True Story: I was visiting the eye doctor a few weeks back, and I needed to get my pupils dilated to finish the examination. It takes about half an hour for the drops to take effect, so I was sent out to the waiting room. Rather than look at old copies of Redbook, I walked two doors down to the local indie bookseller to browse for a while. I came across Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin on the shelf and picked it up. For reasons unknown to me, I was dead set against this novel despite it being a National Book Award winner and having garnered near universal rave reviews. With my vision starting to blur, I read all of the accolades on the first six(!) pages inside the cover (and then more on the back cover) and remained unconvinced. Then I noticed the epigraph, which is a quote from Aleksandr Hemon’s The Lazarus Project (read my review):
All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.
That passage is underlined in my copy of Hemon’s book, and it finally sealed the deal for me. Then my eyes lost focus with the bonus of my retinas searing from the sunlight streaming through the bookstore windows. It was time to throw some bills on the counter and leave with my purchase.
The prologue of the novel is a brief passage recounting Phillipe Petit’s walk on a high wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center in the 1970s. That’s him depicted as a stick figure on the paperback version of the book. From there the novel bounces between the stories of various people of wildly disparate backgrounds living in New York City at the time. Each of the strands has a connection to Petit’s almost incomprehensible stunt. Eventually the various strands connect in entirely believable but totally random ways. Like life.
The high wire act that McCann pulls off with this novel is writing about the September 11 terrorist attacks while barely touching on the act itself. Invoking the image of the towers before their completion and Petit’s incredible act of artistry is enough for the reader to fill in the blanks for themselves. The last few chapters of the book hopscotch over the eighties, nineties, and 2001 directly to present day.
Back to that Hemon quote epigraph. A central theme of this novel is certainly the richness of life and the many unseen connections that we all have with one another. The world is made up of people that we will never know and possibilities for ourselves that we may never fully realize or even recognize. The challenge that McCann lays before us is to find the connections within the breadth of humanity we encounter in our everyday lives and to look within ourselves for the lives that we could/should be living. If that’s not as powerful a “message” as you are likely to encounter in contemporary fiction, I don’t know what is. If you’ve waited as long as I did to get on board the Let the Great World Spin bandwagon, do it now.
I was driving home a few weeks ago and heard Terry Gross interview Patti Smith about her new memoirJust Kids. It was one of those interviews where you sit in your car and keep listening well after you get where you’re going. I picked up the book days later and dove in as soon as I could. It was the right choice.
Just Kids focuses on the unusual and enduring relationship that Smith had with photographer/artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Smith, at the age of 20, had set off to New York City to try to make her mark as an artist and poet. On her first day there, she met Mapplethorpe, himself a struggling artist. The two eventually developed a romantic relationship and move in to a Brooklyn hovel together. It’s the Summer of Love, but neither is much into the hippie thing. They are each preparing for the Next Thing.
Their early New York days are the archetypal starving artist experience: constant struggling to pay rent, going hungry when money is tight (and money is always tight), getting lice from seedy lodgings, etc. And if that sounds romantic to you, consider this: Patti’s first hint that her soul mate might be gay surfaces when Robert begins street hustling to help pay the rent. Even as Smith describes her dismay at seeing her boyfriend go out into the night, she can sense your judgement and offers simply:
Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?
Difficult as it was, Patti and Robert make unlikely and important connections within the art world almost from the very beginning of their life in New York. For example, Patti first met Beat poet Allen Ginsberg when he bought her a sandwich in a Manhattan automat. It turns out that Ginsberg thought that she was a very pretty young boy. Ginsberg would later champion Smith’s poetry and he provided introductions to Gregory Corso and William S. Buroughs. Corso teaches Patti how to avoid giving boring poetry readings, and Burroughs is among the earliest attendees of Patti’s rock shows at the nascent CBGB’s. She meets Hendrix and provides relationship advice to Janice Joplin. After the romantic side of her relationship with Robert runs its course, Patti dates Jim Carroll, Sam Shepard, some guy in the Blue Oyster Cult, and Fred “Sonic” Smith (who she would eventually marry).
The young couple eventually found themselves residents of the famed Chelsea Hotel, all but sealing their fates as artists of renown. Patti became famous first. Just as their career trajectories were primed to seriously take off, the pair landed their first and only joint art show. Patti describes the show:
We chose to present a body of work that emphasized our relationship: artist and muse, a role that for both of us was interchangeable.
And that’s the point of this book. This is the story of a relationship that was greater that the sum of its parts. Neither would have realized their artistic potential had the other not been in their life. Each provided what the other needed in support and nurturing companionship to get through the crisis at hand and strive to create another day.
The book also provides a fascinating look at tortured process through which art comes into the world. Smith did not set out to be a rock star and Mapplethorpe had less than no interest in the field of photography. Robert Mapplethorpe took the now iconic cover picture for Patti’s first album (listen to the Fresh Air interview to find out why the record company hated the picture). From there he went on to become a controversial giant of the art world. The books ends after Robert’s death with AIDS, as it must. Smith promised Mapplethorpe that one day she would write their story. She has made good on that promise, and it is quite a story. This is a beautifully written book that is sure to top many year-end “best of” lists. It will be on mine.
Post Script:
As a fortuitous accident, I read Just Kids not long after finishing Helen Weaver’s The Awakener (see my review), a memoir of Weaver’s relationship with Jack Kerouac. Between the two books, a picture emerges of the avant garde art scene in New York from the 1950s through the 1980s. A direct line between the Beats and the punk scene that would emerge from CBGB’s can be clearly drawn, which was a revelation for me. The two memoirs have notable similarities. Both authors write about transformative relationships with men who certainly had their demons. Each woman survives their subject’s death – deaths that were caused to an extent by “lifestyle” choices. Both credit/blame their subject’s Catholicism for important aspects of their personalities. It’s an interesting comparison and progression through the decades.
But wait, there’s more:
Clearly this a book that begs to have some music to accompany the review. Let’s start with my favorite Patti Smith song that’s not Because the Night.
Patti Smith – Dancing Barefoot
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I have no idea why that’s my favorite. It just is. Another of my favorite Patti Smith recordings is her backing vocals on the R.E.M. song E-bow the Letter. Her spooky and ethereal keening is so emotive, it kills me every time. I saw Patti Smith join R.E.M. for a live performance of the song just last year. If I had any hair, it would have stood on end.
And some songs by singers that were clearly influenced by Patti Smith (according to me):
PJ Harvey – Good Fortune
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Pretenders – The Adultress
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Cat Power – Speak for Me
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Video of 10,000 Maniacs covering Because the Night, a Smith/Sringsteen collaboration
And lastly, I include Sympathy for the Devil since it was mentioned specifically in the text. Smith remembers that Mapplethorpe was completely taken with the song on first listen and seemed to relate to it as he was beginning to explore what he considered the darker side of himself.
Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil (Neptunes Remix)
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And if you need more, you can tune into the Just Kids station that I set up on Pandora to complete my Patti Smith immersion experience.
