I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Jorge Luis Borges
We’re off to Connecticut for the weekend, so I’ll be gone till next week. I hope you can make it through without me.
I checked out Annie Proulx’s The Shipping Yard and Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye from the library yesterday. The Shipping Yard has really captivated me so far. I’ll have to give you a full write-up when I return. And as for the Salinger — well, if Chris is really determined to name this kid Holden, he’s obligated to read the darn book first!
I try not to post twice in one day (no one likes a blog hog), but I was just perusing the Bookslut archives and found this really excellent feature from a couple years back that I just had to share. In the article, Cutter argues that American women are better short story writers than American men. I know, I know, I was skeptical too. Whether or not his premise is true, though, he raises a lot of really great questions and links to some stories and authors that deserve a look. My favorite line from his article is this: “…strong sentences can make anything readable. If boxes of Wheaties had good copy, breakfast would be riveting.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned while being knocked up, it’s that you should never, ever comment on the size of a pregnant woman’s belly. And it’s not because we’re self-conscious about being fat — I, for one, was relieved to finally be able to stop secretly obsessing about my weight and take advantage of the freedom of second helpings — it’s because it’s so damn annoying. It’s bad enough that we have to lug a 30- or 40-pound counterweight around all day, but now we also have to suffer inane comments from everyone from our mothers to the cashier at the grocery store. No, I am not “about to pop.” No, I am not having twins. Yes, I am very uncomfortable. Yes, I have two months to go. I’m sorry, are you an OB? Have you taken my fundal height measurement? Do you know what the hell you are taking about? No, I didn’t think so. Every woman’s belly grows at a different rate (some gain it all at the beginning, some all at the end, some gradually as they go), and they gain differing amounts of weight. For example, on Sunday, I was told I looked like I was going to “pop.” On Monday, I was told I looked tiny. Conclusion: you people don’t know anything. So just stop.
Language Log and Alternet both had some great write-ups of the hilarious misspelling on a banner at Pat Buchanan’s “English-only” initiative conference. Or conferenece, if you’re Buchanan, I guess.
The Alternet article quotes Peter Brimelow as saying that requiring Spanish proficiency in key positions, such as the police force (which, according to Brimelow, is on the Obama administration’s To Do list), will be a “direct attack on the American working class.” That reminds me of a joke that a Spanish teacher of mine once told:
What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.
I bought myself a $40 bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. I call it my victory lap. It’s sitting on the kitchen counter, smiling serenely at me, just waiting till after September when I get this kid out of me and I can drink the whole bottle. In one sitting.
A very interesting exchange during Drew Toal’s interview with James Hannaham got me to thinking:
My bookshelf, through no fault of my own, is too white I think.
Why is it not your fault?
Well, I guess it is, but it wasn’t what I set out to do.
Isn’t it funny how that works? You’re not even trying, and yet, somehow… It’s probably just because you’re not thinking about it. And that’s what privilege is. Not thinking about it. There is a lot of shame involved in thinking about whiteness, I think.
I too have a primarily white bookshelf, not by design, but by happenstance. Books that were my mother’s, books I got for free or off the $1 rack, books I bought for class, books I bought for their pretty covers, books I bought because I liked that one other book that the author wrote. This is how these things happen, I suppose.
In an attempt to ward off the terror, I’m reading Hypnobirthing by Marie F. Mongan, and it’s really fascinating. It’s not as kooky as it sounds. Hypnobirthing uses deep breathing and visualization techniques to put the laboring mother into a state of focused relaxation and allow the body to do most of the work without any forced pushing or medical intervention. Sounds dreamy. Literally — I tried some of the techniques last night and straight up fell asleep.
What fascinates me about the method is the psychological-physiological symbiosis it works to develop. It plays on the Pygmalion Effect, wherein reality is influenced by expectation. If I go into childbirth fearful and expecting pain, then that’s what I’ll get. But, according to Mongan, if I enter the process confident in my body’s natural ability and purpose, fully relaxed, then I’ll have an altogether different experience.
