Tangled Book Reviews: Free Books!

It is my pleasure to announce that The M Half of the M-n-J Show will be the next recipient of Creative is a Verb. In a highly scientific randomization, I took all of the names of people who commented that they'd like the book and put them in a coffee mug. I then drew them one at a time and numbered them according to the order in which I pulled them out. Since there were six names, I rolled the dice. (A die, to be more accurate.) And I rolled a two. That was M Half's number. So the book will be winging its way to Austin over the weekend. Enjoy the book, M Half! And for the rest of you, I guess you'll just have to read her blog to find out when you'll get another chance at it.

Speaking of winning free books, Darren Cormier is a writer I discovered by accident while Googling a David Foster Wallace quote. He has a book coming out soon called A Little Soul: 140 Twitter Stories. The way this man can pack a whole story into 140 characters is utterly amazing. For the release of his book, he is going to send a free copy to the 140th person to "Like" his Facebook page. So go on and give him a like. Even if you don't win a copy of the book, you still win. You get to encourage a fellow writer and he publishes a new Twitterstory every Sunday so you get to read these little nuggets of goodness anyway.

And should you find yourself at everyone's free book mecca - the library - here are a few things I've been reading lately:

Two of my favorite authors: David Shields and Jonathan Lethem both have new books out. Our library currently holds neither of them. Jerks. So, I've contented myself with reading Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence, Nonfictions, etc. which is relatively new, but not about the Talking Heads. So, you all know I how I love nonfiction, right? Lethem is one of the few writers who captivates me with his fiction, too. If you are new to his work, check out Motherless Brooklyn or Chronic City. Both are incredibly imaginative books with prose that just blows the mind. It takes me a long time to read his books, because I have to stop and savor different turns of phrase over and over. Motherless Brooklyn is more straightforward fiction and Chronic City has a bit of magical realism and fantasy about it. Both are fantastic reads, fully absorbing and intricate without sacrificing pace.

While I love Lethem's fiction, I am of course a sucker for the non. Ecstasy is a a collection of essays and articles that range all over the place, but there's a sort of central theme of writing and the nature of fiction and appropriation and influence in art. Lethem's nonfiction is as intense as his fiction, with the same attention to detail and expression. His primary literary influences are sci-fi, a genre that frequently confounds me, so sometimes the references are hard to follow. The upside of this is that my to-read list is growing and my husband might faint to see me check J.G. Ballard out of the library. "Sure, I've been telling you to read Crash for years, but if Jonathan Lethem tells you to..." What's fascinating, though, is that through Lethem's defense of sci-fi, a genre that is often considered sub-literary, I see my own prejudices are based on very little actual knowledge and want to give some of the classics a shot. I will probably still tease the Chief Lou for reading his "romance novels for boys", though.

It is also because of Lethem that I picked up Italo Calvino's Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings, because I am a sucker for nonfiction. I am nosy and fascinated by the things that great writers write about themselves. I like to see the "real lives" of writers - especially writers like Calvino and Lethem who write such surreal fiction. I've only just started the Calvino, but it promises to be interesting. In just the first selection he explores why he chose to settle in Turin against Italian literary tradition and how his choice of home is both a reflection of and inspiration for his writing style. I can't wait to read more.

But the sun is shining today and the bike paths are calling. The Hooligan and I are about to venture out to the post office to send one book on its way across the Rocky Mountains, and then to the library to harass the Powers That Be about their egregious oversight in not having Jeff, One Lonely Guy available, especially considering Shields is a local author. I will harass them gently, though. It is an amazing thing, the library. I will revel a bit in the smell and the stacks and stacks of books. These millions of words that people throughout history have taken the patience and the madness and the "wasting of time" to write down and share so that we can, for free, bring these pieces of brilliant minds into our homes, enjoy them and share them.

We will probably eat cupcakes, too. 

Exploding Unmentionables: An Intensely Personal Book Review (Sort of)

 If you've ever given birth, you'll understand what they mean when they say "the urge to push". Urge is putting it mildly. There is no wondering whether, perhaps, you may or may not be ready to push. There is no weighing the consequences. There is no sense in telling you not to push. There is no worrying about what people will think of your pushing. There is nothing in the world to do except push.

David Foster Wallace's description of a work in progress: “a kind of hideously damaged infant that follows the writer around, forever crawling after the writer (dragging itself across the floors of restaurants where the writer’s trying to eat, appearing at the foot of the bed first thing in the morning, etc.), hideously defective, hydrocephalic and noseless and flipper-armed and incontinent and retarded and dribbling cerebro-spinal fluid out of its mouth as it mewls and blurbles and cries out to the writer, wanting love, wanting the very thing its hideousness guarantees it’ll get: the writer’s complete attention.”