One way to get my attention is to begin a book with a vivid murder scene of a little black girl in the 1950’s. Bernice McFadden, the author of Sugar shocks the reader to attention in the first few pages. Sugar is a book I wouldn’t normally have found, because I don’t choose my books based on the color of the author – this book can be found way over in the African-American Author section. In my case, the book literally landed in my lap so I gave it a try, and I was surprised that I didn’t want to put it down.
Pearl lives in a small town in Arkansas. She is a church-going woman who lost her little girl to a brutal murder fifteen years prior to the beginning of the story. The day Sugar moves in next door to Pearl is remembered by the entire town:
The storm walked into their small town on two legs in spiked red patent leather heels. She waltzed right through the main square, blond wig bounding to the rhythm of her walk, a leopard print pocketbook slung over one shoulder, matching suitcases in each hand.
Sugar is a prostitute and is shunned by all of the church-going women in town (which is of course, all of the women). Pearl ignores the rumors she hears and befriends Sugar. Slowly and gradually, their friendship grows into a deep internal bond that surprises both of them. Their friendship is such that after having “words” with each other, they miss each other and quickly forgive because being apart or even the thought of being apart is too hard to imagine.
Sugar helps pull Pearl out of her 15 year depression by introducing her to experiences she has never had. Likewise, Pearl helps Sugar see a calmer, loving part of life that Sugar has never had. As their friendship develops, Ms. McFadden seamlessly pulls the reader into each of their painful pasts and develops the characters so completely that we want to help them ourselves.
Ms. McFadden brings us this moving, thought-provoking story that contradicts the Beaver Cleaver/Happy Days image a lot of us have of the 1950’s – she makes it “real.” June Cleaver certainly never used the F word! And although this story could happen to people of any color, Ms. McFadden subtly makes us aware that it still the 1950’s with Jim Crow laws in full effect.
The blind man had other one-night gigs to do, the chitlin curcuit was sixty-five nights of giving yourself over to segregated toilets and drinking fountains, and scared white people that suspected your lyrics carried something other than sadness or happiness. Suspected that maybe those words carried seeds of contention.
Throughout the book, Ms. McFadden reminds us through her characters that horrible things can happen to each of us, but we are all still alive! We need to appreciate and love those around us. If we are quick to judge others we could miss an opportunity to come alive more fully, to experience people and places that we never thought we could or would.
At the moment when I thought (or was hoping) that the fairy tale princess ending would happen, Ms. McFadden twists the story another way, then when I really thought I knew the ending, she surprised me again!
Sugar was Ms. McFadden’s first novel ten years ago. She has re-released it in order to reach a broader audience. Hopefully the book will reach this audience and can be enjoyed by people of all ethnicities. Ms. McFadden’s second book is titled This Bitter Earth and I’ll be reading it soon.
I’m not a film fanatic, but I have friends who are. I don’t dislike film by any means, but I’m not nearly as well-versed as my, well, uhm, well-versed friends. And any way you slice it, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is rated as one of the best films ever made. It won the big four Academy Awards — Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress. Only one film before, and one film after, had won all of those (do your research — it will serve you well on trivia night).
I, however, haven’t seen that film, and took it upon myself to read the book first. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, first published in 1962 or 1963 (I can’t tell from this printing that I have) is flat-out astounding. I’ve read lots of books about power struggles (Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, etc.), but this is the one the one that really struck home for me. It didn’t resonate with me because of my time on the funny farm (which may or may not have happened); it resonated with me because of the humanity exhibited by our protagonists.
The book is narrated by Chief Bromden, a half-Indian patient in the insane asylum, who everyone thinks is a deaf/dumb/mute. It turns out that he’s not, but he carries on throughout a good portion of the book maintaining that front. The main character is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a patient who is sent to this hospital from a prison work camp because of his behavior. And then the fun begins, as you (and the characters in the story) try to figure out who’s crazy and who’s not, and they wrestle for control of the facility.
There are multiple dynamics at work here, between McMurphy and the other patients (to determine who’s the alpha male of the ward, a/k/a the “bull goose loony”), between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, between the patients and the orderlies, and between patients themselves to figure out what their roles are in the “therapeutic community” model of the ward. And there are a cast of characters — Chronics, Acutes, and Vegetables — each with their own story and peculiarities.
As much as I want to recount this story, I really don’t want to say anything more about the “field trip” that a group of the patients take, or about the party they throw at the facility. I assume that many of you have seen the movie. But when I’ve spoken to people who’ve seen the movie, they undoubtedly don’t recall some of the most critical elements of the book.
If you’ve seen the movie and liked it, you should read this book. If you’ve seen the movie and didn’t like it, you should read this book. And if you haven’t seen the movie, you should read this book. I think that about covers it.
I myself can’t wait to see the movie. While Jack Nicholson can get on my nerves a little bit, I think the role of McMurphy is absolutely perfect for him, and I’m excited to see this story play out on the screen.
The first thing that struck me about Stuart Archer Cohen’s The Army of the Republic was it’s Banksy-like artwork. The image captures a man in what appears to be a politically motivated act about to launch himself along a violent arc. As it turns out, it is an image that perfectly captures the essence of the words within its cover. The conflict between words and images turns out to be a central theme of the novel, so it’s an interesting choice on that level as well.
The Army of the Republic takes place in a dystopian United States that some would say didn’t seem all that unlikely just a few years ago. A right-wing administration operates under its own interpretation of the laws of the land. A judiciary stacked by the ruling party seems unlikely to enforce laws detrimental to the Administration. Questionable electronic voting returns threaten to eliminate the power of the ballot. National security interests serve as a smoke screen to all manner of shady dealings. The use of mercenary forces (think Blackwater/Xe) for hire by both the government and corporations ensures that the non-governmental security forces are effectively answerable to no one. Right-wing talk shows serve as an echo chamber for the Administration, reinforcing their message through repetition of sound bites and artfully edited images
Lando (not his real name) is a young a young idealist who has decided that enough is enough. He belongs to a secretive organization known as The Army of the Republic (AOR). The AOR aims to disrupt the information flow of the Administration and highlight the injustices of their corporate cronies by conducting high profile direct actions, which have recently come to include violence, destruction, and general mayhem. In other words, the AOR wants their own images on the evening news to counteract the story lines of corporate news services and the Administration’s talking points. As the AOR’s campaign begins to ramp up, support for their tactics and their cause begins to grow, and a showdown with the administration seems imminent. However, Lando’s view of the world (and justice) as black and white becomes clouded when his parents become engaged in the looming conflict – on opposite sides.
A fascinating part of this novel is the glimpse into the operations of how extreme shadow organizations of the left and right are organized and operate. Cohen also does an excellent job of highlighting the many ways that news and information become distorted on its way to consumers. (In a brief comic note, the news coverage of the action of a riot is called by what amounts to a play-by-play man and a color guy.) It’s enough to make a reader extremely paranoid. The novel stuck with me, and I had lots of questions floating around my head. Luckily the author was gracious enough to submit himself to an interview by the likes of us. Come back tomorrow to check out my interview with Stuart Archer Cohen.
