Searching for More

About a year ago, I wrote about Lisa Glatt's collection of short stories, The Apple's Bruise. She has a keen ear for intriguing titles, and A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That is quite possibly my favorite book title yet.

This one's a novel, but in almost short story form. Her main character, that she keeps returning to, is Rachel Spark, a 30 year old writing teacher who is losing her mother to breast cancer and not willing to let go. Partly to drown her despair, she hooks up with a string of random men. But - and this is a very nice stylistic touch that enriches Glatt's story - interspersed with Rachel's saga are the stories of 3 other women who lives intersect with hers in some way or another. And the men in the story all reappear as well. Their setting, a well-to-do corner of beachfront south Los Angeles (county at least), forms its own very small world.

I found myself trying to explain the title to a friend the other day. I didn't do a very good job, so I'll let Glatt do it:

... it occurred to me that I hadn't learned one damn thing in seventeen years of fucking. Since that first wrong boy on the bathroom tile took my new nipple between his teeth. I was worried even then about being unlovely, un loved, and on that black-and-white floor of h is, everything was slick and cold. Within minutes of my first kiss I was stripped like a squid and knew he didn't care whether I was Carol from third period or Christine from sixth or bad Brittany [...] and something inside me hardened, turned into a chunk of cement.
A girl becomes a comma like that, with wrong boy after wrong boy; she becomes a pause, something quick before the real thing. Even now, I am certain that the light coming from his parents' room was a warning that the sincere lovers of the world existed elsewhere, not where I was, and that it would always be like that...

Not so uplifting, no. But sincerely felt. And beautifully written. Reading how these women, as young as 16, strive to be something more and still sometimes push away those chances at more, it made me realize all over again how vulnerable we really are. And yet the connections we make, fleeting or otherwise, can simultaneously be so touching.

Desperado

Nick was fighting his way from deep under the sea. When he opened his eyes, the danger had passed, everything swam, blue and beautiful. If he could just shake the water from his skin, he would emerge. He had to break the surface. They might still be waiting, anywhere.

This is Nick, aka "the writer", emerging from an Ipazine trip that he didn't particularly want to take. In a way, I feel like it's an appropriate characterization of the entire second half of Joy Nicholson's The Road to Esmeralda. The novel begins as a journey into a relationship that is falling apart: the semi-alcoholic writer whose father psychologically abused him and who can't for the life of him get a decent page down, the angelic girlfriend who keeps secrets and may or may not be starting an affair with their German expat innkeeper. Nick seems paranoid, but Nicholson hints that he may have reason to be so.

And then, like falling down a rabbit hole, the tale, strange enough as it already is, takes an entirely different direction. Nick and Sarah's relationship may have been front and center before, but now it is just one aspect of the intrigue and crime of a small Mexican town, its drug runners, political rivalries, business opportunities, and violence.

I preferred the first half. I understood Nick, found him an interesting character. I think Nicholson liked him too - he is so flawed and complete. Then everything just gets wacky and confused. It was a very effective evocation of the madness of the plot, but it was also utterly exhausting. Just thinking of it now reminds me that it's getting close to bedtime...

Schools and Sabbaths

I'm dreadfully behind on the New Yorker (which is common enough, I admit). So I am still reading the January 15th issue. But here were a couple fun/interesting articles that I wanted to share:

"Expectations" by Katherine Boo. (it's not up on their site, but you may be able to read it here)
Since a lot of my work deals with "at-risk" youth, and since I am still mulling over teaching as a career, this article about Denver's Manual High School is especially compelling to me. MHS is mostly minority and poor, and rife with gangs. And... "for a decade, Manual High had been the object of aggressive and thoughtful reforms," none of which made any lasting improvements. In Boo's telling, along came new Superintendent Michael Bennet, whose plan to help the remaining student at Manual (which had dropped from 1100 students to about 600), was to close the school and transfer them elsewhere, offering extra mentoring and support. The students and community didn't buy it. I'm about halfway through the article, so not entirely sure where it's going to go. But I tend to have such conflicting thoughts about these kinds of articles: on the one hand, every time someone like a NYer reader is forced to face the ways we have failed public school students, that's a good thing. On the other, the wretchedness of the situation can become numbing, and I'm afraid that readers start seeing the students as symbols, rather than actual young men and women with dreams, aspirations, different skills and talents - they may not all be scholars, but that doesn't mean they're all failing.

