Onward

now finished: March by Geraldine Brooks 

up next: something written by a woman because I am reading only books written by women in 2022 

Well, damn me if there isn't trouble and forgiveness all around, and within, us. 

That is my takeaway from my gal Geraldine's book here. Including that this mirrors my very reading of it. At first (say, 70 to 80 pages in), I was put off, uncomfortable, thoroughly not into her taking this silent side character and imagining him whole, totally disturbed by Mr. March's objectifying of women, of Black women, of people enslaved. I went so far as to not like the book at first. My, how the pages changed me. Because, you will see when you read it, Brooks has done something quite intense in depicting our awfulness without shying away from it, while also solidly reinforcing my very favorite themes: 

1. Is redemption possible? 

2. Life is a mess, an absolute total mess.  

3. You will absolutely fck things up. You will. And you must go on, keep stumbling forward, and try to do better the next day. 

(This is the part where I once again cite my favorite MILD SPOILER line from the fantastic film In Bruges SPOILER: "Well, save the next little boy!" I mean, sometimes it's all we can do.) 

I am very specifically not going to spoiler March at all, and I hope that you will read it. If you have already read it, feel free to talk to me privately, or talk without spoilers in the comments here, because I would love to know your thoughts. 

I am simply going to say that I changed in the course of reading this book from being so powerfully uncomfortable with it existing to realizing the talent and raw power of what Geraldine Brooks has done. And do I now want to read every damn word she has ever written? I do. Do I now regret shelving her and stacking her and mindlessly touching her books over the years without getting around to reading them? I do. 

It was inevitable that I would read this one sooner rather than later because hello, Pulitzer. But now I want them all. And I also love reading about her, and ahout how she wrote this book, and about her Bronson Alcott research, and her Australian, worldy, and UnitedStatesian-ness, and her marriage with Tony Horwitz, and how he brought her in some literal and figurative ways to see so much Civil War history. 

This book is vivid, and hard to bear.   (Do I really need to say it? LIKE LIFE.) 

And the insight she has about war with her foreign correspondent experience is next level, combined as it is with her artistic and emotional genius. 

Little Women has always, always been about so much more than it might initially seem, and I do think many people realize that, which is good. Despite my resistance to taking it, that something-more aspect, and all the layers of Louisa May Alcott and Concord, are part of why this book March works, too. 

Stunned, I immediately wanted upon closing this book to go walk around some Civil War battleground and feel the ghosts. And guess what, turns out that living in Georgia as I randomly do now, I can do just that. But it gets better: where I am in Decatur, in DeKalb County, I just learned, the majority of residents voted in January 1861 to NOT secede, unlike neighboring Atlanta/Fulton County. And during the Battle of Atlanta, Confederate troops attacked General MacPherson's Union troops near the Decatur Courthouse (walking distance from my house), driving them back down the North Decatur Road (my intersection). 

I mean... as Amy (Ray, Indigo Girls) sings, "...before I realized / everywhere I stand..." 

Amy Ray being from Decatur and having taken those names Jonas and Ezekiel from tombstones she saw one day in a slave cemetery... 

My godz but we are all so fortunate to get to live and learn and feel pain and grow and read and write about it. 

Interpersonal relationships (as other Indigo Girl Emily Saliers would say) are so hard. 

Geraldine Brooks has scarred me. She's wondrous. 

July 29th: Katherine Anne PorterA Month of Short Stories and Their Authors

now reading grudgingly (long story):  
Good Wives aka Little Women Part Two by Louisa May Alcott

Hey there! It's the first day of my new blog appearance. I had to do it for Blogspot reasons, basically, and it isn't quite what I wanted, so further tweaking must needs occur.

Today's Story: "Theft"
Author: Katherine Anne Porter
My Rating: A

I've read a little Katherine Anne Porter before, and what I mostly remember is being blown away by her writing talent. Intelligence without being pretentious, complexity without being confusing, whimsy without being shallow...she's a fantastic writer, pure and simple. And she surprises you, and writes about interesting things you weren't necessarily expecting.

So in a story like "Theft," though at first you're a little bit caught off guard, the "what's-going-on?" isn't in any way unpleasant nor does it make you want to roll your eyes; it's not unlike the actual drunkenness the main character and her friends are experiencing, I suppose! Reading Katherine Anne Porter is a great way to remind yourself how terrible some other authors really are.

Though light on linear this-then-this-then-this action, there is in fact a linear narrative happening, but the story is perfectly introspective and deep as well. By the end, when an accusation is made, and when it is initially resisted with a bit of righteous indignation, you find yourself just this side of advocating for your main character and wondering if she could have in fact been wrong. This story is a lot like life.

"In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she had meant to answer with bitter alternatives and intolerable substitutes worse than nothing..."
--quoted from "Theft" on page 109 of The Best American Short stories of the Century

The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter  won the Pulitzer in 1966, you know. You could do worse than to get a little Katherine Anne Porter in your life. Or a lot of her.

