ifnot arguments, works of the imagination tend to begin with images. You find yourself "haunted" by something you've seen, or believe you have seen; you begin to create, with varying degrees of consciousness and volition, an entire world around this image, a world or more precisely an atmosphere equivalent of a world, to contain it, nurture it, enhance it, "reveal" it. But the revelation is likely to be purely emotional, purely felt."

"Henry James described the novella as the "blessed form." It is also a very difficult, even hazardous form, neither a novel in miniature nor a pumped-up short story, but something quite distinct, if definable. My sense of the novella is that of a rapturously extended prose poem driven by narrative...

Another essay read in the same collection: "Ghosts: Hilary Mantel" first published in the NY Review of Books in 2004. It is a review of her Eight Months on Ghazzah Street and Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir, but covers much of Mantel's oeuvre up to that point in time. Very interesting!

and another half read: "An Endangered Species: Short Stories" The first two pages were a wonderful apologetic for the short story detailing the importance of short stories particularly in the literature of the 20th century. She asks the question, "Is the short story an endangered species?" And will the 21st century be as hospitable to short story writers as the 19th and 20th? (after listing some of the excellent contemporary short fiction writers - Munro, Wolff, Dubus, Paley and, yes, Roth* - she actually says she doesn't think the 21st century will be as hospitable as previous centuries and explains why she thinks this...)

* for all the Roth fans: "Philip Roth's first book, Goodbye, Columbus, stories and novella, remains the sparkling equivalent of any of Roth's novels, and provokes the question of why so gifted a short story writer so quickly lost interest in the form."

>81 absurdeist: Thanks, Enrique, that's one I have somewhere in this house and can't think of where. I'll go searching.

>82 wandering_star: The Parable of the Sower is indeed post-apocalyptic, and I should have mentioned it...but I don't like it, because it's oddly un-novel-y. The Protagonist (whose name is a plant I can't think of just now) is just that, A Protagonist, and when I can feel the writer Thinking In Capitals I tend to respond to the text As A Chore. I appreciate the nudge, however, and amend my post above with the preceding sentence.

>83 rebeccanyc: That sounds trippy, Rebecca, a man's PoV written by a woman about a man's role protecting women. That sentence makes my head hurt.

>85 avaland: Thanks, Lois, for the ideas. Having heard elsewhere that Sarah Hall is to be given wide berth, I'll refrain on those. The others are wishlisted.

Many thanks, all, for the pointers!

>86 avaland: Based on Oates' reviews, I have bought some short fiction by Roth in: Goodbye, Columbus and Five Stories (collects his first novel and 5 stories together) and Colum McCann's Everything in This Country Must since I have been a McCann fan since his fabulous Zoli.

9:16 pm. Listlessly reading. An interview with John Crowley in the latest Locus magazine. Some reading in a book about popular literature in the late 19th century. I was reading the section on satire of New York society during the Gilded Age.

>30 avaland:, 79, 85, 87> I'd definitely include The Parable of the Sower on post-apocalyptic feminist visions, as well as Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères. There's also Doris Lessing's Mara and Dann about a sister and brother making their way through Africa in the distant (?) future -- a provocative look at a world in the throes of climate change and how communities and individuals adapt (or not) to that change.

>63 avaland:

It is instructive to note that the contemporary fairy tale in its revised, re-imaged form has evolved into an art form that subverts original models; from the woman's (victim's) perspective, the romance of fairy tales is an illusion, to be countered by wit, audacity, skepticism, cynicism, an eloquently rendered rage.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan is a novel that perfectly fits Joyce Carol Oates' category of contemporary fairy tales. I'm thinking of Lanagan's wit and audacity, but especially that "eloquently rendered rage".

I love Lanagan but have yet to read TM! (it's sitting right on my coffee table too!) This might be a good excuse to do so soon!

Another post-apocalytic novel by a woman about women: Into the Forest by Jean Hegland. Another could be (depending on your definition of apocalyptic) The Wall by Marlen Haushofer. I recommend both, particularly if you like the genre.

>92 arubabookwoman: Deborah, I read Hegland's book...not post-apocalyptic, to my definition, but dystopian. There isn't a cataclysm, just a horrific development of our own workaday world. I'm not doing a good job of explaining myself....

I've never heard of Marlen Haushofer! I am off to investigate, thanks.

I think you guys just made my wishlist implode. ;)

Great discussions going on over here, avaland. Fortunately for my wish list, I've read many of the books you all are discussing, with the exception of most of the books by Oates. (I'll have to give her more of a chance this year.) Oh, and Mailer's writings--what an obnoxious guy; I don't feel bad at all about ignoring him.

I have finished with Openwork by Adria Bernardi. The book begins with alternating chapters around three characters: a brother and a sister, and a childhood friend of them both. As the story begins in the early part of the 20th century, we are introduced to Imola (the sister) who lives in the mountains of Northern Italy. We are then introduced to the brother and their friend, both of whom are working in mining in the American West. This part of the book is compelling and I got thoroughly 'involved' in the lives of these three until a tragedy strikes....and then the narrative shifts to a more contemporary story line involving the descendents. I reacted badly, I'm afraid. I proceeded to skip around to try to find out more about the three, but even their narrative had moved ahead in time. So, despite the rave blurbs on on the book, I was disappointed with it in the end. I suspect it is the literary mood I'm in, and not the book.

>87 richardderus: Richard, where have you heard Sarah Hall "is to be given a wide berth"?? Who told you that? I will hunt them down and remonstrate with them. Haweswater is a fantastic novel - historical, but one that wears its thorough research lightly, and with the most incredible sense of place. I don't fancy The Electric Michaelangelo much, but How to Paint a Dead Man got great reviews over here and was longlisted for the Man Booker.

>87 richardderus:,97 not only that, but kambrogi gave How to Paint a Dead Man a terrific review in Belletrista, Issue 2!

Yesterday's essay re-readings are from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter. "The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm," "Through a Text Backwards: The Resurrection of the House of Usher,"and "The Better to Eat You With."

"The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm" was interesting (they've never been translated apparently). What is the difference between a fairytale and a legend? The Grimms themselves scrupulously differentiate in their own Foreward to the first German edition of 1816. A fairytale, they say, can 'find its home anywhere', it belongs to the timeless, international zone of poetry; but the legend — ah! the legend, securely attached to to a specific place, often a specific date, is the folk spirit recreating its own history. says Angela.

The Usher piece attempts to find out what really is going on in the tale. It was intriguing and made me realize that I probably haven't read the Usher tale since the late 1960s!

The "Better to Eat You With: piece is a wonderfully irreverent look at the horror of fairytales. "Most children's classics of the fantasy and imagination—that is, the fairytale—are books for bewildered adults sailing under false colours, using the free conventions of the fairytale to project a private world of terror and dread."
That's just a little tidbit of Angela's piece (in which she calls Anderson both a "genius" and "A tortured dement!" - but not in the same sentence).

I chose to reread these pieces because of some of the earlier discussion of fairytale and because Angela herself is inspired by Poe and has written or reenvisioned various fairytales. Her Poe connection is very obvious in her novella Love. Speaking of which, I love Angela Carter's work. Imagine what she might have produced had she lived beyond her early 50s.

Hooray for Angela Carter!

I'm thinking maybe The Magic Toyshop for me this year.

Richard, I'd also recommend How to Paint a Dead Man, which I thought was stylistically unique and captivating.

Those essays sound really interesting. A co-worker has given me an old and battered copy of Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. It's residing somewhere in Mt TBR.

Great post Lois. I love the line from "Better to Eat You With." My first thoughts go to Disney princesses - I've seen a lot of those movies over that last few years - over and over and... Disney is like the hyper fairytale - so this makes me think of them as something like a manifestation of modern dysfunctional societies hyper terror and dread, which brings up some interesting images. But then, I think, are there really non-bewildered adults sailing under true colors?

#101 - Oooh, move Nights at the Circus to the top of the pile! It's great...

101> I agree with 103 -- Nights at the Circus is one of my all-time favorite books! and Carter is one of my favorite authors. The Magic Toyshop is an early, but goodie -- a harrowing coming-of-age story.

There is a descriptive passage in Nights at the Circus that I adore, it is about her trunk and the corsets...it's so wonderfully and deliberately baroque!...running off to find it...

edited to add: Perhaps the stockings had descended in order to make common cause with the other elaborately intimate garments, wormy with ribbons, carious with lace, redolent of use, that she hurled round the room apparently at random during the course of the many dressings and undressings which her profession demanded. A large pair of frilly drawers, evidently fallen where they had light-heartedly been tossed, draped some object, clock or marble bust or funerary urn, anything was possible since it was obscured completely. A redoubtable corset of the kind called an Iron Maiden poked out of the empty coalscuttle like the pink husk of a giant prawn emerging from its den, trailing long laces like several sets of legs. The room, in all, was a mistresspiece of exquisitely feminine squalor, sufficient, in its homely way, to intimidate a young man who had led a less sheltered life than this one. Chapter 1, 3rd page in the Vintage paperback edition.

Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser

In short pieces of prose and arguably some poetry, Millhauser tells the story of one enchanted night in a smallish town in Connecticut sometime in the 1950s (or possibly the 60s?). All manner of activity abounds during the wee hours - some magical, some not. The story is all about desire and longing and the less glamorous 'want' and 'need'(imo). Some of it is whimsical and quite enjoyable and yet I did not enjoy the story as much as I expected to. The reader is watching the happenings of this enchanted night from some distance and it is that distance that I felt acutely. And looking back on it, with rare exception, it seemed the women in the story were objects, enchanted in a way so as to please the men of the story. The manikin comes to life to fulfill the longing in the man who gazes at her in the window. A young woman sheds her clothing privately in the moonlight but watched secretly through the bushes by a man. Still, there are a fair number of laudatory blurbs on the back of the book, so perhaps the story would enchant me more at another time.

Avaland, that was pretty much my take on Enchanted Night.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Remember the Grimm's tale of Snow White and Rose Red? Idyllic cottage life, widow with two very different daughters, friendly bear; abusive, wicked dwarf with his beard stuck in a tree? Remember the greedy dwarf trying to convince the bear to eat the young girls instead of him - "tender morsels" that they were? Well, this is where Lanagan's Tender Morsels gets its core material.

Without giving too much away, the basic story is thus: having been brutalized and raped by her father and a gang of local boys, 15 year old Lida (who has one child by her now-dead father and is unknowingly pregnant again) tries to commit suicide. Instead, she encounters a glowing figure who gives her two jewels and points her home again. Except that her world has been changed into an idyllic version of the same. Here, Liga brings up her two very different daughters and yes, into their lives comes a bear (more than one, in fact) and yes, the girls eventually run into a nasty troll. These turn out to be invasions of the real world into their little heavenly place.

Set in a pre-industrial society somewhere and cast with characters speaking their own antiquated, rural dialects, Tender Morsels, for the most part, 'feels like an old fairy tale—at least at the beginning—but the story becomes more complex as it moves forward. As more of 'real life' breaks into the idyllic, we as readers, watch with our breaths held, to see how these sheltered young women will react and cope—for the idyllic is not real, it's Liga's fantasy and cannot last forever.

I am a great fan of Lanagan's short fiction. She is marketed as YA here in the states but her stories transcend such commercial pigeonholing. And so also Tender Morsels. Sure, there is violence in the story (carefully rendered) but it is essential to counterbalance the idyllic and sweet. And certainly there is sexuality - we are talking about adolescents after all. This is a captivating and ultimately a very moving story. I thought the book a little long, but read the 400+ page book in practically one sitting - if that tells you anything.

Tender Morsels sounds really interesting, and I love re-imaginings of fairy tales, although I'm only marginally familiar with this one in particular. I think that may have to go onto the wishlist.

I am glad you enjoyed Tender Morsels. I have a copy making its way to me as we speak. I can't wait to read it.

>98 avaland: - I recently took a course on (dark) fairy tales and we read Andersen (yes, we also did Carter). His work is a very strange mixture of brutality and mawkish Christianity; i.e., "The Red Shoes" where a self-centred puts on the eponymous shoes only to dance and dance and dance, until she comes across a woodsman who cuts her feet off - luckily she then goes to church and becomes saved.

Re "Better to Eat You With" - there are critics who believe that have suggested that the idea of children being constantly menaced by witches/ogres/wolves who want to eat them is a reflection of the hunger that was endemic throughout Europe at various times, and the hidden truth that it was not unknown for parents/adults to eat children when desperate.

>111 Jargoneer: Very interesting!

>111 Jargoneer: Yikes! (and yes, very interesting).

"Snow White and Rose Red" was one of my favorite fairytales as a child; I'm ordering Tender Morsels right away, and in the meantime I'm going to reread the fairytale in my ancient Book House edition tonight. Have you encountered the fairytale casebooks in Maria Tatar's The Classic Fairy Tales , a Norton Critical Edition -- good stuff in there.

It's good to see a positive review for Tender Morsels, I read it last year and thought it was wonderfully dark and intelligent. I especially loved how she blended the bear folklore traditions from the Pyrenees into the story. I'm also a fan of her short stories.

>115 avatiakh: Now the "bear folklore traditions" is something I clearly missed. While I recognized elements of Snow White and Rose Red right away, I did go back and reread the Grimms.

>114 janeajones: Jane, I will look forward to what you have to say about it. I think I still prefer the sophistication in fairy tale treatments by people like Carter, Oates, Atwood...etc. but this was a good read.

I should mention another book that I was reminded of when reading this and that is Bear Daughter by Judith Berman. Judith is an anthropologist specializing in Native American culture and mythology, I believe. The book is a coming-of-age story that blends folklore, myth & fabulation. It has a horrible Poncahontas-type cover that you have to get past, but there are some reviews on the Amazon page here. Coming from a generationswhere young women were not the heros of their lives, I found this a great and complex tale.

Good review on Tender Morsels, Lois. Though the part about Lida getting raped by her father and a gang of boys does not just double the yuk factor. It's more like exponentially creepier.

>117 bonniebooks: thank you.

I'm trying to add all my significant reading without adding every article I read. Poetry is something I dip into but don't often read cover to cover; therefore it's hard to list as a "book finished".



A couple of evenings ago I read a significant part of The Long Marriage: Poems by Maxine Kumin, a volume I picked up at a library sale. Kumin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who lives here in New England, and there is much of the countryside and rural living in her poetry. Some of what this volume contains is tributes to various other literary persons (if tributes is the right word here) and also a few poems written after her near fatal accident in 1998. Here's an excerpt from her "Skinnydipping with William Wordsworth"
-----
I lie by the pond in utter nakedness
thinking of you, Will, your epiphanies
of woodcock, raven, rills, and craggy steeps,
the solace that seductive nature bore,
and how in my late teens I came to you
with other Radcliffe pagans suckled in
a creed outworn, declaiming whole swatches
of "Intimations" to each other.
-----
There is also "Thinking of Gorki While Clearing a Trail" and "Imaging Marianne Moore in the Butterfly Garden" and three poems about Anne Sexton (who was Kumin's friend) and more.

I liked the poem, "Why There Will Always Be Thistle"

Here is an excerpt from the last stanza:

Bright little bursts of
chrome yellow explode from
the thistle in autumn
when goldfinches gorge on
the seeds of its flower.
The ones left uneaten
dry up and pop open
and parachutes carry
their procreant power
to disparate venues....

There is so much more in this volume then what I have mentioned. http://www.maxinekumin.com/

edited to add cover.

I've always loved Maxine Kumin's poetry.

Lois, you are unnervingly erudite.

I'm invariably disappointed by Millhauser. He comes across to me as very precious and distanced from both the reader and his stories. I keep thinking i SHOULD like his stories - he writes in a genre that i enjoy more often than not - but i'm left cold and uninterested, really.

>121 bobmcconnaughey: Bob, I felt somewhat similarly. I did like it but I did keep telling myself that I should like it more.

I have read five short stories by Philip Roth and 2 short stories by Column McCann but I need to read the novellas by both authors, I think, before commenting. I have some stories of Michael Crummey's to read also.

I think Millhauser is one of those writers you read for the cleverness - he's an academic writer in the same way as Borges or Barth or Coover - aspects such as character (and, consequently, reader empathy) take a back seat to the artifice.

Well, Joyce Carol Oates is correct, Philip Roth is indeed a gifted short fiction writer and I can join her in wondering why he abandoned the form.

The five stories included here are "The Conversion of the Jews," "The Defender of the Faith," "Epstein," "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings," and "Eli, the Fanatic". Roth writes engaging stories with an ironic wit.

In "The Conversion of the Jews" a young, 12 year old boy named Ozzie repeatedly gets in trouble for his persistent questions...until things take a dramatic turn. In "The Defender of the Faith"—which I have been told has much been anthologized—a new sergeant who is Jewish is pushed by a young, outspoken soldier to allow some special treatment for himself and a couple of other Jewish soldiers. This is set on a Army base in the midwest during WWII. "Epstein" is a story of one man's rather comic transformation, and "You Can't Tell a Man..." is a tale of a transformative (and brief) high school friendship. Finally, in "Eli, the Fanatic" a young lawyer enlisted by his neighborhood to deal with the new Yeshivah school that has appeared, goes over the deep end. One issue he must deal with is the perceived archaic dress of one of the adults there.

