You bear the unbearable because you have no other choice

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)

You have to know this book is setting you up to carry a heavy weight. The setting: Nazi Germany. The narrator: Death. That's all you really need to know, yes?

Liesel steals her first book at her brother's graveside. Her brother, who died beside her on a train as her mother accompanied them to a new foster home. Her father? A Communist, so who knows where he was. Liesel gets new parents, a harridan of a mother and a gentle musician father. And a new life. She learns to read, makes friends, all against the backdrop of a gathering storm, that breaks out in Poland, and then everywhere.

And then... her new Papa owes his survival in the First World War to a comrade who lost his life. He vowed to the widow that he would be there to repay the debt. And so the family finds itself sheltering a young Jewish man in the basement.

Because it's Nazi Germany, even the glimmers of joy are against a background of dread, destruction, and death. Speaking of death, the narrator helpfully softens the blow by foreshadowing much that befalls them. And yet, each time the dagger falls, it cuts. Reading this book is a devastating experience.

And yet, there are those glimmers of joy and beauty. For one, you discover that beneath the carping facade of Liesel's foster mother is a loving, giving, and strong woman. Zusak offers a plausible depiction of a town where many of the people (with a capital P if you like) do not subscribe to the policies and beliefs of the Nazis, and perform their own small acts of rebellion. Everyone was culpable, but maybe some did all they could.

Addressing the void

Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death - Irvin D. Yalom (Jossey-Bass, 2008)


One nice thing about having a blog which few (if any!) read is that I can be fairly forthcoming when it comes to self-disclosure. So I can tell you that this book was recommended to me recently as I've been going through a struggle with anxiety that has taken the form - in part - of death panic.

It seems so banal somehow to state "I'm afraid of dying" and so I've perhaps had a difficult time doing that. And my reluctance to just say it gives the fear more power. In this fear, I must realize, I am far from alone. Which is one of the many helpful takeaways from Yalom's work.

Oddly, as I start to try to describe the book, I find it slipping away from me. I'm not sure why that is. But let me try to reel it back in. Yalom explores the prevalence of death anxiety, and ways in which he has found the words of past thinkers helpful. He uses copious examples from his own work as a therapist. He challenges us to consider what about death terrifies us, and in what ways we can find comfort in confrontation.

I was also struck by his emphasis on connection. It's a theme that I've come back to again and again in my life, particularly in challenging times, and in this book I almost felt as though my focus was being validated.

This is almost useless as a book review, so let me try to sum up my reading experience. I struggled at times with this book, finding myself alternately receptive to its message and entirely the opposite. I argued with it, and raged over the places where it seemed to be speaking to someone entirely other than myself. I even found myself wishing for more spirituality, although Yalom very eloquently explains his reasons for the omission. And yet, these experiences enriched the book, because they forced me to ask myself why I reacted so strongly. For an introspective reader, this book offers ample food for thought, and certainly a dose of comfort.

The Dark Side

I Am The Cheese - Robert Cormier (Dell-Laurel Leaf, 1977)

First of all, my boy Corey Perry just won the Hart Trophy for League MVP. I'm a whole mess of happy about that. But I won't let that distract me from my book review.

It starts with Twitter, and the #YASaves trending topic that got big a few weeks back after a WSJ article posited YA lit today was darker than in past years, and even dangerous. (I am oversimplifying.) Anyway, the response was immediate and severe. The consensus: YA literature helps teens navigate the perils of adolescence, and adults who write for the WSJ need to calm the eff down. (Again, oversimplifying.)

I had a few discussions arising from some RTs of mine. A friend told me that while reading the article, he was reminded how I Am The Cheese was a really powerful book, that stuck with him. I decided to read (or maybe re-read?) it. Which I did on Monday night.

It's powerful stuff, this book. Adam's story is revealed in alternating chapters. His solo bicycle journey from his hometown to a Vermont town 70 miles away, where his father is in the hospital, and then the transcripts of taped sessions between him and a shadowy doctor of some sort, who is asking questions about his past. It quickly becomes clear that something in his life went dramatically awry, both recently and in his very early childhood. You fear for Adam, and reading this now, an adult, all my maternal instincts kicked in. I was troubled that I was obviously too late to protect this child.

1977, and this is dark. Apparently not as graphically dark as what's out there today. But powerful. Harmful? I doubt it.

Speaking of the impact of YA, another discussion led to Lois Duncan.... My friend brought up Don't Look Behind You, a 1990 novel about a girl whose family is in the Witness Protection Program. Of course I remember this book! I must have read it a bunch of times. But the one that stuck with me more is Stranger with My Face, the novel that introduced me to the concept of astral projection, and also terrified me away from ever being willing to give it a try. (Wimp.) Are these books still being read?

