Counterbalance

I Was Bad at Vroman's

I went in for Elaine Dundy's Dud Avocado, I left with so much more. Such is a visit to Vroman's on a glorious Sunday in Pasadena. Bookish haul includes:

• The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
• The Angry Buddhist by Seth Greenland
• Suddenly, A Knock at the Door by Etgar Keret
• A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava
• Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift

I had no idea, when I waxed poetic about Graham Swift recently, that he had a new novel out. Though the title leaves much to be desired (really? there wasn't ANY other title that felt more original?), I am now deciding if I should re-read all that came before or just dive in as I would a chocolate bar after a chocolate fast (which I've never done, mind you, I'm not that crazy)?

Also: I finished Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station last night. Holy hell. I love, love, loved it. So beautiful. So spare and yet expansive. So full of all the things we think but never say. So full of all the contradiction we hold within and yet try so hard to pretend we have polished. Still thinking over this one. I don't want to start anything else until I've savored this one a bit longer. Have you read it? Do tell.

Reader-Writer Moment #515

I've been reading Steve Erickson's These Dreams of You in fits and starts. It's been a crazy week of work, so this novel has become a strange respite (mostly because it is in no way a respite) from work madness. The novel has its own internal madness going on, so it has made for an odd reading week.

Two bits have stayed with me, though, and I keep thinking back on them when I'm on six back to back conference calls day after day (and if you can be on my mind during all of that, that's something, no?):

 "This is prosperity, he bays at them beneath montana nights, calculated as much by what's polluted, what's killed, what's secured and incarcerated, but never by a child's delight, a poem's spell, the immutable power of a kept promise. It's a prosperity that measures everything that means nothing and nothing that means everything. It tells all of us, he concludes to the crowds, everything about our country except why it's ours."

                                                   

 "I don't know how much time I have," he says, "to become the person that I hope I am."

 

Neither of these passages give you any idea - in a tangible way - what this novel is about. And yet, they do. I'm not yet at the point where I'm clear how I even feel about the book. I was very much into it early on, lost some steam during the Kennedy stuff, now I'm in a haze that might be more related to too much work than a failing of the novel.

I'll circle back on this one though, as Erickson is attempting to do something interesting that I admire whether he succeeds fully or not.

Post-Read Reviews

I hide my eyes from all reviews about a book until I've read it. Then, particularly if I had a strong reaction to a book, I'll take my time thinking about it for a week or two and then curiosity gets the best of me. What did others think? Am I the only one who liked it/hated it? If we agree, did we agree on the same things? If we disagreed, do I agree with the ways in which we disagree? I have to know.

And so, almost a week to the day that I finished The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits (a book I really dug and thought was a lot of fun and didn't take itself too seriously), I'm peeking around to see what others thought.

• The Rumpus found the novel "provocative and full of hefty, even academic ideas--at its best, a nouveau feminist manifesto."
• Salon/The Barnes & Noble Review finds that "Julavits avoids the form’s faux flavor by hewing carefully to emotional truth."
• SF Weekly thinks "Like everything in Julavits' fiction, this grows more fascinating — and mysterious — the more you read. That's also true for the fiction itself — here is a novelist whose audacity is matched only by her inventiveness and power. And, shit, she's funny, too."
• The Globe and Mail liked it, but of course had to mention that goddamn Believer manifesto from eons ago and then swirl it into a smarmy closing point that was nothing if not forced. Julavits must be equally tired of that same song being played every time she does press. So she wrote a manifesto. Years ago. Let it go.
• NYT is less impressed and I agree with their plot critique and where it gets too mired in detail for its own good. To wit: "While the language remains vivid, its satisfactions are overwhelmed by the confusion of the overdetermined plot."

So, there you have it. Seems I'm not entirely crazy for digging this book as much as I do. Always nice to know. I'm often way out there on my own, loving something that everyone thinks is rubbish. Or, most often, really not liking the novel everyone is swooning about. Ah, well. The fun games we play post-read.

