The Mercy of Thin Air

The above is the title of Ronlyn Domingue's first novel, which I read earlier this week. I had an advance copy, and the novel - set in and around New Orleans - was set to release in September 2005. Not sure how Hurricane Katrina may have affected that. (A peek on Amazon shows that it was indeed released that month.)

The heart of the novel is Razi Nolan, a sparkling 1920s co-ed who died tragically young and remained "between" to guide others through the process of moving beyond. Or really, she stayed because she couldn't let go. It's 70 years later, and she is still trying to find out what happened to her beloved, Andrew, who was essentially ruined by her death. Mirroring Razi and Andrew's love story is the present-day struggle of Amy and Scott to build a life together despite the ghost that haunts them. (It brings to mind the Magnetic Fields, and the song "The One You Really Love.") And of course, the two stories intertwine and solve one another.

It's a prettily constructed tale, that jumps forward and backward in time, and allows the coincidences to feel acceptable and fated, rather than trite. Mostly, at least. Razi's character is a little too much, and I would have toned her down a bit, but I still grieved over the idea that one with so much life could die so young. Domingue offers a reminder that life and death are often unfair, but that acceptance is the key to moving on, in life and in death.

Someone's feeling a little touchy

I'm feeling too lazy to dig up all the links, but there's been some discussion lately in the press about the plight of newspaper book reviews, and the role of lit bloggers in this trend.

On Sunday, the LA Times ran a piece by film and book critic Richard Schickel. The title? "Not everybody's a critic," i.e. "anyone with a blog can express an opinion about a book. But real criticism is so much more." And all these faux critics are messing things up for the real guys. So I guess I'm part of the problem.

Except am I really? I wouldn't even call this a lit blog; it doesn't purport to be literary criticism. It is overtly a set of (often un- or at least underinformed) opinions about whatever it is I'm reading. And if I don't know you and you're reading this, awesome, but this was always intended as a way for me to share with family and friends my thoughts about the books and articles that occupy so much of my life.

That said, I think Schickel must be trying to provoke when he says

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.

Dude. Chill. We respect you.

Even more, I respect D.J. Waldie, who you quote as saying that "blogging is a form of speech, not of writing." Good point. I don't suffer over turns of phrase on this blog the way that I did when writing even grad papers, at least not usually. But I wish I did. And I think a lot of bloggers wish they did too. Cut them a little slack.

My unfortunate new obsession

I love Twitter, the web/text/IM 140 character "what are you doing?" application which is apparently sweeping the nation, b/c Barack Obama is now one of my friends.

But a more intriguing friend is TwitterLit, with roughly twice/day posts of first sentences of books. I love this idea. Would that we were all this clever...

Anyway, if you are a Twitterer, feel free to come visit me.

Sitting at the Kids' Table

I know I'm partial to the name Simon, but in the case of Simon Rich, author of a recent New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs piece, I think deservedly so.

Shouts & Murmurs, the magazine's comedic short, is very inconsistent. It's not even that it depends on the writer; just some weeks it'll be funny, others it will totally bomb. But the March 26th issue carried a piece on children's perspectives that I thought was pretty awesome.

Called "The Wisdom of Children," it imagines what happens with adults when they're not around, and how they respond to the machinations of the young. Here is a clip from the first section, entitled "A Conversation at the Grownup Table, as Imagined at the Kids’ Table":

MOM: Pass the wine, please. I want to become crazy.
DAD: O.K.
GRANDMOTHER: Did you see the politics? It made me angry.
DAD: Me, too. When it was over, I had sex.
UNCLE: I’m having sex right now.
DAD: We all are.
[snip]
MOM: I’m angry! I’m angry all of a sudden!
DAD: I’m angry, too! We’re angry at each other!
MOM: Now everything is fine.
DAD: We just saw the PG-13 movie. It was so good.
MOM: There was a big sex.