Goodbye, Columbus is the National Book Award winner for 1959. It tells the story of the relationship of 23 year old Neil Klugman from poor Newark and a pretty "uptown" girl, Brenda Patimkin. As the back of the book suggests, the book is indeed about social class. Both characters are vivid and there is a feeling throughout the story of being on the cusp of something - something that I could only interpret as being the age in which it was written. I didn't consider the book a real 'wow' sort of story, but I certainly enjoyed it and found plenty in there to chew on (and, I often felt I had read it before). Of particular interest was the story around Neil urging Brenda to get a diaphragm so (and it's implied) he won't have to use condoms. He accuses her of selfishness for not wanting to. She fires the accusation back. He admits to it. The story eventually pivots around that bit of rubber.

Will I go on to read more Roth based on his short stories and this one novella/novel (130 pgs)? I don't know. This collection felt somewhat dated in its cultural underpinnings and certainly in it's assumptions of the ultimate importance of all things male that I seemed relieved to start the McCann.

Readings from Domestic Violence: Poems by Eavan Boland.

This is the most recent collection of contemporary poetry I've bought. Boland is a Irish poet who currently teaches at Stanford. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eavan_Boland

Boland takes the proverbial seashell from the beach and holds it up our ears so that we may hear the ocean. Which is to say, she presents in the ordinary and personal, another greater and oftentimes more public thing. In the title poem "Domestic Violence", she presents a marriage powerfully as a metaphor for international violence.

My favorite of what I have read of her collection thus far is the following poem, one of many that I would love to hear her read in person:

"How It Was Once Was in Our Country"

In those years I owned a blue plate,
blue from the very edges to the center,
ocean-blue, the sort of under-wave blue
a mermaid could easily dive down into and enter.

When I looked aat the plate I saw the mouth
of a harbor, an afternoon without a breath
of air, the evening clear all the way to Howth
and back, the sky paler blue farther to the south.

Consider the kind of body that enters blueness,
made out of dead-end myth and mischievous
whispers of an old, borderless
existence where the body's meaning if both more and less.

Sea trawler, land siren: succubus to all the dreams
land has of ocean, of its old home.
She must have witnessed deaths. Of course she did.
Some say she stayed down there to escape the screams.

Avaland,

I picked up Joyce Carol Oates's Childwold at a 3 for $5 table the other day based on your enthusiasm for her. Have you read this one?

Nice review of Goodbye, Columbus...but I think I'll pass on it.

>126 janemarieprice: jane, I have it but have not read it. Originally I thought I might read it in tandem with A Fair Maiden but did not end up doing so. If you are going to read it soon perhaps I will also...let me know.



Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories by Colum McCann (2000)

I read both short stories in this collection after reading the five Roth short stories before reading both the Roth and McCann novellas.

McCann writes beautifully and soulfully. Both the two stories and the novella are told from the viewpoint of children. In "Everything in This Country Must", a young girl is conflicted as she is torn between gratitude for the British soldier who risked his life to save his father's draft horse or allegiance to her Catholic father. In "Wood", a boy assists his mother as they covertly make banner poles for the Protestant marches in their mill under the nose of the husband/father disabled in bed. Although Protestant, he would disapprove, despite the fact that they sorely needed the money. I thought the ending on this latter story fell a little flat but both stories were powerful.

However, the price of the book was worth it for the 100 page novella "Hunger Strike." Set in early 1981 and against the 60+ day hunger strike of Irish Republican prisoners (remember Bobby Sands?), the novella captures the gut-wrenching struggle of a thirteen year old boy who is trying to parse out meaning behind his young uncle's hunger strike while mired in a complicated mess of feelings, the most powerful of which is anger. The fatherless boy (his father died years earlier in a road accident) never knew his uncle but struggles to make some connection to the event as the days of the strike click by and, much to the dismay of his mother, he becomes a bit obsessed with the hunger strike. The story also includes kayaking and chess pieces made out of bread, but I don't want to give everything away. The story is beautifully crafted, riveting and intense.

Oh, I have to get this. Great review, and I'll look for this at Borders later this week.

>129 kidzdoc: It's older (2000), so you might have to order it. I think you will like it.

>128 avaland: - Joyce Carol Oates reviewed when it came out - combined review with a few other collections. She more or less agreed with you - available here.

>131 Jargoneer: I do believe that is the very same review I quoted in #86, 88 which is where I saw the McCann (and promptly bought it). I think this is also where she notes the Roth (which I also promptly bought). I should reread the review part now that I have finished. I am a fan of McCann anyway, although I have not yet read the latest yet.

>132 avaland: - that just reminds that my ability to forget seems to be growing everyday.

128 - I may pick it up after I finish Light in August, but I tend to get distracted from my plans. I'll let you know when I'm a little closer to finishing.

Yes, send me a note when you are picking it up and perhaps I will join in.

A Cure For All Diseases by Reginald Hill.

In this police procedural, Police Superintendent Andy Dalziel, aka "the Fat Man", is recuperating from injuries sustained in the previous book. He has been talked into doing so at the reasonably swank Avalon center in Sandytown. On the first day, as part of his recovery, he is given a digital recorder in which to record his private thoughts for his own use. Andy doesn't take this very seriously at first, dubs the device "Mildred" and before long he's chatting away to old Mildred on a regular basis. Those of you who are familiar with Andy (who gives Neanderthal's a bad name) will understand when I say that there's not much difference between Andy's private and public language, but his thought process is delightful to follow.

Does it matter who is murdered and who are suspects really? That Andy, although right in the middle of everything is in no condition to run an investigation. That Peter Pascoe is in charge? That Franny Roote reappears.... Not to me. Although I have seldom been disappointed in a Reginald Hill mystery, I pick these novels up to visit familiar, eclectic characters and to follow a delightfully complex plot until justice prevails at the end.
(pssst. shouldn't Weildy get a promotion?)

Flesh & Blood: Stories by Michael Crummey

As noted above in my review of "Galore", Michael Crummey is quite a storyteller. He is also an intriguing poet. Now I can say that he is a talented short fiction writer. This collection contains thirteen connected short stories - all centered around the people of the mining town of Black Rock, Newfoundland (Canada). His stories are evenly told in a no-frills-across-the-kitchen-table style with his wonderful gift of detailed description. There are family stories here: stories of husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters and so on, told with a gentleness and sometimes wit.

My favorite story is called "After Image" and is comprised of multiple short pieces told from the viewpoint of three different members of the same immediate family. Lise, a woman born with prescience. Winston, her husband and a man scarred badly by accident. And Leo, their adopted son. I also really like the story "Break and Enter" about two sisters who come together when the younger sister's relationship with a drug-addicted painter crumbles.

One can't separate Michael Crummey from his beloved Newfoundland but who would want to?

Dark Things by Novica Tadic

I'm not much of a fan of translated poetry and I may have mentioned it before but I can't shake the sense that something will always be lost in translation, particularly the music of the language in the poetry. Still, every now and again, while perusing the bookstore shelves, I happen across something that intrigues me. And so it was with this collection by Tadic.

Tadic is a Serbian poet whose work is likened by Charles Simic his translator as what Hieronymus Bosch poetry might have sounded liked - if he had ever written poetry. I'm not much of a fan of Simic either (although i do have a few of his collections) but he wrote an interesting paragraph or two in the introduction about translating Tadic's work:

Even though his poems have grown less verbally intricate and more direct and plain-spoken over the years, he is still difficult to translate. At first glance, the poems' brevity and limited vocabulary suggest otherwise. The language is simple, the phrasing is idiomatic, but there are vestiges of folk poetry, folk sayings, and the Bible. Every once in a while Tadic will use an uncommon word or twist the syntax in an odd way to take the poem out of the realm of the familiar. Since his aim is extreme concision and lyric purity, there's very little room to maneuver.

He goes on to state his belief that the supreme authority for a translator "ought to be the author's style and form"; that strict literalism is his rule. That is, until he gets stuck. And here he is apologetic for the smallest liberties he may have taken and mentions poems he abandoned when he felt he could not do them justice with his translation.
-------------------------

The poems here do read simply. There are at least a few I'd label 'head-scratchers' but others which intrigue. In a poem called "Again That" there were a couple of lines, an image I found wonderfully original and amusing:


I saw white chairs startled
To be slapped by hot asses
Dropping on them out of the blue.


He's interested in the dark within us and the first poem in the collection to catch my attention—before I ever left the bookstore with it—is one that made me immediately think of literature's current lust for vampires and werewolves. A making literal and external the dark, abstract things within us.

DARK THINGS

Dark things open my eyes,
raise my hand, knot my fingers.

