From the last week or two:

V., Thomas Pynchon.  A great book.  But I wish I had more time to absorb it, as I left it all to this weekend .  I could spend weeks dissecting this text.  Having not read much (it’s been years) Pynchon I expected this to be weirder than it was.  It was really not that hard to read or incomprehensible or anything like that that people seem to say.  Of course, V. came out in 1961.  The ideas and techniques in V. have since then trickled down into plenty of contemporary fiction–I found myself reminded of all sorts of things (produced later than V.) while reading it, which is the mark of an icon.  Finally, I’ve met the character Benny Profane, after being introduced (a la Tin House) to the pornographer who adopted the same name. 

The Robber BrideGroom, Eudora Welty.  This was a fun little slap-stick, fairy tale type novel, a novella really. It was hard to get into given the antiquated style, so it’s a good length at 88 pages.  Later this term I’ll be scouring this text for the influence of Robert Coate’s The Outlaw Years on Welty.

A Curtain of Green, Eudora Welty.  This is a fantastic story collection including such famous stories as “Death of a Traveling Salesman,” “Petrified Man,” and “Why I Live at the P.O.”

The Ecstatic, Victor LaValle.  This is a voice driven first-person adventure.  The inside cover calls it a comic picaresque but I’ve also looked at it in terms of the gothic novel.  It’s a strange little product, completely insular, the crazy (or not?) narrator, Anthony, explains the world in a compelling, entertaining way.  A mash up of 39 odd chapters exploring mental illness, domestic violence, eating disorders, beauty pageants, and the seriously weird, The Ecstatic is an enjoyable read.  It’s one of those books that feels like a whole ball of yarn unwound and knotted up.  There is no nice braid here, but strings trailing off at every angle.  Enjoy the ride, but don’t look for answers (or serious questions).

All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren.  This is simply an awesome book.  A true classic, but contemporary, on the cusp.  We have the accordingly flawed first-person narrator, Jack Burden, and we also have a believable array of other characters.  The plot is juicy.  And Jack, the misguided philosopher, historiographer, talker, maker of deals, gives us more meat than could be expected for a ‘political novel.’  And the prose and imagery is incredible, daring.

Reading right now: The Wide Net and Other Stories (Eudora Welty), The Devil’s Larder (Jim Crace)…

The weather here is static: cold, cold, cold.  I haven’t seen the sun in days, although there’s actually blue in the sky this morning.  It’s been a perpetual white ceiling of clouds, smog, sagging precipitation.  The white fog puts a drag on the day, gives an inevitable feel to wakefulness and sleepfulness; days, evenings, and nights tick away in an unconsequential fashion, but definitively (if blandly) nonetheless. The opening story of Tin House #30, Stuart Dybek’s “The Start of Something,” is both playful and sombre in its mood to capture this ticking and churning of time.  It’s a beautiful little piece trying to hone out the beginnings and ends of things; it might be a short short, only about 3 full pages. Also in this issue is an essay by Anthony Doerr titled “We are Mapmakers,” Time and space are no obstacle: around the earth with the stories of Alice Munro. I’m looking forward to it; I love Munro, and time and space are indeed two of the first concepts (second and third to humanity) that I think of when I think of Munro. Most of the issue looks really good, but I spotted on item that made me say, eh, really? Steve Almond has a piece in this issue called “Condifreaks Speak: A Hate Mail Colloquy.” Now, I love Steve Almond’s work, and he seems like a pretty cool guy. But this piece is him replying to hate mail he received after publicly resigning from Boston College when Condoleeza Rice was invited to be the commencement speaker. I just thought I’d never have to hear about the Boston College thing again. I mean, really. It was a public gesture that made a bit of a splash, but hasn’t the water stilled? Anyway, it looks like a good issuse of Tin House.

First, let me say I loved The Virgin Suicides (Jeffrey Eugenides). I did.  The characters, the setting, the innovations in the narration, all impressed and moved me.  I could go on and on about the narrative techniques–the collective retrospective point of view, the compiling of exhibits and interviews, the foregrounding of the inevitability of the plot–but, praise is less interesting than highlighting the negative; just kidding (but it probably is true)…

Maybe I’ve been reading too much theory, but I’d argue that Eugenides moves from having the narrator simply explore ontological questions in light of the Lisbon tragedy to having the narrator actually make an ontological determination about the nature of the being of the sisters, the nature of the being of suicide.  This change in authority, this brandishing of absolutism, comes at the beginning of the last paragraph. The last one:

But this is all chasing after the wind. The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness.  The girls took into their hands decisions better left to God.