There's no way to know what truckload of mental suitcases the reader brings to any bit of writing at any given time. As a compulsive writer and an avid reader, the most gratifying experience for me is when I read something that collides with me and has me screeching on the brakes and sending that mental baggage flying: exploding unmentionables in a colorful, embarrassing mess all over the place.

Mrs. Hagstrand was my 6th grade teacher. She was so beautiful to me with her flowing skirts, nubbly sweaters and thick ankles. She was Jewish, and therefore exotic in our small Vermont town. She wore chunky, ethnic jewelry and a sleek bob. I wanted so much to be her. I tried to dress like her, write like her, talk like her. I wanted so much for her to see the potential "her-ness" in me. I wrote a book of poems for a creative writing project. I barely remember the poems - a vague recollection of one about a unicorn - but I remember working and reworking them to make them sound just right. Earlier that year I had won a state-wide creative writing contest and had my story displayed outside the governor's office. Full of 11-year-old anxious excitement, I awaited my turn for a private conference for the teacher; for the praise of my latest literary endeavor. Shattered and sick to my stomach, I listened to her explain meter, rhyme scheme, feet, stanzas, all a blur of her red pen and the tears I tried to swallow. "Well Suzanne, I've seen you do a lot of things well, but this isn't one of them."

At some point, the diary I have kept since I was 6 years old became less a record of events and more a blank space for experimentation. Fragments of thoughts, poems, I'm sure a lot of angsty feelings, ideas about things outside my small existence, quotes from songs, books, conversations, magazine articles that resonated with me. I wrote frequently and abundantly, a place I could not only be wholly myself, but also to try out who I might want to be, how I might want to think. When I was 14, my whole family moved to China. Rather than fly out of New York or Montreal, we drove from Vermont to Los Angeles, stopping all across the country to say goodbye to family and friends along the way. A month in the minivan with my parents and siblings, drifting farther and farther away from my childhood home toward what might as well have been another planet. I kept myself busy with Aerosmith and my journal. My older brother kept himself busy reading my journal while I was asleep and repeating parts of it back in conversation while I was awake with a gentle, mocking smile.

The year I dropped out of college, my roommate and I spent all of our time in a coffee house. Writing and letting each other read it. We met some other aspiring writers (who wasn't an aspiring writer? Perhaps the aspiring rock stars?) and spent many a caffeine fueled night - bleary eyed, half-starved, electric - talking, writing, creating with the pretension that only 21-year-olds or established writers can pull off. That roommate remains one of my closest friends. In a recent email, she told me "Your words have kept me afloat this year."

I have the skeletons of short stories littered throughout my journals. Ideas I wanted to explore tangled and left to die in the brambles of poorly developed fictional characters, stilted dialogue, and broken plot lines. I stopped writing much because I didn't like to write fiction. I had stories to tell, but I wasn't famous enough for an autobiography, "important" enough for a memoir, but I got bored with fictionalizing it all. I started this blog as an outlet for that pent up writing. Every time I go to press "publish", my inner censor says: "Why are you publishing that? So much navel-gazing twaddle. Who would want to read that?"

In a prose creative writing class in college, my professor told me I could write tone very well. He told me I could make the reader really feel something, but that my plots went nowhere. I said wasn't it enough to make the reader feel? "Well no!" [pregnant pause in which his ruddy, jowled face seemed to reconsider] "No. No it's not." [quietly, as if to convince himself].

A few months ago, I said "screw it" and started this blog.

I read Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields when it first came out. I had never heard of him before but I read a review by accident as I was stuffing the newspaper into the wood stove and I was intrigued. In part, the book explores how the literary vehicle of the novel somewhat outmoded and tedious. Our current culture craves reality because it seems to be in such short supply. The literature we crave is the real or seemingly real. He speaks of elevating non-fiction from mere memoir or scholarly pursuit to the lyrical essay, the literary collage. I read it all in one night and couldn't sleep for the fire it started. A writer, a good writer, a published writer had defied genre and the literary world with this manifesto, this justification for my journals. It was as if, like my brother, he'd read my journals while I was sleeping and was repeating my thoughts back to me. Except instead of mocking, he returned my thoughts to me in this amazing, eloquent, intelligent, resonant collage. Serendipitously, he sent me a signed copy of the book which is now dog-eared, annotated, underlined and full of coffee stains. "For Suzanne - Good luck with your own writing - Glad to hear this book pushed you in interesting directions."

I went to hear him speak the other night at the library. I shook his hand afterward and told him thank you.
"Your book has liberated my writing. Thank you."
"You're welcome. You're the person I wrote that book for."

Distracted

Is it just me, or is there a whole lot of nasty stuff going down here, lately?! It seems there are a lot of things floating around my world these last few weeks that I don't want to think about. I will think about them eventually. I've set them in the back of the fridge like a sourdough starter and when they're ripe, I'll make some delicious decision bread. Not today. Today I am completely distracted.