Audio Bonus: The whole time I was reading this book, the soundtrack in my mind was playing the political punk songs of the late seventies and early eighties – songs by bands like The Clash, Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, etc. But the song that seemed to get at the ethos of this novel the most was this one:
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Somehow, I’ve found myself well into February still writing about books that I’ve read in 2009. Maybe I should just let it go, but for some reason I’ve become obsessive about writing about ALL OF THE BOOKS that I read over the year. So to satisfy my OCD, I’ll try to wrap up last year in as few posts as possible. I was particularly slack in writing about the comics that I read last year for two reasons: (1) my approach to comics is completely haphazard, i.e., I pick things up that look interesting without much forethought and (2) I don’t know how to write about them. Here, allow me to highlight item number “2″ for you:
Fables 1 and 2
This series came highly recommended to me from various comics aficionados. The series kicks off with Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile. We learn that the characters of our childhood fables are real and they have been driven from their world into ours. Unsurprisingly, they live among us in New York City where they are able to keep a mostly low profile. Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, etc. are real people with very human shortcomings. It seems those fables were an idealized version of these troubled souls. In Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm, we learn that the non-human fables (like the three little pigs) are forced to live apart from their human counterparts on a farm up-state. This doesn’t sit well some of the animals. And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. The day that I went to buy the next edition, my comics dealer was sold out of Volume 3’s. I haven’t felt the need to overcome this surmountable obstacle. This is one of the problems that I have with comics series: how long do you continue on the potential of a story line before you call it quits?
Cecil and Jordan in New York
Cecil and Jordan in New York was a comic of a completely different stripe. Think of a collection of wry short stories about life for twenty-somethings in NYC and you’ll have a good idea of what Cecil and Jordan offers. These are fresh and interesting stories that somehow were meant to be told with the assistance of pictures. My only complaint is that the slim volume is over too soon. I picked this one up while visiting the bookstore of the comics publisher Drawn and Quarterly. If you find yourself in Montreal, don’t miss this store for any reason.
A Drifting Life
A Drifting Life is the comics memoir of “the godfather of Japanese alternative comics”, Yoshihiro Tatsumi. It is also a doorstop weighing in at 800+ pages. This is a fascinating look at a man and comics movement that I knew absolutely nothing about. It also provides an intriguing glimpse of daily life in post-war Japan and its relationship with the US. One of my issues with comics in general is that the medium tends to set limits on the length of the stories that can be told. However, A Drifting Life, decades in the making, provides a near immersion experience. It took me a week or so to make my way through this excellent book. It’s staggering to think about how many hours of work must have gone into this.
Exit Wounds
I’d say that of the comics discussed in this round-up, Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan was my favorite. A terrorist’s bomb in a busy market brings a strange young woman into the life of Koby Franco. Franco’s long-estranged father may have been among the victims of the blast, and the young Russian woman at this door says that she was his lover. The officials say that Koby’s father was killed in the blast, but his girlfriend has her doubts. The unlikely pair set off to learn the truth, and each brings their own expectations and baggage to the search. Exit Wounds masterfully depicts modern Israeli life while telling an intriguing story. Thumbs up. I picked this one up at Drawn and Quarterly, too.
Nemi (Volume 3)
Nemi is the anti-Cathy. She is a goth. She’s Norwegian. She drinks and swears. And she’s not putting up with any crap from you. Nemi is presented primarily in the traditional 4-panel style of the funny pages. I have not read Volumes 1 or 2 of Nemi’s adventures, but Volume 3 is charming and funny in that sassy, goth, Scandinavian kind of way.
See? All over the map. I have been comic-less so far in 2010. If you’ve got some titles that I should check out, leave your suggestions in the comments.
I’ll admit up front that I listened to this book on CD. I usually have two books around that I’m reading and one in the car for listeningduringmy horrendous Atlanta commute. My car books are usually books I would never admit to reading but this time I waited over 150 days to get Shanghai Girls by Lisa See from the library.
I’ve been interested in reading Lisa See for awhile but her books are popular and there is usually a long wait at the library. However, after learning more about Ms. See herself I was encouraged to wait it out. Ms. See is part Chinese and has traveled extensively throughout China for her research. For one book she was only the second Caucasian person to have visited a particular remote village. Currently, I am very interested in Chinese culture and history since my daughter is enrolled in a Chinese-centric school and learning Mandarin. So in addition to educating myself with bi-racial topics for my daughter, I’m doing my best to learn all I can about China too.
Again, I was hesitant about this author who is read by the masses, but I truly enjoyed listening to this book and would have enjoyed reading it as well! It is read by Janet Song who has a soft Asian-influenced accent which lends even more credibility to the story. If China doesn’t interest you at all, this book would not be a good choice.
It is about two sisters May and Pearl in Shanghai, China, 1937. Narrated by Pearl, everything is wonderful in China during this time. Pearl and May are “Beautiful Girls” who pose for artists who paint them for advertisements. The International District is full of Americans, English and Japanese and everyone is happy. The girls’ father owns a lucrative rickshaw business and they are doing quite well. The girls, who even have American names, don’t pay much attention to Chinese traditions but it’s all ok, life is great!
Oh but happiness never lasts. Father loses company. Father loses daughters in bad gambling debt. Father disappears. The Japanese invade China. Girls must get to Los Angeles, California to join arranged-marriage husbands.
It is quite an adventure. I loved this book because in addition to a tear-wrenching tale about their voyage from Shanghai to Hong Kong and then to Los Angeles, it is also a story about sisters and the love sisters have for each other that can never be torn apart. During their journey their love for each other and their Chinese traditions are tested many times. Pearl is a dragon sign and May is the sheep. Throughout the story Ms. See frequently shows the reader how each girl demonstrates the characteristics of her birth sign, a very important aspect of Chinese culture. Ms. See beautifully weaves many more Chinese traditions into this story. Historical fiction at its best.
The journey from Shanghai to Los Angeles is one that probably none of us will ever experience. Once they arrive at Angel Island in San Francisco the reader is reminded how much the United States discriminated against the Chinese. Like many immigrants throughout the years, Pearl, May and their new family receive unbelievable open hatred directed toward them. But what is their alternative really? They can’t go back. After the Japanese, the Communists take over. Pearl and May sit for months in Angel Island and their sisterly bond is strengthened due to the experience on the island before being released to their husbands. Like most immigrants learn, America isn’t exactly how it was described. Instead of a big house with a big garden, the entire extended family lives in a little apartment in Chinatown. The Louie family works hard, sends their children to school and tries to be the best American citizens they can be. American government officials are continually hanging out in Chinatown to catch Communist sympathizers and illegal immigrants. Life is hard. They work a lot, there are family secrets, and tragedies fall on the family all the while they are trying to raise a little girl to be American. Or Chinese in America? Another challenge for the family they did not expect.
