It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

Dickens' famous novel, A Tale of Two Cities, opens with one of the most memorable lines in literature, and the tale is as rewarding as these opening words are compelling. It took me a while to finish this book; but it always takes me a long time to finish Dickens because Dickens forces me to be still. I can't read Dickens quickly, nor can I skip sentences; I have to read each word and give the reins over to him. I find that reading Dickens is the best at night. I'm nuts after a long day, and slowing down to a Dickens novel makes me remember that there was a time when multi-tasking had never been uttered, and going 30 miles an hour was considered breakneck speed.

Dickens, it seems, took a while to write this book. By the late 1850's, Dickens was ready for something new in his literary life; he had spent years writing novels from the Fielding and Smollett school: large novels with many characters and meandering plots. His friendship with Wilkie Collins, who believed that precise plot and characters directly participating in that plot was the key to good fiction, was a tremendous help to Dickens as he crafted A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, Dickens got the idea for his novel while working on Collins' play, Frozen Deep, about a love affair set in the Antarctic, in 1857. A Tale of Two Cities would be published in 1859, with only three more novels - Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood - to follow before his death in 1870.

Dickens' idea to set the themes of love, self-sacrifice, and retribution against the backdrop of The French Revolution is due to his obsession with Thomas Carlyle's work on the subject that Dickens had read "500 times." Yet, here Wilkie Collins may have been helpful, too; Collins' Sister Rose, a novel set during and after the French Revolution, had been published to Dickens', and others, great critical acclaim. At that time only a handful of other historical novels had been published to the backdrop of the Revolution, and most, excepting Collins', had been a failure. Dickens had an opportunity to create a novel in a relatively new imaginative and fictive sphere, and it turned out to be a masterpiece.

High schoolers used to be required to read A Tale of Two Cities, but now many opt for easier fare. In one sense, I can see the point: there are parts, one in particular, that is very slow going. Chapter 3 in Book 2 depicts a trial, and Dickens refers, provides synopses, distills information through the character to the narrator to the reader - anything than tell the story straight from the hilt, or as straight from the hilt as Dickens can. Reading this section aloud to myself helped to slow my eye and focus my attention. Once you go very slowly, it isn't difficult in the slightest. Yet, there is great peril here because this section hits before you are enamored entirely with the characters and before the plot has ripened enough that you just have to be there for the picking at the end. Many people, I have heard, just stop here. Don't! Persevere! The ending is well worth it.

In general, this is a wonderful novel of love and sacrifice told against one of the most bloody events in history. The twin themes of love/sacrifice versus vengeance/retribution play out against the geographies and activities of Paris and London. (Being a Londoner himself you can no doubt guess which city gets the gold star in this novel!) This is a wonderful book, and one that I plan to read again and again.

Bibliography Challenge 2: Buzbee's The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

For the most part, this was a wonderful read. Buzbee remembers his first experiences with reading and his early life in bookstores. He worked and lived around San Francisco, which he still does, and many of his illustrations of bookstore life in this city were interesting to read. He then moves on to an explanation of the history of book, which were at points bright and at others slightly tedious, which I don't entirely blame him for; those sections were just not my cup of tea, but maybe preferable to someone else. The history of booksellers and the story about Shakespeare and Co. were highlights. I was also interested to learn about how bookstores price books. According to Buzbee, out of 25.00, only 1.88 goes to the author, while a little over 11.00 goes to the bookstore. Obviously, the bookstore has more payments, or so Buzbee says, but I was surprised to see that the author gets so little.

He ends the short memoir/history with a fictive city planning venture: he creates a city of books. A few of the bookstores he knows from being an employee, but others are world famous stores, like Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, Tattered Covers in Denver, and The Strand in New York. No bookstores in Atlanta, but that disgruntlement will have to be saved for another post.

I found this book to be incredibly instructive and a beautiful ode to one man's experiences amongst the bookshelves.

Shakespeare and Co.

Beach and Joyce outside the bookshop.




















If you have ever been to Paris or have read about Hemingway, Joyce, or Gertrude Stein, to name a few, then you have heard of Sylvia Beach's bookstore, Shakespeare and Co., which opened in Paris in 1914. It was part bookshop, part lending library, and it became a gathering place for some of the greatest writers of the day. I was reading The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop (review to follow) yesterday by Lewis Buzbee and learned a little more about this famed shop, particularly about its closing, which I thought was a touching tale.

Beach decided to remain in Paris during World War II. Like many Parisians, she wanted to stay with the city. She was not apt to give up so quickly to the Germans. Many of her friends were still around, and she wanted to keep an eye on her shop. One day a German officer drove up in his large, shining car and asked about the copy of Finnegan's Wake in the bookshop window. Beach answered that this particular copy was not for sale because it was her personal copy and the only one she had. (This was actually one of five copies that the shop had available at the time, but Beach did not want the officer to have anything from her.) The German officer demanded the book. Beach refused. The officer became irate and vowed to return to the shop later to retrieve the book. He said that he was a great fan of James Joyce, a man Beach herself helped when she persevered to publish Ulysses, and that Finnegan's Wake would help him improve his English. (Perhaps for his hopes of the Germans invading England.) Beach refused him again. The man drove away, promising to return that afternoon to take it by force.