Pulitzer Day!

And what a fun Pulitzer day it was this year. Let's check out some highlights.

Fiction winner: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Like many, I was wowed by her first novel, The Secret History. I worked at Borders when her disappointing-to-many follow-up The Little Friend came out, so I touched it a lot every day for a year or two but it's never quite made it from my to-read stack to my currently reading stack. Last fall, whilst I was in China, The Goldfinch was released to reviews that called it everything from exhausting to the best book of the year. I noted it, hopefully, in my Book Sphere section of In The Red. We now see whose side the Pulitzer committee agrees with! I'm looking forward to the read.

Biography winner: Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall It's not that often that we get a biography winner whose author and subject are both women. It has happened, just not as often as at least one of those being male. In fact, the first Biography Pulitzer was awarded to two women (co-authors), Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott, for their book about their mother, Julia Ward Howe. Then it didn't happen again for decades, I believe not until Elizabeth Frank's Louise Bogan: A Portrait in 1986. Most recently was to Stacy Schiff for Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). Anyway, Margaret Fuller is a fascinating figure and has always been someone I admire and aim to learn more about. I love me some transcendentalists and that whole era/place from which she emerged; I look forward to reading this one, too.

Poetry winner: 3 Sections  by Vijay Seshadri
Vijay Seshadri becomes the first Asian-American poet to win, it was repeatedly noted yesterday. He was born in India and came to the U.S. as a young child, later attending Oberlin and Columbia (I'm jealous!) His poems use delicate but full and smart language to capture tiny moments juxtaposed with big thoughts about the universe, from what I can see in the smattering that I've read.

Also exciting, in the journalism prizes, the Public Service prize went to The Washington Post and The Guardian U.S.  for their revelations of the NSA's widespread secret surveillance -- basically, for publishing Edward Snowden stuff. Here's to the free flow of information and truth!

Tramplin' out that there vintage

now finished: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Fun Fact: John Steinbeck insisted that "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" be printed in the first published edition of The Grapes of Wrath. Upon receiving some galleys/proofs/something, he wrote his publisher or editor (I forget which) saying No, the whole thing! Print the whole song! It's relevant!

The Grapes of Wrath. An evocative phrase that says so much while being admirably just out of reach of those who don't want to think too much ever in figuring out what something means. Another Fun Fact: Steinbeck was slaving away on the novel and really trying to get its essence right and his dutiful wife (who typed his freaking manuscript - ugh! - but also made corrections and suggestions, so there's that) suggested the title! And then he rejoiced and was thankful and told his editor that Wife had come up with the genius title. Who knew?

OK, maybe some people knew. Just like maybe some people -- by which I of course mean "thousands upon thousands" -- knew all about how totally, incredibly awesome The Grapes of Wrath is. This is one of my finally-finally-dreadfully-late-to-the-party-finally books that defies all finally books.  Earlier this year, while the particular blog you are now reading was still taking its Great Firewall break, I posted elsewhere my list of Seriously-I-Have-Meant-to-Read-These-Forever books, which inspired me to get off my reading a** and go out and acquire one of them, and so I finally got The Grapes of Wrath, thus enabling me to check off a book on many a list: the Pulitzers, the Modern Library's Top 100, the Nobel winners, etc., and most importantly the oh-my-god-why-haven't-I-ever-read-this?! list.

One of the astonishingly good things about Grapes is that every time Ma or not-preacher Casy or Al or the couple they meet by the side of the highway or just about anyone in the book opens his or her mouth, you just get to ooze with delight at the wonderful things they say. How anyone's heart can not be warmed is beyond me.

Tragedy. Americana. One heck of a  road trip. Observations. Disaster. Avoidable disaster. Greed. Selflessness. Poverty. Compassion. Mistakes. Togetherness. The desire to be productive, which must be tempered by the equally important desire to not be wasteful. It's all in there.

Should I get spoilery on here?  The ending is something to behold, undoubtedly. I think for the moment I won't spoil, but I'll just say that it stunned me as it has stunned many a reader over the years. And I do mean the ending-ending, as in, the last paragraph. Perhaps I'll do a future, spoilery post about the ending.

Basically, I revamped my approach to life while reading this book. I now want to ask everyone I know to read it. If they haven't read it, I want to give them my copy that they might do so immediately if not sooner. If they have read it, I want to rejoice over it with them (and also maybe ask them why they never checked to make sure that I, too, had read it).

I think that if you have read it and don't like it, maybe you're kind of a jerk. I'm just sayin' ... It's just really, really enjoyable, while simultaneously being soul-crushingly devastating and heartwarming. How does he do that?!

And of course, the obligatory early 2000s comments: my, how history repeats itself! The more things change...! When will we ever learn?  And so forth.

Stop reading my blog and go read The Grapes of Wrath.  (But then come back here and we'll talk about it.)