I don’t want to give any more of the story away. It satisfied everything I want in a book: great story with a lot of emotion and for me, a wonderful historical picture of China and Los Angeles from 1937 until the 1950’s. I think the wait for another one of Ms. See’s books is 200 days and I will wait it out.
In the midst of my continuing quest to ensure that my bi-racial daughter is ready for any racial challenge, I was fortunate enough to receive The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by first time author Heidi Durrow (Thanks Tim). I was led to believe that this story is solely about a young bi-racial girl’s identity crisis. This would have been a-ok for me. Surprisingly, it turned out to be much more than that. It is also about a young girl’s quest to make sense of a horrible family tragedy and her longing for a parental love that all girls need as they grow up.
After a horrible accident, Rachel whose dad is black and mom is Danish, finds herself in Portland, Oregon with her paternal grandma. The story begins with questions about her race from strangers that she never experienced before. When asked “What are you?” She answers with “I’m a good speller, I’m smart” and she realizes this is not what they want to know. “Papa never told us we were black.” It’s troubling for her since she never before thought about what it meant to be “black”. The family lived in Germany before moving to the United States which can explain her confusion. Even her mom is confused by this and writes in her own diary: ”Roger never was black. He was charming and fun and handsome…..I wasn’t ever thinking he was black.” The black girls at school make fun of Rachel and tell her that she is not black enough, her eyes are blue, her skin is too light, her hair isn’t right, she’s too smart.
This topic of not being truly black could be explored more from the bi-racial point of view. It is interesting to me that a lot of black people tell other black people that they must act, look and believe certain things in order to be legitimately “black” or “African American.” I’ve never had anyone tell me that I’m supposed to think a certain way or have certain friends because I’m white. In this case, Rachel has never been aware of color differences in people and it is a rude awakening.
While Rachel works on her racial identity, she is raised by an “old-school” grandma. Grandma isn’t very communicative or affectionate with Rachel. Rachel, who doesn’t have either parent, needs this affection and love and ends up finding it in other ways. In addition, Rachel remembers in bits and pieces what happened on that fateful evening with her family.
Rachel has a lot going on. She copes with all of these emotions by putting everything into a blue jar inside of her. She describes the jar to a family friend one evening:
“…I imagine that inside of a person there’s a blue bottle, you know?…The bottle is where everything sad or mean or confusing can go. But in the bottle there is a seed that you let grow. Even in the bottle it can grow big and green. It’s full of all those feelings that are in there, but beautiful and growing too.”
Rachel frequently refers to the bottle and I think it’s such a beautiful description.
The story is unique in the way it is told. Rachel and her mother are told in the first person, and her mother’s journals are represented in a different font and in broken English (certainly with a Danish accent). The stories of Laronne (boss of Rachel’s mother) and Brick, a neighbor boy who is a cool character in his own right, are told in the third person. These literally devices are not at all off putting and actually help tell the story in a creative way.
As a mom, this book made me want to hold Rachel and tell her that everything would work out. As a female who grew up without a strong father it made me want to tell Rachel that it will be ok but to be careful. It made me cry, laugh and get angry. The book left me wanting to know more…I want to know more about the characters’ history, I want to know where they end up later in life and I want an entire book on Brick! In a short amount of time Ms. Durrow made me really care about all the characters.
Three cheers to Ms. Durrow who made me yearn for both a sequel and a prequel!
Living in the South I do get tired of the endemic racial issues here. However, I understand is the long, deep-seated history that cannot and must not be forgotten. So, while current race relations exhaust me, the history behind it all fascinates me. I have so many questions: “What was it really like?” ”Did both blacks and whites truly accept the status quo willingly?” “Was anyone fighting behind the scenes?” ”Who?” What would it have been like to be on the freedom rides?” and finally “What would I have done? Really? Would I have accepted it? or tried to make a change?” I will admit that I may be more interested because my husband is Black (no, not African American) and I am not. I want our daughter to have a clear understanding of her family’s past and her heritage.
Although The Help by Kathryn Stockett is fiction, I don’t doubt that the stories told by the main characters definitely happened at least once if not a hundred times. The book takes place in Mississippi in the early 1960’s when ordinary blacks and whites did not mix except when one was working for the other – when the women were so busy with Junior League obligations, the monumental task of raising their children often fell to their black maids.
The author, herself from Mississippi, tells the story of three different people from their own point of view. The “White Woman”, “Skeeter”, just finished college, returned home and isn’t comfortable with what she sees happening. Her own nanny was sent away for unknown reasons. All her friends are married and having children. Skeeter wants to work and all she can get is an entry level job at the newspaper. (- A separate but related issue that can be explored in When Everything Changed by Gail Collins.)
The hot topic of the day is consistently pushed by her best friend, “Hilly” president of the Junior League. She believes all maids should have their own “separate, individual” bathrooms apart from the family so the family doesn’t catch any diseases that Black people are “known to carry”. As all of the women are building separate bathrooms for their maids, they are collecting money for the starving children of Africa. The irony of this endeavor completely escapes these women.
Skeeter decides to anonymously write a book about what it’s like for black women to work for whites. She secretly enlists the help of two maids, Minny and Abilene who coincidentally work for her friends. The book is ultimately published and any dreams of keeping it anonymous die. Although very serious, the book has some very humorous parts that left me cheering for the maids. In the end, “the times they are a changin’” and it affects everyone.
Abilene is a very faithful and dedicated maid who loves all the children she has cared for. In her own sly way, she tries to teach the kids a sense of equality and justice. She knows the child is listening when something interesting happens with the child’s teacher.
Minny is a very outspoken woman who finds herself unable to get a job because of false accusations spread around town in the gossip circle. Minny eventually finds a job with my favorite character Mill Celia, a country white woman who doesn’t understand why the Jr. Leaguers won’t return her calls. She faces her own struggles in the book and it’s the relationship between her and Minny that pulled at my heart strings. They care very much for each other and although Miss Celia would probably admit because she “doesn’t know any better”, Minny fights it. Miss Celia even eats her meals with Minny at the same table! That is scandalous.
When a book evokes strong emotions in the reader, I consider it a great book. Ms. Stockett does such a wonderful job developing the characters and story that I am scared when they have their secret meetings. I don’t want Minny to get fired! I’m angry at the way things were, I want to rally behind Miss Celia and feel triumphant when good things happen. This old, very much written-about story of blacks and whites is made fresh by the narrative. The author really makes us care about these characters!
Some people intentionally keep away from the Best Seller Lists but this book is currently at the top and there is a reason for it.
Sometimes this blog thing pays off. For instance, I never would have learned about the amazing debut novel Radiant Days by Michael FitzGerald without it. I was talking about books over beers with author and all-around cool guy Ben Tanzer (who I first “met” through these virtual pages). We were tossing out the titles of books that we thought had been criminally overlooked. I forget what I said, but Ben was fairly insistent that I drop everything else that I was doing so that I could run, not walk, to the nearest bookseller and grab a copy of Radiant Days. I owe Ben a huge debt of gratitude for steering me toward this stellar novel (which is on my favorite books read in 2009 list).