I dreamed last night that an old friend and I were standing in what looked like a Soviet bread line. We huddled outside with a lot of grim faced strangers, shuffling our feet andlooking at the ground.


 Smash cut. We emerged in a dark, Warhol-esque warehouse sort of scene. Standing at a cocktail table, my friend and I squabbled over who would speak to Billy D. Williams. I wanted Friend to because he has connections "in the industry". He was afraid of looking uncool when he asked Billy D. to sign the Lando Calrissian action figure I had smuggled in. Friend finally agreed to do it, but every time he touched the action figure, it turned into a talking Kelsey Grammer / Frasier Crane doll.

  Insert cartoonish struggling over action figure and scuffling onto the floor. [Ever conscious of sticky things, I am a little appalled, even in my dream, that I am rolling around on the floor of a club.] Landed sweating and dissheveled in front of the stage just as David Bowie came on. But it was like Labyrinth David Bowie and he gave us the stink-eye for ruining his entrance. I recoiled from the inexplicably spooky dream subtext that is impossible to explain, but then was oddly excited because I got some Bowie glitter on me. I turned around to show Friend and he was gone. So was my Lando Calrissian action figure. The latter was more ominous than the former for some reason.

Needless to say, it was a strange way to start the day. My day that only got stranger for myriad reasons that I am still not thinking about. This day that will conclude with going to see David Shields give a talk at the library for National Write a Novel Month. I want to bring a book for him to autograph, but being the library addict bibliophile that I am, the only book of his that I actually own is a copy of Reality Hunger that he, himself, sent to me last year. [Free plug for the book: if you read, write, think about reading, think about writing, you should read this book. It could really change your world.] Would it be strange to have him autograph it again? And why, oh why?! did I not do laundry in preparation for this? I have only ridiculous pants left to wear. It may be more than this girl can handle.

Down the Rabbit Hole into Roses

This month's recommended reading list from within the Rabbit Hole. How to move from the inevitability of death to heirloom roses in five easy steps. 

Rabbit Hole.
I read like tumbling down stairs.

I've been casting about for the last several weeks for something to read while I'm waiting for my stab at A Dance With Dragons from the library (as of this writing, there are 137 people in front of me on the hold list, so it may be a while). I was reading The Inevitable, a collection of essays about the inevitability of death, primarily because (I'll be honest here) David Shields co-wrote the introduction to the collection and it is my personal mission to read every scrap of everything he has ever written and meet him to discuss writing (without enrolling in one of his classes at UW) over coffee one day. It was an excellent collection, for the most part, and I was inspired by the mechanics of it all. Death, like love, friendship and motherhood, is one of those subjects that it's nigh unto impossible to address directly without resorting to cliché. The essays were fascinating in their massively different approaches to the same topic. They were also informative, moving, funny, and appalling. Unfortunately, I had to lay the book aside because my reading of it coincided with the third anniversary of my dad's death and it was all too much right then.

But, as these rabbit holes of reading can go, I needed to pick up some David Foster Wallace because there was an essay by Jonathan Foer in The Inevitable that I found both brilliant and disappointing at the same time and it made me think of brilliant disappointment (or perhaps, disappointed brilliance) and well, obviously Wallace is the next curve in that particular spiral. So, I was noodling through Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and feeling, as I always do when I read his work, rather dilettantish in the face of such staggering insight and wordsmithery. I was enjoying this in much the same way I enjoy poking my bruises, but alas, I eventually had to  put him aside for three distinct and particular reasons. First, like the lobster I no longer eat because of him, it's delicious and somewhat addictive, but also very rich and too much in one sitting can wreak havoc on the digestive system. Second, some of his "Brief Interviews" were men who closely resembled people I may have, at one time, known rather well and it was giving me nightmares. And lastly, because my reading happened to coincide with seeing Justin Townes Earle, both in concert and in the act of reducing the lead singer of his opening act to tears on the sidewalk, and the whole tortured genius thing just got to be all too much.

I was thisclose to picking up a book my mom recommended because she said the author reminded her of me when I'm not thinking about being polite and I wondered what that meant, when in the alchemy of the public library hold system, a book I reserved months ago came available. [I will pause here to explain that I don't buy books very often anymore. I don't have room. Besides the overflowing bookshelves in three rooms of our four room house, I also use teetering stacks of them as "decorations" or "end tables". I call it my version of shabby chic. Other people call it a gigantic mess. Po-tah-to. Also, we have an amazing public library system and I like to think I do my part keeping it afloat with my late fees. I also like the idea of sharing books with the whole city. There are many other reasons, but for now, suffice it to say that a lot of my reading and entertainment revolves around when my number comes up on the hold list.] So, this gentle and lovely book landed in my lap at exactly the right time because the Magic Hold Fairy at the library decided that it was my turn.