They are close and far away,
in a safe hideway
beyond nine hills.

Night is their kingdom,
and this day, just breaking,
is their cloak of light.

No force can revoke them,
untangle them, explain them.

They stay where they are,
in our breasts,
stirring in our hearts.

I'm a fan of many Canadian authors, but Michael Crumney is new to me.. I will be looking for his work. I noticed you mentioned his devotion to New Foundland and I wonder if you have read anything by another Canadian author from New Foundland, Wayne Johnston. His Colony of Unrequited Dreams was a wonderful historical fiction depicting the history of New Foundland and its colorful first Premier, Joey Smallwood. It was one of my Top Ten from 2009.

>139 brenzi: I have not read Johnston, brenzi, though I know of the book from my bookstore days.

135 - I'm planning on starting Childwold mid-week - Wed or Thurs. Hopefully I'll be able to get your thoughts on it as well.

>141 janemarieprice: Will find my copy and not be too far behind you...

#138 - Lois, I love that poem by Tadic.

>143 dchaikin: It's the one that got me to buy the collection!

The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi (Afghani author)
translated from the French by Polly McLean, English edition 2009

As the book flap says, "According to ancient Persian folklore, sang-e saboor is the name of a magical stone, a patience stone, which absorbs the plight of those who confide in it."

A man lies unconscious suffering from a bullet to the neck received during a trivial argument with a fellow jihadist. He has been unconscious for several weeks while the neighborhood as become the latest "front line". His wife cares for him, prays over him, but as time goes by she begins to talk to him, pouring out everything she has been holding in her entire life.

It's a remarkable and powerful confession, part allegory, I suppose, written simply - it's narrative broken with bits of poetry. This little book won France's Le Prix Goncourt and has been translated beautifully.

Well, now I really want to know what her confession was! *stomps over to wishlist*

Very nice review.

>145 avaland:: That sounds like an interesting read...and I haven't read anything by an author from Afghanistan.

>147 TadAD: What? no Kite Runner?
>146 dchaikin: Well, let's just say that it was a lot of stuff and some of it - I'm pleased to say - was not what I expected.

The Patience Stone sounds interesting; I'll look for it in the near future.

me too -- very intriguing.

>145 avaland: Love the sound of The Patience Stone. I thought Atiq Rahimi's novel Earth and Ashes wonderful so am excited to see another one in English.

>151 akeela: Well, if you're endorsing the previous, I may have to seek it out ...

>151 akeela:, 152 I sought it out on Akeela's recommendation last year and really enjoyed it. (Interesting to note that with The Patience Stone he's started to write in French rather than Persian. Well, it's interesting to me ;-) )

>153 rachbxl: Oh, that is interesting! Perhaps writing in French makes it easier to get published (and win prizes) in France, his adopted homeland. Perhaps he now imagines a different audience for his work?

Edited to add: I see it is another novella...I have become a bit enamored of the novella form of late. It has been interesting to see how different authors use it. Keeping in mind the comments quoted in post#86, that is.

Edited again to add: Rahimi also has "A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear" (no touchstone?) from 2006. Earth & Ashes is from 2003.

There's also a non-fiction book, Le Retour imaginaire (The Imaginary Return), from 2005 - not sure if it was originally in French or if translated. It's a collection of Rahimi's photos and writing from his return to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban.
In terms of why the switch of language, I can't find much about it, but the little bits I've read in the French press (no interviewers seem to find it worth asking about, frustratingly) suggest it's a more personal reason than ease of publication or target audience; he says he was "unable" to write in French until he'd returned to Afghanistan in 2002, and that that return unlocked it.

Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill

Superintendent Andy Dalziel is returning to work after his months of convalescence but before he can even make it to the office, he is approached by a woman who is looking for her missing husband. Alex Wolfe, the woman's husband, was a police detective who disappeared seven prior after both a family tragedy and an internal police investigation began to focus on him for possible leaks to a wealthy businessman who was under investigation. Alex is presumed dead but Gina, his wife, is still unsure and would like the situation resolved. One can't look into the disappearance of Alex Wolfe without also looking into the wealthy and ruthless businessman (who now has an ambitious MP son)....

What can I say here? Another satisfying police procedural by Reginald Hill featuring the delightfully Neanderthalish Andy Dalgleish (a veritable dinosaur in a herd of gazelles) and his more educated and younger sidekick, Peter Pascoe. Rounding out the team in this story is the super-efficient and indispensible Sgt. Wieldy, and ambitious young detective Shirley Novallo, lovingly (?) referred to as "Ivor" by her boss. With this book, I think I am caught up with this series (finally).

Childwold by Joyce Carol Oates, 1976

Do you know those camera shots in current movies where the camera circles round and round its subject/s with almost a dizzying effect for the viewer? That's what I thought of as I put closed the covers of this book after finishing it. And I cannot help but think that this was Oates' intention.

The novel begins with a jumble of characters and voices, enough so that I started trying to keep track of who was who, and who was related to whom and how on post-its. Turns out, that probably wasn't necessary. Oates' has included multiple voices using third and first person narration and an unnerving 2nd person "you" voice at times. She freely skips back and forth between them, the result being a vague feeling of disorientation.

Childwold, the book jacket says, is about an "enchantment and its inevitable consequences", but this is an enchantment more akin to madness, and there is plenty of madness for everyone in this story. There is Kasch, a wealthy, middle-aged recluse, formerly a distinguished scholar and author, who clearly is suffering some form of mental illness and spends much of his time now trying to make sense of his madness through philosophy. Kasch has become 'enchanted' with fourteen year old Laney Bartlett, a girl in the midst of that madness we call adolescence. She is of a large, poor farming family who reside in a large old, dilapidated farmhouse in the rural town of Childwold (set in Oates' fictitious "Eden County" in upstate New York). Laney's a bit tough and stringy on the outside but inside she's a caring person and a girl afraid to grow up.

To add to the madness in the story is Laney's grandfather, Joseph, who has some dementia and spends much of his time inside his head cycling through his memories trying to determine what is true and real and what isn't. Then there is Laney's older brother Vale, a Vietnam veteran (remember this was published in '77) who is clearly suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Against all this madness, we can add social class with the rational (?) expectations, the limitations (or not) that come with growing up wealthy or poor, particularly in respect to Kasch and Laney. It might be argued that this is one of the roots of Kasch's "enchantment".

Kasch is hiding in the woods watching a gang of teens messing around down by a boarded up mill near river. When things get out of hand he sends the whole pack scattering with his yelling and 'rescues' Laney, whom he has seen before and become "enchanted" with, from the unwelcome attentions of one young man. From hereonin, Kasch's infatuation with Laney becomes our main story but around it swirls the tale of Joseph, Vale, and Laney's mom, Arlene, and the whole deteriorating, impoverished world of the former farm community Childwold. The story is bleak, as most stories about poverty are, but it end hopefully for some and not so for others.

The story itself and it's onomatopoeic style is intriguing and interesting, but I would not recommend this novel for a reader's early experience with Oates.

*I may have to come back in and rewrite this collection of thoughts...there is so many ways to approach this and so many bits one could mention. I've tried (tried!) to keep it simple, but it's a complicated madness....

A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear by Atiq Rahimi
Translated from the Dari by Sarah Maguire and Yama Yari (©2002, Translation 2006)

Having recently read and enjoyed The Patience Stone, I wanted to read more by Afghan author and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi. Set in 1979 in Afghanistan, this novella tells the story of Farhad, a university student who, when heading home after curfew (a bit drunk) is stopped by soldiers, beaten and thrown into a roadside ditch. A young widow risks much to take the battered Farhad into her home where she cares for him. Farhad is semi-conscious and drifts in and out of reality. He is also somewhat naive and it takes time for him to realize the gravity of his situation.

There is a sense that A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear is very allegorical even if one doesn't exactly understand the allegory. In its telling, the story belies a great sympathy for the women of Afghanistan in particular. And while I think I like The Patience Stone better, this imaginative novella has weighed its words carefully and carries with it a deep soulfulness that lingers well beyond its pages.

*I may have to come back in and rewrite this collection of thoughts...there is so many ways to approach this and so many bits one could mention. I've tried (tried!) to keep it simple, but it's a complicated madness....

Glad I caught this version - it's a nice review. :) Also, nice comments on Rahimi - you've definitely convinced me that I should check him out.

Another by Rahimi to look forward to! Great, thanks.

The Rainforest by Alicia Steimberg (Argentina, 2000, translation 2006)
Translated from the Spanish by Andrea G. Labinger

In this autobiographical novel, Celia, an older middle-aged woman from Argentina, has come to a Brazilian spa on the edge of the rainforest to try to move beyond her anxiety and depression. She spends a fair amount of time seeking solace in the rainforest.