The globe-trotting book begins in San Francisco in the midst of the dot-com boom. Anthony Sinclair is a twenty something who is getting paid very well for doing very little, and he feels like a bit of a fraud. After an unfortunate incident, he becomes awash in guilt and need of a change. Anthony is wallowing in a self-destructive haze when a beautiful and mysterious bartender, Gisela, invites him to travel with her back home to Budapest. Sensing an opportunity for something positive, a fresh start and the potential for a relationship with someone seemingly way out of his league, he agrees. But what starts out with so much possibility, rapidly falls down a rabbit hole of what one of my literature professors would call “moral bankruptcy.”
In Budapest, Anthony finds himself with little to do. Gisela come and goes irregularly and on her on her own schedule – and without feeling the need to explain herself later. Anthony is left to fall in with a group of expatriots and English speakers led by Marsh, a cocky and enigmatic British journalist. Instead of finding a renewed sense of purpose, Anthony finds himself ever more disconnected from the world around him. The Europeans that he encounters are in many ways even more morally adrift than Anthony. Where his remove seems to have evolved from a life of relative affluence and ease that seems undeserved, Anthony’s acquaintances on the continent seem to operate on a different moral plane altogether. Their lives bear the permanent imprint and emotional distance brought on by generations of constant war and international conflict.
Things come to a head when Marsh, Gisela, and Anthony set out together for Croatia during the last days of war in the Balkans. Marsh is going to cover the war, and Gisela is setting out on a vague mission that may be of a dubious moral/legal nature. Anthony is more or less tagging along without really questioning his motives for continuing on with people whose acceptance he craves and yet is becoming increasingly more disenchanted with. It is made clear to Anthony on this journey that Americans have no history (relatively speaking) and no real understanding of the history of the broader world. When Marsh calls Anthony out on this point, it is really an indictment of all of us (Americans):
“Didn’t you say you went to college?” he asked.
“Yeah”
“European history? World history? What did they teach you?”
“I didn’t really take any history.”
“How did you graduate?”
“I only had to take classes in my major.”
“You didn’t read Bridge on the Drina? Ivo Andric won the Nobel Prize.”
“Missed that one.”
“No requirements?”
“Not Balkan history.”
“This isn’t Balkan history. This is the history of Western civilization…our civilization..wouldn’t exist if places like Croatia and the greater Balkans hadn’t so generously taken it up the arse for the past one thousand years.”
During the journey from Budapest to Croatia, the novel had me scrambling to Google Earth to figure out where exactly the travelers were (which further served to highlight my own ignorance of this part of the world). I was surprised to learn that many of the places mentioned are stunningly beautiful (Exhibit A and Exhibit B), at least as viewed form here and after the war. Helpfully, someone has compiled a Google map of all of the places mentioned in Radiant Days (with page numbers and reference!). If you plan on reading the book, bookmark the map already.
Radiant Days is a tremendous novel. For me, it raised many interesting questions. How far are you willing to follow that really hot girl that you know is no good for you and how much are you willing to put up with? What are the limits of moral relativism? Is it possible to be more emotionally insulated and self-absorbed than when you are in your twenties? What does it take to snap out of that deadening torpor? Where do you fit into the world as a North American? What responsibilities (if any) come along with the geographic accident of birth? Simply put this is a novel that sticks with you when you’re done.
So. Many thanks to Ben Tanzer for sending this gem my way. And now I share the love and heartily recommend it to you.
Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the death of John Updike. Fittingly I just finished Rabbit at Rest, the fourth and final installment in the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. And for any of you who’ve found yourself intrigued by fictional accounts of the American male condition, you’d be well-served to delve into these books if you haven’t already (a dare to anyone who read Independence Day, regardless of whether you liked it or not).
As I’ve said in posts about the earlier Rabbit books, our main character is a pretty despicable person in many respects. I don’t relate to a lot of things he does or to a lot of the things he feels. Yet I couldn’t turn away from watching his life unfold.
Rabbit at Rest opens with Rabbit and his wife Janice living in their Summer home in Deleon, Florida, and heading to the airport to pick up their son Nelson, his wife Pru, and their two children, who are coming to visit. Rabbit is in his mid-fifties and is still trying to figure out his place in the world now that he’s the father of a grown son and the grandfather of two small children. As he balances life in a retirement community in Florida for half of each year with his roots and history in Brewer, Pennsylvania, we learn more and more about things he’s done and things he’s thought about and continues to think about. And when Rabbit suffers a heart attack while coming in from a rough ride on a Sunfish with his granddaughter, he is confronted with a need to re-examine his life and what he should do with the rest of it. And his inherent selfish and arrogant nature get in the way of his doing all of the things that would be best not only for those around him, but for himself. Sort of ironic to me.
When Rabbit makes one particular decision that comes back to haunt him, he is once again thrust into a battle for control of his life — a theme that has surfaced throughout this series. And once again, Rabbit attempts to take control of his life by throwing away the life that he has, both metaphorically and in a way literally.
This final book in the Rabbit series finishes much like Rabbit, Run (the first book in the series) started, with Rabbit re-living his glory days as a high-school basketball star by intruding on a youngster shooting around at a pick-up court.
Updike is without a doubt a master of the English language, and a master storyteller as well. And while I feel that Rabbit at Rest is the best of the four Rabbit books, I can’t be sure that I feel that way only because of the closure it brings to our main character, or because the specific events that take place with Rabbit are best told to us by Updike in this book. Regardless, if you are going to read one sentence from this series, you owe it to yourself to read every sentence in the series, starting with the first. Only then can you truly and fully appreciate the characters that Updike has created.
The short story collection Dead Boys by Richard Lange was one of the best that I’ve ever read. A San Francisco Times reviewer called the book one of the best story collections of the last fifty years. It was pretty damn good. (Check out my review here.) Richard Lange also had the lack of judgement to be among the first authors to subject himself to a BGB interview. It should come as no surprise then, that I was eager to get my hands on Lange’s first novel, This Wicked World. I picked it up right when it came out, but then a funny thing happened. I couldn’t read it. It sat on my shelf for months because I was sure that I would be disappointed when it didn’t live up to the promise of Dead Boys. Eventually I got over it and gave it a shot..
One of the things that I really enjoyed about Dead Boys is Lange’s ability to bring the various neighborhoods of Los Angeles (a place that I’ve never been) to sharp and crackling life. In Wicked World, Lange has the room to explore Los Angeles from the faux glitz of Hollywood Boulevard to the tenements of illegal workers and almost everywhere in between. Similarly, all manner of Angelinos find their way onto these pages.
Jimmy Boone is an ex-con and former bodyguard to the stars. He’s stuck bar tending and working for an abusive boss who exploits Jimmy’s limited options for his own needs. A a friend calls on Jimmy to help out with a private investigation job, mostly by standing around looking like a cop. He is hesitant to join in at first, but it seems like a way to briefly escape the tedium of his life. Which naturally becomes quite the understatement. The seemingly innocuous gig quickly pulls Jimmy into a hidden world of crime, violence, and mayhem. Forget keeping on the right side of his parole officer, he’ll be lucky to get out alive.