After the German left, Beach contacted her landlord who had a vacant apartment above the bookstore. With the help of a few friends, Beach moved every single one of her 5,000 volumes upstairs to the apartment. She then blacked out the windows and painted over the name on the shingle. When the German returned, he sat in his car and looked around for the bookshop, but it had disappeared. Beach observed him from an upstairs window, laughing.

Sylvia Beach never reopened Shakespeare and Co. The bookshop by the same name that can be found on the Left Bank across the river from Notre Dame is a tribute to the famous shop of the Lost Generation, but is not the original, and it is not in the original location.

Where's the Red Room Library's Reading Lady?

For those of you who come to the site often, you have probably noticed the dark haired lady reading at the top. For those of you who are new, you might be looking at a big red box. (Not all of you will know what I'm talking about because I don't think this is problem for everyone. I can see her on Firefox but not on IE, for example.) Blogger is experiencing some image upload difficulties, which I am assured will be worked out shortly, so, hopefully, the Reading Lady will be back for everyone soon.

Meg Mullins' The Rug Merchant

Meg Mullins’ outstanding debut novel, The Rug Merchant, ruminates on loneliness, love, and dreams in the Gatsby-esque figure of Ushman, the contemplative, hopeful rug merchant. Uushman arrives in America from Iran with the intent of achieving the American Dream. His wife Farak, still in Iran to take care of Ushman’s mother, sends Ushman beautiful handmade oriental rugs to be sold in a shop in Manhattan. Business is good, and Ushman dreams about the day Farak will come to meet him in America. However, Ushman’s perceptions of his marriage are not shared by Farak, and when Farak announces that she is leaving Ushman for another man, he is devastated. Despondent and distracted, he goes to the airport, imagining that if he is there, Farak may emerge in the crowded terminal. Farak, not surprisingly, does not come, but Stella, a delicate, wise college girl, does, and Ushman latches his hopes and dreams onto her.

Stella and Ushman meet on the common ground of pain and abandonment. Ushman’s wife has left him, and Stella’s parents cannot understand how to interact with her now that she is older than six years old. Stella views her parents inability to understand her as a type of abandonment, and the reader wonders if Stella’s interest in Ushman stems out of an attempt to find affection and structure from an adult. Regardless, they are both looking for needs to be filled, but they are generous with each other, too, and their love affair unfolds into something beautiful and true.

Outside of Ushman’s relationship with Stella is Mrs. Roberts, a bored, rich, and voyeuristic middle aged woman. As Ushman desires to be part of Stella’s life, Mrs. Roberts desires to be part of Ushman’s life and culture. She fantasizes about the Muslim faith and the beauty of poverty. As Ushman achieves the American Dream that Mrs. Roberts represents in all of her finery, Mrs. Roberts desires to desire anything. She is glutted with everything and the greatest gift for Mrs. Roberts is anything that is forbidden to her. Mrs.Roberts circles Ushman and Stella, and the resolution is not what you think.

Mullins’ ability to create such a real and complex character in Ushman is a testament to the power of imagination. In a world, where many believe that the best fiction comes from, at least partial, personal experience, Mullins writes about someone completely opposite from her: a Muslim man from Iran. However, Mullins' core belief about humankind suffuses this book with humanity and opportunities to connect with the characters. None of these characters are mainstream; none of them are predictable. Mullins believes that humans are all the same at root, and through empathy, we can understand everyone. This notion is reminiscent of Forster’s epigraph for Howard’s End: “Connect,” and this novel does feel Forsterian in its interest of finding common ground between people of different classes and countries.

Mullins writes in first person, an increasingly popular tense in modern fiction, and the result is an intimate and immediate atmosphere. We feel what the characters feel, and we are able to understand them. The ending of the novel is surprising and ripe with possibilities.

This is a tremendously moving book, a book that plunges the depths of one man’s heart and dreams, and one that ultimately reveals the frail, tenuous, but real ties that connect all of us.

Mullins must put this forward for the Pulitzer.

Susan at Pages Turned mentioned the other day that she would be reading Daniel Deronda, and a number of other people have pledged to join. I'm diving in head first.

Any other takers out there for Daniel Deronda?

from the back of the Penguin Classic Edition:

"Daniel Deronda opens with one of the most memorable encounters in fiction: Gwendolen Harleth, alluring yet unsettling, is poised at the the roulette-table in Leubronn, observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper classes, and now searching for his path in life.

While Gwendolen becomes trapped in an oppressive marriage, a series of dramatic encounters draws Deronda into ever deeper sympathy with Jewish aspirations to cultural and national identity. Remote as Gwendolyn's country-house world may seem to the world of Mirah, the lost daughter, and Mordecai, the visionary, George Eliot weaves these strands of her plot intimately together, daring the readers of Adam Bede and Middlemarch to open their eyes to areas of experience wholly new to the Victorian novel."

Tragically Funny....