Before I wrap up, I want to mention that the books that stuck with me the most are the scary ones. I bet this isn't uncommon. And I wonder how much it relates to the central thesis of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, namely that dark tales enable children to safely grapple with their fears. I am sure there is plenty of scholarly literature out there on the topic. Maybe one of these days I'll do a little more searching. For now, just speculation....

Face of a Revolution

Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2010)

After waiting 3 months between The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I waited about 10 hours before diving into Mockingjay. I mean, what is the point in being finished with the semester if you can't do things like that?

So.

A lot of this trilogy is about the indignity of being having no control over your life, of being a pawn manipulated for the entertainment of others. Of finding ways to live with integrity in this system, of being authentically yourself. (This does seem a little like being a teenager, doesn't it?) Katniss is particularly compelling because of what I have to call - although the term is so inexact - her naivete; she is capable of genuine independent and surprising action, but within a system of other actors that continue and continue to try to use her to meet their own ends. This does not change in the third installment. In fact, if anything it gets more brutal.

This book was the saddest of the three for me. I found it difficult even as I couldn't stop reading - and it was both good and bad that while I was reading the suspenseful trip through the Capitol, J was arranging (arranging?) a three-part harmony to "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah" - the juxtaposition was creepily appropriate. But it finally ends. And while I saw a few different ways in which Collins could satisfactorily conclude, I felt like this perhaps made the most sense. It was always what I wanted, more or less.

This was some of the most fun I had reading this year. I'll be recommending it for sure.

Back to Panem

Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2009)

For some reason that I won't try to understand, my library has far fewer copies of Catching Fire than of either The Hunger Games or Mockingjay. So - and since I was supposed to be concentrating on school anyway - I waited to request a copy, figuring that if one was free it was meant to be. Otherwise I was supposed to wait until the end of the semester.

But then I got impatient, and got on the list so that I would get the book right around the end of the semester. So as soon as I turned everything in last week, I got down to the important business of returning to Panem and finding out what was up with Katniss. (er, spoiler: she survives the Games in the first book.)

Anyway, there is more love-triangle drama. Of a decidedly tame - and thus adorable - type. Plenty of unexpected twists. And life in general there just sort of sucks. But Katniss remains this interesting, thoughtful, extraordinary young woman. And the other characters gain additional dimension this time around too.

The plot moves quickly, and I was surprised when I came to the end. Fortunately though, I had already snagged my copy of Mockingjay, so instead of waiting and reading something else, I will be finishing the trilogy this week instead...

May the odds be ever in your favor

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2008)

Unlike with many things that get overhyped, I was not "ugh, this is going to be overhyped," I was actually ready and eager to really enjoy it. (I actually felt this way about Twilight too, come to think of it, so many my natural skepticism falls away for YA materials. But talking about Twilight in a discussion of HG is unacceptable, so let me get back to the point.)

The hype is totally deserved. I was really blown away.

The prose is simple, and the plot arc is fairly predictable, but none of that really matters because Katniss has such a strong voice. The dystopic world is the right ratio of familiar and foreign, and just because you are pretty sure how the end will look doesn't mean that you won't be wrapped up in figuring out how to get there.

Oh yeah, plot. It's the future. An evil Capitol demonstrates its power over the outlying districts by forcing teens to compete against one another to the death. For the winner: glory, wealth, fame. For the 23 losers: well, duh. Katniss ends up there and the boy from her district is one with whom she has a past. And maybe a future? (By the way, if you can read this book without thinking about Bella, Edward, and Jacob, you are a stronger person than I am. But Katniss is about a zillion times more kickass than Bella, and there is no good correlation to be had among the men. At least not yet.)

Anyway, go. Read. Also, games. They are fun.

Airborne Toxic Event

White Noise - Don DeLillo (1985, Viking Penguin)

At some point while reading, I started a mental list of "Things this book reminded me of," but because I didn't write it down, I now only remember Catch-22. This is disappointing, b/c I was planning to arrange this whole post around this list.

Instead, I'll have to talk about my vague sense of dis-ease while reading. I have to figure it was carefully cultivated. The talk of death and emergencies, the constant hum of non sequitur from background televisions or radio, the terribly sophisticated contentiousness of the children, and the regular interspersion of brand names... ugh, I feel a little uncomfortable again just thinking of it all.

[Sorry, just took a break to have dinner and also to randomly watch this video of my '07 Ducks]

Okay, in short. Dude invented the field of Hitler studies, which he teaches at a Midwest college. On his fifth marriage to a woman who has also had several. Many many children from all the various pairings - some live with them, others don't but make appearances. Then there's an "airborne toxic event" that forces the family to evacuate, and also prompts a couple of my favorite moments of the book. In one, Gladney tries to reassure his family that things'll be fine b/c this sort of thing happens to poor people of color, not to college professors. In another, an organization charged with planning simulations of emergency response is attempting to respond to the real thing, in order to practice for their real work of simulations. (The later simulation is also kind of awesome.) Gladney ends up exposed to the toxins, which spins off into how both he and his wife respond to the threat of death.