Lange is an excellent writer. This is a very good, gritty, crime novel that packs a punch while keeping it real. Lange excels in creating a palpable sense of place and that skill is on full display here. However, the narrative was not as tightly wound as the short stories in Dead Boys which left me a little disappointed, but I suppose that is to be expected.
My biggest gripe with the novel though is an epilogue that feels as though some suit at the publisher coerced Lange to tack it on the end. The novel ends as it should, with some ambiguity about what might happen next. The kind of ending that keeps you thinking about a novel when you’re done. And then, suddenly, there’s an epilogue that spells out exactly how everything turns out down the road. Bummed me out. Check out the novel, but carefully remove the epilogue first.
Initially I was hesitant to check out The Awakener: A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties by Helen Weaver. I was sure that it would amount to a hagiography. Weaver had dated Kerouac for a short time in the fifties, and a lightly disguised version of the author appears as a character in one of Kerouac’s novels. However, the novel is published by City Lights in San Francisco, which is owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This fact seems to amount to an official “Beats Seal of Approval”, so I decided to check it out.
Weaver tells an interesting story of the escape of a young woman from the Leave it to Beaver 50’s of Scarsdale, NY to the happening scene of Greenwich Village. One day, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and friends end up on her doorstep looking for a place to crash. Kerouac and Weaver begin a brief and tumultuous relationship. Ultimately, she must turn out the alcoholic and seemingly rudderless Kerouac. With the value added of hindsight, Weaver comes up with this eulogy of the relationship:
I rejected him for the same reason America rejected him. He woke us up in the middle of the night in the long dream of the fifties. He interfered with our sleep.
Naturally she means this literally for herself and figuratively for America. Weaver’s memoir also discusses her dalliances in religion and psychotherapy. She draws on these experiences to explain how the French-Canadian Kerouac’s Catholic upbringing informed his Buddhism, and how both philosophies made him who he was.
Weaver’s story also sheds light on the publishing business, in which she was employed, as it existed in the 1950’s. It sounds like little has changed since then:
It was here that I first learned that from a publisher’s point of view the author is a necessary evil: a sort of un-housebroken, hypersensitive enfant terrible who needs to be nursed along, ignores deadlines, and makes impossible demands, and that it would be a whole lot easier and more efficient to publish books without having to deal with them–except for the inconvenient fact that you need then in order to have books to publish. When an author was actually physically present in the house there was a sense of excitement in the air…as if a wild animal were loose in the halls.
The subtitle of the book, A Memoir of Kerouac and the Fifties, seems to lose its focus later in the book as Weaver begins to talk about the sixties and that time that she hooked up with Lenny Bruce. (She had a thing for doomed young men, apparently.) Ultimately she comes back to Jack and the changing perceptions of the Beats and their place in the world of Letters.
Weaver now lives in Woodstock and has embraced some new age ideas. She has written books about communicating with animals and astrology. She has also helpfully included complete astrology charts for the main players discussed in her memoir. I admit, she lost me completely there. In the end, Weaver’s memoir, though uneven and occasionally a little too new age-y for my tastes, is a fascinating look at the private side of Jack Kerouac and other luminaries, the Beat’s scene in 1950’s New York, and the legacy of the Beat Generation.
It’s a snow day here in Atlanta. Not much snow, but we’re completely unequipped to deal with it. Our Nordic-like conditions this morning reminded me of Robert Goolrick’s excellent novel A Reliable Wife. And then I remembered that I forgot to write about it after reading it last winter. Mea culpa. Well, better late than never.
A Reliable Wife takes place in the frozen wilds of Wisconsin. A wealthy industrialist has separated himself from everyone who lives and works near him. They are essentially his employees. He waits in the cold for his new wife to arrive by train. A wife that he has never met that has responded to his advertisement in the Chicago papers for “a reliable wife.” As one might expect, a person who answers such an add must be looking to escape to a better place. This wife brings with her secrets of an unexpected past.
A Reliable Wife reads like a classic – not a “modern classic” but a 19th Century literary classic. It’s a neat trick that Goolrick pulls off here, and he does it with a light touch. I highly recommend this novel (just out in paperback) for your winter reading needs. BGB’s Russ also named it to his Top 3 Books of ‘09 list.
As I often mention here, I’m a big fan of the intersection of music and books. Knowing that interest, David Zweig’s novelSwimming Inside the Sun came to me highly recommended. I’m glad it did. Its an insightful look at the creation of art and the emotional wreckage that can come from putting all of yourself into something.
Swimming Inside the Sun is the story of Daniel Green, a New York musician. He has an affordable Manhattan apartment, and he’s received a nice advance to go along with his major label recording contract. Sounds great. There is a rub – and it is a big one. After fighting every step of the way to make the album that he wanted to create, the way he wanted it created, things change at the label. The suits no longer want to release, promote, market or otherwise spend another moment (or dollar) more on his creation. They’ve canned his album and contract. Also: they won’t let him have the recordings, because they paid for them.
With money enough to live on – for a while anyway – and having been royally screwed on his big break, Daniel’s ambitions to do much of anything dry up. Thus begins a cycle of destructive inward reflection and emotional/creative paralysis. Daniel begins to jot ever increasingly complex notes to himself on yellow post-it notes that he begins to affix to his walls. He can’t bring himself to touch his guitar – or do much of anything else really – except think, watch TV, and write notes to himself.
The novel features a brilliant scene that was funny in a humorous train wreck sort of way. Daniel becomes so inward looking that the “noise” of the outside world finally makes him snap. He makes a sign that says “shut up!” He then walks around New York City holding the sign up to random people on the street, cell phone users, Apple advertisements – the noise of the modern world. This experiment does not end well for Daniel. Whether or not Daniel can pull himself out of this downward spiral creates the tension of the novel, and I’m not telling.
Getting inside someone like Daniel’s mind can make for challenging reading at times. There are more than a few authorial asides, expository bursts, and extended internal dialogues. Daniel, at least, seems aware of this:
You f*cking bastards. You demand action. You protest: When are things going to happen? Where’s the thrust, the suspense, the plot unfurling like a red carpet unrolling for the Queen? No more thoughts! No more authorial asides, expository bursts, extended internal dialogues!
Some may be put off by Daniel’s endless introspection, but I think it is a necessary part of the story. One other minor quibble: I lost an afternoon after a reference to the Mandolin Bros. music store on Staten Island left me browsing their “how-much-are-you-willing-to-spend” web site at length. Who walks in and buys this?
But I digress… Swimming Inside the Sun is an immersive view of the demons of creativity. I found it to be an engrossing and ultimately rewarding novel. I’d recommend it for the “Shut Up” piece alone.