Lit Bits & A Bit About The Vanishers

Several writers I admire have recently written pieces I enjoyed quite a bit:

• Walter Kirn's GQ piece explores the requisite (or not) empathy a presidential candidate must exude in order to win hearts and minds. Money quote: "My theory is that in the Oprah-haunted '90s, when self-help had supplanted public-policy as the preferred path to widespread human betterment, the press needed an apolitical way to talk about politics. They made it about feelings. They made it about identifying, relating. They forgot about Harvard and Yale, the will-to-power, the ruthlessness that is ambition's twin, and finally they forgot about us. They forgot that we want to salute, not share a hug, and that we don't mind a little remoteness if its offset by wisdom, strength, and intellect." Indeed.
• Jim Hanas interviews Douglas Rushkoff over at Co.Create and they get into an interesting conversation about the role reversal of artists & technologists. And branding. Since I spend the majority of my days working with clients on branding and being authentic in their digital communications with customers, this struck me as spot-on: "[But] it’s not about creating a mythology around the way a product was created, so it’s no longer 'these were cookies made by elves in a hollow tree.' That’s not the value of the brand. The value of the brand is where did this actually come from? What’s in this cookie? Who made it? Are Malaysian children losing their fingers in the cookie press or is this being made by happy cookie culture people?"
• Roger Boylan at Boston Review offers a considered look at The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes in the context of the Barnes back list. Appropriate because I just mooned over Barnes yesterday? Perhaps. But also: "Stylistically, Barnes’s stock-in-trade is quotidian realism, leavened with mild satire and total recall of the feel of the past, frequently of that moment when adolescence becomes adulthood and youthful hope yields to reality." Could this be why I uber-pine for that time when I discovered Barnes? Certainly.

Heidi Julavits has written a new novel, The Vanishers, which kicked so much ass it's crazy:

• I've read three novels since. Can't stop thinking about The Vanishers.
• It was sly and silly and smart and sad all at once - my favorite kind of novel.
• It reminded me of the most exhilarating bits of The End of Mr. Y  by Scarlett Thomas. (They are not so similar, really, but my experience reading both novels was similar. Another world that I could perhaps not relate to, but that I some how could entirely. Giddy all the while.)
• I was fully immersed in the other-worldly world she created but loved, loved, loved how she managed to weave in some rather naked truths about our relationships with others and ourselves in a way that felt honest and true and revelatory.
• It is very possible I dug this novel so much because it accessed some of my own hidden truths about my relationship with my mother (before and after her death) and the relationship others willed me to have with my mother (mostly after she passed) not to help me in any way but to help themselves grieve.
• It could also be that I've hated every novel I've picked up this year that wasn't in some way related to Murakami and so I may simply be glad to have my book loving vibe back again or it may be that Murakami has altered my perspective in such a way that I simply cannot love a novel that is entirely of this world.
• And so. There is much more to say here and though I intentionally shy away from "proper book reviews" I may well write a separate post on The Vanishers once I've had time to digest it all.
• Then again, I may not, so consider this firm praise and a "buy" recommendation. Please read it. Would love to have a chat with you after you're finished.

Formative Reads

I've had the same conversation several times over the past few weeks at various bookish events. It never starts the same way, but it invariably gets to the same spot: a few novelists I discovered in college and in the years just after that I find myself wanting to revisit.

I believe it began with Muriel Spark which led to Jeanette Winterson which somehow led to Graham Swift. Julian Barnes was required reading for my french film studies (the film: Madame Bovary, the required book: Flaubert's Parrot) and Barnes somehow led me to Banville.

I'm strangely possessive of these writers because they gave me so much to think about and seemed to "get" me and the kinds of things I'd hoped to write at the precise time in my life when I needed to be gotten, so confused was I about my own talents and aspirations and dreams in the literary scene. (Working for a not-so-lovely lit agent did not help matters, but I digress.)

I've never re-read their work because I've somehow relegated their novels and essays to that time in my life, that period of grasping onto ideas and devouring them whole, keeping whatever literary nutrients I could to propel me forward. There was also, of course, my near total obsession with Vintage International books at that time. It didn't hurt that many of these books were issued by Vintage with their delectable and infinitely collectible color-coded spines. (Another digression, worthy of many posts.)

It may be that I'm nostalgic for all that grasping and hoping. Or perhaps I'm just tired of the new new new novel that has become de riguer reading in many literary parts. These writers and the works I read back then are calling to me in a way I can't ignore. Just thinking of Swift's Waterland brightens me up. Spark's Loitering With Intent is a classic I'd like to be steeped in again. Winterson's Art & Lies is begging to be rediscovered. A re-read of Banville's Book of Evidence sounds like home.