Counterbalance

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.

To the Traveler Goes the Catch-Up Harper's Spoils

Ah, the beauty of ten uninterrupted reading hours! I'm never quite sure what I'll want to read until I'm tucked in and ready to go, so I tend to overpack when it comes to reading materials. I have a mad horror of getting all snuggly in my window seat and flipping through my stash only to find that I'm not quite in the mood for anything I brought with me - awful, I tell you, awful. Especially when a bushel of books beckons me from my shelves at home. So - I bring too much of everything to be sure that the various reading moods that may shift & shimmer as I hurtle through the skies are all accounted for: short attention span (during eating or when I'm getting antsy) = magazines, everyone else is sleeping and I'm wide awake = engrossing novel and that in-between time when my mind is full of ideas = write!  I brought several novels (more on those later) and several periodicals.  I'm not quite sure how I managed to avoid the September 2007 Harper's this long. Oh. My. Goodness. Good stuff abounds and no one on the plane would have understood my squals of glee better than you. Here is a smattering of yum that was found within the pages of last month's Harper's (all links for sub only):

Heidi Julavits has a charming piece, "The Writers in the Silos", that first appeared in Creative Nonfiction: 31 as part of its forum "Writing and Publishing in 2025 and Beyond." Julavits has an interesting take on what our literary future might hold:

"It requires neither imagination nor acumen to predict that our current conglomerating, lowest-common-denominator, demographically targeted publishing industry will soon achieve its streamlined apotheosis -- a single, worldwide, ExxonMobil-owned literary empire offering a list of seven books twice per year. The lists for these two seasons -- Holiday Gifts and Beach -- will each include one of the following: a Dickensianly sprawling Antarctic thriller; a faux-intellectual, faux-experimental novel packaged with enticingly gimmicky swag (such as a French Existentialist pashmina); a World War II historical novel wherein one or more ex-Nazis, in the flash-forward sections, live as kindly sausage-makers or residually evil schoolteachers; a winningly bitchy PTA tell-all, written by an overeducated mother of multiple-birth ADD children living in a suburb of eco-friendly pre-fabs; a spriritual-conversion-after-brush-with-Ebola memoir; an inspiring life-lesson book, written by a long-shot gay pro-life femail minority ex-Klan presidential hopefuly; and a 'quick fire' cookbook for people with intimidatingly professional kitchens who have no time, inclination, or skills to cook in them.  Books will be compiled by a team of content providers; 'the author' will be represented in photos and on tour by genuinely attractive people. Blurbs will be supplied by eBay sellers with the highest approval ratings."

After a few more twists, she envisions that real writers (of the visually unattractive kind), will rise up and reclaim their rightful place as creators of indiviually created fiction, work that sprang from their minds and theirs alone:

"They will shake your hand, these writers. They will promise that their literary wares are the product of a single, careful mind, unmutated by mass production and untainted by viral collaboration, and since these writers are plain-looking people, even downright unattractive and badly dressed, they will seem instantly more believeable and less evil than the glossy actor-authors of recent memory. Soon a slogan will attach itself to this phenomenon - READ LOCALLY - and the new AgriCultural movement will emerge. Writers will begin to form allegiances with small farmers, and every small farm soon will have its own writer. The farmer and the writer will decide that mutual dependency and market diversification are the keys to survival. When the writer produces a less than stellar product, he will be butressed by egg sales; when the farmer has a poor strawberry yield, he will be butressed by the writer's pure and homey creative output..."

Call it my honeymoon-mood or the cramped leg space that exists in coach (why oh why aren't I wealthy enough to fly first class all the time?), but this struck me as entirely funny. I suspect it is because I adore the idea of being butressed by egg sales.

This stuff strikes me as so good that I feel certain it has been covered by a blog somewhere, yet I don't recall reading of it - so forgive me if this is old news and you've all endlessly discussed these bits already.