As the story moves forward, we also get the backstory of her husband's illness and death, and her drug-addicted son's chronic physical abuse of her. This is a painful and brutal past; however, it is told from a place of recovery and reflection and this place is filled with rainforest naps, good Argentine food, slow dancing, a bit hang-gliding, and the first tenuous steps into a new relationship.

I liked this carefully balanced tale of one woman's struggle to move beyond the past into a cautious joy. While the rainforest is not a major character in the story, and is featured less than I expected, it stands as a metaphor for Ceclia's journey - both "solace and tenuously controlled danger."

Voices by Lucille Clifton (US, 2008)

Divided into three sections, this collection brings together 39 fairly short poems. While the poems of the third section, "ten oxherding pictures" did very little for me, I found many of the poems in the first two sections strong and often quite moving.

She has written three poems in the voices of the African-American characters used to market several American products "Aunt Jemima" (pancake mix, artificial maple syrup), "Uncle Ben" (rice) and the nameless man (apparently called "Rastus") on the Cream of Wheat boxes.
Here's a excerpt from "Aunt Jemima" which I found particularly powerful:

...
my life

the shelf on which i sit
between the flour and cornmeal
is thick with dreams
oh how i long for

my own syrup
rich as blood
...

Another beautifully done piece, is "sorrows", which I will reproduce in full as it is the poem featured on the back of the book:

who would believe them winged
who would believe they could be

beautiful who would believe
they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves
as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams
rattling their skulls clicking

their bony fingers
they have heard me beseeching

as i whispered into my own
cupped hands enough not me again

but who can distinquish
one human voice

amid such choruses
of desire

Essay: "Up Against the Walls of Genre: The Many-Mansions Manifesto" by Eugene Reynolds published in the New York Review of Science Fiction, February 2010.

In this judicious and erudite essay, Reynolds discusses the confinement of genre as it relates to speculative fiction. He discusses the ideas of "breaking down the barriers" and "transcending the genre." But what I liked about this essay, is that Reynolds not only discusses the breaking down of genre barriers - the promise and the possible pitfalls - but he also discusses what is gained by identifying with the genre demarcation. Reynolds notes the "contrary tensions" in wanting to claim universality, yet assert uniqueness." In the end, he prefers a house metaphor to the usual ghetto one, and advocates that walls be not broken down so much as there be a set of doors and windows in which writers, artists and critics can move freely through in both directions.

What I thought: I like to think that I am able to move freely around literature - reading what intrigues me - unfettered by genre boundaries. I still read science fiction but, it truth be told, I do not find much within its ranks these days that interests or speaks to me (I suspect here that I need to move towards some select short fiction).

IS not the best fiction that which entertains, inspires and educates? (and with fiction, I think "educates" is an inside out process). Certainly the best of speculative and imaginative literature deserves a wider readership whether it is marketed on one side of the genre wall or the other.

Avaland - thanks again for posting some poetry. I'm still thinking about Tadic's poem above (post #138). "Sorrows" (#162) gives me chills - esp. the first six lines.

Thank you for The Patience Stone - have ordered it from my local library:) I like education as an inside out process and agree that the best fiction entertains inspires and educates.

>164 dchaikin: I know, great stuff! Yeah, I'm still thinking about that particular Tadic poem myself.

>165 juliette07: thanks, Julie. Now that I'm read two Rahimi novellas, I've just received the 3rd - Earth and Ashes, which I'm saving for March (it's tiny).

The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease, edited by Sarah Eyre & Ra Page

The editors of this anthology asked contemporary authors to read Freud's 1919 essay "Das Unheimliche", translated as "The Uncanny", and then to write "fresh fictional interpretations of what the uncanny might mean in the 21st century."

If interested, you can read Freud's essay here

This anthology won the Shirley Jackson Award last year. I recognized about half of the authors in this anthology and of those, I had read other work by them. These stories are not ones of overt horror stories, but are meant to give one some unease or "the creeps". While I certainly enjoyed some of them, others were kind of meh.

Favorites were: A. S. Byatt's "Doll's Eyes" a delightfully subtle, creepy tale about what happens when a woman gives her lover one of her precious dolls from her collection only to see it turn up on Antiques Roadshow. Jane Rogers' "Ped-o-matic" tells the story of one young mother who is leaving her infant for the first time to return to work. On a business trip to Paris she stops in the airport for a foot massage...but the machine won't let go of her feet when she needs to leave.
Etgar Keret's "Anette and I are Fucking in Hell" - which is not much more than a page long - is a creepily funny sex scene in hell. And In Christopher Priest's "The Sorting Out," a young widow and ardent bibliophile, who is in the process of ending a relationship, returns to her home to discover it has been broken into. The story is suspenseful as she must go through each of the rooms of the house oen by one, but interestingly, the only things out of place are a few books here and there --- the authors' names all begin with "D". What does it mean?

It seems to me that I responded best the stories where the creepy element is sort of a manifestation of or connected somehow to the character's internal conflicts. There were other stories that were interesting and imaginative but didn't seem to make an emotional connection. Still, this is a worthy collection to explore if one is interested in the elements of unease in fiction (fiction like other 2009 Shirley Jackson Award Winners like Disquiet by Julia Leigh and The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa)

Sounds interesting, Lois! On to the wishlist it goes. The stories sound like what I've always described as "Twilight Zonish" as opposed to horror.

Yes, I like the sound of that one..... sounds so very different yet not inaccessible.

Great review! I've just now added the entire Shirley Jackson award to my wishlist. These are exactly the kind of horror stories I love.

I've always thought Horror should never be longer then novella. Otherwise the ideas get washed-out by sheer repetition.

Hi avaland -- if you're interested: the March issue of Smithsonian Magazine has a long article by Joyce Carol Oates about "place" and her childhood in upstate New York. It's online here and accompanied by an interview.

I just finished A Fair Maiden, prompted by your review. I got to listen to a lecture by Oates back in 1979 but, somehow, never picked up anything of hers to read. I'm sorry now that I didn't and will be working my way through some of her stuff this year. Thanks.

Belatedly - I really liked Earth and Ashes, which I picked up from BookMooch after akeela recommended it last year, and I have a copy of The Patience Stone in my bag all ready for reading. Bailed out of going to see Rahimi read from it at Daunts last week as I was just too shattered and now kind of regret it... Nadeem Aslam says he is THE writer to read on Afghanistan.

>173 FlossieT: well, there's no much to read. He has 3 novella-length books and some films, as best I can tell.

>172 TadAD: Tad, I'm glad you feel you may have missed something. I have 4 JCO novellas in the immediate March TBR pile (yep, just a few more days until Belle is out and I can take a break)

>171 detailmuse: Thanks! I will look forward to reading this.

>170 stretch: It's always interesting to see what's on the list, but I'm not much interested in genre horror (ha! that said after a reading an essay on 'genre' demarcation!).

Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni

This is a delightful collection of love poetry that is witty, light, playful and musical. Giovanni puts a lot of jazz in her work - and I don't just mean allusions. I'm very curious as to how her poetry sounds when she reads it and may have to search around until I find an example.

Here's one of my favorite poems from the collection:

"Your Shower"

I wish I could be
Your shower
I would bubble
Your hair
Tickle my way
Down your lips
Across your shoulders
And over your back
Around your waist
Bouncing off your knees
Fall to the tips
Of your Toes
Then journey back
Again
Warm Wet
Sticky Sweet
Up and Down
Around and Around
Around and Around
Around and Around
Until
There is
No more hot
Water

The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind (novella, German author, 1987, translation 1988)

An older middle-aged reclusive and fearful man lives an orderly, simple, contented life, by day ironically as a bank guard in Paris; that is, until an ordinary pigeon unhinges it all. And it is within the unhinging that a discovery is made. This is an enjoyable tale, slyly wittiy, and just about the right length. Just as you cannot take any more of this man's unhinging, something happens.

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter

As a member of what is likely to be considered "Old Guard" feminism, I have been bothered by what I have see as a kind of cultural complacency when it comes to women's issues. There's a pervasion (and wrong!) assumption of equality of the sexes which hangs over our culture. Sometimes it feels like I'm in a science fiction movie where everyone is lulled into complacency and I'm the only one who can see the danger. We really would like to think that the sexes have achieved equality - oh, wouldn't it be grand! - but it's just not true. Great inroads have been made of course, but equally is far from a reality.

So, besides the fact that I snorted when I heard the subtitle of this book - "the return of sexism" - when did it ever go away? - I was also curious about what a younger feminist had to say. To her credit, Walters does admit that her title is a bit of a misnomer because sexism really hadn't gone away but it is now enjoying a new wave of its own.