What a stupid thing to say. It’s hard to explain how pissed off I was after reading those three sentences. Obviously I was invested greatly up until that point.

It’s possible this is the determination these men must make (the collective pov) to heal themselves, to get over their adolescence, but despite the position of the narrator(s) (procurers of all things Lisbon, interviewers, observers, etc.), the narrator hasn’t earned the right to make that claim–it doesn’t fit the book, and the book doesn’t ask for an answer, demand it. Sure, questions of being can be directly raised throughout the story, but the blanket determination doesn’t fit and isn’t necessary for the closure of the narrative. I was in love with this story until that last paragraph, when I was booted out of the narrative.

In this instance, the collective narrator oversteps its abilities with this claim; also, it is a selfish claim in itself, formulated to help the obsessed, injured, and seeking feel better. Perhaps these grown men, the mysterious “us” and “we,” do come to this conclusion. Well, it’s lame. Traditionally, it’s human nature to crave a narrative with moral authority, to desire that events ultimately be assessed for moral meaning. And here, the moral meaning emerges as demeaning to that which is assessed. I don’t think this assessment can be so simple, so blindly certain.

You shouldn’t underestimate the value of an Amazon wishlist–you’ll get what you want. I’m not one of those folks that obsessively updates or tweaks the selection of books on my wish list (out of sight, out of mind), so every Christmas I’m initally surprised by the perfect but unexpected books I receive from relatives. You read my mind, I think. No, it was the vast and glorious Amazon wishlist, with which we can thrust our desires out into the world, forming the simulacrum of an intimate conversation with others. The first thing I thought upon opening a pristine copy of Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction from the in-laws was Great! Then How? Then Oh yeah; cool.

Books I received for Christmas:

• The Rhetoric of Fiction, Wayne Booth
• Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton
• White Oleander, Janet Fitch
• Death of a Writer, Michael Collins
• The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews, Eudora Welty

Books Mr. Ambergeek received:

• The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson
• Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
• Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, Brian Tracy

Books the progeny received:

• Zin Zin Zin a Violin (a Caldecott Honor Book), Lloyd Moss and Marjorie Priceman
• Snowmen at Night, Caralyn Buehner and Mark Buehner
• Go, Train, Go!, W. Rev. Awdry and Tommy Stubbs
• Casey At the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 (a Caldecott Honor Book), Ernest L. Thayer and Christopher Bing

 Can I get a side of free time with those books?

So, here I am with a long list of books to devour. I’ll asess what’s come before, this year, last week, etc. Last week I read Jane Shapiro’s The Dangerous Husband in two sittings. It would have been one, but life happens. It’s the funniest book I’ve read all year. Well, it might tie with Leonard Michaels’ A Girl With A  Monkey: New and Selected Stories. At one point while glued to The Dangerous Husband, my husband asks me what I’m reading. And I say, this guy is just so clumsy his wife must hire a hit man! I probably looked giddy, elated. My husband looked horrified. It’s a great book, a funny book.

I also read Victor LaValle’s The Ecstatic last week. It was a really good book that somehow manages to be boring and enthralling at the same time. Boring isn’t the right word….maybe pedestrian? No, it’s extraordinary and ordinary. It’s the first person voice that captivates, in addition to the bizarre family dynamics at play. It’s feels so real it’s sad, and some of it is so sad it’s funny, and that’s life.

Best book I’ve read all year: The Effect of Living Backwards by Heidi Julavitz.  I don’t know what is up with some of the poor reviews on Amazon. Some folks obviously found it too difficult to read; several reviews say the storyline is too obtuse. I thought it was incredible, thrilling. And the reviewers who give only one star and admit to not being able to get past the first chapter–classy, real classy. In close second (or maybe a tie?) comes Kathryn Davis’ The Thin Place, which pretty much floored me on first read.

I’m in the middle of The Intuitionist right now…

I can’t wait to read the new Ander Monson book: Neck Deep and Other Predicaments: Essays