Julio Cortázar and his wife Carol Dunlop have a memoir coming out this month, Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, (consider this to be at the tippity-top of my TBR list, all other books I was secretly looking forward to reading be damned!) and the snippets that are included in the September Harper's had me in stitches.  A brief excerpt, as I realize that most of you are likely no longer with me in this long, long post:

"It happened shortly after we arrived, when we wanted to toast our first motel of the autoroute and looked in the minibar for the two ritual bottles of whiskey and ice cubes. I filled a glass for Carol, prepared mine, and we sat down to drink and smoke after the hot bath we'd so badly needed. When I tasted my whiskey, I knew instantly that I'd fallen for the old, oft-repeated trick. Only at that moment did I realize that my minibottle had opened easily, while Carol's had resisted as all properly sealed lids do. My drink was the same color as whiskey, but urine can be that color too."

Christoper de Bellaigue has an interesting piece on Orhan Pamuk that I've only just finished and don't have proper thoughts on...as I'm now eager to dive headlong into my honeymoon, the green extending before us and calling to me quite firmly. In it, de Ballaigue asks many questions:

"Pamuk arouses strong emotions, as strong as any writer today. Should one leave these emotions at the threshold of a meeting with Pamuk? Must they be expunged from email exchanges and telephone conversations? I wonder whether those passions that have made Pamuk a controversial man, the hottest of literary topics, have also had the effect of belittling him as a writer, undermining his aspirations, tenacious and deeply felt, to artistic greatness. Take, for instance, the prestigious prize. Pamuk would surely have won it eventually. But last year, of all years, three years after he completed his most recent book, the Nobel jury rewarded a man newly famous for resisting the intolerance that we ascribe to societies less civilized than our own. Does the prize weight heavier or lighter as a result? Fifty or one hundred years from now, will Orhan Pamuk be called genius or champion?"

For the two of you who have remained by my side through this lengthy post, bravo. I rarely quote so fully from the pages I've read, but I could find no other way to convey my delight and I know that without a Harper's subscription, you will not be able to enjoy these bits in full. Which can mean only one thing -- get thee to Harper's now and subscribe. Seriously. It is worth every penny which I know I say all the time.  The Harper's Index alone is worth countless hours of weird associations!

Off to consider my own writerly future as I stare down the dreamy darkness of several pints of Guinness...

UPDATE: Due to the back and forth between Ursula K. Le Guin & Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing, I've removed my excerpt of Le Guin's piece that was first published in Ansible and recently reproduced in the September 2007 issue of Harper's.  I'm not quite sure where I stand on the matter, having just returned from two weeks in Ireland and learning that my possibly too-long excerpt remained on the site for two whole weeks without my notice, especially given that I took great pains at attribution on all fronts, but I did feel a twinge when I typed the long excerpt out. I wondered if I was pushing it. And so, that voice in my head says, take it down. Alas, it is down.  If you are coming to this post for the first time and see this updated, you'll be none the wiser. But for those who've kept the original in your readers, well, now you know why it's been removed on the site. I would also add, because I feel I must, that there's a reason so many people were compelled to quote so much: the article in question was quite worthy of it.