In her book, Walter discusses:
--the mainstreaming of the sex industry and how this industry has co-opted the feminist rhetoric of "empowerment" and "liberation". A lap-dancer will tell you she feels "empowered".
--the rise of internet p0rnography; it's cultural pervasiveness and it's affect on young women. It is also noted that current p0rn is much more brutal towards women.
---a hyper-sexual culture which values in women only sexual attractiveness
---the sexualization of very young girls and also the pervasive princessness
---the assumption of equality and the myths of biological determinism (as manipulated by popular authors and a media more interested in entertainment than facts and objective journalism.
---the amazingly restrictive stereotypes...

I'm sure I've not done a very good job summarizing this. Here's an example:

To be sure, the current hypersexual culture does not impact equally on all women. There are young women following their dreams in anything from music to literature, campaigning to politics, and throughout their private lives, who have truly benefited from the work done by feminists before them. Yet so many women are hampered by this claustrophobic culture, and feel trapped and frustrated by what is going on around them. Through the glamour-modelling culture*, through the mainstreaming of pornography and the new acceptability of the sex industry, through the modishness of lap and pole-dancing, through the sexualisation of young girls, many young women are being surrounded by a culture in which they are all body and only body. In the hypersexual culture the woman who has won is the woman who foregrounds her physical perfection and silences any discomfort she may feel. This objectified woman, so often celebrated as the wife or girlfriend of the heroic male rather than the heroine of her own life, is the living doll who has replaced the liberated woman who should be making her way into the twenty-first century.

and that's just page 125 of 238. *posing nude.

She notes that we often think that we of the middle class can protect our daughters from these things, but in actuality we are all affected by these things in some way. I would have loved to read this book chapter by chapter and discussed it with a group; there's a lot in it. I don't agree with everything she says but, for the most part, she has presented her argument well and her cautionary message is a worthy read for anyone who has young daughters or who cares about the status of women in our society.

Thanks for the comments on the new Giovanni collection, and for that poem. I'll pick it up later this month.

Thanks for those comments on Living Dolls. I find the ideas you presented provocative. I think I will read that book. It sounds like something I'd want to discuss.

Also, the cover art...much can be read into, no?

>179 citygirl: basically the cover art reflects her comments that the main stereotype being put forward in our current culture is that of a living doll - an unattainable type based on sexual attractiveness alone - virtual Barbie and Brat dolls.

Lois, Living Dolls sounds like a must read. I've requested it from the library (it appears that they've ordered it but don't have it yet). It does sound a little like The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti, so I expect to be a little crazed by reading it!

The Living Dolls book sounds interesting. Feminism/sexism/women's roles in society is such a heated and often debated topic as you try and think of the general whole but get caught up in exceptions and vice versa. You're right in saying that it'd be fun to discuss in a group.

And that poem. Tantalizing!

>181 Nickelini: yes, expect to be a bit crazed. I did think of your earlier read when I started this.

>181 Nickelini: very true.

I was going to comment that reading your review reminded me of the The Purity Myth which I read last year...but I was beaten to it!

>177 avaland: I'd REALLY like to read this - Sarah Churchwell mentioned that she thought it was spot-on (that was all in the 2000 words that I had to cut, sob). I would say, "sexism didn't die, it just went undercover" but actually it's still OK to say things about "a woman" that it would not be in any way acceptable to say about, for example, a non-heterosexual person, or a disabled person, or a non-Caucasian person. So it's about the worst kind of 'undercover' EVER.

>185 FlossieT: agreed.

Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, 2000, translation 2002)

Set during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, this tiny book succinctly tells a moving story of grief and despair. Dastaguir and his grandson, Yassir, is waiting by the gatehouse of a mine for a vehicle to come along in which they will be able to catch a ride many miles to the mine itself where Dastaguir's son (Yassir's father) is working. While they wait, the reader gets the backstory of how they have come to be there.

This is the last of Rahimi's three published works that I had to read. It is his first, and was translated from his native language. The two later books, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear and The Patience Stone were translated from the French, the language of the author's adopted country. All of these have been excellently told, skillfully rendered in a prose that wastes no words. I think my favorite of the three is the most recent, The Patience Stone, because it is a bit more lyrical, imo, and because it is about a woman, it speaks to me differently. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what Rahimi writes next.

Good. My local Borders has The Patience Stone, so I'll pick it up later today. I'll look for his other books at City Lights later this month.

"The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates, as found in Transgressions Vol. 4 edited by Ed McBain.

Eleven-year-old Marissa is lured into captivity by the disturbed fourteen-year-old Jude and her minions. Jude is obsessed with an old Indian ritual calling for the sacrifice of the Corn Maiden. Alternately told in the voices of Jude, or her accomplishes, and also by a narrator who gives us the viewpoint and voices of Marissa's devastated and desperate mother and a falsely accused male teacher, this spiraling narrative is crammed with emotions and psychological suspense almost to the very end. And I found the 'almost' intriguing also.

For this series, Mr. McBain asked notable authors to write an original novella with some connection to crime, mystery or suspense. As he states about the novella form, "It ain't easy to write!"

The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates(1977)

This little novella is the tale of Bobby Gotteson, a mass-murderer and perhaps a moderately-talented singer/songwriter, who was found abandoned as a baby in an airport locker and grew up and was ill-treated in a series of foster homes before heading off to prison for the first time. Gotteson is on trial for hacking a woman to death. It becomes clear he is some sort of serial killer and has done more than a few times. Gotteson is young and good-looking and uses this power over women, although ironically it seems he sexually prefers older men. Also, referred to in court (and perhaps in the press) as "The Maniac, " Gotteson says his soul in its essence is a spider-monkey (his physical description is that of being short, long-limbed, very hairy; strong and agile).

The story is told mostly by Bobby himself in long rambling testimonies at his trial. There are other things included: bits of poems and songs he has written. It's not always clear what is real and what is not in Bobby's narrative; he's more than a little delusional. We get a little of his background as a child but mostly he tells of his adult life is testimony crammed with emotions - repressed and otherwise.

It is disturbing to be in the head of the criminal insane. It is disturbing and very sad to see how a complete deprivation of human love can warp the human soul. It is disturbing to think that as a society we might have some part in creating this monster(?) It is disturbing because there is perhaps a fine line between fame and notoriety, between the normal dreams of fame & fortune and those that aren't. And it's disturbing to think that we can harbor one iota of sympathy for a creature such as Gotteson.

I find that when Oates writes something deliberately disturbing, it's not just meant to upset us emotionally, but to disturbus - to disarrange us, throw us into a bit of confusion - with the intention of making us think in ways perhaps we don't usually do.

This novella was published in 1977 and Oates rewrote it as a play which was produced in Los Angeles in the 1980s starring Shaun Cassidy.

Great review, Lois; I'm adding to my wish list.

Wow, that sounds incredible Lois.

Sounds great, going on the wishlist.

Very interesting. These are not the responses I expected! How brave you people are!

If you chase the book down, make sure you are getting the novella not the play.

Here's a review of the stage production from the Los Angeles Times dated Nov. 2, 1985.

And here is a theater piece in the NYTimes written by Oates where she talks about the difference between fiction and drama, and between one's play and the finished production, mentioning "The Triumph of the Spider Monkey" specifically.

I would bet this novel was written around the same time as Oates's perhaps best-known short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

--Nope, I just checked, the story was written in 1966. She must have a thing with serial killers.

>195 Cariola: nah, I just think it's the criminal mind and other dark things that lurk within us (post #138, the Tadic poem).

The Beacon by Susan Hill (novella, 2008, UK author)

The Beacon is a story of family, anger, loss, and memory. The Beacon is the name of the farmhouse and family homestead and in the first few pages of this story we learn that the aged mother has just passed away (the father had passed away years earlier) . The one middle-aged sibling still at home - May - must, of course, notify the proper authorities and her siblings --- but not Frank, the younger of the two boys. Frank will not be told of the mother's death because of what he has done.

And herein lies the intrigue. Laced between the story of family notification and funeral preparations, the reader is given the background, mostly from the viewpoint of May, of this farm family. It's beautifully written in a subdued tone and leads us headlong into Frank's transgression and its devastating consequences, before bringing us back around to the present and confrontation. As I expected from Hill, she leaves us with a delicious tiny question mark at the end.

Lois, all of your Oates' reviews have me itching to try her work. I may have asked this before, but where should I start? I've never read any of her writing, and she seems quite prolific. Thanks!

>198 Cait86: that is always a loaded question, but considering the recent novella by the Canadian author you mentioned on your thread, I'd recommend starting with I Lock My Door Upon Myself. Perhaps her latest collection Dear Husband would be as good a place as any to start (I still haven't read some of her most popular novels, it seems I am reading around them).