A little sad humor for Friday:

"We had a going away party yesterday for a lady at our Little Rock claim office. One of the supervisors called WalMart and ordered the cake.

He told them to write: "Best Wishes, Suzanne." and underneath that; "We will miss you.'"

Should J.K. Rowling have told us Dumbledore is gay?

J.K. Rowling’s admission that Dumbledore is gay has ignited controversy. Many people are excited to have such an example in this loveable character, and many others are concerned about immorality and protecting children. Let me say from the beginning, so that I am not misunderstood: I could care less if Dumbledore is gay. The fact that he’s gay does not diminish his character in my mind. This being said, however, I wonder if J.K. Rowling was right to provide this information at all.

J.K. Rowling’s novels are full of dense characterization, yet there is no mention of Dumbledore’s love life. Why mention it now? To say that it shouldn’t matter is in a political sense true; it doesn’t matter if anyone is gay, but it matters for the reading experience. My interpretation of Dumbledore is different now. I love him just as much as I did before, but I now have insights into his character that can aid me in my analysis of his actions. Now I can ask this question, which I could not ask before: If Dumbledore had not loved Grindelwald, would he have done something differently? This question now changes the way I view Dumbledore’s final actions. What if Dumbledore had been in love with Dolores Umbridge in his early life, or he and Mrs. Weasley had almost made a go for it before she met Arthur? This information would have altered the way readers see Dumbledore, and the fact that Dumbledore loved Grindelwald will also change our perceptions. A character is now emotionally involved with another character, and as we know from life, emotional involvement can change a landscape; it can change perception, motives, desires, and opinions. In short, it can change a lot.

If this were important, which I believe that it is, then J.K. Rowling should have provided this information in the text. Afterall, no one understand the power of formative experiences like Dumbledore. Look at his continued and devoted study of Voldemort's early life. Dumbledore knows that past experiences shape the present. If we were to ask his opinion, I"m sure he would say "Spill."

And if you were wondering if J.K. Rowling did put any clues in the book, which I don't believe she did, the L.A. Times has found someone to drudge these clearly significant points from the bottom of the barrel...

Below Andrew Slack, of the Harry Potter Alliance, gives Deborah Netburn seven textual "clues" that Dumbledore was gay. (Quoted from L.A. Times)

"1. His pet. "Fawkes, the many-colored phoenix, is 'flaming.'"

2. His name. "While the anagram to 'Tom Marvolo Riddle' is 'I am Lord Voldemort,' as my good friend pointed out, 'Albus Dumbledore' becomes 'Male bods rule, bud!'"

3. His fashion sense. "Whether it's his 'purple cloak and high-heeled boots,' a 'flamboyantly cut suit of plum velvet,' a flowered bonnet at Christmas or his fascination with knitting patterns, Dumbledore defies the fashion standards of normative masculinity and, of course, this gives him a flair like no other. It's no wonder that even the uppity portrait of former headmaster Phineas Nigellus announced, 'You cannot deny he's got style.'"

4. His sensitivity. "Leaders like Cornelius Fudge, Rufus Scrimgeour and Dolores Umbridge (yes, even a woman) who are limited by the standards of normative masculinity could not fully embrace where Voldemort was weakest: in his capacity to love. Dumbledore understood that it's tougher to be vulnerable, to express one's feelings, and that one's undying love for friends and for life itself is a more powerful weapon than fear. Even his most selfish moments in pursuing the Deathly Hallows were motivated either by his feelings for Grindelwald or his wish to apologize to his late sister."

5. His openness. "After she outed Dumbledore, Rowling said that she viewed the whole series as a prolonged treatise on tolerance. Dumbledore is the personification of this. Like the LGBT community that has time and again used its own oppression to fight for the equality of others, Dumbledore was a champion for the rights of werewolves, giants, house elves, muggle-borns, centaurs, merpeople -- even alternative marriage. When it came time to decide whether the marriage between Lupin the werewolf and Tonks the full-blooded witch could be considered natural, Professor Minerva McGonagall said, 'Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world.'"

6. His historical parallel. "If Dumbledore were like any one in history, it would have to be Leonardo DaVinci. They both were considered eccentric geniuses ('He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes'); both added a great deal to our body of knowledge (after all, Dumbledore did discover the 12 uses of dragon's blood!); both were solitary, both were considered warm, loving and incredibly calm; both dwelt in mysterious mystical realms; both spent a lot of time with their journals (Leonardo wrote his backwards while Dumbledore was constantly diving into his pensieve); both even had long hair! And, of course, a popular thought among many scholars is that the maestro Leonardo was gay."

7. The fact that so few of us realized he was gay. "No matter how many 'clues' I can put down that Dumbledore was gay, no matter how many millions of people have read these books again and again, Rowling surprised even the most die-hard fans with the announcement that Dumbledore was gay. And in the end, the fact that we never would have guessed is what makes Dumbledore being gay so real. So many times I have encountered friends who are gay that I never would have predicted. It has shown me that one's sexual orientation is not some obvious 'lifestyle choice,' it's a precious facet of our multi-faceted personalities. And in the end whatever the differences between our personalities are, it is time that our world heeds Dumbledore's advice: 'Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.' Today as I write this, I believe that it's time for our aims to be loyal to what the greatest wizard in the world would have wanted them to be: love.'"

Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer October 23, 2007

Views of Rooms

I am always interested by what writers do to get ideas, or where they sit when they write, or what supersitions they must follow in order to call down the muse. I forget which author said this (maybe someone can help me), but somewhere I heard that a writer stored his (I do think it was a man) work in progress in the crisper section of his refrigerator. Faulkner enjoyed his bottle. Hemingway said that you must always leave something 'in the well' to make sure that you have some place to start when you come back the next day. Some writers must have complete silence; others must be in the beating heart of things. Some must write in longhand; some must have a typewriter or computer.

When working on my stories, I have learned that I like complete silence, which is hard to come by unless it's early morning, late at night, or I'm in a library somewhere. In school, I loved the Gothic Reading Room. Everyone would glare at you if you made a peep. No one felt too bad about glaring; after all, there (used to be) a cafe immediately outside the reading room if you needed to chat. Currently, Woodruff Library is the best place for complete silence, but usually, I opt for the red room library over other spots.

The picture above is of Margaret Drabble's writing room and is part of a series of stories on The Guardian's website that investigates writers' rooms. There is a long list of mostly English writers, which one would expect. I would love a newspaper to do this for American writers. I don't much like his work, but I would be interested to know what type of room Stephen King writes in. I remember a piece by Annie Dillard in which she said that while she was writing A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek she sat in the library at Hollins in front of a blank wall. There were a few filing cabinets about and some bookshelves behind her. The contrast between her rotund, image-heavy, beautiful prose and her sparse, cell-like surroundings struck me as a clear testament to the power of her imagination and recall. It's always interesting to see the landscapes that play a role in the creative process.

For the series go here.

Have you read The Reincarnationist?

I came across this book a few weeks ago in one of my frequent forays around what I've come to call the bookweb - websites/blogs pertaining to books, which tend to be interestingly interconnected. This book piqued my fancy, so I ordered it from the library. This is definitely the kind of book you should read if you're looking for something quick and entertaining.

The Reincarnationist flashes back and forth between the present and the past, as Josh Ryder tries to understand why he continually revisits Ancient Rome and turn of the century New York in his dreams or nightmares, depending on your definition. He is reliving past lives, and as he begins to understand more about his past, he realizes that events of the past are replaying themselves in ominous ways in his present. The imagery is good. The characters are interesting. I was excited for a bang finish, and then it donned on me that I might have read this book a few times before, that there may be a formula for suspense novels, and I became glum. I continued to read, hoping that I had not predicted the ending, which I hate. I am a willing-suspension-of- disbelief type person; I let the drama unfold for me and analyze afterwards. Here, though, the footprints were unmistakable.

A brief side note to put my disgruntlement in context. Everyone has read The Davinci Code unless you had moral issues against it or didn't want to follow the overwhelming tide. The Davinci Code was awesome, so I moved on to Angels and Demons. By the time I reached Deception Point, I knew I had already read this book. By the time I got to the last Brown book, I was super annoyed. It had happened again! Dan Brown was using the formula. Then I started to really dislike Dan Brown. He's duped all of us. He's written four books in different contexts with the same basic plot twists and gimmicks. (Why can't I think of something like that? Oh, right; there's no point!)

So, here I am in a quandary. Until page 450, I actually really liked The Reincarnationist. Now I'm annoyed and sort of angry that M.J. Rose didn't think of an ending more befitting her unique plot.

Plot Spoiler:
If you haven't read it, go read it and then come back and tell me what you think. If you have read it, continue.

As with Dan Brown, Rose resorts to the formula: one of the good guys becomes the bad guy at the end. The number one person we trust, besides the main characters, turns nasty. Yeesh. I was hoping for a little more grandiosity than that. I was hoping for something original. Then, when Josh dies, I'm convinced that Rose copped out. Good book, bummer, bummer ending.

Nathanial Philbrick's The Mayflower

Nathanial Philbrick's The Mayflower follows the Pilgrim's adventures from the early days in England to after King Phillip's War. The history is detailed, thorough, and clear. Each chapter presents the information in a balanced way and finishes with convincing analysis. The characters from history jump from the pages, and Philbrick succeeds in making the Pilgrims trial and tribulations real for the reader.

The book is equally divided between the founding of Plymouth colony and King Phillip's War, a lesser known war to modern Americans, but, according to Philbrick, one of the shaping events of our early history.

King Phillip's War is considered to be one of the most bloody wars in North America. To provide contrast: America lost less than 1% of our male population in World War II, 4-5% during the Civil War, but Plymouth colony lost 8% during the 14 months of King Phillip's War. Clearly, this was a devastating engagement, and despite the heavy loss, it did not correct the "Indian problem" but heightened the issue. The thick barrier of 'friendly Indians' was eliminated, laying the colony open to attack by other, presumably unfriendly, Indians farther West. While some of the Indians that fought in KPW were obviously hostile and resentful of the English, many were friendly and relied heavily on the English for trade, goods, and income. Many of these were also recent Christian converts, named Praying Indians, and they, particularly the Praying Indians on Nantucket Island, stood staunchly against King Phillip and his plans for supreme power in New England. The myth that KPW was strictly English versus Indian debacle is not true.