Among the points of interest were Gladney's assertion early in the novel that "all plots tend to move deathward," which he isn't even sure he believes but which he revisits again and again; the ridiculous discussions Gladney has with a fellow teacher, the last of which poses the question of "how does a person say good-bye to himself;" and the need of non-believers for believers to exist somewhere out there.

So in the end you end up with a satire, of a world that doesn't feel dangerous or meaningless per se, but which is deeply discomfiting. It's funny, but somehow not humorous. It's also strangely dated. None of DeLillo's themes have been rendered irrelevant by the trends of the last 25 years, and yet they feel so worn, as though we've already grown weary of them. Too many readers have followed in DeLillo's footsteps, perhaps, so what may be legitimately original is sadly no longer so for me.

I heart Michael Ondaatje

Anil's Ghost - Michael Ondaatje
New York: Knopf, 2000

I went through a Canadian phast in my late high school years. While this was largely due to a certain hockey player, it also included a love affair with Ondaatje's The English Patient (both novel and film) and Joy Kogawa's Obasan. I had dreams of moving to Vancouver and having a big dog and taking him on walks to Stanley Park. All of which is introduction, of sorts, to the Canadian Ondaatje's 2000 novel about his native Sri Lanka.

I read it in Denver, and the cold weather and warm family atmosphere made for a gripping counterweight to the book's sultry temperatures and political chill. You understand why Anil left for England, America, etc., and work to understand why she returned to practice forensic anthropology, investigating the murders and atrocities committed by political factions within and against the government. You also work to understand the two brothers who accompany her, one an anthropologist, one a doctor, both destroyed both by their own pasts and the turmoil of their country.

It's hard to say that a lot happens, in the traditional sense of the word. I found myself thinking, well this is where I would go with this plot, and then remembering that Ondaatje is a lot less trite or more interesting than I can be. His prose is lyrical and haunting and quiet and disjointed and all sorts of other good things. Had I not been on vacation, I might have noted passages to share; instead you will have to take my word for it.

In short, he's gorgeous, and I was unsettled and unsatisfied in an entirely satisfying way.

What was sexy (and what wasn't) in medieval England

The Illuminator - by Brenda Rickman Vantrease
New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005

I kinda hate it when I wait awhile between finishing a book and blogging about it. I forget things. I stop caring. But I can't just skip it, not that whatever readers actually exist out there actually care. But I digress, as usual.

The Illuminator is probably much more about the a widowed noblewoman than the title character, a former noble who know creates the beautiful illuminated illustrations on religious texts but who also works with the heretic texts of proto-Protestant John Wycliffe. Life is all sorts of perilous for everyone in late 14th-century England. And the novel's plot feels the need to reinforce the point by letting bad things happen to good people. (That's not too much of a spoiler, right?) Anyway, in order to safeguard her home and lands with the protection of a nearby abbot, Lady Kathryn takes in the illuminator and his daughter. She's a single lady, he's a single dude, and she also has twin boys the same age as the girl. Oh, and there's an evil sheriff, an evil bishop, a female religious recluse, a dwarf, and a servant girl who can read auras. Mayhem, predictably, ensues. Also lots of pride.

But lest I make this sound like fluff, it's really not. It seems fairly well historically grounded, and I didn't feel like it was too anachronistic. I found the sympathetic characters sympathetic, and rooted for them. Vantrease's style is quite pretty, and during a stressful period, I found the quite different stresses of this world a comforting escape.

Nothing lasts forever, not even an Infinite Summer

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1996

I finished the book three weeks ago, but wasn't ready to write about it, to really be finished with it. But it seems like there's no better day that on the first anniversary of Wallace's death to take a stab at wrapping up my time with the novel. For now anyway. I won't try to memorialize DFW here, since Infinite Summer (and others, I am sure) have already done a far better job of that. But know he's been very much on my mind.

But the novel. My book is battered and bruised. It was a little roughed up before, since it was a borrowed used copy. But now I'm a little embarrassed to give it back. I also don't want to have to return it. This is the physical copy that I read. That means something. (I also feel this way about my copy of Fall of a Sparrow, which is why I spurned my mom's gift of a nice hardback edition.)

I have run my mind ragged trying to figure out what happened and what it all means. I'd come close to an epiphany, and then it would shimmer and disappear. And that's okay. I don't really mind anymore. I'll read it again someday, and maybe I'll see something new. I'm sure I will see something new. But it won't offer all the answers either.