"Playoffs" by Shalom Auslander (also maybe available here)
Auslander writes about the role of religion in his life, and how his childhood put literally the fear of God into him. Most poignantly for me, the crux of the story was whether God (hmm, since Auslander is Jewish, should I be writing G-d? He didn't in the article... but anyway, whether God) would allow his beloved Rangers to win their first Stanley Cup in 54 years. Playoff games kept happening after sundown on Friday or before sundown on Saturday; since finances had forced him and his wife out of Manhattan and into a Jewish suburb in New Jersey, he was under his neighbors' observant (pun, get it?) eyes all the time. The article catalogs Auslander's negotiations with God, which can be dizzying. He acknowledges that lighting a joint breaks two Shabbat taboos (Kindling a Fire and Baking, the latter of which made me chuckle); but also is keenly aware of God's (somewhat sadistic) onminpotence. Auslander has a great comedic voice (and hello? there's also hockey) so this was one of the more enjoyable NYer Personal Histories I've read in some time.

Also, during my search for online versions of the article, I can across this blog. Didn't read it much, but I'm quite intrigued.

Parking's a bitch

So Calvin Trillin has gotten a good amount of press lately for About Alice, his memoir about his late wife. I read the piece it was based on in the New Yorker last spring, and it broke my heart. But in the kind of way that puts in back together again.

When I got to reading Trillin this week, though, I chose a slightly older piece, Tepper Isn't Going Out. It was on my reading list, probably from early 2003, although I can't for the life of me recall what led me to put it on there. Which is strange because it's not like me to not remember extraneous details.

And yet, even though it wasn't About Alice, it was "...for Alice. Actually I wrote everything for Alice." (I literally swooned when I read that.)

Trillin's fiction is a lot like his non-fiction, humorous, whimsical, slightly self-deprecating. Murray Tepper is a sort of Everyman, who just happens to be a bit obsessed with parking. And now that he keeps his car in a garage, he gets his parking on by finding and staying in legal spots, usually reading the paper and shooing away people who are expecting him to leave any minute and open up the space. Harmless, until he starts to get press, draws a legion of fans, and draws the ire of Mayor Ducavelli, who is a pretty hilarious mildly-fascist Rudy Giuliani (at least, the pre-9/11 Giuliani known best for marital troubles and freaking out about controversial artwork).

It's not a very challenging read, but it's adorable. I had a smile on my face pretty much the whole time. And sometimes, that's all you need from a book.

My field trip to the library

It's been a while since I've been able to borrow books, perusing shelves and online catalogs, but today I visited my new local library branch. It's a bit of a hike, but definitely walkable, and is open post-rush hour every weeknight. And the community definitely seems to take advantage of it - pretty much every seat in the place was filled with readers, students, tutors, researchers, whathaveyou. My favorite feature was the self check-out machine, which I haven't seen since Berkeley (and there I seemed to always do it wrong). Skipping the line is nice sometimes (especially if you are carrying a book that you are mildly embarrassed about being seen with).

So thus was my trip. Book reviews on my loot coming soon...

Hippie Chic

I made it through Drop City, leaving hippies and trappers alike in the endless night of an Alaskan December. But the kind of endless night that still allows for the Northern Lights. And another summer to come.

While logging into Blogger, I was trying to think of how exactly to describe T.C. Boyle's writing and his evocation of another world. The best I could do was "pretty." There's something very elegant in his prose, and also attractive. Sensual. But all just to the extent that I would label "pretty."

He keeps up his juxtaposition of the two different groups who have gone back to nature, and handles the scandal of the inevitable clash as unexpectedly anticlimactic. Which works better than the "and neither group will ever be the same again" cinematic b.s. that I was expecting. So bravo.

But above all, what kept me most engaged was the novel as a tale of two couples. Star and Marco, Sess and Pamela are together before they really even know one another - the other that they love is more an archetype than a person. But through the course of the novel, the lover becomes real, and their relationships mature in a way that is, again, somehow rather pretty.

And going back to nature? Despite Boyle's best efforts, it still seems pretty damn romantic.