Philbrick illustrates the inconsistencies of the fabled story of Thanksgiving and corrects other misconceptions. The Indians and the Pilgrims did work together at the beginning, but it was not as beautiful and peaceful as the story the elementary school children learn. From the beginning, there was controversy between the English and the Indians over land and resources; though for the first few decades there was a peace, largely architected through Massoit, the leader of the Pokanokets and Edward Winslow. However, even this was tenuous, as Massosit, though powerful, could not speak for the entire Indian population. This initial peace, made between friends out of a shared need for resources, ended in the next generation when Winslow's son and Massosoit's son, King Phillip, realized that there was not enough room for both Indian and English interests.

Our perception of the Pilgrims is largely the product of subsequent generations' memories or views of the true history. In the late 1600s, Thomas Faunce, elderly and feeble, wanted to return to Plymouth to see where his father first landed. He assigned a large rock near the original colony as the first landing spot for the Pilgrims. As a result of Faunce's assignation, the myth of Plymouth Rock was born. Philbrick makes clear that there is no mention in the journals written by Pilgrims from the Mayflower of a landing on a rock; in actuality, the Pilgrims most likely pulled their small landing boats onto the beach. Nevertheless, Faunce's 'memory' was too romantic a notion to ignore. In another way, the myth of Thanksgiving sprang out of the need for a shared history during the Civil War. Lincoln commemorated this day to provide a means for the North and South to find common ground during the war. Prior to this, Thanksgiving was celebrated, in a way, on Founder's Day, which was in December.

Today, many of these realities of this early life in New England have been wiped away to make room for patriotism and myth-making. As Philbrick says, history makes an odd jump from Plymouth Rock to Lexington and Concord, with no real attention made to the steps in between. Philbrick's book attempts to fill in some of this forgotten area.

And the Booker Goes to...

Anne Enright for The Gathering. I'm shamefully behind on my Booker reading this year, so at this point I don't have much to say, but my new favorite bookish paper, The Guardian, has plenty.

Article here.

Excerpt here.

Yasmin Crowther's The Saffron Kitchen

Yasmin Crowther’s debut novel, The Saffron Kitchen, opens with heartbreak. Maryam has lived in England most of her life, but when her nephew Saeed, the son of her sister Mara, comes to live with Maryam and her husband, Edward, after Mara’s untimely death, more than just Saeed comes into Maryam’s life. Maryam begins to remember her life in Iran, her feelings about her family, particularly her estranged father, and the circumstances leading up to her immigration to England. Tension and unhappiness hits the surface one morning with devastating effect for Maryam's daughter's baby. This event prompts Maryam to face the ghosts of her memories, and she returns to Iran to understand what propelled her to leave and why she could never forget her past. Maryam travels to Iran only to discover that the world of Iran that she left many years ago is gone forever, except for one very special person, Ali, her father’s servant who once saved her life. Maryam realizes that she may still be able to capture aspects of her old life in Iran with Ali, but this means sacrificing her English life.

This is a delicate novel about a woman in between two worlds. Maryam is unwilling to forget the past, but terrified to accept the present. She does not feel whole in England and believes that Iran will fulfill her; yet in Iran, Edward and Sara, Maryam's daughter, do not exist. The novel asks two deep questions: is it possible to reclaim the past, and if you can, should you? When she is a teenager, Maryam sacrifices her father’s love because she refuses to follow his directions (which I don’t fault her for), but rather than resisting the temptation to ruin another relationship in her life, she waltzes close to losing Edward and Sara’s love because she will not give up her ghosts and accept the limitations of life. Yet, here, too, I don’t know if I fault her. Maryam’s decisions can either be seen as bullheaded selfishness or desperate decisions made by a woman in a context where women have no such privilege. Though I struggled with Maryam has a character, in the end, I see her point.

Sara, however, makes a different choice than her mother when she paints her kitchen wall saffron, a color associated with the foods and landscape of Iran. Sara understands, where her mother does not, that life is not black and white, or all or nothing; it is a question of mixture. The saffron color brings the world of Iran into her English kitchen. Sara realizes that this is the extent of her experience with Iran: flavor, color, texture, but not life there. Unlike her mother, she is not burdened by memories and hurt, and she does not assume these feelings. Sara realizes she is English with Iranian blood; her mother is not sure where she fits in. Maryam refuses to accept that her past has become something other than a vibrant, breathing thing; a saffron colored wall in the kitchen would only remind of her things she could not have, rather than represent a tribute to her home country.

The end of the novel is ambiguous and somewhat truncated. I wanted more information about the characters, but perhaps that is the point. These deep questions of pasts, homelands, and family are not easily answered, and I would have thought less of the book if Crowther had ended the story with a moral. Despite the ending, and some concern with the similarity between character voices, which worked itself out by the end, this was a thoroughly enjoyable book.