Where Are We On This?

Ahhhh, corporate-speak. As someone pointed out, Orwell's dire predictions of government doublespeak weren't wrong, and they have manifested not just in the military but also in the corporate jargon to which we all so willingly bow down... (Then again, the military is one giant corporation, profiting from violence and death, so there's that.)  Anyway, a favorite corporate line delivered by bosses and managers and "leaders" everywhere is "Where are we on that?"  What a great way to ask someone what the hell is going on, and to blame them without overtly blaming them, which is what corporate-speak is made for.

Well, where we are -- the royal we of this blog -- is a certain country that had me absent without blog behind a certain Gr**t F*r*w*ll for the last few months. Now the issue of access has been mended, we hope for the long haul, and once again I can crank out the bloggage on both Linda Without Borders and on this, its Literary Supplement blog.

But I'm not going to drag you people through tedious posts about each and every book I've read since I last posted -- when was it? -- last October! Um, gulp. Yikes. That can't even all be blamed on a certain country with whom Donald Trump would like to start a war whenever it is most convenient and profitable for him.

Just a rundown, then!

• The End of 2012

After finally reading The Brothers Karamazov down yonder in Mexico (seriously, finally -- I even have a "Finally" shelf on Goodreads now, inspired by that and Cloud Atlas), I spent the remaining time in Mexico reading John Updike's Rabbit, Run (my "U" pick for my Top Half of my A-to-Z Literary Blog Project), Jorge Luis Borges' El Aleph (one of my reading-five-essential-books-and/or-authors-to-familiarize-myself-with-more-literature-in-Spanish project), and Benjamin Harrison  by Charles Calhoun (#23 in my Presidents: Where Did We Go Wrong? project). I spend a lot of time in the projects. No thanks to the Mexican post office/customs/federales that stole my B. Harrison and McKinley books shipment the first time around, forcing me to re-order them. I still like picturing some cartel king somewhere learning all about these random Midwestern presidents of the late 19th century. Rabbit, Run was OK; I wanted something more from Updike but should appreciate it more for its time, perhaps. (Yes, I just called you old if you are an Updike contemporary - sorry about that.) It also has officially eclipsed The Shining for Most Memorable Bathtub Scene. Borges, on the other hand, is an unequivocal genius. Benjamin Harrison is significant mainly for being the point at which we depart from the chronology of presidents matching the chronology of presidencies, and from here on out when you say so-and-so is the twenty- or thirty-whatever-eth president you annoy me because really it's that they are the twenty- or thirty-whatever-eth presidency and you are counting Grover Cleveland as two people.

I then returned to the U.S. on a bit of a Pulitzer tear. I had just finished listening to the audio book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright, which was all kinds of fascinating and one of my favorite things I've listened to because I just learned so much (the purpose of my listening to audio books at all -- I still hate being read to, but I pretend I'm listening to, like, really in depth public radio features). Back in Arizona, I launched into my next audio Pulitzer winner, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, which I really kind of hated. It's pretty terrible, and the combination of Pulitzer and learning just a few things barely kept me hanging on.  As for actual book-books, I returned to the U.S. reading Gone With the Wind, which seems appropriate, and I of course have to wonder why I never read this before, it being so Atlanta-y as well as famous and Pulitzery, and I just adored it. It's remarkable and misunderstood. Next up were The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (good!) and the Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson (also good, and even inspiring on the eve of my departure).

• It's 2013!  Let's go read in Asia. 

Continuing the Pulitzer and the Prez Project themes, I spent January reading In the Days of McKinley  by Margaret Leech, a really well done bio and one that made me feel lots of warm fuzzy things for its subject. McKinley just genuinely tried to be nice to people, almost all of the time. Couldn't we all use a bit more of that?! I commenced my new audio book with the advent of my new job's commute: In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson, whom you may know as the author of The Devil in the White City. Good stuff. I like German things, and I like learning about what the hell is going on behind the scenes when people are violent warmongers. There's never any excuse for it, of course, but we must try to understand.

• February: Lunar New Year and reading on the beach in the Philippines!

Not the whole month, unfortunately, but we did have a nice vacay and on the trip I was pretty excited to go to Manila and see Taft Avenue and McKinley Drive after just having read all about the beginnings of their unfortunate involvement there. Before the holiday I completed William Styron's Set This House on Fire, my "S" pick for the A-to-Z Top Half, and it was a fun Italian lesson and good for the whole self-indulgent-writer-thing, but kind of a sophomore effort compared to Lie Down in Darkness. I spent my beach time reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, volume one of the magnificent (as pretty much everyone says) trilogy bio of TR (don't call him Teddy!)