I mainly just read and read. And didn't stop and note funny quotes or moments that I particularly wanted to go back to. So when I did write on my bookmark, you would figure those moments would be important. And they are, except now I look at them and I don't know what I wanted to say. What I do know is that they are all about Hal. Hal through the lens of Mario. Hal and sadness and irony and and Avril's awesome definition of existential ("vague and slightly flaky"). And Hal & Mario talking almost past each other.

'I feel like you always tell me the truth. You tell me when it's right to.'
'Marvelous.'
'I feel like you're the only one who knows when it's right to tell. I can't know for you, so why should I be hurt.'
'Be a fucking human being for once, Boo. I room with you and I hid it from you and let you worry and be hurt that I was trying to hide it.'
'I wasn't hurt. I don't want you to be sad.'
'You can get hurt and mad at people, Boo. News-flash at almost fucking nineteen, kid. It's called being a person. You can get mad at somebody and it doesn't mean they'll go away.'

It's so.... it's too big to talk about. I wish I could, and it makes me crazy a little that I can't. If I had specific questions to answer - if this were an essay exam where someone asked me something like "Compare and contrast the archetypal roles that mother- and father-figures play for the main characters" I would have something to say. But to just try to get over 1000 pages into a single post, or even several posts, it's too much.

Erin reads The New Yorker

...and links to random things that catch her fancy.

from July 28:
Jonah Lehrer, Annals of Science, "The Eureka Hunt," The New Yorker, July 28, 2008, p. 40
I knew I was right about this!

The insight process, as sketched by Jung-Beeman and Kounios, is a delicate mental balancing act. At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. But, once the brain is sufficiently focused, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight. "The relaxation stage is crucial," Jung-Beeman said. "That's why so many insights happen during warm showers."

fave Aleksandar Hemon has a new book, and is separated at birth from another fave?

(left, Hemon; right, Vladimir Mayakovsky)



from Aug. 4:
Sasha Frere-Jones explains contemporary popular rock:

The main antecedent [to Coldplay's sound] is U2, who invented the form that Coldplay works within: rock that respects the sea change of punk but still wants to be as chest-thumping and anthemic as the music of the seventies stadium gods. Translated, this means short pop songs that somehow summon utterly titanic emotions and require you to skip around in triumphant circles and pump your fist, even if it is not entirely clear what you are singing about.

from Aug. 11 & 18:
Matthew Dickman writes a lovely and haunting poem mostly about suicide, that includes the following line: "If you are/travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially/on a train." Sound advice.

The Journal of Dora Damage

I can't decide whether or not author Belinda Starling's tale outshines her heroine's. A young mother, Starling had just finished The Journal of Dora Damage when a routine operation went awry and she died from septic shock. Her brother wrote an afterword to eulogize her, an author who did not live to see her book bound.

But for over 400 pages, Dora succeeds in taking the reader's attention away from Starling's tragic death. Dora is a London housewife in 1860 whose family faces ruin, and takes salvation upon her shoulders by manning her husband's bookbindery. Except it's a bitch to keep the creditors at bay, deal with a sick husband and daughter, and have time to ply a trade that women weren't supposed to do. Until she gets in with a crowd of aristocratic men with porno- and ethnographic tastes, whose secrets she keeps in exchange for them keeping her own.

And then things get more heated, in all sorts of senses of the term. But throughout it, Dora exudes a pretty impressive sense of calm. This is what (lower)middle-class women did; they shouldered what came at them, and kept households and communities afloat.

It's a bit embarrassing to be an avid reader who has never really thought about how books are made. Once you move past Book of Kells inscriptions and the tedium of typesetting, I'm entirely out of my realm. How do the pages all stick together? Dunno. Which provided another bright point in Dora Damage - the descriptions of the workshop, and of the binding process, were illuminating. And the individual attention taken, to match leather and border design with text.... Now, if only I knew how they made those trade paperbacks I love so much.

Paint it Black

I haven't read or seen White Oleander, so I can't compare Janet Fitch's new(est) novel to the one that made her famous.

It took me a week to get around to blogging about Paint it Black. In part because it's been a busy time, but more because I just wasn't sure what to say. The novel follows the life-worn (at all of, I think, 20) Josie, as she struggles to make sense of her lover's suicide. It's the early 1980s, and Josie is a runaway and punk; Michael was the son of a writer and pianist, who left Harvard for art classes at what I think is LACC.

The novel flashes back to Josie & Michael's short-lived happiness, and the darker times that preceded his death. The tragedy of love, and the inability to help the ones you love struggle with their demons - neither make this an easy read emotionally, and yet Fitch's writing has such ease and fluidity that it's a quick read. But then you're left with the weight of the pain, and the question of how some shoulder it while others simply cannot.

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.