Istanbul was Constantinople...

This month's book club selection is Birds Without Wings, an epic novel by Louis de Bernieres about the final years of the Ottoman Empire. I am about 2/3 of the way through, and still developing my impressions, but since it is long and there is likely much to say, I figured I may as well begin.

De Bernieres is also the author of Corelli's Mandolin, of Nicolas Cage film fame. A friend reviewed that book approximately as follows: "I expected it to be really bad, but it wasn't." Which is a little mysterious, but I would say that Birds Without Wings is probably better. It is sweeping - covering at least 20 years in the life of a little town in Anatolia, as well as the fall of the Ottomans and the rise of Kemal Ataturk. How multiculturalism hardens into nationalism forms another central theme. And there are at least 10 characters telling the narrative, among them the town imam, his wife, her Christian best friend, the latter's beautiful daughter and her ugly best friend; the potter and his son and son's friend, as well as the town's nobleman and his mistress. Plus of course Mustafa Kemal. The chorus of different voices makes for a rich and almost magical set of tales (some more enjoyable than others, of course, but all crucial to the whole).

It's a tragedy, by the way. The full extent isn't yet clear, but we just made it through World War I and the traumatic birthing of modern Turkey and Greece is yet to come.

Joan Didion & Magical Thinking

Library Mom will be happy to hear that Joan Didion was thinking of anthropology in titling her blockbuster memoir/reverie of death and recovery The Year of Magical Thinking. She found herself engaged in magical thinking, performing the same sorts of rites as peoples who believed that certain rituals would cause effects rationally unrelated, such as sacrificing a virgin to make the crops grow.

I don't know about you, but I have definitely done some magical thinking of my own. And I can point fingers at others who have as well, even if they wouldn't admit it. Two examples from my adolescence: the "belief" (?) that singing Tears for Fears' song "Shout" would somehow bolster the Mighty Ducks, and re-examining again and again dance competitions that didn't go well, thinking that somehow a reimagining could and would change the outcome. Or, more darkly, the fear of days that seemed too beautiful, as within three months days like this brought a dangerous brush fire that threatened our home and the murder of a family friend. (This last superstition I haven't quite let go of.)

This spurt of revelation is meant to serve as introduction to a book that I was a bit worried about reading. I've had some trouble lately with books and movies being overhyped to me. Turns out I had nothing to fear from Didion. The Year of Magical Thinking is masterful and deeply moving. It was open and honest, and yet self-protective. It felt profoundly true.

Didion lost her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, on December 30, 2003, in the midst of daughter Quintana's illness - a flu that morphs into pneumonia and eventually neurological damage. (And, after the period covered in the book, Quintana's own untimely death.) This double-whammy complicates mourning and grief, and by Didion's own account, it is not until the summer of 2004, at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, that she realizes she is Not Okay. And so, she begins to write.

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I develooped a sense that meaning itse3lf was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish.

The power of the former sentence almost obscures the importance of the latter. For her whole life, Didion was able to use writing to remake the world, hide behind her prose. Suddenly, she "need[ed] whatever it is I think of believe to be penetrable, if only for myself."

And she was. Her evocation of thoughts and emotions was so powerful for me that I literally felt my mind racing as if it were my own, and felt myself on the verge of her same anxiety attacks. (That part seemed a little unfair. I could have used a little more distance.)

As Didion cares for Quintana, trying to boss her way into making her daughter better, only slowing accepting that there are limits to what she can do, she considers the inherent dilemma in the mother-child relationship. Seeing Quintana in the ICU after neurosurgery, she whispers, "I'm here. You're safe."

It occurred to me during those weeks that this had been, since the day we brought her home from St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, my basic promise to her. I would not leave. I would take care of her. She would be all right. It also occurred to me that this was a promise I could not keep. I could not always take care of her. [...] Things happened in life that mothers could not prevent or fix.

And please let no one ever say to me that the mother-adopted child relationship can not be as strong and elemental a force as the biological one. This is a quibble I have with some fellow readers. Following her talk at the Festival of Books, I was in a circle in which I was the only one who had yet to read the book. Others claimed that her relationship with John seemed to be much richer and more important than the relationship with Quintana, that she felt his loss more. I argued, but from the gut, and unarmed with knowledge from the book. Now, having read the book, I think my gut was right. Both losses are unfathomable, in different ways. Dunne and Didion were intertwined through 40 years of life together, and a deep love. Didion and Quintana were mother and daughter, entwined in an entirely different way. Mourning each of them must (and should) be different. (Not to mention that Didion had not lost her daughter at the time of writing the book, demurred when invited to add a postscript about Quintana's death, and has been on a book tour perhaps as a way to blunt the process of grieving. That last is a little bit of unnecessary psychoanalysis, but I hold the main point.)

Having written for longer than I perhaps intended, I will just say that I have found few books so wholly satisfying. The Year of Magical Thinking is truly stunning.

Festival of Books, Day 2

Sunday saw us back at UCLA, for a shorter stint at the Festival of Books.