• In Like a "Finally!", Out Like an A-to-Z Top Half Project

In March I completed two novels, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which I came to rather enjoy and which reminded me with so many strong sentimental feelings of Amanda and everyone else at Cambridgeside as well as some other books I have also meant to read since that time (but none more meant to read since Cambridge days than Cloud Atlas), and Creation by Gore Vidal, my "V" pick for the A-to-Z project top half, which was pretty long and rambly but interesting, too, it can't be denied. Then it was back to Theodore...

• April Was Actually Not the Cruelest Month This Year. Go Figure.

...and to be honest, Theodore Rex, volume two, was not quite as good as Edmund's first TR, but it was still really, really interesting and better than a lot of bios. A bad day in the TR trilogy is like a good day in some other books. Including, through no fault of the author but unfortunately in my experience, the audio book I was listening to during April, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1850 by Daniel Walker Howe. The book itself (another Pulitzer winner) is informative and fascinating, and I knew I would enjoy listening about that era, which I have been saying as I read all my prez bios from that era is a massively interesting and under-appreciated time in U.S. history. The narration and splicing together of apparently two different narrators were horrible and nearly drove me batty. Why do I persist with Audible? Sigh. Sometimes it really is great, though, to listen and learn. Anyway, after Theodore Rex I read The Dialogues of Plato because I have another project this year (yes, really) in which I am reading a bit about/by one philosopher per month. I'm actually pretty far behind on this project, which I meant to start in January and then February but didn't until Thales in March (just online reading about him) and then Socrates in April. Notice I said Socrates, as the Dialogues were really about him. In May I am moving on to actual Plato-Plato.

• Which Brings Us to the Merry Merry Month of May

And I squeezed in a novel while we traveled to Vietnam, appropriately (I figured) my annual Nelson DeMille. This year was The Gold Coast. Oh, how hilarious to revisit Long Island and its totally out of touch rich assholes! Worth it for that alone, but of course we all know how much I love me some Nelson DeMille biting wit and sarcasm.

And, there! We are caught up! I am now in the middle of a bunch of books at once, due to a series of unfortunate coinciding factors, but a couple of them are just about China and Chinese learning and whatnot. I am actually read-reading the third Edmund Morris volume, Colonel Roosevelt, as well as The Grapes of Wrath, whose praises I will sing next time I post.

Be sure to check in here with the Literary Supplement blog, posted every Sunday, as we are now back with a vengeance! Or at least with lots of bookmarks!

Grover, A Study in Double Project Whammies

now finished (actually, finished a week ago): Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage by Allan Nevins

President #22! The arrival at Grover Cleveland in my presidential bios project is a momentous occasion. It's the halfway point. It's the first bio that spends time in the 20th century: Cleveland finished his second term in 1897, and lived until 1906. And yeah, about that second term? This president marks the point in my project at which I split off from, oh, everybody in that I refuse to call any of the presidents who come after him (not Benjamin Harrison, who comes between him, but the presidents who come after) by the numbers that other people like to call them. You will say McKinley is the 25th president, and Teddy 26th, and so on up through Barack the 44th. But no! Because Grover Cleveland is only one president. He had the 22nd and 24th presidencies, and I will say that, but I can't say that he was the 24th president. Because he was the 22nd president. He was the 22nd person to become the U.S. president. He didn't become another person when he got elected again. This is a pet peeve of mine, and one about which I clearly have no hope of changing anyone's mind, ever. But seriously. There was even talk, later, of him running again, after McKinley started to irk people. So then he would have been the 22nd and 24th and 26th or something? Consider how ridiculous you sound.

Anyway. Grover. Besides his lovable name, what's there to note about Grover? Let's see:

• Like my boy Millard (Fillmore, duh, #13), Grover came from Buffalo, New York,  to the national political scene. Buffalo was so totally important in the 19th century, and I, for one, would like today's Buffaloans (?) to know that I recognize the coolness in your city in all its (well, former) glory.
• He was a lawyer. Soooo many lawyer presidents. He was also really hard working and he made me feel guilty for being such a good young man who worked hard without complaining and helped provide for his family. I totally disagree with him about not liking to travel to other cities/states for work, because he hated it and that is one of my favorite things to do, but I also probably never in my life work as hard as he routinely did.
• He's mainly remembered for being the two non-consecutive terms guy, but it's kind of more interesting that he was the first Democrat in the White House since James Buchanan (#15, right before Lincoln). There was a serious Republican dynasty going on -- you know, back when the Republican party wasn't routinely hijacked by flag-waving-social-moral-conservative-abortion-hysteria freak shows -- and Grover was the breath of Democratic air in the midst of it all. 
• Silver. Oh my god. If you ever want to spend time reading about national currency woes vis-a-vis the gold standard and whether or not there should be free coinage of silver? Grover Cleveland is your man. I personally felt my brain glazing over, and every time I thought we were done with the silver issue it would crop up again, years later. But if you're into that kind of thing -- well, then, actually you probably know all about Grover's role in the silver and currency crises already, if you're into that kind of thing. Right. Moving on.
• Unfortunately, our boy Grover was a little creepy. Back in Buffalo, one of his BFFs died, and Grover was executor of the estate and took care to make sure the wife and young daughter were provided for and doing all right and stuff. Then time passes, Grover becomes governor of New York, he moves to Albany, and pretty soon he's president and heads to the White House. Young daughter of BFF, meanwhile, goes to college. Grover visits her. They're still friends -- until they're suddenly MORE than friends, and they get engaged and married. So. Gross. It's like, really Grover? The creepiness factor just skyrockets at this point. First wedding in the White House, though, so that's exciting. And apparently, it was a happy marriage, I guess? Five kids, contentment, lots of fun times. But really creepy there, Grove. Seriously. 
• Other than that (I know, right? "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?") Grover had integrity. He routinely pissed off people who wanted spoils and favors and insider treats and tricks by telling them where they could go. Which just makes me ask, again, as I so often do in this world, what is up with men? Especially men in positions of power, but really, all men. How can you have integrity that actually differentiates you from masses of your fellow politicians, catapulting you to a position of much needed leadership, and then just be so completely entitled and creepy about a young woman? And you know, Grover also had an "illegitimate" child. I am not one to judge the "illegitimate" part, because obviously I think that is the stupidest way to label a child and I could give two shites about marriage, wedlock, and all that, but I'm just pointing out that Grover in Buffalo had certain proclivities and he did NOT have a relationship with the mother of said child, although he paid for the child and didn't try to shirk responsibility, although he DID question whether he was, in fact, the father...but while he was all about being honest and good in his work, why didn't that carry over into respecting his intimate relations instead of objectification behavior? It's just interesting to consider. 
• But you know, nobody's perfect. (Least of all middle-aged men who date 20-year-olds.) And our boy Grover was honest, a good friend, and boy did he like to go fishing. He's someone that a lot of people liked. His presidencies (there's that plural you love!) are filed under not terrible.

And now, about the book.  Not only was this part of my prez bios project, but Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage is also a Pulitzer winner in the Biography category (1933), so I got to check off an item on another of my little lists as well. However, I'm a little sad to say that I didn't love it. I liked some things about it. For one thing, Allan Nevins, the author, writing in the early 1930s interviewed many people who actually had known Grover Cleveland, so the biography and sources of much information were fascinating in that sense. Also, you could tell that Nevins, coming from a totally jacked-up economic time in the U.S., really felt that importance of the whole 1880s-1890s currency/silver/hard money/economic issues, which, as I mentioned, he writes about for pages and pages and pages and pages. He just had a very immediate sense of his subject, it seemed, which was cool. And he's obviously quite the historian, and there's even an Allan Nevins prize for scholarly historical writing something something...so good for him.

But there were occasional weird choices in the book. Here's one: how do you not mention McKinley's assassination at ALL? I mean, part of the fun of prez bios is reading the post-presidency chapters, when the presidents live to the post-presidency that is. And if something hugely significant happens in that next president's term, of course it is mentioned. And Nevins even talks about Cleveland traveling to my (other) boy Rutherford B. Hayes' (#19) funeral. So, what the hell? How does he not even MENTION McKinley? He talks about Grover and  William getting along famously at the latter's inauguration, and about how the Democrats were dissatisfied with William and thinking of having Grover run again, and then all of a sudden a few pages later President Teddy Roosevelt does something or other and it's like, what the hell?

So that's that. On to president #23, Benjamin Harrison, the one who came between Grover I and Grover II. And then, McKinley, the 25th presidency, but only president #24, who is called president #25. And so on. Sigh.

Thornton, Luis and the Pulitzers (not the name of my new band)

now finished: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

next up: I'm thinking Bill Bryson

Some of the early Pulitzer Prize-winning novels have disappeared into out-of-print obscurity. I mean, really, Lamb in His Bosom? Scarlet Sister Mary? And what can you tell me about the very first winner, Ernest Poole? Oh, but then Upton Sinclair won the Pulitzer in 1943...no, silly, not for The Jungle. For Dragon's Teeth.  Sure, everyone loves Dragon's Teeth.

OK, so while The Late George Apley may not be on your bedside table right this moment, there are some winners from those first two decades of the Pulitzer that are still well known, probably because they had Oscar-nominated films made out of them. Examples: The Good Earth, Gone With the Wind, The Yearling, The Magnificent Ambersons, and -- the subject of today's discussion -- The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

In fact, I do believe that The Bridge of San Luis Rey is more famous as a book than as a book by Thornton Wilder. Yes, that Thornton Wilder, the man who brought us Our Town, for which he also won a Pulitzer, by the way. In fact, he won two in the Drama category. Is he twice as good a playwright as he is a novelist? Maybe.