Lit Bits & A Bit About LAist

• Poetry Appreciation Week continues with more posts forthcoming from some of your favorite litbloggers.  In fact, it seems that the "week" might spill over into next week.  What does that meant to you? It means that if you are lurking in the shadows and have only now gotten up the courage to share your thoughts on poetry (surely the Clash post set the bar very low, did it not?), there's still plenty of time. Please comment or email me about your desire to share and I'll make it happen.
• Michael Redhill's Consolation is now in bookstores stateside! I had a chance (thank you Michael!) to get an advance copy of this (my very first, i must school myself on how to do this better in the future) and it was a moving read that I keep thinking about weeks after finishing it. It lingers in the mind.  My full report on it will be up next week. In the meantime, do check out what the blogcritics have to say. No NYT or LAT love just yet...hopefully we'll see something soon.
• Ed points out a Birnbaum interview with Heidi Julavits which perfectly illustrates the point I'm planning to make in my final Julavits post in the coming days.  She is smart, possibly too smart to seem down-to-earth enough during a reading, but she is a writer who captures the true essence of human beings and all of our faults and pretend non-faults.  Stay tuned.
• Condalmo shares what could be one of the top highlights of my 2007: Twin Peaks, Season Two. On DVD. April 10, 2007.  Mark your calendars and ask for the week off!
• Kensington Gardens is slowing a bit for me, despite my intense praise (which still holds). Reaalllly slowing. Anyone else experiencing the same?
• And finally, I've just been added on as a contributor to the LAist, the premier metroblog for Los Angeles!  Very exciting stuff -- and a huge thank you to Carolyn Kellogg for kicking me in the butt and telling me to go for it.  They cover it all and do so with an attitude seen nowhere else.  I'm so new (and green?) that I won't be on the staff pages for awhile. Have to build up the blog cred and all that.  But, I will be able to cross-post here 48 hours after posting there.  So, watch for that and do check in at the LAist on a regular basis.

The Opposite of Enchantment

Instead of launching into a reading straight out, Julavits opted to explain the basic premise of the book to the audience. Makes sense, right? Give the audience some context for the passages you are about to hear, so they get the full impact.  I've seen it done many times in the past with great success (David Mitchell & A.M. Homes come to mind as writers who have mastered the art of the quick summary of the work before reading the work) and could see no reason why this brief summary would be any different.  Until.

Until Julavits stated, quite plainly, that her book was very complicated and difficult to understand.  She said this, mind you, without a hint of irony. She meant it. She was proud of it. She seemed to indicate that the audience was possibly not up to the task of taking in its full weight, heft, meaning. Not the best way to endear an audience to you.  But, alas, most were not Julavits fans and I unruffled my feathers, sat back and hoped she would veer away from the dangerous precipice of (dare I say it?) condescension she was about to slide down. As a good sport (and what writer who makes such claims doesn't then immediately profess to be?), she wanted to "explain" the book to us, just to be sure we were able to find our way during the reading. Fine. Great. Lead on Heidi.

She then explained that her book was about a young girl who faked her abduction in high school. She pointed out that because of this, part of the book covers her experiences during this faked abduction. She stopped, checking faces, as if to determine how much we'd retained so far. Seemingly satisfied with our ability to remember the first basic premise, she continued.  Now, "to complicate things further" several chapters of the book are told from the point of view of the girl's therapist -- he's trying to determine if she really was abducted or if she's making it up.  Further still, the girl in question seems to have either faked/not faked her abduction as a copycat of another faked abduction case that involved a girl from her high school years earlier.  Another therapist then gloms on to both stories and feels that the young girl isn't being properly treated or diagnosed by her male therapist, so a new saga begins: sexual harassment charges against the male therapist. There's more of course. I could go into it all, but I won't. 

She finished her wrap-up by saying "See! I told you it was complicated! Even reviewers are having a tough time with it."  So - on the surface, yes, it is somewhat complicated. Somewhat bento boxish. Layers within layers and all of that.  Fine.  She was not fibbing when she said there was some complication.  Yet. It's not that complicated. More to the point, I don't know that writers should strive for complication, delight in it, point out to others how truly difficult their work is with a sly smile. Something about that smacks of high brow-ness. Of I'm-too-smart-for-you-ness.  I hate when writers make me feel like I'm not good enough.  There's no reason for it.  While I'm not the most well-read, well-educated audience member out there, I'm no slouch. I know what's what. So if I felt that way, how did others feel?  Was it lost on them? Did they care? And if the writer is a good enough writer (and Julavits certainly is in my book), does any of this matter?