Our morning session was on "Pleasures of the Text" - though a more accurate title for the panel's focus could be "The Sky is Falling: Why No One Reads Except the People in this Room." I think this was partly the fault of the moderator, again Times book reviewer Susan Salter Reynolds. The other panelists were 2005 Erin's Library star Jane Smiley, star translator Gregory Rabassa, NEA administrator and poet Dana Gioia, and Publishers Weekly editor Sara Nelson. Nelson verbalized a sensation I knew well - that I just had to have a book with me, that I didn't feel right if I was without reading material. On the other hand, Gioia and Nelson also ruined it by explaining that they were able to read so much because they didn't sleep. Also, Gioia claimed not to have a life. I am okay with giving up some extracurricular activities in favor of reading - obviously I do so already, and my coworkers already mock the time I spend with my newspaper and New Yorker. I am emphatically not, on the other hand, interested in giving up sleep.

I'm getting off topic a little though. The discussion also talked about how these great readers became readers, what they thought of the ebb and flow of "the novel" and whether it as a form had lasting appeal (yes), and why young people aren't reading. Gioia presented some sobering statistics (downloadable report), and Nelson and Smiley both discussed how their children saw reading. Conclusion: in the past, children read "great works" that were child-appropriate; now there is a pedagogy of children's literature, which young people - sensing condescension - scorn. Etc. Etc. I walked away thinking about the roles I could play in encouraging reading, and reaffirmed in the importance of reading in my own life.

The afternoon session, which had the sparsest attendance of any we went to, was a conversation with Times editor Dean Baquet. Interviewing him was Kevin Roderick. His take on the interview (and links to other bloggers at the Festival) is here. They discussed blogs, local/national/international coverage, Baquet's plans as he enters his second year at the helm, major issues facing Los Angeles, and more... Baquet seemed very human, which I liked, and extremely ambitious about the paper. It was sitting there that I realized how many changes had been implemented in the year that I've subscribed. I still don't know that it's the paper of my youth, but it's a pretty amazing paper. (For contrast, the Bay Area offers three major dailies, all of which seem profoundly mediocre.) The audience itself was interesting, and can be split into three major categories. First: Times staffers or watchdogs; Second: younger people - maybe college journalists?; Third: the unclassifiable folks like us.

Take for the second day: significantly smaller. More chai and some purchased (but deeply discounted) books.

Festival of Books, Day 1

I have spent the past three days surrounded by crowds of passionate, passionate people. Today I marched with about half a million Angelenos down Wilshire Blvd. (Look for pics on the LA Greens Flickr site soon.) But over the weekend, the interest that drew us all together was the written word.

I love the LA Times Festival of Books; I feel so lucky that such an amazing event takes place in my town. I love seeing a college campus overrun with people who recognize the joy of books. Last year, Michael and I collected swag and attended largely political sessions. This time, we were slightly more judicious about the swag (and also spent more money) but went for a more literary focus for ticketed events.

We kicked off the day Saturday with "First Fiction," a panel moderated by a Times Book Reviewer, Susan Salter Reynolds, and presenting three novelists who recently published their first book. The draw for us was Olga Grushin, whose book I own. The others - Kirstin Allio and Uzodinma Iweala - also shared interesting perspectives on how to publish without compromising your vision, the role of both mentors and children, and the gulf between the first novel and the second - the latter being that which confers "writerdom." Iweala's novel, Beasts of No Nation, a first-person account by an African child soldier, won the Times' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and suggests a staggering talent. He was also utterly charming. (They all made me a little jealous though.)

Next was the big event, where we joined about 1000 others in Royce Hall to see and hear Joan Didion. (I have yet to read The Year of Magical Thinking, but Mr. Library read it last week and will I hope chime in with some comments.) The buzz around me was how frail she would look (pretty frail, but not exactly breakable) and how forthcoming she would be. I was struck by her body language; she gestured with her hands often, almost trying to push away questions. She also managed to be both blunt and somewhat evasive. It's a bit understandable. When discussing your most recent book, about the loss of your beloved husband (followed by your daughter's death), wouldn't you have a little trouble? And when the topic moved to Didion's past writing, she was so matter-of-fact about her talent, as though it was such a natural part of her that she had never had to analyze or explain it before.

We ended the day with Joyce Carol Oates in conversation with Michael Silverblatt (of "Bookworm" on KCRW. He is loooong-winded). I don't know what of hers I've read before (I assume that I have read her though). My first thought though, was that she looks a bit like an Edward Gorey figure, lean and severe, with a pointed chin and black frizzy hair. She's an amazing reader - reading a 40-year-old story, she inhabited her pre-teen narrator and gave voice to the competing currents of innocence and terror. Plus she was engaging and funny. These are qualities that the first-novelists were somewhat lacking, and only Iweala was a good reader of his work. Maybe it comes with time....

Take for the day: "Believer" magazine and totebag, BookTV tote, LA art book from the Hammer, 4 copies of the Nation, and a matchbook. Plus chai mix.