Let's get one thing clear right away: The Bridge of San Luis Rey is short. Really short. So if you have any inclination to read it, you might as well just go do it and you can probably finish before happy hour. I must say, though, that this book was not at all what I expected. The problem is, I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting. More action? More like The Bridge on the River Kwai?  Or maybe just a plot. Yes, I think I was definitely expecting a plot.

Instead, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is more of a meditation. There's a bridge, it breaks, and five people plunge to their deaths. (This is not a spoiler; it happens in the first sentence.)  The book proceeds to examine a bunch of questions, such as: Who were those five people? Why did they die instead of five other people? Were they connected? What does it all mean? Is God just messing with us? (I paraphrase.)  Some of these questions are answered, but most of them aren't.

So, if the questions aren't answered, then what does happen in The Bridge of San Luis Rey? Well... that's hard to say. There's a marquesa, an actress, and two twins that nobody can tell apart. (I know, it sounds like the start of a joke, but they don't walk into a bar. They're never all in the same place at once.) You get to know the people, sort of. You ponder love. You ponder life. I suppose these aren't bad ways to spend a couple hours. Have I mentioned that the book takes place in Peru?  This was interesting to me because I just finished reading Mario Vargas Llosa's El Paraiso en la otra esquina, which also spends time in Peru, and it's all kind of making me want to go there really quite a lot. But, yeah, Peru. Now, the Pulitzer criteria of course is that the award must go to a "distinguished work of fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life." It never actually says this has to be United Statesian, and careful readers will recall that I dig it when we remember that this whole big ol' land mass of ours is "America." But the Pulitzers are on top of that, because for the History category they do specifically mention "the United States" whereas for fiction, poetry, and biography it's more broadly "American." Which is in itself interesting (and also why The Tiger's Wife didn't win this year).

Obviously, I have never watched the film of The Bridge of San Luis Rey or maybe I wouldn't find it to be as random as I do. It's not just Peru, or the characters who aren't really connected until they are forced to be connected, but more that when I finished this book I just didn't feel satisfied.  Maybe as it sits with me for a few weeks or months I will come to look back on it more fondly. I certainly support lines like this:

"For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?" - p. 57

And this:

"He was willing to renounce the dignities of public life, if in secret he might feel that he looked down upon men from a great distance, knowing more about them than they knew themselves..." - p. 75And I definitely relate to lines like this:

"...a rather pinched peasant-girl, dragged from the cafés-chantants and quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appetites, of her dreams, and of her crowded daily routine. Each of these was a world in itself..."  -p. 84

And this:

"He was contemptuous of the great persons who, for all their education and usage, exhibited no care nor astonishment before the miracles of word order in Calderón and Cervantes." - p. 77

But something left me wanting. It's not that the whole wasn't greater than the sum of its parts. On the contrary, I think the sum of these parts is much less than the whole, and I found that frustrating. But I wouldn't say it's not worth it. It's short, remember?  So is life. This book will make you think about that.

Is a war best served cold?

now finished listening: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

next up (audio): The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral--and How It Changed the American West by Jeff Guinn

Speaking of not starting the fire (which I did in my last post on this blog), after several months of listening during walks and hikes, I completed my latest audio book, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy.

This is a perfect example of the non-fiction subtitles I used to make so much fun of back when I first started working at Borders. It's like, people! You get ONE chance to title the book, OK? Why should you get to title it one thing and then go ahead and put all the things you were trying but failing to convey in your title in a second, sub-title? That bugs me for some reason.

Anyway, I realize that people do not necessarily know what The Dead Hand is, so I am here to tell you that it refers to the Soviet plan to build a facility way below the earth with automated systems that could launch nuclear retaliation in the event that the U.S. wiped out the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. That is, instead of a hand on "the button" launching a nuclear weapon to attack the U.S., all the Soviets would actually be dead but it is like a dead hand holding down the button, launching the Soviet missiles as revenge to the U.S. I am fairly certain that the author is appalled at this very notion, based on the way he talked about it and chose to use it for the title of the book. However, I think that's unfair. This is something that specifically would happen IF and ONLY IF the United States first wiped out the Soviet Union and there are no leaders left alive. I mean, if you're going to be all wtf?!! about it, you might want to at least consider that the U.S. is the truly dastardly one in that scenario.

This book isn't biased in a Fox News way, but it has a hint of that assumption of U.S. rightness that bothers me because I feel it caters to people who accuse anyone who criticizes the U.S. of being a commie or terrorist or whatever. I do give major kudos to David E. Hoffman for pointing out that Mikhail Gorbachev is truly awesome, a smart, even brilliant, leader who deserved major accolades for all he did in history. I love my boy Gorbie! This book also offers a bit of a glimpse at Ronald Reagan's fretting that bordered on paranoia and the fact that Reagan's use of phrases like "evil empire" didn't help matters any.  (Reagan himself reconsidered and later regretted using this phrase, especially once he got to know more and more Russian people.)