Having just finished Rabbit Redux, I’m now three-quarters of the way through John Updike’s Rabbit series, although I haven’t read the four books in the order in which they were written and take place, having started with the third book, Rabbit is Rich, and then high-tailing it back to the beginning with rabbit, run. I can truly say that I’m starting to realize why such heaps of praise have been thrown on Updike (may he rest in peace, having passed away this past year).
Rabbit’s story is epic in so many ways, yet is so not epic in so many others. It’s epic in that it can sustain my interest through three (soon to be four) books, and it’s epic in that so many of the events that take place in Rabbit’s life are so far removed from anything that has ever happened to me. At the same time, though, these are not events that I wish I could emulate, or that would typically be written about on the front page of the paper, although they are really strong events in an individual’s life.
Something that fascinates me about this character and this series and the way Updike has crafted Rabbit’s tale is that the four books were written approximately a decade apart from one another and cover periods in Rabbit’s life that are approximately a decade apart from one another. When I finished rabbit, run, I assumed that Updike was going to put pen to paper immediately for a sequel; it wasn’t until I looked at the dates of publication that I realized he took a decade off while Rabbit spent the same amount of time growing into the next phase of his life — the part that would unfold in Rabbit Redux.
The thing that struck me immediately about Rabbit Redux was how things turned around completely on our main character (Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom) from the first book. In rabbit, run, he had decided that life had more to offer than what he had at that point, and he took it upon himself to grab life by the horns and try to shape a more satisfying existence for himself. While it would be a stretch to call his efforts a success, at least he was in control. As Rabbit Redux begins, Rabbit and his wife Janice are together, but Rabbit soon figures out that Janice is cheating on Rabbit with a co-worker at Janice’s father’s car lot, Charlie Stavros, and Rabbit’s control of his life is taken away from him. Again, it’s not that one could say Rabbit was completely happy with his life at the time of Janice’s infidelity, but at least he felt that he was in charge. All of sudden, life starts controlling him rather than the other way around.
It was also fascinating to me the way Rabbit handled Janice’s affair — by telling her that she should go spend time with Charlie and figure out what she wanted. While that may sound like control, I certainly didn’t view it as such. At best it was acquiescence, a move that left Rabbit alone at his house with his son Nelson. But not for long. By accepting an invitation from an African-American co-worker to meet out at Jimbo’s Friendly Lounge, Rabbit becomes mixed up with a rich runaway from Connecticut named Jill and a Vietnam vet who appears to be her pusher, Skeeter. These two characters truly take over his life.
Without getting into where Jill and Skeeter’s involvement takes Rabbit, I’ll simply point out that these three novels in the series are incredible portraits of our culture at the times in which they were set (and indeed were written). While the first book oozed with early-1960’s Americana, this book reflects so much of the elements that made the end of the 1960’s and beginning of the 1970’s so unique — the moon landing, free love, drugs, Vietnam, and just a groovy, open mentality.
I’ve started Rabbit at Rest, the final book in the series, and I’m absolutely impatient to finish it.
Machiko Kakutani, writing for the New York Times, wrote a crushing review of Jonathan Lethem’s latest novel, Chronic City. Kakutani bemoans, ”…in this tedious, overstuffed novel…Mr. Lethem’s Chronic City seems like an insipid, cartoon version of Manhattan…(and) In the end the reader simply doesn’t care…” That review ran the morning after I bought the book in Manhattan. Thanks for pooping in my cornflakes, Michiko! It was going to take more than that to run me off though.Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitudeare two of my favorite books. It felt a sort of vindication when the New York Times Book Review named Chronic City one of the Top 10Books of 2009. In my opinion, however, neither view is right.
Like Fortress, Chronic City is largely the story of the friendship between two men, Chase Insteadman and Perkus Tooth. Chase is a former child actor, currently out of work, who remains in the public eye as the fiance of a doomed female astronaut trapped in space. Perkus Tooth is a former rock critic who spends his days smoking lots of pot (the titular chronic) and theorizing about – stuff. The two men and most of the characters who drift in and out of their orbit are artists, writers, actors, independently wealthy, or are otherwise disconnected from the quotidian world.
Chronic City takes place in Manhattan, a much different place than the rough and tumble Brooklyn of Motherless andFortress. Manhattan as represented here is a complex, unknowable place where strange phenomena occur that are taken in stride by a populace too busy to notice. The novel takes place post-9/11, and the aftermath of that event is only referred to obliquely. The entire south end of Manhattan is described as being “in a fog.” Although this is meant literally, it also neatly describes the prevailing mood of the Financial District and its residents/workers/survivors.
The feelings of detachment, alienation, and loneliness in the center of a city of millions of people is a central theme to the book. The complexity of life in a place teeming with people and the hidden world that ensures its successful orderly operation necessarily boggles the mind. Perkus quotes Alan Watts:
“You mustn’t concern yourself with information from outside your immediate village. People…make demimondes for the purposes of of sensory sanity. Nobody–that’s no body–really believes in the news from beyond the boundaries of their neighborhood or pocket universe. Manhattan is one of those, you know, a pocket universe.”
Perkus and Chase are definitely members of a constructed demimonde with little news of the world outside of their prescribed borders. Commentary on the media’s role in the perception of a collective reality is also a theme in this book. A “war free” edition of the New York Times is available for those who don’t want to be bummed out or who prefer to limit their news to that of their own immediate village.
My view is that Kakutani was too quick to dismiss the aimlessness of the Chase-Perkus gang and their struggle to process the world around them. Maybe as a resident of (or a least a worker in) Manhattan, she has lost sight of how unreal Manhattan is to those of us from some place else or how seemingly all-consuming the city appears to be to those who do live there. Then again, I think that she is absolutely right that the novel drags in places and seems a little rudderless. Chronic City did eventually arrive at a satisfying conclusion for this reader, but it took its sweet time in getting there. This is not Lethem’s best novel, nor do I think that it qualifies as a top 10 of the year. That said, Lethem fans should find plenty to enjoy in this latest effort.
A while back I decided to introduce myself to John Updike’s character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom by reading the third book in that series, Rabbit is Rich, since it had won the Pulitzer Prize. As I noted in my review of that book, I had wished I’d started at the beginning instead, and so I’ve gone back and done that, withrabbit, run, Updike’s first book in the series.
And it seems perfectly clear in retrospect that Updike knew he was going to write more about Rabbit after rabbit, run. Not to spoil the “ending” of this book, but there is just way too much left on the table as this one concludes to think that Updike wouldn’t put pen to paper again for Rabbit’s followers’ sake.
Rabbit Angstrom is a former high school basketball star living in Mt. Judge, Pennsylvania. He’s working as a salesman for the MagiPeel Peeler Company and is married to pregnant, alcoholic Janice, whom Rabbit doesn’t really seem particularly close to, and they already have a young son, Nelson. As rabbit, run begins, Harry’s lack of direction and certainty in his life is abundantly clear, and as the title somewhat metaphorically suggests, he decides to take drastic action to try to put himself in a better place. It reminds me of the old phrase “what’s the worst that can happen?” as Rabbit sort of decides that there’s no law that says he can’t just extricate himself from his current situation. I won’t share details about how exactly he goes about it, but as a married man and father, I was both totally captivated and absolutely horrified by the decisions he made and the feelings he seemed to exhibit (or not).