And in the final section, the US Govt. responds to youth political engagement:

—Did you hear the news, Mr. President? The students at the University of Pittsfield are walking out of their classes, in protest over the war.
—(spits out coffee) Wha— What did you say?
—Apparently, students are standing up in the middle of lectures and walking right out of the building.
—But students love lectures. If they’re willing to give those up, they must really be serious about this peace thing! How did you hear about this protest?
—The White House hears about every protest, no matter how small.

And a description of Woodstock: "Apparently, young people hate the war so much they’re willing to participate in a musical sex festival as a protest against it."

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a la Turk

Last summer, I wrote about Elif Shafak, a Turkish author who faced defamation charges because of her characters' comments about the Armenian genocide. The charges were dropped, and the novel in question is available in English.

So this week, I read The Bastard of Istanbul. It is beautiful, full of richly eccentric characters and scents and sights. Women dominate this book; men, to the extent they appear at all, are foils to their more colorful female counterparts, even as their actions have such an impact on the course of all their lives.

The book is about family, in all its convoluted and messy forms. That alone would make a compelling novel. But Shafak has greater aspirations.

It is also about discovery and reconciliation. Within the family, and within the broader family of the old Ottoman Empire. The interplay of memory and forgetting is constant. Characters shed old identities in order to forge on; the matriarch slips into Alzheimers, the "bastard" of the title knows nothing of her past. And superimposed on each character's battles with memory is the broader Armenian-Turkish dispute. Were the events of 1915 a genocide? Why is it important to know? Sometimes it's necessary to forget the past in order to escape its grasp.

Trained as a historian, I obviously have pretty strong views about why we need to address and study the past. For the beauty of its stories, for one, and in order better understand ourselves and those around us. Maybe even to learn from it. But despite (or maybe because?) of my historical bent, I can also see the need to address it and move on. And why for so many individuals and even culture, the second step in that process is often so much easier than the first.

These themes come out clearest in an exchange between Asya, the eponymous fatherless young woman, and Armenian Americans on a message board. She writes,

perhaps it is exactly my being without a past that will eventually help me to sympathize with your attachment to history. I can recognize the significance of continuity in human memory. I can do that...and I do apologize for all the sufferings my ancestors have caused your ancestors.

And a response from another poster, after her "private" apology is rebuffed:

the truth is [...] some among the Armenians in the diaspora would never want the Turks to recognize the genocide. If they do so, they'll pull the rug out from under our feet and take the strongest bond that unites us. Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Armenians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victimhood. Apparently, there are some old habits that need to be changed on both sides.

And there you have it. An argument for why history must neither be shunned, nor wielded as a weapon. And yet so much easier said than done.

Festival of Books, Day 2

I almost forgot that I went back to the Festival on Sunday. Essentially just to see Jane Smiley, b/c it wouldn't be the same without her. She and Times book editor David Ulin discussed literature, sex, Boccaccio, politics, 9/11 fiction, and more. Smiley is so good in conversation. I don't know if it's from practice, or if she is just naturally a good speaker. She is comfortable being on stage, and doesn't patronize her audience, but is also clearly really intelligent. Also self-deprecating and witty. This wasn't the most entertained I've been by her, but still worth the trip.

Purchases:
The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory (I've made fun of this book for ages; figured it was finally time to read it)
Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissinger (the tv show is one of my guilty pleasures)

Swag:
more Ghiradelli chocolate

Ode to a Library

As a graduate student at Georgetown, I relied heavily on inter-library loan and the Library of Congress. But occasionally, I liked to get away from the academic grind, and turned to the local library.

My local branch was a beautiful mansionesque building at Wisconsin and R. Set up on a hill, it looked over the rest of the neighborhood. And on Monday, it burned. And I can't tell from news reports how much was salvaged. It wasn't alone either - another DC treasure, Eastern Market - was also heavily damaged by a fire earlier in the day.

History suffered too:

The library's archivist, meanwhile, stood at Wisconsin and R streets, heartbroken over warped and soot-covered historic paintings and documents that firefighters were bringing out and placing on plastic sheeting on the sidewalk.

The branch's holdings include photos, maps and paintings of the neighborhood and individual files on each home in Georgetown that have been donated over the decades.

I have no words. Libraries and history should never be lost.