Alas, like so much of our public discourse in the U.S. among squawking heads and on the interwebs and whatnot, no one ever considers that the U.S. could actually just be a bad guy, or, even, an average guy who is equally responsible for the stupid-ass nonsense that is war and/or cold war. And that pretty much seems to be David E. Hoffman's position in this book: that the Soviet Union was horribly sinister, secretly making biological weapons and plotting to destroy the world.  He seems to pretty much miss his own (well documented) point that the people who were working in those factories and labs were completely and totally under the impression that the U.S. was also manufacturing biological weapons in violation of international conventions. (Convention as in "signed treaty," not as in "mannerly custom.")  Hoffman spells out how many of the scientists and other workers were decent people and hard workers who were often uninformed and at worst misguided, and even points out how Gorbachev was in the dark on some of this. So why can't Hoffman acknowledge that the U.S., too, occasionally does horrible things because of a few power hungry people who force, cajole, or brainwash others into doing their bidding?  (Exhibit A: Guantanamo. Exhibit B: Iraq. Exhibit C: Taxi to the Dark Side.  Exhibit D: Vietnam.  I could go on...)

And then there's the possibility that the U.S. in fact was also secretly testing and experimenting with various sorts of weapons over the last few decades.... Who, us?! Never, right?  Give me a break.

That said, you can totally learn a lot from this book and it is really, really interesting!  It might be particularly useful for children of the 80s such as myself who came of age as "communism" "fell" and whose introduction to the world of news, government and power was filtered through now-iconic images of Reagan and Gorbachev doing their thing.  Many of the individual Soviets' stories are also fascinating, as are the bits about the "mysterious" anthrax outbreak in the Soviet Union, the off-course Korean passenger airliner shot down because Soviets thought it was a U.S. spy plane (why? because a few months earlier there HAD BEEN an incident there with a U.S. spy plane going over the line, even though we are all innocence and goodness and light of course), the defectors, the flock of geese mistaken for a missile, the George Bush (I) administration that threatened to undo all the good of Reagan/Gorbie, and the tours of the U.S. in the early 1990s in which Soviet verifiers would insist on stopping on some random highway in, like, Kansas or Alabama to check a water tower that they were sure must be holding some biological weapons....but nope, just a water tower.

The Dead Hand is a fascinating book and it won the Pulitzer in 2010 for General Nonfiction. I highly recommend reading it, but I can't highly recommend listening to the audio. I know I am finicky about my audio listening (I have only recently started being able to listen to audio books, while I walk or exercise, and even now I can't listen to fiction -- I hate being read to) but I really didn't care for this narration and it made the book less compelling of an experience for me. I couldn't wait to get back to my favorite narrator (yes, I do have one, and I am pretty much choosing all my audio books right now by only getting ones that he narrates, which unfortunately did not include The Dead Hand.)

Hey, how about we all give peace a chance and stuff?

Wait, like, that Cold Water Flat?

finished: Tinkers by Paul Harding

next up: Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester Alan Arthur by Thomas C. Reeves

current audio listen: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

From the "Who Knew?" files: Paul Harding, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tinkers, is Paul Harding, who was in the 90s band Cold Water Flat.

OK, so I'm a bit late to the Tinkers party. But here's the thing: I was totally one of the few who were AT the Cold Water Flat party, so what do you have to say about that, huh?  It's true. When it comes to mid-1990s alterna-pop and non-top 40 radio, I am your girl. Better than Ezra? Jennifer Trynin? Grant Lee Buffalo? Sinead Lohan? Freedy Johnston? Bring it. Been there, done that, bought the CDs, because those were the days when you liked the single played on the radio so much that you went to Zia or (R.I.P.) Tower and bought the CD, not like now when you like the song played on the radio/Lastfm/Spotify/YouTube so much that you go to iTunes and buy the song. Which you already know and hear all the time. What's the fun in that?

Anyway, so Cold Water Flat is in fact one of the bands that is even a tiny bit more special for me because I was also at the Internet party in 1995 (when many of you -- don't deny it! -- were still a bit befuddled by all this talk of Telnet and chat rooms and the someone@something.com beginning to appear under the names of readers who wrote letters to the editor of Newsweek. So it was still somewhat of a novelty for me to e-mail Cold Water Flat at the e-mail address printed in their liner notes and talk about how I worked at my (ASU) college radio station and their upcoming show in Phoenix and so on ... and I got a response! I totally emailed with someone from Cold Water Flat back in the day! And no, I can't remember any of the details. Or even that long gone ASU e-mail address of mine. I transferred to USC the next year, and eventually the whole world got online, and the past faded away.