Eudora Welty in the 30s.
How fabulous is her hat?!

What There is to Say, We Have Said is a collection of letters between Eudora Welty and her friend, colleague and editor William Maxwell that span nearly 60 years. I want Eudora Welty to be my friend. I want to write to her of roses and traveling and the weather. I want her to come and visit me and read rough drafts of her stories aloud to me. I want William Maxwell to be my editor. I want him to send me galleys with gentle suggestions. I want him to protect me from "stupid reviews". I want him to write and ask me to ask my mother for recipes. In all honesty, I've read very little Eudora Welty for one reason or another and I've never read any William Maxwell. I'm not sure now that I want to. This intimate glimpse of them through their correspondence with each other is far more interesting to me than fictitious short stories. The personality, the wit, the mundane details of life and the genuine regard they have for one another fascinate me. I am sure these elements show up in their fiction, because even in fiction, you can't really hide who you are; but oddly, I'd rather read their writing about their writing. Especially in the frank, unguarded conversation between old friends.

Ezra Pound said: "Man reading should be intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand." People who actually read, do so for many reasons: escape, information, solace, necessity, kinship, entertainment, schadenfreud, maintenance of mental accuity, bragging rights, and so on. I couldn't name just one reason I read any more than I could name just one favorite author or book, but ultimately, it's that "ball of light" that I seek. Whether that "ball" be glowing the sickly greenish cast of  fluorescence from a men's restroom or the ruddy glow of a late Mississippi summer afternoon scented with roses and fresh-baked bread, I need it there in my hands like I need the hands themselves. Even more, reading is so intensely interwoven with my very act of being alive. That ouroboros of life affecting my reading and my reading affecting my life is a constant source of amusement and fascination to me. "What There Is..." is one of those books that's intensely alive whether anyone's reading it or not, but how much more fun to share that intensity with these charming friends. Read it.

Crippling Inspiration

I just finished Enough About You by David Shields. I'm going to blame him for my lack of sleep this week. Whenever I get one of his books, I have to read it all in a wallop. He's a writer who defies genre - both overtly and covertly. While some people find his work tedious or confounding, I am one of the converted.
It feels like getting a letter from an old friend. Most of my reading time is after I've put the monkeys to bed, so into the wee hours I'm huddled over the book while my husband snores beside me. I'm giggling and I'm nodding in agreement, I'm thinking "Oh, shut up!",  sometimes I'm exasperated, sometimes I'm rolling my eyes, sometimes I'm  holding back tears, but I'm always inspired. Something about his writing triggers a rapid neuron-fire that makes my scalp tingle. I'm ready to write, I'm ready to conquer the world, but first I've got to go to sleep because the monkeys have a dentist appointment at the crack of dawn (who scheduled that?!) or I have a volunteer function to go to at school (do I have to?!) or any number of completely prosaic things that will demand my attention and relative degrees of wakefulness the next day.
So I do my walk of shame the next morning (or later the same morning).  I sit in the waiting room of the dentist's office, or in the school cafeteria or where ever my presence is required and I try to stay awake. I wonder if anyone can tell I didn't wash my hair or that I'm wearing yesterday's clothes.  If they see the bags under my eyes or notice that I've drifted off into another world altogether. Can they smell the six cups of coffee on my breath? Do they know that I spent the better part of the night entangled in the words of another man? Can I casually slip the book into conversation so I can keep thinking about it? Should I read the book again or just put it away and try to move on? Maybe I'll just read that one passage again. Maybe the whole chapter. No, I should just break it off. I need to get some sleep. How much longer do I have to talk to this person in front of me before I can sneak off someplace and write?
Then the adrenaline wears off and the doubt sets in. By the time I am alone again with my own words, I feel inadequate, silly, embarrassed by my ardor.  The inspiration from the night before has turned into paralysis. Is my sentence structure too bloated? My metaphors are too pale. How can anyone even look at such hairy punctuation? How can I ever be inventive enough to satisfy? A nauseous hangover that mocks the loud-mouthed ideas from the night before. The sexy, intellectual vixen has turned into a dowdy housewife, tittering self-consciously up her sleeve in cliches.
Sometimes my heroes are too good. They give me just enough commonality, enough of their humanity to feel akin to something, to feel like I've caught on, to inspire me to more. But then daylight comes and the words seize in my throat. They see my pen and a blank page and turn and run away. Or those words I'd merrily dominated the night before get up and rearrange themselves into one giant yawn: already been done, who cares?, charlatan, fake, tedious bore. So I sit here mute, used up, exhausted, crippled by inspiration.

(Originally written 10 June 2011)