The Ilustrated Life of Pi

The Red Room Library reviewed The Life of Pi earlier in the year, and the novel is the Guardian Book Club's October selection. This novel is full of symbol and allegory. The paintings, created by Croatian artist, Tomislav Torjanac, "reveal a new angle on Martel's audacious fable." There are eleven paintings in all. The rest can be viewed here.

Priceless Harvest

"Late at night, when the fire is glowing, I open a book, any book, and read. "It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining" - from Samuel Beckett's Molloy. I think what a priceless harvest great literature is."

Edna O'Brien

Indeed.

And the Nobel goes to....

Doris Lessing.

Read more about it here.

I really wanted Atwood to get it, but there are future opportunities for that. Here I go to dig up my copy of The Golden Notebook.

Bookish Question

I added this to another questionnaire, but I thought it might be good to put it out here again.

Which two characters from which two works of literature should meet and why?

(Example: Mildred Lathbury (Excellent Women) and Emma Woodhouse (Emma). Both delight in matchmaking, both took care of their fathers, both are independent, and both are mostly kind. Emma would think Mildred was like Miss Bates at first, so they would have to get over first appearances, and Mildred might be a little quiet around Emma at first, as Emma really is the more confident of the two, but I think they would complement each other nicely.)

Wendy Leigh's True Grace

Biography is just as much about the writer of the bio as it is about the subject. Judging from the prurient, scandalous, superficial information about Grace Kelly in True Grace, I’m pretty sure Wendy Leigh started off her writing life as a gossip writer for the National Enquirer. I love biography because it is (supposed to be) intense character-driven drama, and the best biographies provide information about motivation, life-defining experiences, and behavior patterns. Leigh doesn’t really do anything like this. She gets excited when she talks about Grace’s experiences with men. There is even an undercurrent of jealousy in these passages, but there is little else. I know little about Princess Grace after reading this 200-page book, and I wonder now why I didn’t just give it the deep six half way through. Oh well, at least I know now that Jackie Kennedy was jealous of Grace Kelly because JFK was in love with her for his entire life. Hmm…or maybe not. Yeesh.

Barbara Pym's Excellent Women

There are writers that discuss tragedy, rape, ruin, war, and devastation. Their books ruminate on the dramatic, life-altering, and singular events that for many people make great reading. Then there are the writers that map real, everyday life onto the pages of a novel. They do not discuss the list above because how often do these things really happen to most people? Instead, they create worlds where we can investigate our own ‘small’ dramas and learn how humanity interacts in the parlor, rather than imagining what one would do on a battlefield. The most famous of this type, of course, is Austen. Napoleon waltzed his war machine through Europe, cutting wide swaths of horror in his wake, arguments over law and the colonies filled Parliament, but Austen included relatively nothing of these worldly happenings. Her villains were not generals or tribal leaders, they were the sorts of people that sit a dinner party, sip their Madeira, and cut you like a knife with their heartless irony. Austen, and Pym after her, instructs us that drama exists on the living room scale. Every dinner party has the potential to play out like a dramatic Russian roulette, and these dramas are really the most important ones.

Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women follows Mildred Lathbury, a woman who is unmarried but very useful. She lives near the local church, helps the curate with his women problems, sorts clothes for the jumble sale, makes tea for the neighbors, and tries to be as nice as she can. Mildred is our old Aunt or the nice lady that checks your books back into the library, with a “did you like this one, dear?” comment and a smile on her face. When the Napiers move in and Father Julian, the curate, strikes up an unsuitable (everyone in the neighborhood knows it’s unsuitable) relationship with a widow, Mildred is present because of her good sense, and because she has the time. After all, she’s not married, you know.

The dichotomy drawn between married women and unmarried women is clear. Miss Lathbury tells us at the beginning that we are not to confuse her with Jane Eyre, meaning that she is not to be found at the end of this novel with a ring on her finger, though as the story progresses I wonder if that is what she really wants after all. Multiple references are made to “the excellent women”, the women who are unmarried, selfless, kind, and, oh, can keep their kitchens tidy. Pym makes an obvious, almost sloppy, distinction between married and unmarried women on the state of their kitchens. The point is that the excellent women are thoughtful and clean. The married women are selfish and opportunistic. Allegra Gray, the woman who tries to catch Father Julian, is beautiful but wrong for him. After she leaves Julian, it is discovered that her kitchen is a wreck, with half empty food tins and a month old cake in the larder. This will never do.

The examples of marriage that Miss Lathbury presents are unacceptable, and I don’t wish these situations for her, but I do think that by the end of the novel she wants something else besides ‘excellence’. She wants companionship with a man. When Everard Bone, though he is arrogant, asks her to come over for dinner and she declines because she wants to know his motives before she accepts his offer, she worries for days that she should have gone over and cooked for him; she worries that he will not be able to handle himself in the kitchen, and she feels guilty for refusing him.