Fast forward to 2010. I'm in Chicago. I've got 700 books on my Goodreads "to-read" list. Tinkers by Paul Harding wins the Pulitzer for Fiction. No one has ever heard of this book. The interesting story in all the press and interviews and newspapers is how it was rejected by publishers before the tiny Bellevue Literary Press printed it in all its small but remarkable literary silence. The New York Times' "Look who wrote a Pulitzer" piece doesn't even mention that he was in a band until the fourth paragraph; the name Cold Water Flat comes in paragraph 14. I didn't read that New York Times piece in 2010. I noted the Pulitzer winners (because, um, I always do, since I kind of am obsessed with the Pulitzers) but all I remember thinking about Tinkers was, "Oh, that's really small. What is it? Oh, it's a tiny little white book. Note to self: read Tinkers."  The title and description evoked in my mind someone older than, you know, my approximate age or a few years older. The author was obviously literary, an Iowa Wrtiers' Workshop graduate, and I mentally placed him in his 50s. (Oh, hush, you know we all make random judgments like that.)

Fast forward again to May 2012. I'm catching up on recent Pulitzer winning fiction, and I check out Tinkers from the Phoenix public library. I read it in a day or two. I like it a lot. I start reading some of the post-Pulitzer  press, no longer afraid of spoilers, devouring the info about this literary wonder author who was checking the Pulitzer web site to see who won when he discovered that he won. And then I see: the drummer for Cold Water Flat. Such a flashback! Two of my worlds colliding!

I try to picture myself driving around Phoenix or L.A. in the late 1990s. I may have sold my Cold Water Flat CD in one of my great used CD purges -- back when you could actually get some money that way. Would I have ever imagined that one of the members of this band would write a novel that would surprise everyone by quietly becoming a Pulitzer Prize winner? Would the members of the band have imagined it, either?

I love creative people.

Oh, and guess what? Jen(nifer) Trynin has written a book, too. 

The beauty of Tinkers

now finished: Tinkers by Paul Harding

I've caught up on another Pulitzer winning novel, and this one is small and wonderful. Most summaries say something like, "A dying man thinks back on his life" and while that is true that is not the entirety of this work. I think the real magic in Tinkers is the way that two stories are told, of two different men, and yet you slowly come to realize how connected we all are, even when separated, and how much our stories are part of one another's stories.

Also, the Maine setting works painfully perfectly for this novel. It, too, is vivid and magical. And so literary! And, yes, a wee bit mournful, I'd say:


"Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn't it? ...And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough. - p. 72

There are several surprising, delightful moments, like when Russell the Cat makes an appearance. I immediately loved Russell the Cat, and remember him well, brief though his time was on the Tinkers stage:

"The children were astonished by the ham that Kathleen had cooked for the Christmas meal. It was the largest they had ever seen. It was covered in a crust of brown sugar and molasses. Buddy the Dog sat at attention, as if recommending himself to the ham over the children by his proper manners. Kathleen shooed him with a kick in the ribs, but he just let out a yelp and stayed put. Russell the Cat came into the room, too, and sat facing the wall, away from the table, cleaning his paws, as if an affectation of utter disinterest might be the trick to getting a scrap." - p.83

Why did the Bellevue Press publish this book? In part, this is a story about epilepsy. In part, it is about humanity.  It is about what it means to work, to feel, and to make a life. In part, it is about what it means to be mentally ill and the judgments we freely cast on one another.

"Is it not true: A move of the head, a step to the left or right, and we change from wise, decent, loyal people to conceited fools?" - p. 124

When I used to review advance reader copies as a Borders front-of-store person, the cards I filled out for the Random House rep asked me to compare the book to another work. (This, to get the bookseller thinking about recommending it to readers, obvio.) I think Tinkers feels a bit like "The Little Match Girl."

Also, when you read Tinkers you will learn about clocks. And you will like doing so.

A Visit From the Recent Pulitzer Winners

recently finished: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Delayed blogging...I actually finished this book in late April. In fact, it was good timing that I had checked it out of the library shortly before the Pulitzer Prize winners were announced. The 2012 winner for the Fiction category was: nobody!  But I just picked up last year's winner, Goon Squad, from my to-read pile and carried on as if something had happened, because I had not got around to reading the 2011 winner yet.

So, then. Did I love it? Well, I wasn't sure I was going to love it, but then it got better near the end. I do not refer to the Power Point chapter, about which I am still decidedly "Whatever" but I just really liked how aptly she illustrated the disconnect between those in the younger generation who aren't willing to say anything that might offend anyone and, well, the rest of us. That got this book so many points from me. More points than all the drugs and rock n' roll and random New York and California moments.

As I mentioned on Goodreads, I think the joke is on the reader in a way. That is, to the extent readers marvel at its incisive criticism of technology -- while reading it on their iPhone or whatever. As I also mentioned previously, I really liked that instead of capitulating to this whole "Woe is the music industry" thing she just wrote about it, accepting that it is changing but not buying into the hyped idea that it is dying.

All in all, I consider this worth a read. I also firmly believe that even if you create individual works of art, you can link them together into a greater work of art, and thus make a new work of art. In other words, it's a novel, not a collection of short stories.