I have hesitated longer with the write-up of the Julavits reading for this very reason.  I see a trend emerging. One I cannot ignore. It is the trend of the writer getting in the way of the work. Of the writer as someone I think I really want to know (as a result of their great writing) and look forward to seeing in person. Yet, inevitably, they are human.  They are artists. Creators of fictions. They are all the things a writer needs to be and so by natural contrast, none of the things that readers want them to be. Or at least, that I want them to be.  I'm beginning to feel like a broken record. Like the girl who cries "writer is snotty" too many times to be believed.  So I have to step back and ask myself "what's up with that?" Is it me?  Do I feel somehow less than all of these writers because I am a writer and see them as far more successful competition? Perhaps, but I don't think its as simple as that. 

All readers have notions of what their favorite writers might be like. Some care a great deal about who they are and what they stand for, others don't care a lick as long as the good writing keeps coming. Others want their writers to be as bad as can be.  Rude, loud, brutish, swearing. Bukowski readings come to mind. I fall into the odd camp of the reader who envisions sitting down to have a proper drink and a proper chat with the writer. Perhaps this is why I'm frequently surprised when academia seeps in. When it is subtly (or not so depending on the writer at the podium) pointed out that I'm possibly not smart enough to sit down and have a drink & a chat with the writer in question. When it is made clear that perhaps the writer in question might find me or anyone else in their audience a trivial bore.  This is what gets me rankled at readings.  I don't want to be made to feel somehow lesser, simply because I'm a reader of your book and not the writer. Am I the only one who feels this way?  Perhaps. It could be that as a reader and a writer, my antennae on this is a little skewed. Overly perceptive in the wrong places.  Even so - facts are facts. She said what she said. She certainly meant for the audience to understand her book was complicated and that even professional reviewers were having a tough time describing it. Take it at face value and make of it what you will.

I unruffled my feathers again, and sat back for the reading.  Would the writing shine through the condescension of the introduction? Or would it be more of the same?

The Business of Enchantment

I have tried (and clearly failed) to create an "epic" series of posts about the recent Julavits reading at Skylight Books. I've tried to come at it from many angles - the waiting, the wondering, the bizarre fans that arrive and conduct bizarre little rituals prior to the reading. The overheard conversations that are often far more interesting than the reading itself. The non-verbal, visual cues that could only be provided by a man on the ground, a woman in the trenches. You know, the usual.  Yet, in order to make the event worthy of such detail, I would have to write...fiction. Pure fiction.  Hardly an option when a "report back from the trenches" must be, if nothing else, truthful. 

There is no other way to say this (and trust me, I've tried): the Julavits reading was so businesslike (read: opposite of epic) and conducted with such perfunctory going-through-the-motions-ness that I am still baffled by it a month later.  To wit:

• There were very few people in the audience, both when I arrived 45 minutes early and also when Julavits arrived exactly, precisely, 45 minutes later. These people sat silently in their chairs, staring ahead until the reading began. One woman (one! in 45 minutes of waiting!) was visiting the bookstore with her young daughter and asked (aloud!) who was giving a reading and if the author in question had written anything that she might recognize.  When one of the silent sitters turned around and pointed to the many copies of The Uses of Enchantment propped along the wall as a backdrop to the podium, the woman shook her head. No recognition. When prompted further by mention of Julavits' previous works (The Effect of Living Backwards, The Mineral Palace), there was still no recognition. Woman with young daughter shrugged her shoulders. "I've never heard of her."  She then packed up her stroller and left.
• Julavits entered the store in deep conversation with a man about the virtues of writing programs and how Ben (one can presume it was her husband, Ben Marcus she was referring to) had just re-structured the "entire program" (one can presume this is at Columbia, where Ben Marcus is now head of the MFA Program.)  She urged him to encourage his daughter to go to a writing program if that's what she really wanted and she stressed the value of writing programs.  She continued this conversation as she walked up to the podium.
• It should be noted that when she strode in, mid-conversation, approx. 20 of the 50 or so seats were filled. A few people stood in the back. Not a brilliant turnout for Ms. Believer. I expected groupies.  Instead, most of those seated seemed to happen upon this event by accident. They were killing time in Skylight before their dinner reservations and asked the cashier up front what the chairs were for.  Intrigued enough by the description of Julavits and her work, they stayed on to hear her speak.  All good things, new readers, new audience to find your work and all that. I get it.  But, still. I expected groupies.  Not foodies looking for a distraction. Was this an isolated incident due to poor promotion? Or was interest simply not high?
• Julavits has that frazzled/beautiful/intelligentsia vibe that several young female writers possess. Can I say that without inciting Pessl wars? I only mean that she was haphazardly, but artily dressed in a way that shouted "I'm brilliant and obviously quite busy creating brilliant work, but if I can look this good with my hair in disarray and my shirt slightly askew, imagine how fetching I'd be if I actually cared about my appearance."  In short, she looked good but busy. Hurried. Multi-tasking. I suppose that is to be expected when one is a novelist, editor of The Believer, mother of a young child, wife to Ben Marcus and friendly with Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida and the lot of them. You can see how her plate might be a bit full.
• She was introduced with little fanfare. Even Skylight Books staff, it seems, couldn't really drum up enough excitement to deliver an intro full of over-compliments and over-promises. Just the standard introduction. Again, I ask, why? Even if Uses doesn't work for you on all levels (and it didn't for me), I posit that she is an excellent writer.  Excellent. Why no excitement? No passion? From the staff or anyone else in the room? Because no one in the audience was familiar with her work? Knew who she was? Or is the Julavits groupie a more reserved, silent admirer? Hmmmm.
• With the lack of hoopla that came before it, I expected more business as usual when Julavits stood up to read.  I expected a preamble, the reading of a brief excerpt and kaput. A few questions & see you later. Instead, Julavits upped that ante and took "business" mode to a whole new level...

Enchanted? Eh.

Heidi Julavits will be at Skylight Books this evening to read from her new novel The Uses of Enchantment. I will be there. Less because I am enchanted by her writing and more because I am enchanted by the concept of her. This writer who writes well and who is also married to Ben Marcus (who also writes very well) and who is part of the Believer aren't-we-all-clever enclave. I read her first two books with much skepticism and found I was not altogether moved. I find Julavits more effective in her well-researched and well-argued pieces for The Believer. Yet her new novel was interesting to me in a way I had not expected. While some of it was problematic for me, there were moments of such humanity, such precise clarity about the human condition and what we are all searching for in the end but never admit out loud to one another, that I found myself wishing the rest of it was more captivating. Her ability to pin down and illuminate some of these darker, yet universal impulses was impressive. Whole passages made me stop for a moment and say aloud - "this is what good writing is about, this is what it should do...highlight what we know to be true but cannot effectively articulate on our own."

Through my new "read as a writer" lenses, there is more to ponder. The structure of her novel is tricky and I marveled at how such stunts were either pulled off or not. There are moments of brilliant banter back and forth between characters and I envied her ability to be so witty & to write it well enough that the wit was not lost. Often what appears on the page is flat when such acrobatics are attempted.  Well, flat or altogether too "aren't-I-clever-and-witty?" I was also dimly aware, throughout my reading, of the amount of research and/or personal experience with Freud and therapy needed to construct such a book.  This awareness of how the book may have been constructed and researched was distracting to me. I found myself on two parallel tracks - one inside the book and one outside of it, wondering how it had come to end up in this final assemblage of words and sentences and chapters. Why not in some other, less overt, arrangement?

I have much more to say and don't intend to do a full review here...a more thorough analysis is needed.  I also know that I am not an average reader that requires a proper plot and nicely summed up resolutions. If something is well-written, if even a few passages ring true for me, I feel it was worthwhile.  By this criteria (this alone?), I found The Uses of Enchantment to be worth my time.

The NYT was less kind:

"Ms. Julavits might have written a braver book without such coy subterfuge and the condescension that comes with it....Though ''The Uses of Enchantment'' is written with sharp, sometimes captivating eloquence, it remains disappointingly hollow in the final analysis."

Eager to see how my thoughts may change in either direction after the reading tonight. My perspective & some of the more poetic excerpts from the book to come. Stay tuned.