Pym’s characters are real and interesting, but not run of the mill in a modern, dramatic sense. These are church ladies, mostly, so if you’re looking for the type of scandal that makes even Jane Austen interesting, there is not much here. Though, to give Pym credit, we do get whiffs of adultery and inappropriate commingling under the same roof, but it’s all very proper and appropriately explained, you see, by Sister Blatt or someone else like that.

This is a wonderfully British book, and the more I think about it now, the more I like it. It is subtle and charming, a great book to read with tea and a biscuit. A book very clearly from a different generation, but, as with all great and timeless books, there is much to be learned about human relations from it.

Lit Prizes here we come

The year is winding down, and we'll soon know the winners of the Mann Booker and the Nobel. Fall is a great time for book lovers.

Margaret Atwood gets my vote for the Nobel, and I'm still simmering over the Booker. More thoughts about that later.

Marley has some more ideas for Nobel here.

Nadeem Aslam's "Maps for Lost Lovers"

"Shamas stands in the open door and watches the earth, the magnet that it is, pulling snowflakes out of the sky towards itself. With their deliberate, almost-impaired pace, they fall like feathers sinking in water." (Aslam 1)

Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers opens with a poetic explanation of one of the main characters, Shamas, watching the snow. The experience of watching, waiting, and meditating in a cold, desolate place adequately opens this novel that contemplates pain, isolation, disappointment, and faith. Shamas soon realizes that his brother Jugnu and Jugnu’s girlfriend, Chanda, have disappeared. Later, it is discovered that Chanda’s brothers murdered the two lovers. Chanda and Jugnu die because they sinned in their faith and acted dishonorably by living together before marriage, the brothers tell their friends. The real tragedy, however, is that Chanda and Jugnu are unable to marry because, though her husband abandoned her a few years ago, she is not allowed to remarry after abandonment in Islam for seven years. Chanda and Jugnu live together as man and wife and wait for the seven years to end, but they are brutally murdered. Pain, guilt and loneliness radiate out of this event like giant rippling waves, and Chanda and Jugnu’s death becomes a symbol for everything beautiful and ugly in the characters lives. In fact, the Pakistani immigrants are so desolate that they have named their homeland, Dast-e-Tanhaii, the Wilderness of Solitude, the Desert of Lonliness. It is a pity that this desert is not only England but their own souls.

As Shamas and his wife Kaukab absorb the hurt of this traumatizing event, they are forced to look at their own relationship. Kaukab is a devout Muslim, “raised under a minaret’ by a Muslim cleric, while Shamas is a communist and a non-believer. The struggle of the West versus East, or Muslims versus non-Muslims takes places in their living room. They both come to England for a better life, but instead they find themselves in a half-world; they are not English, but neither are they fully Pakistani. They have forsaken their homeland for a new country that will not allow them to assimilate. Shamas understands this and makes the most of it. Kaukab pines for Pakistan and condemns the West for ‘stealing her children’ and making her miserable. She is a good woman, but she is stuck in a context where she is no longer understood by or relevant to her children and husband. One of her sons has married a white woman; the other son blames her for Jugnu’s death; her daughter left her husband in Pakistan, wears Western clothing, and cut her long hair. She does not know her children, and her tradition, plus her seemingly unwavering faith in Allah, hinders her from crossing the divide. After Kaukab fights with her daughter, slapping her across the face for a perceived slight, she desires desperately to connect with her daughter, to throw off the shackles of restraint ingrained in her mind by her mother and love her family, but she cannot. She is afraid of gossip and losing face with her neighbors; she worries that others will condemn her for accepting her children’s deviation from the true faith, so she keeps her distance. Kaukab is lonely and in pain, but, according to Aslam, this is not uncommon in Islam. Aslam makes clear that Islam is the hardest on its women.

Aslam’s true brilliance in this novel is surprisingly not the characterization, which is incredibly subtle, nuanced and real, but his language. Maps for Lost Lovers is a prose poem. He imbues his story with perfect-pitched metaphor, sensuous allusions to Muslim fable and Eastern myth, and beautiful imagery from nature. Aslam tells his tale in first person with the result that the language lilts and moves like the prose from a fairy tale. Moths and butterflies fill the pages and chart the course for lovers. Jugnu’s hands glow in the dark, and as moths are attracted to light, so they are attracted to Jugnu. Jugnu glows with life and with love, but in a society where emotion and feeling are sacrificed to duty and covered up with fabric, he is sacrificed, too. Many of these characters are moths, with dull brown colors, unable to become vibrant butterflies, bright with color and life.

The pursuit of life, love, and light is the real purpose for many of these characters, and Aslam seems to blame Islam for their inability to achieve it. There is very little in this novel that praises Islam, and much that argues for change. However, this is not a political novel, and it does not argue for a revolution inside the faith. It does, though, illustrate the isolation and despair that Islam brings about within its own flock. It is a mind-opening experience for the Western reader, and I believe it is a must read.