Neither Hippocrates nor Aristotle wrote of pain during normal, uncomplicated birth, and in fact, Aristotle wrote of the mind-body connection and the deep relaxation that Mongan advocates. It wasn’t until the Second Century AD, at the leading of a few “misguided early Christians,” that the concept of pain and suffering entered the cultural consciousness. This is also when the “Curse of Eve” was essentially created, and it’s been haunting us ever since. The Hebrew word etzev, used sixteen times in the KJV Bible, is usually translated to mean “labor, toil and work,” except when God is speaking to Eve, when the scholars suddenly decided to translate the term as “pain, sorrow, anguish or pangs.” Yet, in non-Western cultures around the world, women continue to give birth naturally and (seemingly) effortlessly. Mongan tells of meeting a woman from Africa at a hotel, and she excitedly asked the woman about birthing practices in her village. The woman at first said there wasn’t much to tell, but when Mongan pressed, she said a pregnant woman finds a structure to lean against for back support, then crouches with her hands open and says, “Baby come.”
I want desperately to buy into this (it’s a simple matter of laying aside all my natural cynicism). I can see it now: I’ll be there in the hospital saying, “Baby, get the hell outta there.” And out he’ll come, thereby precipitating both a beginning and an end.
Am I the only one who thinks the short fiction published in The New Yorker just isn’t that good? Every now and then there’s an exception, but this only serves to increase my general disappointment, as I approach the story in each issue and think, This time, it’ll be great.
Imagine the let-down at the end of a very mediocre and rather aimless story in the May issue, Jonathan Lethem’s “Ava’s Apartment,” when it began with this inspired sentence: “Perkus Tooth, the wall-eyed former rock critic, awoke the morning after the party he vowed would be his last, the night after the worst blizzard of the winter, asleep on a staircase, already in the grip of a terrible cluster headache.” And that was the single sublime moment of the story.
Considering that the other articles in this issue are about the wristwatch market, college lacrosse tryouts, the Supreme Court, frog extinction, Victor Fleming, and various operas and plays that are only showing in New York, I think it’s safe to say I won’t be renewing my subscription.
PS. I think the cartoons are dumb too.
I’m not going to tell you that Ferris’ novel is about work, or the economic downturn, or layoffs, because then you wouldn’t read it, and if you could only do one good thing for the rest of the year, reading this book would not be a bad way to go.
Ferris’ mastery of voice is astounding. He begins the novel in a whimsical, often hilarious first-person plural, the voice of the working masses at an advertising company. “We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of us liked most everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything. Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled. We loved free bagels in the morning.” This goes on for pages and pages, and I thought there was no way that Ferris could sustain that point of view with any sort of conviction. I thought for sure he would run out of steam, much like Joseph Heller’s Something Happened (which is what And Then We Came to the End reminded me of at first) seems to do after a while.
But he doesn’t. The “we” fades a bit into the background as the characters become more fleshed out, and we climb inside their skulls from time to time, but the reader continuously feels like she is standing in a group of these people, peering over a cubicle wall or gathered in someone’s office, watching the events unfold. It’s marvelously effective. Ferris’ characterization, too, is a work of art in itself.
Then there’s the chapter called The Thing to Do and the Place to Be, almost exactly in the center. It’s unlike any other section of the book, and Ferris himself called it the novel’s emotional heart. He says, “Without it Then We Came to the End would have been only an elaborate, if amusing, game.” Incredibly amusing, I would say. But when you hit the depths he plumbs in The Thing to Do, you understand how high the stakes are, and that this is not, by any means, a game.
I love this book. I love to see authors try new things and expand my understanding of the form, whether it be short fiction or a novel, and I think Ferris has done that. I wouldn’t call it avante garde, but it’s certainly fresh and unique in voice and form, and it’s a delight to read. I’ll leave you with one of my favorites passages:
There was so much unpleasantness in the workday world. The last thing you ever wanted to do at night was go home and do the dishes. And just the idea that part of the weekend had to be dedicated to getting the oil changed and doing the laundry was enough to make those of us still full from lunch want to lie down in the hallway and force anyone dumb enough to remain committed to walk around us. It might not be so bad. They could drop food down to us, or if that was not possible, crumbs from their PowerBars and bags of microwave popcorn would surely end up within an arm’s length sooner or later. The cleaning crews, needing to vacuum, would inevitably turn us on our sides, preventing bedsores, and we could make little toys out of runs in the carpet, which, in moments of extreme regression, we might suck on for comfort.
But enough daydreaming. Our desks were waiting, we had work to do. And work was everything. We liked to think it was family, it was God, it was following football on Sundays, it was shopping with the girls or a strong drink on Saturday night, that it was love, that it was sex, that it was keeping our eye on retirement. But at two in the afternoon with bills to pay and layoffs hovering over us, it was all about the work.
Postscript: If you were planning to see the Revolutionary Road flick, in which Leo and Kate are reunited at long last, don’t. Read the book instead. It may change your life. The movie will just make you depressed.