The Beggar by Naguib Mahfouz

I have not read enough of French literature to say for sure, but I suspect that the over-brooding, angst-ridden, search-for-meaning (or identity) novel has its roots in French literature. Mahfouz wrote his novel in Arabic, but his literary influences were largely French ones.

Omar, a successful, wealthy, well-respected lawyer in Cairo, has reached a psychological crisis point in his middle-age. His despair and search for meaning turns him from his work, his family and eventually his friends. Once a young idealist in the 1930s trying to bring about socialist change, he now seems to fear irrelevancy more than anything ("irrelevancy" is the word used in the foreward). Of his other friends from his youth, one is a successful journalist and the other has spent almost 20 years in prison (they drew lots as to who would carry the bomb that day).

There is a fair amount of philosophy (Mahfouz is fond of philosophy) in Omar's conversations with his friends and in his questioning thoughts - bits about art, science, religion, the meaning of life...etc. In his prose, Mahfouz moves oddly about, and one has to stay sharp. I'm sure Omar's midlife crisis is also meant to be an allegory for Egypt's midlife crisis also.

But my emotional reaction to this book is to earnestly wish that Omar would get his head out of his posterior and get on with it. I found the whole crisis thing to be incredibly selfish, self-indulgent, and narcissistic (is that redundant?) - while he's out racing his car and banging whores and contemplating the meaning of life, he has left his children fatherless and his wife unexpectedly pregnant and alone. Did Mahfouz intend this reaction in his readers, I think not and I do not think women in general were his intended audience.

Still, I enjoyed Midaq Alley though was tepid about The Day the Leader was Killed, but this will not put me off The Cairo Trilogy when I get around to it.

Dark Places by Kate Grenville (novel, 1994, Australian)

Set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dark Places is the story of Albion Gridley Singer, the father of Lillian, the eccentric woman in Grenville's Lillian's Story, her 1985 debut novel*. If you have read that novel (or seen the movie starring Toni Colette), you might wonder why one would want to read, much less write about such a man.

The book begins when Albion is a boy being shaped by his own family and the society and culture of the time. Albion is an insecure boy who seems clumsy in navigating the world around him. Within him is an empty, gnawing place that cannot be filled. He craves the love and approval of his father, but is unsatisfied. As he grows older he finds ways to cover his failings and we watch as he develops a deep resentment against women. When his father dies, Albion takes over the successful stationary business, marries, and becomes "a family man" but, despite appearances, we never forget the gaping emptiness in Albion and how it manifests itself with controlled and sadistic cruelty or outright abuse as the story races towards its denouement.

Kate Grenville has wonderfully recreated a Victorian world that moves and changes into the 20th century. And with it she creates the social mores and atmosphere, the privileges and powers, and the regimented gender roles that will help shape the dark soul of of this man, so richly imagined by Grenville. The evolution of Albion Gridley Singer is as mesmerizing as it is disturbing.

*despite the fact that chronologically, Lillian's Story is a sequel to this book, it was written years prior and, imo, should be read first.

Love, love love Grenville so I will add both Lillian's Story and then Dark Places to the pile. I'm wondering if you've read The Lieutenant which I have sitting on my shelf to read. Thank you for your review.

>202 brenzi: me too! yes, I have read The Lieutenant which was sent to me quite a while ago from an LT friend in Australia. It wasn't then out here in the States. I have yet to read Joan Makes History, Dreamhouse and Searching for the Secret River (nonfiction) but I have them and I will. At some point I'd like to get my hands on her first fiction:short stories - Bearded Ladies...

i fell in love with Grenville over The Idea of Perfection which was handed to me by a Penguin Books sales rep who thought I might like it. She was right! (it went on to win the Orange Prize, as you know). Ha! the rest of the world gets to find out what the Aussies already knew!

>202 brenzi: In checking, one can get a new copy of Lillian's Story here in the states (and certainly used ones through ABE books), but Dark Places has not been published here. You might be able to get a reasonably-priced copy through The Book Depository in the UK. picked up my copy in Australia when we were there in '08.

I haven't caught up yet, but I wanted to say I love the Giovanni poem - and I'm appreciating the Avaland collection of contemporary poetry here. Also, Living Dolls sounds fascinating, as does the purity myth. I noted your comment "her cautionary message is a worthy read for anyone who has young daughters"...

>203 avaland: I have never had a book effect me as much as The Idea of Perfection did. I can't put my finger on why the Harley and Douglas love story effected me the way it did but when I read it last summer it was weeks before I could get those two characters out of my head and I still smile to myself when I think of them. I'll definitely reread that one.

>205 dchaikin: Dan, Nickelini is reading Living Dolls now, so watch for her comments (she also read The Purity Myth which I have not.

>206 brenzi: Yes, I totally agree. Her characters were delightfully flawed (imperfect!) and came with baggage. It is witty, yet I thought the scene where he overcomes his fears to save... (I won't give it away) was one of the most imaginative and anti-cliche romantic scenes I've ever read). I have read the book three times now, I think.

I love reading your thread! It's a little like visiting the grown up table a little for someone who reads more by instinct, but it always reminds me how much I enjoy contemporary, well-written novels and especially books by women. I've added a ton to my wishlist and just wanted to thank you for the inspiration.

>208 nancyewhite: gosh, thanks. I'm past the place where I have to read book because it is assigned, or feel I must read a certain book because it will impress others (or impress myself), or should read a book because everyone else is...etc. I'm allowing myself to read whatever I want and be the eclectic reader that I am.

I'm allowing myself to read whatever I want and be the eclectic reader that I am.

(drool) One day! (April 22nd, actually. Unless I apply for grad school).

>210 Nickelini: I will celebrate with you, Nickelini! It hasn't even been a year since I finished my degree, although it's been 3 since I left the bookstore (that shaped my reading in a more mainstreamy bookclubish sort of way).

The Wilding by Maria McCann

Recently announced as part of the Orange Prize longlist, The Wilding is Maria McCann's second novel, after the excellent historical fiction As Meat Loves Salt. Set in late 17th century rural England after the civil war, this is the story of 27 year old Jonathan Dymond, a cider maker who lives comfortably with his parents when he's not on his rounds assisting neighbors with their apple crops. A mysterious note summons his father to the deathbed of Jonathan's uncle, and Jonathan, after reading just a fragment of the note, becomes intensely curious for he perceives a great family mystery that he itches to unravel --- and so we the readers are off and running with him.

McCann does a wonderful job recreating the pastoral lives of village England. It reminded me a little of Brooks' The Year of Wonders in that way. Jonathan is a likable character, perhaps a bit too good, mature is some ways and naive in others. The mystery is somewhat predictable, yet the author manages to toss in a few twists which I enjoyed.

The Wilding is an enjoyable romp of an historical fiction. I picked up while I was cleaning, intending to read just a page or two, and was quickly hooked. Cleaning did not resume until the following day when I had finished the book. However, I was more than a little disappointed because The Wilding is not the equal of its predecessor, As Meat Loves Salt, which was an ambitious, finely detailed, complex romp of a read.

Thanks to FlossieT for sending this to me.

I was just about to post a message saying that I was looking forward to your review of The Wilding! You enjoyed it more than I did.

Thanks for your review of The Wilding, Lois. My goal is to read 8-10 of the OP longlisted books, so I'll pass on this one.

I'd love to see a thread dedicated to reviews and discussions of the 2010 OP longlisted books. What do you (and others) think?

>214 kidzdoc: You certainly may start one. I don't expect to be reading very many of them, but there are a few that I might pick up - Black Mamba Boy, for example.

So I trotted off to the bookstore this morning, it being such a lovely day to be out and about. I picked up Ron Rash's Serena: the latest by an author I have enjoyed in the past. In response to the Orange Prize, I picked up Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips, a novel that did not make the list and one I've been thinking about reading since it showed up on the National Book Award's short list.

And I think I've said it before, but it's the best time of the year to buy poetry here in the states as published release a lot of new collections and anthologies just prior to National Poetry Month (April). So, I picked up two more collections.
I don't feel guilty at all. :-)

Thanks for your review of The New Uncanny, Avaland. I have an interest in the uncanny and didn't know of this book, which I've added to my amazon wishlist!

Just catching up on the threads, so I'm a little behind on the comments here:

Re: Triumph of the Spider Monkey, I read Zombie by Oates last month, which is her novelization of a sexual psychopath serial killer (based on Jeffrey Dahlmer). It was absolutely chilling to be inside his mind. Unlike Gotteson, the Dahlmer character had a loving family upbringing. Zombie is only novella length so you might be able to fit it in before March 31 if you're interested. I intend to look for Triumph of the Spider Monkey.