I’ve read a book or two about grown men trying to make sense of their lives, and I can’t think of any that I’ve found as engaging as the Rabbit series (at least what I’ve read of it so far). Don’t get me wrong — I don’t like Rabbit Angstrom — I think he’s a pretty awful person. But his story is a total trainwreck and I can’t look away.
China Miéville is another is those authors that I’d been meaning to get around to reading. I had vaguely remembered coming across glowing reviews of his past books somewhere or other. When I came across his latest book, The City and The City, hiddenin The Strand’s downstairs half-off shelves, it seemed like it was high time to pull the trigger.
One of the best things about The City and The City is the strange, but completely believable world the author has created. The novel takes place in a Baltic city-state that has been divided for centuries. Unlike most divided cities, there are no walls or other physical impediments splitting the city. The divisions are entirely cultural and are deeply ingrained. The two cities – Beszel and Ul Qoma – exist “grosstopically” are deeply enmeshed, with areas that may be common to both cities described as “crosshatched”. Citizens of the two cities must master the art of practiced heedlessness towards the foreign city and its inhabitants clearly in their midst. Visitors to the strange city-state would have a harder time:
…they would have had to undergo mandatory training and passed the not-unstringent entrance exam, both its theoretical and practical-role-play elements, to qualify for their visas. They would know, at least in outline, key signifiers of architecture, clothing, alphabet and manner, outlaw colors and gestures, obligatory details…
Noticeably sensing the citizens of the other city in any way is a strictly enforced taboo. To violate the taboo is known as a “breach.” The mysterious enforcers of the taboo are known simply as Breach. Miéville notes the seriousness with which abuses of the stricture are handled:
Trust to Breach, we grow up hearing, unsee and don’t mention the Ul Qoman pickpockets or muggers at work even if you notice, which you shouldn’t, from where you stand in Beszel, because breach is a worse transgression than theirs.
Did you catch the “unsee” there? Miéville infuses his dystopian vision with plenty of Orwellian word play. ”Unsee”, “unsmell”, and “unhear” define the methods by which citizens of both cities choose to be oblivious to people and places within the immediate vicinity. Topolgangers, grisstopically, disensus, and liminality are some of my favorite neologisms.
Don’t worry, there is a plot, too. A seemingly straightforward murder becomes anything but as a detective in Beszel follows leads to the other city, Ul Qoma, and the seedy underbellies of both. Eventually detectives from both sides join forces to solve a crime that seems purposefully executed to exploit the grey areas between the two worlds. The novel features also features one of the most bizarre chase scenes (on foot) that I’ve ever read.
The City and The City is an engaging novel that wonderfully blends the crime novel genre with thoughtful social commentary. Miéville explores the ways in which we separate ourselves from others and can consciously or unconsciously “unsee” the people around us. This is one of my favorite novels of the year – hands down.
When I first started to read the early glowing reviews of David Owen’s Green Metropolis: Why Living Smarter, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability, I’ll admit that I was skeptical. I bought it anyway, and I promptly had my mind blown. In a nutshell Owen’s thesis is this: big cities are inherently greener than the rural/suburban landscapes that many green authorities would have you believe are the platonic ideal of green living. That’s right, New York City is greener than Vermont. I read this book while on a trip to New York, which was too bad for my hosts. I provided them with near constant updates about why their city was one of the greenest on Earth. It got a little obnoxious. (Sorry, yall!)
Owen sets it up like this:
…We decided to make out first home in a Utopian community in New York state. For seven years we lived quite contentedly in circumstances that would strike most Americans as austere in the extreme: our living space measured just seven hundred square feet, and we didn’t have a lawn, a clothes dryer, or a car. We did our grocery shopping on foot and when we needed to travel longer distances we used public transportation. Because space at home was scarce, we seldom acquired new possessions of significant size. Our electric bill worked out to about a dollar a day. The Utopian community was Manhattan.
The reasons that New York is greener are varied. New Yorkers use less gasoline than the rest of us – way less (9 gallons per person per year). It’s possible to live in New York City and never get a driver’s license. Walking is a viable daily means of transportation. Public transportation is excellent. New Yorker’s activities take up remarkably less space and are accordingly more efficient. (The author gives the example of his workplace, the Conde Naste building. If built like a suburban office park, it would take up over 150 acres. And everyone would have to drive to get there.) Living spaces that share walls cut down on energy costs. New Yorkers live longer than the rest of us and are able to remain independent longer, too (all that walking is good for you). And so on.
In the second chapter, Owen lays out how the case of our oil dependency in this country and how well and truly screwed we all are as a result. It is impossible, Owen argues, to continue living anything close to the way that we have been. That’s a sobering assessment. We are going to have to change how we live dramatically whether we want to or not. The model that Owen puts forth as a solution is that of our largest cities. We need to live closer to one another in densely developed areas. We need to live in smaller spaces. Our cities need to be walkable and have excellent public transportation. Most difficult of all, we need to stop driving.
Along the way, Owen examines some of the “green” activities that may make us feel better, but are largely window dressing (or just plain wrong-headed) in the context of our oil addiction:
Anything that eases traffic in urban areas (makes driving more appealing) is bad
LEED “green” architecture is not so great (standards are difficult to document; does a poor job of putting buildings in context – i.e., a green office building that requires all of its workers to drive to/from work and out and back at lunch is not so green)
Large Victorian-style parks (think Olmsted parks like Central Park, Prospect Park, Piedmont Park in Atlanta) that break up urban walking routes are utilized less than smaller neighborhood parks
Locovorism is not a sustainable way for all of us to get all of our food
Vertical farming in cities is lunacy
Recycling may make you feel warm and fuzzy but is probably almost completely undone by your driving
Anything involving two people living in a 5000 square foot house (no matter what kind of earth friendly flooring they choose) is bad
If you live in a suburban or rural area, this make is going to make you feel, depending on your attitude about such things, somewhere between a little bit and a lotta bit crummy. Don’t worry though, the author is right there with you. Owen lives in rural Connecticut and is trying to work through the same issues as the rest of us.
In short, Green Metropolis is well deserving of all of the early review praise that I read. I’ll add my own: Green Metropolis is a lucid, well-argued book that will force you to change the way you view our world. It is a must read if our environmental future is something that concerns you. Read it already.
This review is already much longer than most that we run here on BGB, and I feel like I could write about this thought-provoking book all day long. Still, I’m not really doing the book justice because I am scrambling to get this post out so that I can let you know this: David Owen will be participating in a lecture/reading/interview with WABE’s Valerie Jackson at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library tomorrow night (11/12) at 7PM. Free.
Books, Fiction, Review | Tim | 
March 2, 2010 8:24 am | 
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