Julia Child's My Life in France

Everyone I know loves to watch cooking shows, and they all have a favorite food personality. Boys tend to like Giada de Laurentis. Girls tend to like Barefoot Contessa or sometimes Rachel Ray, though she’s a lot to take. Everyone loves Top Chef. These shows have improved cooking and food awareness. I know how to chiffonnade basil and make a roux from watching the Food Network. It’s really amazing the tips you can pick up from these shows. Little did I know, until I read Julia Child’s My Life in France, how unoriginal we all are. People have been watching food shows for decades, and it all started with Julia Child.

Julia Child paved the way for this indulgence in food and being a ‘foodie’ in the 1950s and 60s. She was the first to make food on television, and she was the first to introduce speedy-cooking-obsessed America to the virtues of taking time with food rather than pulling something out of a box.

In My Life in France, which covers much more than her actual time in France, Child explains in short, pleasant vignettes, as transposed by Alex Prud’homme, how she grew to love food. To my surprise, Child did not know much about cooking until she was 37 years old. She and her husband moved to France after the war for Paul to take a diplomatic job in Paris. After eating a beautifully composed meal in a small restaurant in Le Havre, she became obsessed with food. This meal literally opened her taste buds, and she began her journey to becoming a French chef. She took classes at the Cordon Bleu, which were sub par, but she met some great chefs who gave her private lessons. According to Julia, taking classes like these were not rare at this time. Many housewives did this to learn their way around the kitchen, but unlike many of these women, whose cooking experience stopped at the market and their home kitchen, Julia began to investigate and test all sorts of recipes because she wanted to know how they work. She tells one story of how she tested dozens of different recipes of mayonnaise before she was happy with the result. Before she got to the perfect recipe, however, she had so many batches, that she had to resort to flushing some down the toilet!

After a while, she began to teach other people how to cook. She became so energized as a result of her own discoveries with food that she wanted to share her knowledge with others. She and a few friends started cooking classes in Paris and soon after started writing a cookbook, a labor of love that eventually became Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes I and II. What made Julia Child so unique was that she was able to explain the process and chemistry of each recipe so that the home cook could understand what was happening in the kitchen. Julia made it possible for women in Iowa, who had never been to Paris and had no understanding of French cuisine, to make a beautiful coq au vin. Her cookbooks were a revelation to Americans in the 1960s who were anxious to learn about cooking. They are still classics today.

My Life in France is full of charming stories of finding ingredients at the market, living in Provence, and details about the arduous publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julia comes through the pages as a very nice, open person who was obviously a great hostess. This is a meditation on the kitchen and not a memoir of her life, though she does provide some information about her family and relationships as she goes. It is a wonderfully sensuous, nostalgic book that made me want to get into the kitchen, make myself a tart, and open a bottle of wine. Bon Appetit.

Fun Fact: Julia Child was 6 foot 2 with size 12 feet.

Happy Birthday to Me!

The Red Room Library has proven to be quite a little hobby for me, so Mr. Red Room Library, because he's the sweetest husband ever, has made The Red Room Library a very official pursuit indeed. He created this bookmark to be my business card, so when people ask what I do for fun, I can say that I am blogging in the most classiest of ways and hand them my super cool bookmark business card. Great great great!!!!

Theroux's Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

Paul Theroux’s The Stranger at the Palazzo D’Oro and Other Stories will not be reviewed here. The opening of the first, cornerstone story in the collection is deftly written and brilliant in the Sicilian sunshine. The main character flashbacks to his younger days when he was a traveler through Italy. In Sicily, he happens onto the Palazzo D’Oro, a beautiful, old world hotel, and meets a seductive, old, haughty, spoiled, and disturbingly infantile Countess. She has low self-esteem, so her assistant asks the young man to make her believe that he, the young man, loves her. Thus begins the really boring, totally trite, and very predictable love affair that I cannot force myself, as this is not a paying venture, to finish. It was so bad, I couldn't bring myself to even try to read the other stories. Theroux should try travel writing and keep fantasies about the bedroom to a minimum. Back to the library this one goes.

Six Word Short Stories

Hemingway, in his infinite and very impressed with himself wisdom, bragged that he could write a short story in six words, which he successfully did:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

One of Hemingway's theories about literature was that writing should be like a giant iceberg. The words, like the tip of the iceberg pushing through the sleeve of the sea, should hint at the depth below the surface, but not fully explain it. Unlike the lookouts on the Titanic, we should read (see the tip of the iceberg) and penetrate the surface on our own, guess at the depth of the meaning below the surface. In the case presented above, this is a tiny sliver of ice peeking over the surface of water that hides a hulking beast of an iceberg, but, maybe because it's Hemingway, it seems to work.

Other favorites from the Wired site:

Margaret Atwood: Longed for him. Got him. Shit.

William Shatner: Failed SAT. Lost Scholarship. Invented rocket.

The trick, I gather, is to pique the mind and create a little world in six words. The point is not to write a marketing line, newspaper heading, or opening line to a play. See the wired article if you want examples of all the above. It's a great little brainteaser, so I tried a few of my own.


1. Broke eggs. Door slammed. All over.

2. Wife: Who! Husband: Your best friend.

3. Dead old woman; girl watches, regretful.