Re Dark Places, about 15 years ago I bought (in the US) and read Albion's Story which I'm willing to bet is the same book, just the US title/version.

I'm enjoying following your reading.

>218 arubabookwoman: Aruba, thanks for your post. I've read both Oates's "First Love" and Black Water recently, I just haven't been up to writing about them (have a bad head cold). I have Zombie in my extensive TBR pile but I'm thinking I'll need a break from monsters for a bit... As far as her officially declared novellas, I think I just have The Rise of Life on Earth left.

First Love by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1996)

First Love is a Gothic tale of one 11 year old girl's fascination with her cousin, a truly creepy mysterious 25 year old devout seminary student, and his pedophiliac relationship with her. This little edition is made creepier by the inclusion of the dark wood block illustrations by Barry Mosher.

For can you be a child, lacking a proximate adult to define you? (pg 12)

I keep thinking about this line that turned up early in a story which seems to be more about Josie's fascination (and the strange mixture of fear and fascination) with Jared, Jr. - the "adult" who makes himself most available to her - and her eventual defiance. The setting plays into the story, as it does in most Gothic tales, and there is some religious motifs at play also.

It's sometimes difficult to admit to liking a book with content like this, but I did like this book. There is a slow transformation in Josie that is hypnotic.

Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1992)

Publisher's note in the book: "This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously."

Black Water is a fictional re-telling of the Chappaquiddick incident of 1969 which became a great national scandal. For those of you unfamiliar, there is a very detailed wikipedia article on the subject. Everything has been changed - the setting, the physical attributes of the Senator, the car used...etc. - but the story is there in its essence and told by a narrator from the viewpoint of Kelly Kelleher, the victim who drowned in the overturned car that the Senator was driving drunk. Once I got past the impulse to compare details with what I knew of the actual incident, I found the story haunting and often mesmerizing. The narrative alternates between back story and flashes - sometimes lyrical - of the actual crash and the last few hours of its victim. The was not exactly what I expected - an outright indictment of the Senator for all of his failures (although it is surely implied) - there are more fundamental truths, a much broader indictment, that Oates is getting to through this novella - and that, I think, is something left for you to discover on your own.

Just finished reading and two more popped up! You are bending me to the Oates side, Darth. Actually, I think I tried to read her yonks ago and whatever it was I picked up just didn't do it for me. You are convincing me to give her another chance.

In case you don't subscribe, this week's issue of The New Yorker features a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, entitiled I.D.:

I.D.

>224 kidzdoc: thanks. rebeccanyc was right on top of that and let me know.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

The Anthologist is a delightful novel about poetry. Narrated by Paul Chowder, a sometimes-published, middle-aged poet who is currently facing the task of writing an introduction for the anthology he has edited -- Only Rhyme. The task is daunting because Paul has fallen into a long-running funk and seems to be caught on the gerbil wheel of life. His longtime girlfriend has left him, he can't seem to write, and things around him are slipping into neglect. And in this funk, Paul addresses the reader directly in a wonderful rambling narrative about poetry and his life, written with all the quirkiness and wit we have come to expect from Nicholson Baker.

Hello, this is Paul Chowder, and I'm going to try to tell you everything I know. Well, not everything I know, because a lot of what I know, you know. But everything I know about poetry. All my tips and tricks and woes and worries are going to come tumbling out before you. I'm going to divulge them. What a juicy word that is, "divulge." Truth opening its petals. Truth smells like Chinese food and sweat.

In his ramble, Paul Chowder talks about poetry in ways you may never have experienced and you cannot help but laugh and chortle (and you might also be learning something!) Paul tells us about the rhythm and rhyme of poetry, the current dearth of light verse, the history of rhyme, the mouse that lives in his stove, and the outrage that all unsalted butter is flavored. He tells us about meeting Poe in a laundramat in Marseilles and Tennyson and Pope at the salad bar and that he needs a new corn broom. In the back of a Mary Oliver collection, he begins a list of "people I'm jealous of" (the list includes Jon Stewart and Billy Collins). The world of poets he tells us about - particularly American poets - is like a small town, and Chowder is letting us in on all the gossip and trivia.

Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing. We've got to face that. And if that's true, do we want to give drugs so that people won't weep? No, because if we do, poetry will die.

One things I really like about books of poems is that you can open them anywhere and you're at the beginning. If I open a biography, or a memoir, or a novel, when I open it in the midde, which is what I usually do, I'm really in the middle. What I want is to be as much as possible at the beginning. and that's what poetry gives me. Many many beginnings. That feeling of setting forth/

I've read four other Nicholson Baker novels and I've always found him wonderfully clever and quirky with a wry wit. I found this novel playfully delightful - in the same way I delighted in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. Paul Chowder, despite being a bit glum, is endearing, and his love of poetry - whether it be Longfellow, Oliver or Larkin; Swinburne, Ginsburg or Bishop - is irresistible! I will be reading this book again.

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Do you have to know something about poetry to read this novel? I don't think so. Chowder's narrative is enjoyable and free from rhetoric (unless he is explaining a term). He talks about some well-known English poets but mostly American poets (who are sadly all white, I think), but I don't think you have to be familiar with any of them to enjoy what he's saying (like I said before, it's like he's talking about the people of Cranford or some other small town). I suppose though it's like a novel about horses, or war, or football -- it may not be what you want to read about.

Well, I'm not all that fond of poetry, but the book sounds good, and you reminded me that I was going to read some poems by Billy Collins this month. Thanks!

Superb review, Lois! I'll pick this up in NYC tomorrow, and read it soon.

Great, yet another book to add onto my burgeoning "to read" pile!

I love your review Lois and will be looking into Nicholas Baker's novels.

well, The Anthologist is now on the wishlist, as is The Idea of Perfection... just caught up, finally, by the way.

That one has been on my wish list since it first came out. I looked into it on audio but decided not to go that way after listening to a sample. (Baker may be a wonderful writer, but he's not such a great reader. I couldn't imagine sitting through that!) It sounds wonderful.

Thanks, all. The upside is that the book should be coming out in paperback in July. I had the worst head cold while reading it and it was better medicine than Tylenol Daytime.

"Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story" in Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon.

Entertainment in literature has gotten a bad rap, contends Chabon. We associate it with junk and, well, junk is bad for us. So we are told, so we think. But what if this assumption is wrong? "The brain is an organ of entertainment, sensitive at any depth, and over a wide spectrum. But we have learned to mistrust and despise our human aptitude for being entertained, and in that sense we get the entertainment we deserve," the author speculates. Chabon proposes we expand our definition of entertainment to "encompass everything pleasurable that arises from the encounter of an attentive mind with a page of literature." He gives us a long list of the literary experiences which might fall into this category.

You see the problem is that somewhere along the line the idea of 'pleasure' seeped into the pores of the word 'entertainment'. And along with pleasure came disapproval. "Pleasure is easily synthesized, mass-produced, individually wrapped. Its benefits do not endure, and so we come to mistrust them, or our taste for them," he says (you hear it all over LT, confessions of those "guilty pleasures") Furthermore, he adds, it's tainted with 'passivity' - somewhere along the line "entertainment lost ists sense of mutuality, of exchange."

"Yet entertainment—as I define it, pleasure and all—remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least the feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each ofus from everybody else. The best response to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience, and the universal hunger for attention."

The second half of the essay is a passionate defense of the rich tradition of genre in short fiction. I won't expand on this, because it is a fair amount of ground to cover, but suffice it to say that he advocates bridging the gap between 'literary' and 'genre' fiction and believes the most interesting stuff being written is in the 'borderlands'.
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I've read this essay a couple of times now and there is plenty in it to think about, even if you are just considering the first part of the essay. He says he reads and also writes to entertain. "I could adduce Kafka's formula: 'A book must be an iceaxe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.' ...it would still all boil down to entertainment, and its suave henchman, pleasure. Because when the axe bites the ice, you feel an answering throb of delight all teh way from your hands to your shoulders, and the blade tolls like a bell for miles."

And yes, somewhere in the essay, he mentions how much he hates the phrase "guilty pleasures" with regards to books.

I also read a fair bit of poetry from two collections:

She had Some Horses by Jo Harjo and
Rough Cradle by Betsy Sholl.

Harjo is Native America (mostly Southwest US) and Sholl is a Maine poet (Northeast US). Both of these poets are well-regarded. There were some wonderful images and lines but generally-speaking the poetry in both collections didn't really speak to me. This happens sometimes. The collections will go on the shelves and be pulled out again at some random time in the future.

(April is National Poetry Month.)

LOL! yeah, I know:-)

I've continued my log on a new thread HERE.